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Samora, Julian (1920–1996)

Julian Samora was the first Mexican American to earn a doctorate in sociology and anthropology in the United States. His pioneering research in the areas of public health, rural poverty, civil rights, and immigration illuminated the debilitating conditions facing Mexican Americans as a minority group, and his work as an educator, consultant, and policy advocate helped set in motion efforts to address those conditions and provide wider opportunities for Mexican Americans. This entry discusses Samora's life and contributions.

Formative Experiences

Born in Pagosa Springs, Colorado, on March 1, 1920, Julian Samora was subjected to numerous instances of anti-Chicano prejudice early on. He was forced to repeat first grade without benefit of testing simply because Spanish was his first language. At the time, in Colorado and in other parts of the Southwest, Spanish-speaking children were required to repeat first grade, ostensibly to gain sufficient skills in English. In high school, when he was cast as the lead in the school play, Anglo cast members threatened to quit so the teacher deferred to them, denying Samora the part. During his senior year in college, he ran for student body president and lost by one vote. His roommate, citing the reasoning that he could not vote for a Mexican, had cast the deciding vote against him.

When Samora traveled to interview for graduate school, he was turned away from lodging by signs that read, “No Dogs, Indians, or Mexicans Allowed.” He was finally able to obtain lodging when a hotel owner mistook him for a traveler from India. These encounters shaped his determination to prove himself as an equal to members of the dominant group and to use education as a tool in the struggle against racial/ethnic hostility and ignorance.

Samora graduated from high school in 1938, and received a prestigious college scholarship, which he used to attend Adams State Teacher's College in Alamosa, Colorado. In the summer between his freshman and sophomore years of college, Samora was orphaned when his mother died of cancer. Despite now being alone in the world, he persevered, supplementing his scholarship money by washing and ironing shirts for the other men in his dorm, and graduating in 1942 with a degree in history and political science.

Early Research Initiatives

In 1947, Samora obtained a masters in sociology from Colorado State University. In 1953, he received a PhD in sociology and anthropology from Washington University in St. Louis. In his doctoral thesis, Minority Leadership in a Bicultural Community: An Analysis, he concluded that in a community economically and politically dominated by Anglos, Mexican Americans aspiring to leadership had to operate in the Anglo world on Anglo terms, losing, in the process, part of their connection to the Mexican community. His findings were one of the early revelations of the marginal-ity faced by minority group leadership.

In 1955, Samora was hired as assistant professor of Preventive Medicine and Public Health in the University of Colorado, School of Medicine. After noticing that Anglo doctors were having difficulty understanding or relating to their Mexican American patients, Samora undertook a study of medical delivery systems and their impact on Mexican Americans. By taking his observations back to the classroom and helping the medical students develop sensitivity toward their Spanish-speaking patients, Samora, in effect, was teaching some of the first undergraduate courses in medical sociology in the United States.

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