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The Pilgrimage
By Ronni Komarow. Cesar marching
Six months after the Great Delano Grape Strike began, Chavez and his supporters engaged in a 350 mile pilgrimage to dramatize La Causa. Traveling at the rate of 3 1/2 miles per hour, a handful of marchers stopped at fifty-three San Joaquin Valley towns between Delano and Sacramento, California. By the time marchers met on the steps of the state capitol of California in Sacramento on Easter Sunday, 1966, their ranks had swollen to over 10,000 marchers. The march was a public relations success, but the strike continued. In 1967, the two unions merged to form The United Farm Workers Organizing Committee (UFWOC). It was chartered by the AFL-CIO and Chavez was appointed president. Shortly after, because of the escalating violence, Chavez called off the grape strike, but not the battle. He had devised a new strategy to force the grape growers to bargain with the union.
The young and old marched from Delano to Sacramento, March 1966
