Willie Velasquez’s memory will live on as part of a PBS special…

The public broadcaster has announced plans to air Willie Velasquez: Empowering the People in October.

The program centers on the late leader of the movement to increase political power among Hispanic Americans. He passed away of cancer in June 1998. He was 44.

With his rallying cry of “Su Voto es su Voz,” Velasquez started a grassroots movement that would change the nation’s political landscape and pave the way for the growing power of the Latino vote

Velasquez, a native of San Antonio, was a leader of La Raza Unida, a Hispanic-American political party that was active in the Southwest in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s. In 1968 he led a farmworkers’ strike, along with Cesar Chavez, in south Texas. In 1981, he taught a course on Southwestern politics at Harvard University.

In 1974, Velasquez founded the Southwest Voter Registration and Education Project, the nation’s largest voter registration project aimed at the Hispanic community.

Under his guidance, a spokesman said, the project conducted voter registration drives in 200 cities and Indian reservations and conducted extensive polling.

”What we’re most proud of is that from 1974 when we started to 1987, the number of Hispanic elected officials in the U.S. grew from 1,566 to 3,038, an increase of 82 percent,” the spokesman said.

PBS will air Willie Velasquez: Empowering the People on October 3 from 10:30-11:30 pm ET.