- They've been called such names as, "Freedom Fighters."

- "The First Lady of Civil Rights."

- And, "Mother."

- But, never have they been called complacent.

- Dolores Huerta, Rosa Parks and Frances Grice.

- Women whose actions changed life not just locally, but on a national level by setting a precedent for others.

I'm Jessica Greenwell with Iris Hill.

- Today, we feature three individuals who fought tirelessly for the rights of others.

- As feminists, catalysts and activists.

- Welcome to Civil Women.

(uplifting music) ♪ - Few have contributed as much to the advancement of oppressed groups as Presidential Medal of Freedom winner, Dolores Huerta.

Huerta was born on April 10, 1930.

Raised by a single mother who overcame the odds by opening a large hotel providing shelter to low-wage workers, she spent her childhood in the highly diverse community of Stockton, California.

After starting a career as a teacher, Huerta saw the misery of students living in poverty and felt called to a life of fighting injustice.

With the legendary Cesar Chavez, she founded the National Farm Workers Association.

But, that was just the start of her accomplishments.

She went on to successfully lobby for unprecedented gains for farm workers, including disability insurance and the right to unionize.

As revolutionary as her work for agricultural laborers was, her fights for women were no less significant.

Often partnering with feminist icon, Gloria Steinem, Huerta traveled across the country on behalf of the Feminist Majority, encouraging women to run for office and leading to significantly more female representation at every level of government.

She remains a social justice warrior, and we at the Empire Network PBS were honored to interview her during Women's History Month.

- Who's got the power?

- We've got the power!

(crowd cheering) - We've got the highest number of women ever that are now running for political office at all different types of levels.

And, I do believe, that we have a political reawakening that is happening in the United States right now.

- Dolores Huerta is a living legend.

We had a packed auditorium here at Valley College listening to her and she got everybody on their feet.

Everybody wanting to work together toward a better world, and everybody saying, "Yes, we can.

Yes, we can!"

(crowd chanting/clapping) And she's still so relevant and so current because there are so many concerns that we have today in the world.

- I hope that the Me Too movement is just the beginning.

It's not just about sexual harassment.

It's about equal pay for women.

It's about equal service for women.

They say, "Well, what is a feminist?"

Well, look.

A feminist is number one, somebody who stands up for women's reproductive rights, stand up for gay rights, stand up for immigrants, stand up for labor unions, stand up for our environment.

This is what a feminist is.

And so, the men can also be feminists.

- I hope that a lot of students here at Valley and throughout the area will be inspired by her, to see what they can do in their lives if they just pay attention to what she's done.

And, if they keep the persistence that Dolores has demonstrated now for so, so many decades.

- I think, sometimes, that people think that movements just happen.

And maybe in today's world with the internet and with devices that you can bring people together fast.

As we have seen with the Black Lives Matter movement, with the Me Too movement with the DACA students, that you can get information out there and people are kind of on the same "wavelength", you might say.

But, in order for movements to be sustainable I think you've got to build organization.

And, when you think about the United Farm Workers, we actually organized for three years before the strike!

So, when the farm workers came out on strike, it wasn't spontaneous, like Cesar walked through the field and workers came out on strike.

No.

We organized workers in their homes, having house meetings with them.

And so, many of the workers that came out on strike, especially the leadership, they were already organizing what we were about.

When we talk about working people, we have to talk about labor unions.

And you hear the news media and you hear these corporations, and they talk about, "Well, labor unions, "they call big labor.

It's a special interest."

How can you be a special interest when the majority of the people in the United States are working people?

So, the strike didn't end up with just getting an increase in wages.

Farm workers were, then, getting only like 50 cents an hour.

We went for collective bargaining for the right to organize.

And so, that was much more permanent than just getting a little wage increase.

We had to have a contract with conditions in the contract that if workers were fired, we could take the employers to court, to arbitration, to get them back their jobs.

And to be able to get a medical plan for them and a pension plan for them.

So, it was not just about the wages but getting the benefits and getting representation in the workforce, in the workplace.

- The Farm Workers' Union developed and the two people who founded it were Cesar Chavez, whom almost everybody knows, and Dolores Huerta, who was fully equal in organizing and creating the union.

But Dolores never really was recognized as much, and many students today don't even know who she is.

She's an extraordinary individual who has always been trying to bring young people into positions of responsibility and influence.

- I think we do have a solution to the issues that we're facing, and that is our educational system.

Because we have the structure, but we just have to change the content of what we teach.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt said during World War II, "We will not take one dime out of our schools, "or one dime out of our libraries "because education is the foundation of our democracy."

