Midwest Chicano Latino Activism Collection (MICHILAC)
About the Collection
The Midwest Chicano/Latino Activism Collection (MICHILAC) is significant to researchers and students who require primary sources of Midwestern Chicana/o and Latina/o politics and life missing from American history, and Chicano and Latino texts that focus on Southwestern United States activities and events.
This site contains a selection of digitized material from the José F. Treviño Chicano/Latino Activism Collection held at MSU Special Collections. The collection characterizes Treviño’s advocacy work in the Midwest during a time when Chicano politics was on the rise. Influential primary sources in a variety of formats are found in this collection. They relate to the third-party politics of La Raza Unida Party and local politics in communities such as Lansing, Detroit and Saginaw. Types of material in the physical collection include
- newspapers
- unpublished reports and papers
- photography
- audio and video
- posters
- flyers and leaflets
- bumper stickers
- political buttons
- t-shirts
- march banners and other types of realia.
José F. Treviño was a Michigan State University (MSU) student activist and employee whose efforts were responsible for a significant increase in Chicano and Chicana student enrollment at MSU in the early 1970s. As an instructor in the College of Urban Development Department of Racial and Ethnic Studies, he helped develop some of the earliest coursework in Chicano Studies at MSU. He served as an advisor and mentor to the first Chicano student organizations. He was involved in local community affairs and participated in local United Farm Worker committee boycott efforts and marches. He was a graduate student in Sociology.
Some of his mentees now have their papers in this named collection. These include the papers of Juana & Jesse Gonzales, Gilberto V. and Minerva T. Martinez, Rudy Reyes, Pedro & Diana Rivera, Daniel Tirado and Linda Medina Tirado, Miguel Espinoza and Julio Guerrero.