Dolores Clara Fernández Huerta (born April 10, 1930) is an American labor leader and civil rights activist who, with Cesar Chavez and lesser known Gilbert Padilla, is a co-founder of the United Farmworkers Association, which later merged with the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee to become the United Farm Workers (UFW).[2] Huerta helped organize the Delano grape strike in 1965 in California and was the lead negotiator in the workers' contract that was created after the strike.[3]
Huerta is the originator of the phrase "Sí, se puede" ("Yes, you can").[8] As a role model to many in the Latino community, Huerta is the subject of many corridos (Mexican or Mexican-American ballads) and murals.[9]
Dolores Huerta was born on April 10, 1930, in the mining town of Dawson, New Mexico. She is the second child and only daughter of Juan Fernández and Alicia Chávez. Juan Fernández was born in Dawson to a Mexican immigrant family and worked as a coal miner. Later, he joined the migrant labor force, and harvested beets in Colorado, Nebraska, and Wyoming. When Huerta was young, she would hear her father tell stories about union organizing.[10] After her parents divorced when she was three years old, she seldom saw her father. He stayed in New Mexico and served in the New Mexico Legislature in 1938.[11]
Chávez raised Huerta and her two brothers in the central California farmworker community of Stockton, California. Huerta's mother was known for her kindness and compassion towards others and was active in community affairs, numerous civic organizations, and the church. She encouraged the cultural diversity that was a natural part of Huerta's upbringing in Stockton. Alicia Chávez was a businesswoman who owned a restaurant and a 70-room hotel, where she welcomed low-wage workers and farmworker families at affordable prices and sometimes gave them free housing. Huerta was inspired by her mother to advocate for farmworkers later on in her life. In an interview, Huerta stated that "The dominant person in my life is my mother. She was a very intelligent woman and a very gentle woman".[12] This prompted Huerta to think about civil rights.[13] Her mother's generous actions during Dolores's childhood provided the foundation for her own non-violent, strongly spiritual stance. In the same interview she said, "When we talk about spiritual forces, I think that Hispanic women are more familiar with spiritual forces. We know what fasting is, and that it is part of the culture. We know what relationships are, and we know what sacrifice is".[14]
Huerta's community activism began when she was a student at Stockton High School. Huerta was active in numerous school clubs and was a majorette and dedicated member of the Girl Scouts until the age of 18.[15]
Dolores Huerta says a school teacher accused her of stealing another student's work and, as a result, gave her an unfair grade, an act Huerta considers to be rooted in racial bias.[citation needed] Having experienced marginalization during childhood because she was Hispanic, Huerta grew up with the belief that society needed to be changed. She attended college at the University of the Pacific's Stockton College (later to become San Joaquin Delta Community College), where she earned a provisional teaching credential.[16] After teaching elementary school, Huerta left her job and began her lifelong crusade to correct economic injustice:[4]
"I couldn't tolerate seeing kids come to class hungry and needing shoes. I thought I could do more by organizing farm workers than by trying to teach their hungry children.[17]
Career as an activist
Dolores Huerta in 2009
In 1955, Huerta along with Fred Ross co-founded and organized the Stockton Chapter of the Community Service Organization (CSO), which fought for economic improvements for Latino/Mexican/Chicano migrant Farm workers. She fought for their voting rights, access to healthcare for those in the low income community, and against police brutality.[18][page needed] Due to her dedication and willingness to serve, Ross often delegated huge responsibilities to her. He knew she was capable of delivering the organization's message in Spanish and English and promoted the agenda from door to door field organizing.[19] "As she assumed responsibilities and stance that were traditionally held by white males, Huerta encountered criticism based on both gender and ethnic stereotypes".[20][21]
In 1960, Huerta co-founded the Agricultural Workers Association, which set up voter registration drives and pressed local governments for barrio improvements. She engaged the community by providing English classes, health clinics, voter registration drives and credit union.[21][22][23] In 1962, she co-founded, with César Chávez, the National Farm Workers Association, which would later become the United Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee. Huerta was the only woman to ever sit on the board of the UFW, until 2018.[24] In 1966, she negotiated a contract between the UFWOC and Schenley Wine Company, marking the first time that farm workers were able to effectively bargain with an agricultural enterprise.[25]
But Chavez and Huerta quickly realized that they shared a common goal of helping improve the lives and wages of farmworkers, so they co-founded the National Farm Workers Association. In 1962, after the CSO turned down Chávez's request, as their president, to organize farmworkers, Chávez and Huerta resigned from the CSO. She went to work for the National Farm Workers Association, which would later merge with the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee to become the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee. "Dolores's organizing skills were essential to the growth of this budding organization."[23] The Original UFW house is located in the city of Los Angeles.
