A Song for Cesar

Trace the life and legacy of labor activist Cesar Chavez. Through interviews with Maya Angelou, Joan Baez, Carlos Santana and more, see how music and the arts were instrumental to the success of the farmworkers’ movement Chavez helped found.

Labor leader and civil rights activist Cesar Chavez expressed an interest in music from an early age. He grew up identifying as a pachuco, a young Mexican-American who wore zoot suits and listened to jazz, blues and swing music.

"A lot of people have no idea that the leader of the Farm Workers Union was this guy that had this urban soul inside him," said filmmaker Luis Valdez.

When musician and composer Daniel Valdez first read the poem "Brown-Eyed Children of the Sun," he was reminded of his parents, who were migrant farmers from Mexico. He was inspired to create a bolero, typically a romantic ballad, dedicated to farmworkers and their families.

Members of the farmworkers’ movement were committed to nonviolence amidst danger on the picket lines. Singer-songwriter Joan Baez was one of those peaceful protesters.

"I've always been the happiest when I was doing activism and music at the same time,” said Baez. “So that was an obvious place for me to be, with Cesar."

Music promoter Jim Cassell organized concerts as fundraisers for the farmworkers’ movement with the likes of Kris Kristofferson, Jerry Garcia, Cheech and Chong, Crosby and Nash, Taj Mahal, Malo, Tower of Power and others.

“It was an era when the United Farm Workers Union movement was so supported by everybody, so the bands would perform basically for free," said Cassell.