December 2, 2022
Robles contributes to award-winning book
An edited collection to which David Robles, assistant professor in the social transformation studies department, contributed a chapter is the 2022 recipient of the Oral History Association's Best Book Award.
The book, "Civil Rights in Black and Brown: Histories of Resistance and Struggle in Texas," was published by the University of Texas Press in 2021. Robles' chapter, "'It was Us against Us': The Pharr Riot of 1971 and the People's Uprising against El Jefe Politico," presents a community history of the small South Texas border town of Pharr, which experienced a police riot in 1971 when the members of the ethnic Mexican community protested incidents of police brutality at the height of the Chicano movement. The chapter explores how the ethnic Mexican community addressed decades-long practices of racial, social, political, and economic oppression before, during and after the police riot.