The Peralta Community College District Board of Trustees announced Tuesday, July 20, during their first meeting of the new
fiscal year that, going forward, the District’s academic calendar will observe César Chávez Day as a holiday for all four of the colleges.

Recognizing César Chávez as a holiday at the Peralta Colleges underscores respect for our Latino community and the broader educational values of diversity and public engagement," said Abel Guillén, Board President. "The Trustees are grateful to our faculty, staff and everyone who contributed to make it possible for the District to honor this inspiring leader."

This holiday will be observed in lieu of Admissions Day, and it is scheduled to be a day of learning and service.

César Chávez Day, a state holiday in California and seven other U.S. states, will be observed at Peralta on April 22, 2011, and will help foster community service in honor of his life and work.

Chávez led the first successful farm workers’ union in U.S. history, using the nonviolent tactics practiced by Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., in other civil rights struggles. He galvanized national outrage, media attention and public
support for the plight of laborers, who toiled in the fields under grueling, unhealthy working conditions and lived with their families in extreme poverty, most often as migrant workers following the crops from one place to another. He
urged Mexican Americans to register and vote, and he traveled throughout California organizing for worker protections.

In 1962, Chávez co-founded the National Farm Workers Association, which later became the United Farm Workers (UFW). He led a strike of California grape pickersand the landmark march from Delano to the state capitol in Sacramento. The UFW also pushed the national boycott of table grapes as a show of public support. The strike lasted five years. Chávez died April 23, 1993, at the age of 66.

In September 1994, Chávez was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Clinton. In December 2006, he was inducted into the California Hall of Fame, located at the California Museum for History, Women and the Arts –
which is next-door to Laney College and Peralta’s district offices.

"Chávez was a giant in the struggle for civil rights and labor protections. He was a great Californian and a great American. Now more than ever, it is important that we recognize his enormous contribution to our society," said Guillén. “It is particularly fitting for an institution of higher learning to honor Chávez, who once said ‘the end of all education
should surely be service to others.”

Since 1964, the Peralta Community College District – Berkeley City College, College of Alameda and Laney and Merritt Colleges – has served Alameda, Albany, Berkeley, Emeryville, Oakland and Piedmont by providing East Bay students of all ages with a range of educational programs and life-long learning opportunities. To learn more,
visit www.peralta.edu.