If you haven’t heard of Fred Ross before, you’ve likely heard of the legendary activists he helped train, like Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta. Drawing on organizing tactics still used today, such as house meetings and voter registration campaigns, Ross helped secure pivotal racial justice victories, like the election of Los Angeles’s first Latino council member in 1949 and the desegregation of schools in California’s Citrus Belt in 1947. Born in 1910, he was a behind-the-scenes force for civil rights and labor organizing throughout much of the 20th century.
His life and work are the subject of a new documentary by Raymond Telles, an associate adjunct professor in the Department of Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley. American Agitators premiered this month at the Cinequest Film and Creativity Festival in San Jose and, this Monday, won the festival’s juried award for best documentary feature.