Cesar Chavez Research Paper

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Jonathan Nuttall Mr. Chavez Spanish 3 9/28/30 The Life and Legacy of Cesar Chavez Cesar Chavez was a well known union leader and labor organizer. Using his experience as a migrant worker, Chavez created the National Farm Workers Association in 1962. The National Farm Workers Association partnered with the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee to begin their first strike against grape growers in California, and the two groups eventually joined to become the United Farm Workers. Believing strongly in the use of nonviolence, Chavez got attention for his causes through boycotts, marches, and his famous hunger strikes. Despite problems with the Teamsters union and legal issues, he was able to increase raises and better the conditions for the…show more content…
It was during these years that Chavez experienced the conditions that he would spend so much of his life working to change: wretched migrant camps, corrupt labor contractors, poor wages for hard work, and racism. A lot of things changed for Cesar when in September 1965 his young Farm Workers Association decided to join a strike that had been started by Filipino farm workers suffering from the same issues in Delano’s grape fields. It was not long until Chavez and the United Farm Workers became nationally known. Chavez’s use of nonviolence, religious organizations, and mass mobilizing techniques like the famous march in Sacramento in 1966 brought the grape strike and boycott of them by consumers into the minds and hearts of the whole United States. The boycott especially was responsible for forcing the growers to recognize the United Farm Workers. The first contracts were signed in 1966, but were followed by more years of problems. In 1968 Chavez went on his first fast for twenty-five days to convince the growing demand for violence within the union to stop. Victory finally came on July 29, 1970, when a large amount of Delano growers formally

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