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This folder contains newspaper clippings about minorities, racism, discrimination, and human rights efforts in Boulder County. The clippings were compiled by the Reference Staff at the Boulder Public Library.

Richard Lopez, an attorney with Lopez Law Office in the City of Boulder, specializes in civil litigation, and land use development. Lopez describes his experience of growing up in California and working in the fields picking grapes and peaches. He talks about being a member of the International Guard and the Air Force during the Vietnam War. He describes his education including attending Cal-Poly at San Luis Obispo as an undergraduate and Cornell University for Architecture and Planning. He later moved to Boulder and became a city planner. He describes his involvement with growth management policymaking in Boulder and his many contributions to community service in the education and non-profit sectors. He also touches on discrimination against Latinos, both in California and in Colorado, and the importance of diversity.

Eleanor Montour, whose mother founded Clinica Campesina, talks about her family and her life growing up in Lafayette, Colorado. She describes what it was like for her grandfather and father working in the fields and mines. She also discusses the racism and discrimination that she experienced in junior high school and high school. She explains why her mother started Clinica Campesina, details her mother's involvement wtih the community, and her philosophy of the importance of health care, education, and speaking out for what is right. She also talks about her own 30-year career at Clinica, her involvement with the school that was named after her mother (Sanchez Elementary), and her own present-day multicultural family.

Salvador was born in Guanajuerta, Mexico in 1996. When he was 4 years old he came to Colorado with his parents and brother to join his grandma, who was already in the U.S. His parents said they came for their children: a better education, more opportunity, a better life. His father has worked in a series of unskilled jobs; his mother works in a tortillaria. Salvador went to Columbine Elementary School, Trail Ridge Middle School, and had just finished his junior year at Skyline High School, all in Longmont. His teachers treated him well, but he was aware of discrimination elsewhere. He hopes to go to college and become an architect.

Kelly was born to Guatemalan parents who immigrated first to California and then to Colorado. She was born in the United States. She attended elementary and middle schools in Longmont and Niwot High School for her freshman year. She was unhappy there because of the racist attitudes on the part of some of the white students who made her feel ashamed of being a Latina. For the next two years whe went to Skyline High School in Longmont, where she felt accepted. She discusses the Pre-Collegiate Program at the University of Colorado at Boulder (CU-Boulder), to help prepare students of color for college; LYFE (Longmont Youth for Equality), organized by CIRC (Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition), which works for political change and to help people in the community. She discusses her goals for making positive changes in the community and in the political system.

This interview begins by covering Virginia Alvarez's early life in northeast Boulder County where her parents were farm workers. Her parents moved to Boulder County from Mexico in 1929, before Virginia was born in 1942. When she was a child, they did farm work in the Longmont area, moving around from one farm to another annually. Virginia talks about feeling isolated when she was very young because there were not many Hispanics in her elementary school and initially she did not speak much English. She went to school in Longmont from first grade through high school, and she remarks on the dynamics between Hispanics and Anglos in the schools, which were, for the most part, lacking conflict. IBM brought in many new Latinos in the 1960s. She describes her family as being poor, too poor for her to join clubs at Longmont High School, for example. She worked for an OEO program with senior citizens in the 1960s throughout Boulder County. She learned her life philosophy from her family, which is to respect people and to do whatever job you're doing the best that you can. Virginia says she sees less division now between Anglos and Hispanics in Longmont, in part because Hispanics have opened businesses that non-Hispanics also support, and in part becasue Hispanic children are getting educations that are opening doors for them.

Esther Blazon tells about moving around during her childhood while her father was a migrant farm worker. She married while still in high school and had children shortly afterward. When her children grew older, she went back to high school to earn her degree, and graduated in 1968. She worked for Head Start, then received a Migrant Education Program scholarship to the University of Colorado at Boulder. After graduating, she worked for the St. Vrain School District, then earned her master's degree in counseling in 1980 from the University of Northern Colorado. She speaks of her involvement with El Comit{u1EC1} after a police shooting of two Latino youths. She also talks about the importance of her relationship with her husband and his support of her goals, and of her respect for her father. She describes discrimination she experienced when buying a house in Longmont, as well as racism against her children by other students in Longmont schools. She ends by describing work she did in Ecuador as part of a mental health team.

