, a look at our recent visit to san antonio texas. You are watching American History tv all weekend, every weekend on cspan3. Was William Velasquez everyone knew him as willie. Willie was and is a name synonymous with democracy in america. Through the organization he founded, the southwest Voter Registration education project, he nearly doubled hispanic Voter Registration and dramatically increase the number of latino elected officials in the in this nation. His appeal to the Hispanic Community was a simple, passionate, and direct. Your vote is your voice. We are going to be talking about the records of the southwest Voter Registration education product project. They are the oldest and largest nonpartisan latino Voter Registration project in the country. The collection contains the first 20 years of the organizations existence, they are still in existence today. It is a deep and wide collection , if you are interested in learning about Voter Registration, particularly in minority communities. The organization was started in 1974 by willie velasquez. He is from san antonio. As a very young man, he was heavily involved in the chicano movement. In college, he was one of the founders of the mexicanamerican youth organization, which was involved in doing registration drives at local colleges. Also involved in high school walkouts. This was in the late 1960s, early 70s early 1970s, sort of the height of the chicano movement. He was really interested in Voter Registration and getting the Latino Community to vote. Two register to vote and to realize that they have a voice. And by voting they have a voice. In fact, the motto is, your vote is your voice. In 1974, willie was able to successfully apply for 503 c and the organization became a national nonprofit. So here we have the articles of incorporation. He would sit down and start calling. Hey, are you registered to vote . Did you know tomorrow is election day . Eventually the organization expanded to not only covering texas, but all of the southwest. So, arizona, new mexico, california, utah, colorado, nevada, and they grew to have a fulltime staff. They had a board of directors. They have a lot going on they still have a lot going on. There were three main departments. The field organizing department, the legal department, and the Research Department. The field organizing department focused mainly on Voter Education and training. They hit the pavement not only in san antonio, not only texas, but came up with a whole system for identifying coordinators in the various regions, different counties, all over the southwest detailedcreated very training manuals for how to put together a Voter Registration drive. Everything you need to know. It would start with a field coordinator. Here you can see, they tell you what you need to prepare for a Voter Registration drive. For example, it is saying you really need to know your state election laws. You need to be able to answer these questions. If you dont know the voting law or the election code, you dont look as informed as you should be. Fieldre telling these coordinators, you need to know your stuff and that the whole principle of this, organizing campaign, is unity. Get the community together, he want to organize the community and be united in this effort. All of this, the coordinators manual tells you exactly what you need to do. You need to get local politicians on board, you need to talk to local churches, talk to everyone in the community and say this is what we are trying to do. Once you have all that together, then they had a program where you could apply for a grant. You would have to fill out a form that said how you were going to do the drive, how many volunteers you have been able to secure, what your budget is, the dates, everything had to be figured out ahead of time. They would send their application, it would get approved, then they would get the training. Here is the Field Training manual. It tells you everything from sample canvassers, contact sheets, it has information on the media and how to deal with the media at what to say to the media. Procedures and administration of a Voter Registration project. Every single thing that you need to know to have a successful Voter Registration drive. These Regional Planning committees, the files that we have, there are hundreds of them. Hundreds. By the 1980s, they were organizing on average 100 Voter Registration drives a year. For all those planning committees, we have one from yuma county in arizona. And we just have hundreds and hundreds of these from counties all over the southwest. What is cool about this one is we have photographs, they sent in photographs when they sent in their information about the ir registration drive. What is great about these is i often get asked for photographs. Really, considering how large of a collection, because we dont have that many photographs. I have asked maria, who is the current president , about that. She has been involved with the organization for a long time, she said, we were too busy to take photographs. We were busy organizing and registering voters to take photographs. So, it is really great to be able to see what they were doing here in somerton, arizona. Some of the Regional Committee reports from the various counties do have photographs, like this, but i think this has the most. Here is another example, this from robs town, texas. Here, you can see their reimbursement form for every thing they did. Their office supplies, kickoff rallies, everything was accounted for. Here we have examples from the Research Department. The Research Department was very prolific, they did a lot of to collect research, conducted their own research, and published research reports. The collection contains a lot of census data, a lot of Election Results data, and they conducted exit polls, opinion polls. They were gathering as much data as they could to get these reports out. Was such acause this huge part of the organization, they formed the research arm called southwest for research institute. We have hundreds and hundreds of reports. Here you can see, they would do things like a political and demographic analysis of the congressional district. Or hispanic political participation. They were pulling mexican americans to find out what are the issues that you face . What are your opinions . What are your voting habits . To understand how they can reach more mexican americans, how they produce training material s to make mexican americans feel like they have a voice and that they can too participate in the democratic process. In san antonio, some of the issues were basic services, such as roads, sidewalks, education. And from that, this is really influential in how willie got involved with Voter Registration. Sadly, in 1988, willie passed away from kidney cancer. His funeral, there were more than 1000 people at his funeral. It was covered on local news, national news, the New York Times had an article about it. Even Michael Dukakis was at his funeral. A lot of national politicians, when they heard the news, they made statements about how thertant willie was to political process and getting minorities involved in the political process. In 1995, president clinton posthumously awarded willie the president ial medal of freedom. Here we have the invitation to misses velasquez for the ceremony, awarding him the president ial medal of freedom. The collection and the organization is not only important to san antonio, not only important to the southwest, because they did work across the southwest, not just texas, but it is important nationally. What they have been able to do in terms of increasing mexicanamerican Voter Registration, also having an influence on how many mexicanamerican politicians we office, they have made a huge impact on getting out the vote to minority communities. Our cities to her recently traveled to san antonio to learn about its risk rich history. To watch more video, visit cspan. Org citiesto work. You are watching American History tv. All weekend, every weekend on cspan three. University of richmond professor edward ayers discusses how the expansion of slavery and westward migration displaced native americans throughout the antebellum period, moving them further and further from their ancestral lands. This talk is part of john marshall, the Supreme Court and the trail of tears. An allday conference cohosted Virginia Museum of history and culture. If you want more information about the trail of tears, there is a national trail association. It is a partnership with the National Parks service, and local communities are telling this story. Google national trail of Tears Association and it will get you to the website. Ive got that right ok. Thank you for your rapt attention this morning. I think you are in for more surprises this afternoon. Is ed ayres, ier