Dolores Huerta
Dolores Huerta is an American labor leader and feminist activist. After working for several years with the Community Service Organization, she co-founded the National Farm Workers Association with fellow activists Cesar Chavez and Gilbert Padilla, which eventually merged with the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee to become the United Farm Workers. Huerta helped organize the Delano grape strike in 1965, managing boycott campaigns on the east coast and negotiating with the grape companies to end the strike. Some credit her with inventing the UFW slogan "sí se puede".
Although she initially opposed certain feminist concepts, such as the right to abortion and contraception, Huerta eventually became a strong proponent of women's rights. She has worked with the Feminist Majority Foundation to help Latina women become more active and visible in politics, campaigned for women's reproductive rights, and served as an honorary co-chair of the 2017 Women's March in Washington, D.C.
In 2002, she founded the Dolores Huerta Foundation, a civic advocacy organization based in Bakersfield, California. She is active in Democratic politics and has supported the campaigns of Robert F. Kennedy, George McGovern, Al Gore, Howard Dean, Hillary Clinton, Kamala Harris, and Joe Biden. She is also a supporter of LGBTQ rights and immigration reform.
Huerta has received numerous awards for her work as an organizer, including the Eleanor Roosevelt Human Rights Award, the Hispanic Heritage Award, and the Puffin/Nation Prize for Creative Citizenship. She also received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012. In 2018, California Governor Jerry Brown signed a bill proclaiming April 10 as "Dolores Huerta Day" in California. A similar bill was signed in Oregon in 2019. She is portrayed by Rosario Dawson in the 2014 film Cesar Chavez and is the subject of the 2017 documentary ''Dolores.''
Early life
Dolores Huerta was born Dolores Fernández on April 10, 1930, in the mining town of Dawson, New Mexico. Her father, Juan Fernández, was a coal miner who belonged to the United Mine Workers. Labor unrest caused him to move throughout the Western United States working as a beet farmer. Her mother, Alicia Chávez, divorced him when Huerta was five years old. She and the children then moved to Las Vegas, Nevada, and later to Stockton, California. After moving, she rarely saw her father, who remained in New Mexico. He was elected to the state legislature in 1938, where he was described as a "fiery union leader" by the Los Angeles Times.In Stockton, Huerta was raised by her mother and grandfather, Herculano. She described their neighborhood as "integrated", with "Chinese, Latinos, Native Americans, Blacks, Japanese, Italians, and others". Her mother supported the family by working two jobs: as a canner and as a waitress at a local restaurant, earning a total income of $5 weekly from both jobs combined. She was a member of the United Cannery, Agricultural, Packing, and Allied Workers of America, participating in a strike at the cannery in 1937. In 1941, she opened a restaurant. The following year, she bought a 70-room hotel from a Japanese American family who were forced to relocate due to Executive Order 9066. According to Huerta, the restaurant "catered mostly to farm workers".
Huerta, who was "encouraged by her mother to be socially active" according to researcher Christine Beagle, spent ten years as a Girl Scout. She attended Stockton High School, graduating in 1947. Huerta described her high school as being "segregated" by both class and race. After graduating from high school, she married her high school sweetheart, Ralph Head, but they divorced three years later. They had two children: Celeste and Lori. She attended the University of the Pacific's Stockton College and graduated in 1953 with a provisional teaching credential.
Huerta became a teacher in rural California in 1954. She was one of three bilingual teachers in the area. Many of her students struggled with hunger and did not have sufficient clothing, stating:
CSO activism
Huerta quit teaching after a year. Soon after, in 1955, she met Fred Ross, one of the founding members of the Community Service Organization. She initially described him as being "slightly loco". A Republican at the time, she was suspicious of Ross's purported communist leanings. After asking the FBI to perform a background check on him, which came back clean, Huerta began attending CSO meetings. Her work with the CSO initially saw her in traditionally feminine roles, such as participating in women's clubs. However, Ross encouraged her to take on more active leadership assignments. By the late 1950s, she was founding new CSO chapters and working as a lobbyist, testifying before the California State Legislature in support of giving retirement benefits to noncitizens and health coverage to farm workers while opposing the controversial Bracero Program. She also advocated for neighborhood improvement projects, taught citizenship classes, and worked on voter registration drives. Dolores met her second husband, Ventura Huerta, while working with the CSO. The two had five children: Fidel, Emiliano, Vincent, Alicia, and Angela. She also met fellow organizer Cesar Chavez during her time there.Union activism
Early union activity
In 1958, Huerta helped found the Agricultural Workers' Association. When the AWA dissolved in 1959, Huerta became secretary-treasurer of the AFL-CIO-affiliated Agricultural Workers' Organizing Committee. However, according to historian Margaret Rose, she resigned from the organization quickly, " disenchanted with the group's leadership, direction, and top-down policies". In 1962, frustrated with the CSO's unwillingness to advocate for farmworkers, she co-founded the National Farm Workers Association with Cesar and fellow organizer Gilbert Padilla. Formally, she remained a paid CSO employee, staying in Stockton while Cesar established the organization's headquarters in Delano. Meanwhile, her relationship with Ventura "deteriorated", and they divorced in 1963.Huerta eventually left her position with the CSO and moved in with Cesar and his family in Delano in 1964. According to Cesar, Huerta's role in the early NFWA was "critical". Her duties included making phone calls, collecting union dues, and visiting worker camps in Stockton and nearby towns. She struggled to earn enough money to support her family during this time, taking on temporary work as a translator, substitute teacher, and onion farmer to supplement her NFWA income. In April 1965, she helped the NFWA organize a strike on behalf of rose grafters employed by the Mount Arbor and Conklin companies. After three days, the companies agreed to increase the strikers' wages but did not agree to a formal contract, which was one of the strikers' demands. The workers returned to their jobs the next day.
