Cesar Estrada Chavez is widely considered to be the most important Latino leader in the history of the United States. Throughout his life he was many things, including an American farm worker, labor leader and civil rights activist who famously founded the National Farm Workers Association, later becoming the United Farm Workers union. A Mexican American, Cesar Chavez was the second out of six children, born in Yuma, Arizona on March 31, 1927 to parents Librado Chavez and Juana Chavez. He was named Cesario after his grandfather.

His family owned a small farm and ran a country store, both of which they ended up losing in the Great Depression, eventually forcing them to move to California to become migrant farm workers. Cesar was only 10 years old at the time.

The next few years of Chavez’s life were full of hardships for him and his family. They followed the harvests, moving from farm to farm, never staying in one place for long. Chávez switched schools so many times that he eventually gave up in the 8th grade to become a full time migrant farm worker to spare his mother from laboring in the fields. At seventeen, Chavez enlisted in the Navy and served for two years which he later regretted, describing as "the two worst years of my life". Upon returning he married his high school sweetheart (she was in high school at the time).

Chavez and his wife later moved to San Jose, where they had their first of eight children. Chavez continued to work in the fields until 1952, when he took on his first role of activist as an organizer for the Latino civil rights group Community Service Organization. He was hired and mentored by fellow organizer Fred Ross and the two would go on to become life-long friends. By this time, a San Jose priest named Father Donald McDonnell had introduced Chavez to the writings of St. Francis and Mahatma Gandhi, whose ideas Chavez would later use to put into action the principle that non-violence could be an active force for positive change.

CSO started out by helping its members with immigration and tax problems as well as teaching how to organize in order to deal with problems such as police violence and discrimination. Chavez quickly moved up the organizing ranks, eventually becoming the national director of CSO in 1958. Having come from his roots as a migrant worker, he wanted to organize farmworkers, but when CSO turned down his request to do so in 1962 he resigned and founded the National Farmworkers Association. The NFWA used the very same model of community service that Cesar had learned in CSO.

In 1965, The Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC), a mostly Filipino union, struck after the grape growers in Delano, California cut their pay rates during the harvest. The National Farmworkers Association, led by Chavez, quickly supported the Filipino strikers, at one point leading a group of California grape pickers on a march from Delano to the California state capitol in Sacramento to express their solidarity with the cause. The strike lasted five years and attracted national attention. In 1966, the U.S. Senate Committee on Labor and Public Welfare’s Subcommittee on Migratory Labor even held hearings in California on the strike.

Under Chavez’s guidance, the focus of the strike moved from picket lines to the cities where the grapes were being sold. Hundreds of students, religious workers and labor activists talked to consumers in front of markets to ask them to help the farmworkers by not buying grapes. At the height of the movement, over 13 million Americans supported the Delano grape boycott. As the pressure mounted, the Delano growers signed historic contracts with the United Farmworkers Organizing Committee in 1969.

An essay published in the Oxford Encyclopedia of Latinos and Latinas in the United States reveals the extent to which Chavez’s personality and charisma influenced the national movement that he had inspired:

"Chavez had inspired an organization that did not look like a labor union. His vision didn’t include just the traditional bread and butter issues of unionism; it was about reclaiming dignity for people who were marginalized by society. What had started as the Delano grape strike came to be known as La Causa, the Cause. Whether they were farmworkers fighting for a better life, or middle class students trying to change the world, those who were drawn to the farmworkers movement were inspired by Chavez’ example to put aside their normal lives and make exceptional sacrifices."

Chavez placed harsher demands on himself than on anyone else in the movement. In 1968 he fasted (the first of several fasts over his lifetime), to recommit the movement to non-violence. In many ways the fast epitomized Chavez’s approach to social change. On one level it represented his spiritual values, his willingness to sacrifice and do penance. At the same time, he and his lieutenants were extremely aware of the political ramifications of his actions, using the fast as a way of both publicizing and organizing for their movement.

Fasting was just one expression of his deep spirituality. Like most farmworkers, Chavez was a devout Catholic. His vision of religion was a progressive one that prefigured the "preferential option for the poor" of liberation theology. In the UFW, the mass was a call to action as well as a rededication of the spirit."

Chavez was a nationally recognized leader before the end of the grape boycott. In 1968, presidential candidate Robert Kennedy came to Delano to break bread with Cesar at the end of his fast. Chavez responded by pledging his organization to campaign for Kennedy in the California primary, where their voter registration and get out the vote efforts ultimately provided Kennedy his margin of victory.

In the next few years the UFW became a significant political force and Chavez’s efforts to combine economic issues with political participation began a wave of Latino activism and electoral activity that led to the election of thousands of Latino officials and resulted in a major shift in the American political landscape.

In his later years, Chavez branched out his goals and began focusing on the dangers of pesticides, a major source of illness among farmworkers and began using direct mail instead of using volunteers. He also built low-cost housing for farmworkers.

Cesar Chavez died near his birthplace in Yuma, Arizona on April 23, 1993 when he was just 66 years old. His funeral in Delano attracted thousands of people from all walks of life. His legacy as a symbol for Latinos, community activists, the labor movement, and young people everywhere is unparalleled. His greatest accomplishments were building a national union for farmworkers and showing the way for a generation of activists who would apply such skills in other communities and struggles. Below are two quotes which illustrate Cesar Chavez’s philosophy of organizing and non-violence:

"In this country, many have the idea that organizing people is very difficult, but it isn’t. It becomes difficult only at the point where you begin to see other things that are easier. But if you are willing to give the time and make the sacrifice, it’s not that difficult to organize. Maintaining an organization is much more difficult. I don’t look at organizing as something which happens by chance, or as something very complicated. I look at organizing as a lot of hard work. I think that many organizers lose out because they don’t have the patience. First of all, people think that you need to have one hundred percent participation to be successful; and secondly, they feel it has to happen right away. But really what happens is a chain reaction. If you put one worker together with another, that reaction is not going to be too noticeable. But when you put a hundred people together, that reaction is going to carry. And it multiplies. When you have people together who believe in something very strongly-whether its religion or politics or unions-things happen."

"Non-violence is a very powerful weapon. Most people don’t understand the power of non-violence and tend to be amazed by the whole idea. Those who have been involved in bringing about change and see the difference between violence and non-violence are firmly committed to a lifetime of non-violence, not because it’s easy or because it is cowardly, but because it is an effective and very powerful way."