The Underground Railroad to Mexico exposes a neglected history about the Black experience in the Americas. It's likely more enslaved Black people in the US escaped to Mexico than originally thought
#bhm
#blackhistorymonth
For historical perspective, this isn’t the first time black and Latino activists have come together to protest police violence. Here’s Bobby Seale of the Black Panthers and Chicano leader Reies Tijerina and Oakland’s Brown Berets at Defremery Park in West Oakland in 1968
Uvalde, Texas, is the site of one of the most important school walkouts in civil rights history. What Mexican American students did there in 1970 helped students like me years later
The Underground Railroad to Mexico. Across Texas and parts of Louisiana, scholars are working to piece together a puzzle of a largely forgotten piece of American history: a network that helped thousands of Black slaves escape to south of the border.
Florida is one of 19 states that have passed laws or used executive orders to limit the teaching of what it calls "divisive concepts" or critical race theory since 2021. Schools are removing conventional books like this one on Roberto Clemente
Google is honoring Jovita Idár, a Mexican American journalist who stood up to the Texas Rangers who wanted to shut down the newspaper, El Progreso, in 1914. She pushed for women's rights and education of Mexican American children. Oh, and she's not in the
@NAHJ
Fall of Fame.
These have been tough years for Central Americans in the US.
But tonight...Teófimo López, the Brooklyn-born 23-year-old son of Honduran immigrants, is the unified world lightweight champion. A star is born after beating the best fighter in the world
#boxing
BREAKING: Authorities say the 21-year-old white man accused of carrying out the deadly mass shooting at an El Paso Walmart confessed after surrendering and said he had been targeting Mexicans
#ElPasoShooting
Richard M. Fierro, a Mexican American brewery owner who served for 15 years in the military, was at the nightclub in Colorado Springs with his family when the gunman opened fire. He heard gunshots and went into action.
Mexican Americans make up the nation's largest Latino group (37M). They remain politically outshined by more recently arrived Cuban Americans (2M). Mexis fought Jim Crow, mass deportations, poverty, racism. CAs got automatic protections and had money.
Personal news: I am now the Justice and Race reporter at
@axios
and will cover the policies and agencies at the heart of the administration of justice and how it impacts people of color. I will remain in New Mexico and cover the beat nationally!
Noted scholar and author
@esglaude
Eddie S. Glaude is launching a new podcast examining American history and the country's troubled legacy on race. The six-part series — "History is US" — will be produced by Jon Meacham's Shining City Audio
Today is the 50th anniversary of Ruben Salazar’s death. The groundbreaking journalist was killed by a Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputiy following an anti-Vietnam War protest in LA. I stand on his shoulders today while reporting from Kenosha, Wisconsin.
AP EXCLUSIVE: A series of missteps at the nation’s top public health agency caused a critical shortage of reliable laboratory tests for the coronavirus, hobbling the federal response as the pandemic spread across the country like wildfire
#coronavirus
Love that
#TheBeatlesGetBack
is giving some time to keyboardist Billy Preston, the only musician given credit on a Beatles label; the group's 1969 single "Get Back" was credited as "The Beatles with Billy Preston.” He was a Black gay musician born in Houston. Overlooked today.
Reminder: The Albuquerque-born Demi Lovato is a descendant of Francisco Perea, a Hispanic hero for the Union in the Civil War who saw President Abraham Lincoln’s assassination
#Inauguration2021
Rudolfo Anaya, a writer who helped launch the 1970s Chicano Literature Movement with his novel “Bless Me, Ultima,” a book celebrated by Latinos, has died at 82. The World War II-era novel is about a Mexican American boy’s relationship with a curandera
AP BREAKING: Joe Biden picks California Sen. Kamala Harris as his running mate, making her the first Black woman on a major party presidential ticket. Harris, a 55-year-old first-term senator, is one of the party's most prominent figures.
Teachers and civil rights activists are organizing and preparing to go to court to stop conservatives' efforts to block curriculum about institutional racism that some mislabel as critical race theory
#edchat
#education
July 4th has always hurt me. I could have a long line of Mexican Americans who couldn’t vote, couldn’t buy homes in certain places and had hide from the KKK and Texas Rangers. Then I remember Uncle Ciprian. He suffered a concussion at Iwo Jima. And then:
Happy Cinco de Mayo. Day is marketed in the U.S. as a fun holiday for getting drunk and eating tacos. But its origins are linked to California Latinos who saw a battle in Mexico in 1862 as a victory for abolition during the Civil War
U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) and Rep. Darren Soto (D-Fla.) announced Tuesday they would introduce legislation to start the motions for Puerto Rico statehood. Would be 51st state
#nmpol
#Borinquen
#Boriqu
én
.
@Axios
Latino wrote about his brewery last year. They are a puro Chicano family. Jessica Fierro opened the Atrevida Beer Company and has won a number of awards and earned a shout-out for her ingenuity from civil rights leader Dolores Huerta.
