Black History
IN MEMORIAM: United Farm Workers Union Icon Dolores Huerta, 96
Dolores Huerta, the legendary labor leader and co-founder of the United Farm Workers, has passed away at age 96 due to complications from cancer. A pioneering civil rights activist, Huerta was instrumental in securing collective bargaining rights for migrant workers and popularized the rallying cry “Si se puede.” From her early days as a community organizer in Stockton to receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom, her decades of advocacy transformed the American labor movement and inspired generations of activists to fight for social justice. Learn more about her life and legacy.
Dolores Huerta, a community organizer known most for her work to support fair wages and justice for migrant workers, passed away in her Bakersfield home on Wednesday from complications of cancer. She was 96.
Accolades poured in from across the nation.
“I cannot imagine a world without Dolores Huerta, and it is with deep sadness that I mourn the passing of my dear friend and legendary leader,” said Oakland Mayor Barbara Lee who met Huerta in the 1970s. “She understood how race, gender, poverty, and economic inequality intersect, pushing for a women’s movement inclusive of Black women and women of color. And she never separated the struggle for farmworkers from reproductive freedom and other civil rights and human rights.”
Former Berkeley mayor and current state assembly member Jesse Arreguin, who was mentored by Huerta said on Instagram that she was “always driven by a deep sense of justice and fairness, she transformed this state and this nation, changing the lives of farm workers and advancing the rights of all people.”
Former Vice President Kamala Harris called Huerta a “pioneering labor leader and legendary civil rights activist.
“Amidst the struggle of the movement, her rallying cry, ‘Si se puede,’ was a call to stay in the fight,” Harris wrote.
Organizing was a family trait. Born on April 10, 1930, in Dawson, New Mexico, Huerta was the daughter of a traveling coal miner whose reputation as a fiery union leader followed him to the New Mexico Legislature. After moving to Stockton, her mother held two jobs to support her children and went on strike with her cannery union in 1937.
After graduation from Stockton High School, Huerta attended University of the Pacific‘s Stockton College (later San Joaquin Delta College) where she received a teacher’s certificate.
But when the children of farm workers came to school hungry and needing shoes, she quit, believing she could do more for them organizing farm workers and joined the Community Service Organization (CSO).
By the late 1950s, she was organizing other CSO chapters and working as a lobbyist, speaking before the state Legislature, as well as teaching citizenship classes and supporting voter registration drives.
Over the next few years, she was part of several union efforts, co-founding the National Farm Workers’ Association (NFWA) with Cesar Chavez and Gilbert Padilla in 1962.
She became the UFW’s main negotiator, leading to favorable contract for grape workers in 1970. In the years that followed, there were successful boycotts of lettuce, wine and table grapes. In 1975, she helped ensure farm workers’ rights to collective bargaining with the California Agricultural Labor Relations Act.
In 1988, while protesting George H.W. Bush’s candidacy for president in San Francisco, Huerta was severely beaten by a police officer, leading a five-year leave of absence from UFW. She returned to work after Chavez’s death in 1993.
The recipient of numerous awards, Huerta used the $100,000 gift for receiving the Puffin/Nation Award for Creative Citizenship in 2002 to create the Dolores Huerta Foundation, which funds full-time organizers to go to neighborhoods and teach residents how to collaborate with government and community groups to exercise self-determination.
She received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012 and was made a member of the Order of the Aztec Eagle, the highest award given to foreigners by the Republic of Mexico.
Huerta was married twice and is survived by seven children.
Wikipedia, the Associated Press and other online reports are the source of this story.
