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Dolores Huerta
Huerta in 2024
Born
Dolores Clara Fernández

(1930-04-10) April 10, 1930 (age 94)
Dawson, New Mexico, U.S.
EducationSan Joaquin Delta College
Known forCo-Founder of the National Farmworkers Association
Delano grape strike
Sí, se puede
Political partyDemocratic
Other political
affiliations		Democratic Socialists of America
Spouse(s)Ralph Head (divorced)
Ventura Huerta (divorced)
PartnerRichard Chavez (deceased)
Children11
ParentJuan Fernández (father)
Quotations related to Spookyaki/sandbox at Wikiquote

Dolores Huerta (born April 10, 1930) is an American labor leader and feminist activist. After working for several years with the Community Service Organization (CSO), she founded the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA) with fellow activist Cesar Chavez, which eventually merged with the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC) to become the United Farm Workers (UFW). Huerta helped organize the Delano grape strike in 1965, managing boycott campaigns on the east coast and negotiating with the grape companies to end the strike. Some credit her with inventing the UFW slogan "sí se puede" (transl. 'yes you can').[1]

Early life

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Dolores Huerta was born Dolores Fernández on April 10, 1930 in the mining town of Dawson, New Mexico.[2] Her father, Juan Fernández, was a coal miner who belonged to the United Mine Workers (UMW). Labor unrest caused him to look for work as a beet farmer in Colorado, Nebraska, and Wyoming.[3] Her mother, Alicia Chávez, divorced him when Huerta was five years old. She then moved with the children to Las Vegas, New Mexico, and later to Stockton, California.[4] After moving away, she rarely saw her father, who remained in New Mexico. He was elected to the state legislature in 1938, where he was described as a "fiery union leader" by the Los Angeles Times.[5]

In Stockton, Huerta was raised by her mother and grandfather, Herculano, in what she described as an "integrated neighborhood", with "Chinese, Latinos, Native Americans, Blacks, Japanese, Italians, and others".[6] Her mother supported the family by working two jobs: as a canner and as a waitress at a local restaurant, making $5 a week. She was a member of the United Cannery, Agricultural, Packing, and Allied Workers of America (UCAPAWA), participating in a strike at the cannery in 1937.[7] In 1941, she opened a restaurant. The next year, she bought a 70-room hotel from a Japanese American family who were forced to relocate due to Executive Order 9066.[8] According to Huerta, the restaurant "catered mostly to farm workers".[9]

Huerta, inspired by her mother to be "socially active", spent ten years as a Girl Scout. She attended Stockton High School, graduating in 1947.[10] Huerta described her high school as being "segregated" by both class and race. After graduating from high school, she married her high school sweetheart Ralph Head,[a] but they divorced three years later. They had two children, Celeste and Lori. She attended the University of the Pacific's Stockton College (later San Joaquin Delta College) and graduated in 1953 with a provisional teaching credential.[12]

Huerta became a teacher in rural California in 1954. She was one of only three bilingual teachers in the area. Many of her students struggled with hunger and did not have sufficient clothing:

I couldn't tolerate seeing kids come to class hungry and needing shoes. I thought I could do more by organizing farm workers than by trying to teach their hungry children.[13]

CSO activism

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Huerta quit teaching after a year.[14] Soon after, in 1955, she met Fred Ross, one of the founding members of the Community Service Organization (CSO).[15] She initially described him as being "slightly loco" (transl. 'crazy'). A registered Republican at the time, she was suspicious of Ross's purported communist leanings. After asking the FBI to perform a background check on him, which came back clean, Huerta began attending CSO meetings.[16] Her work with the CSO initially saw her in traditionally feminine roles, such as participating in women's clubs. However, Ross encouraged her to take on more active leadership assignments. By the late 1950s, she was founding new CSO chapters and working as a lobbyist.[17] She also advocated for neighborhood improvement projects, taught citizenship classes, and worked on voter registration drives.[18] Dolores met her second husband, Ventura Huerta, while working with the CSO. The two had five children: Fidel, Emiliano, Vincent, Alicia, and Angela.[19] She also met fellow organizer Cesar Chavez during her time with the CSO.[20]

Union activism

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Early union activity

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In 1958, Huerta helped found the Agricultural Workers' Association (AWA).[21] Then, when the AWA dissolved in 1959, Huerta became secretary-treasurer of the AFL-CIO-affiliated Agricultural Workers' Organizing Committee (AWOC). However, according to historian Margaret Rose, she resigned quickly after "[growing] disenchanted with the group's leadership, direction, and top-down policies". In 1962, frustrated with the CSO's unwillingness to advocate for farmworkers, she co-founded the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA) with Chavez. She initially stayed on the CSO payroll, remaining in Stockton while Chavez established the organization's headquarters in Delano.[22] Meanwhile, her relationship with Ventura "deteriorated", and they divorced in 1963.[23]

