Cesar Estrada Chavez (1927–93) was an American labor leader of farmworkers. The founder of a labor welfare organization that became the United Farm Workers, he used nonviolent tactics to gain union contracts with California vineyard owners.
Born the son of a Mexican-American migrant family near Yuma, Arizona, Chavez worked in the fields from early childhood and received little formal schooling. In 1962 he founded, with labor activist Dolores Huerta, the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA,) which sought to unionize migrant workers.
Chavez used strikes, pickets, and marches to win contracts from growers and undertook long fasts to publicize the movement. In 1968 he promoted a nationwide boycott of California grapes, which led to the table-grape growers’ recognition of the union in 1970.
In 1972 the United Farm Workers (UFW,) with Chavez as its president, became a member union of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO,) a federation of international labor unions.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Cesar Chavez
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.
—Cesar Chavez
Topics: Aspirations
Once social change begins, it cannot be reversed. You cannot uneducate the person who as learned to read, humiliate the person who feels pride, and you cannot oppress people who are not afraid anymore.
—Cesar Chavez
Topics: Change
Students must have initiative; they should not be mere imitators. They must learn to think and act for themselves—and be free.
—Cesar Chavez
Preservation of one’s own culture does not require contempt or disrespect for other cultures.
—Cesar Chavez
Topics: Culture
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