Icon activist feminist fighter.
Your eyes and your ears
to us any longer. Dolores
Huerta is a living legend,
one of the most influential civil
rights leaders of the 20th century.
Her activism has spanned
more than six decades.
And now at 91 years old she
is still speaking out. You
know that people still today
are suffering because of racial
injustice and fighting back.
This is how we keep our democracy of life.
Hello, I'm Dolores Huerta.
I am the founder and president of
the dollars with the Foundation,
co-founder of the United Farm Workers
with as our Chavez and I am a Chicana.
Activist and a citizen of
the United States of America.
Well, I was born in New Mexico
and my mother would say to us
even when we were children.
You know if you see someone that
needs help, you have to help them.
Even though I had this great
job of being a teacher, he
was teaching the children of
farmworkers that Huerta says
opened her eyes to their struggle
and I went back, went to this home
where there was a family that had.
They had no linoleum on the floor.
It was a dirt floor.
Their furniture were cardboard
boxes and orange crates.
And the children were malnutrition.
I thought we, you know,
we've got to change this and this
is the way that we change it.
We get the farmer gets
to fight for themselves.
To this day. It's what Dolores
Huerta is most famous for.
An outspoken organizer who
became lead negotiator of the
United Farm Workers Union,
right hand to the civil
rights leader Cesar Chavez,
a woman of color in a man's world.
Making history. When
you look back, you do you
ever feel like you were in
the shadows of Cesar Chavez?
As a Hispanic woman, I
always saw myself as a feminist and
I do agree that I think as women we
probably need to not stand back but
stand up and not be hesitant about
getting in front of the cameras and
and being spokesperson and taking
credit for the work that we do.
Perhaps our most famous fight,
the Delano grape, strike,
when she and Cesar Chavez LED a
boycott against California grape
growers to expose the poverty,
wages and poor working conditions.
For California farmworkers,
myself, ancestor Chavez,
and his wife Helen Chavez,
we started the farm Workers Union
farm workers who are doing the most
essential work of feeding everybody.
They were so discriminated in the
fields that they were not even
provided bathrooms in the fields.
And can, you could imagine what that was
like for women not given rest periods,
not give them a water cold water
to drink while they were out there
working in the hot sun and and we
see that still happening today.
The strike lasted five years
and ended with a contract
for higher pay and benefits.
It was during those years that
Huerta coined a phrase that would
take on a life of its own.
Was there a rallying cry that still
fuels grassroots movements around the world?
Where to says since then
some things have changed.
We have made some progress in in
California, Hawaii, New York.
We do have unemployment
insurance for the farm workers.
They have a good workers comp law
if they get injured on the job
that their injuries are paid for.
These are the only three states
in the United States that have
these protections for farmworkers.
I think Washington State is
probably doing better.
I don't think that they have.
No, give farmers the right to
organize into a union, though
as you know, we are celebrating
Hispanic Heritage Month.
Do you feel like a lot of Americans
that are not of Hispanic or
Latino origin truly know the
contributions that Hispanics and
Latinos have made to this country?
No, they don't, and they
don't know the history either.
They learn about the
genocide that happened here.
The hundreds of people and Mexicans
that were lynched that were
murdered or take away their lands.
Same thing happening in Texas.
And I were, you know, Native Americans.
Mexicans were just slaughtered
to take away their land.
People need to know this history.
This is not racial history.
This is American history,
she says. It's not just history,
it's happening today. Even to her,
I tried to give us some food to a homeless
woman recently and she yelled at me.
You went back, go back where you came from.
This is constant, constant, constant.
You never know where it's going to come from.
Just so ingrained.
The racism in our society is so ingrained,
you know. We just have to put
up with it every single day,
but The thing is that I do
believe that we can change it,
but I've said before it has
to be through education
and optimism. Fueled by
the work of her nonprofit,
The Dolores Huerta Foundation.
Her daughter Camilla Chavez is
the executive director, training
everyday people how to be the change that
they want to see in their communities
and they're about to expand a $15
million grant will help open the
Dolores Huerta Peace and Justice
Foundation in Bakersfield, CA.
This is going to be. Organizing
hub a gathering place for folks.
Activists for community members.
A training ground perhaps for the
Dolores Huerta of the next generation
Dolores. What do you feel
like your legacy is?
Well, hopefully it is one of organizing,
and you know, getting people to
become activists because I think
everybody needs to be an activist.