Henry Pope Anderson (December 14, 1927 – October 24, 2016) was a farm labor union organizer, activist, author, and historian.
In 1957, with the help of a Spanish-speaking assistant, Anderson surveyed thousands of incoming braceros at the "reception centers" in Empalme, Sonora, Mexico and El Centro, California.
Instead, he sent the committee a written statement entitled "Social Justice and Foreign Contract Labor", describing his observations and opinions.
As it turned out, the AFSC distributed Anderson's statement to a number of government officials involved in the bracero program.
In 1959, Anderson left the university, disillusioned by what he viewed as its failure to stand up to the bracero lobby in defense of academic freedom.
At AWOC, Anderson wrote about fifty research reports on various labor-related topics such as wages, crop prices and legislative activity.
Dolores Huerta briefly worked at AWOC as a secretary; she soon left and joined Cesar Chavez at the Community Service Organization.
[3] The annual convention of the AFL-CIO was taking place in Miami one week after the Strathmore conference, and AWOC was entitled to send a voting delegate.
The study found rampant fraud, but because of the strong AMA lobby, these findings never led to prosecution or policy change.
In July 1963 Anderson did a commentary on KPFA - a listener-supported radio station in Berkeley, California - about the future of farm labor after the Bracero program, which had been ended by Congress earlier that year.
This evolved into a series of monthly commentaries, initially on farm labor but eventually branching out to broader political and social issues, which continued to 1972.
In February 1965 Anderson was invited by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) to participate in a meeting in Biloxi, Mississippi, to discuss connections between the farm labor and civil rights movements.
After leaving the Department of Public Health in 1975, Anderson became a real estate investor and landlord in the Berkeley area, but he continued labor-related activities.
In 1982 Anderson was invited to the 20th anniversary celebration, in San Jose, of the founding of the National Farm Workers Association by Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta in Delano.
In October 2001 he organized, with Gilbert Gonzalez, a panel on guest worker programs at the North American Labor History Conference (NALHC).
He learned that Saint John was buried in an unmarked grave in Oakland's Mountain View Cemetery, and together with Archie Green he organized an initiative to raise money for a headstone.