Cesar Chavez Day: 3/28/2009

As described by his family, Cesar E. Chavez was an ordinary man with an extraordinary legacy of great accomplishment and service to humanity. Cesar was born March 31, 1927 in Yuma, Arizona on a farm his grandfather homesteaded in the 1880s. At age 10, his life as a migrant farm worker began when his family lost their land during the Great Depression. These were bitterly poor years for the Chavez family as they, together with thousands of other displaced families, migrated throughout the Southwest to labor in the fields and vineyards.

Although he possessed a thirst for learning that he would exhibit throughout the course of his life, Cesar left school after the eighth grade to help support his family. He joined the U.S. Navy in 1945 and served in the Western Pacific in the aftermath of World War II. In 1948, he married Helen Febela, whom he met while working in the vineyards of Delano. The Chavez family settled in the East San Jose barrio of Sal Si Puedes from which he continued to work in the surrounding fields, orchards, and vineyards of the region.

It was in 1952 that Cesar's life as a community organizer began. While working in the apricot orchards outside San Jose, he became a full-time organizer with the Community Service Organization (CSO), a self-help group among Mexican-Americans. In this capacity he organized voter registration drives, battled racial and economic discrimination, and organized CSO chapters across California and Arizona. Following his dream to establish an organization dedicated to farm workers, Cesar moved his family to Delano, California in 1962 to establish the National Farm Workers Association.

Over the next 31 years, Cesar would forge a legacy of service, conviction and principled leadership that serves as a beacon for all Americans. As President of the United Farm Workers of America (UFW), AFL-CIO, he founded and led the first successful farm workers union in U.S. history. Under his stewardship a broad coalition of unions, religious groups, students, minorities, and consumers joined together to pursue social justice.

The late Senator Robert Kennedy called Cesar E. Chavez, "One of the heroic figures of our time." As a testimony to his lifelong contributions to humanity, he received the highest civilian awards from the United States and Mexico, the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Aguila Azteca, respectively.

This is the legacy that we celebrate and seek to share with our children and all Californians through the Cesar Chavez Day of Service and Learning.

-California Volunteers