Previous attempts to unionize farm workers had failed, as California’s powerful agricultural industry fought back with all the weight of their wealth and political power.Ĭhavez was inspired by the nonviolent civil disobedience pioneered by Gandhi in India, and the example of St. Not covered by minimum wage laws, many made as little as 40 cents an hour, and did not qualify for unemployment insurance. Founding of National Farm Workers Association and the 1965 Grape StrikeĬhavez knew firsthand the struggles of the nation’s poorest and most powerless workers, who labored to put food on the nation’s tables while often going hungry themselves.
That same year, he used his life savings to found the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA) in Delano, California. Over the next decade, he worked to register new voters and fight racial and economic discrimination, and rose to become the CSO’s national director.Ĭhavez resigned from the CSO in 1962, after other members refused to support his efforts to form a labor union for farm workers. In 1952, Chavez was working at a lumberyard in San Jose when he became a grassroots organizer for the Community Service Organization (CSO), a Latino civil rights group.
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