劳工活动家、民权偶像多洛雷斯·韦尔塔逝世，享年96岁

Dolores Huerta, labor activist and civil rights icon, dies at age 96

October 28, 2026 / 2:36 PM EDT / CBS/AP

Dolores Huerta, the labor activist and civil rights leader who co-founded with Cesar Chavez the group that later became the United Farm Workers, has died, her family said in a statement posted to social media. She was 96.

Huerta’s family said in a statement through her Bakersfield, California-based foundation that she died Wednesday at home.

“As you can imagine, this is an incredibly difficult time for us, and we ask for privacy as we grieve this incredible loss to our family,” the family said. “We know that many of you around the world share in our mourning.”

California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who considered Huerta a close friend, ordered flags be flown at half-staff in her honor.

“Dolores represented the best of us,” Newsom said in a statement. “California — and the United States — would not be what we are today without her resolute spirit, her passion for justice and fairness, and her commitment to those overlooked and forgotten.”

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass described Huerta’s legacy as “proof of what ordinary people can accomplish when they organize.”

“Dolores reminded us that no matter the odds, no matter the obstacle, we can build a greater life for ourselves, our community, our city, and our country,” Bass said in a statement. “She never, never stopped working. She was fighting for civil rights every day, into her nineties. Those who knew her, worried about her, but the intensity of her fight continued on.”

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who represents San Francisco in Congress, called Huerta a dear friend who led with courage and determination.

“We all responded to her rallying cry, ‘Sí se puede,’ which inspired generations of Americans to believe in the power of collective action,” Pelosi said in a statement, referring to Huerta’s three-word Spanish-language slogan, which translates to “Yes, it can be done.”

Huerta kept a busy schedule, marching in protests and speaking in cities across the country about race, poverty, LGBTQ+ and women’s rights on behalf of her foundation.

Huerta’s resolve cemented her place in history as one of the nation’s most influential labor leaders, civil rights icons and feminist activists.

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Dolores Huerta attends La Cena Los Angeles: Celebration of Latino Culture on Feb. 21, 2025. Presley Ann/Getty Images

Her work over the decades earned her a number of accolades, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor. When then-President Barack Obama presented the award in 2012, he praised Huerta as a tenacious leader and joked that he had stolen her slogan for his 2008 campaign.

This year, Huerta sent shockwaves through the Latino community when she revealed that she was sexually abused in the 1960s by Chavez, leading to the birth of two children, a secret she kept for 60 years and long after he died.

From the early 1970s on, Huerta’s life partner was Richard Chavez, César’s brother, and together they had four kids. She also had seven children from two earlier marriages.

Huerta said she had kept silent for so long because she feared that coming forward would compromise her life’s work and unravel all the progress made for workers.

When asked during a 2026 interview with the news organization Latino USA about keeping the secret, Huerta said: “It was my personal pain, it was my personal problem and, you know, I think it was worth it because it was my cross to bear. I’ll say it that way.”

Homegrown activism

Huerta was born Dolores Clara Fernandez in 1930 in Dawson, New Mexico. Her father was a miner and union activist who went on to win a seat in the state Legislature. Her parents divorced when she was 3, and her mother took her and her brothers to California.

Immersed in a melting pot of Mexican, Filipino, African American, Japanese and Chinese working families, Huerta learned from her mother — who owned a restaurant and hotel — about independence, compassion and activism.

Huerta was a young, energetic elementary school teacher in the farm-rich San Joaquin Valley when she decided to answer another calling after growing frustrated by her students’ poor living conditions.

“I couldn’t stand seeing kids come to class hungry and needing shoes,” she said in a 2017 PBS Independent Lens documentary on her life. “I thought I could do more by organizing farmworkers than by trying to teach their hungry children.”

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Dolores Huerta, co-founder of the United Farm Workers group, is seen with a union flag in the 1970s. Cathy Murphy/Getty Images

Huerta’s early work with a civil rights group in Stockton resulted in her meeting Chavez. The two wanted to focus more on the plight of farmworkers, so in 1962 they started the National Farm Workers Association, which became United Farm Workers of America a few years later. She was a key leader and negotiator for the union for years.