At the age of only 25, Huerta was a lobbyist in Sacramento for the Stockton Community Service Organization and trained people to do grassroots organizing.[26]
The foundation was later changed to an affiliated agricultural workers' organization. In an interview, Huerta explained that she decided to join the organization after getting an inside look at the poverty farm workers lived in.[27] She cited that they were being paid little to nothing, had no rights, slept on the floors, had wooden boxes as furniture and unclean water, lacked access to bathrooms, and worked from sunrise to sundown without breaks. Many of these workers would migrate to where the crops were in season, meaning their children did not have a proper education and would often work in the fields alongside their parents. She explained that many women were often sexually assaulted by the landowners but were in fear to speak up because their family needed a job. She accused landowners of expecting free labor and justifying it as "doing the farmworkers and the public a favor by giving these people a job."[28]
In 1965, Huerta directed the UFW's national boycott during the Delano grape strike, taking the plight of the farm workers to the consumers. She led the organization of boycotts advocating for consumer rights.[27] The boycott resulted in the entire California table grape industry signing a three-year collective bargaining agreement with the United Farm Workers in 1970.[22]
In addition to organizing, Huerta has been active in lobbying for laws to improve the lives of farm workers. The laws that she supported included the following:[citation needed]
1960 bill to permit Spanish-speaking people to take the California driver's examination in Spanish
On June 5, 1968, Huerta stood beside Robert F. Kennedy on the speaker's platform at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles as he delivered a victory statement to his political supporters shortly after winning the California Democratic presidential primary election.[29] Only moments after the candidate finished his speech, Kennedy and five other people were wounded by gunfire inside the hotel's kitchen pantry. Kennedy died from his gunshot wounds on June 6.
In September 1988, in front of the St. Francis Hotel in Union Square, Huerta was severely beaten by San Francisco Police officer Frank Achim during a peaceful and lawful protest of the policies/platform of then-candidate for president George H. W. Bush. The baton-beating caused significant internal injuries to her torso, resulting in several broken ribs and requiring the removal of her spleen in emergency surgery. The beating was caught on videotape and broadcast widely on local television news. Later, Huerta won a large judgment against the SFPD and the City of San Francisco for the attack, the proceeds of which she used for the benefit of farm workers.[30] As a result of this assault and the suit, the SFPD was pressured to change its crowd control policies and its process of officer discipline.[31]
Following a lengthy recovery, Huerta took a leave of absence from the union to focus on women's rights. She traversed the country for two years on behalf of the Feminist Majority's Feminization of Power: 50/50 by the year 2000 Campaign encouraging Latinas to run for office. The campaign resulted in a significant increase in the number of women representatives elected at the local, state and federal levels.[32][33] She also served as National Chair of the 21st Century Party, founded in 1992 on the principles that women make up 52% of the party's candidates and that officers must reflect the ethnic diversity of the nation.[citation needed]
Dolores Huerta Foundation
Huerta is president of the Dolores Huerta Foundation, which she founded in 2002.[34] It is a 501(c)(3) "community benefit organization that organizes at the grassroots level, engaging and developing natural leaders. DHF creates leadership opportunities for community organizing, leadership development, civic engagement, and policy advocacy in the following priority areas: health & environment, education & youth development, and economic development."[35]
The foundation first got started when Huerta received the $100,000 Puffin/Nation Prize for Creative Citizenship in 2002, which she then used to create the DHF. Her youngest daughter, Camila Chavez, is the executive director at the foundation.[36] The primary purpose of the foundation is to weave in movements such as "women's rights, LGBTQ rights, immigrant rights, labor rights, and civil rights"[36] into an individual thread.
The DHF has several programs.[36] The civic engagement program focuses on the voting rights of the people. They have protested, with petitions and signatures, to revise property tax loopholes in Proposition 13. Another part of their campaigns was to encourage voters to vote at the California primary elections, and to educate voters on federal issues such as the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 and the White House Budget.[36] They also created a Youth VOTE Campaign, where they were able to reach 1,055 contacts and 809 young voters. The organization has "secured millions of dollars for local infrastructures such as new sewer connections, street lights, sidewalks, and gutters in Lamont and Weedpatch from 2007–2015."[36] The DHF was one of the plaintiffs in a suit against Kern High School District, alleging that African-American and Latino students were unfairly targeted for disciplinary actions; as part of the settlement, the district provides Positive Behavioral Intervention and Supports training to staff members.[37]
Awards and honors
Dolores Huerta currently has about 15 honorary doctorates.[citation needed]
On November 17, 2015, Dolores Huerta was bestowed the Order of the Aztec Eagle, the highest decoration a foreign national can receive from the Mexican government. Huerta was lauded for her years of service helping the Mexican community in the United States fighting for equal pay, dignity in the workplace, and fair employment practices in the farms of Northern California like Stockton, Salinas, and Delano.[38]
She was recognized in 2008 by United Neighborhood Centers of America with its highest individual honor, the Jane Addams Distinguished Leadership Award at its National Policy Summit in Washington, D.C.[52] She was awarded the UCLA Medal, UCLA's highest honor, during the UCLA College of Letters and Science commencement ceremony on June 12, 2009.[53]
In September 2010, Huerta was awarded the John Steinbeck "In the Souls of the People" Award at San Jose State University for embodying "Steinbeck’s empathy, commitment to democratic values, and belief in the dignity of people who by circumstance are pushed to the fringes."[54] In October of that year, she was awarded an honorary degree by Mills College, who lauded her as "a lifetime champion of social justice whose courageous leadership garnered unprecedented national support from farmworkers, women, and underserved communities in a landmark quest for human and civil rights".[55] The same month, she was awarded an honorary doctorate [56] by University of the Pacific, which unveiled an official portrait of her for the Architects of Peace Project by artist Michael Collopy.
