One Life: Dolores Huerta

July 3, 2015 – May 15, 2016
National Portrait Gallery
8th and G Streets, NW
Washington, DC
1st Floor, East

One Life: Dolores Huerta highlights the significant role of this Latina leader in the California farm workers movement of the 1960s and 70s. This eleventh installment in the “One Life” series is the first devoted to a Latina. It illuminates Huerta as the co-founder, with Cesar Chavez, of the United Farm Workers (UFW), and highlights her position as the union’s lobbyist and contract negotiator. Huerta was instrumental in achieving major legal protections and a better standard of living for farm workers, yet she remains largely under-acknowledged in history. The exhibition is the first in a national museum to draw attention to her contributions. The exhibition opening coincides with the 50th anniversary of the September 1965 grape strike launched by the farm workers movement.

Taína Caragol, curator for Latino art and history, is the curator for this exhibition.