Chavez history may save jail: Park service considers preserving site
Preservationists interested in saving the West Alisal Street jail in Salinas are hoping a federal study recommends the building where labor leader Cesar Chavez was detained in 1970 becomes part of the national park system.
In 2008, Congress approved legislation that authorized the Cesar E. Chavez Study, which allows the secretary of the interior to survey sites with significance in the life of the labor leader and the farmworker movement.
The survey’s goal is to determine if sites are eligible to become part of the national park system and to consider preserving them and opening them to the public. The final survey report is expected in November.
As part of the study, the National Park Service will host a community meeting in Salinas next month.
Chavez is widely acknowledged as one of the most significant Latino leaders in U.S. history. During the 1960s and 1970s, he led a movement in which impoverished farmworkers stood up to agribusiness to improve wages and working conditions.
The Salinas Valley figures prominently in the life of Chavez, who led a bruising United Farm Workers strike against lettuce growers. From Dec. 10 to Dec. 24, 1970, Chavez was held in Monterey County Jail in Salinas for refusing to obey a court order to stop a union boycott against Bud Antle lettuce.
Coretta Scott King, widow of Martin Luther King Jr., and Ethel Kennedy, widow of Robert Kennedy, visited the jailed labor leader.
In 2002, Monterey County administrators planned to demolish the jail, but historical preservationists sued to stop the maneuver. The Old Jail, now surrounded by chain link fence, was registered in the National Register of Historic Places by the National Park Service in 2004.
County administrators offered a proposal in 2009 that would have demolished most of the building. The plan would have preserved a portion of the Old Jail and incorporated a historical display about Chavez.
Preservationists blocked that plan.
"It was the very first historical site for Cesar Chavez," said architect Salvador Muñoz, who has fought to preserve the Old Jail. "That case became an example of how a historical site should be preserved."
Having the National Park Service come to Salinas will push efforts to transform the area into a historical district, Muñoz said.
"It’s good news. Any site that becomes a historical site and is blessed by the national parks becomes very unique," he said. "Specially for Salinas, we need tourism."
The jail, unused since the late 1970s, has severely deteriorated. The county is weatherizing the roof over the administration portion of the building.
Yaz Emrani, director of Monterey County Public Works, said the facelift, which includes a facade cleaning, could take until the end of the year to complete.
"There’s two parts to the project. We have to look at the conditions and draw a plan. It requires careful consideration," Emrani said. "This is a historic site. We don’t want contractors to come willy-nilly."
Mark Norris, former president of the Architectural Heritage Association of Monterey County, is hoping needed funding to restore the jail will come in the wake of the study.
The National Park Service has "the most money for such things. That’s good to hear," Norris said. "That would be our tax dollars coming home. That’s part of the benefit of having historic places — they bring resources to the community."
The National Park Service is conducting similar meetings in other California cities, including San Jose, Delano and Oxnard. In Arizona, meetings are planned for Yuma and Phoenix. A preliminary report is expected by October and a final report a month later.
The survey is not limited to buildings, but could include trails or any other marker that would help tell the story of the farmworker movement, said project manager Martha Crusius.
Claudia Meléndez Salinas can be reached at 753-6755 or cmelendez@montereyherald.com.
For more information on the National Park Service Cesar Chavez project, see www.nps.gov/pwro/chavez/index.htm
If you go
·What: National Park Service meeting about Cesar Chavez and the farm labor movement
·What: National Park Service meeting about Cesar Chavez and the farm labor movement
·When: 7 to 9 p.m. May 3
·Where: Steinbeck Institute of Art and Culture (formerly Sherwood Hall), 940 N. Main St., Salinas.