Dolores Huerta

Dolores Huerta, born in Dawson, New Mexico, said that New Mexico was where she developed her philosophy of social justice. After her parents' divorce, she moved as a child to Stockton, California, with her mother and two brothers. Her mother worked two jobs, her grandfather cared for the children, and Huerta admired her mother's determination both to support the family and to encourage her children. Although she excelled in school, she experienced racism along with Mexican, Mexican-American, and farm-worker children. She earned a teaching degree at Stockton College and briefly taught elementary school, but left because she could not bear the poor living conditions of her students, many from farm worker families. Wanting to help them, she founded the Agricultural Workers' Association in 1960, organized voter registration drives, and lobbied for public assistance, pensions, and the use of Spanish on public documents. In 1962, she and Cesar Chavez co-founded the National Farm Workers' Association, which merged with the Agricultural Workers' Association in 1965. Five years of work on behalf of grape growers led to a historic agreement that improved benefits for farm workers, including unemployment and health care benefits, and reduced the use of harmful pesticides. A 1970 lettuce boycott helped pave the way for the 1975 Agricultural Labor Relations Act. Huerta continued in her activist father's tradition for many years after the death of her co-founder and friend Cesar Chavez, and she said the honor given her also belonged to all who had assisted in the movement.

South Valley, New Mexico · United States