May 4, 2016
A new book set that chronicles the lives and contributions of Latinos in Boulder County can now be found in area elementary, middle and high school libraries, and will be used more widely to teach Latino history in local classrooms this fall.
The Boulder County Latino History project and Majorie K. McIntosh, a CU-Boulder Distinguished Professor emerita of history, teamed up to publish the two volume set, Latinos of Boulder County, Colorado, 1900-1980, Volume I: History and Contributions and Latinos of Boulder County, Colorado, 1900-1980, Volume II: Lives and Legacies. The Office for Outreach and Engagement has supported this project in various ways since its inception, and most recently has supplied each school library in the Boulder Valley and St. Vrain Valley school districts with a set of the books.
“Now teachers and students can easily find Latino history alongside other local histories. Right where it belongs,” said Kent WIllmann, CU-Boulder School of Education instructor.
Willmann along with Flora Sanchez & Carlota Hernandez of the Boulder Valley School District have been working with teachers in the Boulder Valley and St. Vrain Valley school districts to help them explore the project’s collection, incorporate local history into their curriculum, and provide training on how to discuss race and ethnicity in their classes. A new teacher resource gallery allows teachers to link to lessons, sources and other training materials; the gallery was funded through Women Investing in the School of Education, a giving circle for the School of Education.
Launched in 2013, the Boulder County History Project is a grassroots effort to record the contributions, struggles and progress of Latinos in Boulder County. The project relied upon multiple interviews with area Latinos, some from the 1970s and many more from 2013. There is an interview with two of the American-born Latino interns who worked on the project as they described watching their fathers be arrested by ICE agents, jailed and eventually deported.
Also featured are: the director of the OUR Center for homeless people in Longmont; a doctor who directs a family health clinic in Longmont; a lawyer and city planner in Boulder who has been heavily involved in recovery work after the Four Mile Fire and last fall's floods; a long-time activist in Lafayette whose mother founded the Clinica Campesina and in whose honor a local school is named; and a CU-Boulder counselor who was one of the first group of students to come to the university under the Migrant Action Program in the late 1960s and was active in UMAS (United Mexican American Students) at the time of the "Los Seis" bombings.
These books also explore darker chapters in the county's past, including the presence of the Ku Klux Klan and businesses posting “White Trade Only” signs that were ripped down by veterans returning from World War II and the Korean War.
McIntosh, who authored the book, noted that these stories may be new to residents of Boulder County no matter how long they have lived here. "With a few small exceptions, Latinos are virtually invisible in the standard histories of Boulder County," McIntosh said. "For me, it's a moral issue. What we know about the past should be about everybody." The Boulder County Commissioners named March 8 Marjorie K. McIntosh Day to honor the author's contributions to the community.
The books describe the lives and contributions of local Latinos, telling stories about people who have been missing from local history books and school curricula. Starting with the arrival of Hispanics from Mexico, New Mexico and southern Colorado between 1900 and 1940, the study traces the experiences of Latinos over the course of four generations. It draws upon an exceptional collection of 1,600 primary sources gathered by 10 student interns and 80 community volunteers for the Boulder County Latino History Project. Those sources include oral history interviews, family biographies and photos, films, newspaper material, and quantitative information about school children, immigration and employment.
Arturo Aldama, CU-Boulder professor of ethnic studies, provided the books’ foreword. "This set presents stories of struggle and the implacable force of dignity in the Chicana and Chicano community in Boulder County," Aldama said. "The singular and collective power of the voices of individuals and families heard in these volumes is profound, complex and long lasting. You will be bowled over by the eloquence, truth and enduring power of dignidad (dignity) of the voices in this study."