<P> Dolores Huerta grew up in Stockton, California, which is in the San Joaquin Valley, an area filled with farms . In the early 1950s, she completed a degree at Delta Community College, part of the University of the Pacific . She briefly worked as an elementary school teacher . Huerta saw that her students, many of them children of farm workers, were living in poverty without enough food to eat or other basic necessities . To help, she became one of the founders of the Stockton chapter of the Community Service Organization (CSO). The CSO worked to improve social and economic conditions for farm workers and to fight discrimination . </P> <P> By 1959, César Chávez had already established professional relationships with local community organizations that aimed to empower the working class population by encouraging them to become more politically active . In 1952, Chávez met Fred Ross who was a community organizer working on behalf of the Community Service Organization . This was a group which was affiliated with the Industrial Areas Foundation which was headed by Saul Alinsky . </P> <P> To further her cause, Huerta created the Agricultural Workers Association (AWA) in 1960 . Through the AWA, she lobbied politicians on many issues, including allowing migrant workers without U.S. citizenship to receive public assistance and pensions and creating Spanish - language voting ballots and driver's tests . In 1962, she co-founded a workers' union with César Chávez, which was later known as the United Farm Workers (UFW). The two made a great team . Chávez was the dynamic leader and speaker and Huerta was a skilled organizer and tough negotiator . Huerta was instrumental in the union's many successes, including the strikes against California grape growers in the 1960s and 1970s . </P> <P> During Chávez's participation in the Community Service Organization, Fred Ross trained César Chávez in the grassroots, door - to - door, house meeting tactic of organization, a tactic which was crucial to the UFW's recruiting methods . The house meeting tactic successfully established a broad base of local Community Service Organization chapters during Ross's era, and Chávez used this technique to extend the UFW's reach as well as to find up and coming organizers . During the 1950s, César Chávez and Fred Ross developed twenty - two new Community Service Organization chapters in the Mexican American neighborhoods of San Jose . In 1959, Chávez would claim the rank of executive director in the Community Service Organization . During this time, Chávez observed and adopted the notion of having the community become more politically involved in order to bring about the social changes that the community sought . This would be a vital tactic in Chávez's future struggles in fighting for immigrant rights . </P>

When was the united farm workers union formed