Dolores Huerta was a pioneering US labor and civil rights leader who co-founded the United Farm Workers union (UFW) with Cesar Chavez; she died of cancer at age 96, her family announced on Wednesday, October 28, 2026.
Born in New Mexico and raised in Stockton, California, Huerta worked as a teacher before turning to organizing farm workers in the 1960s and 1970s. She helped negotiate the first farm worker contracts in North America, and the UFW credits her with coining its motto, “Sí se puede!” (“Yes, we can!”). According to the union, she also helped end the Bracero temporary labor program and helped negotiate the 1986 immigration reform law. Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass credited her with work on overtime pay for farm workers after eight-hour days and California’s first comprehensive heat-death protections. Huerta later campaigned on women’s rights, voting and the environment through her foundation, received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012, and raised 11 children while continuing her activism into her 90s.
Source: BBC News, “US civil rights leader Dolores Huerta dies aged 96”
Image: Dolores Huerta, Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.