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Remembering César Chávez

Fifty years after devoting himself to la causa, a look at the labor leader’s legacy of service

by: Ana Radelat, from: AARP, March 31, 2011

A Call to Serve
In his honor each spring, around the time of César Chávez’s birthday, Chávez family members fan out to student and community groups to speak about the importance of community service and volunteerism.

Anthony Chávez, 25, was a child when he lost his grandfather. But he is part of the family’s informal speaker bureau. He urges students — and even inmates of California juvenile justice facilities — to volunteer.

“What we do is share this one example of history — my grandfather — to try to move others to make a difference,” says Anthony Chávez.

That is also the focal point of César Chávez Day, observed as a state holiday in 10 U.S. states. To date, efforts to establish a federal holiday have been unsuccessful.

Anthony’s father, Paul Chávez, 53, says it’s natural for family members to try to maintain the legacy. “He always wanted us to do more,” says Paul Chávez. “He had more faith in me than I had in myself. I chalked it up to the love a father has for a son. But later I found out he was this way with everyone. He had tremendous faith ordinary people could do extraordinary things.”

Next: "He Chose Work" >>

César Chávez Milestones

1942: César Chávez begins toiling in the California fields in his teens, after finishing the eighth grade. Later in life, education would become a passion, and its end, he would often say, was service to others.

1944: Chávez enlists in the U.S. Navy, where he serves for two years.

1952: Chávez becomes an organizer for the Community Service Organization (CSO), a Latino civil rights group, becoming its national director in 1958. His first task? Voter registration.

1962: With Dolores Huerta, Chávez cofounds the National Farm Workers Association, later to become the United Farm Workers — the UFW.

1968: Chávez goes on a 25-day fast to promote the principle of nonviolence; he would practice fasting as a personal purification of his own body, mind and soul, and to purify and strengthen others who worked with him, and as an act of penance for justice. In August 1988, he would complete his longest public fast, the 36-day Fast for Life.

1975: The UFW’s efforts brought about the passage of the groundbreaking 1975 California Agricultural Labor Relations Act to protect farm workers. Today, it remains the only law in the nation that protects the right of farm workers to unionize.

1994: President Bill Clinton posthumously awards Chávez the Medal of Freedom, America’s highest civilian honor. Helen Chávez, César’s widow, accepted the honor at a White House ceremony.

2000: California establishes Chávez’s birthday, March 31, as César Chavez Day, a state holiday. The date is also observed as a state holiday in Arizona, Colorado, Illinois, Michigan, New Mexico, Texas, Utah, Wisconsin and Rhode Island.