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15 DOLORES HUERTA AND
THE UNITED FARM WORKERS Alicia Chávez One thing I’ve learned . . . is that having tremendous fears and anxieties is normal. . . . By doing whatever causes your anxiety, you overcome the fear, and strengthen your emotional, spiritual, activist muscles. Dolores Huerta While she appears mild-mannered and even soft-spoken, Dolores Huerta has been a fearless warrior in her career as an activist. Unflappable as a union organizer, uncompromising as a contract negotiator, unapologetic as she lived against the grain of the social and political norms of her era, she leaves an indelible legacy of labor-organizing in U.S. history. In 1962, after almost a decade of activism in the Stockton, California, chapter of the Community Service Organization, a self-help Mexican American civil rights organization, Huerta joined fellow activist César Chávez in co- founding the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA) to address the issues of migrant farm workers in California. In September 1965, the NFWA joined the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee, an affili- ate of the AFL-CIO, for the famous Delano Grape Strike, and a year later the two groups merged to form the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee, also an affiliate of the AFL-CIO. Later, the new union short- ened its name to the United Farm Workers of America (UFW). With her children in the backseat of her barely operable car, and liv- ing on only $5 per week, Huerta embarked on an exhausting and danger- 240 DOLORES HUERTA AND THE UNITED FARM WORKERS 241 ous journey of speaking engagements and door-to-door canvassing, ac- tivities that established the UFW’s membership base. She also did strate- gic planning for the Grape Strike of 1965, and in 1968 and 1969, she directed the table grape boycott in New York City. In her unyielding style, Huerta became the first woman and the first Mexican American to nego- tiate a union contract with California growers in 1970. As the UFW ex- tended its reach to the lettuce and strawberry fields, Huerta continued her unflagging organizing while lobbying legislators in both Sacramento and Washington, D.C., for laws that would aid farm workers. Her work as a persuasive lobbyist facilitated the passage of the Agricultural Labor Relations Act of 1975, which for the first time recognized and protected the collective bargaining rights of agricultural laborers in California. Huerta’s work seems all the more extraordinary when combined with her rearing eleven children. In addition, she carried her messages and life lessons to the wider political world around her, speaking out, for example, on women’s rights. Her work illuminated how women’s activism could be an essential ingredient to a successful Mexican American political movement, and how political engagement could be a path to women’s self-determination. Huerta’s activism was sparked by the deleterious impact that trans- formations in California agriculture had on Mexican communities there. Once marked by individual relationships to the land, agricultural pro- duction became a very impersonal agribusiness, with an increasing de- mand for inexpensive wage labor, on land where there had formerly been tenant farmers. These changes began at the turn of the twentieth cen- tury with the technological improvements in farming during the advance of industrialization; by World War II, a lot of agricultural land was owned in large tracts by corporations who sought low-wage workers to perform farm labor. The U.S. government permitted labor contracting in Mexico and other places to meet the increased demand for wartime foodstuffs. The most physically arduous jobs were regarded as menial and reserved for these nonwhite laborers. In this economic milieu, wages and work- ing conditions declined substantially. Life expectancy for California farm workers by the 1960s was only approximately forty-nine years. Exposed to dangerous pesticide chemicals, entire families often had to work and continually migrate with the growing seasons, keeping their children out of school. While Dolores Huerta did not grow up in a migrant fam- ily, her evolution as an organizer stemmed from lessons she learned from her parents and her own youthful experiences in a Mexican agricultural community. 242 LATINA LEGACIES Dolores Huerta was born Dolores Fernández on April 10, 1930, to Juan and Alicia Fernández, in the small coal-mining town of Dawson, New Mexico. Huerta’s father was a coal miner, but like many of his peers, he supplemented his income with farm labor, traveling to Colorado, Ne- braska, and Wyoming for the beet harvests. Fernández also developed a strong interest in labor issues and used his predominantly Latino local union as a base upon which to win election to the New Mexico state leg- islature in 1938.1 When her parents divorced in 1935, five-year-old Dolores and her brothers, John and Marshall, moved with their mother to the central San Joaquin Valley agricultural community of Stockton. Alicia Fernández found it very difficult to support her young family as a single parent in this Depression-era town. Dolores described her mother as “a very gen- teel woman, very quiet but very hardworking,” yet also “a very ambitious woman.” Her mother saved the wages she earned at her nighttime can- nery shift (a common occupation