Rethinking the Chicano Movement

Book excerpt: The Chicano Movement for civil rights grew in tandem with other civil rights movements of the 1960s and 1970s. It took many forms, but was based on efforts of Mexican Americans to gain acceptance and equality and to express pride in their ethnic heritage. Rethinking the Chicano Movement, part of the American Social and Political Movements of the Twentieth Century series, seeks to combine several fields of Chicano and Mexican American research into a comprehensive, concise, and synthetic history of the Chicano Movement that considers the movement within a national context, rather than as an isolated, regional issue that only concerned the American southwest. The book details the key events, leaders, and substance of one of the most important post-WWII social movements for identity politics.