Your vote is your voice. We are going to be talking about the records of the southwest Voter Registration 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. William velasquez. He is from san antonio. As a young man, he was heavily involved in the chicano movement. When he was in college he was founders of the mexicanamerican youth organization, which was involved in doing Voter Registration drives at local colleges and also involved in high school walkouts. This was in the late 1960s, early 1970s, the height of the chicano movement. The beginning and height of it. He was really interested in Voter Registration and getting the Latino Community to vote. To register to vote, and to realize that they have a voice. And by voting they have a voice. Is, your votetto is your voice. In 1974, willie was able to successfully apply for 503c and the organization became a national nonprofit. We have the articles of incorporation. He would sit down and start calling. Hey, are you registered to vote . Tomorrow is election day. 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. And they had 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 in texas, but they came up with a whole system for identifying coordinators in the various regions, different counties,. Ll over the southwest they created very detailed training manuals for how to put together a Voter Registration drive. Everything you need to know. It would start with a field coordinator. You you can see they tell 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. They are telling the field coordinators, you need to know the whole and principle of this organizing campaign is unity. You want to get the community together, 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. You need to 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, essentially. 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 in 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, media. Say to the procedures and administration of the Voter Registration project. Every single thing 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 of those Regional Planning committees, as you can see we have one from yuma county, arizona, and we 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 their registration drive. What is great about these is i often get asked for photographs. Really, considering how large the collection is, we dont have that many photographs. I asked the current president about that, because she has been involved in 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. It is great to be able to see what they were doing in somerton, arizona. Some of the Regional Committee reports from the various counties do have photographs, but i think this one has the most. Here is another example. This one is from texas. Theirou can see reimbursement form for everything they did. Office supplies, kickoff rallies, volunteer costs, everything was accounted for. We have examples from the Research Department. The Research Department was very prolific. They did a lot of work to collect research. They conducted their own research. They 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. In 1985, because this was such a huge part of the organization, they founded the research arm called southwest Voter Research institute. We have hundreds and hundreds of reports. Here you can see they would do things like a political demographic analysis of the 27th theressional district, or hispanics political participation. Mexicane polling areicans to find out, what the issues you face, what are your opinions, what are your voting habits . To find out how they can read reach more mexican americans, how they can produce training materials and workshops to make mexican americans feel like they actually have a voice and that they too can 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 influential in how william got involved with Voter Registration. Sadly, in 1988, willie passed away from kidney cancer. His funeral, there were more than a thousand 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 make statements about how important willie was due the 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 mrs. Velasquez for the ceremony awarding him the president ial medal of freedom. The collection and organization is not only important to san antonio, not only to the southwest, because they did work all 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 politicians, how many mexicanamerican politicians we have in office now, they have made a huge impact on getting out the vote to minority communities. Watch this and other programs on the history of communities across the country at cspan. Org citiestour. This is American History tv, only on cspan3. American history tv on cspan3 exploring the people and events that tell the american story every weekend. 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Both conducted from the oval office with reagan discussing a variety of issues, including his hollywood days, the bombing that killed marines in beirut, lebanon, his vision for thesoviet relations, and assassination attempt that left him seriously wounded. Watch American History tv today on cspan3. Tv,ext on American History historian and leadership scholar Jared Peatman looks at lincolns life and how he used humor to humor, optimism, and empathy to handle adversity. Lincolnsabraham intellectual and emotional makeup is wellsuited to lead the nation through the crisis of the civil war. On behalf of all of us at president lincolns college, we to welcome you to the program. Abraham lincoln is a natural example to turn to in a time of crisis. Having led the nation through a crisis that threatened its existence and touched everyone, that is so significant we are feeling its effects today. He is notable for his empathy and accountability and humanity. All of those characteristics were fully on display when he was living here at the cottage