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National Land for People Collection
csf.1987.001
csf.1987.001
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Table of contents
Title: National Land for People collection
Identifier/Call Number: csf.1987.001
Contributing Institution:
Special Collections Research Center, California State University, Fresno
Language of Material:
English
Physical Description:
25.0 Linear feet
Date (bulk): Bulk, 1972-1983
Date (inclusive): 1850-1991
Abstract: National Land for People, founded primarily by George Ballis and Berge Bulbulian, was a grassroots organization most active
in California in the 1970s and 1980s, concerned with a number of environmental factors, most notably federal irrigation water
use restrictions and the 160-acre limitation provision of the reclamation law as it applied to the west side of the San Joaquin
Valley, California. The National Land for People collection measures 25 linear feet and dates from 1850 to 1991, with the
bulk from 1972 to 1983. The collection is comprised of legislation and legal papers, land sales documentation, correspondence,
financial statements and contracts, reports, scholastic papers, historical and background information, press releases, printed
material including newsletters, brochures, propaganda, and campaign materials, maps,charts, newspaper and magazine issues
and clippings, notes, photographs, books and journals, ledgers, and other assorted materials pertaining to the history and
activities of the organization and some of its founding members.
creator:
Ballis, George Elfie, 1925-2010
creator:
Ballis, Maia
The National Land for People (NLP) Collection measures 25 linear feet and dates from 1850 to 1991 (bulk 1972 to 1983). The
collection is comprised of legislation and legal papers, land sales documentation, correspondence, financial statements and
contracts, reports, scholastic papers, historical and background information, press releases, printed material including newsletters,
brochures, propaganda, and campaign materials, maps, charts, newspaper and magazine issues and clippings, notes, photographs,
books and journals, ledgers, and other assorted materials pertaining to the history and activities of the organization and
some of its founding members. The collection is arranged in seven series, as described below.
The
Reclamation, water and land issues series (1850-1984) represents the majority of the collection, measuring 16.4 linear feet, and is divided into five main sub-series,
two of which can be further divided into sub-sub-series. The first sub-series is comprised of materials related to the United
States Department of the Interior's Bureau of Reclamation projects and can be divided into three sub-sub-series: The first,
the 1902 Reclamation Act, includes legislation, historical information, violations, NLP opinions, residency information, and
materials from the Pacific Legal Foundation. The second, the Central Valley Project, including general information, materials
regarding the San Luis Unit and its Westlands Water District land sales and land transactions, and materials regarding the
Kings River and Kern County areas of California as well as other projects throughout the state. The third sub-sub series,
the Bureau of Reclamation general includes the history and general use of water in California, and Bureau of Reclamation projects
in cities in California not found in the Central Valley and in other states. The second sub-series is comprised of materials
related to the Imperial Irrigation District within the Bureau of Reclamation of California. The third sub-series represents
the Panoche Water District, also within the jurisdiction of California's Bureau of Reclamation. The fourth sub-series is comprised
of land transactions and land sales that took place outside the Westlands Water District, including railroad company land
grants and land sales; and the fifth sub-series pertains to other states' reclamation and water issues and assorted other
water and land issues.
The
Family versus corporate farms series (1947-1981) measures 20.5 inches and can be divided into three sub-series. The first pertains to legislation and family
farm acts, the second to general information and economics of small versus large farm enterprises, and the third to corporate
farms and scandals that took place in California and the United States between 1962 and 1981.
The
Legislation and politics series (1865-1981) is composed of 12.5 inches of materials relating to hearings, testimonies, and legislation (one sub-series)
as well as information pertaining to political figures and their viewpoints and opinions in California, Washington, D.C.,
and throughout the United States.
The fourth series, entitled
Other National Land for People issues (1891-1991), is comprised of fourteen sub-series in alphabetical order, all of which pertain to activities undertaken by
NLP throughout its existence. The series measures 5.25 linear feet, and its subseries are: air quality; activism and community
organizing; agriculture in general and agribusiness; appropriate technology; associations and organizations; California projects;
chemical farming and pesticides; co-ops and cooperative farms and funds; education; farm labor and farm mechanization; land
issues including land ownership, reform, trusts, use planning, and farmland preservation; NLP general and historical information
as well as materials pertaining to contacts made throughout the country and world; NLP's creations and printed material developed
throughout its existence; and power and energy.
The
Rural community development series (1972-1982) represents 6.5 inches of the collection and includes reports, printed material, and correspondence pertaining
to community ownership, economics of agricultural development, and other related topics.
The sixth series,
International materials (1965-1980), measures 1.5 inches and corresponds to foreign ownership of California and United States land as well as to
Mexican agribusiness and legislation.
Finally, the seventh series,
Maps (1973-1985) spans the remainder of the collection, and is housed in six map tubes. This series consists of maps related to
land sales and purchases, as well as assessors and land classification maps.
