Fighting for Workers and Civil Rights

(Also available in Spanish)

Hispanics have played a significant role in fighting for and securing access and equity in working conditions and education. We've highlighted just a few people, organizations and events that have helped improve all of our lives.

• Cesar Chavez dedicated his life to achieving better working conditions for the poor and exploited migrant farmers of the western United States. He is regarded as one of the most important people in the U.S. labor movement.  
• Hernandez v. Texas extended constitutional protection to Mexican Americans as outlined in the 14th Amendment, which guaranteed protection regardless of race or class.
• American GI Forum was started in response to growing racism and discrimination against Hispanic war veterans after World War II.

• Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF) has fought for Latino civil rights for 35 years.

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Cesar Chavez
Cesar Estrada Chavez was born on March 31, 1927. During the Great Depression, his family was forced to give up their farm, and at only 10 years old, Chavez became a migrant farmer. He attended 38 different schools before quitting at the end of eighth grade to support his family full time.

In the late 1940s, Chavez was introduced to Mahatma Gandhi’s teachings of nonviolence and was inspired to use Gandhi’s techniques to improve the lives of migrant farmers in the United States. Chavez joined the Community Service Organization (CSO), a group dedicated to helping immigrants gain citizenship and voting rights, and quickly developed as a leader and an organizer; it was not long before Chavez was made president of the CSO.

In 1962, Chavez left the CSO to start his own organization called the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA). He spent three years recruiting members and in 1965 joined a mostly Filipino union called the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC) in a strike against the Delano, Calif. grape growers for better wages. With Chavez’s leadership, the NFWA and the AWOC merged to form what would eventually become the United Farm Workers (UFW), AFL-CIO. Insisting on the use of nonviolent techniques during the strike, Chavez fasted for 25 days in 1968 to inspire and rededicate his members. In the process, Chavez gained the support of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy and was propelled onto the national political scene. Finally, after five long years of struggle, the Delano grape growers were forced to sign contracts with the union, a historic victory in the U.S. labor movement.

The UFW went on to fight and win many more labor battles. According to a nationwide Louis Harris poll, during the early 1970s, Cesar Chavez and the UFW inspired as many as 17 million Americans to boycott grapes. By the early 1980s, thanks to a number of election victories and successful contract negotiations, the UFW had grown to protect nearly 45,000 members. Chavez broadened his union’s cause by turning attention toward the use of pesticides and its effect on the health of both farm workers and the public consuming the produce. His selfless dedication to noble causes, even at the expense of his own health, has served as an inspiration not only to Hispanic Americans but also to people everywhere. On April 23, 1993, at the age of 66, Chavez died in his sleep near his birthplace in Yuma, Ariz. One year later, President Clinton posthumously awarded Chavez the Presidential Medal of Freedom, one of our nation’s highest honors.

Hernandez v. Texas
Hernandez v. Texas was argued before the U.S. Supreme Court in 1954. The focus of the case was whether Hernandez, a migrant worker who was convicted of murder in a small Texas town, received a fair trial given the systematic exclusion of persons of Mexican origin from jury duty. Gustavo Garcia, a Mexican civil rights lawyer, represented Hernandez and argued that the Fourteenth Amendment guaranteed protection not only on the basis of "race" but also "class." The State insisted, however, that the Fourteenth Amendment only covered blacks and whites, and that the absence of persons of Mexican origin from jury duty was a coincidence, not a pattern of discrimination. Garcia presented evidence that showed Mexican Americans treated as a separate class in society. The Supreme Court recognized "class distinctions" between "white" and "Hispanics" and found that different treatment on such a basis violates equal protection laws. Hernandez’s conviction was overturned.

The American GI Forum

Approximately 500,000 Latinos served in World War II for the United States. Upon their return, many were greeted with less respect than that given to other veterans. In the years following WWII, Army Major and physician Dr. Hector P. Garcia watched as the Naval Station at Corpus Christi refused to treat sick veterans who were Latino. Unable to stand for such blatant discrimination any longer, the young doctor founded the American GI Forum in 1948, the country’s first Latino veterans’ advocacy group.

Garcia’s organization received national attention when the remains of Felix Longoria, a Mexican-American soldier killed three years earlier while on a mission in the Pacific, were returned to his relatives in Three Rivers, Texas, for final burial. The only funeral parlor in his hometown would not allow Longoria’s family to hold services for Longoria because of his Mexican heritage. Longoria’s widow approached the Forum for help, and soon the incident became subject of outrage across the country. Ultimately, with the help of the Forum and the sponsorship of U.S. Sen. Lyndon B. Johnson, Longoria was put to rest in Arlington Cemetery.

Quickly expanding its mission and opening chapters across the U.S., the American GI Forum went on to provide a number of services for Latino veterans, making sure they received the educational, medical, housing and other benefits promised in the GI Bill of Rights. The organization has been active both in the courtroom and in promoting voter registration. Garcia remained a visible and vocal leader and was appointed ambassador to the U.N. during Johnson's term as president and was presented with the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Ronald Regan in 1984. He died in 1996 at the age of 82. The Forum continues its work today, providing financial support, job training and counseling for veterans of Hispanic heritage.

Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF)
Started in Texas in 1968, MALDEF has advocated and fought for Latino civil rights in the workplace and community at large. By 1973, MALDEF had established itself in a Supreme Court victory (White et al. v. Regester, et al.), forcing Texas into compliance with the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Under the leadership of Vilma Martinez in the 1970s, MALDEF developed a more sophisticated fundraising endeavor and set up the Chicana Rights Project to challenge sex-discrimination against Mexican-American women. MALDEF also joined the Southwest Voter Registration Education Project, filing more than 80 lawsuits between 1974 and 1984 to combat voter inequalities.

Highlights of MALDEF’s Advocacy Efforts

• Equitable funding of schools as argued in Edgewood
  v. Kirby and Rodriguez v. L.A. Unified School District.
• Eliminating discrimination in employment hiring and promotion was highlighted in Alaniz v. Tillie Lewis Foods, Ballasteros v. Lucky, and Urquidez v. General Telephone.
• Fighting for voting rights by urging Congress to include Latinos in the 1965 renewal of the Voting Rights Act.