The Department of Justice
@CivilRights
announced on Thursday it is opening a "pattern or practice" investigation into the city of Phoenix and the Phoenix Police Department over allegations of excessive force,
@axios
'
@ivanas26
reports
Since Jackie Kennedy is trending on Twitter for that other reason, here she is enjoying a night with Mexican American civil rights activists in Houston just hours before her husband is assassinated. She urged the crowd to vote
Here’s the moment a Southern California Latina high school student found out she was accepted into
@Harvard
. Her father had been detained by ICE and her family was struggling during the pandemic
Breaking News!
Congratulations Cielo Echegoyen!
Fifth Student in History of SAUSD - Cielo Echegoyen, Admitted to Harvard University!
Congratulations to Santa Ana High School student, Cielo Echegoyen!
Chicano leader Reies Lopes Tijerina and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. were planning a Poor People’s March with united black and Latino activists in DC before King’s assassination. The march was also to focus on police violence
#GeorgeFloyd
"I'll Be Home For Christmas" was a popular song for US soldiers preparing for the 1944 invasion of Germany. My Uncle Ernest heard it in cold Belgium. He'd be blown by Cuban American singer Camila Cabello's version with a mariachi band at the White House.
ANNOUNCING a new
@Axios
Latino newsletter covering the Latino community.
@marina_ef
of
@TelemundoNews
and myself join a new partnership between Axios and Noticias Telemundo. Watchala, guey! First edition due next week:
Here's a short documentary on Jovita Idár, a Mexican American journalist who fought against the lynching of Latinos and tried to point out the discrimination Mexican Americans faced in the early 1900s.
Capitol Hill's reaction to the Penn Senate debate was brutal for Dem nominee John Fetterman, from Democrats and Republicans alike. Multiple sources wondered why Fetterman agreed to debate when he clearly wasn’t ready,
@JoshKraushaar
@alaynatreene
report
58 years ago tonite, President Kennedy and Jackie spoke to a crowd of Mexican Americans in Houston for a
@LULAC
event. It was the first time in history a sitting president acknowledged the Latino vote. The next day he want to Dallas.
#jfk
And for one historic perspective on black and Latino civil rights struggles, checkout my high school/undergraduate classmate
@HistoryBrian
’s book “Fighting Their Own Battles: Mexican Americans, African Americans, and the Struggle for Civil Rights in Texas”
#GeorgeFloyd
"When they do put Latinos on CNN or MSNBC, it's usually from an East Coast perspective and they don't understand Mexican Americans (the largest Latino group) on the West Coast.”
America's media habits divide along political and racial lines
New Mexico has elected the most Latinos to statewide office of any state — and they're all Democrats.
@GovMLG
became the 3rd Hispanic NM governor in a row to win re-election. No other state has elected three people of color to governorships in a row
New Mexico State Rep. Derrick Lenten of Sandia Pueblo represented New Mexico last night at the
#DNC
. Lente sponsored a bill to transform Columbus Day into Indigenous People’s Day in New Mexico
#native
Bobby Lee Verdugo, one of the leaders of the 1968 East Los Angeles high school walkout to protest discrimination and dropout rates among Mexican American students, which triggered a movement across the American Southwest, died Friday. He was 69
My daughters and I are remembering John Singleton by dancing to Michael Jackson’s ‘Remember the Time,’ a music video Singleton directed in 1992 when I was a senior in high school
#JohnSingleton
My aunt Hortense died peacefully this morning. She was 91. She was married for more than 70 years to my late-uncle Ernest and stood by his side as he served
@LULAC
and fought for civil rights in Houston. She met President Kennedy the night before his assassination
'Roma' actress Yalitza Aparicio didn’t capture Best Actress at
#Oscars
but she gained fans in the US who saw themselves in her and saw their past in her present
#Oscars2019
#native
The family of Malcolm X released a letter Saturday purportedly written by a now-deceased police officer alleging that the New York Police Department and FBI were behind the 1965 assassination of the Black civil rights leader
Breaking: Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham has issued executive order protecting abortion access in
#NM
. Among other things, order protects health care professionals and assets state will not not comply with abortion-related extradition requests from other states.
#nmpol
.
@WHCOS
Ron Klain says a 1968 Robert F. Kennedy campaign event at his father’s Indianapolis plumbing business got him hooked on politics:
"When you choose sites for these political events, you change people's lives. It absolutely changed my life."
#AxiosOnHBO
The Rev. Rob Lee, a descendant of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee, says the presence of the Confederate flag inside the U.S. Capitol this week was an "attack on democracy."
The 1st Black woman to run for vice president in US history was trailblazing newspaperwoman Charlotta Spears Bass. The groundbreaking journalist and civil rights activist is the subject of a
@PBSAmerMasters
film
Taco trucks on every corner: About 99% of all Americans live near at least one Mexican restaurant, a new Pew Research Center analysis of data from SafeGraph has found.
#mexicanfood
Google is paying homage to Felicitas Mendez, a Puerto Rican woman. She and her Mexican immigrant husband, Gonzalo Mendez, led a school desegregation fight in California. It set up the Brown vs. Board of Ed landmark case.