See also:
The Giffen Inc. collection,1911-1983, Special Collections Research Center, Henry Madden Library, California State University,
Fresno
The John Krebs collection, part of the Central Valley Political Archive, Henry Madden Library, California State University,
Fresno.
The Kenneth L. Maddy papers, 1970-1998, bulk 1987-1995, part of the Central Valley Political Archive, Henry Madden Library,
California State University, Fresno, online at http://www.cvparchive.org/pdf/maddy_finding_aid.pdf
The Charles (Chip) Pashayan, Jr. papers, 1977-1990, part of the Central Valley Political Archive, Henry Madden Library, California
State University, Fresno.
The B. F. (Bernie) Sisk papers, 1955-1978, part of the Central Valley Political Archive, Henry Madden Library, California
State University, Fresno.
The San Joaquin Valley farm labor collection, 1947-1974, online at http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/tf7199n8d8
The Shimeall (Eleanor) California water collection, 1972-1995 at the University of the Pacific, online at http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/tf7t1nb5z3
The Paul Schuster Taylor papers, 1660-1997, bulk 1895-1984 at the Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley,
online at http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/tf7489n98b
The Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) collection, 1965-2004, online at http://scrc.lib.csufresno.edu/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/WILPF.pdf
The Ben Yellen / Charles L. Smith correspondence at the Mandeville Special Collections Library at the University of California,
San Diego, online at http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/kt287024rm
The Yellen Versus Imperial Irrigation District collection at the Mandeville Special Collections Library at the University
of California, San Diego, online at http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/kt738nf3p3
The Ben Yellen papers, 1945-1994 at the Mandeville Special Collections Library at the University of California, San Diego,
online at http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/tf0r29n721
National Land for People (NLP), founded under the leadership of George and Maia Ballis, Berge Bulbulian, and a handful of
others, started in the 1950s under several different names, including Western Water Resources Council, before being incorporated
as the National Land for People Foundation in 1974. George Ballis, a self-described "news reporter, news editor, community
and union organizer, still photographer, film maker, organic gardener-farmer, shamanic guide, and teacher," from Faribault,
Minnesota, lived in Chicago and San Francisco before accepting a position as labor editor for the
Valley Labor Citizen newspaper in Fresno in 1953. In this position Ballis focused on covering the issues of farm labor and farm workers of the
time. In 1965 Ballis worked as a part-time labor organizer for the AFL-CIO Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC),
which worked with the National Farm Workers Union, led by Cesar Chavez. It was also during this time that Ballis and Berge
Bulbulian became active in community organizing and that Ballis became the office manager for B. F. Sisk, who was subsequently
elected to the House of Representatives to represent Fresno. Ballis was soon put in contact with Paul Taylor in Berkeley,
and they began organizing around the state's water and farm labor issues. They produced maps showing the land ownership trends
in the new Westlands Water District, which included many farms of surprisingly large size, including one over 110,000 acres
owned by the Southern Pacific Railroad Company.
This was important because the Newlands Reclamation Act, passed in 1902 to fund large irrigation projects for 16 states in
the American west, stipulated that federally funded water could only be used by landholders who owned 160 acres of land or
less. However, for decades, large, corporate farming enterprises, as well as the Bureau of Reclamation charged with enforcing
the law, were ignoring this restriction. National Land for People used the information they had gathered and maps they had
produced to bring a bill to the Senate to force the Bureau to enforce the Reclamation Act's excess land law and break up the
large farms and sell them in small parcels to farm workers.
George and Maia Ballis and National Land for People were organizing and gathering information in order to gain equality for
working class people. At the same time, George Ballis was photographing farm worker conditions. He then started working with
the Fresno Democratic Association, became president, and organized it into the second largest Democratic club in the state
of California. When National Land for People became incorporated in 1974, Ballis and the others took their advocacy to Washington,
D.C., trying court cases in an attempt to fight the injustices present in California farm labor and publicly-subsidized agriculture
water. They succeeded in closing some of the loopholes in Reclamation law that allowed the Westlands Water District to remain
exempt from the acreage limitations, but President Reagan thwarted National Land for People, promising that the excess land
law would never be enforced. In the middle of the water fight, National Land for People started working with the University
of California, Los Angeles, on a study about how the West side could be developed with small communities and small farms and
succeed, and they organized farmer co-ops, consumer co-ops, and organic farm experiments. After the Reclamation Reform Act
of 1982 raised the acreage limitation to 960, they realized that they would never win the big fight against the government
and large, corporate farms, and so instead re-focused their energies on other initiatives. National Land for People converted
over the course of the late 1970s and 1980s into Sun Mountain, George and Maia Ballis's artistic and environmental endeavor
stressing eco-friendly technology, food and energy alternatives, organic gardening, community activism and organizing, and
other related issues. George Ballis died in 2010. Maia Ballis continues the legacy of Sun Mountain in Tollhouse, California.
