The old Monterey County Jail — where Cesar Chavez was held at the height of the Salinas Valley’s farm labor unrest in the 1970s — is on a list of sites being considered by the National Park Service for honoring the farm labor leader.

The sites, stretching from California to Arizona, are listed as part of a Park Service study examining the best way to preserve and commemorate Chavez and the history of the farm labor movement.

According to its website, the Park Service "has been directed by Congress to conduct a "special resource study" of sites significant to the life of Cesar E. Chavez and the farm labor movement in the western United States." The website says Chavez is recognized as the most important Latino leader in the 20th century.

The sites list was collected by oral history students at California State University, Fullerton, said Martha Crusius, National Parks project manager.

The group combed through old newspapers, interviewed participants and drew up a list that meets potential National Historic Landmark criteria.

Now, Crusius said, she is taking the list on the road with a series of public meetings to find out what people would like to have happen to the sites and how they would like this chapter of American history told.

"We try to find out what people would like to see and what our role might be," Crusius said.

The future of the old jail — much like the farm labor movement itself — is often a subject of debate in agricultural Monterey County.

The three-story building on West Alisal Street was completed in 1931. It has held an untold number of prisoners, but arguably none as famous as Chavez.

During his two-week incarceration in December 1970 for refusing to call off a lettuce boycott against Salinas Valley growers, Chavez was visited by Coretta Scott King, widow of The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.; and Ethel Kennedy, widow of slain U.S. senator and 1968 presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy.

After Chavez’s release, the celebrities stopped coming to Salinas, and by 1980, the jail was no longer used to house inmates.

In 1999, the county Board of Supervisors voted to have the building demolished, but was stymied by a 2004 lawsuit brought by the Architectural Heritage Association of Monterey County. That same year, the parks service added the old jail to the National Register of Historic Places.

By 2010, the county board turned 180 degrees and recognized the fundraising and preservation planning work of the architectural association that had sued the county just six years before.

However, plans for the building’s future are still in the works.

In the end, the building’s fate may not be decided by the park service at all. After the public meetings, Crusius and her crew will recommend to Congress how best to recognize the sites related to Chavez and farm-labor history.

Those recommendations may range from making a site part of the parks system to helping locals preserve the site to simply doing nothing.

The survey of sites important to the farm labor movement began with 2008 legislation sponsored by then-U.S. Sen. Ken Salazar of Colorado, who is now secretary of the Interior.

In February, he and UFW leaders celebrated making the union’s early headquarters in Delano — known as "Forty Acres" — a national historic landmark.

"Our National Parks System tells the story of America and Cesar Chavez and the farmworker movement are an important part of that story," Salazar said at the ceremony.

Crusius will wrap up public hearings on the California sites in May. By the end of the year, the Cesar Chavez Special Resource Study’s recommendations will be delivered to Congress.

        
What’s next

The National Park Service will hold a public meeting to discuss sites related to Cesar Chavez and the farm labor movement from 7 to 9 p.m. May 3 in the Steinbeck Institute of Art and Culture, formerly Sherwood Hall, 940 N. Main St., Salinas. Online: Visit the National Park Service website at www.nps.gov/pwro/chavez.