Fred Ross (community organizer)

Fred Ross, (1910-1992), was the founder of the Community Service Organization, a Californian statewide organzation founded in 1948 to organize Mexican Americans, with the support of his mentor Saul Alinsky and the Industrial Areas Foundation. The CSO gave a young Cesar Chavez his first training in organizing, which he would later use in founding the United Farm Workers.

Ross graduated from the University of Southern California in 1936, intending to be a school teacher, but could find not jobs during the depression. He ended up managing a migrant labor camp by Bakersfield. The experience helped him to decide to become an organizer.

He left the migrant camp and worked with Japanese-American internees to improve their conditions and effect their release from internment in work funded by the AFSC. After the war, he returned to the Souther California, where he worked with African-American and Mexican-Americans to fight school and housing segregation.