A Chicano, Mexican-American Digital History Project for the Sacramento region.
August 2010.
Goals
To create an on-line history collection of Chicano/ Mexican American /Latino history in the Sacramento region.
Encourage participation and contributions by others based upon the model established by the Farmworker Movement documentation project. See example. http://www.farmworkermovement.us/
The project has begun to assemble and to create a digital history of Chicano and Mexican American history and activism in the Sacramento region 1940 – present. Directors include Dr. Duane E. Campbell, Professor (emeritus) CSU-Sacramento and Professor Dolores Delgado Campbell, Professor of History at American River College.
During its initial stages, the project is temporarily housed at the Institute for Democracy and Education in Sacramento. http://sites.google.com/site/democracyandeducationorg/
We will collect, write, and post this history so that it is not lost nor discarded.
Issues to be decided.
1. Where will the project be housed ? Where will it be hosted on the web.
2. How will comments be organized and moderated?
3. Establish a committee of scholars and activists for selection of materials.
4. Criteria for submission of materials.
5. Relationships with archives at the Sac State library.
Ground rules.
The project will be open sourced, using Creative Commons licensing.
The general guidelines for writing and production are the guidelines for writing and posting used by Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Five_pillars
Note: the exception. Submissions will not have to adopt a neutral point of view.
Anyone may submit a paper, an essay, a document fitting these guidelines.
We will not use open editing as per the Wikipedia experience. All papers must be edited prior to submission.
We recommend that persons planning to write a paper or to submit an essay check with the editorial committee in advance. We may already have a piece on this topic in preparation.
Brief posting. ( to be supplemented).
These are samples of the kind of histories we plan to collect and post.
The Mexican American Education Project at Sacramento State- CSU-Sacramento.
Mexican American Education Project. By Duane Campbell.
The Mexican American Education Project was established in 1968 directed by Clark Taylor, in the Department ofAnthropology on the campus (1968–1973). The project was an attempt to prepare educational change agents to overcome the decades of educational neglect suffered by Mexican American students in schools. The U.S. Office of Education first funded the program as an Experienced Teacher Fellowship Program. We recruited Mexican American Teachers to prepare them as change agents. Early students in this program include Olivia Castellano, Jose Montoya, Steve Arvizu, Rene Merino, Dolores Delgado (Campbell), and Armando Ayala.
The program was originally located in the Department of Anthropology. The degree granted was an MA in Social Science with an emphasis in Anthropology. The project produced significant funds for the university ($5 million in five years) and led to the hiring of many new Chicano and Mexicano faculty. At the founding of the program in 1968, the CSU system only had 30 Mexican American graduate students in the entire system. The effort at Sacramento produced 25 graduate students each year in Sacramento alone. The mission of this project was to improve the educational opportunities of Mexican, Chicano and migrant students in California. The author (Duane Campbell )was hired in 1969 by the project to develop a curriculum intervention system. We began to work with Dos Rios Elementary School in North Sacramento as a laboratory school site and he was later appointed as an Assistant Professor in the School of Education.
Dr. Campbell became the co-director of the MAEP in 1970 for one year. After three years of focus on school change, the Mexican American Education Project began to place increased emphasis on the School of Education. Courses were developed in the School on Teaching English as a Second Language and a reform of the existing course, "Teaching the Culturally Disadvantaged" was insisted upon. The School of Education also had a Teacher Corp program from 1972–1974, which brought many ethnic minority students to the School.
During 1970- 1974 period, federal funds were designed for capacity building. A goal of the MAEP was to develop enough faculty to sustain the program with state funds. In the 1971–1973 period, student activism on the campus, often including the students in the Mexican American Education Project (MAEP), helped to establish the Ethnic Studies and Chicano Studies programs on campus.
Dr. Tom Carter, an established authority on education of Mexican Americans became Dean of the School of Education in 1972. In 1973–74, the MAEP completed its funding. In 1974, Dr. Robert Segura, in Education received a grant for an Experienced Teacher Fellowship Program (Title VII) and later a future teachers program. Rene Merino transferred from Anthropology to become the Assistant Director of this program. Adela Fernandez was the office manager. These federal projects became one of the sources for the development of the Department of Bilingual/Multicultural Education.
The new program prepared Experienced Teachers in Education to work with Mexican American children. Teachers received up to $5,000 per year to take a year off and to work on their Masters Degree in Education. By 1976, the funding Title VII programs were transferred to local school districts and to doctoral programs at other universities. Doctoral programs are far more expensive, and therefore most funds were used up and few funds remained available for our students. We could usually pay only tuition and fees. We had developed a graduate program in multicultural education during the period of Title VII funding.
Excerpt. The United Farmworkers in Sacramento.
This except is from an essay by Duane Campbell from the Farmworker Movement Documentation Project. We hope to follow in their footsteps in developing a useful archive of local history. http://www.farmworkermovement.us/
The United Farm Workers in Sacramento 1972-1977. By Duane Campbell
Prior to 1972 our activism had been concentrated on antiwar (Viet Nam) work, and for Dolores Delgado-Campbell, in the Chicano community. We worked together in the 1972 McGovern for President campaign and Proposition 22. The antiwar work was winding down.