Huerta was awarded an honorary doctorate of humane letters by Mount Holyoke College, where she delivered the commencement address, on May 21, 2017.[57]
Four elementary schools in California and one in Tulsa, Oklahoma; one school in Fort Worth, Texas; a middle school in Burbank, California, and a high school in Pueblo, Colorado, are named after Huerta.[41]Pitzer College, in Claremont, California has a mural in front of Holden Hall dedicated to her.[59] A middle school in the major agricultural city of Salinas, California, which has a dense population of farm workers, was named in 2014 after her. She was a speaker at the first and tenth César Chávez Convocation.[60] In 2013, Huerta received the annual Award for Greatest Public Service Benefiting the Disadvantaged, given by Jefferson Awards.[61]
Huerta also gave the keynote address at the Berkeley Law Class of 2018 graduation ceremony.[62]
In July 2018, California Governor Jerry Brown signed into law AB 2455, by Assemblymember Eloise Gómez Reyes, designating April 10 each year as Dolores Huerta Day.[63] In March 2019, Washington Governor Jay Inslee signed a measure also designating April 10 each year as Dolores Huerta Day.[64]
The intersection of East 1st and Chicago streets in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Boyle Heights is named Dolores Huerta Square.[65] In Fort Worth, Texas, a portion of State Highway 183 is named in honor of Huerta.[66]
In March 2021, the Governing Board of the Burbank Unified School District in Burbank voted to rename its David Starr Jordan Middle School as the Dolores Huerta Middle School.[70]Yale University awarded Huerta an Honorary Doctor of Laws in May 2021.[71] In August 2021, a brand new middle school in San Jose was dedicated in Huerta's honor.[72]
In October 2022, the Research Center for the Americas at the University of California, Santa Cruz was renamed the Dolores Huerta Research Center for the Americas in honor of her work in social justice, whose legacy has influenced the center's work and values.[73]
Huerta also received an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from University of Southern California, the highest honor conferred by the university, in May 2023.[74]
Representation in other media
Huerta is one of the subjects of the Sylvia Morales film A Crushing Love (2009), the sequel to Chicana (1979).[75][76]
She is the focus of a 2017 documentary called Dolores.[78]
A middle school in Las Cruces, New Mexico is named after her, called La Academia Dolores Huerta. The school specializes in bilingual studies, Latin dance, and folk music.[79]
Huerta appears with César Chávez in the graphic memoir Tata Rambo La Voz de M.A.Y.O, by Henry Barajas, Bernardo Brice and Gonzo[citation needed]
Women's rights
Dolores Huerta speaking at a campaign rally with former President Bill Clinton at Central High School in Phoenix, Arizona.
Huerta championed women's rights in feminist campaigns during her time off from union work. She also fought for ethnic diversity in her campaigns.[80]
Dolores, a new documentary about Huerta, talks a lot about her feminist approach to activism. She defines a feminist person as someone "who supports a woman's reproductive rights, who supports a woman's right to an abortion, who supports LGBT rights, who supports workers and labor unions, somebody who cares about the environment, who cares about civil rights and equality and equity in terms of our economic system."[81] Huerta goes on, in the documentary, to explain how she understands why many people think "feminism is for white women" and that is because middle-class women initially organized it. However, her stance is to show that women of color can be at the front of civil rights, labor, and feminist movements. When looking to the future of activism, Huerta believes that education is the way to go, stating: "We've got to include, from pre-K, the contributions of people of color in our schools today."[81] She says this is the only way to erase the ignorance we have in the world right now.
