The march was one of Cesar Chavez’s chief weapons. In the 1960s and ’70s, the legendary farm labor leader repeatedly led his supporters on foot across hundreds of miles through the Central Valley, usually ending at the Capitol in Sacramento.

On Sunday, Chavez’s supporters and successors will march in Oxnard, though they will cover just a half mile. It is part of a Cesar Chavez Day celebration to mark what would have been Chavez’s 85th birthday, as well as the 50th anniversary of the United Farm Workers, the union he co-founded.

Chavez was born near Yuma, Ariz. on March 31, 1927.

The day begins with a 9 a.m. Mass at Cristo De Rey Church in La Colonia, where Chavez was a parishioner when he lived in Oxnard. After the service, participants will walk to nearby Cesar Chavez School, where UFW President Arturo Rodriguez will lead a celebration that begins at about 11 a.m. It is free and open to the public.

There will be speakers, traditional Aztec dancers and recognition for the UFW’s "50 in 50" — 50 people who have helped farmworkers in the Oxnard area over the past 50 years.

The focus will be on Chavez and his David-vs.-Goliath story, said Javier Gomez, a retired teacher who is one of the event organizers and also one of the 50 in 50 honorees.

"In the state of California, we know that the agricultural business is a giant, and you have this midget, Cesar Chavez, who stood against these great challenges," Gomez said.

Working conditions in the fields have improved in the past 50 years, but probably not as much as most people think, said Gomez, who worked in the fields as a teenager in Oxnard. Many farmworkers work too long without breaks or access to water, he said, and they are usually paid by how much they pick, which encourages unsafe shortcuts.

"The basic thing is education," he said. "As a larger society we want cheaper products, and we want people to realize the hardship of the work that’s put behind it. Our society doesn’t want to see the price of lettuce going up, but on the other hand, where is that profit margin coming from for the employers? A lot of time it’s going to come from the workers."

The Cesar Chavez Day celebration also is a reminder that Chavez called Oxnard home for many years. His family moved to El Rio to work in the fields when he was a child, and he lived in La Colonia in the 1950s and 60s, when his career as a labor and civil rights activist began.

"There are some very deep roots here," said Denis O’Leary, a teacher and school board member in the Oxnard area and an organizer of Sunday’s event. "Some of the first speeches that he gave to field workers were on the stage of the cafeteria at the school where we’re going to be."