Top 10 Facts About Dolores Huerta

Dolores Huerta (33552046043) (1)-by Montclair Film-Wikimedia Commons

Top 10 Facts About Dolores Huerta

Civil liberties are a necessary component of democracy. They ensure equal social chances and legal protection regardless of ethnicity, religion, or other traits. Dolores Huerta stands among the most celebrated activists of the 20th century for her prominent works to better the lives of children, women, and farm workers. She believes that all people are entitled to dignity and respect. She serves as an inspiration to upcoming activists due to her firm pursuit of justice and equality. Huerta co-founded the National Farmworkers Association with Cesar Chavez, which eventually combined with the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee to form the United Farm Workers (UFW) to empower farmworkers’ by improving their wages and working conditions. April 10 is Dolores Huerta Day in California. Here are some facts about Dolores Huerta.

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1. She is of mixed ethnicity

Dolores Huerta 2019 cropped-by Jay Godwin-Wikimedia Commons

Huerta was born on April 10, 1930, in Dawson, New Mexico to  Juan Fernández a U.S. citizen of mixed Spanish and Mexican descent, and Alicia Chávez. Juan Fernández worked as a coal miner and afterward, he became a migrant worker, harvesting beets in Colorado, Nebraska, and Wyoming.

2. Her activism was inspired by her mother

Huerta’s mother Alicia Chávez was well-known for her compassion and care for others, and she was involved in neighborhood affairs, several civic organizations, and the church. She promoted the ethnic diversity that had always been a part of Huerta’s upbringing in Stockton. Alicia Chávez worked as a businesswoman who owned a restaurant and a 70-room hotel where she welcomed low-wage workers and farmworker families at reasonable rates and occasionally provided free housing. In one of her interviews, Huerta stated that “The dominant person in my life is my mother. She was a very intelligent woman and a very gentle woman”. This encouraged Huerta to consider civil rights. Her mother’s charitable deeds as a youngster laid the groundwork for her own nonviolent, spiritual posture.

3. She is a co-founder of the United Farm Workers (UFW)

UFW Flag-by Aztec Caliphs, Thespoondragon-Wikimedia Commons

Huerta grew concerned about farmworker conditions in the late 1950s and met Cesar Chavez, a CSO official who shared her passion. Their efforts to draw the CSO’s attention to the injustices that plague rural laborers were futile, and both eventually departed that group. In 1962, they co-founded the National Farm Workers Association the forefather of the United Farm Workers (UFW), a powerful organization whose grape boycott in the late 1960s compelled grape producers to improve working conditions for migrant farmworkers. As the coordinator of nationwide lettuce, grape, and Gallo wine boycotts in the 1970s, Huerta contributed to the national context that resulted in the 1975 enactment of the Agricultural Labor Relations Act, the first statute recognizing California farmworkers’ rights to collective bargaining.

4. Huerta’s activism began while she was still a student 

Huerta’s activism began while she was a student at Stockton High School. She claims a teacher accused her of stealing another student’s work and then awarding her an unfair score, an act she believes is motivated by racial intolerance. Huerta grew up believing that society needed to change after experiencing marginalization as a child because she was Hispanic. She got a provisional teaching credential from the University of the Pacific’s Stockton College (later renamed San Joaquin Delta Community College) which later quit and then embarked on her lifelong battle to end economic injustice.

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5. She was a tenacious fighter for farmworker’s rights

Dolores Huerta (51017016008)-by Susan Ruggles –Wikimedia Commons

In one of her interviews, Huerta revealed that she decided to join the UFW organization after seeing firsthand the poverty that farm laborers faced.  They were paid little to nothing, had no rights, slept on the floors, had wooden boxes as furniture and contaminated water, had no access to bathrooms, and worked from sunrise to dark without breaks. Many of these workers would travel to where the crops were in season, which meant that their children received no formal schooling and often worked in the fields with their parents. She added that many women were sexually abused by landowners but were afraid to speak up because their families needed to work.

6. Huerta believes in nonviolent civil disobedience

During the Delano grape strike in 1965, Huerta oversaw the UFW’s national boycott, bringing the plight of farm workers to the attention of customers. She was the leader of a boycott organization that advocated for consumer rights. In 1970, the entire California table grape industry signed a three-year collective bargaining deal with the United Farm Workers as a result of the boycott. She has been detained twenty-two times as an advocate for farmworker rights for participating in nonviolent civil disobedience and strikes. Huerta was severely beaten by San Francisco Police officer Frank Achim in September 1988 in front of the St. Francis Hotel in Union Square during a nonviolent and legitimate demonstration against then-candidate for president George H. W. Bush’s policies/platform. Her torso suffered major internal damage as a result of the baton-beating, including many fractured ribs and the removal of her spleen in emergency surgery.

7. Huerta is the founder of the Dolores Huerta Foundation

Dolores Huerta (25674821500)-by Gage Skidmore-Wikimedia Commons

Huerta was awarded a $100,000 Nation/Puffin Prize for Creative Citizenship in 2002, which she used to establish the Dolores Huerta Foundation (DHF), which trains people to become community activists and organizers. The foundation cultivates leaders by providing hands-on civic-engagement training and opportunities, with a focus on organization building through door-to-door canvassing, tabling, and phone banking, with an emphasis on voter registration, participation in the electoral process, and raising awareness of legislative bills affecting local communities. The Foundation prioritizes serving new immigrants, marginalized individuals, and families in the San Joaquin Valley.

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8. Huerta has received numerous awards for her activism

Among the awards bestowed to Huerta was the Order of the Aztec Eagle, the highest distinction for a foreign national, the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama on May 29, 2012, and the Eleanor Roosevelt Award for Human Rights from President Bill Clinton in 1998. In 2002, she received the Puffin/Nation Prize for Creative Citizenship. She shared the 2007 Community of Christ World Peace Prize with Virgilio Elizondo. In 2008, she also got the “Maggie” Award, the highest distinction bestowed by the Planned Parenthood Federation. She received the Jane Addams Outstanding Leadership Award from United Neighborhood Centers of America in 2008 at its National Policy Symposium in Washington, D.C. On June 12, 2009, she received the UCLA Medal, UCLA’s highest distinction, at the UCLA College of Letters and Science commencement ceremony.  In 2020, Huerta won the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights Ripple of Hope Award. 

9. She is a mother of eleven children

Dolores Huerta (27357470045)-by Tom Hilton-Wikimedia Commons

Huerta married Ralph Head in 1948, shortly after graduating from college. They had two children, Celeste and Lori, throughout their marriage. After divorcing Head, she married Ventura Huerta, with whom she bore five children. Her second marriage ended in divorce as well, in part because of the significant amount of time that she spent away from the family while campaigning and organizing. Huerta later had a love relationship with Richard Chavez, César Chávez’s brother. Although Huerta and Chavez never married, they had four children while they were together. Richard Chávez passed away on July 27, 2011.

10. She has been featured in a number of films

Huerta appears in Sylvia Morales’ film A Crushing Love (2009), the sequel to Chicana (1979), and in Diego Luna’s César Chávez(2014), she is portrayed by actress/activist Rosario Dawson Aso, she is the subject of the 2017 documentary Dolores.

Huerta has been a consistent and outspoken supporter of the rights of women, immigrants, and low-income people. Today, her 93-year legacy still inspires and guides people striving for a more just and equal society.