“Dolores Huerta 2023” by Rafa213 is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Today marks the start of Hispanic Heritage Month which runs from September 15th through October 15th. A month designed to recognize and celebrate all of the contributions and influence that Hispanic Americans have had on the history, culture, and achievements of the United States.
To launch Hispanic Heritage Month, we’ve chosen to highlight civil rights icon and lifelong activist, Ms. Dolores Huerta. Born on April 10, 1930 in a small mining town in New Mexico, Huerta had strong activist influences in her parents. Her father, a farm worker and miner, was also a strong union activist who won a seat in the New Mexico legislature in 1938. Her mother, furthermore, owned a hotel that she worked for years to acquire and often rented rooms to low-wage workers for affordable rates or even at no-cost.
When Huerta was three years old, her parents divorced and she moved with her mother and two brothers to Stockton, California where her mother became active in numerous community affairs and encouraged cultural diversity that was sewed into the fabric of the city. Stockton, an agricultural town, was made up of Mexican, Filipino, African-American, Japanese, and Chinese working families.
Huerta inherited her mom’s penchant for being involved in the community. By the time she was in high school, Huerta was a member of several school clubs, was a majorette, and a member of the girl scouts which she maintained until the age of 18. After graduation, she pursued her associate teaching degree at the University of Pacific’s Delta College in Stockton, a degree she was inspired to get after her and her family faced discrimination growing up. In school, one of her teachers accused her of cheating because her papers were too well-written to be her own work, and in 1945, her brother was brutally beaten by a group of white men for wearing a Zoot-Suit, a popular Latino fashion.
As a teacher, Huerta noticed how many of her students would come to school with empty stomachs or bare feet, and found it incredibly difficult to bear. It was the start of her lifelong journey of working to correct economic injustices. That drive led to her co-founding the Stockton chapter of the Community Service Organization (CSO) in 1955. The organization led voter registration drives and fought for economic improvements for Hispanic individuals. While working for the CSO, Huerta met César Chávez, the Executive Director of the organization. The two quickly realized they shared similar beliefs and a common vision of organizing farm workers which was not shared by the CSO’s mission.
In the spring of 1962, Huerta and Chávez founded the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA). The organization grew quickly thanks to Huerta’s organizational skills, and by the following year the organization was able to secure Aid for Dependent Families (AFDC) and disability insurance for farm workers in California. It was a massive feat at the time, and owed its success largely to Huerta’s lobbying and negotiating talents. The organizations continued growth led to it becoming the United Farm Workers’ Union (UFW) just three years after the NFWA was founded. The UFW is still active today and is the United States’ largest farm workers’ union.
Huerta’s lobbying and activism continued in California where she was instrumental in the enactment of a first of its kind law in the US, the Agricultural Labor Relations Act of 1975. The law granted farm workers in California the right to collectively organize and bargain for better wages and working conditions which ultimately gave them significant economic power. She continued her activism by helping organize picket lines and boycotts. She is also credited with helping several key political figures elected including President Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Hilda Solis, Jerry Brown, and Ron Dellums. She was even acknowledged by Robert F. Kennedy for helping him secure the 1968 California Democratic Presidential Primary.
However, her success didn’t come without its costs. Huerta and the activists in the farmworkers’ movement were often faced with violence. In one altercation, a San Francisco police officer broker four of her ribs and shattered her spleen with his baton during a protest she was part of. The attack led to public outrage and ultimately made the SFPD change their policies regarding crowd control and police discipline. Once she recovered, she decided to step away from her work with the UFW through a leave of absence and focused on feminist activism, a passion she had found herself in after organizing a strike for the grape workers where she met Gloria Steinem.
Huerta faced sexism from both her opponents and those she was fighting for in the farm workers’ movement. At times her efforts were belittled or downplayed. Some would refer to her as Chávez’s “sidekick,” and indeed Chávez has historically received much of the credit for the movement and the work Huerta has done. Even the famous phrase for the NFWA, “Sí se puede” (in English, “Yes, we can”) is often falsely attributed to Chávez. In truth, Huerta created the mantra that would identify not only a movement, but inspire generations to come. It was so popular, in fact, that President Obama used it as inspiration for his political slogan. A fact he acknowledged when he presented Huerta with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in in 2012.
When she took leave from the UFW, the experiences of sexism and her time with Gloria Steinem inspired her to take up more women’s rights focused activities. She joined the Feminist Majority Foundation’s campaign to encourage Latina’s to run for office with the goal of increasing the number of women in office to at least 50/50. Her efforts with the Foundation paid off and drastically increased the number of women in office at local, state, and federal levels.
Today, Huerta is 93 years old, and she is still as dedicated as ever to her activism. She created and still runs the Dolores Huerta Foundation for Community Organizing which fights for civil rights and attempts to weave various movements into an individual threat. In addition, there have been five elementary schools and a high school named in her honor.
Huerta’s accomplishments are insurmountable, and she has been rightfully acknowledged and honored for them. She was inducted into the California Hall of Fame in March of 2013, and in 1998 President Clinton presented her with the Eleanor Roosevelt Human Rights Award. She has won numerous other awards as well for her work, as well as been granted nine Honorary Doctorates from Universities throughout the US including California State University, University of Sothern California, and even Yale University. Her life was also immortalized in a 2017 documentary titled Dolores produced by PBS. Much like it’s subject, the film has won numerous awards including a Peabody Award.
Her legacy has touched not just Hispanic Americans and women, but so many other groups thanks to her fearlessness and fighting spirit.
References:
Dolores Huerta Foundation. (n.d.). Dolores Huerta. Dolores Huerta Foundation. Retrieved from https://www.doloreshuerta.org/doloreshuerta/
Godoy, M. (2017, September 17). Dolores Huerta: The Civil Rights icon who showed farmworkers ‘Sí Se Puede’. NPR. Retrieved from https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2017/09/17/551490281/dolores-huerta-the-civil-rights-icon-who-showed-farmworkers-si-se-puede
Michals, D. (ed.) (2015). Dolores Huerta. National Women’s History Museum. Retrieved from https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/dolores-huerta
Russian, A. (2020, September 11). 15 influential Hispanic Americans who made history. Biography. Retrieved from https://www.biography.com/notable-hispanic-americans
United Farm Workers. (n.d.). Our Vision. United Farm Workers. Retrieved from https://ufw.org/about-us/our-vision/