By Juli McShay
Forward Times
https://forwardtimes.com/
Houston leaders remember a labor and civil rights pioneer whose work turned everyday people into a force for change.
Human rights organizer and labor leader Dolores Huerta died October 28 at the age of 96, leaving generations with a declaration that became a call to action: “¡Sí, se puede!” Yes, we can.
Her foundation confirmed her passing after a lifetime dedicated to advancing social justice.
Huerta organized workers, registered voters, negotiated contracts and challenged the idea that people without wealth or political connections had to accept the conditions handed to them.
She also showed generations of women that they did not need permission to lead.
For Houston organizer and Texas State Representative Lauren Ashley Simmons, that example helped shape her own work.
“Dolores Huerta was a hero, a visionary and a fierce activist,” Simmons said. “As a labor and union organizer, Huerta has always been an inspiration for me. Because of her, I knew that I didn’t need permission to speak boldly, to be unafraid and to fight for everyone who can’t fight for themselves.”
Before the World Knew Her Name
Born Dolores Clara Fernández on April 10, 1930, in Dawson, New Mexico, Huerta grew up with lessons in labor, civic engagement and community care.
Her father, Juan Fernández, was a miner, farmworker and union activist who won a seat in the New Mexico Legislature in 1938. After her parents divorced, she spent much of her childhood in Stockton, California, with her mother and two brothers.
Her mother, Alicia, operated a restaurant and later a hotel, welcoming low-wage workers and sometimes waiving room charges for people who could not afford them. She participated in community organizations and encouraged her daughter to become socially active. Huerta credited her mother’s independence and entrepreneurial spirit with helping shape her feminism.
Workers’ rights, women’s rights and civic responsibility existed in Huerta’s life long before they became the language of her career.
Leadership and organizing were foundational to who she was before the world knew her name.
But the Dolores Huerta we celebrate was also shaped by the darkness of her experiences.
A teacher accused her of cheating because her writing was supposedly too good to be her own. In 1945, white men beat her brother for wearing a zoot suit, a style associated with Mexican American youth. These experiences helped sharpen her awareness of racism and the treatment of her community.
She had witnessed both the harm people could inflict and the care people could offer. Those lessons would inform her life’s work.
The Teacher Learns a Lesson in the Classroom
After earning a teaching credential at the University of the Pacific’s Delta College in Stockton, Huerta taught the children of farmworkers.
In the classroom, she found her reason why.
Children arrived hungry and without adequate shoes. Teaching them mattered, but she recognized that their needs reached beyond what she could address in a classroom. She turned toward organizing to challenge the economic conditions their families faced.
Huerta became involved in the Community Service Organization, working for the economic and civic advancement of Latino communities. She organized voter-registration efforts and pressed for neighborhood improvements.
She understood that voting power was essential to the movement. People needed resources, but they also needed a voice in the decisions governing their lives.
That connection between organizing and civic participation remained central to her work.
Dolores the Organizer
In 1962, Huerta and César Chávez founded the National Farm Workers Association.
The Delano grape strike and the boycotts that followed became among the movement’s most consequential campaigns. Filipino farmworkers affiliated with the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee initiated the strike in 1965; the National Farm Workers Association joined them. The organizations later merged, helping form the United Farm Workers.
Huerta’s work as an organizer and negotiator helped turn collective pressure into concrete gains.
Union agreements secured higher wages, contributions toward health and welfare benefits, and protections limiting exposure to dangerous pesticides. Legislative advocacy also helped extend public benefits and insurance protections to farmworkers. These were victories won through different avenues, with organizing connecting them.
Her advocacy helped secure passage of California’s Agricultural Labor Relations Act of 1975, a landmark law protecting farmworkers’ rights to organize and bargain collectively.
These efforts established what was possible when workers who had been treated as replaceable recognized their collective power.
Houston Mayor John Whitmire described that commitment in his remembrance.
“Dolores Huerta was an outstanding labor leader, a very strong woman and mentor to many. She spent her life fighting for the idea that people whose labor sustains our country deserve dignity, fair pay and a voice.”
Women Organizers
Historically, women organizers have been expected to do far more than they have been respected for doing.
They build relationships, develop strategies, knock on doors and hold movements together. Yet when those stories are told, too often the women receive less space in the final print.
Huerta’s experience belongs in that conversation. Her work was essential to the farmworker movement, even when public recognition centered on its men.
Think of Ella Baker, Gloria Richardson, Fannie Lou Hamer and Houston’s Maria Jiménez. Different communities, different campaigns, but a familiar question: How often do we celebrate the movement without fully recognizing the women whose organizing made it possible?
Simmons connected Huerta’s example to the work she has carried into the Texas Legislature.
“For the last two years, I’ve been able to take this fight to the state level, advocating for bills that will help community members have access to equitable healthcare, education and living wages,” she said.
“I will be forever grateful for her courage, persistence and legacy.”
Harris County Commissioner Lesley Briones recalled sharing a stage with Huerta in Texas this summer.
“She inspired us all with moving stories of past struggles and her powerful, unwavering hope for the future,” Briones said. “I’ll forever draw strength from those moments we shared.”
That is one way a movement continues: Someone sees what another woman has done and understands what she, too, can do.
Honoring Her Means Doing the Work
Harris County Commissioner Rodney Ellis remembered Huerta as a labor leader, civil rights icon, democracy defender and environmentalist who fought for justice, dignity and freedom.
“Through action and art, we will ensure that Dolores Huerta remains a powerful presence in our communities, serving as a reminder of her legacy and what she taught us about the power of organizing and standing up for what was right,” Ellis said.
Harris County Justice of the Peace Dolores Lozano offered a description of organizing that gets to the heart of Huerta’s legacy.
“She didn’t wait for permission. She knocked on doors. She sat at kitchen tables. She told farmworkers, mothers and neighbors who’d been ignored for generations that their voice mattered, then she helped them prove it.”
Remembering Huerta requires us to remember that work. The conversations. The voter-registration drives. The negotiations. The persistence required to return after being told no.
“We honor her by voting. We honor her by organizing. We honor her by remembering hope is something we build together, door by door,” Lozano said.
“¡Sí, se puede!” endures because Huerta spent her life showing people what those words could mean in practice.
The work now belongs to those she inspired.
Juli McShay is a government professor at San Jacinto College specializing in constitutional law, civics and voting rights. She is the founder of the Houston Civics & Leadership Campaign School, host of the Pretty Petty Politics podcast and a political contributor for Forward Times.
