Answer:
Chavez was born as the second of five children in a family of small farmers from Arizona. In 1939 the family sold their farm to pay off debts, after which they had to earn their living in Arizona and California as day laborers. Chavez attended different schools but did not graduate. In 1944 he joined the US Navy. In 1948 he returned to California to marry Helen Fabela. The couple landed in Delano and had eight children.
Chavez became involved in various social organizations and urged Mexican Americans to improve their position and fight for political rights. In 1962 he founded the National Farm Workers Association. The NFWA became nationally known for the first time because of the Delano grape strike, which quickly spread across California. Thousands of grape pickers, mostly immigrants, stopped work for more than five years, so that employers finally gave in and promised to pay the minimum wage from now on.
In the following years, Chavez led more and more protests and strikes. He became the symbol for the Mexican-American part of the civil rights movement. Chavez took his inspiration from Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King. In his later years he also worked against the use of pesticides and for animal rights.