Remembering César Chávez

The California State Assembly officially recognized Cesar Chavez Day today, Saturday, March 31, and called on everyone to observe it as a day of service.

Authored by Assemblyman Luis Alejo (D-Salinas), ACR 73 highlights the contributions that the civil rights and labor leader made to California.

“To many Californians, the farm workers’ struggle is an issue from the past,” said Alejo in a statement about the resolution. “But the challenges of farmworkers did not disappear with the passing of Cesar Chavez. In Cesar’s memory, I call on all Californians to celebrate this day as a day of public service.”

Chavez, who died at the age of 66 in 1993, was a community organizer who practiced Mahatma Gandhi's non-violence message to make positive change, and turned it into a movement for migrant farm workers’ rights that gained national attention.

Born in 1927 in Yuma, AZ, Chavez grew up helping on his family’s farm. He dealt with prejudice at a young age, as teachers strictly forbid Mexican-American children from speaking any Spanish at school.

He served in the military for two years, before moving to San Jose, where he married his high-school sweetheart. He worked as a farm laborer until 1952, when he became an organizer for the Community Service Organization, a San Jose entity that served a mostly Latino population.

He left to found the National Farm Workers’ Association. It merged into the organization now known as United Farm Workers, allying with Larry Itliong, Philip Vera Cruz and Pete Velasco, leaders of Filipino farm workers' group, the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee which had initiated some of the first strikes in Coachella and Delano.

In the late 1960s, with growing visibility and support from presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy —plus the millions of Americans who heeded his call to boycott grapes from the Delano growers — the organization gained national attention and stunningly, contracts from the grape growers. With the support of first-time Gov. Jerry Brown, the UFW successfully won the right to organize in 1975. 

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