Cesar Chavez. Autobiography of La Causa.

[CHAVEZ, Cesar] Jacques E. Levy.

$750.00

Item Number: 126731

New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1975.

First edition of this biography of the famous labor activist. Octavo, original cloth, photographic endpapers, illustrated with 33 pages of photographs. Presentation copy, lengthily inscribed by Chavez on the half-title page, “To Marian Schroeder personal best wishes on this Christmas season Peace Cesar Chavez 12/15/78 LA PAZ.” Fine in a near fine price-clipped dust jacket. Jacket design by Judith Kazdym Leeds. Jacket photograph by Jacques E. Levy.

"In his 66 years Chávez succeeded on many levels. His greatest concern was improving the conditions of men, women, and children who worked in the fields—a life he had shared… Chávez also inspired the Chicano civil rights movement of the 1960s. Politicized by la causa, the farm workers' cause, el movimiento mobilized farm worker families, middle-class Latino organizations, Mexican-American high school and college students, and activist Chicanas to demand their rights and embrace a new sense of cultural pride. Through his message of nonviolence, fairness, and respect, Chávez also reached beyond the Mexican-American community, the second largest minority in the United States, to involve middle-class Anglos and other races in a cross-class and cross-race alliance for social justice. Recognizing the significance of Chávez as a leader of the Mexican-American community and as a national advocate for peaceful social change, President Clinton presented the nation's highest civilian honor, the Medal of Freedom, posthumously to his widow, Helen Chávez, in 1994" (ANB). To Robert F. Kennedy, Chávez was "one of the heroic figures of our time'" (New York Times). Levy's richly detailed biography of Chávez won early praise as an "exceptionally interesting and intimate oral history" (Nation).