César Chávez Day is no more: California lawmakers officially change holiday name to Farmworkers Day

“Our farmworkers remind us that everyone should be treated with dignity and respect,” Senate President Pro Tem Monique Limón said on the Senate floor. “Their days and their lives inspire us to push for a better California.”

The Senate voted 37-0, following an Assembly vote earlier this week.

It is the latest development in a nationwide backlash against Chávez, who Democrats and Republicans quickly renounced last week after a New York Times investigation found he sexually abused young girls while president of the United Farm Workers union in the 1960s and 70s.

One by one, lawmakers described feeling stunned by last week’s allegations, as those who once admired Chávez reckoned with his now-complicated legacy. 

Quiet fell over the chamber floors as legislators from the Central Valley spoke about their backgrounds growing up in farmworker households and the importance of those workers to the labor movement and California’s economy.

“This recognition is deeply personal to me,” Republican Sen. Suzette Martinez Valladares said, and that her family worked as farm laborers in Bakersfield for years. “For generations, farmworkers were excluded from basic labor protections”

Legislative leaders began the process to rename the holiday just one day after the reporting, in which prominent labor activist Dolores Huerta, 95, also said Chávez sexually abused her nearly 60 years ago.

Undoing a legacy

California was the first state in the nation to designate César Chávez Day a holiday 26 years ago, making its decision to revoke his name a striking reversal as it joins other states in undoing his legacy.

Numerous California cities have pledged to begin the costly process of erasing Chávez’s name from plazas, libraries and street signs. Fresno city council members approved renaming César Chávez Boulevard to its original street names — Kings Canyon Road, Ventura Avenue and California Avenue — at an emergency meeting last week. 

At Fresno State University, students covered a statue of the late organizer with a box hours after the March 18 allegations became public. And in San Jose, where Chávez spent his early days as an organizer, city leaders established a commission to comb through records about the numerous plazas, monuments and murals that bear his likeness

School officials have told teachers to diminish Chávez’s role in the civil rights movement as the state works to update its history curriculum. Lawmakers are still deciding whether it will happen before the school year begins in August.

For decades, Chávez was credited for achieving better wages and safer labor practices for agriculture workers, and was widely celebrated as one of the most prominent Latino political figures of the last century.

Chávez, alongside Huerta, co-founded the UFW and organized workers across the state. Although he died more than 30 years ago, his influence is pervasive in California politics — from physical buildings named for him to his role in launching the political careers of numerous Democrats.

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