Henry Pope Anderson: an oral history

In 2014 I persuaded my father, Henry Anderson, to tell his life's story, which, it turned out, was largely unknown to me. He was 86 at the time. For almost a year, my brother Eugene and I visited Henry every Monday at 5 PM and audio-recorded a segment of about 90 minutes. Henry would prepare by going through his records, and he typically had a page of hand-written notes. But mostly he extemporized.

He tells the story of his professional life, and the background and causal factors behind it. He touches on his personal life only when it bears on his career. He's very careful to not pass judgement on anyone, although there are clearly some villains in the plot.

Transcribing these records was labor-intensive, and the job was shared among Henry's children (me, Eugene, Rachel, Stephen, and Dori) and his grandchildren Ryan and Ken. The transcription process was error-prone. We often had to guess at spellings, and there are lots of typos. If you want to help edit, download the Word (.docx) version of the episode and send the edits in track-change form to me (David Anderson, davea at berkeley dot edu).

Henry also wrote a more detailed genealogy in 2008. Thanks to Uncle Don for supplying this.

In Aug 2019 I synopsized the oral history in a Wikipedia page on Henry.

Henry died on October 24, 2016. I'm very happy that we have this record of his life.

Download entire transcript (~250 pages)

1. Ancestry and childhood (1927 - 1935)

2. Summer camp in Lake County (1935 - 1940)

3. Palo Alto High School (1940 - 1943)

4. An unhappy Senior year (1943 - 1944)

5. Enrollment in the Army (1944 - 1946)

6. Henry vs. the Army; return to Pomona (1946 - 1949)

7. Grad school in Hawaii (1949 - 1952)

8. Start of the Bracero study (1952 - 1957)

9. The screed and its repercussions (1957 - 1958)

10. Hired by AWOC (1958 - 1959)

11. AWOC, Dolores Huerta, Norm Smith, final Bracero report (1959 - 1960)

12. More AWOC; Cherry picker's strike (1960 - 1960)

13. SCAL; An ill-advised strike (1960 - 1961)

14. NCAC, Maria Moreno, Harvest House (1961 - 1961)

15. Strike aftermath; Bracero report revision (1961 - 1962)

16. AWOC's Volunteer period; the Strathmore Conference (1962 - 1962)

17. ACL/CIO conference in Miami; fired by AWOC (1962 - 1962)

18. Back in the Public Health Department (1962 - 1963)

19. KPFA; Citizens for Farm Labor (1963 - 1964)

20. KPFA politics (1964 - 1964)

21. More KPFA; Free Speech Movement; Cesar Chavez and FWA (1964 - 1965)

22. A busy month: SNCC, Joan London, grape strike (1965 - 1965)

23. Grape boycott and MediCal (1965 - 1965)

24. More MediCal (1965 - 1968)

25. Pesticides (1968 - 1969)

26. Federal pesticide working group; real estate foray (1970 - 1975)

27. Real estate (1975 - 1977)

28. The Ranch, Joe Murphy, Gene Nelson, Vincent St. John (1977 - 1989)

29. Staying in touch with the farm labor movement (1982 - 2000)

30. A new millenium (2000 - 2010)

31. KPFA commentaries, part 1 (1963 - 1968)

32. KPFA commentaries, part 2 (1969 - 1972)






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