“It had to be easy for anyone to make.” After some small talk, I thanked him for taking a moment to address our shared history, though I already knew it. “I asked my brother, Richard, to make something up,” Chávez said. It’s a story we all should know, and how it happened.”Ĭhávez quietly nodded, gracefully treating the question like it was the first time someone brought it up. After they met, I walked up to Chávez to shake his hand and began: “The flag. Chávez was in town for a meeting with Al Kovar, then-director of the Home of Neighborly Service. But that was the year I had the chance to hear about the cultural identifier from its maker.Ĭésar E. I already knew the backstory of the mark in 1983, when I was a 23-year-old budding graphic designer working as a community arts enabler for a United Way–funded agency in Casa Blanca, my hometown barrio in Riverside, Calif. It’s the symbol of a workforce that made its first marches along the same fields it labored in.Īnyone with Mexican American heritage knows how and why it was created. It doesn’t matter if the image is painted, sewn, or patched on-the bold, simple graphic can be re-created by anyone who supports La Causa, the cause, of the United Farm Workers. When a breeze catches it, the wings of the eagle flutter over the marchers below. It flies on a red banner, standing out against a blue sky. The black eagle rose from the fertile dust of California’s farmland, hoisted on poles and carried with dignity.
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