Early Farm Labor Organizing & the ACLU’s Role

In the evening of August 21, 1935 a band of vigilantes abducted Sol Nitzberg—a Jewish Sonoma County chicken farmer–along with three other labor organizers. Nitzberg and Silva Green (another organizer) were tarred and feathered and forced by the mob to parade through Santa Rosa. What is the historical backdrop to this violent event? Barry Nitzberg, grandson of Sol Nitzberg, and historian Ken Kann will unpack the history of labor organizing and vigilante terror in Sonoma County, including the 1935 Sebastopol Apple Pickers Strike, the assault on Nitzberg and Green, and the role of ACLU in the subsequent trial.