I do believe that the reason racism exists in our country, and misogyny, and homophobia, and bigotry, lack of science is because in our educational systems, from the time that our children are in kindergarten, we do not teach what the contributions have been of people of color.

Native Americans who were the first slaves, whose land we sit on, yet we never thanked them or compensated them for the land.

The African slaves that built the White House and the Congress.

That isn't in our school books.

The Mexicans that came in here, and not only tilled our fields, built our railroads, the Chinese, the Japanese, Filipinos, people from India that were brought in to build the infrastructure of our United States of America.

And, we have to teach that in our school books.

If not, we're never gonna end the racism and our children of color will never get the dignity that they deserve for what their people did to build the country.

And our Anglo children, we can prevent them from having the poison of white supremacy and white privilege.

We can make that happen, but it's got to be done through education.

- I think, ultimately, it's the whole community's responsibility to make sure that people of color are educated about their history and about what's possible.

And teachers, at every level, from the kindergarten, the Pre-K, all the way up to the professors and the highest you can go, educate yourself about the people that you're gonna be teaching.

I think that's the respectful thing to do.

- (laughing) My students!

(shouting/cheering) - Professors can motivate students.

They can encourage students to get involved and, aside from doing a good job and writing papers, how are you gonna really be able to implement or put it into practice?

- You know, being able to see the contributions that people of color have made to America and to the world, you know, that changes the game for a young person because if you're not talkin' about me, then I'm tunin' out.

If you want me to be something great then you have to show me something great.

- To watch a woman like her just rise to the notoriety that she has and work so hard for other people, is, like I wanted to be that even though I was an immigrant.

And, she gave me hope that, despite my immigration status, that there were things I could do for other people that would make me and a little piece of my world a better place.

- Student involvement, community involvement is crucial.

It's absolutely key.

We are the majority, but if people stay home and they don't vote, then we lose.

We've got to be politically savvy.

When I saw the movie, Dolores, I kind of reflected back on my own life.

And there's one scene in the movie where they show Cesar Chavez, and Larry Itliong, and then all these men.

And they're signing the contracts that we finally won after this big, huge boycott when we got 17 million Americans to stop eating grapes.

I'm not in that picture.

Now, I did the boycott.

Okay?

I negotiated the contracts with all these growers but I'm not in the picture.

I'll tell you why.

Because when we were sitting down, after getting ready to sign those contracts, Brother Larry Itliong came up to me and he said, "Dolores, do you mind if I have your seat?"

I was sitting next to Cesar.

And I said, "Oh.

Of course, Larry," and I got up and walked away.

Women, don't ever do that!

(laughing) (crowd cheering) - I just appreciate the candor that she brings to the female perspective, especially as a woman of color, because it's not always heard in the media and definitely not in the public.

- Women are sorely needed in our society and not just as mothers, and wives, and sisters but we need women as leaders.

Because we, as women, we have a different intuition.

We think differently and if there's somewhere that you feel that you should be, you put yourself there.

Because remember this, a woman's place is not only where she wants to be, but a woman's place is where she needs to be.

And if somehow you're not in that space where your voice is needed, you step into that space.

You don't have to wait to be invited.

- A woman who didn't wait for an invitation to change history was Rosa Parks.

Parks has been revered as one of the most influential people of the 20th century.

She was born in my home state of Alabama in 1913.

Exposed to segregation at an early age, Rosa walked to elementary school since black children were not allowed on the bus.

At 19, she met Raymond Parks, a member of the Montgomery NAACP.

The two were married and she joined the organization as a youth leader and a secretary.

On December 1, 1955, after her shift as a seamstress in a store, Parks refused to obey the bus driver's order to relinquish her seat in the Colored Section to a white passenger.

Following her arrest, Parks called NAACP President, E.D.

Nixon.

Within hours, the Women's Political Council, a group created to address issues for black bus patrons, took charge.

Black community leaders organized a non-violent bus boycott that lasted 381 days.

A young Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was appointed spokesperson and the boycott continued for more than a year.

In June, the Federal District Court ruled that the city's segregation policies were unconstitutional and that was upheld by the Supreme Court in November.

Montgomery announced its compliance the next month, a year after the protests began.

Although Rosa Parks wasn't the first black person to refuse giving up a seat, her quiet bravery inspired a unified front and played a pivotal role in the freedom movement.

She received numerous honors, including the Medal of Freedom like Dolores Huerta, and the Congressional Gold Medal of Honor.

Parks passed away at the age of 92 in 2005.

On February 27, 2013, Congress dedicated a statue to Rosa Parks in the United States Capitol approximately 100 years after her birth.

