Cesar Chavez

(1927 - 1993)

Born in Yuma, Arizona, to a family of Mexican American migrant workers, the labor organizer Cesar Chavez founded the National Farm Workers Association with Dolores Huerta in 1962; the group’s members were among the many organizers that supervised the Delano grape strike in 1965, which led to a nationwide boycott of California grapes and protections for Filipino and Mexican farm workers. “Without a union,” he told a journalist in 1968, “the people are always cheated, and they are so innocent.”