Chávez, Huerta fought for farm worker rights. Here’s how Fort Worth will celebrate them

Two Mexican-American labor leaders and civil rights activists who worked on behalf of farm laborers across the country will be celebrated Saturday in Fort Worth.

The Cesar Chavez Committee of Tarrant County, in partnership with LULAC Council 4743 and LULAC Council 4568, will have a birthday celebration for César Chávez and Dolores Huerta at 11 a.m. April 6 at 1409 Ellis Ave., Suite 105. It will include speakers, community organizations, a food giveaway and music.

The César Chávez Committee of Tarrant County has been a nonprofit organization since 2016 and is committed to promoting education, social justice, the community and civil rights.

Marciela Jimenez, president of the organization, says Chavez and Huerta were pioneers whose legacies should be learned by generations to come.

“If we look at what drove them, what their values were, what their passion was, we can still take from that and move forward to help bring our community or community at large to a higher level,” Jimenez said.

Who were Chavez and Huerta?

Chávez was born in Yuma, Arizona, as a first-generation Mexican American. After his family lost its farm during the Great Depression, it moved to California, where Chávez began to work as a migrant field worker to help support his family. While traveling and working throughout California in the fields, orchards and vineyards he experienced unlivable wages and unjust working conditions.

In 1952, he joined the San Jose chapter of the Community Service Organization, a prominent Latino civil rights group, where he coordinated voter registrations and led campaigns against racial and economic discrimination.

In the late ‘50s he met Dolores Huerta, who shared an interest in organizing farm workers.

Huerta was born in Dawson, New Mexico, and left for Stockton, California, with her mother and siblings at 3 years old. She was influenced by her mother’s community activism and was shaped by the discrimination experienced by Hispanic people. She also co-founded the Stockton chapter of the Community Service Organization.

After leaving the Community Service Organization in 1962, Chávez and Huerta helped found the National Farm Workers Association, which later merged with the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee to become the United Farm Workers labor union. United Farm Workers aims to empower migrant workers through nonviolent tactics to have liveable wages and safe working conditions.

A strike against the grape growers in Delano, California, that began in 1965 represented a major victory. It lasted for five years. and workers endured a 340-mile march from Delano to Sacramento to draw attention to the plight of farm workers.

By 1970, 26 grape grower corporations signed contracts with United Farm Workers, resulting in better wages, working conditions, unemployment insurance, paid vacation days, and other benefits.

It led to the California Agricultural Labor Relations Act of 1975, the first law guaranteeing collective bargaining for farm workers.

Recognized in Fort Worth

Chávez and Huerta continued their work in fighting for the rights of farm workers and future Latino leaders.

Chávez died on April 13, 1993, and in the following year was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award of the United States. Huerta continued her activism, establishing the Dolores Huerta Foundation, which helps underrepresented and under-resourced communities with voting. She was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012.

In 2018, Fort Worth ISD voted unanimously to add a new holiday, César Chávez-Dolores Huerta Day, which is recognized annually on the Monday before Chávez’s birth date on March 31.

In 2020, the city voted to honorarily rename portions of 28th Street/Ephriham Avenue after Chávez and Huerta.

Toni Ruiz grew up in Porterville, California, and remembers as a young teenager in the ‘60s picking oranges and grapes with her father, who was a farmer. She remembers the 340-mile march of the Delano grape strike that came through her city. Her parents took her to support the strikers.

Now living in Kennedale, she became a member of the César Chávez Committee of Tarrant County to remember the legacy of Chávez and Huerta and to teach the next generation about them.

“We don’t want them to be forgotten,” Ruiz said. “We want their history to keep going and for people to teach their children about them. These were important activists that did something for everyone and they touched everybody’s life.”