- That is why this statue belongs in this hall.

- And she has other such tributes around the country, but the newest was unveiled in San Bernardino, California during February of 2018.

- What a beautiful day to commemorate the unveiling of the Rosa Parks statue here in downtown San Bernardino.

(crowd cheering) - I think what's important to remember is that just as Rosa Parks was a symbol of resistance, she was a symbol of courage, symbol of perseverance.

San Bernardino has been through a whole lot, and San Bernardino is the picture of resistance, and perseverance and courage.

And I would love for that always to be something that we look at.

San Bernardino stands strong, but before San Bernardino stood strong, Rosa Parks sat strong!

- Calling on our Mother Rosa, could she speak to us of courage and equality?

Would we be so moved as to move she?

Would we?

Can we try that right now?

Let's all stand.

Some of us are on our feet!

Some of us are in our chair.

If you can stand, stand.

Let's sing together, "We Shall Overcome."

Let's see if we can call on our Mother Rosa.

You remember!

You've seen the movies.

Arms intertwined, interlocked through the air with a sway.

Come on!

Sway for Mother Rosa.

♪ We shall overcome ♪ Come on now!

♪ We shall overcome ♪ - One of the things that I learned was that she really fought for human rights.

And, to see a lot of people coming together, doesn't matter what the race, to celebrate her, it really proves how much she has unified the nation just in her spirit alone.

Everyone just loved her and I understand why.

- I think that, when we study the history of Rosa Parks, there's so much.

The fact that she is part Native American is extremely important.

The fact that she is a woman is extremely important.

The fact that she was from Alabama is extremely important.

All of these factors, each one of us is going to take a part of that and we'll identify with that.

And here was a hero, a shero, who stood up for something that was so important.

And, what she fought for wasn't just for the African American.

It was for all of us, quite frankly.

And it's something that we all, something that we all need to live up to.

- But, you know, Rosa Parks was not just by herself.

The whole boycott that she participated in was a plan, and they had made this plan at the Highlands Center in Tennessee.

So they already knew what they were going to do because that was a strategic plan that they made ahead of time.

(somber music) - [Presenter] One, two, three.

(crowd cheering) - Oh, I'm proud and humbled to be able to do an icon like Rosa Parks.

What I was thinking when I sculpted it is that she's a hero, a heroine, I guess.

And, that that's what the world needs is more people who lead by example.

And hopefully that that's what they can take away from, is that they can go out and do good deeds amongst the community.

It's kind of bittersweet because my mother passed away and she modeled for the statue.

She sat in my studio and we talked about the Civil Rights movement and what she was doing at that time.

And the glasses that are on Rosa Parks were my mother's.

They're molded and bronzed.

- As society starts to get farther and farther away from the Civil Rights Movement, they tend to forget the importance of it.

Especially now, with the importance of making sure that everyone is treated the way that they should be treated.

And, when you look at a statue of Rosa Parks, it brings back everything that she stood for and everything that we should stand for and continue to fight for.

- Parks' singular act of disobedience launched a movement.

The tired feet of those who walked the dusty roads of Montgomery helped a nation see that to which it had once been blind.

♪ We shall overcome ♪ ♪ Some day ♪ - Rosa Parks said in her autobiography, My Story, that is isn't true she gave up her seat because of being tired at the end of a work day.

What was the real story?

She was tired of giving in.

Parks lost her job during the bus boycott and had a challenging time finding work.

In 1957, Rosa Parks and her husband moved to Detroit, Michigan where she served on the staff of U.S. Representative, John Conyers.

A few years later, a future civil rights icon would move from that very city in 1962, to make her mark in San Bernardino, California which is also home to the Empire Network-PBS.

Frances Grice discovered that San Bernardino schools were segregated by race and not equal.

In response, she helped co-found the Community League of Mothers, a grassroots coalition that spoke for African Americans and fought to end that policy in San Bernardino schools.

With the help of the NAACP, in 1973, the California Supreme Court ruled that the school district was guilty of discrimination, thereby ending segregation in San Bernardino schools.

Grice also founded Operation Second Chance, a technical school that trained thousands of low-income youth, welfare recipients and workers displaced by plant closure.

She was bestowed numerous honors, including the Presidential Award from both Presidents Reagan and Bush in the White House Rose Garden.

Grice mentored dozens of community leaders across the Inland Empire until her death on New Year's Eve 2017, at the age of 84.

- Frances always was, Frances was an icon in this community.

- Well, everybody met Frances when Frances came to town.

I mean, she came from the Motown town, you know?

She came right in, like dynamite.

