Dolores Huerta, labor leader and avid jazz fan, dies at 96

It's considered this where every day we go deep on one big new story. Today, remembering a civil rights pioneer, Dolores Huerta died Wednesday at the age of 96 after a battle with cancer. She's best remembered as a labor leader who co-founded the United Farm Workers. Huerta has said her family inspired her to enter activism. Her father was a farm worker and her mother operated a hotel. My mother was a dominant force in our family and I always saw her as the leader and that was great for me as a young woman because I never saw that women had to be dominated by men. That's Dolores Huerta on NPR's Tell Me More back in 2007. So, I kind of give credit to my mother for being able to have the confidence to go out there and do the things that I did. Her decades of activism won her international acclaim and when Huerta spoke to NPR back in 2007, when she was in her late 70s, she said her work wasn't finished. We've got to have civic participation. We've got to have collective action. We've got to make our political officials accountable and then we've got to get ourselves elected people that care about community and care about democracy, you know, about working people. Consider this. Dolores Huerta was an influential labor and feminist leader who will remember her life and legacy. From NPR, I'm Wana Simmers. It's considered us from NPR. In the 1960s Dolores Huerta co-founded with Cesar Chavez, the union that would become the United Farm Workers, fighting for better conditions for agricultural field workers. NPR is Adrian Flaredo as this remembrance. California farm owners detested the Lotus Huerta, the way she'd show up at their grape fields with a bullhorn and urged their workers to join the picket line like during this strike in the 1960s. She was five feet tall but could energize a crowd like no other leader of the farm worker movement. She was born in New Mexico but raised in California's Central Valley. As a teenager, she picked onions and cherries there. She later told an interviewer at Cal State Northridge why she started organizing. When you look and you see the homes of farm workers and you see how they're struggling just to survive or you know the children who have been poisoned with pesticides and you know that they died. All of that injustice that makes one really angry to know that these workers who are feeding the nation are having to suffer this kind of hardship and this kind of poverty, you know. Through the work she met another young organizer Cesar Chavez in the early 60s they formed a union. He became president, its charismatic public face. She was vice president, a driving force pressuring farm owners to offer better pay and working conditions. She was so successful and getting people to walk out of the fields. Yolanda Barrera was a teenage farm worker back then. She'd never seen a Mexican American woman command so much respect. She was beautiful, she was smart, she was aggressive, she stood her ground. In 1965 the union joined Filipino farm workers in a boycott of table grapes. The two groups merged and became the united farm workers. Their boycott led millions of Americans to stop buying grapes. What that later recalled the night five years after it began that a major grower called to throw in the towel. And he says you beat me, he tells you you beat me. The next day by 12 o'clock we had all the growers together in a big meeting and we started negotiations. What that helped lead contract negotiations that one pay increases healthcare and safety improvements. She later reflected on how the movement galvanized broader Mexican-American activism. It's everybody came alive because once that people see the farm workers were the most depressed, the least educated that has least political power, that they can make changes and I think it inspires other people to do that. In the mid 1970s though maneuvering by growers and infighting at the union diminished its influence, Chavez and Huerta started kicking people out who disagreed with them. Cesar Chavez died in 1993. Huerta left the union a decade later, but she took on new causes like immigrant rights. She also encouraged young people to take up activism. As President Obama noted when he awarded her the Medal of Freedom in 2012. Don't wait to be invited, she says. Step in there. And on a personal note Dolores was very gracious. When I told her I had stolen her slogan, Cesar Puede, yes we can. Knowing her I'm pleased that she let me off easy because Dolores does not play. Earlier this year Huerta then 95 made a startling revelation. She told the New York Times that in the 1960s Cesar Chavez had raped her in a grape field. She said she had kept the secret for decades to protect her life's work. But said she finally spoke out to support other women coming forward with her own abuse accusations against Chavez. The reckoning continues to this day. Across the country murals of Chavez have been painted over. Many of them have been replaced with images of Dolores Huerta. Adrienne Floreno and PR News. Dolores Huerta was of course known around the world for her tireless