Scholarship Form

This application was establish to honor a great mentor and Hispanic labor leader and organizer. Its intent is to provide financial assistance to migrant students of Southwest Michigan who have demonstrated a record of academic success and civic responsibility. Cesar E. Chavez was born on March 31, 1927 in Yuma, Arizona. Cesar left school after the eight grade to work in the fields full-time to support his family. He joined the US Navy in 1952 and served in the Western Pacific in the aftermath of World War II. Cesar began as a community organizer in 1952 when he joined the Community Service Organization (CSO), a prominent Latino civil rights group. In 1962, Cesar founded the National Farm Workers Association, which later became the United Farm Workers of America. For more than three decades Cesar led the first successful farm workers union in America history, achieving dignity, respect, fair wages, medical coverage, pension benefits, and humane living conditions for hundreds of thousands of farm workers. A strong believer in the principles of nonviolence, Cesar effectively employed peaceful tactics such as facts, boycotts, strikes, and pilgrimages to achieve social justice. In 1994 he was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor in America.