for Mexican-origin women) and as a waitress during the day in order to buy her own business.2 First she bought a lunch counter, then a bigger restaurant, and finally, during World War II, a seventy-room hotel. She often offered free lodging to farm worker families and thus modeled for Huerta the value of acquiring resources and knowledge that could meet community needs.3 Both her parents demon- strated to Dolores the value of leadership and service. Another crucial lesson Huerta learned from her mother was the value of self-sufficiency for both men and women. With five children in the house, there was plenty of domestic work to be done, but it was divided fairly between the boys and the girls: “My brothers were taught to be self- sufficient. We all had to wash the laundry, clean . . . . From very young, she taught us how to work.” Dolores and her brothers labored in their mother’s restaurant in the summers, and though it went against her mother’s wishes, Dolores also went to work in the fields and the packing sheds in order to experience the work lives of her friends. According to Huerta, her mother’s entrepreneurial successes and business acumen en- abled her to go to school and enjoy “a more affluent background than the other kids.”4 Dolores Huerta learned from her mother to chart her own course in life, to work with determination, and to take action for those in need. In recalling her early life, Huerta fondly described the vibrant diver- sity of her neighborhood in Stockton, with Japanese, Chinese, Jewish, Filipino, and Mexican folks of the working class—all intermingling. She participated in a wide range of youth activities, which, years later, she DOLORES HUERTA AND THE UNITED FARM WORKERS 243 indicated had taught her to organize people and to deal with them demo- cratically. A Girl Scout until the age of eighteen, she also took piano and violin lessons, studied dance, sang in the church choir, and participated in Catholic youth organizations. She knew she was more fortunate than most of her Mexican American peers. Her class status protected her from the stings of discrimination, particularly in Lafayette grammar school and Jackson Junior High, where she studied in her early adolescence. “We all hated the teachers,” Huerta declared about the racially mixed groups of students of which she was a part, “but we didn’t hate each other.” This all changed when she got to Stockton High School in 1944. For the first time, Huerta felt discriminated against in a segregated environment. A straight “A” student, Huerta experienced memorable disappointment when a teacher told her that she could not receive an “A” grade because the teacher did not believe that Dolores had submitted her own original work.5 This experience marked the beginning of her political awakening. As was common for women of her generation, Dolores Huerta married her high school sweetheart, Ralph Head, after graduation in 1948. He was an Irish American with whom she had the first two of her eleven chil- dren, Celeste and Lori. Though she described him in a later interview as “a very nice man, very responsible,” they divorced after three years. Huerta then began studying, first at Stockton Junior College and then at the College of the Pacific in Stockton, where she earned an associate’s de- gree and provisional teaching credentials. Afterward, she taught English to rural children for one year.6 Working with the children of farm workers gave Huerta a very intimate perspective on their lives. She decided there- after that she could do far more for farm workers by organizing them around labor issues than by teaching basic lessons to their barefoot, hungry children. She found a venue to begin community service work when she met organizer Fred Ross in 1955. Dolores Huerta has never stopped identify- ing the day she met Ross as among the most important events of her life. Ross traveled around California, organizing Mexican Americans into chapters of the Community Service Organization (CSO), a statewide con- federation that mobilized Mexican American communities for voter reg- istration campaigns and improved public services. Upon his arrival in Stockton, Ross assured Huerta and others that they could “turn every- thing around” by registering Mexican-origin voters and electing Spanish- speaking representatives. Huerta, however, was not immediately or easily convinced. She recalled with some embarrassment: “I thought he was a communist, so I went to the FBI and had him checked out. I really did 244 LATINA LEGACIES that. . . . See how middle class I was. In fact, I was a registered Republican at the time.” Before long, however, Huerta concluded that Ross’s organi- zation had potential, as she had “always hated injustice” and “always wanted to do something to change things.” “Fred opened a door for me,” Huerta declared. “Without him,” she insisted, “I’d probably just be in some stupid suburb somewhere.” Huerta worked with the CSO to regis- ter Mexican-origin voters, to keep the police department from “search- ing and harassing people arbitrarily,” and to get equitable access to the county hospital.7 Huerta continued her work with the CSO, and through the organization, she met César Chávez in the late 1950s. After a very suc- cessful voter registration drive in 1960, Chávez, then executive director of the CSO, decided that Huerta would make a talented lobbyist; in 1961, he sent