BAKERSFIELD, Calif. — Dolores Huerta, the legendary labor organizer and civil rights advocate who co-founded the movement that became the United Farm Workers, died Wednesday, Oct. 28, at her home in Bakersfield. She was 96.
Huerta’s family announced her death through the Dolores Huerta Foundation, saying she died surrounded by close relatives. The family requested privacy and said plans to honor and celebrate her life would be announced later.
For more than seven decades, Huerta fought for farmworkers, women, immigrants and communities whose political and economic power had long been ignored. She became one of the nation’s most influential organizers and helped transform field workers’ demands for fair pay, safe conditions and basic benefits into a national civil rights campaign.
Born Dolores Clara Fernández on April 10, 1930, in Dawson, New Mexico, Huerta grew up in Stockton, California. She briefly worked as a teacher but left the classroom after seeing farmworkers’ children arrive hungry and in need of shoes, according to the National Park Service.
In 1962, Huerta and César Chávez founded the National Farm Workers Association, which later became the United Farm Workers. She helped organize the Delano grape strike, led nationwide consumer boycotts and negotiated contracts that improved wages, healthcare and working conditions for agricultural laborers.
A lasting call for justice
Huerta is widely credited with popularizing “Sí, se puede”—“Yes, we can”—as an enduring call to collective action. Her organizing helped build support for California’s Agricultural Labor Relations Act of 1975, the first state law to recognize farmworkers’ collective bargaining rights.
The U.S. Department of Labor credits Huerta with helping secure disability insurance for injured California farmworkers and negotiating a landmark agricultural collective-bargaining agreement. Her advocacy later expanded to voting rights, women’s equality, immigrant rights, environmental justice and LGBTQ+ rights.
Huerta endured arrests, threats and serious injuries while leading nonviolent protests. Yet she continued organizing and speaking publicly into her 90s, urging younger generations to see civic participation as a tool for changing their communities.
President Bill Clinton presented Huerta with the Eleanor Roosevelt Award for Human Rights in 1998. President Barack Obama awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012, the nation’s highest civilian honor.
The Associated Press reported that Huerta remained active until late in life, continuing to march and speak about race, poverty, women’s rights and other justice issues through the foundation she established in 2002.
Her death closes a defining chapter in American labor history, but the institutions, laws and generations of organizers shaped by her work remain. Huerta’s legacy rests not only in the contracts and reforms she helped win, but in the belief that ordinary people can organize, speak together and force lasting change.
