California Ethnic and Multicultural Archives
Encyclopedia
California Ethnic and Multicultural Archives (CEMA) is an archival institution that houses collections of primary source
Primary source
Primary source is a term used in a number of disciplines to describe source material that is closest to the person, information, period, or idea being studied....

 documents from the history
History
History is the discovery, collection, organization, and presentation of information about past events. History can also mean the period of time after writing was invented. Scholars who write about history are called historians...

 of minority ethnic group
Ethnic group
An ethnic group is a group of people whose members identify with each other, through a common heritage, often consisting of a common language, a common culture and/or an ideology that stresses common ancestry or endogamy...

s in California. The documents, which include manuscripts, slide photographs, newspaper clippings, works of art, journals, film, sound recordings, and other ephemera, are housed in the special collections
Special collections
In library science, special collections is the name applied to a specific repository or department, usually within a library, which stores materials of a "special" nature, including rare books, archives, and collected manuscripts...

 department of the UCSB Libraries at the University of California, Santa Barbara
University of California, Santa Barbara
The University of California, Santa Barbara, commonly known as UCSB or UC Santa Barbara, is a public research university and one of the 10 general campuses of the University of California system. The main campus is located on a site in Goleta, California, from Santa Barbara and northwest of Los...

, where they are made accessible to researchers upon request. An effort is currently underway to make certain documents available online through the Online Archive of California.

History

CEMA was founded in 1988 by Joseph A. Boissé and Salvador Güereña, both UCSB librarians. The library already had a substantial collection of primary and secondary-sources in the Colección Tloque Nahuaque, a library of Chicano studies materials, and the need for special resources to preserve and catalogue
primary resources became apparent. The primary resources, which at that time consisted primarily of silkscreen posters from the Chicano art movement, were transferred from the ethnic and gender studies library to the department of special collections.

Güereña began the acquisition of other collections immediately, and today CEMA is the repository for over 100 collections from each of the four main ethnic groups in California: Latino
Latino
The demonyms Latino and Latina , are defined in English language dictionaries as:* "a person of Latin-American descent."* "A Latin American."* "A person of Hispanic, especially Latin-American, descent, often one living in the United States."...

s, Asian American
Asian American
Asian Americans are Americans of Asian descent. The U.S. Census Bureau definition of Asians as "Asian” refers to a person having origins in any of the original peoples of the Far East, Southeast Asia, or the Indian subcontinent, including, for example, Cambodia, China, India, Indonesia, Japan,...

s, African American
African American
African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...

, and Native Americans
Native Americans in the United States
Native Americans in the United States are the indigenous peoples in North America within the boundaries of the present-day continental United States, parts of Alaska, and the island state of Hawaii. They are composed of numerous, distinct tribes, states, and ethnic groups, many of which survive as...

, although Mexican American collections still outnumber collections from the other groups.

Projects

In 2001, CEMA was selected by the Online Archive of California, an internet resource, to supply digital images of Chicano art from its extensive photographic collections as part of California's contribution to the Congressionally
United States Congress
The United States Congress is the bicameral legislature of the federal government of the United States, consisting of the Senate and the House of Representatives. The Congress meets in the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C....

-mandated American Memory
American Memory
American Memory is an Internet-based archive for public domain image resources, as well as audio, video, and archived Web content. It is published by the Library of Congress...

 project to preserve and increase the accessibility of documents from American history. Since that time, CEMA has provided over 7,000 digital images for the project.

Collections

CEMA's collections include the archives of artistic, political, and professional organizations, as well as the papers of individual artists, musicians, activists, and writers, many of whom were active in the Chicano
Chicano Movement
The Chicano Movement of the 1960s, also called the Chicano Civil Rights Movement, also known as El Movimiento, is an extension of the Mexican American Civil Rights Movement which began in the 1940s with the stated goal of achieving Mexican American empowerment.-Origins:The Chicano Movement...

, anti-war
Anti-war
An anti-war movement is a social movement, usually in opposition to a particular nation's decision to start or carry on an armed conflict, unconditional of a maybe-existing just cause. The term can also refer to pacifism, which is the opposition to all use of military force during conflicts. Many...

, and civil rights
Civil rights
Civil and political rights are a class of rights that protect individuals' freedom from unwarranted infringement by governments and private organizations, and ensure one's ability to participate in the civil and political life of the state without discrimination or repression.Civil rights include...

 movements. Notable collections include:
  • Oscar Zeta Acosta
    Oscar Zeta Acosta
    Oscar Zeta Acosta was an American attorney, politician, minor novelist and Chicano Movement activist, perhaps best known for his friendship with the American author Hunter S. Thompson, who characterized him as his Samoan Attorney, Dr...

  • Asian American Theater Company
  • Black Panther Party
    Black Panther Party
    The Black Panther Party wasan African-American revolutionary leftist organization. It was active in the United States from 1966 until 1982....

     (San Francisco Bay Area
    San Francisco Bay Area
    The San Francisco Bay Area, commonly known as the Bay Area, is a populated region that surrounds the San Francisco and San Pablo estuaries in Northern California. The region encompasses metropolitan areas of San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose, along with smaller urban and rural areas...

