Holidays, monuments, streets. What happens to Cesar Chavez’s legacy?

Cesar Chavez was heralded as a labor and civil rights icon. This is being questioned after allegations he sexually assaulted women and girls.

Dozens of streets, schools and parks bear his name. Public libraries and state offices close to honor his birthday in the three large states where it's a holiday. American presidents honored him with the Medal of Freedom and a National Monument in Keene, California.

For decades, Cesar Chavez, the revered late leader of the United Farm Workers union, was heralded as a labor and civil rights icon, even more so after his death over three decades ago. He came to personify Mexican American and Latino identity.

Yet this week, Chavez is in the spotlight for an array of horrifying allegations. His legacy faces a reckoning after several women, including union co-founder Dolores Huerta, said he sexually assaulted them, including some who were children at the time. Most kept the dark secrets hidden. Others were purged from UFW ranks when they spoke out, a New York Times investigation published March 18 found.

Some labor advocates and scholars said the revelations could provide a much-needed opportunity to reconsider the importance of female workers and activists, rather than attributing the movement's collective successes to one man.

"The farmworker movement has always been bigger and far more important than any one individual," Huerta, now 95, said in a statement that detailed her sexual assault by Chavez, which resulted in two children she said she gave up for adoption. "Cesar’s actions do not diminish the permanent improvements achieved for farmworkers with the help of thousands of people. We must continue to engage and support our community, which needs advocacy and activism now more than ever."