San Jose State University Chicano Oral History Project.

The Chicano Oral History project is the result of a joint project between San Jose State University's Mexican American Studies department and the Chicano Library Resource Center (CLRC). Planning for this project to document the experiences and history of Santa Clara county's Chicano community through oral history began in the late 1970s. The actual project was finally implemented as part of a course on oral history in the Mexican American studies department. Coursework, training and interviews with community leaders were conducted from 1988 - 1990. Near the end of the project, in May 1989, the Alma Chicana Revisited symposium was held to share the results of this project with the campus and broader communities in a three-day forum of meetings and presentations. Funding sources for this program came from various library, campus and California State University (CSU) grants, including Affirmative Action, Faculty Development, and Discretionary Lottery grants. In 2003, Cultural Heritage Director, Jeff Paul, conducted video interviews to be used in a program for the opening of the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Library. These interviews document the history of the Cultural Heritage Center from its beginnings as the Chicano Library Resource Center, and also describes notable events in the history of Chicano activism on campus and in Santa Clara County. Additional materials include: audio tapes of additional interviews; VHS and Beta tapes; DVDs of recorded interviews from the Cultural Heritage Center project conducted in 2003; supporting documentation on the Chicano movement and the Oral History project; and subject indexes to the transcribed interviews.