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A group of Mexican nationals boarding a bus for repatriation to Mexico from the United States.
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Scared Out of the Community

In the 1930s, approximately half a million Mexicans left the United States. Many families had American-born children to whom Mexico was a foreign land.
Border patrol guarding a group of men sitting on the ground.

The Long History of Deportation Scare Tactics at the U.S.-Mexico Border

The precedents for Trump’s hyped-up immigration crackdown.
President Eisenhower; The silhouette of a hand pressing into a fence that is blocking the American flag.

The Shaky History of Mass Deportations

‘Operation Wetback’ and ‘Mexican Repatriation’ worked—until they didn’t.
Soldiers, sailors and marines in Los Angeles, June 7, 1943, stopping a street car looking for zoot suits.

Where and How the Zoot Suit Riots Swept Across L.A.

A location-based timeline and interactive map of the L.A. Zoot Suit Riots.
Protesters at a police brutality rally at the Texas State Capitol in 1977.

The Killing of José Campos Torres

Decades before the recent police violence in Memphis, a brutally beaten Latino man was tossed by officers into a Houston bayou and drowned.
Employees of print shop

Who Owns the Narrative? Texas Law Enforcement Versus Tejano Journalists

At the turn of the century, Mexican American publications paid a price for challenging the local sheriff and elements of the Texas Rangers.
Bullets from the site of the 1918 massacre in Porvenir, Texas.

A Century Later, Historians Revisit a Texas Massacre

After Texas Rangers and ranchers shot 15 unarmed men and boys in 1918, Porvenir killings were largely forgotten.
Image of the 1970 protest against an unfair dismissal of a teacher in Uvalde.

The Uvalde Student Walkout and the Texas Rangers

Uvalde's current protests against gun control mirror those of student protests in the early 1970s.
Disinfection plant at Santa Fe Street International Bridge

From Bath Riots to Blocking Asylum

Public heath and race at the US-Mexico border.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) listens to former president Donald Trump as they speak during a tour of the U.S.-Mexico border wall on June 30, 2021, in Pharr, Tex. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
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The New Threat to Good Schooling for Minority Americans

The right might be targeting a seminal Supreme Court case that protects educational fairness.
Anita Villarreal with a campaigning Richard J. Daley

The US Arrested Her—Then She Changed Chicago

In the 1960s, Chicago’s white neighborhoods didn’t want Mexican Americans moving in. But one determined real estate broker changed everything.
Copies of the graphic novel "Maus" by Art Spiegelman on bookshelf
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Ensuring White Children’s Happiness Has Long Involved Racist Double Standards

What prioritizing white happiness tells us about race and K-12 education.
Chinese miners in California

The Anti-Asian Roots of Today’s Anti-Immigrant Politics

Long before Trump, politicians on the country’s West Coast mobilized a white working-class base through violent hate of Chinese and Japanese immigrants.
Document from the first session of Congress

California’s Vigilante Tradition

The far-right protestors in Huntington Beach aren’t as novel as they seem.
Wooden cross in the Eli Jackson Methodist Church cemetery in San Juan, Texas.

When Slaves Fled to Mexico

A new book tells the forgotten story of fugitive slaves who found freedom south of the border.
A Border Patrol agent stands by an opening in the U.S. Mexico Border wall.
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Trump’s Border Wall Belongs to Biden Now

A border policy divorced from history can’t do what policymakers want.
Students walk in the streets of Uvalde, Texas during the 1970 Uvalde School Walkout.

Remembering the Uvalde Public School Walkout of 1970

During the heyday of the Chicano Movement, school walkouts were organized to disrupt what activists called “the ongoing mis-education of Chicano students.”

The Deportation Machine

A new book documents the history of three specific mechanisms of expulsion: formal deportation, voluntary departure, and "self-deportation."
E.J. Banks, a Texas Ranger, in front of a school with an effigy of a Black student hanging over the front door

A Century Ago, One Lawmaker Went After the Most Powerful Cops in Texas. Then They Went After Him

The Texas Rangers were vicious enforcers of white power. J.T. Canales, who once fought against them lost, but the reckoning he sought is finally underway.
Armed troops wearing gas masks walk through tear gas at Black Lives Matter protest.
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The Extraordinary Scene Unfolding in Portland Has a Disturbing History

How immigration enforcement and policing became entwined
Trump speech script with "Corona" crossed out and changed to "Chinese" Virus.
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Stop Calling Covid-19 a Foreign Virus

Medical xenophobia has dangerous ramifications.
Mexican tenor Alfonso Ortiz Tirado, La Prensa publisher Ignacio Lozano, and Hollywood actor Antonio Moreno before a performance to benefit the Mexican Clinic in San Antonio

How Three Texas Newspapers Manufactured Three Competing Images of Immigrants

In Depression-era San Antonio, polarized portraits of Mexicans appealed to the biases of readers.

How Not to Build a “Great, Great Wall”

A timeline of border fortification, from 1945 to the Trump Era.
Map of lynchings in Texas.

Lynching In Texas

A website with documents, maps, and essays about the lynchings that occurred in Texas between 1882 and 1945.

The Secret History of Anti-Mexican Violence in Texas

In her groundbreaking new book, Monica Muñoz Martinez uncovers the legacy of a brutal past.
Map of Oregon

Oregon’s Racist Past

Until the mid-20th century, Oregon was perhaps the most racist place outside the southern states, possibly even of all the states.
The river between modern-day El Paso, TX and Ciudad Juarez, CH from the 1857 Mexican Boundary Survey

The River That Became a Warzone

The US-Mexico border wall is disrupting and destroying the lives of a united binational community.
Calle de los Negros, circa 1886.

Calle de los Negros: L.A.'s "Forgotten" Street

How did Calle de los Negros get its name? And why did the city raze it in 1887?

Trump Revives a Shameful Tradition: Targeting a Minority Group with Crime Reports

The president's executive orders and inflammatory rhetoric follow a predictable path.
A map of Mexico and border states.
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The Fear of “Mexicanization”

The anxiety about “Mexicanization” that ran through Reconstruction-Era politics, as Americans saw disturbing political parallels with their southern neighbor.

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