Lesson Title:
César E. Chávez and the Great Depression

Grade Level:
Grade Eleven 

Unit of Study:
The Great Depression

History-Social Science Standard:
11.6   Students analyze the different explanations of the Great Depression and how the New Deal fundamentally changed the role of the federal government.
11.6.3   Discuss the human toll of the Depression, natural disasters, and unwise agricultural practices and their effects on the depression of rural regions and on political movements of the left and right, with particular attention to the Dust Bowl refugees and their social and economic impacts on California.

Materials:
Chart paper and marker pens or chalk board
Photographs or pictures of César E. Chávez, President Roosevelt, New Deal Posters
Selected reading from The Emergency Farm Mortgage Act, The Agricultural Adjustment Act, and The National Labor Relations Act
Excerpts from literature selections, such as John Steinbeck’s books The Grapes of Wrath, Tortilla Flats, or other Depression era literature

Setting the Context: 
The Great Depression dramatically changed the lives of the millions of Americans.  The Great Depression caused thousands of people in Arkansas, Okalahoma, and states in the Great Basin to lose their farms.  Drought ruined the capability of farmers to raise crops and forced them to give up their farms.  Thousands of people migrated to California trying to start a new life and found themselves working in the agricultural fields picking fruits, vegetables, cotton, and other agricultural products.  Life as a migrant farmer was difficult as families lived in inadequate company housing without running water, toilet facilities, or in many cases without heat or electricity.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt attempted, through New Deal programs, to help the farmers.  Together with Congress, Roosevelt passed several measures specifically aimed at farmers.  The Agricultural Adjustment Act paid farmers not to produce basic commodities such as cotton, hogs, wheat, and milk.  The Emergency Farm Mortgage Act was created to stop farmers from being evicted from their lands and to stop banks from foreclosing on farmers who could not pay their mortgages.  Neither act significantly helped small farmers for very long and many were forced off their land.  Congress also passed The Wagner Act, also called The National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) that guaranteed laborers the right to organize and to collectively bargain with management.  The NLRA specifically excluded farm laborers, unskilled workers, and women.

César E. Chávez’s family lost their home and farm in Arizona in 1938.  During the early years of the Depression, César’s father, Librado, owned small businesses and had given out too much credit to family members needing basic necessities such as food.  As the Depression deepened, Librado could not pay the taxes on his land or his mortgage.  Librado could not get a loan from the local bank to pay for the taxes on the land and so the Chávez family lost their businesses and home.  They became one of the thousands of people that moved to California in order to find work as migrant farm workers. 

César E. Chávez’s Personal Account 
For ten years, from 1937 to 1947, the Chávez family traveled throughout California from one farm to another in order to harvest the fruits and vegetables that were grown on the farms.  Although the entire family worked from before sunrise until sunset, they still lived in poverty and often didn’t have enough money for food.  The farmers who owned the land paid the migrant farm workers very little money for their hard work and often cheated farm workers out of their full earnings.  César and his family no longer had a home and lived in a tent, in their car, or wherever they could find housing.  As they moved from town to town, they lived in labor camps until they had finished harvesting the crop.  César was ten-years old at the time, and he retold his story of their first labor camp to author Jacques Levy:

“We arrived in San Jose on June 24, my mother’s birthday, and again we had no place to stay.  The barrio wasn’t large, just two unpaved dead-end streets.  It was no different than the poor barrios are today, shabby shacks and old houses.  Children were only allowed to play in the back of the shacks.  Of course, there were no sewers.  We were able to rent a room.  There were eleven of us counting my uncle, my aunt, and some cousins.  The girls slept on one side of the room and the boys slept on the other side.  At most, we had five dollars. 

Behind the house, there was an old broken down garage.  We used it as a kitchen.  It had an earthen floor, and in the middle was an old tub we used for a stove, burning wood in it and putting a makeshift grill on top.  The smoke could get out through the cracks in the walls and the open doorway.

Early the next morning we went out to the cherry orchards looking for work, but always it was the same story.  Either they (the farmers) didn’t have enough buckets or they didn’t have enough ladders, and always there were too many people (looking for work).  Of course, the more workers there were the less the farmers paid.  At first, they offered two cents a pound and then they cut it to one and a half cents a pound.  They could do anything they wanted to, because people just had to work.  

For nearly two weeks, we went out to the orchards, using the little money we made for beans, for gasoline, and for the six dollars a month rent.  We didn’t get too much to eat.” 

Focus Question: 
As a result of the Great Depression, how were the lives of individuals changed, both during and after?

Expected Learning Outcomes: 
Students will learn that César E. Chávez and his family experienced a common fate with thousands of Americans who suffered through and recovered from the Great Depression, but whose lives were forever altered because of their experiences.

Students will gather oral history projects and analyze the effect of the Great Depression on the people of the time.

Assessment:
Students will conduct an oral history project by contacting senior citizens living in a convalescent home.

