Latinos, the Civil Rights Movement, and the Making of Multiracial America After the 1960s

Research and writing leading to a book on the Latino involvement in the Civil Rights Movement between 1968 and 1984.Minority: Latinos and the Making of Multiracial America after the 1960s offers a full account of Latinos' centrality to the struggles over law and policy that reconfigured American society after the 1960s. The book will argue that Latino activism and leadership contributed substantially to the outcome of major domestic conflicts and debates during the long decade of the 1970s: battles over school desegregation and busing, political redistricting, affirmative action in employment, and access to higher education, as well as ongoing protests against police brutality and disagreements over the causes of growing urban poverty. The real impact of the major changes that took shape in American society during the 1970s--the coda to the conventionally-defined civil rights movement--cannot be understood without expanding this national story to incorporate Latinos as central historical actors.