Cesar Chavez Day - March 31, the United Farm Workers, and a US federal commemorative observance
Cesar Chavez Day is observed on March 31 in the United States, honoring the labor organizer and co-founder of the United Farm Workers (UFW), who died in 1993. Federally recognized as a commemorative day but not a public holiday; observed as an optional holiday or state holiday in California, Texas, Colorado, and a dozen other states.
Civic memorialPublished October 12, 2026
- Observed in
- Where observed
- When
- March
- Frequency
- Same date every year
- Days off
- 1 day - some jurisdictions give time off
- Public status
- Memorial / civic observance - half-mast on government flags
Cesar Chavez Day is one of the youngest civic-day additions to the US calendar - young enough that most schools grew up without it. It is also one of the few observances aimed squarely at recognizing a single 20th-century American figure beyond Martin Luther King Jr.
The Dolores Huerta Foundation co-organises an annual "Si Se Puede" march in downtown Los Angeles the Saturday closest to March 31; attendance is typically 5,000 - 15,000 participants. Cities with large Mexican-American populations (Los Angeles, San Jose, San Antonio, Phoenix, Houston) also hold municipal Cesar Chavez Day observances, sometimes combined with Cinco de Mayo and Hispanic Heritage Month programming. School-based essay contests and art contests are common, often with prizes donated by community organisations.
Cesar Chavez's grandchildren have continued his legacy through the Dolores Huerta Foundation and the Chavez Family Vision, both founded in the 2000s. The Chavez National Monument in Keene receives about 20,000 visitors annually. The UFW Foundation, the 501(c)(3) arm of the union, runs the Robert F. Kennedy Farm Worker Medical Plan, which serves 20,000+ members annually. The UFW's political action arm endorsed candidates in 32 of 53 California congressional and state-level races in 2024.
Chavez's organising drew on Catholic social teaching (especially the encyclicals Rerum Novarum and Quadragesimo Anno), the United Auto Workers playbook of sit-down strikes, and the nonviolent- resistance tradition of Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. His adoption of the huelga (strike) and the pilgrimage / march (marcha) as core tactics, and the use of the Aztec eagle as the UFW flag, all connected the labour struggle to Mexican cultural identity. These stylistic choices are emphasised in most Cesar Chavez Day lesson plans.
The UFW and farm labour
California farm workers today number roughly 600,000, of whom about 95 percent are Latino, primarily of Mexican origin. The UFW currently organises about 10,000 active members - a fraction of the 70,000+ it represented at its 1970s peak. The union remains politically active in California and has won several recent state-level labour standards. Wage theft, pesticide exposure, and heat illness remain the three most-cited farm-labour issues addressed by Cesar Chavez Day programming.
The Chavez fasts
Chavez used hunger fasts as a tactic multiple times throughout his career. His 1968 fast (25 days) opposed the Vietnam War and was joined by Robert F. Kennedy. His 1972 fast (24 days) opposed Arizona's restrictive farm-labour law. His 1988 fast (36 days) highlighted pesticide exposure among farm workers and was the longest of his career; he ended it on August 21, 1988, at a mass in Keene, California, with Senator Robert J. Dole in attendance. The fasts are central to the Chavez Day curriculum.
How the day is observed
Observance clusters around three channels: K-12 schools (lesson plans on Chavez, the UFW, and the Delano strike); universities and community colleges (Latinx-studies programmes, Chicano studies departments, and UFW-affiliated events); and labour-and-civic coalitions (workplace awareness programs, UFW marches, and remembrance events in California, Texas, Colorado, and the Pacific Northwest).
California state offices close on March 31; school districts typically host a one-day observance on either March 31 or the preceding Friday. Texas schools observe by law since 2001 but state offices remain open. Several state and municipal labour coalitions (UTLA, SEIU California, NEA California) run annual marches in the week of March 31.
Migration and the CSO years
The Chavez family's migration to California was typical of Depression-era Mexican-American families. They worked in vineyards, cotton fields, and orchards across the Central Valley. The family settled in San Jose in 1946, and Cesar married Helen Fabela in 1948. He joined the Community Service Organisation (CSO) in 1952 after meeting Fred Ross, becoming national director in 1958. His tenure at the CSO coincided with the rise of Latino civil-rights organising in California.
Chavez left the CSO in 1962 to found the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA), which merged with the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC) in 1966 to form the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee (UFWOC), later the United Farm Workers (UFW). He led the UFW until his death on April 23, 1993, near Yuma. His funeral at Nuestra Senora Reina de la Paz was attended by an estimated 30,000 people. His grave is at the National Monument in Keene, California.
Early life
Cesar Chavez grew up in a Mexican-American family in Yuma, Arizona that lost its farm during the 1930s Depression and became migrant farmworkers. The family picked carrots, lettuce, and grapes through the 1940s across California, living in labor camps and roadside shacks. Chavez was formally schooled through the eighth grade but spent 8,000 hours of self-education from a public library over his lifetime.
CSO and NFWA (1952-1965)
Chavez joined the Community Service Organization in 1952, became its national director in 1958, and as a CSO employee ran voter-registration drives among Mexican-American communities in East San Jose and East Los Angeles. He left CSO in 1962 to co-found the National Farm Workers Association with Dolores Huerta in Delano, California. The Filipino-American Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC), led by Larry Itliong, joined in 1965 to form the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee (UFWOC).
Delano grape strike (1965-1970)
On September 8, 1965, AWOC voted to strike against the Delano-area table-grape growers; Chavez and the NFWA voted to join on September 16. The five-year strike was the longest in California agriculture at the time. Key concessions came in 1970 when the major growers signed the first UFW contracts covering about 10,000 workers; the total grew to roughly 70,000 by 1973.
Legacy and the holiday
California named March 31 a state holiday in 2000 (AB 1844); Texas (2001), Colorado (2003), and others followed. The federal commemorative proclamation began under George W. Bush (2001) and continues annually. A Presidential Medal of Freedom was awarded posthumously in 1994. Congress established the Cesar Estrada Chavez National Monument in Keene, California on October 8, 2012 (Public Law 112-253), the site of Nuestra Senora Reina de la Paz and the UFW's national headquarters until 1971.
Related days
- Martin Luther King Jr. Day - third Monday in January, federal holiday.
- Labor Day - first Monday in September, federal holiday.
- Independence Day - July 4.
Primary sources: Public Law 102-355 (1992, RFRA); California AB 1844 (2000); Presidential Proclamation 8837 (2012); UFW Archives, Wayne State University; Library of Congress.
Chavez biography
Cesar Estrada Chavez was born on March 31, 1927, in Yuma, Arizona, to a Mexican-American family that owned a small ranch. The ranch was lost during the Great Depression; the family became migrant farm workers in California and Arizona. Chavez served in the US Navy during World War II (1944 - 1945), then returned to agricultural work. He met Fred Ross in 1952 and began organising for the Community Service Organisation (CSO) in San Jose, California.