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Grade 5 Social Studies · World 7: Civil Rights · Level 73
Cesar Chavez
Describe his work for farmworkers.
Warm-up, learn, try it together, practice, then a quick check. About 15 minutes.
What children learn in Level 73
- The fight for equal treatment reached beyond Black Americans. Cesar Chavez grew up in a Mexican American family that lost its Arizona farm in the Depression, and moved around California picking crops.
- Farmworkers earned very little, and they lived in poor housing. They had few protections. Chavez and Dolores Huerta began organizing them in 1962, in the group that became the United Farm Workers.
- In 1965, Filipino farmworkers walked off the grape fields in Delano, California. Chavez's group joined them in a strike, when workers stop working to demand better treatment.
- Like Dr. King, Chavez used nonviolence. Farmworkers marched about 300 miles to the state capital. Americans across the country stopped buying grapes.
- After years, grape growers signed contracts for better pay and conditions. Dolores Huerta's words became the movement's motto: “Sí, se puede.” It means “Yes, we can.”
Georgia Standards of Excellence in Social Studies:
- SS5H6.b — Explain the key events and people of the Civil Rights movement: Brown v. Board of Education (1954), Montgomery Bus Boycott, the March on Washington, Civil Rights Act, Voting Rights Act, and civil rights activities of Thurgood Marshall, Lyndon B. Johnson, Cesar Chavez, Rosa Parks, and Martin Luther King, Jr.