Born March 31, 1927
Yuma, Arizona
Died April 23, 1993
San Luis, Arizona
Labor leader, founder of the United Farm Workers, and civil rights leader
César Chávez is widely considered to have been the greatest Mexican American civil rights leader in history. Chávez brought the terrible plight of farm workers—most of whom were of Mexican descent—to the attention of the American public. He was a charismatic leader who turned the farm workers’ strike into a national movement for social justice.
In the 1960s Chávez founded the United Farm Workers (UFW) union, an organization that continues to work on behalf of agricultural workers throughout the United States. While the war against injustice in the fields is far from over, Chávez’s efforts have resulted in improved conditions for many farm workers.
In California’s San Joaquín Valley, where the UFW originated, workers migrated from one grape harvest to the next. They performed back-breaking labor for long hours and were constantly exposed to dangerous pesticides. The average life expectancy of a farm worker in 1965 was forty-nine years; the average life expectancy of a white U.S. citizen, by comparison, was seventy years.
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