Rita Sanchez (born May 20, 1937 in San Bernardino, California) is an American academic in the field of Chicana/o studies. Sanchez' family roots are in Bernalillo, New Mexico, but her grandfather took a second home in San Bernardino in 1910 because of his work with the Southern Pacific Railroad, and sold the Bernalillo home in 1919. Rita Sanchez was born in San Bernardino on May 20, 1937, the seventh of eleven children. She graduated from San Bernardino High School in 1956 and studied journalism at San Jose State University as one of the first Mexican-Americans to attend college, but did not finish her degree. She returned to college in the 1970s as a single mother of two daughters, earning a B.A. in English in 1972, a master's degree in education in 1973, and an M.A. in English in 1974, al