Cesar Chavez Day
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Journal Articles
Below you will find journal articles on the subject of Cesar Chavez.
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A Hispanic World of Difference
The Struggle Continues: El Centro de los Trabajadores Agrvcolas Fronterizos
At the Heart of a Historic Movement
Links
History
A true American hero, Cesar Chavez was a civil rights, Latino, farm worker, and labor leader; a religious and spiritual figure; a community servant and social entrepreneur; a crusader for nonviolent social change; and an environmentalist and consumer advocate.
A second-generation American, Cesar was born on March 31, 1927 in Yuma, Arizona. At age 10, his family became migrant farm workers after losing their farm in the Great Depression. Throughout his youth and into his adulthood, Cesar migrated across the southwest laboring in the fields and vineyards, where he was exposed to the hardships and injustices of farm worker life.
Cesar's life as a community organizer began in 1952 when he joined the Community Service Organization (CSO), a prominent Latino civil rights group. Cesar's dream, however, was to create an organization to protect and serve farm workers, whose poverty and disenfranchisement he had shared. In 1962, Cesar resigned from the CSO, leaving the security of a regular paycheck to found the National Farm Workers Association, which later became the United Farm Workers of America.
A strong believer in the principles of nonviolence practiced by Mahatma Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Cesar effectively employed peaceful tactics such as fasts, boycotts, strikes, and pilgrimages. In 1968 he fasted for 25 days to affirm his personal commitment and that of the farm labor movement to non-violence. He fasted again for 25 days in 1972. In 1988, at the age of 61, he endured a 36-day "Fast for Life" to highlight the harmful impact of pesticides on farm workers and their children.
Cesar passed away in his sleep on April 23, 1993, in San Luis, Arizona, only miles from his birthplace of 66 years earlier. More than 50,000 people attended his funeral services in the small town of Delano, California, the same community in which he had planted his seed for social justice only decades before. His motto in life-"sí se puede" (it can be done) embodies the uncommon and invaluable legacy he left for the world's benefit.
Read more about Cesar E. Chavez.
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Updated: May 16, 2008
