Cesar Chavez street name change stirs passionate response at Fresno City Council meeting

A packed audience at Fresno City Hall on Thursday took turns praising and criticizing the Fresno City Council’s March 9 vote to rename a significant 10.3-mile stretch of road for late farm labor leader Cesar Chavez.

Backers of the move hailed it as a long overdue for the founder of the United Farm Workers who sought to organize farm laborers in an effort to improve pay and working conditions after a fledgling attempt at naming a street for Chavez stumbled 30 years go.

Opponents, however, said that while they recognized Chavez’s work on behalf of farmworkers, that recognition need not come at the expense of roads with long-established histories in Fresno dating back decades before the birth of the farm labor movement.

The March 9 vote called for renaming Kings Canyon Road, Ventura Avenue/Ventura Street and California Avenue from Temperance Avenue in southeast Fresno to Marks Avenue in the southwest part of the city to Cesar Chavez Boulevard.

Almost 20 speakers addressed the council during its morning session, with many more forced to wait until later in the afternoon after the council finished its regular business agenda. But the street renaming wasn’t on the council’s list of official business, and the lead sponsor of the name change said the hue and cry is unlikely to sway the city council into reconsidering its 6-1 vote at a future meeting.

“I applaud Cesar Chavez, but what I do not understand is how anyone could agree to tear down something that’s established and historic and a legacy to uplift someone else,” said Sharon Williams, a lifelong resident of southwest Fresno. California Avenue, she added, “is part of our legacy” for the city’s Black community.

“Historical is in stone. We feel as African Americans that we’re being erased off the map … and not being considered,” Williams said. She added that years ago, the city renamed a portion of Fig Avenue in southwest Fresno for slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. — a two-mile stretch from California Avenue south to North Avenue. “But now you’re talking about 10 miles,” Williams said.

Hester Hensley, another southwest Fresno resident, said it was “absolutely ridiculous” to change the name of streets that already have established names. “This doesn’t even make sense that we are fighting over street names when we’ve got so many other things that we should have on our minds,” she said.

Hensley added that her African-American family came to Fresno in the 1940s and worked the fields, picking cotton and grapes into the late 1960s. “The only reason we left the fields is because Cesar Chavez wanted to charge us union dues to work where we’d been working for years.”

“When you say he did a whole lot, we all did a whole lot,” Hensley said.

Each person who spoke in opposition to the name change was greeted by applause from part of the audience, while those who supported it cheered speakers backing the change — waving green mock street signs bearing Chavez’s name and sometimes shouting “Si se puede,” Spanish for “Yes we can.”

One of those supporters was Al Romero, a resident of southeast Fresno who said he lives a few blocks south of Kings Canyon Road. “Turning it into Cesar Chavez Boulevard is a great thing for us,” Romero said. “Our community is a lot of farm workers, and we support Cesar Chavez and we support the name change. We need something that represents our community, our culture and our people.”

Paul Garcia told council members Thursday that he would like to see the city do more than rename the streets for Chavez. “I would like to bring to the council’s attention the significance of the address 1405 E. California Ave. here in Fresno,” Garcia said. “It was actually 60 years ago that Cesar Chavez founded the National Farmworkers Association at that address. At that time it was the Edison Social Club; it doesn’t exist there any more.”

“That significant event 60 years ago led to some very significant improvements in farm labor conditions,” he added. “Hopefully sometime soon we will come to the City Council and ask you to approve designating that site as a site of significance in the city of Fresno.”

The lead sponsor of the name change is Councilmember Luis Chavez, whose southeast Fresno district includes the Kings Canyon Road portion of the renamed street. Chavez told The Fresno Bee that he understands the concerns of those who oppose the move. He added, however, that he does not believe a majority of his council colleagues are likely to vote to reverse the action after a process that began more than a year ago.

Under typical rules of parliamentary procedure, it would require one of the six council members who voted in favor of the change to ask for the body to formally reconsider the issue.

Councilmembers Miguel Arias, Mike Karbassi and Nelson Esparza were absent after the council returned from closed session and heard another hour of public comments, most on the street renaming. With no more speakers present in the council chambers or online, council President Tyler Maxwell ended the meeting at 6:05 p.m.