Dolores Huerta, co-founder of the United Farm Workers, dies at 96
Labor leader and civil rights figure Dolores Huerta, who co-founded the United Farm Workers with Cesar Chavez, has died at 96, her family said.
Dolores Huerta, who co-founded the United Farm Workers union with Cesar Chavez, has died at the age of 96, according to ABC News, which cited her family. NBC News reported the death, describing Huerta as a figure who spent decades fighting for marginalized communities.
PBS NewsHour reports that Huerta died Wednesday from cancer at her home in Bakersfield, California. The network aired a remembrance looking back at her life and legacy as tributes began to circulate.
NPR describes Huerta as an influential labor leader, feminist and civil rights icon. The network says she co-founded the union to improve working conditions in the nation's fruit and vegetable fields, and that she coined the Spanish-language slogan commonly rendered as "yes, we can," which became a widespread rallying cry.
Coverage so far focuses on her role in building the union and on the lasting reach of her public words. The initial reports do not describe memorial plans or other arrangements.
Background
The United Farm Workers grew out of organizing among farmworkers in California during the early 1960s. Farm laborers were excluded from many of the protections that the federal government extended to most private-sector workers in the 1930s, including the right to bargain collectively under the main national labor law. That gap left field workers with low pay, poor housing, little job security and frequent exposure to pesticides and heat.
Huerta and Chavez worked to organize these workers through community-based groups and then through a union that expanded into a national movement. The union's most visible campaigns included strikes in the Central Valley and consumer boycotts aimed at grape growers and retailers, tactics that drew wide public attention and, in some cases, sharp opposition from growers and their allies. Over time the union negotiated contracts with several agricultural employers, and its organizing methods influenced later campaigns for low-wage and immigrant workers.
Huerta's public profile also rested on the slogan she popularized, which became a staple of marches, union halls and political rallies well beyond farm country. Her work often combined labor organizing with advocacy on women's rights, voter registration and community services, a set of concerns that has become central to later debates about who gets represented in the American labor movement. The union she helped build remains active, though its membership and influence have changed significantly since its early decades.
Why it matters
Huerta's death closes a chapter for a generation of activists who turned agricultural labor into a national question. Farmworkers were long treated as outside mainstream labor politics, and the movement she helped build forced public debate about wages, safety, and the dignity of work that many Americans never see up close. Her life shows how organizing at the local level can shape national policy and public language.
Her influence is also tied to the people who worked alongside her. Her death invites reflection on the many organizers, often women and immigrants, whose names rarely appear in headlines but whose daily efforts sustained the movement. Remembering her contribution accurately means recognizing a team effort, not a single figure.
The moment also raises questions about how the farm labor movement will be remembered and taught. Some historians and advocates emphasize the union's victories, while others focus on internal disputes and the tensions of building a movement under hard conditions. How her legacy is framed will shape how younger workers understand what collective bargaining can accomplish, and what it still struggles to achieve in a sector that depends heavily on seasonal and immigrant labor.
What to watch
Expect a wave of tributes from labor groups, civil rights organizations and political leaders, along with commemorations in California's farming communities. Watch whether the union announces memorial plans or a public event that brings together current members and longtime supporters.
Keep an eye on how historians, archivists and journalists approach her papers, oral histories and recorded speeches, which could offer fuller accounts of her work. Also watch whether her death prompts renewed discussion of farmworker protections, pay and heat standards, and the legal status of the workers who make up much of the agricultural labor force.
Viewpoints
Commentary from our columns: three angles on this story.
The Long View history and context
Every generation tends to hand its heroes a neat story, but the history of farm labor in America is messier and more interesting than any single portrait. Dolores Huerta belongs to a long line of people who tried to win basic rights for workers who were left out of the laws that shaped industrial life. Their struggle began well before the 1960s and has never fully ended.
Looking back from this moment, what stands out is how much depended on sustained, unglamorous work: meetings in church basements, boycotts that lasted for years, negotiations that moved slowly. Huerta's public voice gave the movement its rhythm, but the movement itself rested on thousands of people willing to take risks for modest gains.
Her passing is a good moment to remember that progress for working people is rarely a straight line. The arguments over wages, safety and representation that she helped bring into the open are still being fought. Reading her life against that longer arc may be the best tribute of all.
The Ground Level what it means for ordinary people
For most people, the phrase "farm labor" is abstract. It describes the workers who pick fruit and vegetables that end up on dinner tables, often under heat, long hours and uncertain pay. Dolores Huerta spent much of her life insisting that those workers mattered and deserved a real voice at the bargaining table.
Her death matters at the kitchen-table level because the conditions she fought over still shape daily life for many families. A union contract can mean a steadier paycheck, a safer job, or a chance to speak up without fear. Those are concrete things, and they were not handed out freely.
Readers who want to honor her can start locally: learn where the food they buy comes from, ask grocers and restaurants about labor practices, and support organizations that represent farmworkers in their own communities. Her slogan was simple. Acting on it has always taken ordinary people.
The Optimist the hopeful reading
There is something hopeful in how far a single voice can travel. Dolores Huerta took a phrase that began in the fields of California and turned it into a rallying cry that people still repeat in languages and places she never visited. That kind of reach is rare, and it reminds us that words can outlast the people who first speak them.
The movement she helped build also left a legacy of organized workers who expected to be heard. Many farmworkers today have access to protections and representation that once seemed out of reach, and the principle that labor deserves dignity has spread into broader conversations about fairness at work.
Her life suggests that determined people can change what is possible, even when the odds look stacked against them. The best way to honor that is to keep the work going, to bring new people into the fight and to believe, as she did, that yes, it can be done.