Native Americans, Chicanos and other civil rights movements
Chicano Civil Rights and the United Farm Workers
The 1960s civil rights movement inspired other minority groups to demand equal treatment. Mexican Americans — often called Chicanos by activists — faced systematic discrimination in employment, education and political representation. In 1962, Cesar Chavez founded the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA) in Delano, California, alongside co-founder Dolores Huerta. Farmworkers — mostly Mexican American and Filipino — had no legal right to organise, worked in dangerous conditions for low wages and received no overtime pay.
In September 1965, the NFWA joined a Filipino farmworkers’ strike against grape growers in the Delano region, launching what became known as the Delano grape strike. Chavez used tactics consciously modelled on King’s non-violent movement: marches, fasting, and — crucially — a national consumer boycott of California grapes. By 1968, an estimated 17 million Americans were boycotting grapes. In 1970, the major grape growers signed contracts recognising the United Farm Workers (UFW). It was one of the greatest labour victories for a non-unionised workforce in US history.
Cesar Chavez led the Delano grape strike from 1965 to 1970, using non-violent tactics — strikes, marches, fasting and a national consumer boycott — to force grape growers to sign union recognition agreements with the UFW in 1970.
Native Americans and the American Indian Movement
Native Americans faced extreme poverty, high unemployment, poor health outcomes and broken treaty promises. In 1968, the American Indian Movement (AIM) was founded in Minneapolis by Dennis Banks, Clyde Bellecourt and George Mitchell, initially to monitor police violence against Native Americans in urban areas. Russell Means joined in 1969 and became its best-known spokesman. AIM was influenced by Black Power and drew on a similar combination of assertive self-defence and community self-help.
In November 1969, a group of Native Americans occupied the former federal prison on Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay. They held it for 19 months, drawing national attention to treaty violations and the poverty of reservation life. In November 1972, AIM participated in the “Trail of Broken Treaties,” a cross-country march to Washington DC that ended with the occupation of the Bureau of Indian Affairs building. Protesters produced a document demanding restoration of treaty-making authority and return of treaty lands.
The most dramatic confrontation came at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, in February 1973. AIM members and local Oglala Lakota residents occupied the village — a site of the 1890 massacre — for 71 days, facing a federal blockade. Two Native Americans were killed during the siege; several federal agents were wounded. The FBI and federal marshals maintained the blockade. AIM leaders were subsequently prosecuted, though many charges were eventually dismissed due to government misconduct. The Church Committee later documented FBI surveillance of AIM as part of broader COINTELPRO-style operations. The occupation brought Native American land and treaty rights to national attention, though direct legislative gains were limited.
The Indian Civil Rights Act 1968
In 1968, Congress passed the Indian Civil Rights Act, which applied most Bill of Rights protections to tribal members in their dealings with tribal governments. It also recognised a degree of tribal sovereignty. The Act was a significant but limited gain: it did not restore treaty lands, and conditions on reservations remained dire. Native American activists argued that legal rights on paper were meaningless without the economic base to make them real — a critique that paralleled the Black Power movement’s dissatisfaction with the Civil Rights Act.
Beyond the UFW, the Chicano movement developed in other directions. Reies Tijerina’s Alianza Federal de Mercedes campaigned for restoration of land grants from the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Rodolfo “Corky” Gonzales founded the Crusade for Justice in Denver. Students organised walkouts (“blowouts”) in Los Angeles high schools in 1968, protesting against inadequate education for Mexican American students. These movements shared the Chicano identity label and a demand for cultural recognition alongside political rights, though they differed in tactics and focus. In 1970, La Raza Unida Party was founded to build independent Chicano political power in Texas.
In February–May 1973, AIM occupied Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge Reservation for 71 days in a standoff with federal agents, protesting treaty violations and reservation conditions. Two Native Americans were killed. The occupation raised national awareness but produced limited direct legislative change.