Dolores Huerta
Biography

Dolores was born Dolores Clara Fernandez on April 10, 1930 in the mining town of Dawson, in northern New Mexico. Her father, Juan Fernandez, was a seasonal farm worker, miner, union activist and later a State Assemblyman. Her parents divorced when she was three years old and her motheralong with Dolores and her two brothers relocated to Stockton. Alicia raised Dolores, along with her two brothers, and later two sisters working as a cook in two restaurants to support her family during the Great Depression. Through prudence Alice (her mother) became a businesswoman when she purchased two hotel businesses and a restaurant.

While her mother worked feverishly to support the family, Dolores and her siblings were cared for by her grandfather, Herculano Chavez. He was a miner who became disabled in a mining accident in New Mexico in which he lost one of his sons, Marcial Chavez at age seventeen. In helping to raise Dolores, Herculano would often say that Dolores had seven tongues because she spoke so fast.

It was through her work with Fred Ross and the CSO that Dolores met Cesar Chavez. It was Fred who recruited and organized both Dolores and Cesar and trained them in community organizing. The CSO battled segregation, police brutality, led voter registration drives, pushed for improved public services in Latino communities throughout the State of California and fought to enact new legislation. The CSO played a leading role in electing the first Latino in over one hundred years, Ed Roybal, to the Los Angeles City Council. While working with the CSO, both Cesar and Dolores realized the immediate need to organize farm workers because of their dire conditions. In 1962 after the CSO turned down Cesar’s request, to organize farm workers, Cesar and Dolores resigned from their jobs with CSO in order to do so. At that time she was a divorced mother with seven children. She later joined Cesar and his family in Delano, California where they began the National Farm Workers Association (“NFWA”), the predecessor to the United Farm Workers Union (“UFW”). Dolores worked with Cesar for over forty years until his death in 1993. In addition to the UFW together they founded the Robert Kennedy Medical Plan, the Juan De La Cruz Farm Workers Pension Fund, the Farm Workers Credit Union, the first medical and pension plans and credit union in history for farm workers. They also formed the National Farm Workers Service Center (visit www.NSWSC.org) which today provides affordable housing with over 3,700 rental and 600 single family dwelling units, and educational radio with over nine Spanish Speaking Radio Stations throughout California, Washington and Arizona.

In 2002 Dolores was the second recipient of the Puffin Foundation/Nation Institute Award for Creative Citizenship (visit www.nationinstitute.org) that included a $100,000 grant which she utilized to establish her long time dream, the Dolores Huerta Foundation’s Organizing Institute. The Foundation’s mission is to focus on community organizing and leadership training in low-income under-represented communities.