Cesar Chavez was an American labor leader and civil rights activist. Along with Dolores Huerta, he co-founded the National Farm Workers Association, which later merged with the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee to become the United Farm Workers labor union. The organization he founded in 1962 grew into the United Farm Workers union, negotiated hundreds of contracts and spearheaded a landmark law that made California farmworkers the only ones in the nation entitled to protected union activity. In his most enduring legacy, Chavez gave people a sense of their own power.
The Bell Bomber plant transformed Marietta—and helped the Allies win World War II. On this day in 1942, construction began on the Bell Aircraft Corporation plant that built more than 600 B-29s during the war. The Roosevelt administration wanted to build aircraft away from the coast, and Atlanta was a prime location.