Corrections & Clarifications: An earlier version of this article misstated how long it has been since Arizona State University awarded Cesar Chávez an honorary doctorate.

Once social change begins, it cannot be reversed. You cannot un-educate the person who has learned to read. You cannot humiliate the person who feels pride. You cannot oppress the people who are not afraid anymore. — Chávez

He was born on March 31, 1927, in Arizona, where the desert is made soft and fertile alongside water that flows through the Colorado and Gila rivers near Yuma. He was named after his grandfather Cesario, an escaped slave who traveled from his home in Chihuahua, Mexico to work the railroads and fields of Arizona.

He died in 1993 near the Arizona-Mexico border his grandfather had crossed more than 100 years earlier.

Cesar Estrada Chávez was baptized Catholic in the faith of his parents, his grandparents and the many ancestors who came before them. He grew up on the homestead his grandfather established in North Gila Valley in Yuma County about 10 miles from the big city. His parents ran a grocery store, an auto repair shop and a pool hall, near his grandfather’s farm until “the Great Depression forced the young family back to the family homestead,” according to a National Park Service report.

At home, he learned from parents who taught him to work with his hands, farming the Chávez family’s 100 acres. At school, he learned from books and children who didn’t look like him.

He experienced “racism and discrimination as a young child," branded as a “dirty Mexican” at the public school in Yuma, states an NPS study to assess the historical significance of sites and resources associated with Chávez and the farm-labor movement. "Such experiences taught Chávez how discrimination made its targets feel excluded and inferior."

In the 1930s, as the Depression deepened, the Chávez family lost their land. They left Yuma County. They left the adobe home with sturdy mudbrick walls that his grandfather built with his hands.

In California, they joined migrant farmworkers.

Decades later, after founding a farmworkers movement that drew international support for a boycott of inhumane working conditions. After winning the admiration of fieldworkers and presidents and fueling the ire of powerful growers. After inspiring music, art and people with fights for social justice, Chávez would return to Yuma to battle a lawsuit against the United Farm Workers Union.

Diáz: What did Cesar Chavez fight for? The answer is just as relevant today

On April 22, 1993, after a long day in the courtroom, Chávez drove through Latino neighborhoods in Yuma and San Luis, according to UFW archives. Places he recognized from his childhood. Places where farmworkers who picked lettuce, lemons, wheat and other crops lived.

He settled at the San Luis home of Dofla Maria Hau, a friend and former farmworker. That night, his loved ones said they saw the weight of the trial on Chávez’s face. He told them to take care of themselves, went to his room and fell asleep reading. In the morning, he was found dead, holding a book about Native American crafts in his hands, according to UFW archives.

Six days later, mourners came from across the nation to the UFW’s field office in Delano. More than 50,000 people — farmworkers, families and dignitaries — walked Chávez to his final resting place.

When we are really honest with ourselves we must admit that our lives are all that really belong to us. So, it's how we use our lives that determines what kind of men we are. It is my deepest belief that only by giving our lives do we find life. — Chávez

Henry Valenzuela was born and raised in Yuma. He lets loose a long sigh and says it was only about a year ago that he learned Chávez was born, went to school and died in the Yuma area.

“My goodness, how do people not know this? How do I not know this?” he said. “We’re hoping we can change that. Let people in Yuma know how he changed the lives of so many.”

Valenzuela, 40, is the treasurer and spokesman for the Cesar Chavez Legacy political action committee. The group came together after sharing a common concern: Yuma, a place rich with the history of an American and Latino civil rights icon, has no major recognition for Chávez.

Valenzuela said the group has emailed the Yuma City Council asking for a main street to be named after Chávez, for the Pacific Avenue Athletic Complex to be named after him and for the city to establish a holiday in Chávez’s name. No one has responded to their request, he said. The Yuma mayor and council members did not immediately respond to an Arizona Republic email for comment.

He struggles to understand.

“It would be as if Martin Luther King Jr. was born here and died here and we’d done nothing,” he said. “All over the country people know who Cesar Chávez is. He is one of our most well known civil-rights leaders in our country. And we’ve done nothing. Nothing.”

He worries about why.

“There are some powerful business owners, land owners, farmers in the community that have opposed any honoring or any promotion of the legacy of Cesar Chávez, and it’s because they lived through the era when the United Farmworkers were trying to come to Yuma and they resisted that,” he said.