her to Sacramento where she headed the legislative program of the CSO. Her work laid the foundation of almost everything in that leg- islative season that benefited California workers. One of Huerta’s primary concerns was that many farm workers, as Mexican citizens, were excluded from the social service benefits that had been established in the New Deal era, like social security, disability insurance, and retirement pensions. Huerta pushed for legislation that would ease the burdens that workers experienced trying to navigate their way through life in the United States, regardless of citizenship status or language skills. At the California state capitol, Huerta, with her small children at her side, lobbied successfully with her team for an old-age pension, a welfare bill, the right to register voters door to door, and the right to take the driver’s license exam in Spanish. During her CSO years, Huerta met and married her second husband, Ventura Huerta, also a community organizer. Together they had five chil- dren: Fidel, Emilio, Vincent, Alicia, and Angela. Huerta described it as “a terrible marriage,” which deteriorated due to incompatible temperaments and disagreements about the manner in which Huerta balanced her pub- lic commitments with her private, domestic ones. Huerta later said of the marriage: “I knew I wasn’t comfortable in a wife’s role, but I wasn’t clearly facing the issue. . . . I didn’t come out and tell my husband that I cared more about helping other people than cleaning our house and doing my hair.” Her second marriage ended in 1961; after it dissolved, she stated, “I put everything into my relationships,” but “I have to do what I have to do.”8 Huerta thus alluded to the fact that despite her own personal commitment to her spouse, she refused to let their conflicting visions of her responsibilities prevent her from working as an activist in the Mexi- can American community, as she felt compelled to do. DOLORES HUERTA AND THE UNITED FARM WORKERS 245 Meanwhile, Huerta and César Chávez were becoming more interested in rural labor issues than urban ones, and they tried to give farm workers more visibility within the CSO. When the organization persisted with its primary focus on urban populations, both Huerta and Chávez resigned. In 1962, they co-founded the National Farm Workers Association in Chávez’s hometown of Delano, California, and began down the long road of forging an agricultural labor union in California’s San Joaquin Valley. Chávez was elected the first president, and Dolores Huerta and their col- league Gilbert Padilla were elected the first vice presidents. From that year forward, Huerta had a key role in shaping the union’s fortunes, and she has continued the work for over forty years. Huerta and Chávez relied on a method they had learned from Fred Ross, called the “house meeting,” to earn the trust of individual farm workers and persuade them to join the NFWA. They tried to persuade groups of workers in the neutral, safe space of someone’s home, where they could talk to them freely and at length about issues that farm workers faced, knowing that the workers were extremely vulnerable to dismissal and violent reprisals from growers. Labor leader Luisa Moreno (a close friend of Fred Ross) used the same tactic with great success among California cannery workers in the 1940s. Huerta sent regular correspondence to Chávez about her progress. She often lacked a working automobile, gas money, and a babysitter for her children, and she identified these things to Chávez as the “handicaps” of her organizing. With her children in tow, she canvassed the fields, strug- gling to garner support for the union and to provide for the needs of her kids at the same time. She told Chávez: “You can only imagine how rough my financial situation is. Any help I get from my two ex-es has to go for grub for my seven little hungry mouths, and I am keeping one jump ahead of PG and E [Pacific Gas and Electric] and the Water Dragons who close off water for non-payment.” Living on limited support from her children’s fathers and some sparse donations made to the organizing campaign, Huerta revealed a constant need for resources. Working for no regular income, Huerta and Chávez were also anxious in those early years over raising sufficient dues to cover the costs of organizing. She sometimes explained to Chávez, “I have not even tried to have any meetings, be- cause very few of these people up here are working steadily, and it doesn’t do me any good to have meetings if I have to wait another month to collect the dues, no?”9 Consequently, for Huerta, the possibility of using her educational train- ing to get substitute teacher certification, so that she could work a few 246 LATINA LEGACIES days a week to make ends meet, loomed large at that time. However, she ultimately decided to work for the NFWA full-time, giving up gainful employment and everything that goes with it. While Huerta was always briskly conscious of the impact that this sacrifice had on her family, her letters were rife with news of successful advances in the progress of the union. These included frequent reports of new members (with records of their dues payments) and the plans she and Chávez shared for creating a cooperative, a credit union, insurance policies (unemployment, health, life), and a newspaper, El Malcriado, all of which eventually came to pass. Dolores