Dr. Julian Samora

Dr. Samora was born March 1, 1920 in the small town of Pagosa Springs in southwestern Colorado, where he attended grade and high schools. Receipt of a Frederick G. Bonfiles Foundation grant enabled him to enter Adams State College of Colorado, where he received his B.A. degree in 1942. He taught in a Colorado high school for one year and then was able to continue work for an advanced degree as the result of being selected for three scholarships. In 1947 he received his M.S. in sociology from Colorado State University at Fort Collins. He had, by then, begun teaching at Adams State and continued for more than a decade (1944-1955). After completing his M.S., he enrolled in the Ph.D. program at Washington University in St Louis, where he earned his doctorate in sociology and anthropology in 1953 - the first Mexican American in this field. After two short-term teaching positions (the first of which was at Michigan State University), he accepted an associate professorship in sociology at the University of Notre Dame in 1959. He was also a visiting professor at a number of outstanding universities, including the Universidad Nacional de Colombia. In the spring of 1985, he retired from Notre Dame.    Throughout his retirement, and until his death on Feb 2, 1996, Dr. Samora continued to provide a wide range of insight and direction for Latino educators, professionals, and students.    Dr. Samora had a major impact within the field of Sociology as well as all social sciences in general because of the number of students he mentored. While at Notre Dame, he graduated numerous Latino students with Ph.D.'s and Master's degrees. He was not only a pioneer in Mexican-American studies, but he was also one of the National Council of La Raza co-founders.    From the beginning of his academic career, Julian Samora was deeply interested in research and presented the results of his interest in nearly 30 journal articles and in several seminal books. Among his most important publications are La Raza: Forgotten Americans (1966), Mexican-Americans in a Midwest Metropolis (1967), Los Mojados: The Wetback Story (1971), and Gunpowder Justice: A Reassessment of the Texas Rangers (1979). During his retirement, he was working on a historical account of four families living in the Southwest from the sixteenth century to the present.    As a result of his experience and expertise, Dr. Samora was invited to serve on many important boards and commissions in both the governmental and private sectors. Among the most salient are the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, the National Institute of Mental Health, and the President's Commission on Rural Poverty. He also served as an editor for International Migrant Review, Nuestro, and other journals. At Notre Dame he directed the Mexico Border Studies Project, sponsored by the Ford Foundation. He received a multitude of prestigious grants and awards over the past 40 years.