SCARC completed 2 new finding aids April – June 2024; as of the end of June, SCARC has 1147 finding aids in Archives West.
These finding aids are available through the Archives West finding aids database, the SCARC website, and the OSU Library discovery system a.k.a. “the catalog.” The links below are to the guides in Archon, SCARC’s finding aids website.
The Edith Yang Papers consist of materials generated and collected by Edith Yang. In 1954, Yang, as a Chinese-American Woman, was the first woman of color to be licensed as an architect in Oregon. Yang predominantly worked within Benton County, Oregon, with the majority of her work taking place within Corvallis and the Oregon State University campus. The collection documents her architectural work in four areas: commercial, residential, and OSU, as well as World War II-related projects. Also included are biographical and other materials reflecting Yang’s community engagement within the Corvallis community.
Irwin Stone was a biochemist and chemical engineer who was known for his groundbreaking research on ascorbic acid, more commonly known as Vitamin C. He championed the use of Vitamin C for food preservation and human health throughout his career, influencing how Vitamin C was used by nutritionists, biochemists, medical professionals, and the pharmaceutical industry. Materials document his research and career as a biochemist, public speaker, and author and relate to Vitamin C’s effects on diseases such as cancer, stress, wound healing, AIDS, and drug addiction. Access to Box 12 Folder 13 and Box 11 Folder 57 is restricted due to the presence of confidential information.
In honor of the new guide created to showcase the LGBTQIA+ rare books within the SCARC rare books collection, some of these rare books are being exhibited in the display case outside of the SCARC Reading Room on the 5th floor of the library!
While looking at the collection as a whole and trying to separate the books into two themes, there was one clear theme, that being books written by and for Oregonians, which will be the second exhibit going up at the end of August 2024. With those books removed, we surveyed the remaining books, and another theme emerged: the good, the bad, and the misrepresentation. This set of materials deals with the ways that queer people have been referred to and used within media historically. While there are more good representations than bad representations, the bad cannot be overlooked and ignoring them would not accurately represent the historical record that exists.
Below a picture of the exhibit can be found, as well as copies of the statements that are placed within the bookcase:
The Exhibit, mid-June – August, 2024
The Good……
These books and magazines represent some of the more positive depictions of queerness within the rare books collection. While all have not been confirmed to have been written by someone in the queer community, all of them show positive representations of queer relationships and allow space for queer stories to be shared.
The Strange Path (Reprint 1953) was written by Gale Wilhelm, a pioneering lesbian writer who wrote two lesbian books in the 1930s, the other being We Too Are Drifting (1935), which is also available in the collection.
Davy (1964) by Edgar Pangborn is one of those that may not have been written by a queer person, as he was not openly out, but he is often read as a queer author due to the relationships and themes he crafts within his stories.
Kaliflower (1977) is a collection of art, poetry, and prose written by members of the Kaliflower commune. One tenet of their commune was sexual exploration, and relationships were encouraged between all members of the commune referred to as “mutual marriage.”
On our backs (1974) is a magazine that, though being mainly focused on straight feminist issues, had a large lesbian readership and it featured lesbian focused content from time to time. Ultimately the lesbian members of the collective left to found their own periodical, the Furies, published in 1972-1973, but on our backs still holds a place within lesbian feminist history.
…the Bad, and the Misinformation
These books are some of the books within the collection that portray negative stereotypes of queerness or spread misinformation. These contain themes or plot points that are centered around historical events such as the Cambridge Five in the UK, the AIDS epidemic in the U.S. in the 80s, and the anti-gay hysteria occurring in the 90s in the U.S.
Purple 6, published in 1962, is nuclear suspense fiction set in the UK, that utilizes opinions about the Cambridge Five as plot points. The Cambridge Five were a ring of spies in the UK during the cold war from the 1930s to the 1950s of which at least two, possibly three, were gay or bisexual, and claimed to be spying under threat of blackmail from the Soviet Union. Within the book, as they come to understand that there is a spy in their midst, everyone’s sexualities are investigated because of this stigma that if you were queer then you were more liable to blackmail or treason.
