In addition to African Americans, women and the LGBTQ communities, there were other disenfranchised groups seeking their rights as citizens. These included the First American, farm worker and Hispanic communities. The First American community was tired of the poverty, the lack of control of their reservations, and the forced separation of their children into government schools. The farm working community were fed up with the extremely poor working conditions migrant workers underwent, being treated like slaves instead of the human beings they were. Inspired by the work of the farm workers leadership, the Hispanic community began to raise its voice.
During the Sixties, extraordinary leaders appeared in each of a number of other disenfrancised communities. Among the migrant farm workers, many of them Hispanic, it was Cesar Chavez and Delores Huerta. With the First American population, it was Dennis Banks and Russell Means. The Sixties provided a springboard to change American society into a more fair and equal country. And laid the groundwork for the transformation that continues.
"If you can't change them, absorb them until they simply disappear into the mainstream culture. ... In Washington's infinite wisdom, it was decided that tribes should no longer be tribes, never mind that they had been tribes for thousands of years." --Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell, Northern Cheyenne (Horse, Capture, pp. 2 -3).
The 1972 Trail of Broken Treaties Caravan culminated in the occupation of the Bureau of Indian Affairs building in Washington, D.C. At the BIA, they presented their demands in the form of a Twenty-point Paper. The Twenty-points were:
Source: Ghost Rider Roads by A.N. Claypoole, pp. 8 - 10.
An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States by 
The Way to Rainy Mountain by Source:allmusic.com, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, ACLU.org, American Indian Magazine, & Spindittty.
Songs found on Spotify & Youtube.
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Dolores Huerta, negotiator and co-founder of the United Farm Workers of America
After a keynote addressing human rights, community organizer Dolores Huerta answers questions from University of Chicago students on April. 2009. Originally posted to Flickr as 040809 nws huerta eg. Photographer: Eric Guo
Source: Wiki Commons
Source: Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers Movement, p.xiii.
César Chávez —
speaking at the Delano UFW−United Farm Workers rally in Delano, California, June 1972.
Cropped from photograph by Joel Levine.
Source: Wiki Commons.
Cesar Chavez was a migrant Mexican American farm worker who became the leader of the Farm Worker Movement. A devout Catholic, he used non-violence to overcome the opposition to the farm workers and their pursuit for human dignity, social justice and a union.
""Our struggle is not easy. Those who oppose us are rich and powerful and they have many allies in high places. We are poor. Our allies are few. But we have something the rich do not own. We have our bodies and spirits and the justice of our cause as our weapons. When we are really honest with ourselves we must admit that our lives are all that really belong to us. So it is how we use our lives that determine what kind of men we. It is my deepest beliefs that only by giving our lives do we find life...in a totally non-violent struggles for justice." --Cesar Chavez after a 21 day fast on March 10, 1968. (Bruns, p.62)
Bless Me, Ultima by Source: allmusic.com, Smithsonian Folkways & NPR.org
Songs found on Spotify
Bruns, R. A. (2011). Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Worker movement. Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood.
Claypoole, A. N. (2013). Ghost rider roads: American Indian Movement. Ashland, OR: Wild Embers Press.
Davis, M. B. (1994). Native America in the twentieth century: An encyclopedia. New York, NY: Garland.
Horse Capture, George P.; Champagne, Duane; Jackson, Chandler C.; Nighthorse Campbell, Ben (2007). "Opening Keynote Address: Activating Indians into National Politics". American Indian Nations: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow. Rowman Altamira.
Novas, H. (1998). Everything you need to know about Latino history. New York: Plume.
Ochoa, G., & Smith, C. (2009). Atlas of Hispanic-American history. New York: Facts on File.