One proposal would change 16th Street to Cesar Chávez Street. The group has talked with leaders who are considering a proposal to change Highway 95, which stretches across Arizona, cuts through Yuma along 16th Street and extends south to the border in San Luis where Chávez died.

They like to imagine that by this time next year, people in Yuma will be gathering to honor Chávez with renaming ceremonies and a day of service on an official holiday in his name.

But they’ll compromise.

Really, any main street would do, Valenzuela said. They’re fine with sharing. Marking a street sign with its original name and Chávez's would do. They’ll take an unpaid holiday, as long as it's dedicated to Chávez.

In this region along the border, where cultures, traditions and languages mix, sometimes things take time.

But it’s past time, Valenzuela said. In San Luis, 22 miles south of Yuma, they have the Cesar Chávez Cultural Center, where families learn art, music and dance. There's a statue of Chávez in the town square. They have Cesar Chávez Street that runs parallel to Main Street and stops just short of the U.S.-Mexico border. And this year, the city approved a resolution adding Cesar Chávez Day as an official holiday.

“Cesar Chavez is a hero to many and an inspiration to all, who made history by speaking up for the voiceless and advocating for the rights and dignity of farmworkers,” Mayor Gerardo Sanchez said in a statement on the recognition.

Valenzuela believes any recognition of Chávez is “not just for fieldworkers, but for the dignity of work and of labor for all jobs."

But there's another reason to remember. One Valenzuela keeps coming back to, maybe, because he’s a police officer in a border state in a divided country. Chávez faced inhumanity and injustice with nonviolent marches, hunger strikes and boycotts.

“What we need in our country right now — if you think about the last several years, the violent protests that have happened throughout our country — we need to give an example to people who want change, that change can happen and violence is not necessary,” he said.

For now, when people ask Valenzuela if there's anything official for Chávez in Yuma, he points them to a mural.

The one near a high school that bears the Latino icon's face. But not his name.

History will judge societies and governments — and their institutions — not by how big they are or how well they serve the rich and the powerful, but by how effectively they respond to the needs of the poor and the helpless. — Chávez

Alejandro Chávez isn’t surprised Yuma doesn’t recognize his grandfather.

“If you think about it, we were among the last states to get Martin Luther King Jr. Day as a holiday,” he said.

President Ronald Reagan approved the first national King holiday, celebrated in 1986. The late Sen. John McCain famously voted against establishing the federal holiday in King’s honor. Decades later, McCain said he was wrong to oppose the recognition. Arizonans voted down establishing a state holiday for the civil-rights leader, but after losing the 1993 Super Bowl because of the snub, voters returned to the polls and approved the MLK holiday.

READ MORE: Gosar wants Chavez's birthday to be 'National Border Control Day'

Upon McCain’s death, Arizonans and people across the U.S. have sought recognition for the late senator who was born in the Panama Canal Zone. Chávez likes to think that the sentiment for McCain will ease the way for similar recognition for his grandfather, an Arizona native.

But like his grandfather, he knows justice moves slowly.

Chávez served in the U.S. Navy for two years, from 1944-46. At the time Mexican-Americans were only allowed to serve as deckhands and painters. Chávez's family has said he entered the Navy for opportunity and left it because of discrimination.

In 2015, 22 years after his death, a sailor named Marco Valdovinos organized a ceremony to render final military honors to Chávez. Something he didn't receive upon his death, according to Navy Times.

Maybe, one day, Arizona will recognize Cesar Chávez Day as an official state holiday, like California does, Chávez said. For now, he celebrates his grandfather’s legacy at Arizona schools, churches and community celebrations in cities that choose to recognize Chávez with a local holiday.

RELATED: Glendale dedicates street in honor of Cesar Chavez

On Thursday, Chávez read the Prayer of the Farm Workers’ Struggle/Oración del Campesino en la Lucha at his child’s Phoenix school.

Show me the suffering of the most miserable;

So I will know my people’s plight.

Chávez likes knowing his own son was born in the same state as his grandfather. Lately, he's been thinking about his grandfather's past and what opportunities his son's generation will have in a country with growing economic disparity.

“It’s a prime time to recognize my grandfather’s work not just for farmworkers, but in bridging the gap between the most powerful industry in California and the workers,” he said. "With everything happening now, what better way to honor the dignity of work and the value of bridging the gaps we have now?"

One thing many people don’t know about his grandfather, is that he kept working with his hands, long after he stopped working in the fields, he said.

