The Founding Members of the CSO San José Chapter, Excluding Cesar Chavez

Title: The Founding Members of the CSO San José Chapter, Excluding Cesar Chavez
Description: The following are some of the founding members of the CSO San José Chapter:

Herman Gallegos became the first president of the San José Chapter as well as president of the national CSO in 1960. Gallegos grew up in a poor coal-mining family who lived in a mud hut built by his father near the mines in Ludlow, Colorado, where he observed the infamous “Ludlow Massacre” of striking workers. After the massacre, the family moved to San Francisco. Gallegos first attended San Francisco State University, where two of his professors, Dr. John Beecher and Dr. Herbert Bisno, refused to sign a loyalty oath required under the Levering Act affirming that the signer was an American and not a Communist or risk being fired. When a state police officer came into the classroom and handed Dr. Beecher a letter requiring him to leave, Gallegos and two Jewish students walked out of class and went to the administration office demanding the professor be reinstated. Because the protesting students did not have a permit, the police broke up the protest, and Gallegos decided to transfer to the Social Work Program at San José State College. When he joined the CSO, he was attending college, living on the Eastside, and working as a gas station attendant. At that time he and Hernández were the only two members of the organization with a college education. In 1960 Gallegos became national CSO president, with César Chávez serving as executive director.

Alicia Hernández, a public health nurse who worked with families on the Eastside, became a founding member after attending Fred Ross’ first talk at San José State College (with Herman Gallegos, Juan Marcoida, and Leonard Ramierez). She became the first temporary chair or interim president of the CSO San José chapter. A friend of Chávez’ wife Helen, Hernández arranged the first meeting between Ross and César Chávez, who was 25 years old. Hernández and Chávez walked door to door in the Eastside registering voters.

Juan Marcoida, another student who heard Ross’s initial talk at San José State, was an engineer who worked by day and went to college at night. He became a founding member of the CSO San José Chapter while working at the General Electric Plant, where he’d been employed since its opening in 1947. A resident of Sal Sí Puedes in the Eastside, Marcoida served two terms as president of the CSO San José Chapter. He also hosted a radio program called CSO INFORME that aired for ten years on KLOK and KSJO radio stations, highlighting jobs, legal issues, police brutality, domestic abuse, immigration, deportation, scams, and voter registration assistance. He was named “1956 Man of the Year” in El Excentrico magazine.

Rita Chávez Medina, the eldest of the Chávez siblings, had quit school at age 12 to help support the family after they lost their farm. She continued to work in the fields, transitioning into cannery work when she married and her family moved to San José. There she became active in local efforts to obtain a Catholic church to serve the Mexican community in the Eastside, enlisting the help of her brothers César and Richard, a union carpenter. She had already demonstrated her organizing skills in the church campaign when César asked her to work on the CSO voter registration drive, and he increasingly delegated local organizing tasks to her. Rita rose to become CSO San José Chapter President.

Leonard Ramirez, who also heard Ross’ speech, and his wife Erma became founding members of the CSO San José Chapter, fighting for paved streets and street lighting as well as promoting voter registration. Ramirez led the CSO drive to abolish citizenship requirements to receive Social Security benefits for old age. The law was revised in 1960 taking out Social Securities citizenship requirement. Ramirez was born in Watts, California, in 1926. After high school, he joined the army during WWII. Through the help of the GI Bill, he graduated from San José State College in 1953, one of only five Mexican students attending the university.
Identifier: B4SV Exhibit Topic Five: Slide 017

Site pages: Topic Five Gallery

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