Processing of the National Land for People collection was generously funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and administered
by the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR). The Henry Madden Library at California State University, Fresno,
was awarded a Cataloging Hidden Special Collections and Archives grant from 2010-2012, "Uncovering California's Environmental
Collections," in collaboration with eight additional special collections and archival repositories throughout the state and
the California Digital Library (CDL). Grant objectives included processing of over 33 hidden collections related to the state's
environment and environmental history. The collections document an array of important sub-topics such as irrigation, mining,
forestry, agriculture, industry, land use, activism and research. Together they form a multifaceted picture of the natural
world and the way it was probed, altered, exploited and protected in California over the twentieth century. Finding aids are
made available through the Online Archive of California (OAC).
Collection is open for research.
The library can only claim physical ownership of the collection. Users are responsible for satisfying any claimants of literary
property.
National Land for People collection, Special Collections Research Center, Henry Madden Library, California State University,
Fresno.
Immediate Source of Acquisition
The collection was donated by George and Maia Ballis in 1987.
Reclamation, water and land issues, 1850-1984 Boxes 1-19
Family vs. corporate farms, 1947-1981 Boxes 19-20
Legislation and politics, 1865-1981 Boxes 21-22
Other National Land for People issues, 1891-1991 Boxes 22-28
Rural community development, 1972-1982 Box 28
International materials, 1965-1980 Box 28
Maps, 1973-1985 Tubes 1-6
Subjects and Indexing Terms
Alinsky, Saul David, 1909-1972
American Agri-Women.
American Farm Bureau Federation.
Anderson, Jack
Andrus, Cecil D., 1931-
Baillie, Jack T.
Baldoni, Kathleen
Barnes, Peter, 1942-
Barry, Frank J.
Bonadelle, John
Boswell, James Griffin
Bowker, Victor
Brazilian Land and Cattle Company.
Brody, Ralph M., 1912-
Brown, Clayton
Brown, George Edward, 1920-1999
Brown, Jerry, 1938-
Brown, Willie L., 1934-
Bulbulian, Berge
Burns, Hugh M., 1902-
Burton, John, 1932-
Burton, Phillip, 1926-1983
Bush, George, 1924-
California Women for Agriculture.
California. Bureau of Reclamation.
California. Office of Appropriate Technology.
Carr family
Carter, Jimmy, 1924-
Chapman, Oscar J., (Oscar James), 1907-1994
Chavarria family
Chavez, Cesar, 1927-1993
Church, F. Forrester
Clark, Allen W.
Clark, Norman
Cochran, Dwight M.
Coelho, Tony, 1942-
Cole, Bert L., 1910-
Combs family
Control Data Corporation.
Cranston, Alan MacGregor
De La Cruz, Jessie Lopez, 1919-
Del Monte Corporation.
Denton, John H.
Di Giorgio Fruit Corporation.
Di Giorgio, Joseph
Diener, Frank C.
Diener, Octavia
Diener, Paul Ernst
DiMare family
Dixon, Barbara
Donaghy family
Donna Martin
E. F. Schumacher Society.
Ecklund, James
Enos, Larry J.
Environmental Action Foundation.
Eu, March Fong
Farm/Water Alliance.
Findley, Paul, 1921-
Fisher, Hugo B.
Fortune family
Frampton, Mary Louise
Fresno bee. (Fresno, Calif.)
Frito-Lay, Inc.
Giovannetti family
Goldschmidt, Walter, 1913-2010
Greene, Sheldon
Griswold, Erwin N., (Erwin Nathaniel), 1904-1994
Groefsema family
Haley, James Andrew, 1899-1981
Hammonds family
Hammonds Ranch.
Haskell, Floyd K., 1916-1998
Hernandez, Gloria
Hess, Karl, 1923-1994
Hickel, Walter J., 1919-2010
Holland, David W., agricultural economist
Houlding family
Jackson, Henry M., (Henry Martin), 1912-1983
Jansen, Robert B., 1922-
Jiminez, Ray
Johnson, James P., 1930-
Kennedy, John F., (John Fitzgerald), 1917-1963
Kirihara, Jake
Kirshner, Edward M.
Kline, Allan
Krebs, Albert, 1932-2007
Krebs, John Hans, 1926-
Kuchel, Thomas H.
Lange, Dorothea
Lara family
Lasher, Marc
Lee, Clifford
Lehman, Richard, 1948-
Lowe, Jim
Lynch, William B.
MacDiarmid, John MacLeod
Maddy, Kenneth L.
Magneson, Charles
Martin, Arnold
McAfee, Rodger
McCloskey, Michael
McGovern, George S., (George Stanley), 1922-
Meeds, Lloyd, 1927-2005
Mendelsohn, Robert H., 1938-
Metzler family
Mexican American Political Association. (Calif.)