The AIDS Plague (1986) is by Dr. James McKeever, who was a fundamentalist physician. He combines surprisingly accurate AIDS information and education with religious aspects from Christianity, and blames not just homosexuality, but all deviant sexual behavior outside of marriage. Not the worst representation, but certainly not the best.
7 Steps to Recruit-Proof Your Child by Scott Lively was published in 1990, and is described on the book jacket as “A concise, practical guidebook for parents who wish to protect their children from pro-homosexual indoctrination and the possibility of recruitment into the homosexual lifestyle.” Lively is known for being an aggressively anti-gay pastor who helped introduced anti-gay laws into Uganda and possibly Russia. This is possibly as far from a queer-positive book as you could get.
The LGBTQIA+ Rare Books LibGuide started with curation of books from the Rare Books that had any connection to LGBTQIA+ people or topics, which was done by Anne Bahde, Special Collections Librarian for Research and Learning. Once all of the materials had been paged, I got to spend more than a few hours poking through all of the materials. The trouble with doing work like this is that everything is so fascinating, it can be hard to stay on task without getting lost in the materials. Regardless, I was able to take pictures of all of the books, take some notes on the content, and then start on the LibGuide.
I decided to separate the books into 5 categories: Magazines and Newspapers, Music and Arts, Fiction and Queer Pulps, Non-fiction, and HIV/AIDS. What follows is a highlight of the materials in each category, as well as information that was found through some light researching.
Tip: Right Click on an image and hit “Open image in new tab” for a larger view of the image so that the text is readable.
Magazines and Newspapers
The Lavender Network
The magazines and newspapers were by far the most interesting set of materials to me, and the one that I found myself spending the most time on. One rather interesting one was the Lavender Network, or “Oregon’s Lesbian and Gay Newsmagazine,” created in Eugene, Oregon.
Kaliflower
Kaliflower, with its colorful covers and wonderful artwork, was quite an eye-catcher. I spent some time flipping through the pages, trying to ascertain why a self-published magazine from a commune about communal-living was in a curation of queer books, but I soon found out. Their articles on sexual freedom and exploration, and “mutual marriage” elucidated that for me, but their other articles on their anti-capitalist practices and advice for communal living were just as interesting.
Off Our Backs
But the materials that I kept finding myself coming back to was the run of off our backs (lowercase stylized as oob). It had an array of queer and lesbian focused features, those being columns, interviews, artists, and letters from lesbian subscribers. There were comic strips from Alison Bechdel’s “Dykes To Watch Out For,” advertisements for other lesbian periodicals, groups, and retreats, and statements from lesbian groups and organizations. And yet lesbians were still marginalized within oob.
This lesbian-marginalization spawned not only one, but two separate lesbian-focused magazines. Furies, a lesbian focused periodical that was founded when the lesbian members of the collective left, but was only published for a short year. Another publication that was created out of spite against oob was On Our Backs (OOB), a lesbian erotica magazine that ran from 1984 to 2006. Its existence sprung out of the anti-pornography stance that oob held, particularly during the sex war period of the 80s in lesbian and feminist communities (interesting further reading here).
Despite the faults, this set of oob is a really incredible time capsule back to feminist culture in the 70s. Reading these even inspired me to subscribe to a new queer magazine that is created and printed in Portland, in hopes that one day I could look back on them as I am looking at oob now.
Music and Arts
Turned On Woman Songbook Come Out Comix
I do have to say that I am an enjoyer of comics and graphic novels, especially queer focused ones, so Come Out Comix was a real treat for me. It was really interesting to read it as someone who lives in the Willamette valley, as it is set in Portland, and Coos Bay was also mentioned. Turned On Woman was also interesting, but as I can’t read sheet music, I think it’s intrigue was lost to me.
