More than two decades after his death, Cesar Chavez’s memory continues to be celebrated. The labor leader’s name appears on schools, street signs, community centers and parks, to name but a handful. Despite the influence he continues to have in society, much of the public remains unaware of just what Chavez did to become an internationally known civil rights activist and what his beliefs were. The remarks Chavez made about his upbringing, the plight of farm workers and the role of the community, among other issues, shed light on who he was and what motivated him to fight against injustice.

Settling a Score

Cesar Chavez said that the difficulties his family endured in his youth largely prompted him to fight for farm workers’ rights as an adult. According to the Cesar E. Chavez Foundation, the labor leader remarked about his decision to become a union organizer:

“There are vivid memories from my childhood--what we had to go through because of low wages and the conditions, basically because there was no union. I suppose if I wanted to be fair I could say that I’m trying to settle a personal score. I could dramatize it by saying that I want to bring social justice to farm workers. But the truth is that I went through a lot of hell, and a lot of people did. If we can even the score a little for the workers then we are doing something. Besides, I don’t know any other work I like to do better than this. I really don’t.”

The Link Between Social Justice and Unionization

The National Farm Worker Ministry gathered a number of Cesar Chavez quotes from 1968.  Discussing why it was important for farm workers to be able to unionize, Chaves said, “The road to social justice for the farm workers is the road to unionization.

Our cause, our strike against table grapes, and our international boycott are all founded upon our deep conviction that the form of collective self-help which is unionization holds far more hope for the farm worker than any other single approach, whether public or private. This conviction is what brings spirit, high hope and optimism to everything we do.”

Using Agriculture to Help The Urban Poor

The United Farm Workers collected a number of remarks Cesar Chavez gave about his unionizing strategy and other issues. Chavez believed that relocating the poor out of the inner city and reacquainting them with agricultural work could help overcome poverty.

He said, “As one looks at the millions of acres in this country that have been taken out of agricultural production; and at the millions of additional acres that have never been cultivated; and at the millions of people who have moved off the farm to rot and decay in the ghettoes of our big cities; and at all the millions of hungry people at home and abroad; does it not seem that all these people and things were somehow made to come together and serve one another? If we could bring them together, we could stem the mass exodus of rural poor to the big city ghettoes and start it going back the other way; teach them how to operate new farm equipment; and put them to work on those now uncultivated acres to raise food for the hungry. If a way could be found to do this, there would be not only room but positive need for still more machinery and still more productivity increase. There would be enough employment, wages, profits, food and fiber."

On The Opposition

Cesar Chavez noted that the rivals of the farm workers exerted influence but said that the laborers still would triumph because they had justice on their side. “Our opponents in the agricultural industry are very powerful and farm workers are still weak in money and influence,” he said. “But we have another kind of power that comes from the justice of our cause. So long as we are willing to sacrifice for that cause, so long as we persist in non-violence and work to spread the message of our struggle, then millions of people around the world will respond from their heart, will support our efforts…and in the end we will overcome.”