Michalowski, Judy
Miller, George, 1945-
Milliman, Jerome W.
Mink, Patsy T., 1927-2002
Moore, Charles V.
Morton, Rogers C.B., (Rogers Clark Ballard), 1914-1979
National Family Farm Coalition. (U.S.)
National Land for People.
Nesmith, David
Nieman family
O'Neill family
Pashayan, Charles "Chip", 1941-
Pasnick, Vic
Perkins, Robert M.
Pilibos family
Planet Drum Foundation.
Plaza family
Randolph, Jennings, 1902-1998
Reagan, Ronald
Reed, A. Doyle
Ritchie, Mark
Rominger, Richard Elmer, 1927-
San Francisco Examiner.
Schild, Neil W.
Schulz, Orissa M.
Seaton, Fred A., (Fred Andrew), 1909-1974
Shafer, Mark
Sharp, Margaret
Shelley, John Francis, 1905-1974
Smith, Charles L.
Southern Pacific Railroad Company.
Stamenson, Gus
Stamm, Gilbert G., 1911-
Steiner, Wesley E.
Stone, Jack
Sun Maid Growers of California.
Sun Mountain.
Sunkist Growers, inc.
Taylor, Paul Schuster, 1895-1984
Telles family
Temple, Betsy
Thurman, John E.
Udall, Morris K.
Udall, Stewart L.
United Farm Workers Union.
United States. Bureau of Reclamation.
United States. Congress. House.
United States. Congress. Senate.
United States. Department of Justice.
United States. Department of the Interior.
United States. Farmers Home Administration.
United States. General Accounting Office.
United States. Western Area Power Administration.
University of California, Berkeley.
University of California, Davis.
University of California, Santa Cruz. Agroecology Program.
Unruh, Jesse, 1922-1987
Valley labor citizen. (Fresno, Calif.)
Vanik, Charles A., 1913-2007
Villarejo, Don
Von Flue family
Watt, James G., 1938-
Watts, Raymond D.
Weaver, James H., 1927-
Weidert, John
Westlands Water District.
Westlands Water District.
Westside Planning Group.
White, Byron R., 1917-2002
Whitehurst, Dan, 1948-
Williams, Joe
Williamson, Ann
Women's International League for Peace and Freedom.
Woodring, Harry Hines, 1887-1967
Woolf, Jack
Yellen, Ben, 1907-1994
Young Democrats of America.
Young, Douglas Leonard
Activists--California
Agricultural laborers--California
Agricultural laborers--California --Economic conditions
Agricultural laborers--Mexico
Agricultural laborers--United States
Agriculture--California--Central Valley (Valley)
Agriculture--California--Fresno County
Agriculture--California--History--Bibliography
Agriculture--California--Imperial Valley
Agriculture--California--Maps
Agriculture--Economic aspects--California
Agriculture--Economic aspects--United States
Air quality--California
Alabama
Alaska
Appropriate technology--United States
Arizona
Arkansas
Berkeley (Calif.)
Caruthers (Calif.)
Chico (Calif.)
Colorado
Cooperative societies--California
Crops--California
Davis (Calif.)
Del Rio (Calif.)
Drought relief--California
Education--California--Berkeley
Education--California--Fresno
Education--United States--Caricatures and cartoons
Education--United States--Information resources
Family farms--California
Farm corporations--California
Farm mechanization--California
Freedom of information--United States
Fresno (Calif.)
Grass Valley (Calif.)
Huron (Calif.)
Kings County (Calif.)
Lanare (Calif.)
Land grants--California--History
Land grants--United States
Land ownership--California--Maps
Land reform--United States
Land reform--United States--History--Congresses
Land titles--Registration and transfer--California
Land trusts--California
Land trusts--United States
Land use--Planning
Lemoore (Calif.)
Los Angeles (Calif.)
Mendota (Calif.)
Mexico
Oregon
Organizing and managing public services
Palo Alto (Calif.)
Parlier (Calif.)
Pesticides
Power resources--California
Public records--Law and legislation--California
Public records--Research--United States--Directories
Railroads--California--History
Reclamation of land--California
Reclamation of land--United States--Congresses
Reclamation of land--United States--History
Sacramento (Calif.)
San Diego (Calif.)
San Francisco (Calif.)
San Jose (Calif.)
Santa Cruz (Calif.)
Tennessee
Three Rocks (Calif.)
Tulare (Calif.)
Uncovering California's Environmental Collections Project
Washington
Washington (D.C.)
Water districts--California
Water rights--California
Water rights--California--San Joaquin Valley--History
Water use--California
Water use--California--Central Valley (Valley)
Water use--California--San Joaquin Valley
Water--California--Management
Water--Law and legislation--California
Water--Law and legislation--United States
Water--United States
Westlands Water District
Whitesbridge (Calif.)