Cesar chavez biography summary
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California Museum.
César Chávez (March 31, 1927 - April 23, 1993)
Chávez believed that unionizing was the only chance for farm workers to improve their working conditions. He resigned in 1962, increasingly frustrated because the CSO would not become involved in forming a farm workers’ union.
The following year, President Bill Clinton awarded him a posthumous Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian award. When the CSO leadership turned down César’s request, César decided to leave CSO and asked Dolores Huerta to join him in forming a union for farmworkers.
César believed that:
“We cannot seek achievement for ourselves and forget about progress and prosperity for our community . our ambitions must be broad enough to include the aspirations and needs of others, for their sakes and for our own.”
With no money and no organizational support, César - with his wife Helen and their eight children, and Dolores – now divorced with seven children, traveled to Delano, California to form the National Farm Workers Association.
With cries of “La Causa!” and in solidarity with their Filipino brothers and sisters, César and Dolores led thousands of Mexican American farmworkers on strike in what is now known as the famous “Delano Grape Strike of 1965.” César, Dolores, and Larry merged NFWA and AWOC, renaming their new union the “United Farm Workers Organizing Committee.” UFWOC would later become the United Farm Workers.
He immediately established the National Farm Workers Association, which later became the UFW, an affiliate of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO). Miriam Pawel, The Crusades of Cesar Chavez. (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2014) California Hall of Fame: Cesar Chavez.
2, Gale, 2010, pp. Instead, Cesar turned down the job in exchange for a life of self-imposed poverty.
Starting in the 1960s, Cesar and others in the movement made $5 a week, plus room and board.
Cesar Chavez
Working doggedly to build the NFWA alongside fellow organizer Dolores Huerta, Chavez traveled around the San Joaquin and Imperial Valleys to recruit union members.
“To be a man is to suffer for others. .
Source:"Chávez, César Estrada." Gale Encyclopedia of American Law, edited by Donna Batten, 3rd ed., vol. The NFWA later became the United Farm Workers of America. In 1962, César lobbied CSO to advocate for farmworkers, the most abused members of our society. The NWFA and AWOC had merged in 1966 to form the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee, which in 1971 became the United Farm Workers of America (UFW).
Throughout the 1970s, Chavez continued leading the union’s efforts to win labor contracts for farm workers across the agricultural industry, employing the same nonviolent techniques of strikes and boycotts.
344-346. From Gale Virtual Referencedatabase.
César Chavez Biography
César would later become CSO's National Director in 1958. The banner soon became the symbol of the farm workers’ struggle. In 1972, he went on a second hunger strike to protest an Arizona law banning farm workers from organizing and protesting.
Thanks to the UFW’s efforts, California passed the landmark Agricultural Labor Relations Act in 1975, giving all farm workers the right to unionize and negotiate for better wages and working conditions.
In the mid-1980s, Chavez focused the UFW’s efforts on a campaign to highlight the dangers of pesticides for farm workers and their children.
The UFW would also play a critical role in creating the Chicano Movement.
César’s brother Richard E. Chávez designed the famous red UFW flag emblazoned with the black Aztec eagle in a white circle. It would have meant a big house with servants and all the advantages for his children. Under Cesar, the UFW achieved unprecedented gains for farm workers, establishing it as the first successful farm workers union in American history.
In 1962, President Kennedy offered to make Cesar head of the Peace Corps for part of Latin America.