Cesar Chavez
March 31, 1927 — Yuma, Arizona
Cesar Chavez was an American labor leader and civil rights activist who co-founded the United Farm Workers union and led one of the most successful consumer boycotts in U.S. history on behalf of California’s farmworkers.
Growing Up as a Migrant Farmworker
Cesario Estrada Chavez was born on March 31, 1927, near Yuma, Arizona, on a small farm that had belonged to his family for two generations. The Great Depression cost the family their land, and they joined the hundreds of thousands of migrants who moved to California to work in the fields — picking cotton, grapes, and other crops for poverty wages under dangerous conditions.
Chavez attended more than 35 different schools as his family followed work across the state, never completing high school. After service in the U.S. Navy during World War II he returned to California and resumed farmwork in the Salinas and San Joaquin valleys. He saw firsthand how farmworkers, the majority of them Mexican and Mexican-American, were excluded from the labor protections that covered most American workers.
Building the United Farm Workers
In the 1950s Chavez became involved in community organizing through the Community Service Organization, learning the mechanics of voter registration drives and grassroots advocacy. In 1962 he left that organization, returned to Delano in the San Joaquin Valley, and co-founded the National Farm Workers Association with Dolores Huerta — which would eventually become the United Farm Workers of America (UFW).
The union's tactics drew heavily on the nonviolent tradition of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. Chavez organized strikes, boycotts, and marches. The 1965 Delano grape strike, joined with Filipino farmworkers' union AWOC, became a five-year campaign that attracted national attention. Chavez's 25-day fast in 1968 — which he ended by breaking bread with Robert Kennedy — brought him to national prominence and built solidarity with a broader civil rights coalition.
The grape boycott, which asked American consumers not to buy California table grapes, remains one of the most successful consumer boycotts in U.S. history. By 1970, growers representing nearly 85 percent of California table grape production had signed union contracts.
Did You Know?
Cesar Chavez was deeply influenced by St. Francis of Assisi and observed strict vegetarianism later in life, connecting environmental stewardship with the labor movement. His commitment to nonviolence was so strong that he opposed strikes that turned violent, even when the violence came from management-hired strike breakers.
Legacy and Cesar Chavez Day
Chavez continued leading the UFW through the 1970s and 1980s, fighting pesticide exposure affecting farmworkers and expanding the union's political advocacy. He died on April 23, 1993, in San Luis, Arizona — just miles from where he was born — while on union business. He was 66. An estimated 40,000 people attended his funeral.
President Clinton posthumously awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1994. March 31 is Cesar Chavez Day, a state holiday in California and several other states, with school closures observed in parts of the Southwest. His rallying cry — ¡Sí, se puede! ("Yes, it can be done!") — was adopted by the broader progressive movement and famously rephrased as "Yes We Can" during the 2008 Obama presidential campaign. He remains one of the most important figures in American labor history.