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César Estrada Chávez was a soft-spoken, humble man. His son Paul said that when people met his father, they could hardly believe that this small man could be a national civil rights hero, the leader of the most successful farm-labor movement in American history. "They got there expecting to see this big man," said Paul, who now heads the César E. Chávez Foundation. "But the leadership and inspiration he drew out of people really came out of being a man of the earth, that he really wasn't bigger than life. When they saw [Chávez], they saw their neighbors, and they saw their parents, and he moved them."
In 2007, a statue of César Chávez will take its place among the statues of American heroes on UT's West Mall.
A time of vulnerability
César Estrada Chávez was born on March 31, 1927 near Yuma, Ariz., the second of Juana and Librado Chávez's six children. Librado operated a small family grocery store while the family farmed part time.
During the Great Depression, the Chávez family was forced to sell their home and store. They relocated and began life again as migrant workers in California's farm country.
Like other seasonal farm labor families, the Chávezes earned a meager living traveling and picking crops according to the harvest season. Although a majority of such families were Mexican-American, some were of Filipino, Puerto Rican, and other backgrounds. Payment for labor was often distributed according to ethnicity, so blacks, Latinos and white workers made different wages. Wages were meager and unregulated, and at the end of a back-breaking season, the family often found employers missing when it came time to be paid.
In an interview given in the late 1960s, Chávez describes his family's early life in the California fields as a time of vulnerability.
"We trusted everybody that came around," he said. "You're traveling in California with all your belongings in your car: it's obvious ... Anywhere we stopped, there was a labor contractor offering all kinds of jobs and good wages, and we were always deceived by them, and we always went."
Between migrating and the fact that the Chávez family spoke mostly Spanish, it was difficult for the children to attend school. When César was in the seventh grade, Librado became no longer physically able to keep working. That year, César's parents asked him to quit school in order to support the family.
Paul said that this was a galvanizing moment in his father's life. "He remembered the pain in his mother's eyes" when she asked him to quit school, Paul said. "And it burned in him. It was a burning desire to make sure that another mother didn't have to go through what his mother had to go through."
Get Out if You Can
During this time, Chávez and his family settled in an area of San Jose, Calif., known locally as "Sal Si Puedes" or "Get Out If You Can." Young César continued to travel and work as a farm laborer. He took part in small strikes, but it would be several years before he took on a leadership role.
According to Paul, Chávez wore a zoot suit like many young Mexican-Americans of his time. The zoot suiters were associated with a Los Angeles riot in the 1940s, the Zoot Suit Riots, and often clashed with Navy sailors in California port towns.
Chávez served in the Navy himself for two years during World War II, then returned to San Jose where, in 1948, he married Helen Fabela, a woman from a farm labor family in Delano. The couple would eventually have eight children together.
At this point, Chávez was named director of the Community Service Organization, a political group focused on the Mexican-American community. There, he met Dolores Huerta, who would become one of his most intimate collaborators.
Chávez left the CSO in 1962, when it would not devote the focus he felt was needed towards farm labor.
Chávez and his family once again relocated to Delano, where he founded the organization eventually known as the United Farm Workers of America, that through his leadership would bring the plight of seasonal farm workers to national recognition.
Huelga
In the summer of 1965, Filipino-American grape pickers in Delano, who had been evicted from their labor camps after picketing growers, appealed to Chávez for support. Chávez and what would later be the UFW joined the strike, which encompassed nearly 400 miles of grape farms.
The Delano strike gave Chávez the opportunity to learn from the picket line, so he would later be able to better organize strikes or "huelgas," as they were referred to by Spanish-speaking UFW strikers.
Picketers faced violence from unsympathetic police and thugs hired by growers, as well as workers called scabs or strikebreakers, who were willing to work despite the strike. These imported workers were often Mexican citizens.
Chávez later said of the strike experience: "The picket line is where a man makes his commitment, and it is irrevocable; the longer he's on the picket line, the stronger the commitment ... The picket line is a beautiful thing, because it does something to a human being."
Paul remembers being on the picket line with his father. "He made the movement big enough so that his kids could be part of it," he said. "I remember not going to Little League games, but going to marches with him."
Throughout his involvement in various strikes and protests, Chávez followed a principle of nonviolence. This gained him the support of other leaders in the American civil rights movement, including church groups and African-American civil rights groups that were employing the same nonviolent strategy.
The UFW joined with the mostly Filipino-American Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee and aligned itself with the AFL-CIO. It was with this breadth of structure that Chávez was able to organize a national boycott of Delano-area grape growers that would last for almost five years. The boycott pressured most Delano growers to reform their labor practices and sign UFW into their contracts.
In 1968, the year the Delano grape strike began, Chávez fasted for 25 days in allegiance to the cause. He received a telegram from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. soon afterwards, commending his nonviolent approach to protest.
In late 1970, Chávez was arrested and jailed briefly for refusing to obey a court order to end a boycott of Bud Antle lettuce.
In May of 1975, under pressure from Chávez and Huerta, the California Agricultural Labor Relations Act was passed. The act allowed seasonal workers more rights regarding labor elections and the right to organize boycotts.
Chávez announced the end of the Delano Grape Boycott in 1978. However, he would revive it repeatedly in the years to come.
Chávez continued to work for farm labor until his unexpected death on April 23, 1993. More than 30,000 people attended his funeral in Delano.
Si Se Puede
We Are Texas Too, a Latino student group, in association with the Latino Leadership Council, has led the effort to have Chávez's statue placed on the West Mall. According to Stephen Torres, student chairman of the César E. Chávez statue committee, it is important to the students that Chávez be honored in the same form and medium that other major American figures such as George Washington and Martin Luther King Jr. have been honored on campus.
"I think that he was a national figure of the civil rights era that many people respected not only because he had the effect that he did in mobilizing thousands of farm workers and underprivileged citizens," Torres said, "but because he did it promoting nonviolence."
Paul Chávez says that his father's biggest accomplishment was "breaking this notion that poor people are powerless. He showed that poor people, if guided by the right set of principles of hard work and nonviolence ... could make lasting changes."
Chávez's legacy is embodied in his favorite saying, "Si Se Puede." Yes, it can be done.
Chávez's life
1927: César Chávez born
1930s-40s: Chávez family migrates as farm workers
1948: Chávez marries Helen Fabela
1962: Chávez leaves the Community Service Organization, founds United Farm Workers of America
1963: Martin Luther King Jr. arrested in Birmingham
1965: Delano grape workers' strike
1968: Delano grape boycott begins
1975: California Labor Relations Act affords more rights to seasonal workers
1978: Delano grape boycott ends
1993: Chávez dies
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