Join us for a virtual MACRI Talk with Dr. Albert Camarillo about his new memoir, Compton in My Soul: A Life in Pursuit of Racial Equality. Learn about the history of Compton, Los Angeles, and Camarillo’s path to becoming the first Mexican American to earn a Ph.D. in Chicano History and a founding scholar of the field of Mexican American history and Chicano Studies.

📍This virtual MACRI Talk will stream live on Tuesday, August 12, 2025, at 6 PM Central on MACRI’s Facebook at https://bit.ly/FB-MACRI and YouTube at https://bit.ly/YT-MACRI.

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About the talk
When Al Camarillo grew up in Compton, California, racial segregation was the rule. His relatives were among the first Mexican immigrants to settle there—in the only neighborhood where Mexicans were allowed to live. The city’s majority was then White, and Compton would shift to a predominantly Black community over Camarillo’s youth. Compton in My Soul weaves Camarillo’s personal story with histories of Compton, and illuminates a changing U.S. society—the progress and backslides over half a century for racial equality and educational opportunity.

Entering UCLA in the mid 1960s, Camarillo was among the first students of color, one of only forty-four Mexican Americans on a campus of thousands. He became the first Mexican American in the country to earn a Ph.D. in Chicano/Mexican American history, and established himself as a preeminent U.S. historian with a prestigious appointment at Stanford University. In this memoir, Camarillo offers his career as a vehicle for tracing the evolution of ethnic studies, reflecting on intergenerational struggles to achieve racial equality from the perspective at once of a participant and an historian.

About our guest
Al Camarillo is Professor of American History (and by courtesy Graduate School of Education) and the Leon Sloss Jr. Memorial Professor/Haas Centennial Professor of Public Service, Emeritus. A member of the Stanford University History Department for over forty years, Camarillo is widely regarded as one of the founding scholars of the field of Mexican American history and Chicano Studies. He was born and raised in Compton where he attended public schools before entering the University of California at Los Angeles. He received his B.A. in History in 1970 and his Ph.D. in U.S. History in 1975. He is the first Mexican American in the nation’s history to receive a Ph.D. in U.S. history with a specialization in Chicano History.