Delano Grape Strike
On September 8, 1965, union organizer Larry Itliong of the AWOC initiated a strike at nine vineyards in Delano. Itliong approached Cesar for support, and on September 16, the anniversary of the Cry of Dolores, Cesar called an NFWA meeting at the Our Lady of Guadalupe Church in Delano. AWOC members addressed the crowd, and attendees urged Cesar to support the strike. While he was initially reluctant, he began drafting plans for the NFWA's entry at a meeting on September 19. It joined the strike the next morning.The strike was accompanied by boycotts. Huerta and Padilla organized a wine boycott throughout California. Huerta was then sent to direct boycott efforts in New York and New Jersey. She initially organized secondary boycotts with local unions, who refused to transport California grapes over the Hudson River. This was illegal at the time under the Taft–Hartley Act. After the union eventually released the grapes for distribution, she launched a consumer boycott in coalition with local churches, labor organizations, liberal activists, and student groups. Members of the coalition picketed A&P grocery stores until they stopped selling grapes. Soon after, other stores such as Bohack, Finast, Hills, and Waldbaum's followed suit. Huerta spoke in public regularly about the strike, becoming well known for her "firebrand rhetoric".
On August 19, 1965, the AWOC and NFWA merged to form the United Farm Workers. Huerta, along with various members of the former AWOC and NFWA leadership, was appointed vice president of the new organization. She was one of the union's lead negotiators, and according to Rose, was "the union's first contract negotiator". In 1966, she negotiated with several of the struck grape companies—Schenley, Gallo, and Franzia—resulting in a contract favorable to the workers. When the strike ended on July 29, 1970, Huerta helped secure a contract with the remaining companies that increased workers' wages, added new safety rules to protect workers from pesticides, created a health fund, and turned the hiring process from the companies over to the UFW.
Later union activity
During the 1970s, Huerta helped organize boycotts of lettuce, Gallo wine, and table grapes. She also entered a romantic relationship with Richard Chavez, Cesar's brother. The two had four children: Juanita, María Elena, Ricky, and Camila. Many criticized Dolores and Richard's cohabitation as "unorthodox", but according to Huerta, she was inspired by the women's liberation movement to proceed with the arrangement anyway. She, Richard, and Padilla worked to organize workers in California's Central Valley. In 1974, she helped found the Coalition of Labor Union Women, and in 1975, she helped pass the California Agricultural Labor Relations Act, the first law to recognize farmworkers' right to collective bargaining in the state, as a lobbyist for the UFW. Throughout the late 1970s, she participated in efforts to protect the new law as director of the Citizenship Participation Day Department, the UFW's political wing.Huerta's relationship with other UFW organizers became tense during the 1970s. Amidst a conflict between the UFW and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, the Agricultural Labor Relations Board, which had been created by the ALRA, shut down due to lack of funding in 1976. The UFW supported Proposition 14, an amendment to the ALRA that would have addressed funding issues and unclear legal language in the ALRA, initiating a boycott in support of the proposition. The amendment was ultimately defeated by a significant margin. After its failure, Cesar blamed boycott leader Nick Jones for the loss and accused him and fellow organizer Charlie March of being part of a "left-wing conspiracy to undermine the union".
After the defeat of Proposition 14, Cesar moved to reorganize the UFW's boycott offices, leading to conflict with boycott staff and causing Cesar to become increasingly paranoid about opposition. He began to affiliate himself with Charles Dederich, founder of the new religious movement Synanon. Influenced by Dederich, Cesar began advocating for the use of a confrontational group criticism method called "the Game" in UFW meetings. Huerta supported the implementation of "the Game", but it was controversial among union members.
Huerta came into conflict with several UFW staff members during this period, including lawyer Jerry Cohen and organizers Padilla, Berta Batres, Chris Hatmire, Juan Gutierrez, Marshall Ganz, and brothers Chava and Mario Bustamente. Historian Matthew Garcia notes that she often had conflicts with younger staff members. He also describes an incident where Huerta criticized organizer Lorraine Agtang during a "Game" session, later "intimidat her" by "staking out her house at night for hours on end". According to one observer quoted by Garcia, Huerta regularly claimed that "infiltrators with revolutionary, radical ideology urging armed struggle" to try to overthrow union leaders. Elements of Garcia's account have been criticized by researcher Stacey K. Sowards, who argues that he takes some of Huerta's statements "out of historical context". While Huerta's relationship with Cesar was often strained during this time, with investigative journalist Miriam Pawel describing her as his "whipping girl", Sowards notes that they still maintained a "very close and supportive relationship".
In the 1980s, Huerta founded Radio Campesina, a UFW radio station. She also raised money and gave public speeches supporting the union and testified before Congress about farmworkers' benefits, wages, and health issues. In September 1988, she was beaten by a police officer at a protest against George H. W. Bush's candidacy for president at the St. Francis Hotel in Union Square, San Francisco. She suffered two fractured ribs and a ruptured spleen, which doctors had to surgically remove. She received an $825,000 settlement from the San Francisco Police Commission as a result of the beating. The assault also led the San Francisco Police Department to change its policies for crowd control and officer discipline.
After the beating, Huerta took a leave of absence from the UFW. She returned to union work after Cesar's death in 1993, supporting strawberry workers, speaking at colleges, attending union meetings, and testifying before Congress. She stepped down from her position as UFW vice president in 1999 to work on other social causes.