American Studies Associate Professor and Chair Theo Gonzalves was quoted in an Inquirer Global Nation story last week about a law highlighting the Filipino story in California.
The article describes how Gonzalves came across an audio clip in his research work from the height of the farm worker protests in California in 1966. He posted it at the start of Filipino American History Month last week.
The new law requires California schools to study the contributions of Filipino Americans to the California farm labor movement.
“This is long overdue,” Gonzalves said. “You know how people will sometimes complain about historical revisionism? The truth is that histories are always being revised and Filipino Americans aren’t going to wait for someone else to tell those stories.”
Gonzalves’s brother was a member of the VFW. “He could tell you that as a younger Filipino organizer and lawyer that the Latino elders in the organization, the ones who worked side-by-side with Filipinos from the Delano days, cherished the contributions of Filipinos to the movement,” he added.
Tags: AmericanStudies, CAHSS, Research
