James Vizzard, S.J., teaching at Santa Clara University in an undated photo. Credit: America Media

Around Labor Day every year at America, we like to take a digital trip into the archives to see if there might be a story from the past about the church and the worker that could complement any new offerings. Luckily for the researcher, our back pages are full of such treasures, particularly when it comes to the nation’s famous “labor priests”: One can read stories about Boston labor rights hero Edward F. Boyle, S.J., John Corridan, S.J. (the inspiration for Karl Malden’s character in “On The Waterfront”), Msgr. George Higgins, the “Hollywood priest” Daniel Lord, S.J., the “Right Reverend New Dealer” Msgr. John A. Ryan and many more. 

Last month, on the recommendation of an America subscriber, I went looking for a name I hadn’t previously seen or heard: James Vizzard, S.J. What I found over the next few weeks was the colorful tale of a larger-than-life labor priest who perhaps never earned the public recognition of some of the above names in life or in posterity, but still had a fascinating and somewhat tumultuous career.

Along with San Antonio’s Archbishop Robert Lucey and the aforementioned Monsignor Higgins, Vizzard was once recognized as “one of the most outspoken Catholic promoters of migrant issues” after the Second World War for his work with farmworkers—both with Cesar Chavez in California and nationally. 

James L. Vizzard was born in San Francisco in 1916. He joined the Society of Jesus in 1933 after graduating from high school, following his older brother John, who had entered two years before. Ordained in 1946, he received a licentiate in theology a year later and was assigned to Santa Clara University. The largely undeveloped Santa Clara Valley in those days was full of orchards—the valley was described by his brother as “solidly carpeted in white from the profusion of fruit blossoms, pears and plums and apricots and almonds”—and Vizzard became interested in the economic condition of migrant farmworkers in the area. 

If the name Vizzard strikes some readers as familiar, it is likely because of that brother, John A. “Jack” Vizzard. After leaving the Jesuits in 1943 several years short of ordination, Jack Vizzard worked for decades in Los Angeles as a censor enforcing the “Hays Code,” Hollywood’s famous (or infamous, depending on one’s point of view) production code enforcing moral standards in movies. The Code was largely written and enforced by Catholics, including the aforementioned Daniel Lord, S.J. Jack Vizzard seems by all accounts to have been a colorful character, as evidenced by the opening line of his entertaining yet very politically incorrect 1970 memoir See No Evil: Life Inside a Hollywood Censor: “Being a censor is like being a whore; everyone wants to know how you got into the business.” 

James Vizzard followed a different path. After several years teaching at Santa Clara, he spent four years in graduate study at Georgetown University, the University of Chicago and the United States Department of Agriculture. Episodes of poor health—which would be a constant throughout his life—forced him to abandon his graduate work in 1953, after which he returned to Santa Clara University. In 1955, Father Vizzard accepted a position with the National Catholic Rural Life Conference as their legislative representative in Washington, D.C., where he would mostly stay until 1968. 

For years during and after World War II, growers in California and elsewhere had relied on the bracero program for cheap labor. The program, which allowed Mexican laborers to work in the agriculture and freight industries in the United States during harvest time but then required them to return home at the end of the season every year, was decried by labor organizers of every stripe as not only inhumane, but an obvious source of downward pressure on wages and worker protections. (You can listen to a haunting song by Woody Guthrie about the braceros here.)

Vizzard argued that under the bracero program, growers “had been under no pressure to improve wages and working and living conditions to the point where enough qualified citizen workers would be attracted to the fields.” Two issues—the termination of the program in 1964 and the formation of what would eventually become the United Farm Workers two years later—would be prominent in Vizzard’s Washington advocacy, as well as in his writings for America. 

Authoring articles for the magazine from 1956 to 1973, Father Vizzard was listed for many years as a “corresponding editor” on the magazine’s masthead. Perhaps his most famous article was a 1973 essay on Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers, who were engaged in a lengthy unionization effort that was opposed by both the Teamsters and big growers in California: “Chavez and the Teamsters: David vs. Goliath?” 

Chavez, who had been involved in labor organizing since 1953, had many supporters among Catholics at the time, including Dorothy Day, who joined a 1973 strike in California and spent 10 days in jail for defying an ordinance against picketing. It would be the last time she was arrested. The cause of migrant workers also found support among priests and men and women religious at the time: Note the attached photo by Bob Fitch of a number of priests with Chavez in Coachella, Calif., in 1970.

Priests with Cesar Chavez in 1970 in Coachella, Calif. (Photo by Bob Fitch/Courtesy of the Bob Fitch Photography Archive at Stanford University)

Like Dorothy Day, Father Vizzard had the occasional habit of refusing to mince his words. In 1966, while director of the National Catholic Rural Life Conference, he wrote in a Catholic paper: “Since these growers seem incapable of self-reform, they need to be told emphatically and with finality by outraged citizens and their legislators that the approximation of slave-labor conditions which they have perpetuated will no longer be tolerated in this nation.”

His life was also not without controversy and the occasional colorful tale. He once publicly claimed that a Jesuit of his acquaintance who had been working in Chile had attended a lunch at the Kennedy White House in 1961—and had been secretly given $5 million by the Central Intelligence Agency for covert anti-communist efforts. When both the Jesuit in question and the superior general of the order, Pedro Arrupe, S.J., later denied the payment, Father Vizzard replied that “I assume that when [he] took the money from the CIA, he took an oath not to say where he got it.”

During his lobbying career, Vizzard helped pass the Migrant Medical Help Law, the Farm Labor Contractor Registration Act and the repeal of Public Law 78 (which had authorized the bracero program). He testified more than 100 times before congressional committees on behalf of migrant workers.

Father Vizzard returned to California in 1968, becoming the director of social ministries for the California Province of the Jesuits. In 1972, Chavez asked Vizzard to become the legislative representative of the United Farm Workers union; in the following years, he helped pass the Farm Labor Contractor Registration Act Amendments and the Child Labor Law Amendment, (which prohibited children under 12 years of age from working in the fields). In 1974, U.S. Labor Secretary Peter Brennan appointed him to the Standards Advisory Committee on Agriculture for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

After further health problems, Father Vizzard resigned from that position in 1977 and retired to Santa Clara, Calif. In 1980, he donated his papers to Stanford University. He died eight years later, in 1988.

Twenty years before, in recognition of his efforts on behalf of migrants and rural populations, Pope Paul VI awarded Father Vizzard the Benemerenti Medal, a former military honor now given by popes to recognize meritorious service to the church and the world. 

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Our poetry selection for this week is “Magdalene: Before,” by Rachel Lott. Readers can view all of America’s published poems here.

In other news, we are excited to announce a pilgrimage to Ireland in April 2026. Led by myself and America editor in chief Sam Sawyer, S.J., the trip, “The Land of Saints & Scholars: A Journey into the Heart & Soul of Ireland,” will be from April 19 to 28, 2026. Reserve your spot!

In this space every week, America features reviews of and literary commentary on one particular writer or group of writers (both new and old; our archives span more than a century), as well as poetry and other offerings from America Media. We hope this will give us a chance to provide you with more in-depth coverage of our literary offerings. It also allows us to alert digital subscribers to some of our online content that doesn’t make it into our newsletters.

Other recent Catholic Book Club columns:

Happy reading!

James T. Keane

James T. Keane is a Senior Editor at America.