Woman's History Month: Dolores Huerta

Before becoming a labor organizer, Dolores Huerta was a grammar school teacher, but soon quit after becoming distraught at the sight of children coming to school hungry or without proper clothing. “I couldn’t stand seeing kids come to class hungry and needing shoes. I thought I could do more by organizing farm workers than by trying to teach their hungry children.”

In 1955, Huerta launch her career in labor organizing by helping Fred Ross train organizers in Stockton, Calif., and five years later, founded the Agricultural Workers Association before organizing the UFW with Cesar Chavez in 1962. Some of her early victories included lobbying for voting rights for Mexican Americans as well as for the right of every American to take the written driver’s test in a native language. A champion of labor rights, women’s rights, racial equality and other civil rights causes, Huerta remains an unrelenting figure in the farm workers’ movement.

“Don’t be a marshmallow. Walk the street with us into history. Get off the sidewalk. Stop being vegetables. Work for justice. Viva the boycott!” – Dolores Huerta

In the late 1960s, she became the first woman to negotiate a labor contract with growers. Beside a photo of Huerta stating her demands to a room of men, a quote reads: “For her unyielding character at the bargaining table, growers referred to Huerta as the ‘Dragon Lady.’ One Delano grower remarked: ‘Dolores Huerta is crazy. She is a violent woman, where women, especially Mexican women, are usually peaceful and calm.’”

At 90, Dolores Huerta is a living civil rights icon. She has spent most of her life as a political activist, fighting for better working conditions for farmworkers and the rights of the downtrodden, a firm believer in the power of political organizing to effect change.

She is the first Latina woman to have an exhibit dedicated to her in the Smithsonian’s “One Life” series, a project that has spotlighted eleven important historical figures since its inception.