Emmon M. Clarke Farmworker Photograph Collection
Scope and Contents
The Emmon M. Clarke Farmworker Photograph Collection contains negatives, prints, and contact sheets documenting the United Farm Workers Association's activities, such as picket lines, protests, rallies, meetings, voting, fundraising, and operations at the El Malcriado newspaper office. It also depicts families in farmworker camps, fieldworkers, significant labor leaders and picketers such as Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta, and Manuel Rivera, and members and performances of El Teatro Campesino. Other materials include a photo essay publication and a portfolio of prints by photographer Jon Lewis. Most of the locations captured in images are in the San Joaquin Valley, particularly Delano. Other locations include Los Angeles, Watsonville, Sacramento, Texas, and New Mexico. Bulk dates are 1966 and 1967.
Most negatives are 35mm in black and white. Negatives are paired with their matching contact sheet in folders. Not all rolls of negatives have contact sheets, and some contact sheets lack their matching negatives.
Negatives, some prints, and slides are marked with alphanumerical unique identifiers at the top of preservation sheets or on the back of prints. The Tom and Ethel Bradley Center created this identification system for internal reference and for use on Digital Collections.
Collection folders are arranged alphabetically by title.
Dates
- Creation: 1966-1996
Creator
- Clarke, Emmon Maika’aloa (1933-2022) (Person)
Conditions Governing Access
This collection is open for research use.
Conditions Governing Use
Copyright for unpublished materials authored or otherwise produced by the creator(s) of this collection is in the public domain. Copyright status for other materials is unknown. Transmission or reproduction of materials protected by U.S. Copyright Law (Title 17, U.S.C.) beyond that allowed by fair use requires the written permission of the copyright owners. Works not in the public domain cannot be commercially exploited without permission of the copyright owners. Responsibility for any use rests exclusively with the user.
Biographical / Historical
Emmon Maika’aloa Clarke was born in Honolulu in 1933 to Robert and Charlotte Clarke, both part Hawaiian. He grew up in Hawaii during and after World War II. He served in the Army in Korea from 1950 to 1951 and was wounded in action. After the military, he studied for three years at the University of Hawaii and for one year at the Brooks Institute of Photography in Santa Barbara.
Clarke married his wife Judith, a social worker, in 1962. For Judith's work, they moved to Tulare County in 1963, and it was during this time that Emmon became exposed to the farmworkers' struggles. Clarke volunteered his photography skills to the National Farm Workers Association and started documenting the Farmworker Movement during a seven-month period starting in the winter of 1966. In his second day as a volunteer, on October 15, 1966, he photographed picketer Manuel Rivera being run over by a truck at the Hourigan-Mosesian-Goldberg Company packing shed in Delano.
By March of 1967, he was contributing as a staff photographer and director of photography for El Malcriado newspaper, where he also authored one article entitled "The Leamon King Incident" in March 1967. Later in life, Emmon and Judith Clarke lived in Rohnert Park. He died in 2022.
Full Extent
3.56 Linear Feet (5 boxes, 1 oversized folder)
Language of Materials
English
Abstract
The Emmon M. Clarke Farmworker Photograph Collection contains negatives, prints, and contact sheets documenting the United Farm Workers Association's activities, such as picket lines, protests, rallies, meetings, voting, fundraising, and operations at the El Malcriado newspaper office. It also depicts families in farmworker camps, fieldworkers, significant labor leaders and picketers such as Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta, and Manuel Rivera, and members and performances of El Teatro Campesino. Other materials include a publication and a portfolio of prints by photographer Jon Lewis. Bulk dates are 1966 and 1967.
Immediate Source of Acquisition
Emmon M. Clarke, 1996
Existence and Location of Copies
Digital reproductions of selected images from this collection are available electronically in the Farmworker Movement Collection as a part of the Tom and Ethel Bradley Center Photographs project.
General
Support for the processing of the Emmon M. Clarke Farmworker Photograph Collection is part of the Farmworker Movement Collection grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH).
Processing Information
Claire V. Gordon, 2021; Elizabeth Peattie, 2024
Genre / Form
- Title
- Guide to the Emmon M. Clarke Farmworker Photograph Collection
- Status
- Completed
- Date
- 2024-01-17
- Description rules
- Describing Archives: A Content Standard
- Language of description
- English
- Script of description
- Latin
- Sponsor
- Support for the processing of the Emmon M. Clarke Farmworker Photograph Collection is part of the Farmworker Movement Collection grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH).
Repository Details
Part of the Special Collections & Archives Repository
University Library
California State University, Northridge
18111 Nordhoff Street
Northridge CA 91330-8326 USA
818-677-4594
asksca@csun.edu