As
the 20th Century was coming to a close, Ladies Home Journal
named labor leader and civil rights activist, Dolores Huerta,
as one of the 100 most important woman of the century. She is
best known for co-founding, with Cesar Chavez, what was to become
the UFW (United Farm Workers), and for staging the Delano Grape
Strike from 1965 to 1970, which successfully secured the first
collective bargaining agreements for farm workers in America.
Dolores Huerta left her job as a teacher to become an activist
and organizer, working to end discrimination and improve conditions
for farm workers, because it broke her heart to see her students
coming to class hungry and dressed in shoddy clothes. She felt
she could help her community more by "organizing farm workers
than by trying to teach their hungry children." Over the next
50 years, while raising 11 children of her own, Dolores has worked
tirelessly to improve the lives of immigrants, the workers, and
women and children in America. In 2002, Delores Huerta started
the Dolores Huerta Foundation, a nonprofit organization she heads
that nurtures, empowers and organizes grassroots leaders, to continue
the work of improving the lives of the working poor and women
and children in their communities.
