UT Collections
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The tutorial is tailored to working with women's human rights archival collections at the University of Texas, but can be useful for anyone doing archival research. The tutorial walks you through finding an archival collection, preparing for research, viewing archival collections, conducting archival research, and emotional and ethical engagement with archival material.
Civil Liberties and Censorship, Civil Rights, Segregation, and Apartheid, Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, Ethnic Conflict and Genocide, Gender and Sexuality, Immigrant Rights, Indigenous Rights, Prisoner Rights, Slavery and Human Trafficking, War Crimespresent -
The Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES) is a national organization founded in 1980 by American activists to fight against U.S. military intervention in the Salvadoran civil war. CISPES and other organizations advocated for U.S. non-intervention in this and other Central American conflicts and the right of undocumented refugees to sanctuary in the U.S. CISPES is best known for the series of law suits it brought against the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the late 1980s following FBI infiltration and surveillance of the organization. This collection includes materials from the Dallas branch of CISPES that operated from approximately 1981 to 1990 and it documents the FBI infiltration and subsequent law suits, the CISPES sanctuary work in the Dallas area, and Holy Cross community initiatives for the urban poor in Dallas.
1968-1990 -
Texas author and journalist Dick J. Reavis has written much on the topic of the Mexican people, including pieces on undocumented immigrants, guerrilla movements and their leaders, Mexican American civil rights activists, and the cultural formation of modern Mexico. The collection is comprised of personal papers of Texas author and journalist Dick J. Reavis, and more specifically those materials relating to Mario Cantú, Güero Medrano and the Partido Proletario Unido de America, and the Campamento 2 de Octubre, a squatter camp outside of Mexico City. These include articles, photographs and reflections composed by the Reavis, as well as various newspaper clippings on each subject.
1968-2002 -
From 1983 to 1999 the Central America Resource Center (CARC) compiled a collection of news articles on the current events in the U.S. and Central America. A similar project was undertaken for Mexico, the Mexico Newspak, from 1993-1999. The articles documented human rights violations in Central America that immigration attorneys used in political asylum petitions on their clients’ behalf. In 1992, CARC changed its name to the Human Rights Documentation Exchange (HRDE) and expanded its mission to collect documentation for asylum cases worldwide.
1985-1999 -
Mario Cantú was a civil rights activist best known for his success in the restaurant business. In 1969, Cantú began political organizing around Chicano rights by organizing the first "Semana de la Raza" in San Antonio, Texas. He subsequently founded several organizations designed to support undocumented immigrants and reduce police brutality against Chicanos in San Antonio. In 1976, U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Services (INS) raided Cantú's restaurant and convicted him on charges of employing illegal aliens. Across the border in Mexico, Cantú supported the Partido Proletario Unido de America (PPUA) internationally until he was found to violate terms of his probation following the 1976 conviction. Cantú subsequently focused his energy on the restaurant business, but maintained the physical records of his political endeavors in this collection. Materials include legal documents from the 1976 trial, a large body of documents from the various initiatives mentioned above and collected materials on related topics.
1957-1998 -
The Mexican American Programs of the Longhorn Radio Network collection consists of 198 recordings for two series of radio programs: The Mexican American Experience, which first aired in October, 1976, and A esta hora conversamos, which first aired in October, 1981. Both programs were part of the Longhorn Radio Network, a distribution service and production center of public service content for radio stations across Texas and the greater Southwest. The project may also be accessed through its own web page (http://www.laits.utexas.edu/onda_latina) for additional information. The collection contains interviews, music, and informational programs related to the Mexican American community and their concerns. Topics covered on these programs include political activities of Mexican Americans, Mexican American folklore and folk medicine, corridos, Tejano music, Mexican American musicians, voting rights, education, health, farm workers' unions and working conditions, and some Mexican and Central American topics.
Civil Liberties and Censorship, Civil Rights, Segregation, and Apartheid, Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, Immigrant Rights, Prisoner Rights1976-1982 -
In 1979, Carla J. Hagen and four other researchers and photographers (Dan Dickey, María Flores, Félix Peña, and Scott Van Osdol) worked on a project funded by a National Endowment for the Humanities grant and administered through the Southwest Center for Policy Studies in Austin, Texas. They collected 60 songs from migrant workers in the Rio Grande Valley region of Texas, and photographed musicians, informants, and the environment in which migrants live and work.
This collection documents the music and experiences of migrant agricultural workers in the Texas border region. A 403-page manuscript (titled La compusimos pizcando: Texas migrant ballads) describes the lives and music of Mexican and Mexican American migrant workers and includes an appendix with Spanish language song lyrics and English translations; 7 cassette tapes contain interviews with informants including musical performances; 81 black-and-white photographs by Dan Dickey, María Flores, and Scott Van Osdol show musicians, researchers, and the working and living conditions of migrant workers.
1979 -
Consists of 59 original photonegatives and corresponding prints showing Mexican American communities in South Texas. The photographs were taken in June, 1941. Images show housing, schools, water supplies, sanitation, and construction techniques in several South Texas counties. Includes pictures of winter housing of migrant agricultural workers, and the small communities of Concepcion, El Sauz, La Grulla, Las Cuevitas, Los Ojuelos, San Ygnacio, and others. The photographs are said to have been taken with a borrowed Kodak as part of a report on conditions in South Texas for the U. S. Department of Agriculture.
1941 -
In 1988, the Political Asylum Project of Austin / Proyecto Asilo Político de Austin (PAPA) began with two employees and by 2003, PAPA had grown into a staff of ten, including four attorneys. Its original mission was to promote the human rights of refugees and immigrants in Central Texas through legal representation, public education, and advocacy. Its mission today is to ensure that asylum seekers and immigrants in Central Texas continue to receive the resources and advocacy that they need to stay in the United States. The organization also provides education for other advocates and for law enforcement on legal and social issues related to immigration issues and political asylum. The collection includes documents from PAPA’s founding in the 1980s as well as PAPA publications and outreach documents from 1990-2001.
1987-2002 -
The Rethinking Power and Resistance: Gender and Human Rights from Texas to the Transnational Americas Conference Footage collection contains edited footage from the 2012 conference, including several panel discussions, a radio segment aired on KOOP 91.7 fm, and a post-conference promotional video produced by Andrea Zarate. The conference was sponsored by the Center for Women’s and Gender Studies, University of Texas at Austin as part of its Embrey Women’s Human Rights Initiative. The Rethinking Power & Resistance organizing committee envisioned a conference that would bring organizers and activist scholars together and foment collaborative work beyond the conference. As such, the conference centered around three community-university collaborations with the Transgender Jail Project, Conspire Theatre, and the Polochic Evictions Counteraction and foregrounded the themes of arts as advocacy, pedagogies of alliance and resisting criminalization. Videos are in English, Spanish and Portuguese, with some videos featuring consecutive translation into English.
Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, Gender and Sexuality, Immigrant Rights, Indigenous Rights, Prisoner Rights2012-2013
