Cesar's Roots

Cesar Chavez grew up on a small family farm in Arizona before debt forced his family into the stream of California farmworkers. He missed the liberty of the family ranch and bounced from school to school (30 or 40 before dropping out in the eighth grade) while picking nearly every type of crop grown in California. Chavez met and married his wife, Helen, in the farming town of Delano in 1948, two years after an honorable discharge from the Navy. It was also then, as he returned to field work, when he met community organizer Fred Ross. Chavez was eager to learn from Ross how to organize; his father always supported wildcat strikes and unions. He soon rose to the position of executive director of the Community Services Organization, a national group dedicated to making local government work for Hispanics.

In 1962, Chavez quit the CSO when its board refused to commit to the idea of organizing farm workers. Striking out on his own, but dirt poor, he begged and borrowed for food and money (or worked the fields) while he traveled California's extensive valleys. He canvassed workers on wages, conditions, and a farmworkers' association. Three years later, his National Farm Workers Association joined a strike on grape growers started by Filipino workers. Soon after, he initiated the union's first grape boycott.

Later, in the Seventies, Chavez organized a lettuce boycott, reinstated the grape boycott, and fasted on water for weeks at a time to draw attention to the cause of farmworkers. In 1975, under pressure from growers and the United Farm Workers union, the California Legislature passed the Agricultural Labor Relations Act, the first labor law for farmworkers in the continental United States.