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Cesar Estrada Chavez was born to the children of Mexican immigrants in a small Arizona town in 1927. He experienced discrimination from an early age. In school his teachers punished him for speaking Spanish, and his classmates teased him because of his ethnicity. At age ten he moved with his family to California, where they and hundreds of thousands of others sought work as migrant laborers.

After serving in the U.S. Navy for two years during World War II, Chavez returned to California. In 1952 he began working for the Community Service Organization, where he gained his first experiences working with striking agricultural workers. In 1962 he left the Community Service Organization and formed the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA).

In September of 1965 Chavez and the NFWA gained national attention as a result of the Delano grape strike, when workers associated with the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC) walked off their jobs on the farms of area grape growers, demanding wages equal to the federal minimum wage. A week later, the NFWA joined the strike, which lasted for five years. As spokesperson for the strike, Chavez articulated the so-called Plan of Delano, outlining the strikers' goals. From that time forward he became known as an inspiring public speaker. In March 1966 he and his supporters began a march to Sacramento, California, which ultimately led to growers' concessions to the NFWA's demands--the first union contract between growers and farm workers in U.S. history. Also as a result of the strike, the NFWA joined the AWOC to become the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee (UFWOC). In 1968 Chavez engaged in a fast during a strike, to impress upon the UFWOC membership the necessity of a continued commitment to nonviolence. From 1969 to 1970 Chavez and the UFWOC organized a nationwide boycott of table grapes, which persuaded most California grape growers to sign contracts with the union.

In the 1970s farm workers began to lose ground, and by the 1980s Chavez and his union found themselves battling a more conservative government, opposed to union gains and favoring laissez-fair economic policies. In his 1984 speech to the Seventh Constitutional Convention of the union, which had by then become the United Farm Workers of America (UFW), he cast the struggle as a larger issue of civil rights. That year he also began to focus on the negative effects of pesticides on farm workers; in June he called for a boycott of grapes in an effort to stop growers from using pesticides. By 1986 the boycott was universally called the "wrath of grapes boycott," and Chavez was delivering his "wrath of grapes" speech at public rallies across the country. Although the grapes boycott brought national attention and support to the battle against pesticide use, the UFW never achieved significant legislation to protect workers against dangerous chemicals. Chavez died of natural causes on April 29, 1993.

References:

1. Ferriss, Susan, Ricardo Sandoval, and Diana Hembree. The Fight in the Fields: Cesar Chavez and the Farmworkers Movement. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1997.

2. Griswold del Castillo, Richard, and Richard Garcia. Cesar Chavez: A Triumph of Spirit. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1995.

3. Hammerback, John C., and Richard J. Jensen. The Rhetorical Career of Cesar Chavez. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1998.

4. Houle, Michelle. Cesar Chavez. San Diego, Calif.: Greenhaven Press, 2003.

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