Hispanic Heritage Month

This collection includes almost three dozen color and black-and-white photographs that feature Latina lowriders and others in the Sacramento and Los Angeles lowriding communities. Other photographs include people within the photographer’s circle whose lives reflect how they incorporate the Virgin de Guadalupe into their lives on clothing, as tattoos, in their homes, and more.

This July 1971 issue of La Verdad, an underground Chicano publication out of San Diego, California, features the La Raza Unida Party (RUP), which was created in Crystal City, Texas, and spread across the nation. The RUP affirmed Mexican American and Latino political power, transforming the U.S. political landscape. This issue also includes a special report on the first National Chicana Conference held May 28–30, 1971, in Houston, Texas.

In the late 1960s, a young Irma C. Lerma Barbosa, an original member of the Sacramento Brown Berets chapter, designed, and hand-sewed this flag. The organization formed as a response to the social inequities confronting ethnic Mexican communities and the need for community protection. The Brown Berets of Sacramento, led by Freddy Rodriguez, proudly displayed this flag during rallies, protests, and community celebrations where they provided security for the community against police brutality and harassment.

This flyer was designed by Irma C. Lerma Barbosa and Kathryn Garcia, members of the Royal Chicano Air Force (RCAF), to promote the 1974 Conferencia Femenil (Women’s Conference ’74) held at the Centro de Artistas Chicanos de Aztlán, then RCAF headquarters, in Sacramento, California. This dynamic, day-long conference led by Lerma and co-organized by the RCAF, the Washington Community Council, and the National Education Task Force de la Raza (now UnidosUS), empowered women in the community with the knowledge of available resources and the power of mutual “ayuda” (aid) and affirmed the role of Chicanas in the struggle for social change.

This postcard view of Mission Dolores was printed and published by the Curt Teich Company of Chicago using photomechanical processes in about 1913. Mission Dolores, originally known as Mission San Francisco de Asís, is the oldest surviving structure in San Francisco. Founded in 1776, the mission was the sixth of 21 Spanish Franciscan missions to be founded in California between 1769 and 1823. It was established to support the conversion of American Indians of the Bay Miwok, Coast Miwok, and Patwin tribes to Catholicism. Today the mission site is run by the Sonoma State Historical Park system.

Artist Eric J. Garcia's print offers a commentary on the rights of Chicanos in the United States. He writes: “An Air Force Veteran myself, I wanted to make a propaganda poster for an imaginary Chicano Air Force."