In the post-War era, a growing Mexican-American and Hispanic social consciousness led to the formation of civic, political and cultural organizations, including the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) and Cesar Chavez's National Farm Worker's Association (NFWA). One of the most significant among these groups was the Mexican American Youth Organization (MAYO), created in San Antonio in 1967. Its founders were mostly students at St. Mary's University and community leaders in the city.

MAYO sought to aggressively address the issues of discrimination, police brutality, labor organizing and education and the treatment of Mexican-American students in public schools. MAYO also attempted to stimulate a new Chicaco sense of pride. MAYO emulated the black movements of the time, employing a confrontational politics involving public demonstrations and marches, rather than the more passive, legalistic approaches invoked by other Mexican-American groups.

The MAYO focus on education was embodied in its constitution, which stated, "We seek to control local school districts or individual schools in order to make the institutions adapt to the needs of the [Chicano] community rather than... making the students adapt to the school." This led to the tactic of student boycotts, largely in protest of the rule banning the speaking of Spanish in the schools. My Journey Home sheds light on the most successful of these boycotts, the November 1968 walkout at Edcouch-Elsa High School in the Rio Grande Valley, in which Armando and Luis Peña participated. This boycott eventually led a federal court to declare the ban on Spanish-Speaking unconstitutional. This was a major victory that eventually led to the implementation of bilingual education in public schools — a subject still hotly debated today.