An Organizer's Tale: Speeches

Cesar Chavez

Apr 2008 · Sold by Penguin

About this ebook

The first major collection of writings by civil rights leader Cesar Chavez

One of the most important civil rights leaders in American history, Cesar Chavez was a firm believer in the principles of nonviolence, and he effectively employed peaceful tactics to further his cause. Through his efforts, he helped achieve dignity, fair wages, benefits, and humane working conditions for hundreds of thousands of farm workers. This extensive collection of Chavez's speeches and writings chronicles his progression and development as a leader, and includes previously unpublished material. From speeches to spread the word of the Delano Grape Strike to testimony before the House of Representatives about the hazards of pesticides, Chavez communicated in clear, direct language and motivated people everywhere with an unflagging commitment to his ideals.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

About the author

Cesar Chavez was a civil rights and labor leader, a farmworker, a crusader for nonviolent social change, and an environmentalist and consumer advocate. He was born on March 31, 1927, near his family's farm in Yuma, Arizona. His family lost their farm in the Great Depression and later became migrant farmworkers when Chavez was ten. Throughout his youth and into his adulthood, Chavez migrated across the American Southwest, laboring in the fields and vineyards where he was exposed to the injustices of farmworker life. After achieving only an eighth-grade education, Chavez left school to support his family. Chavez's life as a community organizer began in 1952, when he joined the Community Service Organization (CSO), a prominent Latino civil rights group. While with the CSO, he coordinated voter registration drives and conducted campaigns against racial and economic discrimination primarily in urban areas. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Chavez served as the CSO's national director. Chavez died in 1993 at the age of 66.

Ilan Stavans is the author of numerous short stories and more than 15 works of nonfiction, including Quixote: The Novel and the World and Resurrecting Hebrew. His many awards and honors include an Emmy nomination, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Pablo Neruda Medal, and the National Jewish Book Award (for his anthology The Schocken Book of Modern Sephardic Literature). He lives in Amherst, Massachusetts, where he is the Lewis-Sebring Professor in Latin American and Latino Culture and the Five College Fortieth Anniversary Professor at Amherst College.