The Radical Reading Room

Dolores Huerta, the labor and civil-rights leader who helped found the United Farm Workers, died at 96, her family announced Wednesday. The family asked for privacy as it grieved. The accounts describe her as a prominent farmworker organizer and public advocate.

Huerta campaigned alongside fellow labor leader César Chávez for farmworkers’ rights and co-founded the UFW with him. Both reports connect their work to efforts to improve conditions for agricultural workers. Huerta’s organizing with the union was a central part of her public career, according to the accounts.

The reports also say Huerta continued activism through her foundation after her years organizing with the union. Both describe her as a civil-rights advocate as well as a labor leader, presenting her public work as extending beyond farm labor alone. They do not describe a new foundation action connected to the announcement of her death.

The accounts also recount Huerta’s statement that Chávez sexually abused her in the 1960s. Huerta said the abuse resulted in two pregnancies, and that she kept the circumstances secret for decades. The reports attribute the allegations to Huerta; they do not present them as judicial findings. The central announcement from her family was her death at 96, alongside its request for privacy as relatives grieve.