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Resource Spotlight: California & Mexican History & Heritage

September holds special significance for both California and Mexico. On September 9, 1850, California was admitted to the Union as a free state under the Compromise of 1850. September also marks the beginning of Hispanic Heritage Month, observed from September 15 to October 15 in recognition of the independence anniversaries of five Latin American countries.  This year, we encourage educators to highlight Mexico, which celebrates its independence on September 16. Mexico’s eleven-year War of Independence from Spain began on September 16, 1810, and ended on September 27, 1821. Through lesson plans, primary source sets, and oral histories, these resources offer opportunities to explore and celebrate Mexico, Chicana/o/x heritage, and California history.

Chicana/o/x Oral Histories

  • The Sacramento Movimiento Chicano and Mexican American Education Oral History Project
    • Veterans and allies of the Chicana/o/x movement launched this project in 2012 to record and preserve the histories of Chicana/o/x activism in the Sacramento region between 1965 and 1980. The collection contains 125 oral histories documenting the struggles and mindset that led ordinary people into collective action, civic engagement, and public service. Students enrolled in Dr. Lorena Márquez’s Qualitative Methods Course in the Department of Chicana/o/x Studies at UC Davis conducted 98 of the interviews in 2014-2015.  The Sacramento Movimiento Chicano Oral History Project committee conducted 27 interviews in 2023. The narrators, many of them now in their 80s and 90s, describe their real-life experiences and recollections of the social and political events that shaped el Movimiento Chicano.
    • Curated Picks from the Collection:
      •  Angel “Dinamita” Rodriguez was a DJ at KERS, a student-run radio station at Sacramento State, and host of La Voz de Aztlán. While there, Rodriguez collaborated with his Chicano and Anglo American peers—one of which happened “to be Tom Hanks”—to expand Spanish-language programming at the station.
      • Francisco X. Alarcón, “one of the few openly gay Chicano poets in the nation,” points out that “a lot of the Movement was very sexist, very patriarchal, [and] extremely homophobic.” Gay Chicanos feared coming out and often ignored these issues. Alarcón credits Chicanas with instigating the difficult but necessary conversations they needed to have regarding misogyny and bigotry within their movement.
      •  Maria “Luz” Gama’s family immigrated to Walnut, California from Jalisco, Mexico when she was a child but grew up in a “very traditional” Mexican household. Yet, she felt alienated from “los mexicanos” who “said [she] wasn’t’ Mexican,” Despite her family’s disapproval of the word “Chicano,” Gama saw herself reflected in the term. Through el movimento, Gama found family and home alongside other “unwanted Mexicans.”  
      • Melinda Rasul grew up in Elk Grove, California, around “a lot of Caucasians” and understood that she wasn’t white because she “[felt] racism and discrimination” for being “too brown.” At the same time, she didn’t think of herself as just Mexican. She describes how joining the Royal Chicano Airforce, a Sacramento-based art collective, and experiencing the Movement firsthand taught her to value the Mexican and American sides of her heritage and enabled her to no longer feel “ashamed” for being Chicana and Latina.

Podcast

  • “Raymond Jonas | Emperor Maximilian and the Second Mexican Empire.”
    • In this Botstiber Institute podcast episode, the Botstiber Institute speaks with University of Washington professor Raymond Jonas to discuss 19th-century Mexico and the United States’ relationships with European powers. Jonas focuses on the impact of a “motivated Habsburg monarch, Maximilian I” to tell the history of the Second Mexican Empire.

CHSSP Lesson Plans

Chicana/o/x History 
  • California Indians in Pre-Columbian to Mexican Rancho Periods
    • In this fourth-grade inquiry set, students will consider why Spain established missions and how they gained control. It also details the encounters between Native peoples, Spanish missionaries and military, and the Spanish/Mexican settler population within California’s natural environment. 
  • Separate is Never Equal: Before Linda Brown, there was Sylvia Mendez
    • This fourth-grade lesson plan focuses on the case of Mendez v. Westminster (1947), the legal precedent to Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas (1954).
  • The Mexican Revolution
    • This tenth-grade inquiry set focuses on the defining event of modern Mexican history, the Mexican Revolution. Despite a brutal civil war for ten years, the revolution led to mass participation, resistance from underrepresented peoples, and ended with the Constitution of 1917.
  • Transnational Maquiladoras in Northern Mexico
    • This tenth-grade inquiry set provides perspectives of Mexicans and Mexico as a nation on maquiladoras, which are factories in Mexico that border the United States and are owned by exploitative transnational corporations. 
  •  California Mexican Women Making Their Own Lives 
    • This eleventh-grade inquiry set shows how some Mexican women in the early 20th-century resisted Americanization, a government program funded by the U.S. that targeted Mexican immigrants to teach them the “American Way.” 
California History 
  • How do Families Remember Their Past? 
    • This second-grade inquiry set that focuses on California history asks students to consider how people remember their past. This set introduces the concept of primary sources in comparison to secondary sources. 
  • Native Californian Communities 
    • This third-grade inquiry set shows students how Native peoples in California historically lived and how they continue to live. It emphasizes how Indigenous peoples in California interacted with their environments and how those environments influenced the development of California Native communities.  
  • Why did People Settle in California? 
    • This third-grade inquiry set discusses the ways that California was settled and the importance of geographic setting. 
  • California Natural Environment 
    • This fourth-grade inquiry set explores the ways in which settlers new to California extracted natural resources. The set asks students to consider “How do climate, natural resources, and landforms affect how plants, animals, and people live?”
  • California Missions, the Environment, and the Economy (Spanish Version) 
    • This fourth-grade inquiry set introduces students to how Californian Native communities experienced the environmental and economic impacts of colonialism. 
  • California Missions' Impact on People
    • This fourth-grade inquiry set introduces students to Indigenous Californian communities before colonization and how foreign contact changed Native people’s lives during the Spanish mission period. 
  • Literacy Support for California Indians Source Sets
    • This fourth-grade inquiry set focuses on California life before and during the mission system. It emphasizes how Native peoples responded to the changes in their work, environment, and religious influence. 
  • California's Diverse Population
    • This fourth-grade inquiry set allows students to explore the xenophobia and racism that people of color and immigrants faced during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. 
  • Water and Growth
    • This fourth-grade inquiry set allows students to analyze how water is valuable and exploited in California. 
  • Discovery of Gold
    • This fourth-grade inquiry set gives students a comprehensive understanding of the impact of the California Gold Rush on those who lived in California and the demographic, economic, and environmental changes that occurred between 1848 and 1870. 
  • Local Government - Bike Lanes
    • This fourth-grade inquiry set explains how people used transportation like biking to make cities sustainable spaces and to show how city and town governments and councils plan and enact initiatives.