She started going to all the organizations.

She started talking about where she was from and some of the things that she wanted to do, and so she got involved right away.

- I met Frances Grice through Keith Lee.

Keith Lee was the County Administrative Officer over economic development.

And he was a student of Frances' Operation Second Chance.

He looked at what I was doing with Youth Action Project.

hH said, "You need to meet this woman named Frances Grice."

Went over to her office off of Hospitality Lane and it was history ever since.

- Dorothy Height wrote a grant in the early '80s through the National Council of Negro Women, so I became the director of the one in San Bernardino.

So my first day of getting the contract, here I was with the contract in my hand and didn't know what to do.

Well, Frances had already been there and done that.

Right?

And so, I was lookin' for a place to have an office and I went to this building downtown.

And she sent her staff, she sent two or three other people to talk to the owner to make sure I got an office.

She gave me my first set of furniture.

She gave me reams of paper.

That was just the kind of person she was.

- When I came to live in San Bernardino proper in the 1980s, that's when I would have seen this beautiful woman with the stark, green eyes, who had a presence about herself and spoke very comfortably and was not afraid to speak her mind about anything.

That's when I probably in my brain said, "That is the lady that I have been hearing about "all of these years."

- They don't know we had to dodge bullets.

They don't know that the Ku Klux Klan was walkin' down E Street.

They don't know that Harry Rubottom had to sue Bing's to get in the restaurant to eat Chinese food.

They don't know all the conditions that we had to go through.

They don't know that our children had to develop a program to run into a room- that we said, if they started a riot, we have to tell our kids, "Run in a room and lock the door, and stay there."

- When she came to San Bernardino, she just heard the voices of the mothers that really felt like their kids weren't getting the best.

And so, she just felt like she was gonna do something about it and so she organized a group of mothers and then they eventually became the League of Mothers.

- While she was doing this fight for integration, there was some negotiations going on between the school district and the community.

One of the issues was busing.

They had taken the buses away from the children who lived on the west side of town.

So, if they wanted to go to school across town, they had to walk.

The League of Mothers gave them holy hell over it and as a result, the district gave back the busing opportunity.

- So Frances' involvement in desegregation was because she wanted to make sure that all kids had access to a quality education.

- She knew African American young people needed to be trained.

She knew that there was funding available and I think that was her whole drive to start that training program.

- My sister found that being a part of Operation Second Chance equipped her with a particular skill that would help her in her adult life.

- When I was an assembly member I was in Sacramento, and here's this young man walkin' in to my office.

And he was president of the NAACP in Stockton, and he was workin' for this big company and all that.

And I said, "Don't I know you from somewhere?"

And he said, "Oh, yeah.

You remember me in San Bernardino.

"I went to Frances' training program."

So anywhere you went, pretty much, you could run into somebody who was successful who had been from San Bernardino and had gone through Frances' program.

- She has a great deal of responsibility for me being in the positions I am today just because of her advice, her direction and the ideas that she shared with me.

- We owe a lot to Frances Grice.

For that visionary thinking that she had, and honoring that visionary thinking.

- She could pick up on what needed to be done and go ahead and start doing it.

- When she talked to you, it was like she was talking to your soul.

Like literally, she could motivate you.

She could make you want to fall out on the ground because you're not doin' enough.

And then, pick you back up and put you all back together again and help you get the direction that you needed.

- She was an amazing, amazing person.

And she won't soon be forgotten.

- Continue to speak, continue to defend, continue to work in the community.

That would be the greatest legacy that she could have.

- Every day that I wake up is an opportunity for me to do better than I did the day before.

And I think that is the message to young people and we use Frances as a model.

If we aspire to be the best selves, then I don't think there's anything that we can't do.

- We are women of faith and that faith energizes us to move those mountains.

- And right now, nobody in this community remembers, nobody even remembers a Frances Grice sometimes.

Very few people are here now that was here in the '60s and the '70s, so they don't know the struggle we had.

- Frances, much like Rosa and Dolores, was placed in a situation where she had to make a choice.

- Accept the problem, or take it on.

- It can be argued that if Rosa hadn't given up her seat, or if Dolores had never led a protest, or if Frances had allowed schools to remain segregated, the world would be a very different place.

Thankfully, they didn't.

- [Iris] Their legacies reveal the personal power that we all possess to make a difference.

- [Jessica] And thus, are true role models for courage in the face of injustice.

- We hope that you've been both inspired and enlightened.

For the Empire Network-PBS, I'm Iris Hill.

- And I'm Jessica Greenwell.

Thanks for watching.

(uplifting music) ♪ ♪