Fiction and Queer Pulps
Torchlight to Valhalla (Original Cover and Title) The Strange Path (Reprint Cover and Title)
The queer pulps are definitely the catchiest bunch of this collection, but seemed different from what I expected at first glance. The Strange Path was written by Gale Wilhelm, a pioneering lesbian author, but this edition is a rename of the original book titled Torchlight to Valhalla, with the new name being paired with a new pulpy cover. This printing occurred in 1953, almost ten years after Wilhelm stopped writing and 25 years after the book was originally published. Barbara Grier, who is known for essentially building the lesbian book industry, speculated in the foreword of one of the publishings of Torchlight to Valhalla that she stopped writing “because the world would not let her write the books she wanted,” that being books with lesbian characters, as her last three novels featured heterosexual themes. Looking at the title, the Strange Path, through the lens of this information makes me a bit sad. Wilhelm probably didn’t think that this path was a strange one, but at the time, the world did think that. This led not only to Wilhelm writing stories she truly didn’t enjoy, but to a misbranding of one of the stories where she was able to share her true self.
The other pulp fiction that has an eye-catching cover does not do any better, with the content of this one being the main offender. The Men Between has been described as what “seems to be anti-gay propaganda in disguise” by a reviewer of the book. The tagline on the back of the seems to say the same, reading “Mike thought he was normal until he was raped by another man – and he liked it!”
Non-fiction
It Could Happen To You 7 Steps to Recruit Proof Your Child
It Could Happen Happen To You was my favorite of the non-fiction books, mainly for all of the inserts that were seen within it. There were a lot of comics, posters/flyers, and advertisements relating to the Local Measure 51 in Eugene that these activists were working against. Two other books that are really interesting include the Homosexuality Bibliography and Supplement, which could be a really great resource if you are looking for works published earlier than 1975. Lastly, Seven Steps to Recruit-Proof Your Child, although rather homophobic, does have a lot of interesting illustrations, including queer right’s groups posters and ads that they took out of context. This book was also created in Oregon and contains a lot of Oregon related content.
HIV/AIDS
The AIDS Time Bomb
I chose to separate out the HIV/AIDS related books as they are not necessarily about queer people or written by them, but they are included in this collection due to the stigma in the US surrounding HIV/AIDS as being something that only gay men contract, which is far from the truth. One of these books, AIDS: The American Roads of Denial by Richard Caper, shines light on that fact. It details his story as a person with AIDS (PWA) as an intravenous drug user and the social rejection he faced when his diagnosis got out, and his walk across the country to raise awareness. It is by far the most positive representation of queerness in any of the AIDS books, as the other two contain rather negative depictions of queerness in relation to AIDS.
The Necessary Friction zine, produced by the Corvallis Lesbian Avengers, features art and writing in a variety of formats that relate to the experiences of queer people, and especially lesbian women, as well as the activities of the Lesbian Avengers. This material was written by members of the Lesbian Avengers, as well as solicited from the broader Corvallis community.
Wired was published by the OSU Hattie Redmond Women & Gender Center. The Center’s mission is informed by feminist theories and lessons, we are committed to creating spaces of community, supporting advocacy, and developing student leaders who actively contribute to building feminist futures.
Issues of Wired are available online via ScholarsArchive@OSU: Wired Issues
The Benton County Quaranzine was compiled by the staff of the Corvallis-Benton County Public Library and consists of submissions from area residents collected from June 1 to November 2, 2020, focusing on life during the pandemic and the era’s political unrest. The resulting print publication includes drawings, cartoons, collages, photographs and other artistic renderings, as well as essays and poems.
Contributors to the project were: Quinn Andreas, Ellen Beier, Jack Compere, Molly Curry, Tru Denton, Sarah Finkle, David Grube, Mari Beth Hackett, Forrest Johnson, Charlie Kelso, Colleen Kitchen, Erin MacAdams, Nancy Chestnut Matsumoto, Orion Olson, John Otto, Vic Russell, Linda Varsell Smith, Karen Stephenson, Kim Thackray, Marvel Vigil and Marion J. Whitney.
On May 23rd SCARC was delighted to host the archivists of the Albina Community Archive for an amazing musical experience! Earlier this year Dr. Kelly Bosworth, Horning Assistant Professor, Public History & Ethnomusicology, proposed the idea and SCARC worked with her to organize the event — we set up a record player in the reading room, projectors in the exhibit space, and a welcome + merchandise table in the lobby area.
