Search results

One vertical file that contains information clipped from newspapers, magazines, and other publications on racial justice, racial equity, discrimination, and Black Lives Matter as they apply to and are handled by the University of Colorado at Boulder.

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.

Philip Hernandez is a Boulder native whose family immigrated to the United States from Mexico in the early 1960s. He discusses implications of immigration for his own family and for Mexcian Americans in the United States in general, noting that some families have been here so long that there is a saying that "we didn't cross the border, the border crossed us". The interview explores issues of inclusiveness, diversity, and discrimination, including such subjects as Latinos who fought in the Vietnam War, segregation, lynching, elitism, and working for social change. He talks about his own involvement with social change action, including representing interests of the Latino community on non-profit boards, serving as the State of Colorado affirmative action director, and working to document Latino history.

One vertical file that contains information clipped from newspapers, magazines, and other publications on racial justice, racial equity, discrimination, and Black Lives Matter.

Emmanuel Melgoza was born in Mexico and moved to Colorado when he was in 3rd grade. After attending elementary and middle school in the Denver area, he was part of an International Baccalaureate program in high school. At the time of this interview he had finished his second year at the University of Colorado at Boulder, where he was majoring in political science and ethnic studies, with a minor in technology, arts and media. He discusses the struggles he had in school as he learned to speak English, but he also speaks about his determination and successes, which he attributes in part to the way his family stressed the value of obtaining an education. He describes the experience of adjusting to life at the university and in Boulder, noting that participation in student organizations and student government had opened doors for him. He also reflects on being a Latino in Boulder County, some of the prejudice that non-Latinos bring to interactions with Latinos, and stresses the need for hard work and achievement to overcome those stereotypes.

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.

Emma Gomez Martinez has been a spokesperson and advocate for the Hispanic community in Boulder since the 1950s. She was born in Aguilar, Colorado in 1928. Her father had come from Mexico in the 1920s; her mother's family was from Northern New Mexico (one grandmother was a Comanche Indian). Her parents moved to Erie, Colorado, in 1929; her father worked in the coal mines in the winter and did field work in the summer. She talks about discrimination against Latinos in the schools and witnessing the deportations of Mexicans in the 1930s. She comments on the effect that discrimination had on Latinos. She describes lack of employment and housing for Latinos in Boulder in mid-twentieth century Boulder. She talks about the history of her work with OEO (Office of Economic Opportunity) in Boulder in the 1960s and 1970s. She comments on positive relationships among Latinos and blacks in that neighborhood. She talks about the re-naming of Canyon Park in her honor in 2013.

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.