Dolores Huerta turns 94. Here's a look at the civil rights icon's legacy.
Summary
Dolores Huerta, a labor and civil rights leader from Stockton, helped organize California farmworkers and co-founded the United Farm Workers with Cesar Chavez. She helped lead a national grape boycott that contributed to California’s 1975 law allowing farmworkers to form unions and bargain collectively, and later founded the Dolores Huerta Foundation.Key Facts
- Huerta grew up in Stockton and became a schoolteacher before leaving teaching to organize farmworkers.
- She began working alongside Cesar Chavez in 1962, and they co-founded the United Farm Workers.
- Huerta served as the union’s vice president while raising 11 children.
- She persuaded Chavez to support a national grape boycott rather than a potato boycott.
- The grape boycott contributed to California’s 1975 Agricultural Labor Relations Act, which gave farmworkers the right to form unions and bargain for better wages.
- A police officer struck Huerta with a baton during a demonstration in San Francisco, breaking her ribs and injuring her spleen, according to her account.
- Huerta left the United Farm Workers in 2002 and later founded the Dolores Huerta Foundation.
- President Barack Obama awarded Huerta the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
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