In the summer of 1972 the Teamsters union raided the UFW and sought to represent farm workers even though they failed at organizing farmworkers; this is the ultimate violation of labor democratic rights. Because of my long history of union activism, I (Duane Campbell) was moved by this betrayal of union solidarity by a corrupt union. Dolores Campbell and I discussed the situation and decided to work together to help the United Farm Workers.
Dolores called the UFW headquarters and said we would volunteer. They said there already was a support committee in Sacramento, headed by Joe Serna. We both knew Joe because he and I worked in the same union and Dolores had been a student in one of his classes as a part of the MAEP. We contacted Joe and found out what was being done. A boycott committee had existed in Sacramento during the prior boycott.
The existing committee was centered on the Chicano artistas, who eventually become the Royal Chicano Air Force (RCAF). Jose Montoya was perhaps the best known. They helped the UFW with posters and hosted Cesar when he came to town. They also educated people about the UFW within their circle.
We decided to take a more labor union/ church centered approach, and to not only concentrate on the Chicano/Mexicano community but to spread the boycott to new groups. We began by organizing picket lines at local Safeway stores and asking people to not buy grapes. We stayed in touch with Joe Serna. We did not meet regularly with him, but we relied upon Joe for our political front. He handled all political matters, including the Democratic Party. For example, the UFW shared a desk in the Mc Govern campaign for their Proposition 22. One time when we were bill boarding over a freeway overpass he called to tell us to get down from there. He said the call had come in from La Paz.
We began to picket regularly and recruited supporters. This began a four year experience of picketing each week at a local store. At times we would have 10-12 volunteers, at times only 3-4. The Catholic Newman Center served as a place to meet and to plan. A small group of regulars formed, which sustained the effort. Picketing taught us a great deal about political discipline and staying on the subject. The Sacramento effort remained a volunteer effort from 1972-1977. Sacramento can get to 108 degrees in the summer, and it is cold and wet in the winter - but we kept the picket lines going. We did not have any fulltime UFW staff except on brief projects, such as Proposition 14.
More at http://www.farmworkermovement.us/
The establishment of the Department of Bilingual/Multicultural Education at Sac State. Excerpts.
By 1990, as a consequence of the changing demographics in the state, and in our programs, we achieved a teacher preparation center where a majority of the students were fromlanguage minority backgrounds. The small and struggling cohort of language minority students became the majority. Our Bilingual, Multicultural Center within the Department of Teacher Education developed new perspectives.
In 1991, the faculty held a year long self-study directed by Dr. Victoria Jew on new developments in Bilingual and Multicultural education. In 1992, Professor Cintrón urged the name change to the Multicultural/Multilingual Center, and he accepted the position of advisor to the Multilingual/Multicultural Teacher Preparation Association. Dr. Nadeen Ruiz brought the OLE project to CSU Sacramento which had a defining impact on our own reading courses, and which established a school intervention model in 3 California School Districts.
By 1993, the faculty associated with the Multicultural/Multilingual Center decided that they wished to leave the department of Teacher Education and to become their own department at Sac State. The growth of bilingual education, and multicultural education at both the graduate and under graduate level had developed to a faculty of over 8 full-time faculty.Typical departments at the university are 8-12 faculty.
By becoming our own department, we gained more local control over our budget, hiring, and decision-making. While we were in Teacher Education, it would often require 2–3 years of advocacy to achieve a single faculty position. And, faculty outside of our area controlled our tenure and promotion processes.
We proposed to the Dean's Advisory Council that we become a department. Dean Gregorich placed the issue to a vote of the entire School faculty. Several members of other departments assisted us in this effort, usually through the Bilingual Core Faculty.
We won the vote. The Dean recommended to the President, and we became our own department in 1994. Dr. Forrest Davis was interviewed and selected by a hiring committee in Teacher Education, and became the first new hire in our new department of Bilingual/Multicultural Education.
Duane Campbell was elected as the first Chair, and Katy Romo was hired as the first Department Secretary. Rene Merino was elected as the second Chair in 1997. Since becoming a new department we have added several new faculty. By 1997 we had prepared over 320 bilingual teachers for the Sacramento region.
In 1994, Dr. Diane Cordero de Noriega became the Dean of the School of Education. This position assisted our development as a department. In 1996 we began our single subject program based on the long history of success with the multiple subject program. In 1996, California voters passed Proposition 187, and in 1998, they passed Proposition 227 to eliminate bilingual education.
Analysis of the Proposition 187 and Proposition 227 campaigns will be added.
See also on this site for the California History Framework and Why California students do not know Chicano/Latino history and California Senate Bill SB 1278 of 2010. Also see the pages of Chicano history ( on this site) which are from, Choosing Democracy: a practical guide to multicultural education. (2004) by Duane Campbell.
For further information contact Duane Campbell. Director, at
campd22702@gmail.com