Excerpts from the Voices of Feminism Oral History Project Interview with Linda Chavez-Thompson

A Note on the Project:
The Voices of Feminism Oral History Project, based at the Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, documents the persistence and diversity of organizing for women in the United States.¹ Narrators include labor, peace, and antiracism activists; artists and writers, lesbian rights advocates; grassroots antiviolence and antipoverty organizers; and women of color reproductive justice leaders. Interviews average five to six hours and cover childhood, personal life, and political work. Most oral histories consist of videotapes, audiotapes or audio CDs; unedited and edited transcripts; correspondence between interviewer and narrator; a biographical sketch; the interviewer's interview guide; and occasional research material and photos. This interview, one of fifty oral histories in the project to date, was conducted in February 2004.

About LINDA CHAVEZ-THOMPSON:
In 1967, at the age of twenty-three, Linda Chavez-Thompson went to work for the International Laborers' Union and served as the secretary for the Lubbock, Texas, local and, as the only Spanish-speaking union officer, represented all of the Hispanic American workers within the local. Four years later she went to work for the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Union in San Antonio, ultimately rising through the ranks to be international vice president (1988–96). In 1995 Chavez-Thompson was elected executive vice president (third-ranking officer) of the American Federation of Labor–Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), the first woman and the first person of color to hold such a high office within the organization; she was reelected in 1997 and in 2001. She also serves as a vice chair of the Democratic National Committee and an executive committee member of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute. This interview took place at AFL-CIO headquarters in Washington, D.C.

KATHLEEN BANKS NUTTER: I have spoken to many women in the labor movement at various stages, and I feel I've gone right to the top. Can you tell me a little bit about your parents and their values and politics and your childhood, and your religion? What was your home setting?

LINDA CHAVEZ-THOMPSON: My parents were first-generation American. I happen to be second generation. My grandparents, both sets, came from Mexico during the Revolutionary War of 1910. But my father managed to get up to the fifth grade [before he] started working.

My mother managed to get through the second grade, [but]because my grandparents were migrant workers, they took the kids out of school and she never made it back. So, my mother had limited English-speaking abilities, although she did write Spanish. In other words, her main language all her life was Spanish. My father learned a little more [English], and because he had to deal with the boss man on a cotton farm, he of course had a more fluent capacity as far as English was concerned.

I'm one of eight children. My father was a very hardworking man. If you are a cotton sharecropper, if you work on a farm and the deal you make with the farmer is that you get a certain amount of acreage of cotton and anything that comes out of that is going to be yours. In other words, whatever price we managed to sell the cotton at the cotton gin was what my father ended up with as his bonus, or his payment for that year in addition to his salary weekly. And I remember one time knowing that my father used to get thirty dollars a week. That's thirty dollars a week to support a family of nine. The seven of us kids and my parents. But we managed [with] no meat, lots of potatoes and eggs and beans and whatever we grew during the summertime in our little truck garden: okra, green beans, tomatoes, cucumbers. Those kinds of things that we were able to grow, we ate.

At the age of ten, I remember, my father that year did not get an annual job of cotton sharecropper, so that summer was...