Martyrs for a just cause: The eulogies of Cesar Chavez

ON JANUARY 25, 1972, Nan Freeman, an eighteen-year-old Jewish college student from Massachusetts, was walking a picket line at the entrance to the Talisman Sugar Plant about twenty miles north of Belle Glade, Florida, during a United Farm Workers (UFW) strike. Freeman was a "bright, inquisitive student" whose interests "were focused on the needs of her fellow human beings" ("The Martyrs"). She was a National Merit Scholar who had won an award from the Massachusetts AFL-CIO for her knowledge of labor history. In college she continued to study the struggles of working class people and became interested in the farm worker movement in Florida ("The Martyrs"). Freeman and other students had "been doing volunteer work for the UFW at [her] college in Sarasota as part of the REAL program, a research program into Florida agriculture" ("Nan Freeman"). She had volunteered to help the UFW in its picketing, and along with another student, she was helping pass out materials to workers and truck drivers who entered the plant. Their job was to talk with the drivers and encourage them to join the strike ("Nan Freeman").