About the Albina Music Trust:
“Albina Music Trust is the only full-service community archive in the United States, dedicated to the restoration of a Black community’s historic musical culture. Our programs amplify the legacy of Albina’s musician community through archival media preservation, events and exhibitions, a record label, a radio program, oral history publications, and a sound walk. In collaboration with community members, we are the stewards of a digital repository documenting Albina’s arts and culture legacy, the Albina Community Archive.”
About the Event:
We hosted a pre-public event for Dr. Bosworth’s music history students to engage in a conversation with the Albina Community Archive archivists and then hosted an open house for the public to join in the fun! Participants selected records to play on the record player, explored the online archive via large projectors, and as a connection to SCARC materials, attendees also had the opportunity to view content from the Urban League of Portland Records, specifically the Albina neighborhood materials, as well as materials from the Obo Addy Legacy Project.
Event Photos:
Albina Music Trust Welcome TableAlbina Music Trust MaterialsA Conversation with the Albina Music Trust Archivists The SCARC Reading Room ~ it was filled with records and the music sounded great!The SCARC Exhibit Gallery ~ there were two projectors for attendees to browse the online archiveAttendees Checking Out the SCARC MaterialsDr. Kelly Bosworth Swapping Records ~ The record player and records were donated to the OSU LBH Black Cultural Center
SCARC completed 4 new finding aids January – March 2024 and updated 1 finding aid; as of the end of March, SCARC has 1145 finding aids in Archives West.
These finding aids are available through the Archives West finding aids database, the SCARC website, and the OSU Library discovery system a.k.a. “the catalog.” The links below are to the guides in Archon, SCARC’s finding aids website.
The Judy Kitzman Papers consist of materials generated and collected by alumna and Oregon State University Women’s Crew coach Judy Kitzman. Made up of photographs, scrapbooks, instructional guides, newspaper clippings, a research paper, and historical essays, this collection documents Kitzman’s particpation in competitive rowing for OSU first as a student and then as the coach of the team. Kitzman’s involvement in the Portland-area crew community after her departure from OSU is also reflected in this collection. Kitzman died in 2017.
The Oregon State University (OSU) Kalmekak Community Outreach Program Records document the administration and outreach activities of this organization. OSU Kalmekak was established at OSU in 1996 and was active until 2018. The program sought to serve and advocate for the Latino/a and Chicano/a community of Corvallis – and more broadly the state of Oregon – within higher education, as well as increase cultural and racial awareness within the Corvallis area.
The Oregon State University Pennant Collection is made up of six pennants promoting Oregon State University as well as its earlier incarnations: Oregon Agricultural College and Oregon State College. Two of the pennants specifically commemorate Oregon State College’s participation in the 1942 and 1957 Rose Bowl games. The pennants were donated to the OSU Special Collections and Archives Research Center by the Office of University Relations and Marketing and two other donors.
The Kathleen A. Kerr Papers document the instructional career of Oregon State University dance professor Kathleen A. Kerr. This collection is primarily made up of guides to various folk dance styles assembled and written by Kerr for use in her folk dancing classes. These guides include a few generated in the 1930s and 1940s that Kerr collected for reference. Kerr taught dance coursework in the Physical Education Department from 1975 to 1989.
Finding aids that were updated / expanded and re-uploaded to ArchivesWest:
The Panhellenic Council Records document the origins, administration, and activities of sororities at Oregon State University. The Panhellenic Council, established in 1917 at OSU, is the governing body for a portion of the sororities at OSU, responsible for creating rules and oversight that is outside of the institution’s range.
