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Cotton Strike, October 1933

Strikers demanded that local police take action after cotton growers in Pixley and Arvin, California, opened fire on unarmed Mexican pickers, killing three people. Instead, authorities issued additional gun permits to growers and appointed many as deputies. Eventually, several growers in the Pixley incident were prosecuted for murder (and later acquitted by a friendly jury), while a strike leader was charged with criminal syndicalism.

Source: Pickets in 1933 Cotton Strike—Photographs relating to agricultural strikes in California, BANC PIC 1945.007:1–PIC, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.

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