April 9-10, 2026
Join us for an unprecedented national conference at the CUNY Graduate Center in NYC. This gathering will convene Latinx sixties movement veterans, graduate students, faculty, archivists, and the public. During this age of great dreams, Latinos joined civil rights and black power movements and built their own to expand both the experience and meaning of American democracy.

Organized by historians Johanna Fernández and Felipe Hinojosa, the conference is part of a larger project dedicated to preserving the oral histories of aging movement veterans and safeguarding their papers, including the work of photographers and artists. The broader project will launch Latinx Freedom Movement exhibitions across the country for the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.

We situate the Latino struggle for justice within a broad historical arc, beginning with the U.S. acquisition of 55 percent of Mexico’s territory with the U.S. invasion of Mexico in 1846, and the colonization of Puerto Rico after the Spanish-American War in 1898.

Closing the knowledge gap about the origins of Latinos in the United States and their contributions to the expansion of American democracy is central to our work.