Within hours of explosive sexual abuse allegations against the revered labor leader César Chavez, officials at a California university took swift action: First, a black cloth over a campus statue of Chavez, later followed by a plywood box hiding it from public view. Soon, officials said, it will be taken down.
The statue at California State University, Fresno, is just one of scores of monuments, city streets and elementary schools that honor Chavez
's name and his labor movement legacy across the nation. The Associated Press identified more than 130 locations or objects in at least 19 states named after Chavez, including libraries, streets, community centers and public parks.
Overnight, the name has become more of a stain. Some of the institutions and local governments overseeing sites across the country bearing the Chavez name have already started the process of erasing it. Besides buildings and street signs, they also want to take steps to rename César Chavez Day, a federally proclaimed holiday that falls on his March 31 birthday. Many planned celebrations this month have been canceled.
The allegations that Chavez sexually abused girls and women, including fellow movement leader Dolores Huerta, “call for our full attention and moral reckoning by removing his statue from our campus," said Saúl Jiménez-Sandoval, president of California State University, Fresno. It's not clear how long that will take.
It’s also not clear what will happen to the César E. Chavez National Monument in Keene, California. It's where Chavez and his wife, Helen, are buried. It also includes the office where some of the reported abuse took place.
Brian Hughes, of Vancouver, Canada, was among the monument's visitors Thursday morning. The stop was planned for the trip weeks ago.
"Now it's difficult reconciling the inspirational side of his life and the stories with these revelations," Hughes said.
At the Cesar Chavez Student Center at San Francisco State University on Thursday, student Luca Broggi Hendryx recalled hearing stories as a child about Chavez and idolizing him. Now he says the school needs to separate itself from Chavez by changing the student center’s name.
“When I first started coming here it made total sense: He was seen as an icon for the Latino civil rights movement,” Hendryx said. “So it was almost a proud thing to have a building named after Cesar Chavez. But now it feels the opposite.”
Some are calling for Chavez’s namesake places to be renamed for Huerta instead.
In Phoenix, city council members said they will meet next week to vote on whether to rename the holiday as well as any buildings and streets that bear Chavez's name. Mayor Kate Gallego is urging César Chavez Day be renamed Farmworkers Day.
“We have a duty to honor the dignity of the survivors and move forward in a way that reflects our values," she said in a statement.
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and the city council announced the same decision in a proclamation. Bass also said she will assess the renaming of city landmarks that bear the Chavez name with the community and the city council.
Denver for now will celebrate the holiday as Sí, Se Puede Day, which translates into the farmworkers movement rallying cry — Yes We Can.
“We will not let the sins of one man set back the commitment of a community who has fought for decades to deliver on the fundamental belief that everyone is entitled to justice,” Mayor Mike Johnston said to applause as he announced the change outside Denver’s City and County Building.
A few miles away, a handwritten “Dolores Huerta Park” sign was seen at the park that bore Chavez's name for two decades. A bust of Chavez was gone.
The New York Times first reported Wednesday that it found credible evidence that Chavez groomed and sexually abused young girls who worked in the movement. One of his victims, in fact, partly felt compelled to come forward after a proposal to name a street near her home after Chavez.
Huerta, who was a labor legend in her own right and co-founded in 1962 with Chavez the National Farm Workers Association — which became the United Farm Workers of America — revealed to the newspaper that she was a victim of abuse by him in her 30s.
When it comes to changing names of sites or events honoring Chavez, Teresa Romero, United Farm Workers president, said, “Everybody’s going to have to make their own decisions. I respect the victims, I respect the thousands of people who worked with the union throughout the years as volunteers, and that is not going to change.”
Among the locations and objects bearing Chavez’s name is a U.S. Navy cargo ship commemorating his service during World War II and the national monument established in 2012 by then-President Barack Obama on a 187-acre site in Central California where Chavez once lived and worked.
Most of the locations are in California but they include sites in at least 19 states, from New York and Maryland to Oklahoma, the Great Lakes Region and Washington state.
About half are schools with most of them located in California. In Pueblo, Colorado, Chavez shares the name of a school with Huerta.
Altering a national monument, such as changing a name, needs an act of Congress or action by the president.
There have been previous efforts to change names for government sites and institutions on a broad scale.
During the civil rights backlash that followed the 2020 killing of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis, Congress ordered a nationwide review of military posts and other assets such as roads, buildings, memorials and signs that honored Confederate leaders. Nine Army bases including North Carolina’s Fort Bragg, named after a slave-owning Confederate general, were renamed, only to have the original names restored under President Donald Trump’s administration last year after the army found other people with the same names to honor.
Under former Interior Secretary Deb Haaland – the first Native American to hold the post -- federal officials renamed hundreds of peaks, lakes, streams and other geographical features with racist and misogynistic terms. It capped a yearlong process to remove the historically offensive word “squaw” from geographic names across the country.
Artist Paula Castillo, who created a sculpture in Albuquerque in 2010 framed as a tribute to Chavez, joined other art critics in questioning whether people should think more about monuments to shared values.
“The public work in Albuquerque is intended to make collective labor and lived experience visible in civic space, rather than isolate a single figure,” she said in an email. “This allows it to continue holding meaning for communities even as new information forces a more honest reckoning with the past.”
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Brown reported from Billings, Montana. Tang reported from Phoenix. from Associated Press writers Jacques Billeaud in Phoenix, Rebecca Boone in Boise, Idaho, Susan Montoya Bryan in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Terry Chea in San Francisco, Haven Daley in Keene, California, Jaimie Ding in Los Angeles, Thomas Peipert and Colleen Slevin in Denver also contributed to this story.