The Erlinda Gonzales-Berry Papers document the research and publishing of Gonzales-Berry in the fields of Latino literature and culture and immigration from Mexico to the United States. Her research files include, but are not limited to, a plethora of notes, articles, presentations, book chapters, newspaper clippings, and reports. In the container list for the collection guide, the majority of the folder titles describe the material types but not necessarily the subjects or topics covered within the materials themselves. This was an opportunity for enhanced description, which is related to and supports “reparative description”, which is a “remediation of practices or data that exclude, silence, harm, or mischaracterize marginalized people in the data created or used by archivists to identify or characterize archival resources.” (SAA Dictionary)
In 2023, OSU Masters graduate student Sharon Salgado, shared the need for enhanced description to highlight Indigenous Mexican, Zapotec, Mixtec, and Triqui communities, mostly from the state of Oaxaca, who migrated to Oregon, documented within the collection. She was using the papers for her research project and noted that it would have been helpful to her as a researcher if the representation of these communities within the materials was more explicitly included as part of the collection guide. She shared her research notes, specifically noting the materials she referenced.
The collection guide was updated to include a “Statement on Description” that included the keywords – so the collection would show as a result when searched – with a link to this blog post. We also added four Library of Congress Subject Headings: Zapotec Indians, Mixtec Indians, Triqui Indians, and Oaxaca (Mexico: State).
This blog post includes a statement from Salgado as well as her research notes which include the folders within the collection she referenced, along with the specific materials she used in her research.
Below is a statement from Salgado:
“Dr. Erlinda Gonzalez-Berry carefully selects the materials in this collection and includes the works of other important scholars, like Stephen Lynn, who dedicated their lives to telling the stories of Indigenous Mexicans, mostly from the state of Oaxaca, migrating to Oregon. The main ethnicities in the records are Mixtec, Zapotec, and Triqui. However, other Indigenous identities reside in the Beaver State, like Purépechas from Michoacán, Mexico. Even though the materials about the lives and experiences of Indigenous Mexicans in Oregon and in the US are scarce, their importance to the US economy is fundamental. Their work in the fields, service industries, nurseries, and other businesses is essential for developing the state and the Pacific Northwest farming and agricultural sector.
The materials are collections of newspaper cuts and individual research conducted by scholars, which focus on the struggles of Indigenous Mexican farmworkers to obtain fair wages and stop exploitation in the fields, as well as the struggle to find translators since most of the Oaxacans speak their Indigenous languages and not Spanish or English.”
Sharon Salgado, OSU Masters Student, 2023 Graduate
Below is the list of folders within the collection referenced, along with the specific materials she used in her research. Note: for ease of access, the materials listed have been moved to the beginning of the folder.
Box-Folder 1.7 Immigration in Oregon, 1995-2009
“The New Pluralism in Woodburn, Oregon – A Community Study Conducted in 2003-2004” Summary Report written by Ed Kissam and Lynn Stephen, September 2006. Note: The Mixtec community is represented in the report, and there is a reference to El Oaxaqueno, a newspaper published in California on page 23.
“Cultural Citizenship and Labor Rights for Oregon Farmworkers: The Case of Pineros y Campesinos Unidos del Nordoeste (PCUN)” by Lynn Stephen. Human Organization Vol. 62, No. 1 (Spring 2003), pp. 27-38 (12 pages); Published By: Society for Applied Anthropology. Note: Leonides Ávila, a Mixtec organizer and farmworker who worked for PCUN.
Box-Folder 1.13 Journal Articles, 1995-1996
Chapter from the 1995 book Marginal Spaces edited by Michael Peter Smith, Chapter 5 “Mixtecs and Mestizos in California Agriculture: Ethnic Displacement and Hierarchy among Mexican Farm Workers, Contributors” by Carol Zabin
Box-Folder 1.16: Mexicans in Oregon, 1974-2006
Stephen, Lynn (2004). “The Gaze of Surveillance in the Lives of Mexican Immigrant Workers” Development 47 (1), 97-102. Note: Stephen’s article mentions Indigenous Mexicans; she specifically describes the story of Marina Bautista, a 27-year-old undocumented immigrant from the Mixtec region of Oaxaca.
Sarathy, Brinda (2006). “The Latinization of Forest Management Work in Southern Oregon: A Case from Rogue Valley” Journal of Forestry, October/November 2006.
