By DEBORAH MARTINEZ MARTINEZ
Strike: National Florist Workers Vs. Kitayama, by Priscilla Falcón, Ph.D., won History Colorado’s 2024 Barbara Sudler Award. The award is presented biennially to a nonfiction book on a Western American topic by a female author.
Falcón tells the story of the strike against the Kitayama Carnation and Rose Company of Brighton, CO which eventually involved Cesar Chavez, United Farm Workers, Teamsters, dozens of religious organizations, and hundreds of University of Colorado students from Denver and Boulder. The strike centered on the poor working conditions, low wages, and unfair treatment of mostly Chicano women and men.
Using a variety of sources including interviews with organizers of the strike, NFWO affidavits, letters, press releases, telegraphs, court case records and the Lupe Briseño archives when compiling the research, Dr. Falcon’s book captures the nuance of a complex experience. The workers and larger community would come together to persevere through difficult and inhumane conditions, violence and mistreatment. “Brown women, oppressed women, women of color are overlooked and not seen to have agency and these women still said, we are going to do this.” Although Lupe Briseño passed away in July of 2024, she was able to experience the book before her passing.
She was also a speaker for the Rosenberry Lecture Series March 19 at History Colorado. The series brings speakers from around Colorado and the United States to shed new light on topics in Colorado history. History Colorado presents a series of eight lectures and Falcón was seclected for the honor before learning she had won the Sudler award Falcón herself is aware of the cultural politics of the agricultural workers as she is a native-born Colorado and has participated in her share of protests, strikes, and actions.
One unusual aspect of the strike was that the leaders of the strike were five women — Guadalupe “Lupe” Briseño, Mary Sailes, Mary Padilla, Martha del Real and Rachel Sandoval. At a time when most strike leaders were men, these five women gathered enough support to create a union and hold the strike lines for 200 days.
Strike represents the significance of the Chicana-led protest with interviews of Lupe Briseño through the days of struggle and personal assaults on picketers and their children. Falcón’s book is the first to tackle a topic that affected the entire community and hit national news. Falcón is the first Chicana to win the Sudler Award.
The Sudler Award, begun in 1992, is named in honor of Barbara Sudler Hornby, the former president (1979-1989) of the Colorado Historical Society, now History Colorado. She maintained an active interest in historical issues and was an avid reader of Western American literature. Barbara Sudler Hornby died in February, 2006.
Another awardee (2020) is Susan Devan Harness for Bitterroot: A Salish Memoir of Transracial Adoption, who struggled with the American Indian history of assimilation and the concept of race. In 2018, Shirley Ann Wilson Moore won the award for Sweet Freedom’s Plains: African Americans on the Overland Trails 1841-1869.
Falcón is a professor emeritus of Department of Chicana/o and Latinx Studies at The University of Northern Colorado. The book is published by, Vanishing Horizons, a Southern Colorado publisher, and is available at www.VanishingHorizons.com.
PBS did a documentary on the Brighton Strike in Nov. 29, 2023. The program can be accessed at https://www.rmpbs.org/blogs/rocky-mountain-pbs/lupe-briseno-ranchel-sandoval-kitayama-strike
