LatinaLista —
Campaign: Save Our History: The Chicana!o Archive Project
The Latino history of San Diego is largely unwritten because people do not know about what others have done or their struggles in life.
For five years, a committee of community members and academics have been working to create a resource to tell the story of the Mexican American people’s struggles in San Diego, California – an important border town with connections to Mexico.
Richard Griswold is the chair of the committee and worked for 35 years as a history professor at San Diego State University and has published eight books about the Mexican and Chicano history of the U.S.
Working with a committee of people, he and the others have been developing a Chicana/o Archive. It is a collection of personal papers, documents, photos, and media gathered by people who have been active in the struggles of the 1970s.
They have worked to build an important archive collection, one that will benefit present and future students and community members who want to tell the story of how San Diego’s Chicanas and Chicanos have sought to improve their lives.
They will be a permanent record for others to draw inspiration from. The library at San Diego State University is willing to house this collection and give invaluable technical assistance, but their funds are not enough to process and digitize the collection.
The digitization will be done by the SDSU Department of Special Collections and Archives.
The digitzation of the materials is expensive and will cost $5000 to make this archive usable for students in local high schools as well as outside of San Diego.
The campaign ends September 19.
