Cesar Chavez

As a child, Cesar Chavez lived a stable, contented life on his family's Arizona farm. Then, in 1937, when Chavez was ten years old, crop failure made it impossible for his family to pay their taxes and the Chavez farm was put up for auction. After a lifetime of stability, Chavez and his family were suddenly nomads, working, like countless other Mexican Americans, as migrant workers who traveled from farm to farm. Taking the jobs that no one else wanted -- backbreaking fieldwork, using primitive tools and sometimes only their hands -- these Mexican-American laborers were paid obscenely low wages and worked in harsh conditions. Though they were treated as second-class citizens, their transient existence made it difficult for them to unite and negotiate for improvements. Then, in 1962, Cesar Chavez founded the union that would later become the United Farm Workers of America. Leading by his example of nonviolent civil disobedience, Chavez spent the next 30 years of his life uniting farm workers in the battle against the nation's most powerful farm owners. Through his determination and persistence, Chavez won the first contract for Mexican-American laborers in history, upholding not only the dignity of migrant workers, but Mexican Americans everywhere. Book jacket.Marcovitz, Hal is the author of 'Cesar Chavez' with ISBN 9780791075159 and ISBN 079107515X.