Cesar Chavez
Storyboard Text
- I was born on March 31, 1927 in Yuma, Arizona. I grew up in a family of Mexican American descent. The Great Depression caused my parents to lose their farm and left them no choice but to move to California to become migrant workers.
- I dropped out of school after eighth grade and decided to work in the fields full time. In 1946 I joined the U.S. Navy and after my service I returned to my farmwork and married Helen Fabela (whom I would eventually have 8 kids with).
- In 1952 I was working in a lumberyard when I became a grassroots organizer for the Community Service Organization (CSO), a Latino civil rights group.
- Over the next decade, I worked to register new voters, fight racial and economic discrimination, and I rose to become the CSO's national director. I later resigned in 1962 because other members did not support my efforts to form a labor union. That same year I used my life savings to found the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA).
- In September 1965, we launched a strike against California's grape growers alongside the Agricultural Workers Organizing committee, a Filipino-American labor group. The strike lasted five years and expanded into a nationwide boycott of California grapes. Our boycott drew widespread support. The grape strike later ended in 1970 with the farm workers reaching a collective bargaining agreement that gave the workers more pay and gave them the right to unionize. Throughout the 1970s I led more union efforts to win more labor contracts.
- On April 23, 1993 I died in my sleep at the age of 66. The following year, President Bill Clinton awarded me a posthumous Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian award. Barack Obama also borrowed my slogan,Si se puede in his successful run to become President.
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