Posted
on April 10, 2015
If
you were the daughter of a union activist and state assemblyman, you
too might grow up to be a civil rights activist.
But
Dolores Fernandez Huerta – like everyone else – had two parents.
The union activist and state assemblyman was her dad, Juan Fernandez;
and Huerta didn't grow up with him, because her parents divorced when
she was just three years old.
It
was Huerta's mom, Alicia Chavez, who raised her. After the divorce,
Chavez moved with her kids from New Mexico to Stockton, California.
Chavez became very involved with community organizations and the
local church, and she made sure that her kids got a taste of cultural
diversity. Chavez became a businesswoman; she owned a restaurant and
a 70-room hotel. She was known for her kindness, and she often
welcomed low-paid workers, including farm workers, into her hotel for
free.
And
Dolores Huerta, born on this date in 1930, saw her mom's compassion
for and connection to others.
Huerta learned to be active in her community, like her mom. She joined
clubs at her high school; she became a majorette; she was in the Girl
Scouts all the way through until she became an adult. She was also
able to do something her mom hadn't done: she attended college and
became a teacher.
However,
kids came to Huerta's class hungry. They came shabbily dressed, with
worn shoes or no shoes at all. Huerta had learned compassion, like
her mom, and she decided to quit teaching and to start organizing
farm workers so that the families those kids belonged to could have better lives.
Dolores
Huerta cofounded organizations and workers' unions. She met Cesar Chavez and worked with him
to organize farm workers. She helped direct a national boycott of
table grapes, and she participated in and led non-violent civil
disobedience activities and strikes. These sorts of activities had
worked for Mahatma Gandhi in achieving independence for India, and
for Martin Luther King, Jr., and other black activists in overturning Jim Crow laws and working toward civil rights. Huerta and Chavez
used these peaceful means to win rights for farmworkers and Hispanic people.
Huerta
lobbied politicians in California with the same goals. She became so
well-known among progressive politicians that she was actually with
presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy when he was assassinated
after winning the California presidential primary election for the
Democratic Party. What a horrible blow that was for America – and
it must have seen even more horrifying to Huerta, since she was right
there with Kennedy!
Huerta
was badly beaten during a peaceful, lawful protest of a Republican
presidential candidate (later to become the president), George H.W.
Bush. The San Francisco police officers who beat her with their
batons ended up breaking several ribs and injuring her spleen, which
had to be removed in emergency surgery. The beating was caught on
videotape, and Huerta won a large judgment against the SFPD and the
City of San Francisco.
She
gave away the money she won in that judgment to benefit farmworkers.
After
recovering from her injuries, Huerta began to work for women's
rights. In 2002 she founded the Dolores Huerta Foundation, which
helps women, children, and poor people to develop their leadership
skills and to organize their communities in order to make their lives
better.
 |
| President Obama awarding Dolores Huerta with the Presidential Medal of Freedom |
It's
great to see that Huerta has won a lot of honors for her work on
human rights issues! I cannot list them all, but I will mention that
she is on the Board of Directors of an organization I belong to,
Equality California, and that one of the student centers at a college
very near me, Pitzer College, is named after her!
The
biggest surprise for me, when writing about all of Huerta's many
achievements in California and the nation, is realizing that she had
eleven children!
That's
right – she had 11 kids!!!
 |
| This is Huerta with her seven daughters...remember, she has four sons, too! |
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