The first official Cesar Chavez Day will be celebrated on Wednesday, with events scheduled at the MSU Main Library and a dinner at the Lansing Center.
Cesar Chavez was best known for his civil rights work with farm laborers and founding the United Farm Workers Union.
"This is kind of a celebration to get the community together," said Santiago Rios, chairperson emeritus for the Capitol Area Cesar E. Chavez Commission, which is hosting the dinner. "It's to showcase and bring to light all the positive ideals Cesar Chavez stood for.
"He was a fighter for social justice."
The dinner will begin at 5:30 p.m. and will include comments from Gov. Jennifer Granholm and Lansing Mayor Tony Benavides and a keynote address by Baldemar Velasquez, the president of the Farm Labor Organizing Committee. Tickets for the dinner have been sold out for more than a week.
For students who can't make the dinner, a celebration in room W-444 of the library will take place from 2 to 4 p.m. Benavides, East Lansing Mayor Mark Meadows, Provost Lou Anna Simon and Velasquez will attend. The keynote address will be delivered by history Professor Dionicio Valdes.
Diana Rivera, an MSU Libraries Chicano Studies/Ethnic Studies bibliographer, said the library system has close to 2,000 titles on Mexican Americans and Puerto Ricans in the Cesar E. Chavez Collection.
Chavez had a large connection to Michigan, she said.
"He came here more often than any other area outside of California," she said.
Rivera said that Chavez's legacy is in human rights and extending them to the population that feeds America.
"Sometimes, we forget that the people who keep this country running are the gardeners and the factory workers, those that are involved in the low-paying jobs," she said.
Journalism senior Ernesto Mireles said Chavez saw workers' conditions that were unjust and spent his life trying to improve them.
"What really made Cesar Chavez special was what he believed in," he said.
Mireles said people spend a lot of time looking for a hero or someone who will do the job for them.
"The big lesson that we overlook is there is no such person," he said. "If we want something to happen, we have to make it happen ourselves."
