Born in 1930, Dolores Huerta is considered one of the most influential labor activists of the 20th century.
As a child growing up in Stockton, Calif., an area filled with farms, Huerta faced racism. A teacher accused her of stealing another student’s work because of her ethnicity and she was given an unfair grade, according to the National Women’s History Museum. On the way to a party celebrating the end of World War II, she found her brother severely beaten because of the zoot suit he was wearing, which was a popular fashion for Latinos at the time.
Huerta, now 85, briefly taught elementary school, finding herself distraught at the sight of seeing her students, many of them children of farmworkers, arrive at school hungry and without basic necessities.
“I quit because I couldn’t stand seeing kids come to class hungry and needing shoes. I thought I could do more by organizing farmworkers than by trying to teach their hungry children,” said Huerta, according to the National Women’s History Museum.
In the 1960s, she organized in the fields, and was instrumental in a strike and a boycott of grapes. In 1962, with Cesar Chavez, Huerta co-founded the National Farm Workers Association, which later became the United Farm Workers of America. Huerta has served as a community activist and a political organizer, and was influential in securing the passage of California's Agricultural Labor Relations Act of 1975, and disability insurance for farmworkers in California. Huerta stepped down from the UFW in 1999, but she remains dedicated to efforts to improve the lives of workers, immigrants and women.
The recipient of many awards, Huerta was awarded a Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama in 2012.
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