San José State University Chicano Oral History Collection

The Chicano Oral History Collection is the result of a joint project between San José State University's Mexican American Studies Department and the Chicano Library Resource Center (CLRC). Planning for a project to document the experiences and history of Santa Clara County's Chicano community through oral history began in the late 1970s when Dr. Sylvia Gonzales of the CLRC investigated the possibility of starting such a project. In 1985 Dr. Samuel Henry, Affirmative Action Officer at San José State University (SJSU), first proposed an oral history project to the CLRC in order to develop a repository of information on the lives of Chicanos in Northern California; however, due to funding issues the project was not implemented. The project finally began as part of a course on oral history in the Mexican American Studies Department. Coursework, training and interviews with community leaders were conducted from 1988 - 1990. The focus of this project was on the Chicano Movement in San José and Santa Clara County in the 1960s and 1970s. During this period, San José was a center of Chicano activism and social change, including some of the earliest Chicano student walkouts in the state, student activism at SJSU and other area colleges, and community organizing. Near the end of the project, in May 1989, the Alma Chicana Revisited Symposium was held to share the results of this project with the campus and broader communities in a three-day forum of meetings and presentations. Funding sources for this program came from various library, campus and California State University (CSU) grants, including Affirmative Action, Faculty Development, and Discretionary Lottery Grants.