Huerta eventually left her position with the CSO and moved in with Chavez and his family in Delano in 1964.[b][27] According to Chavez, Huerta's role in the early NFWA was "critical".[28] Her duties included making phone calls, collecting union dues, and visiting worker camps in Stockton and nearby towns. She struggled to earn enough money to support her family during this time, subsisting by taking on temporary work as a translator, substitute teacher, and onion farmer to supplement her NFWA income.[26] In April 1965, she helped the NFWA organize a strike on behalf of rose grafters employed by the Mount Arbor and Conklin companies.[29] After three days, the companies agreed to increase the strikers' wages but did not agree to a formal contract, which was one of the strikers' demands. The workers returned to their jobs the next day.[30]

Delano Grape Strike

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Main article: Delano grape strike

On September 8, 1965, union organizer Larry Itliong of the AWOC initiated a strike at nine vineyards in Delano.[31] Itliong approached Chavez for support, and on September 16, the anniversary of the Cry of Dolores, Chavez called an NFWA meeting at the Our Lady of Guadalupe Church in Delano. AWOC members addressed the crowd, and attendees urged Chavez to support the strike. While he was initially reluctant, he began drafting plans for the NFWA's entry into the strike at a meeting on September 19.[32] It joined the strike the next morning.[33]

The strike was accompanied by boycotts. Huerta and fellow NFWA organizer Gilbert Padilla organized a wine boycott throughout California. Later, Huerta directed boycott efforts in New York and New Jersey. She initially organized secondary boycotts with local unions, who refused to transport California grapes over the Hudson River. This was illegal at the time under the Taft–Hartley Act. After the union eventually released the grapes for distribution, she launched a consumer boycott in coalition with local churches, labor organizations, liberal activists, and student groups. Members of the coalition picketed A&P grocery stores until they stopped selling grapes. Soon after, other stores such as Bohack, Finast, Hills, and Waldbaum's followed suit.[34] Huerta also spoke in public regularly about the strike, becoming well-known for her "firebrand rhetoric".[35]

On August 19, 1965, the AWOC and NFWA merged to form the United Farm Workers (UFW).[36] Huerta, along with various members of the former AWOC and NFWA leadership, was appointed vice president of the new organization.[37] As part of her union responsibilities, she attended Robert F. Kennedy's primary victory speech on June 5, 1968, where he was assassinated. In a later interview, she called Kennedy's assassination "the death of our future".[38] She also helped negotiate the end of the strike after five years on July 29, 1970. The final contract increased workers' wages, added new safety rules to protect workers from pesticides, created a health fund named after Kennedy, and turned the hiring process from the companies over to the UFW.[39]

Later union activity

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During the 1970s, Huerta helped organize boycotts of lettuce, Gallo wine, and table grapes. She also entered a romantic relationship with Richard Chavez, Cesar's brother. The two had four children: Juanita, María Elena, Ricky, and Camilla. Many criticized their cohabitation as "unorthodox", but according to Huerta, she was inspired by the women's liberation movement to proceed with it anyway.[40] In 1975, she also helped pass the California Agricultural Labor Relations Act, the first law to recognize farmworkers' right to collective bargaining in the state, as a lobbyist for the UFW.[41] Throughout the late 1970s, she participated in efforts to protect the new law as director of the Citizenship Participation Day Department, the UFW's political wing.[42]

In the 1980s, Huerta founded Radio Campesina (KUFW), the UFW's radio station; raised money and gave public speeches supporting the union; and testified before Congress about farmworkers' benefits, wages, and health issues.[42] In September 1988, she was beaten by a police officer at a protest against the George H. W. Bush administration at the St. Francis Hotel in Union Square, San Francisco. She suffered multiple fractured ribs and a ruptured spleen, which doctors had to surgically remove.[43] She received an $825,000 settlement from the San Francisco Police Commission as a result of the beating.[42] The assault also led the San Francisco Police Department to change its policies for crowd control and officer discipline.[44]

After the beating, Huerta took a leave of absence from the UFW. She returned to union work after Chavez's death in 1993, supporting strawberry workers, speaking at colleges, attending union meetings, and testifying before Congress.[45] However, she stepped down from her position as UFW vice president in 1999 to work on other social causes.[46]

Feminist activism

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Notes

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  1. ^ Alicia Chávez claims that Head and Huerta married in 1948, while Beagle claims that they were married in 1950.[11]
  2. ^ According to Doak, she resigned in late 1962.[24] Alicia Chávez, Bardacke, and Sowards also claim that she resigned.[25] However, according to Rose, she was "terminated for her overriding interest in farmworker organizing over CSO business".[26]

