Colegio Cesar Chavez

Cesar Chavez lecturing at Colegio Cesar Chavez, 1977
Type	Private
Active	1973–1983
Location	Mount Angel, Oregon, United States

Colegio Cesar Chavez (Spanish for "Cesar Chavez College") was an American college-without-walls in Mount Angel, Oregon. The college was named after Mexican American civil rights activist César Chávez. Colegio was established in 1973 and closed its doors in 1983. Colegio was the first accredited, independent four-year Chicano/Latino college in the United States. In 1975 it was granted candidacy status from the Northwest Association of Schools and Colleges. In 1977, Colegio granted degrees to 22 graduates, a number exceeding the combined number of Chicanos who graduated that same year from University of Oregon and Oregon State University. In his book Colegio Cesar Chavez, 1973–1983: A Chicano Struggle for Educational Self-Determination, author Carlos Maldonado writes that Colegio Cesar Chavez was one of the few institutions that was named after Cesar Chavez during his lifetime.

For many members of the Colegio community, the most memorable campus event occurred on May 16, 1974, when Cesar Chavez paid his first visit to the college.... More than 600 people, mostly Mexican Americans, crowded into Guadalupe Hall to see and hear Chavez.... Chavez devoted most of his speech to the union’s fight with the growers, making his case for the boycott. But he also talked about Colegio, confessing that, if someone had told him five years earlier that Mexican Americans would have established their own college in Oregon, he ‘would have thought they were crazy.’ ‘Who knows?’ he added. ‘Maybe tomorrow there will be mariachi music in the White House.’