Huerta’s advocacy for farm workers took many forms. In 1965, she contacted the Department of Motor Vehicles to get revoked licenses reinstated and persuaded insurance companies to write automobile poli- cies for union members. She also pressured the Welfare Department of Kern County to set clear policies regarding patient access to the county hospital so that Mexicanos seeking medical attention would not be hu- miliated by hospital social workers.10 Dolores Huerta’s busy schedule was complicated even further by her continued political lobbying in both Sacramento and Washington, D.C. She began to develop a substantial rapport with legislators who were sym- pathetic to the union’s objectives. One of these was Congressman Phillip Burton of California, who in 1967 introduced a bill to extend the Na- tional Labor Relations Act (NLRA) to include agricultural workers—a bill that, despite Huerta’s efforts, did not pass. Huerta had forged a working relationship with Burton some years earlier when she had persuaded him to organize donations of stamps to the NFWA. Although César Chávez recognized that support from politicians could clearly help the union, he began to question the amount of time Huerta spent lobbying. She defended her support of the Aid to Dependent Children Bill in the late 1960s by saying, “Let me remind you that at least the workers we are trying to represent will have bread in the winter months.” Even as the demands of the NFWA work increased, Huerta continued to see certain legislative victories as paramount to securing true economic justice for farm workers.11 One of Huerta’s most important goals was the demise of the Bracero program. Begun in 1942 as a wartime emergency measure between the United States and Mexican governments, the program had provided for the legal contracting of large numbers of Mexican nationals to work in the agricultural fields of the Southwest. The program was renewed after the war as growers insisted the bracero (worker) migration was still necessary due to continued labor shortages, but these Mexicanos were often ill-paid and DOLORES HUERTA AND THE UNITED FARM WORKERS 247 ill-treated and had little recourse.12 Huerta and Chávez knew that as long as these workers were available to growers as “scab” labor (replacement during union strikes), strikers would never be able to force growers to negotiate with the their union. When Congress abolished the Bracero program in 1964, farm labor activists in California were encouraged by this victory. In the summer of 1965, Filipino workers in the Coachella Valley called a “wildcat” (sponta- neous, grassroots) grape strike. Because the hot climate of the area made the crop quickly vulnerable, growers agreed to raise the wages of workers within one week of the strike. Encouraged, these workers moved north- ward to the San Joaquin Valley, the base of the NFWA, to execute another strike under the banner of the Agricultural Workers Organizing Commit- tee (AWOC), AFL-CIO. They knew that it would be more difficult because of the much larger pool of available scab labor, and they knew that this strike would never be successful without the help of the Mexican work- ers of the NFWA. The leaders of the NFWA, including Huerta, were then faced with a momentous decision: to strike or not to strike in solidarity with AWOC. The NFWA plan had been to organize very discreetly for about five years, until they could get the whole San Joaquin Valley organized and acquire some resources, before executing a strike. Despite having no strike fund available, the NFWA members voted to join the AWOC in a grape strike. Perhaps a bit naive, they believed that the strike would last for a few days or a few weeks. Instead it lasted five long years. In September 1965, Mexican and Filipino workers in Delano, Califor- nia, walked off the fields, refusing to pick grapes. Three weeks after the initial walkout, the strike had spread, and almost three thousand workers had left the fields. Growers used legal injunctions to stop picketing and resorted to violence to subdue demonstrations and protect their scab re- placement workers. In contrast, nonviolent protest to effect social change marked union organizing from the beginning. Both César Chávez and Huerta adhered to the principles of Mahatma Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Public pilgrimages, growing support from Catholic and Protestant church groups and clerics, and significant financial contribu- tions by the AFL-CIO helped build and sustain the new union—the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee. The 1966 march (known as the peregrinación, or Easter pilgrimage) to the state capitol in Sacramento in- creased the visibility of the union and made the workers’ struggle more than a labor issue—it became symbolic of a national civil rights move- ment among Mexican Americans.13 Built out of the Filipino AWOC and 248 LATINA LEGACIES the Mexican NFWA, the new union, which would soon be known as the UFW, would change the course of American labor history. Realizing that the battle would not be won in the fields of California, union leaders decided that they would have to carry their message to the marketplace, boycotting table grapes and other produce in supermarkets. Their objective was to force growers to negotiate contracts with the UFW that established increased benefits and improved conditions for union