[1] As recalled in his autobiography, Barrio Boy, the young man successfully navigated the cultural differences in the public school system, received a scholarship to Occidental College in Los Angeles, and then went on to earn a master's degree in history at Stanford University in 1929.

[3] Although primarily an intellectual and scholar whose weapons were words, Galarza initially played an activist's role with the AFL as the leader of several strikes.

The book was instrumental in the ending of the program, which in turn opened the door for Cesar Chavez to begin unionizing immigrant farmworkers in 1965.

His many books include: In the wake of a bus crash in the Salinas Valley in September 1963 that claimed the lives of 32 braceros, Galarza was appointed to investigate the tragedy by Adam Clayton Powell Jr., chairman of the Committee on Education and Labor of the U.S. House of Representatives.

His report, published by the committee in April 1964,[6] found that the accident was directly caused by negligence, exemplifying a practice in which flatbed trucks were illegally converted to buses, driven by poorly trained personnel.