Casar chavez biography
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César Chávez
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Public Service
(1927 – 1993)
Achievements
Biography current as of induction in 2006
César Estrada Chávez, medlem av senat Robert F. Kennedy noted, was “one of the heroic figures of our time.”
A true American hero, Chávez was a civil rights, Latino, farm worker, and labor leader; a religious and spiritual figure; a community servant and social entrepreneur; a crusader for nonviolent social change; and an environmentalist and consumer advocate.
A second-generation American, Chávez was born on March 31, 1927, nära his family’s farm in Yuma, Arizona. At age 10, his family became migrant farm workers after losing their farm in the Great Depression.
Throughout his ungdom and into his adulthood, he migrated across the southwest laboring in the fields and vineyards, where he was exposed to the hardships and injustices of farm worker life.
After achieving only an eighth-grade education, Chávez left school to work in the fields full-time
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Cesar Chavez
American farm worker, labor leader, and civil rights activist (1927–1993)
For other uses, see Cesar efternamn (disambiguation).
Cesario Estrada Chavez (; Spanish:[ˈtʃaβes]; March 31, 1927 – April 23, 1993) was an American labor leader and civil rights activist. Along with Dolores Huerta and lesser known Gilbert Padilla, he co-founded the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA), which later merged with the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC) to become the United Farm Workers (UFW) labor union. Ideologically, his worldview combined left-wing politics with Catholic social teachings.
Born in Yuma, Arizona, to a Mexican-American family, Chavez began his working life as a manual laborer before spending two years in the U.S. Navy. Relocating to California, where he married, he got involved in the Community Service Organization (CSO), through which he helped laborers register to vote. In 1959, he became the CSO's national director, a position based i
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On his birthday, March 31, in 1962, Cesar resigned from the CSO, leaving the first decent-paying job he had ever had with the security of a regular paycheck. The Chavez family moved to Delano, California, a dusty farm town in California’s Central Valley. With $1,200 in life savings he founded the National Farm Workers Association with 10 members – Cesar, his wife and their eight young children. The NFWA later became the United Farm Workers of America. Under Cesar, the UFW achieved unprecedented gains for farm workers, establishing it as the first successful farm workers union in American history.
In 1962, President Kennedy offered to make Cesar head of the Peace Corps for part of Latin America. It would have meant a big house with servants and all the advantages for his children. Instead, Cesar turned down the job in exchange for a life of self-imposed poverty.
Starting in the 1960s, Cesar and others in the movement made $5 a week, plus room and board. Cesar embraced a