The Mestizo (mixed ethnic heritage) Civil Rights Movement in the United States can be divided into five phases: Pre-Civil Rights, Civil Rights, Bilingual-Multicultural Education, Political Conservatism, and the current period, an Assault on Civil Rights. The paper describes how a personal research career has been influenced by the different stages of the Movement, and work on the concept of the multicultural personality has closely reflected its various phases. The Movement not only provided multicultural models such as Cesar Chavez, Malcolm X, Dolores Huerta, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Rosa Parks, it also provided a liberating force from racist, sexist, and cultural and genetic superiority paradigms of the social sciences. A personal account of the development of the concept of the multicultural personality is given, and a description of the instruments which were designed to assess multicultural personality processes is also provided. The anti-affirmative action trend of today's society impels one to look to the future in the hope that the Civil Rights flame will be rekindled so that multiculturalism can help save the world. (Contains 24 references. Three figures and nine tables are presented which are related to multicultural personality development and identity.) (Author)