Chavez was born in Arizona, the son of Mexican-American migrant farm laborers. Migrant farm workers travel from farm to farm as different crops are harvested. Often, workers receive low wages and live in camps with very poor living conditions. As a boy, Chavez traveled with his family to different labor camps throughout the Southwest and attended school only occasionally. 

After Chavez was in the U.S. Navy for two years during World War II, he returned to work as a farm worker in Arizona and California. at the time, a group called the Community Services Organization (CSO) was helping farm workers organize into an active group to improve their conditions. The CSO taught Chavez how to organize workers so they could obtain better wages and living conditions from the farm owners. In 1958, he became the general director of the CSO.

In 1962, Chavez resigned from from the CSO and started an organization which would more directly benefit farm workers, the National Farn Workers Association (NFWA). In 1965, he led California grape pickers on a strike that lasted five years and initiated a nationwide boycott of grapes which ended in the signing of agreements with the grape growers. Chavez also effectively organized farm workers against lettuce growers and other agribusinesses, who were forced to make agreements with the United Farm Workers (UFW), the new name for Chavez's organization. UFW contracts featured higher wages and better living conditions for farm workers. However, in the 1970's and 1980's, the UFW's effectiveness declined until the union represented only ten percent of California's grape pickers. After Chavez died in 1993, he was commemorated with a Presidential Medal of Honor in 1994 by President Clinton.