Wages Crying Out from the Vineyards

On September 8, 1965, Filipino grape workers walked off the vineyards of Delano, California. Led by Larry Itliong, they refused to keep harvesting table grapes for wages that left their families hungry — stooping under a brutal sun with no shade, no clean drinking water, and pesticide dust drifting over them as they worked. Eight days later, Cesar Chavez and the National Farm Workers Association voted to join them.

What followed demanded extraordinary sacrifice. Workers who had almost nothing risked losing even that. Chavez fasted for twenty-five days in February 1968, his body wasting while his resolve deepened. Families survived on donated food. Strikers endured threats and poverty while growers wielded wealth and political power against them. Yet millions of Americans eventually joined the grape boycott, and the harvesters' cries could no longer be ignored.

James 5:4 declares, "Look! The wages you failed to pay your workers who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty."

By July 1970, the Delano growers signed union contracts granting fair wages and humane working conditions. The withheld wages had cried out — and the Lord Almighty heard.