By Salma El-Sakka
Dolores Huerta, the co-founder of the United Farm Workers union and a towering figure in American labor and civil rights history, died Wednesday at the age of 96. Her family announced her death in a statement released through her foundation, saying she died at home of cancer.
Huerta coined the rallying cry "Sí, se puede!" — "Yes, it can be done" — and was jailed 22 times for union demonstrations. She received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012, became the first Latina inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame, and was awarded nine honorary doctorates. Schools, streets, and murals across several states bear her name.
Early Life and Activism
Born Dolores Clara Fernandez in 1930 in Dawson, New Mexico, Huerta was the daughter of a miner and union activist who later served in the state legislature. After her parents divorced, her mother moved the family to California, where Huerta grew up amid diverse working-class communities. She worked as an elementary school teacher in the San Joaquin Valley but left the classroom after becoming frustrated by the poverty of her students' families, deciding she could achieve more by organizing farmworkers.
Her early civil rights work in Stockton led to a meeting with César Chavez. In 1962 they founded the National Farm Workers Association, which later became the United Farm Workers of America. Huerta served as a key leader and negotiator, joining Filipino grape pickers on the picket lines during the five-year Delano Grape Strike.
United Farm Workers and Key Achievements
With Chavez, Huerta negotiated the first collective bargaining agreements and health benefit plans for farmworkers. She lobbied politicians for financial aid for the unemployed, disability insurance for California farmworkers, and regulations on toxic pesticides. She also pushed for amnesty for undocumented immigrants and opposed federal guest worker programs. By directing nationwide boycotts of grapes and lettuce in the early 1970s, she helped create the economic pressure that led California to pass the first state law recognizing farmworkers' right to collective bargaining.
Huerta met Senator Robert Kennedy during his 1968 visit to Delano and volunteered on his presidential campaign. She was on stage with him moments before his assassination, an event that devastated her but did not halt her organizing. In 1988, while protesting George H.W. Bush's opposition to the UFW grape boycott in San Francisco, she was struck by a police officer's baton, suffering three broken ribs and a pulverized spleen, requiring more than a dozen blood transfusions.
Personal Revelations and Later Years
In 2026, Huerta disclosed that she had been sexually abused by César Chavez in the 1960s, resulting in two children whom she placed with other families. She kept the secret for 60 years, fearing that coming forward would undermine the farmworker movement. Her longtime partner was Richard Chavez, César's brother, with whom she had four children; she also had seven children from two earlier marriages.
Well into her 90s, Huerta maintained a busy schedule of protests and speeches on behalf of her Bakersfield-based foundation, advocating for women's rights, LGBTQ+ rights, and racial and economic justice. She campaigned for Presidents Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden, and was considered a close friend of California Governor Gavin Newsom. A 2025 documentary, "Seeds of Change: The Life and Legacy of Dolores Huerta," captured her reflections on decades of activism. "I hope that my legacy will be one of an organizer that organized to fight injustice," she said in the film. "We want to give our children an inheritance of justice, right, not jewels or property or money."
