Intersection of Two Very Important Months

                      

This Month brings us to the Intersection of two very important months. The completion of “Black History Month and the start of “Women’s History Month. I will post, in regards to two very important, women who have helped shape our history.

Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer stood against all injustices in the United States. As an uneducated woman from the American South, she chose to speak out! This was a time that “A COLORED should be seen, BUT not heard”. Mrs. Hamer used her voice to address the injustices and plights of rural Blacks in Mississippi. She spoke about Voting rights, Food rights, and the right to a Quality Education.

On Education and Black Power, she stated “What we mean by Black Power, is we mean to have not only Black political power, but Black economic power, to have a voice in the educational system that our kids will not only know the Black kids, but the White kids should know the contributions made by Black people throughout this country. We want to determine some of our destiny and we want to have something to say about our destiny”.

Mrs. Hamer was bruised, beaten and blasphemed in her state. They could not quiet her commitment to the people. She eventually worked with the Student Non- Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) to promote voting and educational rights as well.

Mrs. Hamer’s words and thoughts still apply, they are as important to America today as they were in the 1960’s and 1970’s’. They are being carried out today.

During our last biennium, we spoke of bridges, here was Mrs. Hamer’s take on bridges;

“Never to forget where we came from and always praise the bridges that carried us over”

www. PBS.org, www. Women’s history.org, Student Non Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), www.inspiringquotes.org, 

The mother of Dr. Rochelle Gutierrez spent a few hours talking to me about the infamous Dolores Huerta. I had previously only heard tidbits regarding Ms. Huerta’s legacy.

I am going to use the excerpt from women’s history.org, since it covered all I had to say.

"Co-founder of the United Farm Workers Association, Dolores Clara Fernandez Huerta is one of the most influential labor activists of the 20th century and a leader of the Chicano civil rights movement. 

Discrimination also helped shape Huerta. A schoolteacher, prejudiced against Hispanics, accused Huerta of cheating because her papers were too well-written. Huerta later received an associate teaching degree from the University of the Pacific’s Delta College.

Huerta briefly taught school in the 1950s, but seeing so many hungry farm children coming to school, she thought she could do more to help them by organizing farmers and farm workers.

In 1955 Huerta began her career as an activist when she co-founded the Stockton chapter of the Community Service Organization (CSO), which led voter registration drives and fought for economic improvements for Hispanics. She also founded the Agricultural Workers Association. Through a CSO associate, Huerta met activist César Chávez, with whom she shared an interest in organizing farm workers. In 1962, Huerta and Chávez founded the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA), the predecessor of the United Farm Workers’ Union (UFW), which formed three year later. Huerta served as UFW vice president until 1999.

Despite ethnic and gender bias, Huerta helped organize the 1965 Delano strike of 5,000 grape workers and was the lead negotiator in the workers’ contract that followed. Throughout her work with the UFW, Huerta organized workers, negotiated contracts, advocated for safer working conditions including the elimination of harmful pesticides. She also fought for unemployment and healthcare benefits for agricultural workers. Huerta was the driving force behind the nationwide table grape boycotts in the late 1960s that led to a successful union contract by 1970.

The recipient of many honors, Huerta received the Eleanor Roosevelt Human Rights Award in 1998 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012. As of 2015, she was a board member of the Feminist Majority Foundation, the Secretary-Treasurer Emeritus of the United Farm Workers of America, and the President of the Dolores Huerta Foundation."

(https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/dolores-huerta)

References https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/dolores-huerta

PBS documentaries/ Mrs. Fannie Lu Hamer

Mrs. Dolores Huerta