Regional History Project Oral Histories

Florence Wyckoff's three-volume oral history documents her remarkable, lifelong work as a social activist, during which she has become nationally recognized as an advocate of migrant families and children. From the depression years through the 1970s, she pursued grassroots, democratic, community-building efforts in the service of improving public health standards and providing health care, education, and housing for migrant families. Major legislative milestones in her career of advocacy were the passage of the California Migrant Health Act and, in 1962, the Federal Migrant Health Act, which established family health clinics for the families who follow the crops along both the eastern and western migrant agricultural streams.

This volume continues Wyckoff's story of the arduous political struggle for federal and state legislation providing for health services for migrants, the California and Federal Migrant Health Acts. Once this legislation was in place, Wyckoff was involved in a new battle to insure continuing budget appropriations for the migrant health programs. In her narration, Wyckoff provides additional chapters on her fifteen-year tenure on the Governor's Advisory Committee on Children and Youth, including the involvement of the Rosenberg Foundation in funding pioneering migrant public health services in the San Joaquin Valley; the changing living and social conditions of migrant workers during the period 1948-58; and the organizing of farmworker communities through citizen education and political action. Wyckoff also discusses many individuals who were significant in different areas of the struggle-- Anthony Rios and the CSO; notable growers, labor contractors, and public-spirited physicians, politicians and congressional staff members. The culmination of her varied work on the Governor's Committee was the organizing of the five Conferences on Families Who Follow the Crops, held in California between 1959 and 1967.

The remaining two sections in this volume focus on Wyckoff's national and local work addressing and linking the issues of poverty and citizen participation. She chronicles her membership during the Kennedy Administration on the Study Committee charged with conceptualizing policy initiatives for what later came to be known as the War on Poverty. Some of the topics in this section include the concept of mainstreaming the poor; the 1960 White House Conference on Children and Youth; working with urban youth and the Watts Riots; the origin of the Headstart Program; and the function of the Citizens' Crusade Against Poverty.

In the volume's final section, Wyckoff discusses her philosophy of citizen participation; describes how the War on Poverty emerged in Santa Cruz County; outlines some of its political and social consequences; and indicates how the Watsonville community defined and attempted to meet the housing, educational, and health needs of the migrant families so crucial to the region's agricultural economy.