#KatesBookClub Reads:

California History
  • Our California, written by Pam Munoz Ryan, illustrated by Rafael Lopez. A poetic tour of the entire state of California.  A wonderful way to jump-start the school year with an overview of valleys, deserts, mountains, and the coastal regions of our state. 
  • Golden Gate:  Building the Mighty Bridge, written by Elizabeth Partridge, illustrated by Ellen Heck. Two children witness history as they watch the construction of the Golden Gate Bridge. From the first day, when machines and dynamite blasts “carve a place for the anchorage block,” to the opening day celebration, when “towers touch the sky,” the text provides a concise and fascinating summary of the building process. Pair with Pop’s Bridge. How the Golden Gate Bridge Got Its Color and This Bridge Will Not Be Gray.
  • Camping Trip That Changed America, The written by Barb Rosenstock, illustrated by Mordicai Gerstein. Delightful book that describes the 1903 three-day camping trip in Yosemite National Park between President Theodore Roosevelt and naturalist John Muir, who worked together to protect America’s wild spaces.  The direct impact of their campfire talks led to the expansion of Yosemite National Park and the protection of public lands.  
Hispanic Heritage
  • Barrio Rising:  The Protest that Built Chicano Park written by Maria Dolores Aguila, illustrated by Magdalena Mora.  Historical fiction of the story of the Barrio Logan, a historic Hispanic neighborhood in San Diego, California.  In 1970, residents of the area were hopeful that the construction of a long-promised park was finally about to begin.  Unfortunately, the neighbors discover that the city was actually building a police station on the land.  Upon hearing this news, the community bands together for a twelve-day occupation of the parcel, effectively blocking construction.  This peaceful protest led to the creation of Chicano Park.
  • Grandma and Me at the Flea/Los meros meros remateros written by Juan Felipe Herrera, illustrated by Anita DeLucio-Brock.  A bilingual (Spanish/English) story full of hope, generosity, and humor is set at a Fresno flea market, where a Mexican American boy and his grandmother spend a Sunday as vendors, or remateros. At the flea market, Juanito discovers that everything old can be new again. Running from booth to booth with his friends, Juanito is part of a community in which everyone helps one another, exchanging wares for good deeds and vice versa. Spanish words incorporated into the English are well defined in context.  
  • Separate is Never Equal:  Sylvia Mendez and Her Family’s Fight for Desegregation written and illustrated by Duncan Tonatiuh.  As of January 2025, California public schools must teach the landmark Mendez v. Westminster desegregation case as part of history and social science classes.  Tonatiuh’s beautiful book is a wonderful way to introduce this important California story to students, a story that paved the way for the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision.
  • A Sea of Lemon Trees:  The Corrido of Roberto Alvarez written by Maria Dolores Aguila.  Not a picture book, but an important California story told in first-person verse. Fifth grader Roberto Alvarez lives in la colonia, a neighborhood of Mexican Americans and Mexican immigrants in Lemon Grove, California. When students return from Winter Break, Roberto and his friends from la colonia find out they can no longer attend their grammar school; all Mexican students must now attend Olive Street School in a converted barn. The families of la colonia organize to fight the order. The children face expulsion for truancy when their parents keep them home. Roberto’s best friend David and his family face deportation, despite David being a U.S. citizen. Roberto, a high-achieving student who loves school, is chosen to be lead plaintiff in la colonia’s legal case against the school board. Roberto doesn’t always understand the intricacies of what’s happening, especially the legal terminology, and when he testifies in court the questions feel repetitive and overwhelming. Excellent Author’s Note. Pair with Todos Iguales/All Equal:  Un Corrido de Lemon Grove/A Ballad of Lemon Grove and Without Separation:  Prejudice, Segregation, and the Case of Roberto Alvarez. 
  • Spanish is the Language of My Family written by Michael Genhart, illustrated by John Parra.  Many schools hold spelling bees during the academic year.  This book features a young boy who prepares for his school’s Spanish spelling bee with the help of his grandmother.  As the two practice together, the grandmother shares that she was punished and forbidden from speaking Spanish in school when she was growing up.  Her stories inspire the boy to study harder and honor his heritage.  Spoiler:  He wins the spelling bee!  Terrific back matter detailing language suppression in California.  Also available in Spanish.
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