He graduated from the University of Texas at Austin, and from Yale University with a M.A. and Ph.D. in Sociology. He taught at the University of Texas at Austin, University of California, Santa Cruz, and the University of New Mexico. He was the former Chair of the Center for Latino Policy Research at University of California, Berkeley.
In 1995, he was inducted into the Texas Institute of Letters. From 1992-1998, he was State Commissioner of the Texas Commission on the Arts.
Awards
1987–1988 National Endowment for the Humanities Resident Scholar
1988 Frederick Jackson Turner Award
Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences Fellow at Stanford
School of American Research Resident Scholar in Santa Fe
Rockefeller Post-Doctoral Fellow
Works
John Tutino, ed. (2012). "Mexican Merchants and Teamsters on the Texas Cotton Road, 1862-1865." Mexico and Mexicans in the Making of the United States. University of Texas Press. ISBN 978-0-292-73718-1.
Sancho's Journal: Exploring the Political Edge with the Brown Berets. University of Texas Press. 2012. ISBN 978-0-292-74384-7.
Quixote's Soldiers: A Local History of the Chicano Movement, 1966-1981 (Jack and Doris Smothers Series in Texas History, Life, and Culture). University of Texas Press. 2010. ISBN 978-0-292-72290-3.
Maggie Rivas-Rodriguez, ed. (2005). "The Beating of Private Aguirre". Mexican Americans & World War II. University of Texas Press. ISBN 978-0-292-70681-1.
David Montejano, ed. (1999). Chicano Politics and Society in the Late Twentieth Century. University of Texas Press. ISBN 978-0-292-75215-3.
Anglos y mexicanos en la formación de Texas: 1836-1986. Vol. 84. Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes, 1991.
Anglos and Mexicans in the Making of Texas, 1836-1986. University of Texas Press. 1987. ISBN 978-0-292-77596-1.
A journey through Mexican Texas, 1900-1930: the making of a segregated society. Yale University. 1982.
Race, labor repression, and capitalist agriculture: notes from South Texas, 1920-1930. University of California, Institute for the Study of Social Change. 1977.