    )
  • Ana Castillo
    Ana Castillo
    Ana Castillo is a Mexican-American Chicana novelist, poet, short story writer, and essayist.- Life and career :Castillo was born and raised in an inner city barrio of Chicago, Illinois. After completing undergraduate studies, she immediately began teaching college courses...

  • Católicos por la Raza
    Católicos por La Raza
    Católicos por La Raza is a political association organized by Ricardo Cruz in the later 1960s in Los Angeles, California.-St. Basil's arrests:...

  • Iris Chang
    Iris Chang
    Iris Shun-Ru Chang was an American historian and journalist. She is best known for her best-selling 1997 account of the Nanking Massacre, The Rape of Nanking. She committed suicide on November 9, 2004...

  • Centro Cultural de la Raza
    Centro Cultural de la Raza
    The Centro Cultural de la Raza is a non-profit organization with the specific mission to create, preserve, promote and educate about Chicano, Mexicano, Indigenous and Latino art and culture...

  • Frank Chin
    Frank Chin
    Frank Chin is an American author and playwright.- Life and career :Frank Chin was born in Berkeley, California, but was raised to the age of six by a retired Vaudeville couple in Placerville, California. At six his mother brought him back to the San Francisco Bay Area to live in Oakland Chinatown...

  • Comisión Femenil Mexicana Nacional
    Comisión Femenil Mexicana Nacional
    The Comisión Femenil Mexicana Nacional , is a Chicano organization geared towards the political and economic empowerment of Hispanic women, particularly Chicanas, in the United States....

  • Ricardo Cruz
    Ricardo Cruz
    Ricardo Cruz , aka Richard V. Cruz, was a Los Angeles, California attorney who fought for many Chicano Movement causes...

  • Galería de la Raza
    Galería de la Raza
    Galería de la Raza is a non-profit art gallery and artist collective that serves the heavily-Latino population of San Francisco's Mission District. GDLR mounts exhibitions, hosts poetry readings, workshops, and celebrations, sells works of art, and sponsors youth and artist-in-residence programs...

  • Adelina García
  • Lalo Guerrero
    Lalo Guerrero
    Eduardo "Lalo" Guerrero , was a Mexican-American guitarist, singer and farm labor activist best known for his strong influence on today's Latin musical artists.-Life Summary:...

  • Kearney Street Workshop
  • Yolanda Lopez
    Yolanda Lopez
    Yolanda M. López is an American painter, printmaker, educator, and film producer. Her work focuses on the experience of Mexican American women and often challenges ethnic stereotypes associated with them. According to López, "It is important for us to be visually literate; it is a survival skill....

  • MEChA
    MEChA
    M.E.Ch.A. is an organization that seeks to promote Chicano unity and empowerment through political action. The acronym of the organization's name is the Spanish word mecha, which means "fuse"...

  • Miguel Méndez
    Miguel Méndez
    Miguel Méndez is the pen name for Miguel Méndez Morales, a Mexican American author best known for his novel Peregrinos de Aztlán .- Early life :...

  • José Montoya
    José Montoya
    José Montoya is a poet and an artist from Sacramento, California. He is one of the most influential Chicano bilingual poets. He has published many well-known poems in anthologies and magazines...

  • Royal Chicano Air Force
    Royal Chicano Air Force
    The Royal Chicano Air Force is a Sacramento, California-based art collective. It was one of the main centers of the Chicano art movement in California during the 1970s and 80s and continues to be influential into the 21st Century....

  • Self Help Graphics & Art
    Self Help Graphics & Art
    Self-Help Graphics & Art, Inc. is a community arts center in East Los Angeles, California, USA. Formed during the cultural renaissance that accompanied the Chicano Movement, Self Help, as it is sometimes called, was one of the primary centers that incubated the nascent Chicano Art movement, and...

  • Teatro Campesino
    Teatro Campesino
    El Teatro Campesino , is a theatrical troupe founded in 1965 as the cultural arm of the United Farm Workers. The original actors were all farmworkers, and El Teatro Campesino enacted events inspired by the lives of their audience...

  • REFORMA
    REFORMA
    The National Association to Promote Library and Information Services to Latinos and the Spanish-speaking, more commonly known as REFORMA, is an affiliate of the American Library Association formed in 1971 to promote library services to Latinos and the Spanish speaking. It is registered in...

  • Rini Templeton
    Rini Templeton
    Lucille Corinne Templeton , better known as "Rini" Templeton, was an American graphic artist, sculptor, and political activist. She was most active in Mexico and the Southwestern United States, although she also volunteered in Cuba and Nicaragua after the triumph of the Cuban Revolution and the...

  • Don Tosti
    Don Tosti
    DonTosti was an American musician and composer.Born in El Paso, Texas, Tosti forged a career spanning several decades and styles, from classical to jazz and rhythm and blues. He was best remembered for his Pachuco-style compositions like the hit "Pachuco Boogie"...

  • Maria Helena Viramontes
  • Nellie Wong
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