02/17/2026 UFW mourns the passing of farm worker champion Jesse Jackson

It is with much sadness that the United Farm Workers learned about the passing of the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who helped take up the mantle of civil rights leadership after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s 1968 assassination, and was also a longtime faithful champion of the farm workers' cause.

His rich history with the farm workers spanned the decades and saw him consistently turning out to support their marches, strikes, and campaigns on behalf of organizing, boycott and pesticide reform efforts. He helped lead a mass march through the streets of Watsonville, Calif. amidst a big UFW drive to organize berry workers in the 1990s.

More recently, Rev. Jackson joined UFW President Teresa Romero as they rallied alongside Pacific Northwest dairy workers, joining in their call for Starbucks to prevent labor abuses among its dairy suppliers.

Union veterans remember Rev. Jackson marching with the UFW in the Central Valley to expose pesticide dangers and a short time later sitting alongside Cesar Chavez as he ended his 36-day 1988 fast in Delano over the pesticide poisoning of agricultural workers and their children. Then, Jesse Jackson and a few others convinced Chavez to end the fast by committing to take up their own brief "chain fasts" by going without food for a few days at a time.

Image of Rev. Jesse Jackson and UFW President Teresa Romero (left) rallying with dairy workers in Seattle, Wash. in 2019.