Dolores Huerta, a labor activist and civil rights leader who co-founded with Cesar Chavez the organization that became the United Farmers, has died, her family said in a statement posted on social media. She is 96 years old.
Huerta died Wednesday at her home, her family said in a statement through her foundation.
“As you can imagine, this is an extremely difficult time for us and we ask for privacy as we grieve this incredible loss our family has suffered,” the family said. “We know many people around the world share our grief.”
Huerta maintained a busy schedule well into her 90s, attending protests on behalf of her Bakersfield, Calif.-based foundation and speaking in cities across the country on race, poverty, LGBTQ+ and women’s rights.
Huerta’s determination cemented her place in history as one of America’s greatest figures. influential labor leadercivil rights icon and feminist activist. Her three-word Spanish slogan “Sí se puede” – which translates to “Yes, it can be done” – is rooted in the belief that people can affect change.
Her work has earned her many honors over the decades, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor. then-President Barack Obama Awards In 2012, he praised Huerta as a tenacious leader and joked that he had appropriated her slogan during his 2008 campaign.
This year, Huerta revealed that she sent shockwaves through the Latino community. sexual abuse She had a sexual relationship with Chavez in the 1960s that resulted in the birth of two children, a secret she kept for 60 years, even long after Chavez’s death.
From the early 1970s, Huerta’s life partner was Cesar’s brother, Richard Chavez, and they had four children. She also has seven children from two previous marriages.
Huerta said she had long remained silent because she feared speaking out would undermine her life’s work and undermine all the progress made for workers.
In a 2026 interview with news agency Latino USA, when asked how he kept his secret, Huerta said: “This is my personal pain, this is my personal problem, and you know, I think it’s worth it because it’s a cross that I’m going to bear. I’ll say that.”
homegrown activism
Huerta was born Dolores Clara Fernandez in 1930 in Dawson, New Mexico. Her father was a miner and union activist who later won a seat in the state Legislature. Her parents divorced when she was three, and her mother took her and her brother to California.
Living in a melting pot of Mexican, Filipino, African-American, Japanese and Chinese working-class families, Huerta learned independence, compassion and activism from her mother, who owned a restaurant and hotel.
Huerta, a young, energetic elementary school teacher in the farm-rich San Joaquin Valley, decided to answer another calling after becoming frustrated with her students’ poor living conditions.
“I couldn’t bear to see kids hungry and needing shoes to come to class,” she said in a 2017 PBS Independent Lens documentary about her life. “I thought I could do more by organizing farm workers than trying to educate their hungry children.”
Huerta’s early work with Stockton civil rights groups led to her meeting with Chavez. The two wanted to draw more attention to the plight of farm workers and founded the National Farm Workers Association in 1962, which was renamed the United Farm Workers a few years later. She has been a key leader and negotiator for the union for many years.
She was one of those who took to the picket lines with Filipino grape pickers as part of the five-year Delano Grape Strike. She worked with Chavez to negotiate collective bargaining agreements and contracts with large growers, winning the first farmworker health and welfare program.
Chavez, who died in 1993, once described her as fearless, dedicated to her cause and tough in negotiations.
in the campaign
In 1968, she met U.S. Sen. Robert F. Kennedy of Massachusetts during his visit to Delano and became a volunteer for his presidential campaign, registering Mexican-Americans to vote in California. After Kennedy won the California primary, Huerta took the stage with Kennedy, who publicly thanked her before he was shot.
The assassination devastated Huerta, but she continued to organize for farm workers’ rights.
Huerta was jailed 22 times for union demonstrations. In 1988, she was seriously injured while protesting against a UFW grape boycott during Republican presidential candidate George H.W. Bush’s visit to San Francisco.
She was trapped in a crowd and hit with a police baton. Three of her ribs were broken, her spleen was shattered and she required more than a dozen blood transfusions. She settled with the city to resolve her claim.
After a long recovery, Huerta shifted her focus to fighting for women’s rights and encouraging Latinos to run for office.
She also campaigned for Democratic Presidents Bill Clinton, Obama and Joe Biden. California Gov. Gavin Newsom considers her a close friend.
Powered by courage
Emilio Huerta, one of Dolores’ 13 children, once mentioned his mother’s courage in an interview, calling it one of the most important driving forces in her life’s work.
“It takes a lot of courage to dedicate one’s life to the dream of building a farm workers’ union, to take on the responsibility of agriculture, which remains a powerful force to this day,” he said.
Huerta learned the art of lobbying politicians. She provided financial aid to the unemployed and disability insurance for California farmworkers. She has spoken out against toxic pesticides, pushed for amnesty for illegal immigrants in the country and opposed the federal guest worker program.
By leading nationwide boycotts of grapes and lettuce in the early 1970s, she helped create the economic pressure and political climate needed for California to pass the first state law recognizing farm workers’ collective bargaining rights.
Her work has earned her many honors. She was the first Latina to be inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame and has received honorary doctorates from nine American universities.
Schools in California, Texas and Colorado are named after her. Her image appears on numerous murals and streets are named after her, but she hasn’t always won over more liberal activists.
In 2016, when she endorsed Hillary Clinton over Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders in the Democratic presidential primary, actor Rosario Dawson — a Sanders supporter who played Huerta in a 2014 film about Cesar Chavez — said Huerta had become “a tool of the establishment.”
Dawson and Huerta eventually reconciled.
Guitarist Carlos Santana executive produced a documentary based on Huerta’s life after the two talked about music late at night in Hawaii. Santana, a Miles Davis fan, discovered that Huerta was a huge fan of pop legend Charlie Parker.
“I even met Charlie Parker. That’s what made me famous,” Huerta, 87, joked in an interview with The Associated Press.
Her work as a leader of the labor movement reverberated across the United States and beyond, making her name synonymous with civil rights.
In the 2025 documentary Seeds of Change: The Life and Legacy of Dolores Huerta, she recounted her decades of activism and spoke of the inspiration she drew from the women’s movement of the 1970s, saying it proved she could stand on stage with other labor leaders.
“I hope my legacy will be one of organizing against injustice,” she says in the video. “We want to give our children an inheritance of justice, not jewels or property or money because they will just fight for it. So the most important thing is to give them a love of justice – I think that’s the greatest gift any of us can have.”