Issue link: http://educator.cta.org/i/477973
"Both the clinical training and patients gave me more of an awareness of the human condition." For the next four years, he was part of the Student Interracial Ministry formed by Union Theological Seminary students. He worked with street kids in Washington Heights, N.Y., assisting a Puerto Rican Lutheran minister who was opening a storefront church. Then he became an asso- ciate minister of a black United Church of Christ in Queens. " T h e m i n i s t e r t h e r e w a s a Southern Christian Leadership Conference member. In addi- tion to working with the church groups and other pastoral duties, he encouraged me to get involved in community activities and the tutoring project Queens College students were running. I made an effort to relate to and work with these children whose lives were so different from mine." Political activist Chris Hartmire recruited him to join the California Migrant Ministry, which became the National Farm Worker Ministry, work- ing in support of UFW. "His reaction to what I'd had been doing was: 'That's what we need for strike families in California.' So off I went." ON THE FRONT LINES With his wife Felicia and infant daughter in tow, Williamson headed to the Golden State, which was not so golden for those laboring in the fields. Pay, housing and conditions for migrant workers were miserable. Adults and children worked in fields contaminated by pesticides that endangered their health. He spent a week on the picket line in Coachella with striking grape pickers, where a contractor tried to run him over with a truck. It was a terrifying experience. "The violence I was seeing was completely foreign to me. I knew very little about what I was getting into." Williamson became involved in the "No on 22" cam- paign, fighting a grower-backed measure that attempted to make it illegal for farmworkers to unionize. Williamson was among those who helped defeat the measure by proving that voter fraud was being committed by "Yes on 22" proponents, who pre- tended to offer farmworkers "secret ballot elections." " I h e l p e d i n t e r v i e w p e o p l e who were defrauded and trace the defrauding to the people who did it," says Williamson. The ballot measure was defeated. Under the leadership of Chávez and Dolores Huerte, momentum grew as millions of Americans boycotted lettuce and grapes to put economic pressure on growers to sign contracts with UFW. Chávez had quit his job as a community orga- nizer in San Jose in 1962 and moved to rural Delano to try to bring unionism to California's lettuce and grape fields after others had tried for decades. There were numerous death threats against Chávez, and little assurance of police protection. "I was among those who did guard duty outside César Chávez's home in the middle of the night in Delano," says Williamson. When asked to describe the man he risked his life for, Williamson takes a moment. "It's hard to put into words," he says finally. "César's commitment to social justice and the farmworkers was something he felt was a personal mission from God. He had an expansive vision of this mission. He also had a sense of humor, because you couldn't survive in the UFW without a sense of humor. He was charismatic and knew how to organize people using nonviolence." That was put to the test in 1972, when two strikers were shot on the picket line in Kern County following the murder of another striker who was hit by a car in Florida. "César's response was that no matter what happens, UFW would not be responsible for "Our program had a huge impact on children," says Williamson, here with Vincent Flores. "Many claim that it was transformative and attribute everything good in their lives to what they learned at Huelga School." THE CHILDREN MAY NOT KNOW IT, BUT THEIR TEACHER IS SOMETHING OF A HERO. Profile Perspectives 26 www.cta.org