Dolores Huerta, United Farm Workers Co-Founder and Civil Rights Icon, Dies at 96

BAKERSFIELD, Calif., Oct. 28 (TodayViralUSA) — Dolores Huerta, the labor organizer who co-founded the United Farm Workers with César Chávez and spent seven decades fighting for farmworkers, women and immigrants, died Wednesday at her home in Bakersfield, surrounded by family. She was 96.

The BBC confirmed she died of cancer. “This is an incredibly difficult time for us, and we ask for privacy as we grieve this incredible loss to our family,” family spokesman Erik Olvera said.

From the classroom to the picket line

Born in New Mexico and raised in Stockton, California, Huerta began her career as a schoolteacher. According to the Dolores Huerta Foundation, she left the classroom after seeing farmworkers’ children arrive hungry and poorly clothed, concluding she could do more by organizing their parents.

Through the Community Service Organization she registered voters and lobbied in Sacramento in the late 1950s, one of the few women lobbyists of the era. In 1962 she joined Chávez in building the National Farm Workers Association, which in 1966 merged with the Filipino-led Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee to form the union that became the United Farm Workers.

“Sí, se puede”

During the Delano grape strike and the national grape boycott, Huerta helped turn a California labor dispute into a national campaign, and she negotiated some of the first farmworker contracts in North America. The UFW credits her with coining its motto, “Sí, se puede” — “Yes, we can.”

Her advocacy helped secure California’s Agricultural Labor Relations Act of 1975, which gave farmworkers the right to organize and bargain collectively. She also campaigned against pesticide exposure in the fields, and later championed women’s rights, voting access and immigration reform through her foundation, work she continued into her 90s while raising 11 children.

Tributes pour in

“Her life’s work was to empower her community to face and overcome injustices, and she has left farm workers and the entire Latino community stronger and more organised than she found it,” the UFW said in a statement.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom said Huerta “represented the best of us.” Former President Bill Clinton, who presented her with the Eleanor Roosevelt Human Rights Award in 1998, said “we’ve all lost a stalwart champion of working Americans.” She received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012.

Earlier this year, Huerta publicly alleged that Chávez, who died in 1993, had pressured and on one occasion forced her into sex in the 1960s, following a New York Times investigation into allegations against him. Chávez’s family said at the time that they were devastated by the reports.