Slatta, Richard Wayne (1974). “ Valley Migrant League.” In Chicanos in Oregon: An Historical Overview (Masters Thesis, Portland State University). [full text available online]
McGlade, Michael S. (2002). “Mexican Farm Labor Networks and Population Increase in the Pacific Northwest” APCG Yearbook, Volume 62. Note: The connection between rural and urban, page 51.
Executive Order 13166: Limited English Proficiency Resource Document: Tips and Tools from the Field, September 2004. Note: Page 67 “…trainings focused on teaching interpretation skills to speakers of indigenous languages including Mixteco, Triqui, Zapoteco, Nahuatl, Tarasco, Akateco, Kanjobal, and others.”
Stephen, Lynn (2004). “Mixtec Farmworkers in Oregon: Linking Labor and Ethnicity through Farmworker Unions and Hometown Associations.” In Indigenous Mexican Migrants in the United States, edited by Jonathan Fox, Gaspar Rivera-Salgado.
Fairchild, Stephen T. and Nicole B. Simpson (2004). “Mexican migration to the United States Pacific Northwest.” Population Research and Policy Review, 23 (3).
Dash, Robert C. (2002-2003). “Latinos, Political Change, and Electoral Mobilization in Oregon,” Latino(a) Research Review 5, no. 2-3.
Oregon Center for Public Policy (2007). “Undocumented Workers are Taxpayers, Too.” Issue Brief, Revised April 10, 2007.
O’Connor, Pat (2006). “Occupations by Race in Oregon,” Oregon Employment Department, OLMIS.
Box-Folder 1.21 Newspaper Articles, 1943-2007
“Idiomas poco hablados causan problemas en tribunal” El Hispanic News, January 20, 2005. Note: Key words: Texmelucan, Zapoteco, Oaxaca, Mixteco. Información en el artículo: sólo alrededor de 4,100 personas en el mundo [hablan el idioma Texmelucan Zapoteco]
“Not Quite Home” by Ernestine Bousquet, The Bulletin, December 26, 2004. Note: Not Quite Home: After settling in Central Oregon, an immigrant family holds tight to its Mexican culture and traditions.
“La Oaxaqueña proves small businesses have a place in the market” by Richard Jones, El Hispanic News, September 29, 2004. Note: Article about La Oaxaqueña Frutería in Portland, Oregon; Lázaro García, owner.
“Immigrants from Mexico’s indigenous groups work to preserve traditional medicine,” Juliana Barbassa, El Hispanic News, January 5, 2006.
Box-Folder 1.25: Pineros y Campesinos Unidos del Noroeste (PCUN) and Freedom Ride, 2001-2003
PCUN Fighting for Farmworker Rights (compilation of news clippings – blue title page). Note: See the article, “Native Americans join farmworkers in protest against Bracero Bill”
Box-Folder 2.8: Transnationalism, 1998-2005
Presentation Slides “Mexican Transnationalism from Above and Below” Note: Slide 6 “Transnationalism from Below: At Community Level” mention of Mixteco Farmworkers in Salem, OR.
Guarnizo, Luis Eduardo, and Michael Peter Smith. “The Locations of Transnationalism.” Transnationalism from Below: Comparative urban and community research(1998): 3–34. 2 copies.
Goldring, Luin. “The Power of Status in Transnational Social Fields.” Transnationalism from Below: Comparative urban and community research(1998): 165–195.
SCARC completed 3 new finding aids October – December 2023 and updated 2 finding aids; as of the end of December, SCARC has 1141 finding aids in Archives West.
These finding aids are available through the Archives West finding aids database, the SCARC website, and the OSU Library discovery system a.k.a. “the catalog.” The links below are to the guides in Archon, SCARC’s finding aids website.
The Oregon State University Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) Student Experience StoryCorps Collection is comprised of video recorded testimonies provided by EECS students from non-traditional or historically underserved backgrounds. The stories shared by these students are meant to document their experiences while also providing insight to university and industry leaders on approaches to improve support for Engineering students from underserved communities. The collection is entirely born digital and the raw video of each interview is available online.
