Cesar Chavez
...f field labor when he had to quit school and work because his father was in a car accident. In 1944, Chavez joined the US Navy but two year was discharged and went home to work in the fields. He would marry Helen Fabela in 1948. The family then moved to San Jose where Cesar worked in a lumber mill. It is here that Chavez met Father Donald McDonnell, a Catholic Priest from San Francisco sent to work with the farm laborers. McDonnell introduced Chavez to the Church’s social doctrines on labor organizing and social justice. Chavez began to read papal encyclopedias on labor, labor history, the teachings of St. Francis of Assisi and Louis Fisher’s The Life Of Gandhi. All of these works influenced him in his philosophical approach to the farm worker movement. That same year, he is recruited by Fred Ross, an organizer for the Community Service Organization, to help to be an organizer for Saul Alinsky’s Community Service Organization. The CSO sent Chavez, in 1958, to Oxnard to confront the bracero program. This program was one in which the growers, with the governments help, lowered wagers and exploited the farm laborers. In 1962, Chavez resigned from the CSO and moved Delano with his family to start the Farm Workers Association (FWA). By 1964, there are 1000 members and 50 locals. Chavez and the FWA join the AFL-CIO union strike against major Delano wine grape growers. Against great odds, Chavez led a successful strike that lasted 5 years and rallied millions of supporters to the FWA. This strike merged the FWA and the AFL-CIO in 1966. Chavez made sure that the FWA adhered to non-violent means and in 1965 conducted a 25-day fast to reaffirm their pledge to non-violence. Even Senator Robert F. Kennedy went to Delano to be with him when the fast ended. By 1970, the boycott convinced most grape growers to sign contracts with the FWA. However, that same year, the vegetable industry signed “sweetheart” pacts with the Teamsters Union. When the FWA’s contracts came up for renegotiation in 1973, the growers signed with th...