Question 24 - Reading: Level D Practice Test for the TABE Test

César Chávez was an American farmworker, labor leader, and civil rights activist. He and fellow activist Dolores Huerta started the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA) to help bring equal rights to Mexicans working in the United States. He led boycotts and used nonviolence to bring lasting changes for Chicano agricultural workers.

Chávez was born near Yuma, Arizona, in 1927. He was one of six children and his family lost everything during the Great Depression. They became migrant farm workers and moved all over California and Arizona to find work, never staying in one place very long as the crops ripened in different fields. As a child, Chávez attended over 30 schools before he left school after eighth grade to work full-time.

Growing up in the fields, Chávez noticed how poorly the field workers were treated. In 1965, Chávez and the NFWA started a strike for grape-pickers in California and encouraged American shoppers to boycott grapes from California. In 1970, the migrant workers, led by Chávez, won their fight for better pay.

He kept working against unfair labor rules. He stopped eating in protest three times because of low pay and bad working conditions.

Chávez is respected in California and other states. In 2000, seven years after his death, California’s state legislature approved a holiday to honor him. The holiday is on March 31, Chávez’s birthday. It was the first U.S. public holiday to honor a Mexican American.