The efforts of civil rights activist Cesar Chavez to better the lives of Mexican farm workers will be the focus of a special program to be hosted by the Fullerton Public Library on Tuesday, Oct. 13.

“Giving Farmworkers a Sense of Place:  Cesar Chavez and the Forgotten Legacy of the Forty Acres” will be held at 7 p.m. in the Osborne auditorium of the Fullerton Main Library, 353 W. Commonwealth Ave.  Admission is free.

Guest speaker will be Dr. Raymond W. Rast, assistant professor of history at California State University, Fullerton, and Associate Director of the Center for Oral and Public History.

The program is part of the library’s “Town and Gown” lecture series, which features professors from local colleges and universities who speak on a variety of interesting topics. 

In his presentation, Rast will trace the growth of the farm worker movement from its birth in Delano, California, in 1965, when Chavez united the workers in a strike against California grape growers for better working conditions. 

The program will include screening of the film “Viva La Causa:  The Story of Cesar Chavez and a Great Movement for Social Justice.”  The film is being made available through “Teaching Tolerance,” the anti-bias education project of the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Rast, a Missouri native, earned a bachelor of arts degree in history from Yale University in 1995.  After brief stints at the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody, Wyo., and the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial in St. Louis, Mo., he entered the master’s program at the University of New Mexico.  In 2006, he received his doctorate from the University of Washington, near Seattle.

Rast has worked on historic preservation projects for the National Park Service related to Japanese-American internment during World War II, and Cesar Chavez and the farm worker movement.  During the 2006-07 academic year, he was a visiting assistant professor in the Department of History at the College of Wooster.

Rast joined the CSUF History Department in 2007.

Further information about the “Town and Gown” program or the Oct. 13 lecture may be obtained by calling the Fullerton Main Library at (714) 738-6326.