Cesar Estrada Chavez Research Paper

Born in Yuma, Arizona 1927, Cesar Estrada Chavez was the second born of his six siblings. His family owned a ranch and was part of that business, but when the Great Depression hit the United States in the 1930s, his family was hit hard by the economic downturn, and ultimately lost their business. With their business in ruin, the Chavez family moved to California where they settled themselves as migrant farm workers (Cesar Chavez Biography). The family soon began facing the hardships of life as migrant farm workers. For instance, Cesar Chavez stated that he did not like school as he was always drifting from one location to another with his family in search of work and would be ridiculed by his teachers that minded him speaking Spanish. He eventually
quit school in the seventh grade to help out his family with their labor in the fields (Levy 23-25). A couple years later, Chavez enlisted in the United States’ Navy and consequently served there for two years. After serving his time with the Navy, he returned to work in the fields (Cesar Chavez Biography). Soon after however, he became the organizer for the civil rights group, ‘Community Service Organization’ (CSO). About six years after joining, he became the national director of the CSO, his first steady job in the sense that he received a paycheck and stayed in one place. Throughout the ten years he spent working with CSO, he realized that, while the civil rights organization was doing some good for communities and providing relief for the poor in said communities, “a farm workers’ union was needed to end the exploitation of the workers in the fields, if we [are] to strike at the roots of their suffering” (Levy 3). After taking time to think it through for four years, he finally took a stand and convinced his wife and children that he should leave CSO and form a union in their own way to help farm workers. With the support of Dolores Huerta, another former CSO member, Chavez would subsequently start a union.