One Union for Farm Workers

Emiliano Zapata Salazar, Martin Luther King, and John F. Kennedy all supported farm workers and were active in championing for their rights.  Zapata featured prominently in the Mexican Revolution.  He led a peasant revolution in Morelos, Mexico and formed the Liberation Army of the South in 1910.  Zapata also rebuilt Morelos and enacted land reforms.   In 1960, John F. Kennedy established the Viva Kennedy Club to support Latino politics, and his brother Robert F. Kennedy was particularly supportive of Cesar Chavez and the farm workers movement.  Together they brought national attention to the grape strike during the 1960s and 1970s.  Martin Luther King supported farm workers’ rights activist Cesar Chavez, and Chavez followed King’s example of non-violent protest.  Chavez co-founded the United Farm Workers of America with Dolores Huerta in 1962, and it became the first successful farm workers union.  The Aztec eagle depicted on the button is the symbol of this union, and the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) is a federation of labor organizations.