Larry Itliong Day honors Stockton farm labor hero

SACRAMENTO — One of Stockton’s most noteworthy — if not the most oft-forgotten — socialjustice leaders was recognized Sunday when Gov. Gavin Newsom declared Oct. 25 as “Larry Itliong Day” in the state of California.

“Larry is a hero of Stockton,” Dillon Delvo, co-founder of the Little Manila Foundation, told the Stockton Record in 2015. “He helped begin one of the greatest justice movements we’ve ever seen.”

Coinciding with Filipino American History Month and the anniversary of Itliong’s birth in the Philippines in 1913, the state proclamation notes his founding of the Filipino Farm Labor Union in Stockton and the instrumental role he played in shaping the farm labor movement with Dolores Huerta and Cesar Chavez, with whom he co-founded the United Farm Workers.

“During Filipino American History month, we remember the Manongs’ message of ‘Isang Bagsak!’ — that we are connected together in our fight for justice, we rise and fall together,” the proclamation reads. “The lasting relevance of their cause is underscored by the outsized burden borne by our farmworkers during the COVID-19 pandemic, whose essential role in securing our food supply puts them at greater risk. In redoubling our efforts to protect these workers, we honor an indelible legacy which continues to inspire the next generation of leaders across our state and nation.”

Itliong is often overshadowed by the more well-known Chavez and Huerta, but he was a key player in the farm labor movement — one of the largest social justice movements in American history — after moving to Stockton following World War II.

Here, though, his memory is largely absent from city history, though in 2017, Filipino Americans Gayle Romasanta, the late Dawn Mabalon and Andre Sibayan authored the children’s book “Journey for Justice: The Life of Larry Itliong.”

The Little Manila Foundation circulated a petition in 2015, the 50th anniversary of the Delano grape strike, to urge the city to honor the forgotten leader by renaming a stretch of South Hunter Street that was the heart of Little Manila to Larry Itliong Street after unsuccessfully lobbying in 2006 to have what was ultimately dubbed Spanos Elementary School named in his honor.

“It’s great that in our hometown we know about Dolores Huerta and Cesar Chavez,” Mabalon told the Record in 2015. “But we don’t know about this person who lived among us, went to Trinity Presbyterian Church, whose children went to Stockton schools. (He’s) all but forgotten in Stockton.”