A dramatic response to American racism occurred in Los Angeles during 1855 when a brilliant eighteen-year-old Mexican-American, Francisco P. Ramirez, published a Spanish-language newspaper, El Clamor Publico. Ramirez called upon a Mexican-American majority to rebel and seize power by electing themselves to public office. Ramirez was a radical liberal in a town controlled by white conservative Southerners with antebellum values. His life's work has been the subject of academic seminars and mandatory reading in university classes. Historians have long recognized the need for a complete biography of Ramirez. Paul Bryan Gray, a California lawyer and historian, was honored in 2001 with the Historical Society of Southern California's Donald H. Pflueger Award for distinguished research and writing.".
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With "Sonny Montes and Mexican American Activism in Oregon, " Glenn Anthony May makes a major contribution to the literature on Oregon and Chicano history. On one level a biography of Oregon's leading Chicano activist, the book also tells the broader story of the state's Mexican American community during the 1960s and 1970s, a story in which Sonny Montes, a former migrant farmworker from South Texas, played an important part. Montes was the key figure in the birth of a Chicano movement in Oregon during the 1970s, a movement that coalesced around the struggle for survival of the Colegio Cesar Chavez, a small college in Mt. Angel, Oregon, with a largely Mexican American student body. Montes led the college community and its supporters in collective action--sit-ins, protest marches, rallies, prayer vigil. This campaign received wide media attention, making Sonny Montes a visible public figure. By viewing Mexican American protest between 1965 and 1980 through the prism of social movement theory, May's book deepens our understanding of the Chicano movement in Oregon and beyond. It also provides a much-needed account of the emergence of the state's Mexican American community during that time period. "Sonny Montes" will appeal to readers interested in modern social movements, Mexican American history, and Pacific Northwest history. It is an essential resource for scholars and students in those fields.
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• Leadership and power / Victor Garza, Blanca Alvarado, Ron Gonzales
• Politics and society / Esther Medina, Sofía Mendoza, Ernestina García
• Education and social change / Fernando Zazueta, Juan Olivérez, Yolanda Reynolds
• Culture and the arts / Adrian Vargas, Rigo Chacón, Mary Andrade
• Religion and community / Sal Álvarez, Gloria Loya.

This book consists of fourteen interviews with Mexican-American community activists of various stripes in San Jose.
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• Preface
• 1. Introduction Part I: The Story
• 2. Alex and the Hobo Part II: The Life
• 3. The Valley
• 4. Awareness
• 5. Social Structure
• 6. Anastacio Taylor
• 7. Beatriz Mondragon
• 8. Women in Peril
• 9. Conclusion Appendix: Juana's Witchcraft Testimony Notes-- Bibliography.
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When a ten-year-old boy befriends a mysterious hobo in his southern Colorado hometown in the early 1940s, he learns about evil in his community and takes his first steps toward manhood by attempting to protect his new friend from corrupt officials. Though a fictional story, "Alex and the Hobo" is written out of the life experiences of its author, Jose Inez (Joe) Taylor, and it realistically portrays a boy's coming-of-age as a Spanish-speaking man, who must carve out an honorable place for himself in a class-stratified and Anglo-dominated society. In this innovative ethnography, anthropologist James Taggart collaborates with Joe Taylor to explore how "Alex and the Hobo" sprang from Taylor's life experiences and how it presents an insider's view of Mexicano culture and its constructions of manhood. They frame the story (included in its entirety) with chapters that discuss how it encapsulates notions that Taylor learned from the Chicano movement, the farmworkers' union, his community, his father, his mother, and his religion. Taggart gives the ethnography a solid theoretical underpinning by discussing how the story and Taylor's account of how he created it represent an act of resistance to the class system that Taylor perceives as destroying his native culture.
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In 1968, ten thousand students marched in protest over the terrible conditions prevalent in the high schools of East Los Angeles, the largest Mexican community in the United States. Chanting "Chicano Power", the young insurgents not only demanded change but heralded a new racial politics. Frustrated with the previous generation's efforts to win equal treatment by portraying themselves as racially white, the Chicano protesters demanded justice as proud members of a brown race. The legacy of this fundamental shift continues to this day. Ian Haney Lopez tells the story of the Chicano movement in Los Angeles by following two criminal trials, including one arising from the student walkouts. He demonstrates how racial prejudice led to police brutality and judicial discrimination that in turn spurred Chicano militancy. He also shows that legal violence helped to convince Chicano activists that they were nonwhite, thereby encouraging their use of racial ideas to redefine their aspirations, culture and selves. In a groundbreaking advance that further connects legal racism and racial politics, Haney Lopez describes how race functions as "common sense", a set of ideas that we take for granted in our daily lives. This racial common sense, Haney Lopez argues, largely explains why racism and racial affiliation persist today. By tracing the fluid position of Mexican Americans on the divide between white and nonwhite, describing the role of legal violence in producing racial identities, and detailing the commonsense nature of race, Haney Lopez offers a much needed, potentially liberating way to rethink race in the United States.
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Jose Angel Gutierrez' autobiography provides an insider's view of the important political and social events within the Mexican American communities in South Texas during the 1960s and 1970s. He traces the many prejudices facing the Chicanos with powerful scenes from his own life.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)