A New York Times investigation found that Hispanic labor leader Cesar Chavez was a serial rapist. Many streets are named after him. A school textbook in Virginia listed him as one of seven great Americans. His birthday is a state holiday in California. But it turns out that he behaved very badly:
Ana Murguia remembers the day the man she had regarded as a hero called her house and summoned her to see him [and sexually molested her]…Recently, more than 50 years later, Ms. Murguia learned that a street near her home in the Central California city of Bakersfield was in the process of being renamed. City officials want to name it in honor of her abuser: Cesar Chavez Boulevard.
Ms. Murguia and another woman, Debra Rojas, say that Mr. Chavez sexually abused them for years when they were girls, from around 1972 to 1977. He was in his 40s and had become a powerful, charismatic figure who captured global attention as a champion of farmworker rights.
The two women have not shared their stories publicly before, and an investigation by The New York Times has uncovered extensive evidence to support their accusations and those raised by several other women against Mr. Chavez, the United Farm Workers co-founder who died in 1993 at the age of 66….
Ms. Murguia and Ms. Rojas, both of whom are now 66, were the daughters of longtime organizers who had marched in rallies alongside Mr. Chavez. He used the privacy of his California office to frequently molest Ms. Murguia, she said. He had known her since she was 8 years old. She became so traumatized that she attempted to end her life multiple times by the age of 15.
Ms. Rojas said she was 12 when Mr. Chavez first touched her inappropriately, groping her breasts in the same office where he’d meet with Ms. Murguia….The abuse allegations appear to be part of a larger pattern of sexual misconduct by Mr. Chavez, much of which has never been publicly revealed. The Times investigation found that Mr. Chavez also used many of the women who worked and volunteered in his movement for his own sexual gratification. His most prominent female ally in the movement, Dolores Huerta, said in an interview that he sexually assaulted her.
Other historical figures have also faced allegations of complicity in sexual assault. Martin Luther King Jr. “looked on” and “laughed” as a fellow minister committed rape, and “encouraged the attacker to continue,” according to evidence that came to light in 2019, note a professor and David Garrow, the Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer of Martin Luther King Jr. The evidence of King’s complicity is found in FBI documents found within the John F. Kennedy assassination files — summaries of FBI surveillance tapes recorded at the Willard Hotel in Washington, D.C., in January 1964. FBI memos describe how a Baptist minister, Logan Kearse, raped a female parishioner during a party in a hotel room and that King was present, watched the assault, laughed, and offered advice, noted Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David Garrow.