members; while they were successful in securing a few contracts by 1967, dozens of growers, including the powerful John Giumarra Corporation, would not budge. Although the boycott initially targeted only a few la- bels, Dolores Huerta ultimately moved to New York City, the center of grape distribution, to coordinate the industry-wide boycott in 1968 and 1969. The commercial boycott received tremendous public support and proved very effective, with polls showing that an estimated 17 million consumers supported the boycott by the early 1970s. In the fourth year of the boycott, growers found a powerful ally in the newly elected Cali- fornia Republican governor, Ronald Reagan, who ate grapes at several photo opportunities. In response, the UFW stepped up the boycott aspect of union activities, and by 1970 shipments to the top grape-consuming cities were down by 22 percent. Finally, on April 1, 1970, after five long years, one grower came through: Lionel Steinberg of the Freedman Ranches signed a contract with the UFW. Shipments of grapes produced on its land were now stamped with the UFW label, signaling the union’s approval to consumers. In the economic cli- mate of the boycott, “union” grapes could now be sold for a premium price, and the price of nonunion grapes sunk. As a result, growers began to clamor for the UFW union label on their product, and at that point Dolores Huerta and her colleagues could hardly negotiate the contracts fast enough. Finally, on July 29, 1970, John Giumarra Jr. and the rest of the growers in the Delano area met to sign contracts with the UFW at the union hall in Delano. Dolores Huerta handled the negotiations, and years later, as she reflected on the experience, she insisted, “It never, ever, ever, ever crossed my mind that it couldn’t happen. Not once. I always knew that we would be able to do it.”14 Huerta possessed the tenacity and faith that enable one to carry on for years working toward a seemingly impos- sible goal. In negotiating these historic contracts, Dolores Huerta earned a nick- name among the growers—“dragon lady”—referring to her ability to speak “with fire” as she held fast to the terms and conditions that UFW mem- bers demanded. At that time, twenty-six Delano-area growers signed con- DOLORES HUERTA AND THE UNITED FARM WORKERS 249 tracts, raising wages to $1.80 per hour plus $.20 per box, as well as estab- lishing provisions for hiring workers directly from the UFW hiring hall, hiring by seniority, and placing strict controls on the use of pesticides. Growers quickly became familiar with the intensity of Huerta’s style, and stories abounded of growers pleading to deal with someone other than Huerta. One representative exclaimed, “Dolores Huerta is crazy. . . . She’s a violent woman, where women, especially Mexican American women, are usually peaceful and pleasant.” Huerta was called “too quick to attack, too slow to listen,” by one politician. Even her successor, David Burciaga, who took over negotiations in 1973, reflected on the new need to “con- vince, not insult, the growers.” However, in Huerta’s pathbreaking work with the original contracts, she found the growers very insulting to her and the Mexican-origin members of her union. This explains why she felt her own strong style was justified: “Why do we need to be polite to people who are making racist statements at the table, or making sexist com- ments?” she questioned. “I think when they do that you have to call them at it because then also you are educating them in the process,” Huerta explained. Whatever anyone thought of her style, she did get substantial results.15 But the events of 1973 convinced her that protecting farm work- ers would continue to be an uphill battle. The initial contracts were set to expire that year, and growers colluded with the Teamsters Union to sign new contracts directly with the Teamsters without a vote among farm workers. The strike in the fields and the consumer boycott both began again that year. Once again, Huerta was there, serving as a backbone of UFW strategies. As one might expect in a movement with two determined visionaries, the relationship between Huerta and Chávez could be tense at times. Both believed passionately in their cause and committed their lives to overcom- ing seemingly insurmountable obstacles to realize its goals. Both raised families while living, working, and organizing in the fields. Both did these things for a sum of money so small, it can hardly be called an “income.” It is no surprise that facing such challenges day in and day out would raise tensions. The president of the UFW until his death in 1993, Chávez had become the national symbol of the farm worker movement, and even though he and Huerta did not favor celebrity, they both knew the sup- port it brought to their cause had some positive consequences. Wholly committed to the realization of UFW goals, Huerta often deferred to Chávez’s final authority on issues, especially in the beginning. Sometimes she did so calmly, as when she stated, “I bow to your better judgment and experience and will do as you say.” Other times, she did so with 250 LATINA LEGACIES sarcasm, as when she retorted, “But then again, I am not getting paid to ask questions, right?” On other occasions, and particularly later, she did exactly as she thought best. Whatever the case, she respected Chávez tre- mendously: “César Chávez is an