#history
AP BREAKING
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — Democrats gain US House seat in New Mexico as Xochitl Torres Small defeats Republican Yvette Herrell to pick up US House seat for Dems
#nmpol
#ElectionNight
The plot thickens. My family has determined this colorized photo shows my great-great-grandmother, Francisca Martinez. She was born in Monclova, Mexico, a town known for helping formerly enslaved people from the U.S. and was a possible stop on the Underground Railroad to Mexico
New Mexico has elected its first Hispanic to the US Senate in a generation. The most Latino state in the US hasn’t had a Hispanic US Senator since 1977. It used to elect them regularly.
@benraylujan
will be heading to the US Senate.
Her name is Sarah La Morena. She's an African American woman raised by a loving Mexican family. This is the result. She grew up in Zacatecas, Mexico, where she tended horses on a rancho. We got your back
@saritapalafox
Go get it.
Also unknown to most: Mexican American scholar and civil rights advocate George I Sanchez once received a letter from NAACP lawyer Thurgood Marshall about a California desegregation case Sanchez worked on. Marshall wanted some ideas for a case in Kansas
#GeorgeFloyd
Actually, some can learn from me. My great grandfather Florencio Contreras (left) was a blacksmith who put on horseshoes in Houston, Texas, for Black, white, and Mexican American cowboys. Four of his sons, including my grandfather, served in WWII. I come from the heart of America
Sarah Palafox, an African American woman raised by a Mexican immigrant family, has generated excitement w/ her versions of regional Mexican music. Born in California but raised in Zacatecas,
@sarahlamorenaa
also faced a racist backlash.
Fewer Americans are trying to get out of jury duty, and legal experts say this may reflect people's growing desire to combat systemic racism
#legal
#law
Since we are discussing team name changes, the Texas Rangers baseball team's name also holds a painful history with Mexican Americans. Here's my 2019 story about how the Texas Rangers wiped out a town after a mass lynching
In towns, villages and cities in the West, Mexican Americans were subjected to torture, lynchings and other violence at the hands of white mobs and law enforcement agencies such as the Texas Rangers. That history is largely unknown (from
@AP
)
#redsummer
Latinos are severely underrepresented in the media industry and have made few gains in film, television, or newsrooms since 2014, according to a preliminary U.S. Government Accountability Office report.
@JoaquinCastrotx
demanded the audit
@nahj
Tens of millions have watched "A Charlie Brown Christmas" every year since it first aired in 1965, but few realize the beloved special has a Mexican American godfather who transformed the popular newspaper comic strip "Peanuts" into a holiday classic
SCOOP: Ex-CNN exec S. Mitra Kalita and Philly radio exec Sara Lomax-Reese have launched a newsletter to expand local news on Black and brown communities to national audiences
#mediadiversity
@aaja
@NABJ
@najournalists
@NAHJ
AP BREAKING: Another bookstore cancels a planned event around “American Dirt.”
“There has been a growing controversy around this book, with concerns focusing on cultural appropriation and stereotypes, among other things,” the Houston bookstore tweeted.
Uvalde High School seniors had visited Robb Elementary School just a day before the massacre, wearing their graduation robes and high-fiving the grade-schoolers, who lined up in the hallways — a community tradition.
A few thousand Black Ukrainians live in the nation's major cities. An Olympic gold medalist serving and 1st Black member of parliament is urging fellow countrymen to resist the Russian invasion, highlighting the vulnerable Afro Ukrainian population
Two Hispanic congressmen, Reps. Joaquin Castro and Ruben Gallego, are asking Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to remove Trump loyalists from a panel charged with renaming 10 Army bases that honor Confederate leaders
#NM
Republican
@Yvette4congress
goes on Fox News, says she’s not conceding US House race in
#NM
to
@XochforCongress
, doesn’t correct pronouncation of Xochitil’s name, alleges vote fraud, says everyone previously declared her winner. The
@AP
did not
#nmpol
And let’s not forget the Plan de San Diego in 1915 — an attempt create a “Liberating Army of Races and Peoples” for Mexican Americans, African Americans and Japanese Americans in Texas. Goal: create black republic in South, return Native lands
Cuban Americans in South Florida were outraged in 2000 over the international custody battle over Elián González. But that was just one kid. In the 1930s, tens of thousands of Mexican American children (yes, Americans) were deported. Then forgotten.
This was a deeply personal story to research and write. During my reporting, I found out that my great grandfather’s mother was born in Monclova, Mexico. That was a stop on the Underground Railroad to Mexico. Her name was Francisca Martinez
It should also be noted that The Beatles once OPENED for Trini Lopez in Paris. “The French newspapers would say ‘Bravo Trini Lopez! Who are The Beatles?’” Lopez later told the web site .
The Emancipator, one of the nation's first antislavery newspapers of the 19th century, is being revived as part of a new project to discuss and debate racial justice in the U.S. today,
@binajv
and
@DrIbram
announced