Latino Civil Rights: Dolores Huerta
Dolores Huerta was born in 1930 in Dawson, New Mexico but was raised by her single mother in the San Joaquin Valley community of Stockton, California. She became involved with labor organizing at an early age, co-founding a local chapter of the Community Service Organization in 1955 and late go on to co-found what would become the United Farm Workers union withCésar Chávez.
Huerta spearheaded the UFW’s 1965 grape boycott, an attempt to bring the issues surrounding migrant farm laborers to consumers. As a result of boycott, the table grape industry of California signed a collective bargaining agreement with the union, the first time farm workers had been able to achieve such a feat.
Huerta has been awarded numerous honors for her lifetime of fighting for workers’ rights, including an honorary degree from Princeton University in 2006 and being inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in 1993. At 81, she is president of the eponymous Dolores Huerta Foundation.
References:
http://dhuerta.hostcentric.
http://www.biography.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
