NYT: Dr. Marion Moses, Top Aide to Cesar Chavez, Dies at 84

[Omaha Steve]

She tended to the health of poor farm workers and was at the forefront of a 1960s national grape boycott that brought his agricultural union triumph.



By Alex Traub
Sept. 15, 2020

Marion Moses, who as a trusted aide to the farm workers’ leader Cesar Chavez promoted a nationwide boycott of table grapes and helped create a health care system for impoverished grape pickers, died on Aug. 28 in San Francisco. She was 84.

The cause was heart failure and renal failure, her brother Maron Moses said.

Dr. Moses met Chavez in 1965 at a church near the University of California, Berkeley, where she was pursuing a master’s degree in English, and was struck by what she described as his “strong moral force.” A month earlier, Chavez had led around 1,700 farm workers and their families in his fledgling union to strike against grape growers in California.

Dr. Moses soon traveled to Chavez’s headquarters in Delano, a small city in the heart of California’s table-grape region. At the time, farm workers’ wages in California averaged less than $1.20 an hour (less than $10 an hour in today’s money). Dr. Moses found that the grape pickers lacked running water and toilets, were excluded from health safety labor laws, could be fired at will, and got no overtime or vacations.

FULL story: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/15/us/dr-marion-moses-top-aide-to-cesar-chavez-dies-at-84.html