extremely creative person,” she declared; “He is a genius.”16 Huerta knew that they were on the same page about things, and she exercised diplomacy in order to deal with him effectively and act upon her own views. For the most part, Chávez and Huerta man- aged to work together in a manner that enabled the best qualities of each to be put to work toward achieving union objectives.17 One of their most important victories came in 1975 with the passage of the Agricultural Labor Relations Act (ALRA) in California. It was mod- eled after the National Labor Relations Act of 1935 (also known as the Wagner Act), part of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal. The NLRA protected the right of laborers to organize and bargain collectively, and it established a board to review grievances—but it excluded agricultural la- borers from its provisions. The NLRA also established an enforcement arm, the National Labor Relations Board, to provide redress for workers, cer- tify elections, and curb unlawful labor practices by employers. The lack of these basic protections, and especially the lack of governmental redress against grower abuses, had hindered UFW organizing. Dolores Huerta was a major force in lobbying legislators to support the ALRA, which provided the right to boycott, voting rights for migrant seasonal workers, and se- cret ballot elections and control over the timing of these elections.18 Also, the ALRA, like the NLRA, established an enforcement board, the Agricul- tural Labor Relations Board (ALRB), for the redress of grievances and the certification of union elections. Initially regarded as a victory, ALRB became increasingly conservative during the late 1970s and early 1980s. At that time, a growing conserva- tive political mood in California—particularly after the 1982 election of Republican governor George Deukmejian—led to the appointment of board members who sympathized more with growers than with farm workers. According to Huerta, the ALRB began to rule consistently against the UFW in grievances brought before it. As a result, though the industry- wide grape boycott had been called off in 1978, it was instituted again in 1984. Huerta continued her lobbying efforts throughout the 1980s. In 1985, she lobbied to outlaw a federal “guest worker program” (a new incarna- tion of the bracero program), which would once again enable growers to legally bring Mexican nationals into the fields to work for below mini- mum wages in substandard conditions. When it was introduced, U.S. DOLORES HUERTA AND THE UNITED FARM WORKERS 251 congressman from southern California Howard Berman, a longtime ally of Huerta and the UFW, successfully led the opposition to the program.19 Huerta’s primary concern in this period, however, was lobbying to out- law the use of harmful pesticides. On September 14, 1988, in the course of a peaceful political rally where she spoke on that issue, San Francisco police severely beat Dolores Huerta. She suffered six broken ribs and the removal of her spleen in emergency surgery; she ultimately received an unprecedented monetary settlement from a lawsuit she brought against the offending law enforcement agency. The longevity of Dolores Huerta’s political career is particularly remark- able considering that at its height she embarked on her third marriage and reared another four children. She and Richard Chávez (brother of César) were the parents of Juanita, María Elena, Ricky, and Camilla. Speak- ing of the demands that her many duties placed on her, Huerta confessed: “I don’t feel proud of the suffering that my kids went through . . . but by the same token I know that they learned a lot in the process.” Managing this guilt as one of the biggest challenges in her life; she recalls “driving around Stockton with all these little babies in the car, the different dia- per changes for each one.”20 Huerta spoke forthrightly about the tremen- dous pressure she felt to be a conventional mother while she worked as a major American labor leader. Lori De León, her daughter, revealed, “She was always on the road, and we were left to take care of ourselves.” Huerta noted that, as in other poor people’s movements, farm workers of the UFW were very willing to care for one another’s children while other adults performed the work necessary to effect economic justice. Huerta has of- ten insisted that she could only truly improve the conditions of farm workers’ lives by living in the same circumstances as the workers. As a result, she could not realistically shelter her children from that reality. “Although criticized for putting la causa first, Dolores Huerta has had few regrets. As she informed [historian Margaret] Rose, ‘But now that I’ve seen how good they [my children] turned out, I don’t feel so guilty.’”21 She is filled with parental pride at the course of her children’s lives; many of her children now have careers rooted in community service and activism, with some holding advanced professional degrees. Huerta’s own experience as an activist and a mother has given her very particular views about the roles of women in unions and in public life in general. Her first engagement with mainstream U.S. feminism came in the late 1960s, when Huerta’s own place in the national spotlight gave her occasion to become acquainted with noted feminist Gloria Steinem. Huerta slowly began to incorporate woman-centered views into her own