United Farm Workers.

Cesar Chavez was the most effective labor leader of the 1970s, rising from poverty as a Hispanic migrant worker in Arizona to international celebrity as the leader of the United Farm Workers Union. In 1962 Chavez left his job as director of the Community Service Organization in California to establish the National Farm Workers Association. His success with Hispanic and Filipino farm pickers led to the formation of the United Farm Workers (UFW) in 1966.

Democratic Support.

Supported by Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, United Auto Workers president Walter Reuther, and other prominent liberals, Chavez adroitly used church meetings, sit-ins, picket lines, consumer boycotts, and media propaganda to win a bitter strike against twenty-six California table-grape growers. The growers signed a contract with the UFW in July 1970, and in 1972 he negotiated a contract with the agribusiness giant Minute Maid in Florida.

Nonviolence.

Chavez...