An Educational Symposium Co-Sponsored by Courageous Conversations Georgetown and the Race and Ethnicity Studies Program at Southwestern University

This is the second symposium that has been designed to explore our American history and to come to terms with how racial biases have negatively impacted not only those in the past but continue to give rise to injustices today.   The focus of this symposium is to examine how those of Mexican descent living in Texas have experienced for generations white racial discrimination and injustices, even though this difficult history has rarely been confronted or acknowledged.   To that end, we have invited two perspectives on this history- the first will be a presentation given by a historian whose scholarship has addressed this racial violence and discrimination in Texas that Mexicans and Mexican-Americans have had to endure.  The second presentation will be given by a local community activist who has experienced first-hand herself white racial discrimination and who works with Latinos here in our community who have also struggled with injustices because of their racial heritage. 

Symposium Presenters

Dr. Monica Munoz Martinez is the Stanley J. Bernstein Assistant Professor of American Studies and Ethnic Studies at Brown University and an Andrew Carnegie fellow. She an award-winning author, educator, and public historian. Her research specializes in histories of violence, policing on the US-Mexico border, Latinx history, women and gender studies, and public humanities. Her forthcoming book The Injustice Never Leaves You: Anti-Mexican Violence in Texas (Harvard University Press, Sept 2018) is a moving account of a little-known period of state-sponsored racial terror inflicted on ethnic Mexicans in the Texas–Mexico borderlands. She is currently at work on Mapping Violence a digital research project that recovers histories of racial violence in Texas between 1900 and 1930. Martinez is also a founding member of the non-profit organization Refusing to Forget that calls for public commemorations of anti-Mexican violence in Texas. Born and raised in south Texas, Dr. Martinez received her Ph.D. in American Studies from Yale University. 

Norma B. Perales, Executive Director of the Southeast Georgetown Community Council (SEGCC).  As the founding member of the Southeast Georgetown Community Council, Mrs. Perales holds a Professional Service Coordinator certification, a Public Housing Specialist certification, a Family Self Sufficiency Professional Service Coordinator certification and is a trained Family and Parenting Instructor and a Volunteer Trainer Specialist focusing on Cultural awareness and Domestic Violence issues. Aside from SEGCC, she owns and operates a bilingual consulting business called Servicios Bilingues. Her community activism includes forming two nonprofits, the SEGCC and the Madison County Hispanic Association; forming community support groups such as Club de Oro, ALCANCE Women’s Support Group, GHA Men’s Group; previously owned and operated two bilingual newspapers, La Estrella Hispana and Mi Pueblo; is a former, two term State Commissioner for the State of Nebraska’s Mexican-American Commission and member of Congressman John Carter’s Hispanic Council.   Mrs. Perales presentation will focus on Americans of Mexican Descent Yesterday vs Today – How others see us and how we see ourselves.

Sponsored by

This Educational Symposium is Co-Sponsored by Courageous Conversations Georgetown and the Race and Ethnicity Program at Southwestern University, with additional support from the Departments of History, Philosophy, Political Science, Religion, Sociology and Anthropology, and the Feminist Studies Program.