The COVID-19 at Oregon State University Collection consists of materials submitted to or collected by multiple projects whose aim was to document university and community life during the COVID-19 pandemic. The collection includes submissions to a collecting initiative led by the Special Collections and Archives Research Center (SCARC); two outreach activities sponsored by the OSU Libraries; and an additional collecting project led by OSU Psychology professor Regan Gurung. The collection also includes compilations of university- and library-wide broadcast emails communicating operations adjustments necessitated by the pandemic, as well as university social media posts reflecting the culture of remote work at OSU. The collection is rounded out by a print zine published by the Corvallis-Benton County Public Library, and an assortment of pandemic-related websites that have been preserved by SCARC staff within the Internet Archive. The collection is largely born digital, supplemented by a smaller paper component.
The Julie Green Papers document paintings and other art works created and exhibited by Art Professor Julie Green. Along with photographs of their pieces, this collection includes published information about exhibitions of Green’s art, in particular, “The Last Supper” series. Joining the Oregon State University Art Department in 2000, Green taught coursework in painting and drawing. They died in 2021.
Finding aids that were updated / expanded and re-uploaded to ArchivesWest:
The United States War Relocation Authority Reports are comprised of more than fifty mimeographed reports detailing the operation of War Relocation Authority (WRA) concentration camps used to house Japanese American incarcerees during World War II.
The Mildred and Frank Miles Scrapbook of the Santo Tomás Internment Camp scrapbook includes documents and ephemera produced at Santo Tomás during the Miles’ imprisonment there, as well as materials written about the camp after liberation. Many materials document daily life in the camp. The Santo Tomás Internment Camp was created by the Japanese military after occupation of Manila, the capital of the Phillipines. It was located on the campus of the University of Santo Tomás in Manila, and housed over 4,000 incarcerees for nearly the entirety of World War II.
On December 12, 2023, PODER: Oregon’s Latino Leadership Network hosted an event to commemorate the official 50th Anniversary of the Colegio César Chávez. It was on this date in 1973 when Colegio community members decided on the name in honor of the activist. The event began with a presentation by Colegio co-founders Sonny Montes and José Romero followed by a community conversation, which was recorded and is available online. The evening continued with an introduction from PODER Board Chair Anthony Veliz; a welcome by Chemeketa Community College Woodburn campus Dean Elias Villegas; a reading of the Governor’s Colegio César Chávez Proclamation by Javier Cervantes, Office of the Governor – Racial Justice Advisor; and concluding remarks from Montes and Romero. And, the Colegio exhibit was featured as part of the event!
A presentation by Colegio co-founders Sonny Montes and José RomeroThe Governor’s Colegio César Chávez Proclamation presented to Anthony Veliz by Javier Cervantes Closing remarks by Colegio co-founders Sonny Montes and José RomeroColegio 50th Photo CollageColegio 50th Photo Collage
Jennifer Cox, Dean of Library and Learning Resources, Chemeketa Community College, cutting the ribbon at the November 20, 2023, Salem Campus exhibit opening
Colegio César Chávez Exhibit ~ Chemeketa Community College Tour Dates and Locations:
November 20th-December 28th ~ Salem Campus
January 3rd-February 9th ~ Woodburn Center
February 12th-March 22nd ~ Yamhill Valley Campus
March 22nd-April 1st ~ Salem Campus – César Chávez Day Celebration
April 2nd-May 17th ~ Polk Center
May 17th-June 30th ~ CCRLS (Chemeketa Community Regional Library Service) Partner Library-Newberg Public Library
Additionally, there has been interest from Blue Mountain Community College in displaying the exhibit in the summer or fall of next year.
On Monday, November 20th, the Salem Campus held an informal exhibit opening; about a dozen people attended and received a tour and Q&A of the exhibit. The exhibit begins in the library (building 9) of the Chemeketa Community College ~ Salem Campus with the history exhibit panels located throughout the second floor’s skybridge. The calendar and timeline panels are grouped on the main floor by the stairs leading up to the library.
Salem Campus Exhibit Photos
The calendar and timeline panels are grouped on the main floor by the stairs leading up to the library (building 9)
About a dozen people attended the opening and received a tour and Q&A of the exhibit
