Edward R. Murrow, Harvest of Shame. CBS Reports, 25 November 1960. John Light: “The people who harvest our fruits and vegetables are, today [2013], among the country’s most marginalized. They earn well below the poverty line and spend a substantial portion of the year unemployed. They do not have the right to overtime pay or to collective bargaining with their employers. In some cases, workers have faced abuses that fall under modern-day slavery statutes…. This is not a new phenomenon….”
Excerpts from the documentary:
Edward R. Murrow, opening lines, Wikipedia: “This scene is not taking place in the Congo. It has nothing to do with Johannesburg or Cape Town. It is not Nyasaland or Nigeria. This is Florida. These are citizens of the United States, 1960. This is a shape-up for migrant workers. The hawkers are chanting the going piece rate at the various fields. This is the way the humans who harvest the food for the best-fed people in the world get hired. One farmer looked at this and said, “We used to own our slaves; now we just rent them.”
Edward R. Murrow, closing lines, Wikipedia: “The migrants have no lobby. Only an enlightened, aroused and perhaps angered public opinion can do anything about the migrants. The people you have seen have the strength to harvest your fruit and vegetables. They do not have the strength to influence legislation. Maybe we do. Good night, and good luck.”
John Light, Bill Moyers & Company, 19 July 2013:
Since the beginning of large-scale agriculture in America, the demand for farm labor has been met by a population that lives in the shadows. Often exploited by the employers they depended on for seasonal, poverty-level wages, farm workers have, time and again, been likened to post-Civil War slaves.
In 1960, legendary broadcaster Edward R. Murrow and his producers Fred Friendly and David Lowe attempted to draw public attention to this state of affairs with the documentary Harvest of Shame. The film — an hour-long portrait of the “humans who harvest the food for the best-fed people in the world” — aired on CBS the day after Thanksgiving, 1960.
At the end of the film, Murrow mentions that President Eisenhower’s Committee on Migratory Labor made recommendations to Congress to relieve the plight of migrant laborers. “There will of course be opposition to these recommendations: Too much government interference, too expensive, socialism,” concluded Murrow. “The migrants have no lobby. Only an enlightened, aroused and perhaps angered public opinion can do anything about the migrants. The people you have seen have the strength to harvest your fruit and vegetables. They do not have the strength to influence legislation. Maybe we do.”
But the recommendations, and Murrow’s powerful documentary, didn’t translate to legislation. Even today, half a century after the film first aired, not much has changed.