Key Concepts:
Depression
Government Activism

Essential Vocabulary: 
New Deal
loans
Emergency Farm Mortgage Act
Agricultural Adjustment Act
National Labor Relations Act 

Primary Sources:
Photographs from the Farm Security Administration, possibly Dorothea Lange
Selected reading from The Emergency Farm Mortgage Act, The Agricultural Adjustment Act, and The National Labor Relations Act

Visuals:
Photographs from the Farm Security Administration, possibly Dorothea Lange
Maps of the migration routes to California during the Depression
Graphs and charts of employment rates 

Procedure

Motivation:
Show students photographs documenting the conditions of farmers during the Great Depression.  Show students migrant farmers working in the fields, stranded on the highways leading to California.
Show photographs of the farm labor camps.

Ask students to describe what they see, and ask:
What is going on in the photo?
How do you think the people feel?  Why?
What are the homes like?
Why do you think these people are camping outside?
How do you think you would feel if you were caught in a similar situation?

Tell the students that these are photos of what life was like during the Great Depression in California for many people.

Making Connections:
Ask students to describe what they think the living and working conditions of migrant farm workers are today?  Make a list of student responses on the board and compare the list to their responses given earlier. 

Ask students to hypothesize why some things remain the same as in the Depression and why some things have changed.

Vocabulary Activities:
Pre-teach vocabulary to students by providing examples of key terms before the lesson begins and re-teach the vocabulary once the word appears in the reading or discussion.

Guided Instruction:
1)	Have students examine photographs of migrant farmers.  Have students analyze the photographs and make a list of causes of their apparent situation.  Next to the causes, have students list the possible solutions that could help the farmers improve their situation.

2)	Divide the class into nine groups.  Assign each group a readable portion of each of the following primary source documents: Emergency Farm Mortgage Act, the Agricultural Adjustment Act, and the National Labor Relations Act. 

3)	Have each group identify key elements found in their reading that might address the plight of farmers and migrant workers.  Have them identify the most important elements in their reading of the legislation.

4)	Have each group share their findings and list the most important elements on the board.

5)	Once all of the groups have shared their findings, hold a discussion with the class asking if there was anything else the Government could have done to assist farmers and farm workers.  Have students hypothesize why they think the Government, under President Roosevelt, did not provide more assistance.

6)	Have students read the high school biography of César E. Chávez, focusing on the sections identified as Childhood and A Migrant Family.

7)	Using a Venn diagram, have students compare and contrast the lives shown in the photographs of migrant workers with the story of Chávez.

8)	Discuss the values Chávez learned from his family and how they shaped his behavior during the depression years. 

9)	Have students identify other challenges that the Chávez family, especially the children, encountered during the depression years.  Focus on the issues of language and racial discrimination.

10)	Return to the list of New Deal legislation and examine what if any might have saved the Chávez family farm or improved their condition.

11)	Assessment: Students will conduct an oral history project by contacting senior citizens living in a local convalescent home or by interviewing a relative who was alive at the time.  Have the class come up with several key questions to ask senior citizens about life during the depression years.  Have students develop a variety of questions that might deal with national, state, local, and personal issues.  Have students take notes and write a short oral history of the person they interviewed.

12)	Compile all of the oral histories and make a class book of oral histories. 

Integrating Language:
Read selected portions of literature describing how other families and individuals lived during the Great Depression.  Examples could be from John Steinbeck or Stud Terkel’s book Hard Times.

Enrichment:
Have students research their local community and discover the history of the area where they live as it occurred during the depression years.  Possible activities could be to research the headlines or key stories in the newspapers of their area or where community archival materials might be located for their community.

Service Learning:
Identify the Problem:  
There is a possibility that migrant farm workers, the elderly, or the poor live in their community and need additional services.  What possible services might migrant farm workers and their families, or the elderly or poor need to live a better life and improve their condition?

Possible Solution:  
Students can investigate the existence of migrant farm workers or the elderly or poor in their community by contacting community organizations, churches, or public assistance agencies that are in place to deal with the farm worker families or the elderly or poor.

Taking Action:  
The students can investigate agencies and the services they provide that deal with migrant farm workers or the elderly or poor and make a list of telephone numbers.  Students can call the numbers and inquire as to what kind of voluntary assistance the students can offer to help migrant farm workers or the elderly or poor.  Suggestions might be to volunteer to be an after-school tutor to elementary school children of migrant workers, conduct a canned food drive, or assist families with filling out public assistance paper work.  Other suggestions might include supervising children of migrant workers for a short time period to allow adults to take care of important family matters or reading to children in the public library

Evaluation:  
Have students keep a log of all of the steps they took to complete the project.  Have them reflect on the process of the project and how it relates to the lessons they learned while studying the Great Depression.  Have students analyze the effectiveness of community agencies in helping migrant farmers, the elderly, or the poor.