César Chávez
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LearningTranscript
00:00The signs say they're protesting for fairer wages.
00:10Dear Tim and Moby, Why are we celebrating Cesar Chavez's birthday?
00:15Thanks, Jared.
00:17Cesar Chavez was a Mexican-American farm worker who led a campaign to improve the working conditions of millions of other farm workers.
00:26He was one of the greatest civil rights leaders of the 20th century.
00:30Chavez was born in North Gila Valley near Yuma, Arizona on March 31, 1927.
00:36During the Great Depression, his family was swindled out of their home.
00:40They headed to California to find temporary work on farms.
00:44People who move around the country harvesting seasonal crops are called migrant workers.
00:50Chavez's family picked peas and lettuce in the winter, cherries and beans in the spring, corn and grapes in the summer, and cotton in the fall.
01:00Because they moved so often, Chavez went to more than 30 schools.
01:05No, a migrant farmer's life wasn't easy.
01:10It didn't pay much, and workers often lived in government camps without access to clean water or bathrooms.
01:17Kids had to switch schools all the time, and sometimes, in order to raise enough money to keep their families fed, they couldn't go to school at all.
01:26Well, sure, it's fun to get a day off from school every once in a while.
01:31But without a decent education, children of migrant workers couldn't learn the skills that could help them get better jobs.
01:38Young Cesar left school after eighth grade to work in the fields after his father was in an accident and could no longer work to feed the family.
01:46After serving in the Navy for two years, Chavez returned to field labor.
01:51Soon, he became the leader of a civil rights group for Latinos, who made up the majority of the farming labor community.
01:58Conditions for farmworkers remained pretty bad, so eventually Chavez got, well, he just got fed up.
02:05A lot of other people were fed up, too.
02:08In 1962, he and Dolores Huerta founded the National Farmworkers Association to improve wages and working conditions.
02:16It was a labor union, a group of workers who joined together in order to protect their rights.
02:22Because Chavez was influenced by the peaceful rebellions led by Mahatma Gandhi in India, he always used nonviolent ways to get his point across.
02:31Like Martin Luther King Jr., another student of Gandhi, Chavez relied on three techniques—strikes, boycotts, and protest marches.
02:40All three of these came in handy in 1965.
02:43That year, the National Farmworkers Association joined up with a group of Filipino grape pickers striking in Delano, California.
02:51A strike happens when employees of a particular company all decide not to go to work.
02:58Well, yeah, usually it's a good thing to go to work.
03:01But a strike is a nonviolent way for workers to demand things like better wages, safer working conditions, or more affordable health care from their employers.
03:11Companies don't want employees to strike because it costs money.
03:15So they'll often negotiate with strikers, and both sides will come to a compromise.
03:20Chavez also led a protest march from Delano to Sacramento, the California state capital.
03:28Well, protest marches show that people care about an issue, which can help convince leaders to pass new laws.
03:35Finally, Chavez helped convince millions of Americans to boycott grapes, to refuse to buy or eat them in support of the strikers.
03:44The strike he led finally ended in 1970, leading not just to better conditions for grape pickers, but also to more strikes and unions all over the country.
03:54It also caused a bunch of different labor unions to join up into the United Farmworkers, an organization that still works for the rights of farmworkers today.
04:03Well, Chavez is best known for the grape picker's strike.
04:07But he worked for the rest of his life for the rights of farmworkers and of Mexican-American immigrants.
04:13He died on April 23, 1993.
04:17Today, eight states recognize his birthday as a holiday, and cities all over the country have named streets, schools, and other buildings after him.
04:26Maybe we should find a different store.
04:32Thanks for watching!