Before Silicon Valley: A Migrant Path to Mexican American Civil Rights

FAIN: GE-50402-11

San Jose State University Research Foundation (San Jose, CA 95112-5569)
Margo McBane (Project Director: August 2010 to December 2014)
Anne O. Fountain (Co Project Director: April 2011 to December 2014)

Planning for a traveling exhibition and associated programs on the history of the Mexican Americans in the Santa Clara valley from 1920 through 1960.

This is a dissemination project/planning program, which will be brought to a broad audience of civil rights supporters, students, multi-generations of Mexican/Hispanic Americans and the general public who live on the edge of this history of racial tensions, cultural negotiation, and political engagement without understanding its genesis. The subject of our program is the legacy of racial discrimination faced by Mexican migrants in Santa Clara Valley from 1920 to 1960. This subject will be explored through the humanities themes of work, community and civil rights. Regional racial segregation and discrimination in the workplace and community became a catalyst for creation of identity and cultural citizenship initially through the formation of recreational spaces such as dance halls and the later struggle for a civil rights movement.