Leadership in the Genesis of the Farm Workers Movement In 1946, Mexican-Americans were very poor, and could not read nor write. Most of them would die by the age of 49 because of the miserable life conditions they lived. During this time, the American society was very segregated; for example, in theaters, white people used to sit on the middle and the others had to sit on the sides. The farm owners treated their workers like slaves and forced them to work deplorable conditions. In a Mexican-American family of six children, Cesar Chavez was born on March 31, 1927. His family owned a grocery store and a ranch, but their land was lost during the Great Depression. Chavez drop out high school at the age of 14 to become a full-time worker. Chavez understood clearly the suffering many Mexican-American people were facing. Later, he decided to work for the Community Service Organization, a group dedicated to improving the lives of Mexican-Americans. The genesis of the Farm Workers movements occurred at a meeting in San Francisco in 1962, when Cesar Chavez approached to Dolores Huerta with the idea to organize a non-violence union. It was not easy at the beginning, in first place, the history of unionism in the United …show more content…
After this meeting, the Farmer Worker Movement supported by Senator Robert Kennedy accomplished some of its objectives. In addition, the movement became an example for other people who witnessed some kind of injustice. In Texas a graduate student founded a political party transforming centuries of oppression into ethnic power. Moreover, in San Antonio, a young activist brought a millions of Mexican-Americans who had never voted to the polls, eventually doubling the number of Latinos elected to political office. In Los Angeles a high school teacher led the largest student walkout in history, risking his own freedom to give Mexican-American students the opportunity at a quality