Chavez name, once an honor, now carries a stain that officials want to scrub

Within hours of explosive sexual abuse allegations against labor leader César Chavez, officials at a California university took swift action: First, a black cloth over a campus statue of Chavez, 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 one of scores of monuments, city streets and elementary schools across the nation that honor Chavez ‘s name and his labor movement legacy. The Associated Press identified more than 130 locations or objects in at least 19 states named after Chavez, including libraries, boulevards, community centers and public parks.

Overnight, the name has become more of a stain. Some of the institutions and local governments overseeing sites bearing Chavez’s name have already started the process of erasing it. In Denver, city workers took down a bronze bust of Chavez in a park named after him. The city’s mayor said the park would be renamed.

Officials there and elsewhere also moved to rename César Chavez Day, a federally proclaimed holiday on March 31, his 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 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.

A push for honoring Huerta instead

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.”

In cities including Phoenix, Los Angeles, Portland, and Albuquerque officials said they would look at renaming landmarks such as buildings, streets and schools.

“We have a duty to honor the dignity of the survivors and move forward in a way that reflects our values,” Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego said in a statement. She urged renaming César Chavez Day as Farmworkers Day.

Denver for now will celebrate the holiday as Sí, Se Puede Day, which translates into the farmworkers movement rallying cry — Yes We Can.

Mayor Mike Johnston said Denver would “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.”

Some called for Chavez’s namesake places to be renamed for Huerta. The sign at Denver’s Cesar Chavez park was covered with a tarp Thursday, and someone had placed a handmade sign over it that said, “Dolores Huerta Park”.

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 recent proposal to name a street near her home for 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.”

Dozens of schools and a Navy cargo ship

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, primarily in California. In Pueblo, Colorado, Chavez shares the name of a school with Huerta.

Republican Rep. Tim Burchett of Tennessee on Thursday said he would ask the Pentagon to remove Chavez’s name from the Navy ship. “We are on it, Congressman” Pentagon spokesperson Sam Parnell said in a social media post.

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 assets named after Confederate leaders. Nine Army bases 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 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 offensive word “squaw” from geographic names across the country.

Artist Paula Castillo, who created a sculpture in Albuquerque in 2010 as a tribute to Chavez, questioned 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. “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. 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, and Thomas Peipert and Colleen Slevin in Denver also contributed to this story.