References

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  1. ^ Sowards 2019, pp. 7–8.
  2. ^ Rose 2008, p. 8.
  3. ^ Garcia 2012, p. 27.
  4. ^ Rose 2008, p. 8; Sowards 2019, p. 35.
  5. ^ Beagle 2016, p. 48; Sowards 2019, p. 35.
  6. ^ Sowards 2019, p. 35; 38.
  7. ^ Garcia 2012, p. 28.
  8. ^ Garcia 2012, p. 28; Beagle 2016, p. 49.
  9. ^ Sowards 2019, p. 36.
  10. ^ Beagle 2016, p. 53.
  11. ^ Chávez 2005, p. 243; Beagle 2016, pp. 53–54.
  12. ^ Beagle 2016, p. 54; Sowards 2019, pp. 37–39.
  13. ^ Beagle 2016, p. 54.
  14. ^ Doak 2008, p. 23.
  15. ^ Thompson 2016, pp. 1, 126.
  16. ^ Thompson 2016, pp. 126–127.
  17. ^ Rose 2008, p. 11; Beagle 2016, p. 56.
  18. ^ Sowards 2019, p. 40.
  19. ^ Beagle 2016, p. 57.
  20. ^ Sowards 2019, p. 41.
  21. ^ Doak 2008, p. 31.
  22. ^ Rose 2008, pp. 11–12; Bardacke 2011, p. 120; Pawel 2014, p. 80.
  23. ^ Beagle 2016, p. 58.
  24. ^ Doak 2008, p. 39.
  25. ^ Chávez 2005, p. 245; Bardacke 2011, pp. 120–121; Sowards 2019, p. 42.
  26. ^ a b Rose 2008, p. 13.
  27. ^ Pawel 2014, p. 99.
  28. ^ Sowards 2019, p. 42.
  29. ^ Pawel 2014, p. 101.
  30. ^ Bardacke 2011, p. 139.
  31. ^ Garcia 2012, p. 40.
  32. ^ Garcia 2012, p. 41; Pawel 2014, pp. 105–106.
  33. ^ Pawel 2014, p. 106.
  34. ^ Garcia 2013, pp. 149–150.
  35. ^ Rose 2008, p. 16; Beagle 2016, p. 117.
  36. ^ Garcia 2016, pp. 3–4.
  37. ^ Garcia 2012, p. 57.
  38. ^ Guadalupe, Patricia (June 6, 2018). "'Death of our future': RFK's assassination set back Latino civil rights, says Dolores Huerta". NBC News. Retrieved December 30, 2024.
  39. ^ Garcia 2012, pp. 110–111.
  40. ^ Rose 2008, pp. 18–19.
  41. ^ Chávez 2005, p. 241; Rose 2008, p. 18.
  42. ^ a b c Rose 2008, p. 19.
  43. ^ Morain, Dan (September 16, 1988). "Police Batons Blamed as UFW Official Is Badly Hurt During Bush S.F. Protest". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved January 4, 2025.
  44. ^ "$825,000 Proposed for Union Activist Injured by Police". Los Angeles Times. January 25, 1991. Retrieved January 4, 2025.
  45. ^ Rose 2008, p. 20; Beagle 2016, p. 219.
  46. ^ Beagle 2016, p. 205.

Sources

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  • Bardacke, Frank (2011). Trampling out the Vintage: Cesar Chavez and the Two Souls of the United Farm Workers. London: Verso Books. ISBN 1-84467-718-4.
  • Beagle, Christine (2016). Siete Lenguas: The Rhetorical History of Dolores Huerta and the Rise of Chicana Rhetoric (PhD thesis). University of New Mexico. Retrieved December 4, 2024.
  • Chávez, Alicia (2005). "Dolores Huerta and the United Farm Workers". In Ruíz, Vicki; Sánchez Korrol, Virginia (eds.). Latina Legacies: Identity, Biography, and Community. New York: Oxford University Press, USA. ISBN 0-19-515399-5.
  • Doak, Robin S. (2008). Dolores Huerta: Labor Leader and Civil Rights Activist. Minneapolis: Compass Point Books. ISBN 0-7565-3477-1.
  • Garcia, Matt (2013). "A Moveable Feast: The UFW Grape Boycott and Farm Worker Justice". International Labor and Working-Class History. 83. doi:10.1017/S0147547913000021. ISSN 0147-5479.
  • Garcia, Matt (May 9, 2016). "Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers Movement". Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History. Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acrefore/9780199329175.013.217. ISBN 978-0-19-932917-5.
  • Garcia, Matthew (2012). From the Jaws of Victory: The Triumph and Tragedy of Cesar Chavez and the Farm Worker Movement. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-28385-5.
  • Pawel, Miriam (2014). The Crusades of Cesar Chavez: a Biography. New York: Bloomsbury Press. ISBN 1-60819-710-7. OCLC 849210456.
  • Rose, Margaret (2008). "Dolores Huerta: The United Farm Workers Union". In García, Mario T. (ed.). A Dolores Huerta Reader. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. ISBN 0-8263-4513-1. OCLC 231724520.
  • Sowards, Stacey K. (2019). ¡Sí, Ella Puede!: The Rhetorical Legacy of Dolores Huerta and the United Farm Workers. Austin: University of Texas Press. ISBN 978-1-4773-1766-2.
  • Thompson, Gabriel (2016). America's Social Arsonist: Fred Ross and Grassroots Organizing in the Twentieth Century. Oakland: University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-96417-4.
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