25 and 50 years ago
October 24, 1975
TOLEDO, Ohio--Farm workers from the tomato, sugar beet, and cucumber fields of northwest Ohio, together with their supporters, gathered here on October 4 for a four-mile march in support of the Farm Labor Organizing Committee's efforts to organize agricultural workers in Ohio and Michigan.
Red flags with the FLOC eagle and slogan, "Hasta la victoria" (Until the Victory), filled the air.
Among the marchers were children of all ages. About twenty Chicano students came from a FLOC group at a local high school.
The march called for government enforcement of migrant housing laws, better wages for farm workers, the right of farm labor to organize, and replacing the labor contracting system with the union hiring hall.
The marchers, about 130 in all, chanted "Viva FLOC" and "Viva la causa" as they proceeded through the streets of the Chicano community. Supporters waved from their windows. Automobile drivers honked their horns in sympathy. Bystanders shouted encouragement, and some joined the march.
FLOC President Baldemar Velasquez was the featured speaker. "Two children died in the fields this summer because the government won't enforce the child labor law," Velasquez told the Militant. "They won't enforce the existing housing codes either. Farm workers themselves must organize to better their conditions."
October 23, 1950
The Truman administration began to enforce the McCarran-Kilgore police-state law last week. Section 22 of the law forbids the entry into this country of any alien who has "at any time" been a member of, or affiliated with a "communist" or other "totalitarian" party. The Attorney General may make exceptions in cases of foreign visitors coming here temporarily, but is required under the law to report the information about these exceptions to Congress.
The consequence of enforcing Section 22 was that hundreds of people arriving at Ellis Island, especially Germans and Italians, were detained at Ellis Island while the Department of Justice considered their cases. The congestion became so great that the State Department suspended all visas except those of DP's and ordered a rescreening of all aliens abroad who had applied for entry into the U.S.
Public reaction was so unfavorable that some of the chief congressional sponsors of the law protested that the administration was deliberately enforcing Section 22 in such a way as to create "ill will" toward the law. But everything the administration was doing was authorized and permissible under Section 22.
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