The only Southern California display of a traveling Smithsonian exhibition on Dolores Huerta will open Wednesday, March 8, at CSU Channel Islands (CSUCI) with a daylong series of events featuring the 92-year-old civil rights activist reading to children and discussing activism with local leaders. 

“Dolores Huerta: Revolution in the Fields/Revolución en los Campos” will run through May 7 in the John Spoor Broome Library Exhibition Hall. 

The exhibition shares the compelling story of Huerta and the farmworkers movement of the 1960s and 1970s. Featuring text in English and Spanish, it explores Huerta’s public life as a co-founder of the United Farm Workers Union and what led her to become a Latina civil rights icon. She tirelessly led the fight for racial and labor justice along Cesar Chavez and continues to this day. 

“As a Hispanic Serving Institution, it is important that the campus create culturally relevant programming that contributes to all students’ success. The Center for Community Engagement, in partnership with the Broome Library, saw an opportunity to do just that with the hosting of this traveling exhibition that introduces Dolores Huerta’s work as a civil rights icon to the next generation of young leaders and keeps her legacy of activism alive,” said Pilar Pacheco, Director of the Center for Community Engagement. “This is especially important at a time when so much of history is being silenced and erased. Hers is a voice and story that is to be celebrated today and always.” 

The exhibition and events are providing valuable learning experiences for students at CSUCI, which is surrounded by agricultural fields. Art History students helped set up the exhibition and will serve as docents. Chicana/o Studies students will lead fellow students on a bus tour of Ventura County with stops at a Huerta mural and other street art sharing the history of the area. Art majors are presenting a student screen-printing workshop featuring their Huerta-inspired designs. 

The exhibition and the following opening-day events are free and open to the public: 

- Storytelling with Dolores, noon to 1 p.m., Broome Library Plaza — Huerta will read the book “Dolores Huerta: A Hero to Migrant Workers” by Sarah Warren. 

- Becoming a Woman Activist: A Conversation with Dolores Huerta, 1:30 to 2:30 p.m., Broome Library Plaza — Huerta will discuss her decades-long fight for farmworkers’ rights, her current activism and what it means to be an activist with local women community leaders and activists leading this work in Ventura County. 

- Exhibition Ribbon-Cutting, 3 to 4 p.m., Broome Library Exhibition Hall 

The exhibition is organized by the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service in collaboration with the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. It received federal support from the Latino Initiatives Pool administered by the Smithsonian Latino Center. 

The library is open from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. Mondays through Thursdays, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Fridays, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturdays and 1 to 9 p.m. Sundays. For more information or to RSVP for events, visit go.csuci.edu/huerta-exhibition.

Parking is available on the campus with the purchase of a $6 daily permit; visit https://maps.csuci.edu to locate parking permit dispensers. VCTC bus service is also available to and from the campus from the Camarillo Metrolink Station/Lewis Road or the Oxnard ‘C’ Street/Maywood Way Transfer Center with free parking at both locations. View the VCTC schedule for exact times to/from CSUCI. The cash-only fare is $1.75 each way or riders may download the VCTC app for fare discounts and live bus tracking.