By Scott Harrison (Los Angeles Times)
March 31 is Cesar Chavez’s birthday and a holiday in California, Colorado and Texas.
When Chavez died on April 23, 1993, staff writer George Ramos wrote The Times obituary published the next morning. He reported:
Cesar Chavez, who organized the United Farm Workers union, staged a massive grape boycott in the late 1960s to dramatize the plight of America’s poor farmhands, and later became a Gandhi-like leader to urban Mexican-Americans, was found dead Friday in San Luis, Ariz., police said. He was 66.
Authorities in San Luis, a small farming town on the Mexican border about 25 miles south of Chavez’s native Yuma, said the legendary farm workers’ leader apparently died in his sleep at the home of a family friend.
“He was our Gandhi,” said Democratic state Sen. Art Torres, a prominent Chicano politician from Los Angeles’ Eastside, upon hearing news of Chavez’s death. “He was our Dr. Martin Luther King. (Read more)
