“You cannot uneducate the person who has learned to read. You cannot humiliate the person who feels pride. You cannot oppress the people who are not afraid anymore.” – Cesar Chavez

Most people know the names of civil rights activist Cesar Chavez, actor and playwright Lin-Manuel Miranda, and Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor who became the first Latina, and the third woman, to serve on the Supreme Court in 2009. But what about Ellen Ochoa, the first female Hispanic astronaut to go to space? Or physicist Luis W. Alvarez who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1968? Or Civil rights activist Sylvia Mendez whose case, Mendez v. Westminster in 1947, ended the segregation of Hispanic kids across four school districts in California paving the way for Brown v. Board of Education in 1955? 

This September 15 starts off #HispanicHeritageMonth. At the Korematsu Institute, all of our stories from every community blend together to create the American story. Every contribution to the building of our nation and culture can be found in Chinese immigrants helping to build our transcontinental railroads and enslaved African Americans helping shape the nation’s identity from their treatment as enslaved workers to demanding the ideals of the Constitution be upheld in their contributions to the Civil Rights Movement. We also can learn from our mistakes such as the Japanese American Incarceration that placed 125,000 Japanese American citizens and descendants in camps during World War II and the decimation of indigenous communities across the country through the 20th century. It is our shared history, blended through our fabric of every tribal resident sharing their story to every immigrant from Europe, Asia, Africa, and South America doing the same. 

From September 15 to October 15, we honor Hispanic Heritage Month to celebrate the contributions of Hispanic and Latino communities that have shaped American history. At the Korematsu Institute, we believe that prejudice is rooted in ignorance. The most powerful tool to fight ignorance and erasure is education. There is no place more important than the public education classroom for sharing the truths, histories, and voices of all of our communities. As Cesar Chavez noted, when we learn each other’s stories, we are better for it and can treat each other as equals. We owe this to our youth. We owe it to our shared future. This is about all of us. 

This month we hope you learn more and honor the people, culture, and contributions of our Hispanic communities across the United States and its territories. 

If you would like to learn more about it and why it kicks off mid-month (one reason is that it is the anniversary of independence for Latin American countries Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua), you can visit: https://www.hispanicheritagemonth.gov/