11th Grade Hispanic Heritage Month DBQs

César Chavez: Analyzing Primary Sources

By Sarah Austin

This inquiry based lesson will vicariously draw your students into the lives, circumstances, and struggle for social justice as they engage in the analysis of three primary sources. Specifically, this resource will have students;

  • Discuss and analyze the motivations and philosophy of César Chávez
  • Understand the problems faced by farmworkers in California's central valley and beyond. 
  • Analyze primary sources related to the meaning and context of the Chicano Rights Movement.

The primary sources include;

  1. Photograph taken on December 19, 1969 outside of a Safeway supermarket in Seattle, WA (strike and boycott led by Cesar Chavez)
  2. Speech given by César Chavez to the Commonwealth Club of California on Sept 9, 1984.
  3. Viva La Causa Documentary film- the grape strike and boycott led by César Chávez and Dolores Huerta in the 1960s. The film shows how thousands of people from across the nation joined in a struggle for justice for the most exploited people in our country — the workers who put food on our tables.

Materials Include:

  • Teacher Reference Guide
  • Google (10) Slide Presentation
  • Interactive Guided Notes Handout
  • Economics Chart

If you liked this lesson see other related lessons here:

  • American Japanese Internment
  • Unit BUNDLE- Reconstruction, Jim Crow & the KKK
  • Jim Crow: Separate and Unequal
  • Women's Suffrage: Iron Jawed Angels (Comparing Sources)
  • Civil Rights Movements: Then and Today
  • The Ku Klux Klan: The Past & Today
  • Proposing a 28th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution
  • 'The Quotable Rebel' Activity: First Day of School
$4.25