I chose to research about Cesar Estrada Chavez, because I was interested in the social issue topic of equality, and Cesar Chavez stood up for the equality of farmworkers. The minute I read a paragraph on him, I immediately knew that he was someone worth writing about. He not only had an interesting story, but also a clear activism story. In some parts, I made up some dialogue, that are meaningful to the story. I thought this was important, because it helped the scene come alive. One struggle about writing this book was, what to base the story on. I came up with 2 big ideas that the story could be based on. Equality for farmworkers and equality for latinos. For both of these categories, Cesar faced many challenges. But, in the end, I thought that he did more activism work for the equality of farmworkers.
Cesar Chavez
Cesar Estrada Chavez was born on March 31st, 1927, in Yuma, Arizona. He worked in the fields from 8th grade until he joined the navy after world war II. Despite all of his success, life was extra hard for Cesar, because he was latio. Back then, Latinos had no rights. It made people not want to listen to him when he tried to speak out. In 1945, 10 years before Rosa Parks got arrested, Cesar Chavez got arrested. He was arrested in California for sitting in the Japanese and Whites only section of a movie theatre. He had also seen signs that horrified him, like a sign that said no dogs or mexicans allowed. Cesar had a very important quote, which was “Si, se puede” which meant yes, it can be done. On April 23, 1993, Cesar died in his sleep, at age 66. He had gone on several hunger strikes while protesting, which is said to have contributed greatly to his death. Even though he has passed, he has also passed the word to many others, who today, still continue the advocacy work.
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