The Judith Sutliff collection consists of personal papers donated by Sutliff, gathered while working as a volunteer with the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA), and the United Farm Workers (UFW) during the years 1962-1982. The collection includes correspondence, newspaper clippings, pamphlets, fliers, fact sheets, press releases, photographs, and a scrapbook.

At the time of Sutliff’s main involvement in the UFW, the union was attempting to force growers who would not sign a union contract into negotiating with strike and boycott actions. The strike on grape growers began in 1965 and lasted for five years. The UFW boycott of table grapes and lettuce took on a national scale and resulted in union victory. Major issues included: the UFW’s exclusion from the National Labor Relations Board because the language of the National Labor Recovery Act excluded farm workers from being considered industrial trade unions, police violence against strikers (especially the Texas Rangers), the use of illegal aliens as strikebreakers and the refusal of the Immigration and Naturalization Service to enforce immigration laws against illegal strikebreakers, the poor living and labor conditions of farm workers, the effects of pesticides on the health of farm workers, and the poor sanitary conditions that the farm workers were subject to in the fields.