SAN JUAN, Texas (Border Report) — For decades, Jim Harrington worked as a civil rights lawyer alongside César Chávez championing in court the rights for farmworkers and migrants in the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas.
They filed lawsuits to stop dangerous pesticides that pregnant women were exposed to in the fields. They challenged the work conditions, pay and migrant housing.
And in 1990, Harrington founded a nonprofit in the Rio Grande Valley, the Texas Civil Rights Project, to offer free legal services for migrants and farmworkers and other vulnerable populations.
On Monday, Harrington returned to deep South Texas to promote his new book: “The Texas Civil Rights Project: How We Built a Social Justice Movement.”
About 200 people attended the book-signing event at La Union del Puebo Entero (LUPE). They clapped and waved red flags and sang corridos of tribute to Harrington and “la causa” (the cause) and remembered “the old days.”
“I wanted to honor the stories of the people that I worked with. You know, in the farmworker cases, all of the litigation that we did, because I didn’t want their struggle to be lost to history, and I wanted to pay respect for the sacrifices that they made,” Harrington, 79, told Border Report.
“The movement has picked up,” Harrington said. “This is a fight for justice that they learn from their families, and they’re carrying on into whatever part of life they happen to be in. So it’s really great to see that. I was really honored to be here.”
Harrington said it took him three years to write the 280-page book, which is published by the University of Texas Press.
He said he was drawn to the border of South Texas after meeting many migrants who farmed the fields all the way north to his hometown of Lansing, Michigan.
Year after year, wave after wave of migrants would come and harvest crops in Michigan and he said he was curious about their lives and how he could help. He reached out to Chávez and found out the ACLU was in need of a lawyer in Texas. He said the rest was history.
“I wrote this book to give life to the story here in the Rio Grande Valley. So people can know about your world,” Harrington told the crowd in Spanish on Monday.
Harrington said he learned Spanish in seminary school decades ago when he thought he wanted to be a priest.
“That was a fluke. It changed my life,” Harrington told Border Report.
Juanita Valez-Cox, founder of LUPE in the RGV, introduced Harrington and praised him for his years of service.
“It’s not any individual,” she said. “It’s a fight we did together. … We were victorious working together.”
Dolores Huerta, who co-founded of the United Farmworkers Association with Chávez, wrote a paragraph on the back cover of the book endorsing it. Huerta writes: “‘The Texas Civil Rights Project’ makes you feel you are there, with Jim, reliving the experiences, learning as he was, and gaining the motivation to follow his footsteps into activism. Jim’s life story gives us so many examples of faith in action and belief in one’s own power. This book is an inspiration and a blueprint for all who believe in justice.”
Sandra Sanchez can be reached at SSanchez@BorderReport.com.
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