Albert Camarillo

Albert 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 the South-Central Los Angeles community of Compton where he attended the Compton public schools before entering the University of California at Los Angeles as a freshman in 1966. He continued his education at UCLA in the Ph.D. program in U.S. History where he received his doctorate in 1975 and where his dissertation was nominated that year as one of the best Ph.D. theses in the nation in American history. 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. Camarillo has published eight books and dozens of articles and essays dealing with the experiences of Mexican Americans and other racial and immigrant groups in American cities.