César E. Chávez National Monument

Dolores Huerta

Larry Itliong

Philip Vera Cruz

As the 1966 march by farmworkers from Delano to Sacramento neared its conclusion, the workers won an important victory. Schenley Industries agreed to negotiate a contract. However, the struggle to bring other growers to the bargaining table continued.

This article explores changes in farm work and farmworker organizing that took place in the 1960s. The end of the Bracero Program, a strike wave, and the emergence of the Black Freedom Movement, all played a role in expanding the opportunities for farmworker organizing. So too did the emergence of a new organization, the National Farm Workers Association.

César E. Chávez National Monument, known also as Nuestra Señora Reina De La Paz (La Paz), is located in Tehachapi Pass. La Paz has acquired exceptional historical significance at the national level for its association with César E. Chávez, the most important Latino leader in the history of the United States, and for its association with the United Farm Workers of America (UFW), the first permanent agricultural labor union established in the history of United States.

César E. Chávez, a civil rights leader among Latinos during the 1950s, was leader of the United Farm Workers union and assumed major roles in the broader labor, Chicano, and environmental movements. As a result, Chávez earned a high degree of national prominence during his lifetime and improved the lives of U.S. farm workers by securing them higher wages and safer working conditions. Explore César E. Chávez National Monument via HDP’s virtual tour.

Federal laws protect everything that might be underground, including cemeteries and archeological sites. Laws are an important way to protect archeological sites that tell Cesar Chávez's stories and the activities that took place surrounding workers' rights and unionization at his home.

Co-founder, with César Chavez, of the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA) Dolores Clara Fernández Huerta was born in 1930 in Dawson, New Mexico and grew up in Stockton, California. Her organizing and activism has focused on improving the lives and working conditions of agricultural laborers, especially among the Lantinx and Chicanx living in the United States.

Visitors to César E. Chávez National Monument might be surprised to see the Chávez home surrounded by a chain-link fence. It was erected after federal agents uncovered a plot to assassinate the famous labor union organizer. For Helen Chávez, the fence was an example of how home and union life merged. She worked ceaselessly to support both family and union, understanding that violence could follow them home at any time

Over the course of the 2018-19 academic years, the National Park Service’s Washington, DC Office of Interpretation, Education and Volunteers (WASO IEV), with support from Kutztown University, has overseen a series of pilot programs aimed to facilitate unique, place-based learning experiences in national parks for military youth throughout the United States.