Dolores Huerta Dies at 96 After Challenging Power

Dolores Huerta taught people “how to come together and be able to fight” for their rights, she said while accepting the Presidential Medal of Freedom. The labor leader and civil rights activist who co-founded the United Farm Workers died Wednesday at age 96 at her home in Bakersfield, California, surrounded by close family, her team said in a statement shared through her foundation.

Organizing Against the Hierarchy

Huerta campaigned for migrant laborers’ rights through the 1960s and ’70s. She founded the United Farm Workers with Cesar Chavez in 1962 and served as its vice president for almost four decades, organizing people whose work and rights were at the center of the fight.

Her mother’s advice, Huerta recalled, was direct: “If you see people that need help, you have an obligation to help them, and you shouldn’t wait for people to ask.” Huerta said she honored that obligation by teaching people to join together and fight for their rights. The phrase she’s credited with coining, “Sí, se puede,” or “Yes, we can,” was later adopted by former President Barack Obama.

Huerta was arrested more than 25 times for what her foundation described as “non-violent civil disobedience activities and strikes.” The description is plain enough: she used collective action, and authorities repeatedly took her into custody.

In 1988, baton-wielding San Francisco police officers beat Huerta during a protest against presidential candidate George H.W. Bush’s policies. She was 58 and suffered broken ribs and a damaged spleen. Huerta and others injured in the protest filed a civil rights lawsuit in the U.S. District Court in San Francisco.

Power Inside the Movement

Earlier in 2026, Huerta accused Chavez of sexually abusing her in the 1960s. “I have kept this secret long enough. My silence ends here,” she said in a statement in March. Huerta said the abuse led to two pregnancies and that she “chose to keep [the] pregnancies secret and, after the children were born, arranged for them to be raised by other families that could give them stable lives.”

Huerta said she spoke publicly after a New York Times investigation reported allegations that Chavez groomed and sexually abused multiple girls and women in the labor movement. She said she had “carried this secret” because she feared speaking out could jeopardize her life’s work and progress for laborers.

“The formation of a union was the only vehicle to accomplish and secure those rights and I wasn’t going to let Cesar or anyone else get in the way,” Huerta said. “I channeled everything I had into advocating on behalf of millions of farmworkers and others who were suffering and deserved equal rights.” The account puts the struggle for workers’ rights alongside the abuse Huerta said she endured within the movement built to secure them.

Huerta’s foundation called her “one of the few women lobbyists of her era” and “a formidable advocate for people who could not afford one.” Her legislative work included a California measure allowing driver’s-license examinations in Spanish, extending Aid to Families with Dependent Children to California farmworker families, and securing disability-insurance protections for agricultural workers.

The Legacy They Claim

Huerta returned to California’s Central Valley in 2003 and founded the Dolores Huerta Foundation. Its mission is “inspiring and organizing communities to build volunteer organizations empowered to pursue social justice.” The foundation said it plans to open the Dolores Huerta Peace and Justice Cultural Center in the Central Valley in 2027.

Huerta remained active into her 90s, her foundation said, attending rallies, walking precincts, speaking with young organizers and urging people to vote. Her history also moved through formal channels: Obama presented her with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012, and former President Bill Clinton presented her with the Eleanor Roosevelt Award for Human Rights in the late 1990s.

Obama called Huerta one of his heroes and said she spent “her life fighting for marginalized communities, even as she herself faced sexism and abuse—including, as she revealed earlier this year, from Cesar Chavez and others within her own movement.” He added that “sí, se puede” was “a pretty good slogan” that he too often got credit for, “But as usual, Dolores got there first.”

Former President Joe Biden said Huerta organized in the fields, walked picket lines and negotiated with people who “never expected to have to negotiate with her.” California Gov. Gavin Newsom said California and the United States “would not be what we are today without her.” Her family called her death an “incredible loss”; the cause of death was not given in its statement. The New York Times, citing family spokesperson Erik Olvera, reported that she died of cancer.