Sacramento first jurisdiction where state, city and now county workers celebrate Cesar Chavez’s birthday

Marc Grossman (left) spoke for the UFW and Chavez foundation before the Sacramento County Board of Supervisors. Board Chair Phil Serna, who pushed through the Chavez holiday ordinance, is on the far right behind the dais.

Sacramento is the only community in the country where state, city and now county employees have won an official holiday on Cesar Chavez’s March 31 birthday. “Service to others was a hallmark of Cesar Chavez’s example and values,” stated United Farm Workers President Arturo Rodriguez and Cesar Chavez Foundation President Paul Chavez in a letter to county Board of Supervisors Chair Phil Serna, who pushed through the ordinance and got it approved on Tuesday, June 9. “So we especially appreciate that the holiday ordinance is accompanied by a strong community service component that will see the county organize and encourage employees to join other residents in honoring Cesar Chavez by participating in worthy local projects,” the letter stated.

Phil Serna is the son of the late Sacramento Mayor Joe Serna Jr., who convinced his capital city to be the first municipality in the nation to enact an official holiday on Chavez’s birthday shortly after the civil rights and farm labor leader died in 1993. State workers won the holiday in 2000 when then-Gov. Gray Davis signed a bill making March 31 an official state holiday.

Chavez’s connection with Sacramento goes back to when he was a 14-year old migrant picking canary tomatoes with his family in the Sacramento Delta near Walnut Grove, from September through November in the early 1940s, noted Marc Grossman, Chavez’s longtime spokesman and personal aide. Grossman supported the ordinance before the board on behalf of both the UFW and Chavez foundation. 

The Sacramento area was important to the Chavezes’ economic survival since they needed to earn as much money as they could during the summer and fall harvests as there was little work in the winter months, Grossman said. Cesar Chavez would tell his family then, “We’re going to pick 1,000 boxes of tomatoes today,” and they usually make the quota if the quality of the fruit was good.

Chavez was drawn to Sacramento again, most famously at the end of the grape strikers’ historic 1966 march from Delano, which firmly placed the farm workers’ plight before the national conscience. Ironically, it was while the marchers approached Sacramento along the river delta when word came they had won the first genuine union contract between farm workers and growers in American history. Sacramento was the scene of another victory in 1975, when the UFW helped push through the Agricultural Labor Relations Act at the state Capitol, guaranteeing farm workers the right to organize and bargain.