SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Larry Itliong was one of the most important Filipino American activists and a founding figure in the California labor movement. Yet his influence on the Central Valley is one that often gets lost in popular retellings of California history.
"Honestly, people didn't want to learn about him," said Marie Mallare-Jimenez, professor of ethnic studies at California State University, Sacramento.
Many know who Cesar Chavez is and have heard of the United Farm Workers union that he headed. What many are less familiar with is that it was actually Itliong who reached out to Chavez to create a labor union that would form the first major bridge of solidarity between Filipino and Mexican farmworkers in California, a power Itliong would eventually leverage to instigate a five-year labor strike in the Kern County farming community of Delano. That strike resulted in increased pay, benefits and safer work practices for grape workers.
"Every community needs a hero," said Major Alex Fabros, a Filipino American labor historian. "In this case, Larry Itliong was that hero."
Itliong's story is just one of many that have often gone overlooked in education about American history, Mallare-Jimenez said. More Filipino American history is being taught now, she said, but there needs to be more education that explains how that history informs our present communities in California.
"Our youth need to know more about what it is really to be Filipino American," Mallare-Jimenez said. "What is my existence? Why am I here today, and how am I going to make my community better?"
WHO WAS LARRY ITLIONG?
Itliong was born in the Philippines in 1913 before moving to the United States in 1929, where he immediately began working at an Alaskan cannery and as a farm laborer at the age of 15. Friends called him "Seven Fingers" after he lost three fingers in an accident, although tales of how he lost those fingers vary.
After moving to Stockton as an adult, he organized more than a thousand laborers to join the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee, which prompted union leaders to ask him to move to Delano and organize Filipino grape workers there.
On Sept. 8, 1965, Itliong led more than 2,000 Filipino farmworkers in walking off the vineyards as part of a labor strike to push for higher wages, better working conditions and the right to form a union. A week later they were joined by the National Farm Workers Association, led by Cesar Chavez.
The strike lasted five years, coming to an end in July 1970 with a victory for the farmworkers.
"Larry Itliong was a mobilizer," Mallare-Jimenez said. "He was always revered as a kuya (Filipino for older brother). Whatever he decided or he saw is right is how everybody followed it. ... And they saw that what he actually fought for — rights of workers, equal pay — that they benefited from it."
Cynthia Bonta, a longtime Filipina American activist and mother to Assemblyman Rob Bonta, D-Alameda, recalled in a Filipino American History Month event in October how Itliong, who was often casually dressed and had a reputation for being loud and using fierce language, bucked conventional images of what a political leader was supposed to look like.
"It doesn't matter that he looks the way he does and uses crude language sometimes," Bonta said. "Because I knew he labored in the fields, and so he knew the inhumane conditions that he wanted to change."
Outside of his activism, Itliong led a colorful life — he spoke multiple languages, including Spanish, Cantonese, Japanese and several Filipino languages. He was known to be an excellent card player as well as a keen cigar smoker, and was married six times.
Itliong died from ALS, or Lou Gehrig's disease, in 1977 at the age of 63, leaving behind a legacy of Filipino American activism and inspiration for generations of Filipino Americans. But even beyond the history of Filipino American organizing in the Central Valley, the change that Itliong brought to thousands of farmworkers lives on.
"He wanted to form this kind of group so others can lead too," Mallare-Jimenez said. "You don't just want to be the leader forever. You want to pass that on ... I see him now really as an icon to a lot of our youth."
FILIPINO LEGACY IN CALIFORNIA
The first Filipinos arrived in California on Oct. 18, 1587, on a Spanish galleon in Morro Bay.
But it wasn't until 1898 that the first Filipinos arrived in the Delta region, when a Filipino sailor known only as Villareal left his ship in San Francisco and made his way to Stockton. There, he harvested fruit and also worked as a railroad laborer.
During the early 1900s, California farmers were "desperate" for Filipino laborers, according to a previous interview from The Bee with Filipina American historian, activist and author Dawn Mabalon, who died in 2018. Chinese, Sikh and Japanese laborers had been barred by the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and other anti-immigration laws.
"They built the Central Valley with their bare hands in asparagus, tomatoes, celery, peaches, tomatoes and grapes," Mabalon said in her previous interview with The Sacramento Bee. "Filipino and Mexican immigrants and their families turned California into the seventh-largest economy in the world. There are still Filipinos working in the fields and sorting asparagus with Mexican immigrants."
According to Fabros, the first small influx of Filipino Americans into California began around 1915, when Filipinos entered the workforce mostly as farm workers doing stoop labor and harvesting. Many of them worked on farms owned by Chinese and Japanese he said, who had previously immigrated and settled in large waves.
"Any way to get to the States is the first priority. Then once you get here, you can sort it all out," Fabros said.
The first wave of Filipino migration peaked from 1920 to 1930, Fabros said, finding work in a wide variety of unskilled labor industries from canneries, lumber and fruit orchards. In 1930, the California census showed about 30,000 Filipinos living mostly in the Delta area on Ryer Island, Rio Vista, Locke, Isleton, Walnut Grove, Elk Grove, and from Florin to Tracy.
The second wave came in 1946, Fabros said, when American servicemen stationed in the Philippines during World War II married women there who came back as war brides. These women would often sponsor their family members to come over as well.
With the passing of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 came the third wave, this time in the form of professionals from the Philippines, a "brain drain," Fabros said. These were mostly nurses and doctors, Fabros said, who would be sponsored to work in rural hospitals before eventually moving out to more urban areas in California.
WHY IT'S IMPORTANT TO LEARN ABOUT THIS HISTORY TODAY
Understanding Filipino history, historians said, is to understand California's history, America's history and how inextricable America's success stories are from Filipino communities.
"They're part of the historical makeup," Fabros said. "They're the ones that helped build the economy up for everything that came after."
As of 2018, Filipino Americans are the second largest AAPI ethnic group in Sacramento, according to AAPI Data. Part of that is because of all the families that came to California in the early 20th century and laid generations of roots, Fabros said, beginning from farm workers and manual laborers leading to children who were able to go to school and branch out into callings of their own choices.
Californians can also chart the increased diversity of their leaders through the rise of Filipino Americans in politics, Mallare-Jimenez said, which began to take off in the late 1980s to early 1990s. Given the size and influence of the Filipino American community in California — both in its history and in its present — Filipino Americans need to be given more seats at the table, she said, whether that's in public office, on the boardrooms of corporations or as leaders of university student clubs.
"(Growing up), I never knew that there were different waves ... who came first or what happened next. ... Where do I fall in this line of immigration?" Mallare-Jimenez said. "All of that is very important for the youth, and for us as a community, so we can acknowledge where we came from. ... Because we have another heritage."