She was among those who joined Filipino grape pickers on the picket line in what became the five-year “Delano Grape Strike.” With Chavez, she negotiated collective bargaining agreements and contracts with big growers, winning the first health and benefit plans for farmworkers.

Chavez, who died in 1993, once described her as fearless, committed to the cause and tough when it came to negotiations.

On the campaign trail

She met U.S. Sen. Robert Kennedy of New York during his visit to Delano in 1968 and became a volunteer on his presidential campaign, registering Mexican Americans in California to vote. Huerta was onstage with Kennedy after he won the California primary and he publicly thanked her moments before he was shot.

The assassination devastated Huerta, but she kept organizing for farmworkers’ rights.

Huerta was jailed 22 times for union demonstrating. In 1988, she was seriously injured while protesting Republican presidential candidate George H.W. Bush’s opposition to the UFW grape boycott during his visit to San Francisco.

Caught in a crowd, she was struck by a police officer’s baton, suffered three broken ribs and a pulverized spleen, and required more than a dozen blood transfusions. She reached a settlement with the city to resolve her claims.

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United Farm Workers’ leader Dolores Huerta at the UFW headquarters in San Francisco on March 8, 1989. Mike Maloney/San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images

After a long recovery, Huerta shifted focus and hit the road to campaign for women’s rights and encourage Latinas to run for office.

She also campaigned for Democratic Presidents Bill Clinton, Obama and Joe Biden.

Clinton called Huerta a “stalwart champion of working Americans” in a statement praising her contributions to the country.

“To see her in action was to witness a living legend who never stopped pushing for progress and seeing every new obstacle as a fresh opportunity to educate, to organize, and to uplift — even as those efforts sometimes brought her grave consequences,” Clinton said.

Fueled by courage

Emilio Huerta, one of Dolores’ 13 children, once pointed to his mom’s courage during an interview, saying it was one of the most significant drivers of her life’s work.

“To dedicate your life to building a dream of a union for farmworkers, to take on agriculture, which to this day is still a powerhouse. … That took a lot of guts,” he said.

Huerta learned the art of lobbying politicians. She secured financial aid for the unemployed and disability insurance for California farmworkers. She spoke out against toxic pesticides, pushed for amnesty for immigrants in the country illegally and fought federal guest worker programs.

By directing nationwide boycotts of grapes and lettuce in the early 1970s, she helped to create the economic pressure and political climate necessary for California to pass what would be the first state law recognizing farmworkers’ right to collective bargaining.

Her work earned her many accolades. She was the first Latina to be inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame and she’s received nine honorary doctorates from U.S. universities.

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Dolores Huerta, co-founder of the United Farm Workers, receives an honorary degree from the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, May 12, 2023. Sarah Reingewirtz/MediaNews Group/Los Angeles Daily News via Getty Images

Schools are named in her honor in California, Texas and Colorado. Her image graces many murals, and streets bear her name, but she didn’t always win favor with more liberal activists.

In 2016, when she endorsed Hillary Clinton instead of Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont in the presidential Democratic primary, actor Rosario Dawson — a Sanders supporter who played Huerta in a 2014 movie about Cesar Chavez — said Huerta had become “an instrument of the establishment.”

Dawson and Huerta eventually reconciled.

Guitarist Carlos Santana later oversaw a documentary based on Huerta’s life after the pair had a late-night conversation about music while in Hawaii. Santana, a Miles Davis fan, discovered Huerta was a huge fan of bebop legend Charlie Parker.

“I even met Charlie Parker. That’s my claim to fame,” Huerta joked during an interview with The Associated Press when she was 87.

It was her work as a leader within the labor movement that reverberated through the U.S. 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-long journey in activism and talked about the inspiration she drew from the women’s movement during the 1970s, saying it provided validation that she too could stand on the stage with other labor leaders.

“I hope that my legacy will be one of an organizer that organized to fight injustice,” she said in the film. “We want to give our children an inheritance of justice, right, not jewels or property or money because they’ll just fight over it. So the main thing to do is to give them this love for justice — and that is the greatest gift I think that any of us can have.”