Dolores Huerta and Women’s History as Living History

Women’s History Month is a great time to remember that history is never separate from the world we’re living in today. The work of historians is not just the work of recovery, but of truly listening. Listening to the sources, reading between the lines, and listening to women. And the work of women’s history includes listening to the voices and lives of women today. Women’s history must also always involve asking difficult questions about power, memory, and whose stories get told. 

Legacies and Listening

This past week, Dolores Huerta, the 96-year-old civil rights activist and co-founder of the organization that became the United Farm Workers, released a public statement accusing celebrated labor leader Cesar Chavez of raping her in the 1960s and fathering two children as a result of those assaults.

Huerta’s statement comes more than 30 years after Chavez’s death, but her statement coincided with the culmination of a five-year New York Times investigation into allegations that Chavez sexually abused multiple women, some when they were children. The public may just be finding out, but the allegations, conversations, and corroborations around Chavez’s behavior began decades ago. If it seems difficult to understand why more women (not to mention young girls) do not come forward about sexual assault, consider that even Huerta, a prominent feminist activist with a position of leadership within the movement, was silenced all these years. 

Cesar Chavez held immense authority and power over vulnerable people within the labor rights movement, including children whose parents dedicated themselves to the movement and often worked as farmworkers themselves. The specific details of allegations against Chavez may be shocking, but perhaps not surprising as we are almost daily subjected to news of men in politics, Hollywood, or corporate America abusing their power and abusing women. What this moment reveals, however, is not only new information about Cesar Chavez, but a wider pattern that historians and activists have documented in progressive movements and organizations for decades.

The Position of Women

It is a well-known and disappointing fact of history that women have often been harassed, excluded from leadership, abused, and assaulted across movements that advocate for equality and justice for marginalized groups. These were not just the unfortunate views or actions of a few male leaders. Social movements were (and are) part of a larger culture that justified and excused abuses of male power. 

Sexism and racism are features, not bugs. 

Sexism was a defining feature of the civil rights era of the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, of which the labor rights and farmworkers’ movements were a part. Women in the anti-war and student activist movements of the 1960s and 1970s reported sexually demeaning attitudes and statements by male participants, and sexual dominance over women functioned as a way for men to establish respect and leadership within the movement. These attitudes were the foundation for the exclusion of women from leadership and decision-making. In 1964, women within the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), a civil rights group organizing anti-segregation and voting rights efforts, issued a formal paper documenting and criticizing their treatment, a statement to which SNCC leader Stokely Carmichael famously responded that “the position of women in SNCC is prone.” (See Note 1)

During the landmark 1963 March on Washington, women who had been working tirelessly in the Civil Rights Movement were banned from speaking and asked to march separately. Activist and lawyer Pauli Murray called the treatment of women during the March “humiliating.” She later coined the term “Jane Crow” to describe the combination of sexism and racism that women of color were subjected to and the two battles, both inside and outside the movement, that they must simultaneously fight. (See Note 2)

The mistreatment of women within progressive organizations changed the history of those movements. It became one of the driving forces behind the formation of independent feminist organizations in this era. But it also weakened the movements and slowed the progress of causes that could have benefited from women’s more equal participation and leadership. 

Silent or Silenced 

Despite her public activism as a prominent feminist and advocate for women, Dolores Huerta did not feel free to challenge Chavez’s legacy. She says she was cautioned against speaking out even now, particularly given the current political climate and the hostility and violence directed toward immigrants, especially Mexican immigrants, and other people of color deemed inferior, dangerous, or un-American. The stakes are especially high for women of color, as many may also feel that reporting sexual violence constitutes a betrayal of their larger communities or reinforces stereotypes about men within those groups.

As soon as the news about Cesar Chavez broke, many were quick to point out these are the actions of one man and not reflective of the legacy and impact of the broader movement. The struggle for the rights of workers and immigrants continues, though, and is not in the past. Chavez’s name is tied to hundreds of places, schools, streets, and public statues in California and throughout the West (many of which have already made changes to remove his name). Such revelations can negatively impact the morale of current movement participants who are building on that name and legacy. And it can arm critics with claims of hypocrisy against a movement making claims for justice and equality on behalf of marginalized groups.

There are reasons to want to protect a legacy or a name, but history tells us that a different choice could always have been made. A choice by others within the movement to listen to and protect women and children. To reject violence and inequality in all its forms. To hold leaders accountable rather than treating them as irreplaceable. The work of history shows that it is possible to critically examine the actions of leaders without dismissing the movements they helped build and the issues they so importantly worked for. 

Women’s History Month is often framed as a time to celebrate progress and honor legacies. But it is also a reminder that history remains incomplete when women’s voices and experiences are silenced. Dolores Huerta's legacy and place in history was already established. As a participant in that history, however, she still was not fully heard. Her voice, alongside those of the other women and girls who came forward, will now reshape how this history will be told. 

Dolores Huerta as an activist in California, 1965 (left), and receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Obama, 2012. (Photo Credit: National Archives 219775169)

*********************************

Notes:

1. It is well-documented by contemporary participants in SNCC that Carmichael said these words about the position of women as "prone." What his intentions might have been, however, has been a subject of debate, as some claim he was “just joking" and that repeating the story overshadows his legacy in the Civil Rights and Black Power movements.

2. Pauli Murray's work and life intersect with the history of every rights movement of the 20th century. I highly recommend the documentary, "My Name Is Pauli Murray": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uh4r95VBU2Q