Chicano!

¡Chicano!

Chicano!



Chicano! The History of the Mexican American Civil Rights Movement is the most comprehensive account of the arduous struggle by Mexican Americans to secure and protect their civil rights. It is also a companion volume to the critically acclaimed, four-part documentary series of the same title, which is now available on video from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Both this published volume and the video series are a testament to the Mexican American community’s hard-fought battle for social and legal equality as well as political and cultural identity.



Since the United States-Mexico War, 1846-1848, Mexican Americans have striven to achieve full rights as citizens. From peaceful resistance and violent demonstrations, when their rights were ignored or abused, to the establishment of support organizations to carry on the struggle and the formation of labor unions to provide a united voice, the movement grew in strength and in numbers. However, it was during the 1960s and 1970s that the campaign exploded into a nationwide groundswell of Mexican Americans laying claim, once and for all, to their civil rights and asserting their cultural heritage. They took a name that had been used disparagingly against them for years—Chicano—and fashioned it into a battle cry, a term of pride, affirmation and struggle.



Aimed at a broad general audience as well as college and high school students, Chicano! focuses on four themes: land, labor, educational reform and government. With solid research, accessible language and historical photographs, this volume highlights individuals, issues and pivotal developments that culminated in and comprised a landmark period for the second largest ethnic minority in the United States. Chicano! is a compelling monument to the individuals and events that transformed society.



Gladys Ramirez (Illustrrator), Malaquías Montoya (Arte)

Creator: Nicolas Kanellos

Area: Houston / Third Ward-MacGregor

Contributor: Arte Público Press

Source: Center for Mexican American Studies

Uploaded by: Marisela Martinez

Copyright status: In copyright

Center for Mexican American Studies

Colored Men and Hombres Aqui

Hombres de color y hombres aquí

Colored Men and Hombres Aqui



This collection of ten essays originally published in 2006 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of an important but almost forgotten U.S. Supreme court case, Hernández v. Texas, 347 US 475 (1954), is now available in trade paperback for the first time. Involving Mexican Americans and jury selection, this major case was published just before Brown v. Board of Education in the 1954 Supreme Court reporter.



This landmark case, the first to be tried by Mexican American lawyers before the US Supreme Court, held that Mexican Americans were a discrete group for purposes of applying Equal Protection. Although the case was about discriminatory state jury selection and trial practices, it has been cited for many other civil rights precedents in the intervening 50 years. Even so, it has not been given the prominence it deserves, in part because it lives in the shadow of the more compelling Brown v. Board case.



There had been earlier efforts to diversify juries, reaching back at least to the trial of Gregorio Cortez in 1901 and continuing with efforts by the legendary Oscar Zeta Acosta in Los Angeles in the 1960s. Even as recently as 2005 there has been clear evidence that Latino participation in the Texas jury system is still substantially unrepresentative of the growing population. But in a brief and shining moment in 1954, Mexican-American lawyers prevailed in a system that accorded their community no legal status and no respect. Through sheer tenacity, brilliance, and some luck, they showed that it is possible to tilt against windmills and slay the dragon.



Edited and with an introduction by University of Houston law scholar Michael A. Olivas, Colored Men and Hombres Aquí is the first full-length book on this case. This volume contains the papers presented at the Hernández at 50 conference that took place in 2004 at the University of Houston Law Center and also contains source materials, trial briefs, and a chronology of the case.



James F Brisson (Illustrator)

Creator: Nicolas Kanellos

Area: Houston / Third Ward-MacGregor

Contributor: Arte Público Press

Source: Center for Mexican American Studies

Uploaded by: Marisela Martinez

Copyright status: In copyright

Center for Mexican American Studies

Enriqueta Vasquez and The Chicano Movement

Enriqueta Vásquez y el Movimiento Chicano

Enriqueta Vasquez and The Chicano Movement



As a teenager, long before Enriqueta Vasquez became a writer and activist, she wrote her first letter to complain against the injustice she saw around her while growing up in the Southwest. Why was she, a Mexican American, not allowed to eat in local restaurants, while her brothers were fighting to preserve their country’s principles of freedom and democracy? Why were Mexican Americans good enough to fight and die for their country but not good enough to be treated as equals at home? And so began Enriqueta Vasquez’s life-long fight for justice.



Highlighting the involvement of women in the Chicano Movement, this anthology combines for the first time in one volume the columns written by Enriqueta Vasquez from 1968-1972 for the path-breaking Chicano newspaper, El Grito del Norte.



Enriqueta Vasquez’s columns written during the peak of the civil rights movement provided a platform for her fierce but hopeful voice of protest. In her column, entitled ¡Despierten Hermanos! [Awaken, Brothers and Sisters!], she used both anger and humor in her efforts to stir her fellow Chicanos to action. Drawing upon her own experiences as a Chicana, she wrote about such issues as racism, sexism, imperialism, and poverty, issues that remain pressing today.



With introductory and concluding essays by editors Lorena Oropeza and Dionne Espinoza, this collection of 44 of Vasquez’s original articles arranged thematically into six chapters seeks to inform and inspire a new generation. Each is annotated to clarify references to people and events, and the editors have included English-language translations of any essays that appeared originally in Spanish. The text is complemented by six drawings by activist and artist Rini Templeton that originally appeared in El Grito del Norte. The volume includes a foreword by John Nichols and a preface by Enriqueta Vasquez.



James F Brisson (Illustrator)

Creator: Nicolas Kanellos

Area: Houston / Third Ward-MacGregor

Contributor: Arte Público Press

Source: Center for Mexican American Studies

Uploaded by: Marisela Martinez

Copyright status: In copyright

Center for Mexican American Studies

Pioneer of Mexican-American Civil Rights

Pionero de los derechos civiles de los mexicoamericanos

Pioneer of Mexican-American Civil Rights



In this wide-ranging biography, historian Cynthia Orozco examines the life and work of one of the most influential Mexican Americans of the twentieth century. Alonso S. Perales was born in Alice, Texas, in 1898; he became an attorney, leading civil rights activist, author and US diplomat.



Perales was active in promoting and seeking equality for “La Raza” in numerous arenas. In 1929, he founded the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), the most important Latino civil rights organization in the United States. He encouraged the empowerment of Latinos at the voting box and sought to pass state and federal legislation banning racial discrimination. He fought for school desegregation in Texas and initiated a movement for more and better public schools for Mexican-descent people in San Antonio.



A complex and controversial figure, Alonso S. Perales is now largely forgotten, and this first-ever comprehensive biography reveals his work and accomplishments to a new generation of scholars of Mexican-American history and Hispanic civil rights. This volume is divided into four parts: the first is organized chronologically and examines his childhood to his role in World War I, the beginnings of his activism in the 1920s and the founding of LULAC. The second section explores his impact as an attorney, politico, public intellectual, Pan-American ideologue and US diplomat. Perales’ private life is examined in the third part and scholars’ interpretations of his legacy in the fourth.



Mora Design (Illustrator)

Creator: Nicolas Kanellos

Area: Houston / Third Ward-MacGregor

Contributor: Arte Público Press

Source: Center for Mexican American Studies

Uploaded by: Marisela Martinez

Copyright status: In copyright

Center for Mexican American Studies