Emory Libraries is pleased to celebrate National Hispanic Heritage Month, which takes place each year between September 15 and October 15. This event commemorates the important contributions of Americans who trace their roots to Mexico, Central America, South America, and the Spanish-speaking islands of the Caribbean and Spain.
Mural by Juan O’Gorman/Wikimedia Commons
Did you know that there are more than 60 million people who identify as Hispanic in the United States today?
In 1968, Congress authorized the President to issue an annual proclamation observing a National Hispanic Heritage Week. In 1988, this became a month-long commemoration. National Hispanic Heritage Month begins on September 15, the day that the nations of Central American (Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and Costa Rica) celebrate their independence. Mexico (September 16) and Chile (September 18) also mark their independence days during the period. Día de la Raza, or Columbus Day (October 12), also occurs in this 30-day interval.
This blog post showcases the Emory Libraries’ digital primary sources, created by and for Hispanic American communities, that encompasses the life experiences of a broad spectrum of people.
Lange , Dorothea . First Braceros. 1942
Newspapers have played an important role in creating and sustaining Hispanic American communities in the United States. Hispanic newspapers have a long history in the United States. The first Spanish language newspaper in the United States was published in 1808 in New Orleans. Emory Libraries provides access to Hispanic American Newspapers, a database compiling over 300 Spanish-language newspapers printed in the U.S. during the 19th and 20th centuries.
The University of Arizona has created the Historic Mexican and Mexican American Press collection, which contains historic Mexican and Mexican American publications from Arizona, California, Texas and Sonora, Mexico.
Google digitized the influential Los Angeles Spanish language newspaper La Opinión that started publishing in 1926. Coverage runs from the first published edition until 2000.
Contemporary news sources
For more contemporary news, Acceda Noticias currently provides access to 126 Spanish language news sources including a number of Hispanic American newspapers such as La Voz (Houston), La Opinión (Los Angeles), El Nuevo Herald (Miami), El Diario La Prensa (New York) and El Nuevo Día (San Juan)
El Diario, June 1, 2020.
PressDisplay provides online access to newspapers from around the world in full-color, full-page format. A number of newspapers have backfiles that go back several years. PressDisplay includes the Hispanic American daily newspapers : El Diario de El Paso, El Diario (New York), La Opinión (Los Angeles) and the weeklies: La Opinión de la Bahía (San Francisco), La Raza (Chicago) and La Semana (Oklahoma).
Oral histories
Oral histories help to document the presence of Hispanic Americans in the United States. The following collections provide insights into the experiences and daily lives of the various Hispanic American communities.
Mexican workers from the Bracero Program. (Oregon State University Archives.)
The Bracero History Archive documents the experience of Mexican agricultural laborers who worked as part of a guest initiative in United States between 1942 and 1964.
Luis J. Botifoll Oral History Project of the University of Miami Libraries Cuban Heritage Collection traces the experiences of Cubans who left the island for the United States after the 1959 revolution.
The Puerto Rican Oral History Project of the Brooklyn Historical Society offers narratives of Puerto Ricans who arrived in Brooklyn between 1917 and 1940.
UCLA Library Center for Oral Research Latina and Latino History Oral Histories provides documentation of the Hispanic experience in California and in the film and music industries.
The University of Texas at Austin’s Voces Oral History Project records Hispanic experiences in the military and at home during World II, the Korean and Vietnam Wars, as well as political and civil engagement.
Spanish Speaking Peoples in Utah from the University of Utah is a series of transcripts of interviews by Hispanic American who lived or worked in Utah.