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Our Team

In February 2014, a group of professors met at the National Association of Chicano Chicana Studies Tejas Foco in San Antonio, Texas to discuss strategies for commemorating the centennial of the period of widespread, state sanctioned anti-Mexican violence on the Texas-Mexico border (1910-20). In collaboration with Texas residents who have conducted research and maintained invaluable archives, Refusing to Forget is a multifaceted project that seeks to incite public conversations through efforts such as: museum and online exhibits, historical marker unveilings, lectures, and curricular materials for public school teachers. Our team has worked with state institutions like The Bullock Texas State History Museum and the Texas Historical Commission. We have been published in national news outlets such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, and NBC News, as well as local outlets like The San Antonio Express-News, Austin-American Statesman, and The Houston Chronicle.

Read more about our project and see other publications where we have been quoted.

In The press

John Morán González

Co-Founder

Monica Muñoz Martínez

Co-Founder

Benjamin Johnson

Co-Founder

Sonia Hernández

Co-Founder

Christopher Carmona

Member

Leah LaGrone

Member

Juan Carmona

Member

Annette Rodriguez

Member

Nati Román

Digital Editor

John Morán González

co-founder

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gonzalezjm@gmail.com

From the border town of Brownsville, Texas, John Morán González is the J. Frank Dobie Regents Professor of American and English Literature at the University of Texas at Austin. He has published in journals such as American Literature, American Literary History, Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies, Journal of Latino/Latin American Studies, Nineteenth-Century Contexts, Symbolism, and Western American Literature. He is the author of two books: Border Renaissance: The Texas Centennial and the Emergence of Mexican-American Literature (2009), and The Troubled Union: Expansionist Imperatives in Post-Reconstruction American Novels(2010). He is editor of The Cambridge Companion to Latina/o American Literature (2016). He is co-editor (with Laura Lomas) of The Cambridge History of Latina/o American Literature (2018), which was selected as a 2018 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title. He is co-editor (with Vildan Mahmutoglu) of Communication of Migration in Media and Arts (2020). He co-edited, with Sonia Hernández, the critical anthology Reverberations of Racial Violence: Critical Reflections on the History of the Border (2021). 

 González is a founding member of Refusing to Forget (RTF). A former director of the UT Austin Center for Mexican American Studies (CMAS) and former Acting Director of the Plan II Honors Program, González currently serves on the Board of Directors for Humanities Texas and on the Board of Directors for the Recovering the U.S. Hispanic Literary Heritage Project.

John Morán González

co-founder

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gonzalezjm@gmail.com

From the border town of Brownsville, Texas, John Morán González is the J. Frank Dobie Regents Professor of American and English Literature at the University of Texas at Austin. He has published in journals such as American Literature, American Literary History, Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies, Journal of Latino/Latin American Studies, Nineteenth-Century Contexts, Symbolism, and Western American Literature. He is the author of two books: Border Renaissance: The Texas Centennial and the Emergence of Mexican-American Literature (2009), and The Troubled Union: Expansionist Imperatives in Post-Reconstruction American Novels(2010). He is editor of The Cambridge Companion to Latina/o American Literature (2016). He is co-editor (with Laura Lomas) of The Cambridge History of Latina/o American Literature (2018), which was selected as a 2018 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title. He is co-editor (with Vildan Mahmutoglu) of Communication of Migration in Media and Arts (2020). He co-edited, with Sonia Hernández, the critical anthology Reverberations of Racial Violence: Critical Reflections on the History of the Border (2021). 

 González is a founding member of Refusing to Forget (RTF). A former director of the UT Austin Center for Mexican American Studies (CMAS) and former Acting Director of the Plan II Honors Program, González currently serves on the Board of Directors for Humanities Texas and on the Board of Directors for the Recovering the U.S. Hispanic Literary Heritage Project.

Sonia Hernández

co-founder

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soniah@tamu.edu

Hernández, a native of the Rio Grande Valley, received a Ph.D in Latin American History from the University of Houston in 2006 and is currently Professor and the holder of the George T. & Gladys H. Abell Professorship of Liberal Arts Endowment II in the College of Arts and Sciences at Texas A&M University. She specializes in the intersections of gender and labor in the U.S. –Mexican Borderlands, Chicana/o history, Texas & the Southwest, and Modern Mexico. She has published in Spanish and English; her book, Working Women into the Borderlands (Texas A&M University Press, 2014) received the Sara A. Whaley Book Prize (NWSA), the Liz Carpenter Award (TSHA), The Jim Parish Award (Webb County Heritage Foundation) and was a Weber-Clements (SMU-Clement’s Center) prize finalist. A Spanish translation of this book was published as Mujeres, trabajo y región fronteriza (Tamaulipas: ITCA; Mexico City: INEHRM, 2017). Her book, For a Just and Better World: Engendering Anarchism in the Mexican Borderlands, 1900-1938 (University of Illinois Press, 2021) earned the Taft Labor History Book Prize (LAWCHA & Cornell’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations). She has published in the Journal of American History, Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, LABOR: Studies in Working-Class History, among other places. Her work has been funded by the Texas Council for the Humanities, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Fulbright Foundation. With support from a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship for faculty at HSIs, Hernández’s current book project reexamines the 1901 case of the near lynching of Gregorio Cortez from a transnational and gender perspective. She is a former UT Board of Regents Outstanding Teaching Fellow, former Texas A&M Arts & Humanities Fellow, and former Chancellor EDGES Fellow at Texas A&M University.