work as a labor and political organizer. But few knew that she was just as passionate about jazz. Felix Contreras is the host of NPR Music's Alt Latino podcast and he once shared the mic in our NPR studios with Dolores Huerta as she spun some of her favorite jazz tracks. Felix what an experience. Thanks for being here. Thank you. Now when we heard today that Dolores Huerta had died we knew that we wanted to talk to you about the time you spent with her. Tell us the story. Okay in 2017 the PBS series Independent Lens presented a documentary about the Dolores Huerta that was directed by Peter Brad and Executive Produced by Carlos Santana. Now I attended a screening here in DC and I made my way through the crowd of admirers to invite her to the podcast to talk about the film and I told her we were mostly a musical podcast and she told me that she could talk about music as well. Okay. You have to know that in the earliest days of organizing the United Farm Workers Union both agit prop theater and music were used as organizing tools and it was mostly Mexican folk music so when I invited her I expected a completely different playlist than the one she brought. Okay this is just an amazing story. Did she mention anything to you that gave you a sense of just how serious of a music fan she was? Yes she talked about traveling from her home in Stockton to go to jazz clubs in San Francisco. Then she pulled off the ultimate jazz fan name drop. And I guess my claim to fame is I'm a charity parker. Oh my gosh. Tell me about that. What was that? Well I was I was dumbstruck I couldn't talk. I mean when I saw a charity park I just had this staring at him and I couldn't say anything and it was every awkward moment because I did have a lot that I wanted to ask him about and I couldn't say anything I was just frozen just frozen. My winter I have met the President Obama and they work with Hillary, but Clinton many many famous people. But when I met a charity parker I was at a loss for words. And Felix you can hear the affection and the enthusiasm and her voice there. I do want to know how her jazz DJ skills. You know she definitely knew her stuff man. She actually had a pleasant jazz radio host voice but being who she was she sprinkled some social justice messaging along with the music. Now here she is reminding us of the legacy of racism and show business as she queued up Lena Horan's hit Stormy Weather. Now keep in mind this is from 2017. As you know we are now in a very difficult political era in our United States of America. We might say it's because of Stormy Weather and also Lena Horan was such a great singer and a very great actress but she like many of the black performers of that time were completely ostracized and eliminated. They didn't have the successful careers that they should have had to white audiences because they happened to be African American. What a loss to so many people. I mean that's just absolutely beautiful. You can hear her there weaving together the politics of the time and history just in such a seamless, clear way. Did she play any music from the Latin jazz world? Okay she went completely foundational to the birth of Afro-Cuban jazz with Dizzy Gillespie and the legendary Cuban drummer and vocalist John Aboso whose life and career was cut short by his shooting. We have to think of our Latin American roots. We have to think of where our Latin music came from. It all came from Africa everybody. Let's remember that and also to think of gun violence. We have so much of that in our country and we need to end it. So that means we have to be vigilant. We have to know what's going on and make sure that we can kind of end the gun violence in the United States of America. So let's hear some great music with Dizzy Gillespie in "Channel Puzzle." I mean Felix this is just such an incredible opportunity. I have to confess I'm jealous. I wonder in the time that you spent with Dolores Huerta. Was there anything that gave you insight into her as just a person? Yeah you know when she ended her guest DJ spot. She played a Charlie Parker track that wasn't the frozen leave fast music he's known for. She played a track, she played a ballot from the Charlie Parker with Strings album and referenced the Latin American poet in her intro. And to me that reflected an aspect of Dolores Worcesters' life that maybe wasn't all that well known. A childlike sense of all for art and beauty that seemed to fuel the steely determination and dedication that was her life's work. You've been hearing Dolores Swerta playing jazz DJ on the NPR music podcast Alt Latino. That was back in September of 2017. Host Felix Contreras brought us these moments Felix it's been such a pleasure and this must have been just an incredible thrill for you. It was an honor then and it's an honor now thank you. Thanks. This episode was produced by Sophia Polisacar, Brianna Scott and Jeffrey Pierre with audio engineering by Hannah Glovna. Our director is Jonas Adams. It was edited by Jennifer Portman, Sarah Handel and Tenby Armias. Our executive producer is Courtney Dorning. It's considered this from NPR. I'm Wanna Summers.