Mexican flag with the BLM flag. Mexican Americans in Atlanta joining #GeorgeFloydProtests
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
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
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
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
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 http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtid=3&psid=3692
And the first photo above in this tread was taken by @photobgray
Full disclosure: I come from a now 5th generation Mexican American family in Houston and it includes brothers and sisters from the diaspora. Our city was connected to the Underground Railroad to Mexico. Look out for my story in June #familia #primos #primas
You can follow @RussContreras.
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