Remembering Cesar: The Legacy of Cesar Chavez - Hardcover

McGregor, Ann

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1884956114 ISBN 13: 9781884956119

Publisher: Word Dancer Press, 2000

Synopsis

In this collection of firsthand accounts by those who knew Cesar Chavez best, a portrait of an uncommonly complex man, both driven and focused, yet humble, empathic and exceedingly principled, emerges. The reader gains an understanding of the yoke Chavez chose to place upon his own shoulders, as well as the ideals he employed to accomplish for the migrant farmworkers what many predicted would be impossible. The more than 45 contributors range from the famous--Edward James Olmos, Henry Cisneros, Martin Sheen, Coretta Scott King, Jerry Brown and others--to members of the Chavez family, to UFW staff, to the farmworkers themselves. Illustrated by the compelling black and white photographs of George Elfie Ballis, who began photographing the farmworker movement in the 1950s.

About this title

From the Publisher:

This is the only book to receive the endorsement of the Cesar E. Chavez Foundation.

Quiet and unobtrusive, Cesar Chavez took on a seemingly impossible task with the simple admonition to those who doubted him: "Sí se puede"--yes, it can be done--he would insist.

Chavez was a migrant farmworker by birth and by trade. Although he was extremely well-read later in life, his formal education ended after the eighth grade. He never owned a house. He didn’t own a car. He never made more than $6,000 a year.

For more than 100 years, organizers, on the behalf of farmworkers, had been unsuccessfully trying to form a union. Chavez had a better idea; he took the battle from the few and gave it to the many: to the farmworkers themselves and to the American consumers in communities throughout the nation.

Chavez’s sharpest spear was nonviolence, his most devastating sword, the boycott. With these two weapons and an undying dedication to justice, Chavez awakened America to the plight of the migrant farmworker. In doing so, he improved the lives of thousands of farmworkers and taught important lessons about justice and self-sacrifice to countless others.

About the Author:

Ann McGregor retired in 1988 as Executive Director of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Farm Workers' Fund. On staff with the Union for seventeen years, she was named a national representative of the UFW in 1986.

George Elfie Ballis has been doing still photography and movies on the edges of social change with farmworkers, civil rights organizers, working people and environmentalists for almost half a century.

Cindy Wathen is a native Central Californian. An Acquisitions Coordinator for Osborne/McGraw-Hill, she resides in Berkeley, California.

About this edition

• Publisher: Word Dancer Press
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 1884956114
• ISBN 13: 9781884956119
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 112
• Editor: Wathen Cindy