Steinbeck's dubious ghosts

John Steinbeck’s In Dubious Battle is a novel describing the Great Cotton Strike of 1933 by farm workers in the California Central Valley. I’ve not read it, but it has been criticized at times for the author’s choice to focus almost exclusively on white Okies rather than the Mexicans who formed three-fourths of the workers in the real event.

The Village Voice has an article by Tony Ortega, who began researching the question at the behest of his mentor, novelist Louis Owens. As he digs deeper, Ortega is stunned to realize that members of his own family, still living, were there during the historical strike.

It was in the small farm town of Pixley, for example, about two weeks into the shutdown, that the most harrowing event of the strike occurred. The organizers, who included a man named Pat Chambers and a woman named Carolyn Decker, had called for a meeting at a hall in town. So many strikers showed up, however, that many were unable to get inside. As the crowd tried to get word of what was going on in the meeting, someone managed to snap a couple of stunning photographs: About a dozen farmers with rifles in their hands were sneaking up on the Mexican workers.

The farmers opened fire on the unarmed crowd. Miraculously, only two men were killed; several other people were injured, including a woman. The gunmen then jumped into their cars and sped away, but were almost immediately pulled over by California Highway Patrol officers who had actually witnessed the attack (the farmers’ weapons were literally still smoking). The officers took the rifles and then told the men to go on home.

Read “Louis Owens and John Steinbeck’s Ghosts”, by Tony Ortega.

(Found via “John Steinbeck’s migrant workers” on the LA Times’ Jacket Copy blog.)