Rita Sanchez, San Diego Women's Hall of Fame, 2011 Activist

Rita Sanchez has been a pioneer of Chicana empowerment since the 1960s. In 1974, Rita was the first woman to be hired as a full-time tenured faculty in the Mexican American Department at San Diego State University (SDSU) and in 1990 at San Diego Mesa College (Mesa). By 1976 she was working almost full time in two areas: as a professor at SDSU and as a Ph.D Candidate on a Ford Foundation Fellowship at the University of California, San Diego. At SDSU, Rita pioneered the first Chicana journal -- Visiones de la Mujer. She also hosted presentations and receptions for various important figures in Chicano Studies like Dolores Huerta and Gracia Molina de Pick. Following her nearly ten years at SDSU, she founded one of the first Chicano/Latino art galleries with Mario Acevedo. The Chicana studies courses she created and her 1973 article "Chicana Writer: Breaking Out of Silence," placed writing center stage as a means of challenging male-centered knowledge as the accepted practice. Professor Sanchez has published several articles and one book since 1973 and is working on Love Stories of the Southwest, with her husband, noted historian, Richard Griswold del Castillo. She continues her work on ancestral history and is still involved in the advancement of women's rights. Rita believes that her greatest work of activism has been the privilege to reach and promote women through the written word.