Keep Me in the Loop!

10/01/14: Message from UFW President Arturo S. Rodriguez: UFW marks induction of legendary community organizer Fred Ross into California Hall of Fame

Fred Ross’ remarkable career spanned seven decades from the 1930s when he ran the federal migratory labor camp immortalized in John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath. Ross discovered and trained Cesar Chavez in 1952, while setting up a chapter of the Community Service Organization in East San Jose. Together they turned CSO into the most effective and militant Latino civil rights organization of its day. Chavez quit CSO in 1962 to begin what would become the UFW, which Ross joined full time in 1966. He continued training UFW organizers for decades.  Ross wrote and the UFW published the book Conquering Goliath, about Chavez’s first organizing effort among farm workers in 1958-59 in Ventura County.