Lucero-White Lea is best known for her 1953 work Literary Folklore of the Hispanic Southwest, a compilation of cultural traditions, songs, and stories collected while traveling northern New Mexico.
[5][6][1] As a teenager, Lucero gave a speech advocating the use of Spanish in the public schools in a persuasive speaking competition on the campus of the New Mexico Normal University in 1910.
[8] On October 21, 1915, one hundred and fifty women marched through Santa Fe, around the Capitol and to the home of Senator Thomas Benton Catron, who they hoped would support the Susan B. Anthony Amendment.
[9] Ella St. Clair Thompson of the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage, recognizing the importance of working with Spanish-speaking women, asked Lucero and Nina Otero-Warren to speak at the event.
[10] Together with Otero-Warren, Lucero insisted on bilingual access to suffrage publications and speeches, saying, "I speak for the Spanish American women who, while conservative, want the best possible laws where their home life is the question at issue.
Along with Cleofas Martínez Jaramillo, she helped found La Sociedad Folklorica in 1935, a Santa Fe organization dedicated to preserving the customs and traditions of the descendants of colonial Spaniards.