Dolores Huerta, an American farm labor leader, feminist, and civil rights icon, died surrounded by her family on Oct. 28. She was 96.

Huerta died of cancer in her family’s care at her home in Bakersfield, California, family spokesman Erik Olvera told The Epoch Times.

“Dolores Huerta inspired generations with three words: ‘Sí, se puede’—‘Yes, we can,’” her obituary stated Wednesday. “In her hands, those words became a rallying cry for workers, women, immigrants, and people fighting for justice around the world.”

Huerta cofounded the National Farm Workers Association in California alongside Cesar Chavez in 1962. The association later became the United Farm Workers (UFW) union.

She was an advocate for farmworkers’ rights and worked to secure improved working conditions and fair wages for migrant agricultural laborers.

In her later years, Huerta focused her work on fighting for social justice, feminism, and grassroots organizing through the Dolores Huerta Foundation.

Former President Barack Obama, who presented Huerta with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012, said Wednesday he was thinking about the lives she had changed and everyone who drew inspiration from her.

“Dolores Huerta was a hero of mine,” Obama wrote as part of a tribute to her on X.

Huerta was born in the small mining town of Dawson, New Mexico, in 1930. Her father, Juan Fernández, was a farm worker, miner, and union activist before winning a seat in the New Mexico Legislature in 1938.

Her childhood and early adult life was spent in the northern California city of Stockton, where she and her two brothers moved with their mother after her parents’ divorce.

Growing up in a cultural mosaic of Mexican, Filipino, African American, Japanese, and Chinese families, Huerta watched her mother take part in community activities from her 70-room hotel and restaurant.

Huerta became involved in high school clubs and the Girl Scouts before attending the University of Pacific’s Delta College in Stockton, earning a teaching credential. She also married Ralph Head and had two daughters, Celeste and Lori.

United Farm Workers leader Dolores Huerta, center, leads a rally in San Francisco's Mission District on Nov. 19, 1988, along with Howard Wallace, president of the San Francisco chapter of the UFW, left, and Maria Elena Chavez, 16, the daughter of Cesar Chavez, right, as part of a national boycott of what the UFW said is the dangerous use of pesticides on table grapes. (AP Photo/Court Mast, File)

Her teaching years helped start her lifelong journey of working to correct economic injustice, according to the foundation. She began serving as a leader in the Stockton Community Service Organization and founded the Agricultural Workers Association.

In 1955, she was introduced to Chávez and found they shared a common vision of organizing farm workers.

Huerta was also a force in advocating for farmworkers in Sacramento and Washington. She helped win the passage of a state law to allow agricultural laborers to organize in 1975. She also fought for clean water and for environmental and workplace protections.

Huerta also helped negotiate the 1986 Immigration Reform Act to control illegal immigration and increase border enforcement. The law also allowed millions of immigrants to become naturalized citizens.

Dolores Huerta, far right, thanks senators after the unanimous vote to designate April 10 as "Dolores Huerta Day," in Olympia, Wash., on March 18, 2019. (AP Photo/Rachel La Corte)

During the last year of her life, Huerta continued to lead the movement she helped build. In March, Huerta recounted alleged sexual encounters with Chávez she said she kept secret for 60 years. Her statement followed a multi-year New York Times investigation into sexual misconduct by the late civil rights leader.

“I carried this secret for as long as I did because building the movement and securing farmworker rights was my life’s work,” Huerta said.

Chávez’s family was processing the information at the time and said they still remembered the man they knew, whose life work and contributions mattered deeply to many people.

Beyond Huerta’s work with farm laborers, feminism, helping the working poor, and civil rights, Huerta was committed in the last days of her life to getting people to the polls, her family said.

“More than anything, she was 100 percent committed to the election and tying to motivate people to get out and vote,” family spokesman Olvera said. “Voting and vote mobilization was something that was the driving force behind everything she did. Especially right now.”

California Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered state flags to be flown at half-staff Wednesday in her honor. He and his wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, paid tribute to Huerta.

“Dolores represented the best of us,” the Newsoms said in a joint statement. “California — and the United States — would not be what we are today without her resolute spirit, her passion for justice and fairness, and her commitment to those overlooked and forgotten.”

Former President Bill Clinton, who awarded Huerta with the Eleanor Roosevelt Human Rights Award in 1998, said it was a great gift to spend time with and fight alongside her.”

The United Farm Workers Union mourned and celebrated her life in a statement Wednesday.

“Her life’s work was to empower her community to face and overcome injustices, and she has left farm workers and the entire Latino community stronger and more organized than she found it,” United Farm Workers Union President Teresa Romero said.