Cesar chavez why is he important

Neither was the name Cesar Chavez. Only seven years later, he would be on the cover of Time magazine. But the most significant was his resolution to create what seemed almost impossible, a labor union for farmworkers.

He harnessed public outrage to achieve unprecedented gains for farmworkers. Chavez drew on an anger that came from his childhood picking cotton and grapes, enduring poverty and prejudice.

Photo by Cris Sanchez In a migrant farm worker camp, the ladies are visiting while their laundry dries on the clothesline strung between their houses. His parents also taught him that it was important to help others. They began working on farms picking fruits and vegetables.

Working on the farms was very difficult. They often had few bathrooms and little clean water to drink. On his birthday, March 31, in , Cesar resigned from the CSO, leaving the first decent-paying job he had ever had with the security of a regular paycheck.

Under Cesar, the UFW achieved unprecedented gains for farm workers, establishing it as the first successful farm workers union in American history. It would have meant a big house with servants and all the advantages for his children. Instead, Cesar turned down the job in exchange for a life of self-imposed poverty.

Cesar embraced a life of voluntary poverty, as did other movement leaders and staff until the late s. When Cesar Chavez began building the farm worker movement, he knew it would take a strong union to remedy the economic injustices workers suffer at the workplace.

He also realized it would require a movement to overcome the burdens of poverty, discrimination and powerlessness people endured in the community. Cesar began a burial program, the first credit union for farm workers, health clinics, daycare centers and job-training programs. With the help of the movement, Cesar built affordable housing — starting with a retirement home for the elderly and displaced Filipino American farm workers and later, multi-family and homeownership communities for farm workers and other low-income working families and seniors.

He established two educational-style Spanish-language farm worker radio stations, the beginning of what is now the station Radio Campesina network. He also established the Fred Ross Education Institute which trained negotiators, contract administrators and union organizers. Cesar adopted historic strategies and tactics that were novel to organized labor. He demanded farm workers strictly adhere to a pledge of nonviolence.

He and his brother, Richard, attended thirty-seven schools. In he graduated from the eighth grade. Because his father, Librado, had been in an accident and because he did not want his mother, Juana, to work in the fields, he could not to go to high school, and instead became a migrant farm worker. While his childhood school education was not the best, later in life, education was his passion. He joined the U. Navy, which was then segregated, in , at the age of 19, and served for two years. In Cesar married Helen Fabela.

They honeymooned in California by visiting all the California Missions from Sonoma to San Diego again the influence of education. They settled in Delano and started their family.

First Fernando, then Sylvia, then Linda, and five more children were to follow. They talked about farm workers and strikes. Cesar began reading about St. Francis and Gandhi and nonviolence. His first task was voter registration. He was joined by Dolores Huerta and the union was born. Cesar told the story of the birth of the eagle.

He asked Richard to design the flag, but Richard could not make an eagle that he liked. Finally he sketched one on a piece of brown wrapping paper.

He then squared off the wing edges so that the eagle would be easier for union members to draw on the handmade red flags that would give courage to the farm workers with their own powerful symbol.

That is why we chose an Aztec eagle. It gives. For a long time in , there were very few union dues paying members. By the UFW got grape growers to accept union contracts and had effectively organized most of that industry, at one point in time claiming 50, dues paying members. The marchers wanted the state government to pass laws which would permit farm workers to organize into a union and allow collective bargaining agreements.

Cesar made people aware of the struggles of farm workers for better pay and safer working conditions.