Cesar Chavez

Cesar Chavez was born on March 31, 1927, near his family's farm in Yuma, Arizona. At age 10, his family became migrant farm workers after losing their farm in the Great Depression. Throughout his youth and into his adulthood, Cesar migrated across the southwest laboring in the fields, where he was exposed to the hardships and injustices of farm worker life. After achieving only an eighth-grade education, Cesar left school to work in the fields full-time to support his family. He attended more than 30 elementary and middle schools.

Cesar joined the US Navy in 1946, and served in the Western Pacific in the aftermath of World War II. He returned from service to marry Helen Fabela, whom he had met working in the vineyards of central California and would have eight children.

Cesar's life as a community organizer began in 1952 when he joined the Community Service Organization (CSO). In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Cesar served as CSO's national director. His dream was to create an organization to protect and serve farm workers so in 1962, he resigned from the CSO, leaving to found the National Farm Workers Association, which later became the United Farm Workers of America

For more than three decades he led the first successful farm workers union in American history, achieving dignity, respect, fair wages, medical coverage, pension benefits, and humane living conditions, for hundreds of thousands of farm workers. He led successful strikes and boycotts that resulted in the first industry-wide labor contracts in the history of American agriculture. His union's efforts brought about the passage of the 1975 California Agricultural Labor Relations Act to protect farm workers. It remains the only law in the nation that protects the farm workers' right to unionize.

He effectively employed peaceful tactics such as fasts, boycotts, strikes, and pilgrimages. In 1968 he fasted for 25 days to affirm his personal commitment and that of the farm labor movement to non-violence. He fasted again for 25 days in 1972, and in 1988, he endured a 36-day "Fast for Life" to highlight the harmful impact of pesticides on farm workers and their children. Cesar passed away in his sleep on April 23, 1993, in San Luis, Arizona. More than 50,000 people attended his funeral services in Delano, California.

On August 8, 1994 , at a White House ceremony, Helen Chavez accepted the Medal of Freedom from President