Marta Moreno is the Executive Director of El Comit{u1EBB}, a non-profit organization that focuses on helping underserved people in Longmont, primarily Latinos, solve legal problems, achieve citizenship, recoup wages, and overcome unfair treatment among other services. She talks about growing up in El Paso, Texas, the influence of nuns and priests had in her life, and her educational experiences there. She moved to Boulder in the mid-1970s when her husband was hired as a mechanical engineer for IBM. She talks about leading a movement to have the Catholic churches here offer Spanish Mass. Later she moved to Longmont. She describes discrimination against Latinos in El Paso and in Boulder County. She ends by explaining the history of El Comit{u1EBB}, and describes many of the ways in which it helps the community.

Sonia Marquez is the director for Northern Colorado of CIRC (Colorado Immigration Rights Coalition) and has set up youth groups in Longmont (LYFE) and Lafayette). Her maternal grandparents came to Longmont around 1932 from northern New Mexico in a covered wagon; her grandfather, John Borrego, worked in the fields and then in meat packing. Her father came from Chihuahua, Mexico, when he was 19 and worked on farms and in construction. She describes discrimination experienced by relatives in Longmont during the 1930s and later, including signs in businesses that stated that dogs and Mexicans were not welcome. Sonia talks about her difficulties going through school in Longmont as a Latina, her college education, and being fired from the Longmont Youth Center, which was protested by many of the center's clients. She speaks of the work that CIRC does, especially around immigration reform, her passion for empowering young people, and the importance of perserving people's stories and culture.

Veronica was born in Oregon. Her parents, who had come to this country in 1984 from Mexico for job opportunities, worked as agricultural laborers, moving between Nevada, Oregon, Idaho, and Texas to find employment. When she was a young child her parents were arrested for being illegal immigrants and sent to jail in Oregon. She relates the difficulties and humiliations that ensued for her and her siblings, including her two older siblings being forced to walk through airports wearing handcuffs and leg shackles as they were put in foster care; the bullying she endured at school for her impoverished situation; and the difficulties of growing up without a father after her mother's release and her father's deportation. She also talks about her (successful) struggle to obtain a college education and her ambition to be an immigration lawyer, born of her childhood experience of wanting to help her father.

Elvira Ramos is Director of Programs at The Community Foundation Serving Boulder County. She talks about her experience of growing up in Indiana and her roots in Brownsville, Texas. Her ancestors have lived in the Rio Grande Valley for many generations, and both of her parents were born in Brownsville, Texas. After World War II, her parents moved to Indiana, where her father worked in the steel mills. Her mother graduated from high school, but was not allowed to go to college. Her parents were active in the Democratic Party and in helping new Latino immigrants in the area. Although both of her parents spoke Spanish, Elvira was not taught the language because her parents had been punished and held back in school for speaking Spanish. Elvira received her bachelor's degree in English at Indiana University in Bloomington. She worked in Denver and Brownsville before moving with her son to Boulder County in 2009. She talks about racism in Colorado, which she finds to be more pervasive than in Texas. She also discusses her work at The Community Foundation, where she manages grants that are used to encourage and promote philanthropy. She trains and facilitates workshops on leadership development, diversity, cultural competency, volunteer management and strategic planning. She offers career advice for young people.

David Young (whose name as a curandero, a traditional healer, is Atekpatzin) was born in 1956 and moved to Boulder in 1972 so his mother (Maria Dora Esquivel, an activist who died in May 2013) could attend the University of Colorado. In this interview he talks about his ethnic identity: he identifies as a Chicano who is a Genizaro Apache, the descendant of Native Americans who were enslaved to serve Spanish families in New Mexico. He tells about how when his mother was a child, she and her relatives were brought by truck from New Mexico to Colorado by a "coyote" to whom they owed all their wages, another form of human trafficking. He describes his mother's later involvement with UMAS on the CU-Boulder campus and her work with other Chicano leaders; her and his participation in the 1970s-90s with the American Indian Movement, Nicaragua, the Communist Party, and gay rights issues; his conflicts with the City of Boulder and the Boulder School District in the 1990s and 2000s. He relates the history of Indian and Chicano oppression by the government. He talks in detail about curanderismo (traditional healing), how it succeeds in helping people, and his own training. He discusses differences between Chicanos and Anglos.