César Chávez

His grandfather crossed into Texas in 1898 and in 1906 bought a farm in the North Gila Valley. His parents bought a store and a pool hall in 1925, fell into debt, and by 1929 lived in the storeroom of the family house. At the local school Spanish was forbidden and he was made to answer to Cesar rather than Cesario. His grandmother died in 1937, and the county auctioned the farmstead for back taxes in 1939. The family picked avocados at Oxnard and peas at Pescadero and slept in a garage in San Jose. Two years in the Navy, then Delano, then a San Jose priest who lent him lives of Saint Francis, Eugene Debs and Gandhi, and an organizer named Fred Ross who put him on voter registration.

He built the thing from below, out of house meetings — the National Farm Workers Association, founded with Dolores Huerta at Delano in 1962. When Filipino workers walked out of the grape fields in September 1965 he took his members out behind them, and the strike became a boycott. He fasted, he marched, he signed contracts. In 1975 he and Governor Jerry Brown steered through a state law giving farmworkers a secret ballot, the first in the country. BriefHistory tells that campaign and what it won. This page is about what the machine required of the people inside it.

By 1973 he had decided that migrants crossing illegally were breaking his strikes, and said that getting them out of California would win the strike overnight. He started an Illegals Campaign to identify migrants for deportation. His cousin Manuel ran a UFW patrol on the Arizona line — a wet line, in the union's own word — and the reports that came back said its men beat and robbed migrants and castrated one. Chavez called the reports the work of paid provocateurs and protected his cousin. In 1977 he took the union's board to the Synanon compound and brought back the Game, a session of profane collective attack played twice a week at La Paz and used to punish nonconformity. That year he also accepted Ferdinand Marcos's hospitality in Manila and praised martial law to a reporter.

He died in his sleep on April 23, 1993, in San Luis, Arizona, during a trial that could have broken the union. Clinton gave the Medal of Freedom to his widow in 1994. Obama made his headquarters a national monument in 2012. On March 18, 2026, the New York Times reported, after five years' work, that he had sexually abused two girls, aged 12 and 13. Dolores Huerta said he had assaulted her twice, that she bore both children and placed them, and the paper matched the DNA. His family said it could not judge, and nobody in his circle denied it. Critics answer that a dead man cannot. Nine days later California renamed the holiday Farmworkers Day.

César Chávez's life against the full span of the corpus.

• National Farm Workers Association company
  Founded at Delano with Dolores Huerta. Later the United Farm Workers. 1962
• Delano grape boycott other
  The strike turned into a national consumer campaign that ran five years 1965
• Forty Acres, Delano building
  The union headquarters he fasted at in 1968 1966
• United Farm Workers constitution other
  Adopted at Fresno. It gave the president wide powers, which he wanted. 1973
• California Agricultural Labor Relations Act law
  Negotiated with Governor Jerry Brown. The first secret-ballot law for farmworkers in the country. 1975

• 1939 aged ~12 The family farm is sold for back taxes and the Chavezes go to California He treated it as the founding injustice of his life.
• 1944 aged ~17 Enlists in the Navy and serves at Saipan and Guam Honorably discharged in 1946.
• October 1948 aged 21 Marries Helen Fabela in Reno A double wedding with his sister Rita.
• 1962 aged ~35 Founds the National Farm Workers Association at Delano
• September 1965 aged 38 Joins the Filipino walkout in the Delano grape fields
• March 10, 1968 aged 40 Ends a fast of about three weeks by sharing bread with Robert Kennedy
• June 1975 aged 48 Jerry Brown signs the California Agricultural Labor Relations Act Chavez worried it would kill the movement's spirit.
• February 1977 aged 49 Takes the UFW board to Synanon and brings the Game back to La Paz His wife and his brother Richard refused to play.
• April 23, 1993 aged 66 Dies in his sleep at San Luis, Arizona
• March 18, 2026 aged 98 The New York Times publishes its abuse investigation California renamed his state holiday Farmworkers Day nine days later.

• Dolores Huerta b. 1930
  Labor leader and civil rights activist who co-founded the United Farm Workers with Cesar Chavez. co-founded the union with
• Robert F. Kennedy 1925–1968
  Senator and Attorney General whose 1968 presidential campaign was cut short by assassination. broke his fast with
• Walter Reuther 1907–1970
  United Auto Workers leader who helped build organized labor into a major economic and political force. marched with him at Delano
• Martin Luther King Jr. 1929–1968
  Baptist minister and civil rights leader whose nonviolent activism ended legal segregation in America. wired him support during the 1968 fast
• Barack Obama b. 1961
  44th President and first African American to hold the office, known for the Affordable Care Act. borrowed the slogan
• John L. Lewis 1880–1969
  Union leader who built the United Mine Workers and helped found the CIO, expanding industrial unionism and collective bargaining. predecessor in industrial unionism