Hernández, a native of the Rio Grande Valley, received a Ph.D in Latin American History from the University of Houston in 2006 and is currently Professor and the holder of the George T. & Gladys H. Abell Professorship of Liberal Arts Endowment II in the College of Arts and Sciences at Texas A&M University. She specializes in the intersections of gender and labor in the U.S. –Mexican Borderlands, Chicana/o history, Texas & the Southwest, and Modern Mexico. She has published in Spanish and English; her book, Working Women into the Borderlands (Texas A&M University Press, 2014) received the Sara A. Whaley Book Prize (NWSA), the Liz Carpenter Award (TSHA), The Jim Parish Award (Webb County Heritage Foundation) and was a Weber-Clements (SMU-Clement’s Center) prize finalist. A Spanish translation of this book was published as Mujeres, trabajo y región fronteriza (Tamaulipas: ITCA; Mexico City: INEHRM, 2017). Her book, For a Just and Better World: Engendering Anarchism in the Mexican Borderlands, 1900-1938 (University of Illinois Press, 2021) earned the Taft Labor History Book Prize (LAWCHA & Cornell’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations). She has published in the Journal of American History, Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, LABOR: Studies in Working-Class History, among other places. Her work has been funded by the Texas Council for the Humanities, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Fulbright Foundation. With support from a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship for faculty at HSIs, Hernández’s current book project reexamines the 1901 case of the near lynching of Gregorio Cortez from a transnational and gender perspective. She is a former UT Board of Regents Outstanding Teaching Fellow, former Texas A&M Arts & Humanities Fellow, and former Chancellor EDGES Fellow at Texas A&M University.

Sonia Hernández

co-founder

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soniah@tamu.edu

Sonia Hernández

co-founder

Link Link Twitter Envelope

soniah@tamu.edu

Hernández, a native of the Rio Grande Valley, received a Ph.D in Latin American History from the University of Houston in 2006 and is currently Professor and the holder of the George T. & Gladys H. Abell Professorship of Liberal Arts Endowment II in the College of Arts and Sciences at Texas A&M University. She specializes in the intersections of gender and labor in the U.S. –Mexican Borderlands, Chicana/o history, Texas & the Southwest, and Modern Mexico. She has published in Spanish and English; her book, Working Women into the Borderlands (Texas A&M University Press, 2014) received the Sara A. Whaley Book Prize (NWSA), the Liz Carpenter Award (TSHA), The Jim Parish Award (Webb County Heritage Foundation) and was a Weber-Clements (SMU-Clement’s Center) prize finalist. A Spanish translation of this book was published as Mujeres, trabajo y región fronteriza (Tamaulipas: ITCA; Mexico City: INEHRM, 2017). Her book, For a Just and Better World: Engendering Anarchism in the Mexican Borderlands, 1900-1938 (University of Illinois Press, 2021) earned the Taft Labor History Book Prize (LAWCHA & Cornell’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations). She has published in the Journal of American History, Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, LABOR: Studies in Working-Class History, among other places. Her work has been funded by the Texas Council for the Humanities, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Fulbright Foundation. With support from a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship for faculty at HSIs, Hernández’s current book project reexamines the 1901 case of the near lynching of Gregorio Cortez from a transnational and gender perspective. She is a former UT Board of Regents Outstanding Teaching Fellow, former Texas A&M Arts & Humanities Fellow, and former Chancellor EDGES Fellow at Texas A&M University.

Benjamin Johnson

co-founder

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bjohnson25@luc.edu

Benjamin H. Johnson is Professor in the History Department and School of Environmental Sustainability at Loyola University Chicago. He is the author of numerous works on the U.S. Mexico border and environmental history, including Revolution in Texas: How a Forgotten Rebellion and Its Bloody Suppression Turned Mexicans into Americans (2003) ; Bordertown: The Odyssey of an American Place (Yale University Press, 2008); Escaping the Dark, Gray City: Fear and Hope in Progressive Era Conservation (2017), and Texas: An American History (coming in 2025). He is also a member of “Refusing to Forget”, a public history project devoted to commemorating the legacies of the border violence of the 1910s, which has received awards from the Western History Association, the American Historical Association, and the Organization of American Historians. Johnson has served as co-editor of the Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, currently co-edits the Journal of Texas History and the Weber Series in New Borderlands History at the University of North Carolina Press. He is a member of the Texas Institute of Letters.

