![]() ![]() News & World Report magazine photograph collection (Library of Congress) Labor organizer César Chávez speaks during a 1979 interview. They were the brown, uneducated Spanish speakers that spent their lives toiling under the sun. In the first half of the 20th century, farmworkers were among the most excluded and ignored people in America. It was then that Chávez got a firsthand look at how backbreaking the work was. When Chávez was 11, his family lost their farm during the Depression, packed their bags and became migrant farmworkers – constantly relocating around California for seasonal work. Like most minorities, he didn’t grow up with much, but he was raised around family, and they usually had enough to eat from working their land. It’s that status that’s made him an integral part of Hispanic heritage in America.Ĭhávez’s contributions to farmworkers and the history of labor are historic – but like all historical figures, he’s complicated.īorn in 1927, Chávez was raised in Yuma, Ariz. His organization of farmworkers, his hunger strikes, and his grape boycotts have made him one of the few Latino icons of the civil rights era.Ī Los Angeles Times poll from 1983 revealed that he was the Latino that Latinos in California admired most – above both actor Ricardo Montalbán and baseball player Fernando Valenzuela. Though he passed away in 1993, Chávez is still perhaps the most famous labor organizer in American history. ![]()
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