Amid political battles over immigration, many youths face difficulties with laws regarding everything from police interactions to school curriculum. But this is nothing new, according to Mexican American historian Laura Muñoz.
Muñoz will explore the historic hardships and gains of Mexican Americans in the last century in an April 24 lecture in Oldfather Hall Room 638. The lecture, “Mexican Arizona and the Politics of Equality,” is at 3:30 p.m. and is free and open to the public.
Muñoz, a visiting history professor in the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s Department of History, is an associate professor of history at Texas A&M Corpus Christi. She is an expert in the history of Mexican Americans in Arizona from the mid-19th century to World War II.
Her lecture will focus on the struggle to gain equal treatment within schools and how that is related to receiving citizenship and rights when Arizona became a state.
“One of the questions that is central to my research is why the schools matter in discussions about race and equality,” Muñoz said.
Muñoz has researched several Arizona civil rights cases regarding Mexican Americans in schools – cases that occurred before the civil rights landmark U.S. Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education, which ended segregation in schools.
One such case is Romo v. Laird, involving a Tempe, Ariz., school in 1925. Historians recognize this case as the first lawsuit regarding segregation of Mexican Americans in schools.
“Arizona had practiced forms of ‘de jure and de facto segregation’ in schools, parks, pools, any public gathering place, and this case was the start of that civil rights movement for Mexican Americans,” Muñoz said. “Similar cases were undertaken in Texas and California, but those significant cases didn’t happen until the 1930s and 1940s.”
Muñoz said that parallels from the 19th and early 20th centuries could be drawn to current events in Arizona, where the state government has taken a firm stance on immigration.
“If we look at contemporary situations, you realize these issues stem from race relations from the last 100 years,” she said.
“The news in 2015 isn’t really new. It’s been the state of affairs for quite a long time. For some reason, generation after generation can’t seem to figure this out.”
