February 20, 2004

Dolores Huerta brings her message to campus

• CSUS celebrates Women’s History Month
• Panel to discuss feminism’s ‘Third Wave’
• Women's History Month Events

Dolores Huerta

Civil rights icon Dolores Huerta will give a free talk as part of California State University, Sacramento’s Women’s History Month celebrations. Huerta will speak in the University Union Ballroom at 7:30 p.m., Thursday, March 25.

Huerta, 73, perhaps best known for her role as a co-founder of the United Farm Workers of America in 1962, began her civil rights activism in 1955 when she helped found the Stockton chapter of the Community Service Organization. There she fought segregation and police brutality, led voter registration drives, pushed for improved public services and worked to enact new legislation. She became involved in farm worker rights in 1960 and successfully fought to extend Aid to Families with Dependent Children to them in 1963. In 1962 she joined with Cesar Chavez to create the National Farm Workers Association which later became the UFW.

Huerta has been repeatedly honored for her work in labor and civil rights activism. Those honors include the American Civil Liberties Union’s Roger Baldwin Medal of Liberty Award, the Eugene V. Debs Foundation’s Outstanding American Award, the Ellis Island Medal of Freedom Award and induction into the National Women’s Hall of Fame. In 1998 she was named one of the "100 Most Important Women of the 20th Century” by Ladies Home Journal and she is currently vice president of the Coalition for Labor Union Women, vice-president of the California AFL-CIO, and a member of the Fund for the Feminist Majority which advocates for political and equal rights for women.

For more information, call (916) 278-7388 or visit the CSUS Women’s Resource Center’s website at www.csus.edu/wrc. Media assistance is available from CSUS public affairs at (916) 278-6156.

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