The name is believed to refer to Chinese migrant labourers who were brought to the area for agricultural work in the early 19th century by Frederick North, then the colonial Governor of Ceylon.
His father Felipe (Philip), dropped out of school in the fifth grade, and became a Filipino agricultural laborer who emigrated from the Philippines in 1929.
In 1966 Nelson became Texas director of the first grape boycott by César Chávez's farmworker union.
AWOC was composed primarily of Filipino American farmworker organizers, although it did hire Dolores Huerta.
During the 20th Century African-American Civil Rights Movement, Fannie Lou Hamer, a farmworker, started a movement for poor people.
Luis Valdez, a Chicano from a migrant farmworker family, founded the troupe after attending San Jose State University and working briefly with the San Francisco Mime Troupe.
On 21 June 1873, Franz Bender, a 26-year-old farmworker, emigrated to Ohio to live with relatives who were already there.