Dolores Huerta and Gloria Steinem championed intersectionality in activism. In the 60's, when Huerta traveled to New York City for the Boycott of California Table Grapes, she was focused on bringing women to the fight. Said Huerta: "My mind was focused on getting those women at those conventions to support the farmworkers,". At the convention, Gloria Steinem voiced her support for Huerta's cause, which prompted Huerta to lend her support for the feminist movement. Huerta believes herself to be a "born again feminist".[82] By consciously incorporating feminism into her fight for workers' rights, Huerta had more of an impact on how female workers were treated. Additionally, Steinem expanded the feminist movement to include issues surrounding race and feminism to show it was no longer a movement just for white women.
In the 1970s, Huerta's positions on women's rights were often moderated by the UFW's messaging strategy, which involved portraying its workers as what Ana Raquel Minion describes as "idealized figure[s] of the physically disciplined resident/ laborer deserving of rights."[83] As a result, the union encouraged abstinence, discouraged homosexuality, and restricted the distribution of birth control to laborers. Huerta joined in criticizing workers for their perceived promiscuity; while she did not personally support the use of birth control, she kept this opinion to herself out of respect for other women's choices.[83]
In 2014, Dolores Huerta organized people in Colorado to vote against Amendment 67, which would have extended the definition of "person" and "child" in the Colorado Criminal Code and the Colorado Wrongful Death Act to include "unborn human beings", which could have restricted reproductive rights.[82][84]
Huerta spent three decades advocating for safer working conditions with the UFW. A key part of her platform was reducing use of harmful pesticides.[85] As her movement grew more feminist in nature, this became more important as such pesticides cause pregnancy complications such as: decreased fertilitity, spontaneous abortion, stillbirth, and developmental abnormalities.[86][better source needed]
Personal life
Huerta married Ralph Head in college after her graduation in 1948.[87] During their marriage, they had two daughters, Celeste and Lori.
After divorcing Head, she married Ventura Huerta, with whom she bore five children. Their son Emilio Jesus Huerta entered politics and ran for Congress. Her second marriage ended in divorce as well, in part because of the significant amount of time that she spent away from the family while campaigning and organizing.[citation needed]
Later, Huerta had a romantic relationship with Richard Chavez, the brother of César Chávez.[88] Huerta and Chávez never married, but the couple had four children during their relationship. Richard Chávez died on July 27, 2011.[88]
Archival collection
The Dolores Huerta Papers[89] are a part of the United Farm Workers Collections at the Walter P. Reuther Library. There is also significant material related to Huerta in the Cesar Chávez Papers at the Reuther Library.[90]
^https://npg.si.edu/object/npg_EXH.DH.25 "Dolores Huerta also took music and dance lessons, sang in the church choir, and joined the majorette team and the Girl Scouts"
^"Dolores Huerta". U.S. National Park Service. Retrieved November 7, 2023.
^Felder, Deborah G. (2021). Trailblazing Women! Amazing Americans Who Made History. Visible Ink Press. ISBN9781578597574.
^Frank, M. "Dolores found her calling as an organizer while serving in the leadership of Stockton Community Service Organization (CSO)", "Dolores Huerta coined the term: "Sí, se puede — We can do it." " File: Dolores Huerta. Available: Archives of Labor and Urban Affairs, Ruether Library, College of Urban, Labor, and Metropolitan Affairs, Wayne State University, Detroit, MI (1987).
^ abDolores Huerta Foundation (November 16, 2013) located its headquarters in Bakersfield, California, where it still recruits organizers and volunteers who want to support "la causa." "Dolores Huerta." Retrieved September 23, 2015.
^ abBrown, Monica (2010). Side by Side/'Lado a lado': The Story of Dolores Huerta and Cesar Chavez. Harper Collins.
^"Oral History". Farmworker Movement Documentation Project. UC San Diego Library. Archived from the original on April 23, 2018. Retrieved April 22, 2018.
^"The Year of the Woman, 1992". History, Art & Archives | United States House of Representatives. Archived from the original on January 27, 2018. Retrieved January 26, 2018.
^"DHF History". Dolores Huerta Foundation. Archived from the original on January 20, 2012. Retrieved January 23, 2012.
^Currie, Lorenzo (March 2013). Through the eyes if the pack. p. 269.
^Author unknown (2007). Two Recipients Share This Year's Award. Community of Christ International Peace Award, 2007. Retrieved on August 3, 2007, from "Community of Christ". Archived from the original on July 23, 2012. Retrieved August 3, 2007..
^Mendoza, Nora. "Pesticides in the Fields". La Causa. Exhibit curated by Kathleen Schmeling. Walter P. Reuther Library, Wayne State University. Retrieved April 2, 2023.
^"Life Story: Dolores Huerta (1930– )". Women and the American Story, New York Historical Society. New York Historical Society. Retrieved April 13, 2021.
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