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Cesar Chavez spent his entire childhood in poverty for 11 years.
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Cesar lived with his parents at farm raising chickens, watermelons, and vegetables.
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His Family became migrant workers, traveling from place to place, following the California crops and lost all of their money because of Great Depression.
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1938-1943 Cesar Chavez attended more than 30 different schools.
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When Cesar was 21 years old he, he married a women named Helen. In the future they had 8 children. Helen has always supported him in everything.
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Cesar Chavez became a staff member of the Community Service Organization, a group dedicated to protecting the civil rights of Mexican Americans. The group fought discrimination by encouraging Mexican Americans to register to vote.
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His family was not rich, but they had enough money to pay the bills. But Cesar was not satisfied, because he new that there is a lot of farm workers with no rights and he wanted to help them.He left his job to form a union of Mexican Migrant Workers.
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Cesar Chavez dream of uniting farm workers became known as La Causa ( Spanish phrase that means " the cause ").In 1965 the union, which became known as the United Farm Workers Association, had just few thousand members.
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Filipino grape pickers decided to go on strike. The pickers were angry because the growers table grapes had just lowered wages by more than 25 percent. The members of the United Farm Workers Association took a vote and decided to join the Filipinos. All the grape pickers in the union went on strike.
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Cesar Chavez would ask the public to stop buying California grapes , as a show of support for the workers.
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Although the boycott was successful, the grape growers still refused to accept the union. Union members had no work, so they started to talk about using violence. Cesar tried to stop talks about violence. He decided to go on fast and soon it ceased. Union members were more determined and united.
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California grape growers gave in. They signed the first union contract with farm workers.
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1970-1993 Until he died he was fighting for equal rights for all workers.
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Cesar Estrada Chavez died peacefully in his sleep on April 23, 1993 near Yuma,Arizona a short distance from the small family farm in the Gila River Valley where he was born more than 66 years before.
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It's a federal commemorative holiday in the U.S. by proclamation of President Obama in 2014. On March 31 of each year, it celebrates the birth and legacy of the civil rights and labor movement activist Cesar Chavez.
