CESAR E. CHAVEZ LEGACY AND EDUCATIONAL FUND
A true American hero, Cesar was a Latino, a farm worker and labor leader; a religious and spiritual figure; a community servant and social entrepreneur; a crusader for non-violent social change; and an environmentalist and consumer advocate.  A second-generation American, Cesar was born on March 31, 1927, near 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 youth and into his adulthood, Cesar 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 eight-grade education, Cesar left school to work in the fields full-time to support his family. Although his formal education ended then, he possessed an insatiable intellectual curiosity and was self-taught in many fields and well read throughout his life.

Cesar joined the U.S. Navy in 1946 and served in the Western Pacific in the aftermath of World War II. He returned from service to marry Helen Fabela. The Chavez family settled in the East San Jose barrio of Sal Si Puedes and would eventually have eight children and 31 grandchildren.

Cesar's life as a community organizer began in 1952 when he joined the Community Service Organization (CSO), a prominent Latino civil rights group. While with the CSO, Cesar coordinated voter registration drives and conducted campaigns against racial and economic discrimination, primarily in urban areas. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Cesar served as CSO's national director.

Cesar's dream, howerver, was to create an organization to protect and serve farm workers, whose poverty and disenfranchisement he had shared. In 1962, Cesar resigned from the CSO, leaving the security of a regular paycheck to found the National Farm Workers of America.

For more than three decades, Cesar led the first successful farm workers union in American history, achieving dignity, respect, fair wages, medical coverage, pension benefits, and humane living conditions, as well as countless other rights and protections for hundreds of thousands of farm workers.  Against previously insurmountable odds, he led successful strikes and boycotts that resulted in the first industry-wide labor contracts in the history of American agricultural Labor Relations Act to protect farm workers.  Today, it remains the only law in the nation that protects the farm workers' right to unionize.

The significance and impact of Cesar's life transcends any one cause or struggle.  He was a unique and humble leader, in addition to being a great humanitarian and communicator who influenced and inspired millions of Americans to seek social justice and civil rights for the poor and disenfranchised in our society. Cesar forged a diverse and extraordinary national coalition of students, middle-class consumers, trade unionists, religious groups, and minorities.

A strong believer in the principles on non-violence practiced by Mahatma Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Cesar effectively employed peaceful tactics such as fast, boycotts, strikes and pilgrimages. In 1968, he fasted for 25 days to affirm his personal commitment that of the farm labor movement, to non-violence. He fasted again for 25 days in 1972.  In 1988, at the age of 61, he endured a 36-day "Fast for Life" to highlight the harmful impact of pesticides on farm workers and their children.

Cesar passed away in his sleep on April 23, 1993, in San Luis, Arizona. More than 50,000 people attended his funeral service in the small town of Delano, California.

His motto in life - - "si se puede" (it can be done) - - embodies the uncommon and invaluable legacy he left for the world's benefit.  Since his death, dozens of communities across the nation have renamed schools, parks, streets, libraries, other public facilities, awards and scholarships in his honor, as well as enacting holidays on his birthday, March 31.  In 1994, he was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor in America.
Artwork-Noe G. Garza/Teacher
Columbia Heights Elem./ H.I.S.D.