Dolores Huerta, United Farm Workers Co-Founder and Labor Icon, Dies at 96
Dolores Huerta, the labor leader who co-founded what became the United Farm Workers and spent about seven decades fighting for farmworkers, women and immigrants, has died. She was 96.
Huerta died Wednesday at her home in Bakersfield, California, her family announced in a Facebook post shared by the Dolores Huerta Foundation. A cause of death was not immediately released.
"We are deeply saddened to announce that our beloved mother, Dolores Huerta, has passed away today at the age of 96," the family wrote, according to NBC Los Angeles. The family asked for privacy and said they would share plans to honor her legacy.
From the Classroom to the Picket Line
Huerta was born Dolores Clara Fernandez in Dawson, New Mexico, in 1930. Her father was a farmworker and union activist. After her parents divorced, her mother, an independent businesswoman, moved the family to Stockton, California, in the San Joaquin Valley. Growing up, Huerta was a Girl Scout, a pianist and a writer. The racism she experienced in school helped push her toward activism.
She earned a teaching degree from Delta College and taught school in the 1950s. But she left the classroom after seeing her students, many of them the children of farmworkers, come to school hungry. She decided she could do more by organizing their families.
Huerta often said "organizer" was the title she valued most, explaining that she felt called to help people organize so they could help themselves, NBC Bay Area reported.
Building a Movement
In 1955, Huerta co-founded the Stockton chapter of the Community Service Organization, and she later helped start the Agricultural Workers Association. Through that work, she met César Chávez, and in 1962 the two co-founded the National Farm Workers Association. That group later became the United Farm Workers, and Huerta served as its vice president until 1999.
She helped lead the Delano grape strikes of the 1960s and negotiated contracts that fought for safer working conditions, an end to harmful pesticides, and unemployment and health benefits for farmworkers. In 1973, she led a nationwide consumer boycott of grapes that helped pave the way for California's landmark Agricultural Labor Relations Act of 1975.
Huerta is also credited with coining the rallying cry "Sí, se puede," or "Yes, we can," which became a lasting slogan for the movement. Beyond the fields, she led voter registration drives, championed immigrant rights and fought gender discrimination, helping redefine the role of women on the picket line.
Honors and Legacy
President Barack Obama awarded Huerta the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor, in 2012. She also received the Eleanor Roosevelt Human Rights Award from President Bill Clinton in 1998.
In 2002, she started the Dolores Huerta Foundation, which focuses on community organizing. Landmarks including Dolores Huerta Square in Los Angeles' Boyle Heights neighborhood are named in her honor.
A Painful Revelation
Earlier this year, Huerta made headlines when The New York Times reported allegations that Chávez had sexually abused girls and women connected to the farmworker movement. Huerta publicly supported the accusers and revealed that Chávez had sexually abused her decades earlier.
The disclosure upended Chávez's legacy. In March, his face was removed from a mural in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles and replaced with a portrait of Huerta. In May, she made her first public appearance since the allegations at the dedication of "Walking into History," a new mural by artist Robert Vargas in downtown Los Angeles.
Huerta is survived by 13 children. Her youngest son, Ricky, said the family "had to share our mother with the world," but that she "shared the world with us."
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