| Dolores Huerta |
Article Index for Dolores |
Website Links For Dolores |
Information AboutDolores Huerta |
|
She was born in a mining town in northern New Mexico , where her father, Juan Fernandez, was a miner, field worker, union activist and State Legislator . Her parents divorced when she was three years old. Her mother, Alicia Chavez, raised Dolores, along with her two brothers, and two sisters, in the central San Joaquin Valley farmworker community of Stockton, California . Her mother was a businesswoman who owned a restaurant and a 70-room hotel that often put up farmworker families for free. In 1955, Huerta co-founded the Sacramento chapter of the Community Service Organization , and in 1960 co-founded the Agricultural Workers Association. In 1962, she co-founded the National Farm Workers Association with Cesar Chávez , which would later become the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee and still later, the UFW. In 1966, she negotiotiated a contract between the UFWOC and Schenley Wine Company, marking the first time that farmworkers were able to successfully collectively bargain with an agricultural enterprise. Dolores directed the UFW’s national grape boycott taking the plight of the farm workers to the consumers. The boycott resulted in the entire California table Grape industry signing a three-year collective bargaining agreement with the United Farm Workers. She has been highly politically active, lobbying in favor of (and against) numerous California and federal laws, including:
As an advocate for farmworkers' rights, Huerta has been arrested twenty-two times for participating in non-violent civil disobedience activities and strikes. Huerta's organizing and lobbying efforts are often overshadowed by those of Cesar Chávez, who is revered by many (especially Chicanos ) as the primary figure of the Chicano Civil Rights Movement . SOURCES Murcia, Rebecca Thatcher. ''Dolores Huerta''. Bear, Delaware: Mitchell Lane Publishers, c2003. ISBN 1584151552 EXTERNAL LINKS |