Beyond Black and White

One population noticeably absent from the expansive literature on the history of higher education is Latinos. ¹ This, despite the fact that Latinos have participated in American higher education since shortly after the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo of 1848—just about 160 years. Often overlooked are the sons and daughters of Mexican American landowners, called Californios, being among the first to matriculate at institutions such as Santa Clara and the University of California at Berkeley in the mid 19th century. Often ignored is the founding of la Universidad de Puerto Rico in 1903, or that several hundred Puerto Rican students attended college on the mainland at schools ranging from Tuskegee to Cornell in the first decade of the 20th century. ² Often forgotten is the Mexican American Movement (MAM)—a student-led organization that published their own newsletter, The Mexican Voice, in order to promote the value of higher education among the larger Mexican American community of southern California from 1934 to roughly 1950. Remarkably, each of these rich stories has yet to take their rightful place within the greater literature of the history of higher education.