At 90, Dolores Huerta is a living civil rights icon. She has spent most of her life as a political activist, fighting for better working conditions for farmworkers and the rights of the downtrodden, a firm believer in the power of political organizing to effect change.

Pesotta once worked in Southern California where she had been discharged from a garment factory and blacklisted for union activity. Now Pesotta was returning at the request of garment workers to organize their industry. Within one month a new International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU) local was formed and the garment industry found itself in the middle of a bitter strike with Rose Pesotta leading the charge.

This labor and racial rights activist played a pivotal role in the 1943 strike at Plant No. 65 of RJ Reynolds Co., the largest tobacco manufacturing facility in the world at the time, and helped found the Local 22 of the Food, Tobacco, Agricultural and Allied Workers of America-CIO labor union.

The Atlanta washerwomen strike of 1881 was a labor strike in Atlanta involving washerwomen. Beginning in July 1881, the strike was carried out primarily by African American women who argued for increased wages and greater autonomy in their work. The strike ended in August with some success for the strikers.

“When people of color get the opportunity to be leaders, we have a responsibility to fight with everything within us to bring others along. We cannot, once we get in the door, close the door behind us. We’ve got to make darn sure that the door is not just cracked but is opened wide for others to come in.”

“The colored man’s struggle until now has been for naked existence, for the right to life and liberty; with the fifteenth amendment, henceforth his struggle will be in the pursuit of happiness; in this instance; it is to turn his labor to the most effective account, to be respected therein; the most we can hope to effect in this gathering, is a crude organization; the formation of a labor bureau to send out agents, to organize throughout the land, to effect union with laborers without color.”

“Those unions that enjoy the right to strike have no guarantee that sacrificing their jobs and their livelihood will result in victory but they nevertheless engage in lengthy strikes, not because they are assured of winning but because they are determined to fight.”—William Burrus, 1998