"Más Que Una Unión":

Almost every textbook on twentieth century American history has a few sentences on Cesar Chavez and the California Farmworker Movement. Very few textbooks include expansive treatments of farmworkers and residents of rural California as central to American culture.  Professor Oliver Rosales, Bakersfield College, has been part of working groups and design teams commissioned to find ways to include these broader histories in the exhibit spaces for the Cesar Chavez National Monument. As they wrote in their recently paused and un-paused NEH grant, “From the exhausted hope of the Joads to the tenacity of Cesar Chavez; from the austere Garveyian self- reliance of Allensworth to the lyricism of the Bakersfield Sound, very few locales have captured the promise, struggles, artistry, and multi-ethnic tapestry of Rural America more than California’s San Joaquin Valley.”  Oliver Rosales has been engaged in a broader near-region-wide public history project with the National Park Service and the National Endowment for the Humanities to make the Central Valley important to its residents, its tourists, its migrants and the broader history of migration, work and agriculture in the United States, part of the upcoming celebration of the Cesar Chavez Centennial.

Oliver Rosales is the author of numerous essays and articles, including the award winning book Civil Rights in Bakersfield:  Segregation and Multiracial Activism in the Central Valley. Oliver A. Rosales is professor of history and faculty coordinator of the Social Justice Institute at Bakersfield College.  A former board member for California Humanities, His teaching and research focus on Chicano/a, California, United States, and World history. Dr. Rosales has held appointments as a Visiting Faculty member at Bard College and as a Visiting Fellow at Harvard University’s Hutchins Center for African and African American Studies. He is the author of Civil Rights in Bakersfield: Segregation and Multiracial Activism in the Central Valley (University of Texas Press, 2024), which received the Outstanding Book & Media Award from the Association of Ethnic Studies, the 2025 Ambassador Julian Nava Best Ethnic Studies Book award, and an Honorable Mention for the Norris Hundley Book Award from the Pacific Coast Branch of the American Historical Association. A former Board Chair for California Humanities (2022–2024), he is a recipient of the Whiting Foundation’s Public Engagement Fellowship and multiple grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Rosales has directed grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities focused on community college faculty development, digital humanities, and public engagement programs.  Most recently, he served as a historical consultant for the National Parks Service to help reshape the public history of the National Chavez Center in Keene, California, contributing to a revised exhibit experience forthcoming for the 2027 César Chávez Centennial.