Equity in the Classroom - Dr. Joan Jaimes

From "Teaching Tolerance" a project of the Southern Poverty Law Center.

The Bracero History Archive collects and makes available the oral histories and artifacts pertaining to the Bracero program, a guest worker initiative that spanned the years 1942-1964

C-SPAN interview with the authors. Historians talked about the history of Mexican-American civil rights struggles in Texas. Their recent books each examine different historical periods when Mexican Americans have struggled for equality. The panelists also responded to questions from members of the audience. Ricardo Romo moderated. Cynthia Orozco is the author of No Mexicans, Women, or Dogs Allowed: The Rise of the Mexican American Civil Rights Movement about the League of United Latin-American Citizens (LULAC), founded by Mexican-American men in 1929. Emilio Zamora is the author of Claiming Rights and Righting Wrongs in Texas: Mexican Workers and Job Politics during World War II. David Montejano is the author of Quixote’s Soldiers: A Local History of the Chicano Movement, 1966-1981, about San Antonio, Texas.

She covers many aspects of the Chicano Movement and speaks freely about prominent Mexican American political figures Henry Cisneros and Henry B. Gonzales. She recalls the political gatherings at Kramer's Polish Restaurant and her involvement in the Committee for Barrio Betterment. She refers to her participation in an unsuccessful migrant education project in Michigan arranged through the Texas Institute for Educational Development and reveals the circumstances of her arrest during the 1970 boycott of the San Antonio Savings Association, which was owned by San Antonio's mayor, Walter McAllister. She refers to an incident at St. Mary's University involving Albert Garza Bustamante and George Velásquez and assails the Good Government League.

Scholars have paid some attention to the geography of Chicano activism but not in the detail that now becomes possible with the maps this project provides. The starting assumption is that the movement was concentrated in the Southwest where Mexican American populations were largest. That is true but our maps show activism was not spread evenly through the region and that certain organizations and types of activism were limited to particular geographies.