Benjamin Johnson

co-founder

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bjohnson25@luc.edu

Benjamin H. Johnson is Professor in the History Department and School of Environmental Sustainability at Loyola University Chicago. He is the author of numerous works on the U.S. Mexico border and environmental history, including Revolution in Texas: How a Forgotten Rebellion and Its Bloody Suppression Turned Mexicans into Americans (2003) ; Bordertown: The Odyssey of an American Place (Yale University Press, 2008); Escaping the Dark, Gray City: Fear and Hope in Progressive Era Conservation (2017), and Texas: An American History (coming in 2025). He is also a member of “Refusing to Forget”, a public history project devoted to commemorating the legacies of the border violence of the 1910s, which has received awards from the Western History Association, the American Historical Association, and the Organization of American Historians. Johnson has served as co-editor of the Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, currently co-edits the Journal of Texas History and the Weber Series in New Borderlands History at the University of North Carolina Press. He is a member of the Texas Institute of Letters.

Monica Muñoz Martínez

co-founder

Dr. Monica Muñoz Martinez is Associate Professor of History and the Clyde Rabb Littlefield Chair in Texas History Fellow. She is an award-winning author, teacher, and public historian. Martinez is the author of The Injustice Never Leaves You: Anti-Mexican Violence in Texas. Martinez’s research documents the long impacts of massacres and racist violence on communities in the U.S. Southwest and offers recommendations for addressing historical harms. Since the tragedy at Robb Elementary in Uvalde, Texas, her hometown, Martinez has been leading a multidisciplinary team of researchers at UT to bring solutions to meet the ongoing and urgent needs in Uvalde and rural communities impacted by mass violence. Martinez is a 2021 MacArthur Foundation Fellow and a Distinguished Lecturer for the Organization of American Historians. Her research has received funding from the Mellon Foundation, the Andrew Carnegie Foundation, and the National Institute for Justice, among others.

Dr. Monica Muñoz Martinez is Associate Professor of History and the Clyde Rabb Littlefield Chair in Texas History Fellow. She is an award-winning author, teacher, and public historian. Martinez is the author of The Injustice Never Leaves You: Anti-Mexican Violence in Texas. Martinez’s research documents the long impacts of massacres and racist violence on communities in the U.S. Southwest and offers recommendations for addressing historical harms. Since the tragedy at Robb Elementary in Uvalde, Texas, her hometown, Martinez has been leading a multidisciplinary team of researchers at UT to bring solutions to meet the ongoing and urgent needs in Uvalde and rural communities impacted by mass violence. Martinez is a 2021 MacArthur Foundation Fellow and a Distinguished Lecturer for the Organization of American Historians. Her research has received funding from the Mellon Foundation, the Andrew Carnegie Foundation, and the National Institute for Justice, among others.

Monica Muñoz Martínez

co-founder

Monica Muñoz Martínez

co-founder

Dr. Monica Muñoz Martinez is Associate Professor of History and the Clyde Rabb Littlefield Chair in Texas History Fellow. She is an award-winning author, teacher, and public historian. Martinez is the author of The Injustice Never Leaves You: Anti-Mexican Violence in Texas. Martinez’s research documents the long impacts of massacres and racist violence on communities in the U.S. Southwest and offers recommendations for addressing historical harms. Since the tragedy at Robb Elementary in Uvalde, Texas, her hometown, Martinez has been leading a multidisciplinary team of researchers at UT to bring solutions to meet the ongoing and urgent needs in Uvalde and rural communities impacted by mass violence. Martinez is a 2021 MacArthur Foundation Fellow and a Distinguished Lecturer for the Organization of American Historians. Her research has received funding from the Mellon Foundation, the Andrew Carnegie Foundation, and the National Institute for Justice, among others.

Christopher Carmona

member

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ccarmonawriter@gmail.com

Dr. Christopher Carmona is the Director of the Center for Mexican American Studies and Research and an Associate Professor at Our Lady of the Lake University of Mexican American Studies and English. He is an award-winning poet and writer. Carmona is a member of the national award-winning organization, Refusing To Forget, which researches and promotes the history of violence against Mexican Americans and Latinos in the early 20th Century and beyond. His latest anthology is Jovita: An Anthology of the Life and Influence of Jovita Idar. Currently, he is working on finishing this series of YA novels. Book Two is out now. He served as the Chair of the NACCS Tejas Foco Committee on Implementing MAS in PreK-12 Education in Texas. He was a leader in getting the TEKS based Mexican American Studies High School Course approved by the Texas State Board of Education. He served on Responsible Ethnic Studies Textbook committee that was awarded the “float like a butterfly, sting like a bee” award for excellence in educational leadership from the Mexican American School Board Association (MASBA). He is also an inductee to the Texas Institute of Letters.

