Dolores Huerta will celebrate her 78th birthday. March 31 is the birthday of her colleague and friend, Cesar Chavez.
By Christine Senteno
Editor
Long before I ever met Dolores Huerta, I used her as a role model for my children, especially my growing daughter.
Huerta seemed to have it all — certainly not in terms of material possessions, but in spirit and strength. She was not only brown and beautiful, she was bold.
She and César Chávez organized the 1965 grape boycott that turned a national spotlight onto the fledgling United Farm Workers union and the exploitation of campesinos who planted and harvested the food that reached our tables.
She continued to fight for radical improvements in the conditions of farmworkers long after the boycott ended in 1970 and has been a powerful voice for the farm labor movement ever since. She worked side-by-side with Chávez until his death 14 years ago.
To me, this 5-foot-tall, 100-pound mother of 11 children, almost fragile in appearance, was bigger than life, an icon. I was just one of many who were attracted to her flame.
Robert Kennedy was another. He enlisted her in his presidential campaign in 1968. Addressing a jubilant crowd at Los Angeles’ Ambassador Hotel, Kennedy praised her as a valued campaign spokesperson and credited her fellow farmworkers for helping him win the California Democratic presidential primary. He spoke the words moments before he was assassinated.
Another individual who recognized the power of her presence was Karenna Gore Schiff, a lawyer and the eldest daughter of Al Gore. After considerable thought and research, she sought Huerta out for inclusion in her first book, Lighting the Way: Nine Women Who Changed Modern America.
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Gore Schiff said she wanted to expand the pantheon of powerful women behind political movements and Huerta resonated with her because of the spirit and imagination she brought to her mission.
“Dolores and the other women in the book” — none of whom are high-profile national figures — “make this country truer to the ideals it stands for,” Gore Schiff says, stressing that Huerta was never afraid to face up to the most difficult challenges of her time.
Huerta disavows the notion she is an icon. In some ways, she says, she feels more like Forest Gump because she has witnessed so many important moments in modern history.
Faced with death threats throughout her life as a UFW organizer locked in struggles with the nation’s agribusiness giants as well as competing unions such as the Teamsters, Huerta lived hand-to-mouth for years, moving constantly because of her work.
In 1988 she was severely beaten, nearly killed, by San Francisco police during a political demonstration. Three years later she was awarded a $750,000 settlement, some of which she later contributed to the Dolores Huerta Foundation. She created the foundation in 2002 after being presented with a $100,000 grant tied to the Puffin Foundation Institute Award for Creative Citizenship.
Huerta was born into a farmworker family in the northern New Mexico mining town of Dawson. Her father was a farmworker. She grew up with her mother after her parents divorced when she was three. Her mother purchased a hotel in Stockton, Calif. from a Japanese family which was displaced to a “relocation camp” during World War II. She grew up with her two brothers and two sisters in that hotel.
Now retired from the UFW, Huerta resides in Bakersfield and remains active as a community organizer. Six schools are named after her and she has received six honorary doctorate degrees in addition to the teaching credential she earned.
She is a board member of the Feminist Majority Foundation and teaches community organizing at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.
On April 10 she will celebrate her 78th birthday. March 31 is the birthday of her colleague and friend, Cesar Chavez.
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