Baldemar Velasquez
Civil Rights Leader
Labor union activist who co-founded the Farm Labor Organizing Committee, a labor union representing migrant farm workers in the Midwest, in 1967.
He would help his parents in the fields starting at the age of four.
He was named as a MacArthur Fellow and awarded the Order of the Aztec Eagle, the highest honor that can be received by a non-citizen of Mexico.
He was born to Cresencio and Vicenta-Castillo Velasquez with eight siblings.
He was influenced by the ideas of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, Gandhi, and Cesar Chavez.