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DMV, State Courts To Be Closed In Observance Of Cesar Chavez Day

LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com) — State offices, including the Department of Motor Vehicles and Los Angeles Superior Courts, will be closed Friday to observe Cesar Chavez Day.

Federal offices and services, including the U.S. Postal Service, will be open.

The labor leader was honored with the holiday by then-Gov. Gray Davis in 2000.

Chavez, an advocate of nonviolence, is remembered for spearheading a grape boycott in 1965 that went nationwide in 1968 and lasted until 1978, which led to higher wages for farm workers and focusing national attention on their plight.

Born March 31, 1927, in Yuma, Arizona, Chavez dropped out of school after the eighth grade to help support his family by joining them in the fields as a migrant farm worker. He joined the Latino civil rights Community Service Organization in 1952, urging Latinos to register to vote.

In 1962, Chavez joined Dolores Huerta in co-founding the National Farm Workers Association, which later became the United Farm Workers.

Chavez and the UFW played an instrumental role in the passage of the California Agricultural Labor Relations Act in 1975, which made California the first state to give farm workers the right to seek union representation and bargain collectively within an established legal framework.

Chavez died in 1993 at age 66.

(© Copyright 2017 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. City News Service contributed to this report.)

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