Feisty Female Friday: Delores Huerta

The FFF this week is Delores Huerta.

Delores Huerta, the co-founder of the UFW, is one of the most influential labor activists of our time. She was born in NM and moved to CA with her family. Her grandfather helped raise Delores and her two brothers while her mother worked three jobs. Her mom’s community activism and compassionate treatment of workers greatly influenced Delores. Her own discrimination in school also helped shape Delores who did receive a teaching degree. She married while a student, had two daughters, divorced, and soon married fellow activist Ventura Huerta with whom she had five children. Delores briefly taught school, but after seeing so many hungry farm children coming to school, she thought she could do more to help them by organizing farmers and farm workers.

She began her career as an activist when she co-founded a CA chapter of the CSO and the AWA, which led voter registration drives and fought for economic improvements for Hispanics. Delores soon met Caesar Chavez and with him founded the UFW, where she served as vice president. Despite ethnic and gender bias, Delores helped organize a strike of 5,000 grape workers, was the lead negotiator in the workers’ contract that followed, organized workers, advocated for safer working conditions, and fought for unemployment and healthcare benefits for agricultural workers. Delores was the driving force behind the nationwide table grape boycotts that led to a successful union contract, resulting in the ground-breaking CALR, which allowed farm workers to form unions and bargain for better wages and conditions. She worked as a lobbyist to improve workers’ legislative representation, to elect more Latinos and women to political office, and championed women’s issues.

For her work, Delores received the Eleanor Roosevelt Human Rights Award, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, was a board member of the Feminist Majority Foundation, and an officer in the UFW of America. She is President of the Dolores Huerta Foundation which focuses on empowering marginalized communities.

At the age of 93, She remains active today in civil rights, social justice, community empowerment, and voter registration drives. Delores is a frequent speaker who advocates for the rights of all people.

She lives in CA, is a widow, and her motto, “Yes we can,” should be the motto for feisty women everywhere and every day.