Axel Roblero—Morales 5th hr. Cesar Chavez Axel Roblero—Morales 5th hr.

Birth of Cesar Chavez Cesar Chavez was born on March 31, 1927. He was born near Yuma Arizona.

Early Life Cesar Chavez lived in a small adobe house. He grew up in a Mexican-American family of six children. He was the son of of Juana Estrada and Librado Chávez. His family owned a grocery store and a ranch, but their land was lost during the Great Depression. His family then moved to California to become migrant farm workers. The Chavez family faced many hardships in California. The family would pick peas and lettuce in the winter, cherries and beans in the spring, corn and grapes in the summer, and cotton in the fall. In 1942, Chavez quit school in the seventh grade It would be his final year of formal schooling, because he did not want his mother to have to work in the fields.

Introduction to Activism Chavez worked in the fields until 1952, when he became an organizer for the Community Service Organization (CSO), a Latino civil rights group. Father Donald McDonnell who served in Santa Clara County introduced Fred Ross, a community organizer, to Cesar Chavez. Chavez urged Mexican Americans to register and vote, and he traveled throughout California and made speeches in support of workers' rights. He later became CSO's national director in 1958.

Fighting for workers rights In 1962, Chavez left the CSO and co- founded the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA) with Dolores Huerta. When Filipino American farm workers initiated the Delano grape strike on September 8, 1965, to protest for higher wages, Chavez eagerly supported them. Six months later, Chavez and the NFWA led a strike of California grape pickers on the historic farmworkers march from Delano to the California state capitol in Sacramento for similar goals. The UFW encouraged all Americans to boycott table grapes as a show of support. The strike lasted five years and attracted national attention.

Continued Chavez supported the passage of California’s Agricultural Labor Relations Act (the first of its kind in the nation), which promised to end the cycle of misery and exploitation and ensure justice for the workers. These promises, however, proved to be short-lived as grower opposition and a series of hostile governors undercut the effectiveness of the law. After 1976 Chavez led the union through a major reorganization, intended to improve efficiency and outreach to the public. In 1984 in response to the grape industry’s refusal to control the use of pesticides on its crops, Chavez inaugurated an international boycott of table grapes.

Final Chavez died on April 23, 1993, of unspecified natural causes in San Luis, Arizona, in the home of former farm worker and longtime friend Dofla Maria Hau. Chavez was in Arizona helping UFW attorneys defend the union against a lawsuit. Shortly after his death, his widow, Helen Chavez, donated his black nylon union jacket to the National Museum of American History, a branch of the Smithsonian. For thirty years Chavez tenaciously devoted himself to the problems of some of the poorest workers in America. The movement he inspired succeeded in raising salaries and improving working conditions for farm workers

Reflection I chose to do Cesar Chavez because he saw the need for change and went for it. His efforts to gain better working conditions for the thousands of workers who labored on farms for low wages and under severe conditions are what made me choose him. All of his protests were non violent and got the idea to do so from Martin Luther King Jr. Chavez also went on hunger strikes, protesting by refusing to eat for long periods of time. In 1968 he fasted for 25 days in support of the UFW commitment to non-violence. He was inspired to fast by Gandhi. His tactics led to negotiatiating contracts for higher wages and better treatment of agricultural workers with California grape producers.

Sources http://www.americaslibrary.gov/aa/chavez /aa_chavez_peace_1.html http://www.history.com/topics/cesar- chavez http://chavez.cde.ca.gov/ModelCurriculum /Teachers/Lessons/Resources/Biographie s/K-2_Bio.aspx https://www.biography.com/people/cesar- chavez-9245781