Dolores Huerta has worked to improve social and economic conditions for farm workers and to fight discrimination. To further her cause, she created the Agricultural Workers Association (AWA) in 1960 and co-founded what would become the United Farm Workers (UFW). Huerta stepped down from the UFW in 1999, but she continues her efforts to improve the lives of workers, immigrants and women. Born in New Mexico in April 10, 1930, Huerta co-founded the nation’s largest farm workers union and was the first woman in U.S. history to organize and lobby on behalf of migrant workers.

On September 16, 1988 Huerta was distributing brochures to a crowd outside San Francisco’s Union Square hotel, where the then Vice President George Bush was making a speech. When police came to break up the crowd, Huerta endured a hail of blows from a police baton. Her injuries included six broken ribs and a pulverized spleen. She required more than a dozen blood transfusions.

She has been the recipient of many awards including the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Ellis Island Medal of Freedom.

A link to her foundation: http://doloreshuerta.org/dolores-huerta/

An additional link to a brief time-line on the History of Women in the Labor Movement. On the United Healthcare Workers site: http://www.seiu-uhw.org/archives/20663