Dolores Huerta, the organizer whose work helped turn farm labor into a national civil-rights cause and whose three-word rallying cry traveled far beyond California’s fields, died Wednesday at 96.
Her family announced that she died at home and asked for privacy while plans are made to honor her life. The Associated Press reported that family spokesperson Erik Olvera said Huerta died of cancer in Bakersfield, California, surrounded by relatives. California Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered flags at the state Capitol flown at half-staff.
She made farmworkers impossible to ignore
Huerta co-founded the National Farm Workers Association with César Chávez in 1962. The organization later became the United Farm Workers, and Huerta emerged as its chief negotiator, strike organizer and legislative strategist.
Her influence was practical as much as symbolic. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, Huerta negotiated an early collective-bargaining agreement that improved wages and working conditions for agricultural laborers. She also helped secure disability insurance for injured California farmworkers and directed a national grape boycott that pressured growers to change workplace practices.
The gains documented by Reuters reached deeply into daily life: job security, health care, retirement plans, clean drinking water, field toilets, rest periods and protections from pesticides. Those victories made Huerta one of the most consequential labor leaders of the 20th century, even when her public profile was overshadowed by Chávez.
The words that became a movement
Huerta is widely credited with coining “Sí, se puede!”—roughly, “Yes, it can be done.” The phrase captured her conviction that ordinary people acting together could force institutions to change. It became a farmworker slogan, then a broader declaration of political possibility.
Her route into organizing began in a classroom. Born April 10, 1930, in Dawson, New Mexico, and raised in Stockton, California, Huerta earned a teaching credential and taught children from farmworker families. The hunger and hardship she saw convinced her that organizing parents could do more than treating the consequences one classroom at a time, according to the National Park Service.
She helped organize the Delano grape strike and the consumer boycotts that followed. The movement’s pressure contributed to California’s landmark Agricultural Labor Relations Act of 1975, which established collective-bargaining rights for farmworkers.
A campaigner who never really retired
Huerta left her formal UFW leadership role in 1999, but not public life. Through the Dolores Huerta Foundation, founded in 2003, she trained organizers, promoted voter participation and advocated for immigrants, women, LGBTQ+ people and low-income communities. She continued marching, speaking and campaigning well into her 90s.
Recognition came from across American public life. President Bill Clinton presented her with the Eleanor Roosevelt Award for Human Rights in 1998. President Barack Obama awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012. She was also inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame.
Her final year also brought a painful reexamination of the movement she helped build. Huerta disclosed that Chávez had sexually abused her decades earlier and that she had remained silent because she feared the truth would damage the cause. Her foundation publicly supported her disclosure and reaffirmed its opposition to sexual violence.
California lowers its flags
Newsom called Huerta a leader who changed California and the nation by insisting on dignity for people too often ignored. His official statement emphasized that her legacy lives in the people who continue the work.
That may be the clearest measure of Huerta’s reach. The contracts, laws and institutions mattered. So did the method she modeled: organize locally, negotiate relentlessly and keep pressure on power. Her voice is gone, but the movement carried by “Sí, se puede” remains very much alive.
