After Father McDonnell came another very influential person, Fred Ross.Ĭesar became an organizer for Ross’ organization, the Community Service Organization – CSO. They talked about farm workers and strikes. First Fernando, then Sylvia, then Linda, and five more children were to follow.Ĭesar returned to San Jose where he met and was influenced by Father Donald McDonnell. They settled in Delano and started their family. They honeymooned in California by visiting all the California Missions from Sonoma to San Diego (again the influence of education). Navy, which was then segregated, in 1946, at the age of 19, and served for two years.
He believed that, “The end of all education should surely be service to others,” a belief that he practiced until his untimely death. The walls of his office in La Paz (United Farm Worker Headquarters ) are lined with hundreds of books ranging from philosophy, economics, cooperatives, and unions, to biographies on Gandhi and the Kennedys’. While his childhood school education was not the best, later in life, education was his passion.
Because his father, Librado, had been in an accident and because he did not want his mother, Juana, to work in the fields, he could not to go to high school, and instead became a migrant farm worker. In 1942 he graduated from the eighth grade. He felt that education had nothing to do with his farm worker/migrant way of life. He and his brother, Richard, attended thirty-seven schools. He remembers seeing signs that read whites only. He remembers having to listen to a lot of racist remarks. He also remembers that some schools were segregated and he felt that in the integrated schools he was like a monkey in a cage. He remembers being punished with a ruler to his knuckles for violating the rule. The teachers were mostly Anglo and only spoke English. He did not like school as a child, probably because he spoke only Spanish at home. He and his family worked in the fields of California from Brawley to Oxnard, Atascadero, Gonzales, King City, Salinas, McFarland, Delano, Wasco, Selma, Kingsburg, and Mendota. They lived in the barrio called Sal Si Puedes -“Get Out If You Can.” Cesar thought the only way to get out of the circle of poverty was to work his way up and send the kids to college. They returned to California in June 1939 and this time settled in San Jose. He lived in La Colonia Barrio in Oxnard for a short period, returning to Arizona several months later. In 1938 he and his family moved to California. Later, he would say, The love for justice that is in us is not only the best part of our being but it is also the most true to our nature. Cesar learned a lesson about injustice that he would never forget. Later when Cesar’s father could not pay the interest on the loan the lawyer bought back the land and sold it to the original owner. Cesar’s dad went to a lawyer who advised him to borrow money and buy the land. The agreement was broken and the land sold to a man named Justus Jackson. Cesar’s father agreed to clear eighty acres of land and in exchange he would receive the deed to forty acres of land that adjoined the home. Cesar grew up in Arizona the small adobe home, where Cesar was born was swindled from them by dishonest Anglos. He learned about justice or rather injustice early in his life. He passed away on April 23, 1993, in San Luis, a small village near Yuma, Arizona. Regrettably, the story of Cesar Estrada Chavez also ends near Yuma, Arizona. He was named after his grandfather, Cesario. The story of Cesar Estrada Chavez begins near Yuma, Arizona.
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