Cesar Chavez Day

(this post was adapted from a weekly email I sent out on 3/26/25)

Cesar Chavez is a fascinating figure from US Labor history. Born in 1927 to a Latino family of crop pickers and laborers in San Luis, Arizona, Cesario was forced at an early age to go by “Cesar” while in school. He eventually adopted this name for the rest of his life. This was still a point in US history where Arizona was strictly segregated - Black and Hispanic children attended separate schools from White students. In the late 1930’s his grandmother died and her estate, which Cesar’s family lived on, was auctioned off to cover back taxes, something which forced the family to move back to California. Cesar continued in school but was expected to help his family with fieldwork on the weekends and holidays. 

Cesar joined the Navy and served for several years before being honorably discharged. He returned to California where he joined the South Tenant Farmers Union (STFU). The STFU was still fairly unique at the time as it was one of the few non-segregated unions. The group had been founded in 1934 as a collective of sharecroppers who would demand better working conditions and pay from farmers. This was necessary both due to the brutal conditions of sharecropping but also the exploitative conditions that arose during the Great Depression. in 1935, for instance, they organized a strike calling for higher pay for cotton picking. Farm work was (and continues to be) an underpaid field - cotton pickers in Arkansas were being paid $0.40 cents per 100 pounds of cotton picked. At the time, $0.40 cents was considered a full day’s wages, but 100 pounds of cotton would take a single person 2-3 days to pick. The STFU quickly won a raise to $0.75 per 100 pounds of cotton picked. Cesar participated in a similar strike against the DiGiorgio Farm Corporation the same year he joined, demanding higher wages per bushel of fruits picked. He became something of a leader quite quickly, leading marches around the orchards and encouraging new workers to join. 

Cesar’s involvement in the STFU waned when he moved to San Jose in the 1950s, but he got back into activism when his new employer, a box company, laid him off. He then joined the Community Services Organization (CSO), a Latino civil rights organization, and spent many years traveling around California opening new chapters. The CSO grew in influence but often struggled with funding during this decade - to remedy this, the organization started working with labor unions to accomplish shared objectives like community organizing and voter registration.  Cesar eventually became the President of the CSO in 1959 but resigned in 1962, partially due to frustrations with the priorities of CSO leadership. 

After this, he moved to Delano, California and worked with his wife Helen and Dolores Huerta (who I talked about in my March 6th email) to start a new labor union that would focus just on agricultural workers. This organization, the National Farmworkers Association (NFWA), would later become the United Farm Workers Union (UFW), the largest American farm labor organization. Throughout the 1960’s he expanded the scope and influence of the organization, creating a dedicated insurance program, newspaper, and credit union for members. The union organized several successful strikes and consumer boycotts throughout the 1960s supporting higher wages for rose grafters and grape pickers, and greatly expanded membership by merging with other unions like the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC). 

Cesar returned to Arizona in 1972 to protest a new state bill which would ban agricultural organizing and strikes during the harvest season - though he was ultimately unsuccessful, his work to activate voters led to a rise in Hispanic representation in Arizona’s House and Senate. Throughout the 1970s Cesar continued to build influence through a combination of lobbying, legal battles, marches, and public high-profile solidarity fasts. UFW also pushed for stricter legislation to regulate the use of commercial pesticides on crops due to concerns that they were the cause of high rates of cancer in farm workers. These actions and his union’s focus helped build Cesar’s reputation as an advocate - up until his death in 1993 he was invited to dozens of events a year to speak about his advocacy work and won a number of significant accolades, including the Mexican government’s Order of the Aztec Eagle (their highest honor given to foreigners) and the US Presidential Medal of Freedom. 

Numerous cities started recognizing Cesar’s influence starting in the 1990s, with Sacramento starting the first official Cesar Chavez Holiday several months after his death. Phoenix and Tempe started recognizing March 31st as an official City holiday in 2004, partially due to feedback from employee groups wanting greater recognition of Hispanic accomplishments. (Side note, current City Manager Rosa Inchausti was Diversity Director at the time and supported the decision as early as 2003. I was not asked to plug her involvement - I just stumbled across that fact while researching for this writeup). The federal government started recognizing the day in 2014 and Arizona declared it a state holiday (but not a paid one) in 2024. 

Anyways, thanks for reading another writeup on an important character from labor history. I know we often celebrate holidays without consciously processing why they’re important - in this case I think the important takeaway is his influence on the Southwestern labor movement in the latter half of the 20th century and the multi-faceted ways he tackled injustice within his communities.

Thanks for a great week everyone.