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Presidential Medal of Freedom Recipient Cesar E. Chavez
Helen Chavez receives the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Bill Clinton in Cesar Chavez's honor, August 1994.
1927-1993
Cesar Chavez Nominated for the Congressional Gold Medal - March 31, 2004
His motto in life was "Si se puede" ("it can be done")
Born on March 31, 1927, Cesar Chavez began his life on a small farm near Yuma, Arizona. When his family lost their farm during the Great Depression and moved to California, Chávez at age 10 became a migrant farm worker, laboring in fields and vineyards.
Chavez's experiences gave him the determination to create an organization to ensure protections for farm workers. This organization developed into the United Farm Workers of America, the largest farm workers union in U.S. history. As president of the union, Cesar Chavez worked to promote fair wages, medical coverage, pension benefits and adequate living conditions for workers. Because of his leadership, hundreds of thousands of farm workers today are able to live their lives with respect, dignity and a decent wage. But even in light of the progress spurred by Chavez, more work remains to be done before we can see his dreams for every farm worker fulfilled.
"Viva Cesar Chavez!"
Although the United Farm Worker founder and charismatic leader has been dead for seven years, that cry still can be heard at marches and rallies throughout California by farm workers who still draw from his inspiration and legacy in their struggle for equitable pay and safe working conditions.
Born March 31, 1927, on the small farm near Yuma, Arizona that his grandfather homesteaded during the 1880s, Cesar Estrada Chavez began working in the fields at age 10 when his father lost their land during the Depression.
Like some 300,000 others, the Chavez family traveled throughout the Southwest working in fields and vineyards. The workers lived in dingy, overcrowded quarters without bathrooms, electricity, or running water. Cesar attended more than 30 elementary schools before finally leaving school after his eighth-grade graduation to help support his family.
He joined the U.S. Navy in 1945, and served in the western Pacific during the end of World War II. In 1948, he married Helen Fabela, a young woman who shared his social concerns, and the couple settled in the East San Jose barrio of Sal Si Puedes (get out if you can) where they began teaching farm workers to read and write so they could become U.S. citizens.
In 1952, while working in an orchard outside San Jose, Chavez met an organizer for the Community Service Organization, a barrio-based self-help group. Within a few months Chavez was a full-time CSO organizer, coordinating voter-registration drives and battling racial and economic discrimination.
In the late 1950s he became CSO's national director, but in 1962, when the organization failed to commit itself more strongly to farm-worker organizing, Chavez resigned from the first regular paying job he had, moved his wife and eight young children to Delano, California, and started the National Farm Workers Association, predecessor to the UFW.
Traveling among California's field and farm communities, Chavez slowly built a core team of dedicated farm-worker members, and in September 1965, his 1,200-member organization joined an AFL-CIO strike against Delano area table and wine grape growers. Chavez led a five year strike-boycott that rallied millions of supporters to the UFW. He forged a national coalition of unions, church groups, students, minorities and consumers to support the farm workers' group.
The UFW subscribed to the principles of non-violence practiced by Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Strikers took pledges of non-violence. After Chavez conducted a 25-day fast in 1968 to reaffirm the UFW's commitment to non-violence, the late Sen. Robert F. Kennedy called Chavez "one of the heroic figures of our time," and flew to Delano to be with him when he ended the fast.
By 1970, most table grape growers agreed to sign contracts with the UFW but the same year vegetable growers signed pacts with the Teamsters Union to limit UFW success to the vineyards. When the UFW's table grape agreements came up for renegotiation in 1973, grape growers signed with the Teamsters, prompting 10,000 farm workers in California's coastal valleys to walk out of the fields in protest.
Cesar called for a new worldwide grape boycott, and by 1975, a poll showed 17 million Americans were honoring the boycott. In 1975, under California Gov. Jerry Brown, the Agricultural Labor Relations Act was passed.
By the early 1980s tens of thousands of farm workers had UFW contracts stipulating higher pay, family health coverage, pension benefits and other protections.
But in 1982, Republican George Deukmejian was elected governor with more than $1 million in grower campaign donations. Under him, the farm labor board ceased to enforce the act and in 1984, Chavez called for another grape boycott. In July and August 1988, he conducted a 36-day "Fast for Life" to protest the pesticide poisoning of grape workers and their children.
Chavez and his family lived in La Paz, in Keene, California, the union's headquarters east of Bakersfield. Like other UFW officers and staff, he received subsistence pay of no more than $5,000 a year.
Chavez died on April 23, 1993, at age 66. More than 40,000 people attended his funeral at Delano. He was buried at La Paz in a rose garden at the foot of the hill he often climbed to watch the sun rise.
In 1991, Cesar received the Aguila Azteca (The Aztec Eagle), Mexico's highest award presented to people of Mexican heritage who have made major contributions outside of Mexico. On August 8, 1994, Chavez became the second Mexican American to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom , the highest civilian honor in the United States, awarded him posthumously by President Bill Clinton.
In 1994, Cesar's family and the officers of the UFW created the Cesar E. Chavez Foundation at La Paz to promote Chavez's vision.
