Tony Diaz, El Librotraficante & Literary Curator for the Latino Bookstore at the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center (GCAC) in San Antonio Texas, welcomes professor Dr. Jesús Jesse Esparza, Associate Professor in the Department of History, Geography, and General Studies at Texas Southern University, to discuss his book RAZA SCHOOLS (University of Oklahoma Press, 2023) ahead of his Texas Author Series appearance on November 10th, 2023 at the GCAC's Latino Bookstore.
Join us on NP LIve on October 16th, 2023 at 6:30 PM CDT as part of Nuestra Palabra's multi-stream platform broadcast on Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter.
In 1929, a Latino community in the borderlands city of Del Rio, Texas, established the first and perhaps only autonomous Mexican American school district in Texas history. How it did so—against a background of institutional racism, poverty, and segregation—is the story Jesús Jesse Esparza tells in RAZA SCHOOLS, a history of the rise and fall of the San Felipe Independent School District from the end of World War I through the post–civil rights era.
Telling the complex story of how territorial pride, race and racism, politics, economic pressures, local control, and the federal government collided in Del Rio, Raza Schools recovers a lost chapter in the history of educational civil rights—and in doing so, offers a more nuanced understanding of race relations, educational politics, and school activism in the US-Mexico borderlands.
Dr. Jesús Jesse Esparza is an Associate Professor of History in the College of Liberal Arts and Behavioral Sciences at Texas Southern University, where he has taught since 2009. His area of
expertise is on the history of Latinos in the United States, emphasizing civil rights activism. Dr. Esparza’s manuscript, Raza Schools: The Fight for Latino Educational Autonomy in a West
Texas Borderlands Town, is scheduled for release in September 2023. The University of Oklahoma Press will publish it as part of the New Directions in Tejano History series. Dr. Esparza teaches Mexican American, Texas, and Civil Rights history. He received his B.A. and a master’s degree in History from Southwest Texas State University and a Ph.D. in History in 2008 from the University of Houston.
Writer and activist Tony Diaz, El Librotraficante, is a Cultural Accelerator. He was the first Chicano to earn a Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Houston Creative Writing Program. In 1998, he founded Nuestra Palabra: Latino Writers Having Their Say (NP), Houston’s first reading series for Latino authors. The group galvanized Houston’s Community Cultural Capital to become a movement for civil rights, education, and representation. When Arizona officials banned Mexican American Studies, Diaz and four veteran members of NP organized the 2012 Librotraficante Caravan to smuggle books from the banned curriculum back into Arizona. He is the author of The Aztec Love God. His book, The Tip of the Pyramid: Cultivating Community Cultural Capital, is the first in his series on Community Organizing. Tony hosts Latino Politics and News and the Nuestra Palabra Radio Show on 90.1 FM, KPFT, Houston’s Community Station. He is also a political analyst on “What’s Your Point?” on Fox 26 Houston.
* This is part of a Nuestra Palabra Multiplatform broadcast.
* Video airs on www.Fox26Houston.com.
* Audio airs on 90.1 FM Houston, KPFT, Houston's Community Station, where our show began.
Roxana Guzman, Multiplatform Producer
Rodrigo Bravo, Jr., Audio Producer
Radame Ortiez, SEO Director
Marc-Antony Piñón, Graphics Designer
Leti Lopez, Music Director
Bryan Parras, co-host and producer emeritus
Liana Lopez, co-host and producer emeritus
Lupe Mendez, co-host, and producer emeritus
Nuestra Palabra is funded in part by the BIPOC Arts Network Fund.
Instrumental Music produced / courtesy of Bayden Records baydenrecords.beatstars.com