“He had his own little garden,” he said. “He took great pride in that you worked and you took care of your family, whether you were a CEO or a farmworker, you both put the food on the table."

We cannot seek achievement for ourselves and forget about progress and prosperity for our community…Our ambitions must be broad enough to include the aspirations and needs of others, for their sakes and for our own. — Chávez

Nancy Godoy worries about people forgetting, or worse, never learning.

She spends most days making sure that doesn’t happen. Godoy is the archivist of the Chicano/a Research Collection at Arizona State University. She sifts through papers and photos and hunts for memories, ones people keep in their mind and ones they store in a drawer or box, to record.

She's not surprised Valenzuela, the officer working to honor Chávez in Yuma, didn't know the civil and labor rights icon was born and died in Yuma County. She sees too many students who don't know their own stories, their own past.

"In Arizona, we don’t know that history (of Latino communities) existed, I would say because of racism and lack of resources in archiving, so figures like Cesar Chávez haven’t been documented in our history,” she said.

Not knowing paves the way for inequality, she said.

“When communities lack a history, they get dehumanized,” she said. “In Arizona, you see that with the Latino community, even though they have been here before Arizona was a territory, they’ve been marginalized and once you marginalize and dehumanize a community, it’s easier to attack them with legislation. You see that through SB 1070 and the ban on Ethnic Studies.”

Godoy is managing a Mellon Foundation grant awarded to ASU that helps historically marginalized communities preserve their past.

Stories are her work. She will tell you about Arizona’s Mexican mining families and about Gustavo Gutierrez, the labor organizer from Chandler who helped found Chicanos Por La Causa and who like Chávez was born to a family of farmworkers. And in the next breath, she's reminding you that it's been nearly 27 years since ASU awarded Chávez an honorary doctorate.

Arizonans who marched with Chávez and stood by his side during hunger strikes and boycotts keep their stories close.

They remember when Chávez came to Arizona in 1972. He took shelter at Santa Rita Center, an old building in Phoenix on loan from the Catholic Church. The labor organizer and civil-rights leader, surrounded by supporters, many of them children of Mexican farmworkers, kept his 24-day "fast for love."

READ: New generation refuses to forget the place that sheltered Cesar Chávez and where 'Sí, se puede' was born

Many consider Santa Rita the place where Arizona’s Chicano movement started. Chávez launched his hunger strike to bring attention to the plight of Arizona farm workers after then-Gov. Jack Williams signed a bill outlawing boycotts and strikes during harvest time, making it virtually impossible for workers to organize a union.

Families, migrants and activists went to Santa Rita to be by Chavez’s side, as did national leaders, including Coretta Scott King, widow of Martin Luther King Jr.

Dolores Huerta, who co-founded the United Farm Workers of America union with Chávez, stood by him in Arizona. At Santa Rita, after a day of losses, Huerta, surrounded by Latino youth and leaders, said three words: "Sí, se puede." (Yes, you can.)

The famous phrase is synonymous with Chávez and the farmworkers movement. It became a political cry for millions who cast their vote for the nation’s first black president. Today, it is a mantra for migrant-rights groups and others fighting what seems impossible.

But it started in Arizona, with Huerta, Chávez and the farmworkers movement.

Huerta was meeting with the state’s Latino leaders. They told her Chavez picked the wrong state for a fight. Arizona’s growers’ lobby was too strong.

"They kept saying, 'In Arizona, no. No se puede. No se puede,'" she recalled in a 2014 interview with The Republic. "My spontaneous response was, 'Sí, se puede. Sí, se puede.'

Later that night, during her organizing report, Huerta said the words again.

"All the people started shouting, 'Sí, se puede! Sí, se puede!' " she said. "It became the heart of our campaign."

You should know that the education of the heart is very important. This will distinguish you from others. Educating oneself is easy, but educating ourselves to help other human beings to help the community is much more difficult. —Chávez

Want to help preserve your community and family histories?

ASU Library will pay for workshop supplies and provide free services for community-driven collections. Info: https://lib.asu.edu/communityarchives, 480-965-2594.

Archives and Preservation Workshops: Individuals will learn how to be archivists for under-represented communities. Each person will receive a free archive starter kit that contains preservation information and archival supplies.

Scanning and oral history events: Individuals will learn how to scan archival material and conduct an oral history interview. ASU Library will offer free consultation services and scan material. People will also have the opportunity to record their story using StoryCenter listening stations.