New U.S. Stamp Honors Mexican-American Labor Leader Cesar Chavez
Postage stamp commemorates a life of service to others
Commemorative stamp
"Civil rights leader Cesar Chavez (1927-1993) founded the United Farm Workers of America. A tireless advocate for justice and equality for all people, he dedicated his life to working in service of others."
By Eric Green
Washington File Staff Writer
Washington -- The late Mexican American civil rights leader and union organizer Cesar Chavez has been honored with a new U.S. postage stamp, commemorating a common man with an uncommon vision of non-violent social change and service to others.
The stamp was unveiled April 23 at a ceremony in Los Angeles, California, where that state's governor, a U.S. congressional delegation, the city's mayor, representatives from the U.S. Postal Service, and family members hailed Chavez, his life story, and his efforts to improve the lives of the less fortunate.
U.S. Postmaster General John Potter issued a statement describing Chavez as someone who "understood the hardships of working people and fought hard to bring about justice and quality of life for them and their families."
The late U.S. Senator and Attorney General Robert Kennedy once called Chavez "one of the heroic figures of our time." A second-generation American with only an eighth-grade education, Chavez left school to become a farm worker after his family lost its farm in the U.S. state of Arizona, and thus its means of support during the Great Depression of the 1930s.
Cesar Chavez's son, Paul, said in an interview that the family forebears migrated in the early 1900s from Mexico's Chihuahua state to Yuma, Arizona. Throughout his youth and into adulthood, Cesar Chavez worked all across the southwestern United States, where he was exposed to the hardships of the backbreaking manual labor of farm work in lettuce fields and vineyards.
Paul Chavez said in his remarks at the Los Angeles ceremony that even a decade after his father's passing, "his example and values continue to resonate with people of good will -- just as they did during the 40-odd years that he marched, fasted, and stood with the less fortunate."
Cesar Chavez became a legend after bringing to fruition his dream to create an organization to protect and serve farm workers, whose poverty and disenfranchisement he shared.
In 1962, Chavez resigned from a regular paying job to establish the first successful farm workers' union in U.S. history -- what became known as the United Farm Workers of America. For decades, he worked to win farm workers fair wages, medical coverage, pension benefits, humane living conditions, and numerous other basic protections.
Against seemingly insurmountable odds, Chavez negotiated the first union contracts for farm workers in the mid- and late 1960s, using strikes and boycotts to achieve his goals. His efforts resulted in the California Agricultural Labor Relations Act, which remains the only law in the United States that protects the right of farm workers to organize into unions.
A strong believer in the principles of non-violence practiced by Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Chavez also went on hunger fasts to fight unjust conditions. In 1988, the 61-year-old Chavez used a 36-day "Fast for Life" to protest the harmful effects of pesticides on farm workers and children.
Biographers say Chavez's life cannot be measured by material success. For instance, he never earned more than $6,000 a year, never owned a house, and, when he died in 1993, had no savings to leave to his family. While he lacked formal schooling, Chavez was self-educated, with an intense interest in philosophy, economics, and union organizing. He liked to say that "the end of all education should surely be service to others."
Chavez's motto was "it can be done" ("si se puede" in Spanish), which encapsulated his approach to life. In 1994, he was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor in the United States. In 1991, Mexico awarded Chavez "The Aztec Eagle" (Aguila Azteca), its highest civilian award to people of Mexican heritage who have made major contributions outside Mexico.
Dozens of communities across the United States have named schools, parks, streets, libraries and other public facilities, and awards and scholarships in his honor. California established March 31 as an official state holiday, "Cesar Chavez Day," designed to promote service by citizens to their communities.
More than 50,000 people attended his funeral after Chavez died in his sleep in 1993 in San Luis, Arizona, near where he was born 66 years earlier. It was the largest attendance at a funeral for any labor leader in U.S. history.
The new postage stamp features a portrait of Chavez against a background of grape fields. The back of the stamp says: "Civil rights leader Cesar Chavez (1927-1993) founded the United Farm Workers of America. A tireless advocate for justice and equality for all people, he dedicated his life to working in service of others."
Chavez's son, Paul, chairman of the California-based Cesar E. Chavez Foundation, said the new stamp "is one of the highest honors that can be bestowed upon an individual. For our family, it is not only just a great honor, but also a powerful vehicle to teach new generations of Americans about my father's legacy of justice, dignity, and equality for all people." He added that when young people see the stamp, "they will know that my father was an ordinary person ... but he had an extraordinary vision and determination to make that vision a reality."
Cesar Chavez was "a humble man of deep conviction, who lived the American dream," said his son. "He demonstrated that with hard work and integrity, there is no limit to what can be achieved."
César Chavez's wife, Helen, poses with President Bill Clinton,
Hillary Rodham Clinton, and others after the White House Ceremony during
which she was presented César’s Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Left to right: Cesar Chavez, Coretta Scott King, and Dorothy Day at the Cathedral of St. John the Devine, New York City, February 20, 1973. Photo: Chris Sheridan/Catholic News Service; courtesy Marquette University Archives
Timeline of Cesar Chavez's Life
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Medal History
