George Ballis

Who was George Ballis?

George "Elfie" Ballis was an American photographer and activist who advocated on behalf of migrant farm workers in California, and took tens of thousands of photographs documenting the efforts of César Chávez, the Mexican American labor leader who founded the United Farm Workers.

Ballis was born on August 12, 1925, and was raised in Faribault, Minnesota. He enlisted in the United States Marine Corps during World War II and served in the South Pacific as a mechanic repairing torpedo bombers. After completing his military service, he earned an undergraduate degree from the University of Minnesota. One of his first jobs was at U.S. Rubber, where a manager told him that he "had to have a U.S. Rubber attitude... ready to go anywhere at anytime" but found that he "didn't have the U.S. Rubber attitude." After his car broke down while he was on vacation in San Francisco, Ballis decided to live there and took a job writing headlines for article in The Wall Street Journal, where he was called in by his boss about his use of creative phrasing.