Dolores Huerta, influential labor leader, feminist and civil rights icon, dies at 96

Dolores Huerta, who co-founded the United Farm Workers union to improve working conditions in the nation’s fruit and vegetable fields and coined the enduring “Sí, se puede!” rallying cry, has died. She was 96.

Huerta died of cancer Wednesday at her home in Bakersfield, California, surrounded by family, said Erik Olvera, a family spokesperson.

Huerta kept busy well into her 90s, marching in protests and encouraging activists to keep speaking out about race, poverty, LGBTQ+ and women’s rights.

“It seems like history continues to repeat itself,” she told The Associated Press in August. “You see what’s happening right now in our country, and we know that people have to stand up.”

Huerta’s resolve cemented her place in history as one of the nation’s most influential labor leaders, civil rights icons and feminist activists. Her three-word Spanish-language slogan — which translates to “Yes, it can be done” — was grounded in the belief that people who take action can affect change.

Her accolades over the decades included the Presidential Medal of Freedom. When President Barack Obama presented her with the nation’s highest civilian honor in 2012, he praised Huerta as a tenacious leader and said she was gracious when he stole her slogan for his 2008 campaign. “I’m pleased that she let me off easy … ’cause Dolores does not play,” Obama joked.

“Her life’s work was to empower her community to face and overcome injustices, and she has left farm workers and the entire Latino community stronger and more organized than she found it,” United Farm Workers President Teresa Romero said in a statement Wednesday.

Revealing a secret that shook Latino culture

This year, Huerta revealed a shocking chapter in her life story — that she was sexually abused in the 1960s by the farmworker movement’s co-founder, César Chavez, leading to the birth of two children, a secret she had kept for 60 years, long after he died. Chavez’s reputation immediately soured, his name removed from streets and buildings and the holiday that had been a point of Hispanic pride.

Huerta said she had kept silent for so long because she feared coming forward would compromise her life’s work and unravel all the progress made for workers. From the early 1970s on, Huerta’s life partner had been Richard Chavez, César’s brother, and together they had four kids. She also had seven children from two earlier marriages.

When asked during a 2026 interview with the news organization Latino USA about keeping the secret, Huerta said: “It was my personal pain, it was my personal problem and, you know, I think it was worth it because it was my cross to bear. I’ll say it that way.”

Demonstrating a ‘passion for justice’

Huerta’s advocacy changed many lives beyond the farm fields, said former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who called her “a stalwart champion of working Americans.”

“Dolores wore many hats: voting rights advocate, human rights champion, die-hard Democrat, self-described ‘born-again feminist,’ and co-founder of the United Farm Workers of America,” the Clintons said in a statement. “To see her in action was to witness a living legend who never stopped pushing for progress.”

Gov. Gavin Newsom said California would not be where it is without her “passion for justice and fairness.”

“Dolores’ fight for gender equity, workers’ rights, and civil rights paved the way for generations to come — teaching people what was possible with determination and heart,” the Democrat said.

Becoming an activist well before meeting Chavez

Huerta was born Dolores Clara Fernandez in 1930 in Dawson, New Mexico. Her father was a miner and union activist who won a seat in the state Legislature. Her parents divorced when she was 3, and her mother took her and her brothers to California.

Immersed in a melting pot of Mexican, Filipino, African American, Japanese and Chinese working families, Huerta learned from her mother — who owned a restaurant and hotel — about independence, compassion and activism.

Huerta was a young, energetic elementary school teacher in the agricultural San Joaquin Valley when she decided to answer another calling after growing frustrated by her students’ poor living conditions.

“I couldn’t stand seeing kids come to class hungry and needing shoes,” she said in a 2017 PBS Independent Lens documentary on her life. “I thought I could do more by organizing farmworkers than by trying to teach their hungry children.”

Huerta’s early work with a civil rights group in Stockton resulted in her meeting Chavez. The two wanted to focus more on the plight of farmworkers, so in 1962 they started the National Farm Workers Association, which became United Farm Workers of America a few years later. She was a key leader and negotiator for the union for years.

She was among those who joined Filipino grape pickers on the picket line in what became the five-year “Delano Grape Strike.” With Chavez, she negotiated collective bargaining agreements and contracts with big growers, winning the first health and benefit plans for farmworkers.

Chavez, who died in 1993, once described her as fearless, committed to the cause and tough when it came to negotiations.

Campaigning for presidents and voting rights

She met Sen. Robert Kennedy in 1968 and volunteered with his presidential campaign, registering Mexican Americans in California to vote. Huerta was on stage with Kennedy after he won the California primary and he publicly thanked her, moments before he was shot.

The assassination devastated Huerta, but she kept organizing. Huerta was jailed 22 times for union demonstrating.

In 1988, she was seriously injured while protesting Republican presidential candidate George H.W. Bush’s opposition to the UFW grape boycott during his visit to San Francisco.

Caught in a crowd, she was struck by a police officer’s baton, suffered three broken ribs and a pulverized spleen, and required blood transfusions. She reached a settlement with the city to resolve her claims.

After a long recovery, Huerta shifted focus, campaigning for women’s rights and encouraging Latinas to run for office.

She also campaigned for Democratic Presidents Clinton, Obama and Joe Biden.

Leaving a legacy of civil rights advocacy

Emilio Huerta, one of Dolores’ 13 children, said his mother’s courage drove her life’s work.

“To dedicate your life to building a dream of a union for farmworkers, to take on agriculture, which to this day is still a powerhouse. … That took a lot of guts,” he said.

Huerta secured financial aid for the unemployed and disability insurance for California farmworkers. She spoke out against toxic pesticides, pushed for amnesty for immigrants in the country illegally and campaigned against federal guest worker programs.

By directing nationwide boycotts of grapes and lettuce in the early 1970s, she helped to create the economic pressure and political climate necessary for California to pass the first state law recognizing farmworkers’ right to collective bargaining.

But she didn’t always win favor with more liberal activists.

In 2016 when she endorsed Hillary Rodham Clinton instead of Sen. Bernie Sanders in the presidential Democratic primary, actor Rosario Dawson — a Sanders supporter who played Huerta in a 2014 movie about César Chavez — said Huerta had become “an instrument of the establishment.” The two eventually reconciled.

Huerta’s leadership in the labor movement made her name synonymous with civil rights in the U.S. and beyond. In the 2025 documentary “Seeds of Change: The Life and Legacy of Dolores Huerta,” she credited the 1970s women’s movement for providing her with the validation to take the stage with other labor leaders.

“I hope that my legacy will be one of an organizer that organized to fight injustice,” she said in the film. “We want to give our children an inheritance of justice, right, not jewels or property or money because they’ll just fight over it. So the main thing to do is to give them this love for justice — and that is the greatest gift I think that any of us can have.”

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Associated Press contributors include Leslie Ambriz, Brian Melley, Russell Contreras and John Seewer.