Larry Itliong



Larry Dulay Itliong ( – 8 February 1977) was a Filipino American labor organizer. He organized west coast agricultural workers starting in the 1930s, and rose to national prominence in 1965, when he, Philip Vera Cruz, Dolores Huerta, and Cesar Chavez led the Delano grape strike. He has been described as "one of the fathers of the West Coast labor movement."

Itliong was a native of Pangasinan Province in the Philippines. He immigrated to the United States in 1929 and joined his first strike in 1930. By 1965 Itliong was living in the Central Valley of California and was the leader of the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee, an AFL–CIO union. The committee voted to strike against Coachella Valley grape growers on 3 May 1965. The strikers managed to win higher wages but weren't able to negotiate a contract with the growers.

Itliong served as assistant director of the United Farm Workers under Cesar Chavez. He resigned in 1971 because of disagreements about the governance of the union. He died in 1977 at the age of 63.

Iliong was posthumously honored in 2010 by inclusion in a mural at California State University, Dominguez Hills.

External links and further reading

 * Frank Bardacke, Trampling Out The Vintage: Cesar Chavez and the Two Souls of the United Farm Workers, Verso (October 24, 2011), hardcover, 848 pages, ; trade paperback,
 * Mark R. Day, Forty Acres: Cesar Chavez and the Farm Workers, Praeger (1971), hardcover, 222 pages