Christopher Carmona

member

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ccarmonawriter@gmail.com

Dr. Christopher Carmona is the Director of the Center for Mexican American Studies and Research and an Associate Professor at Our Lady of the Lake University of Mexican American Studies and English. He is an award-winning poet and writer. Carmona is a member of the national award-winning organization, Refusing To Forget, which researches and promotes the history of violence against Mexican Americans and Latinos in the early 20th Century and beyond. His latest anthology is Jovita: An Anthology of the Life and Influence of Jovita Idar. Currently, he is working on finishing this series of YA novels. Book Two is out now. He served as the Chair of the NACCS Tejas Foco Committee on Implementing MAS in PreK-12 Education in Texas. He was a leader in getting the TEKS based Mexican American Studies High School Course approved by the Texas State Board of Education. He served on Responsible Ethnic Studies Textbook committee that was awarded the “float like a butterfly, sting like a bee” award for excellence in educational leadership from the Mexican American School Board Association (MASBA). He is also an inductee to the Texas Institute of Letters.

Leah LaGrone

member

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leahlao08@gmail.com

Leah LaGrone is an assistant professor of history and public history director at Weber State University in Ogden, Utah. A native of Texas, she graduated from Texas Christian University in Fort Worth with a PhD in history focused on the intersections of borderlands, labor, and gender studies in early 20th century. Her research examines state legislation and the discourse on minimum wages for women, specifically the connections of sex work with low wages. Her current book project, “Sex, Race, and Wages: How the Minimum Wage Movement for Women Influenced Modern America, 1913-1938,” demonstrates that the politics around race and the minimum wage for women drove conversations among labor, politicians, and progressive reformers about the future of white supremacy in Texas.

She has contributed an essay to the anthology “Impeached: The Removal of Texas Governor James E. Ferguson” as well as articles to The Washington Post and NursingClio. She has worked on several public history projects, including “The Civil War Documentary,” “Civil Rights in Black and Brown,” and the Texas State Historical Association’s “Handbook of Texas Women.

Leah LaGrone is an assistant professor of history and public history director at Weber State University in Ogden, Utah. A native of Texas, she graduated from Texas Christian University in Fort Worth with a PhD in history focused on the intersections of borderlands, labor, and gender studies in early 20th century. Her research examines state legislation and the discourse on minimum wages for women, specifically the connections of sex work with low wages. Her current book project, “Sex, Race, and Wages: How the Minimum Wage Movement for Women Influenced Modern America, 1913-1938,” demonstrates that the politics around race and the minimum wage for women drove conversations among labor, politicians, and progressive reformers about the future of white supremacy in Texas.

She has contributed an essay to the anthology “Impeached: The Removal of Texas Governor James E. Ferguson” as well as articles to The Washington Post and NursingClio. She has worked on several public history projects, including “The Civil War Documentary,” “Civil Rights in Black and Brown,” and the Texas State Historical Association’s “Handbook of Texas Women.

Leah LaGrone

member

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leahlao08@gmail.com

Leah LaGrone

member

Twitter Envelope

leahlao08@gmail.com

Leah LaGrone is an assistant professor of history and public history director at Weber State University in Ogden, Utah. A native of Texas, she graduated from Texas Christian University in Fort Worth with a PhD in history focused on the intersections of borderlands, labor, and gender studies in early 20th century. Her research examines state legislation and the discourse on minimum wages for women, specifically the connections of sex work with low wages. Her current book project, “Sex, Race, and Wages: How the Minimum Wage Movement for Women Influenced Modern America, 1913-1938,” demonstrates that the politics around race and the minimum wage for women drove conversations among labor, politicians, and progressive reformers about the future of white supremacy in Texas.

She has contributed an essay to the anthology “Impeached: The Removal of Texas Governor James E. Ferguson” as well as articles to The Washington Post and NursingClio. She has worked on several public history projects, including “The Civil War Documentary,” “Civil Rights in Black and Brown,” and the Texas State Historical Association’s “Handbook of Texas Women.

Juan Carmona

member

Juan P. Carmona is a Social Studies teacher at Donna High School and a dual enrollment History instructor through South Texas College. He graduated with honors from the American Military University with a master’s degree in American History and was awarded the 2018 James F. Veninga Outstanding Teaching Humanities Award by Humanities Texas and was Donna I.S.D.’s Secondary Teacher of the Year for 2017-18. He is a member of the NACCS Tejas Foco Committee for Mexican American Studies K-12. Mr. Carmona is also a member of the award-winning Refusing to Forget Public History Project. His primary field of research is the history of the South Texas borderlands. He is also the Co-founder of Nosotrxs Por El Valle a community public history project with a traveling exhibit highlighting important events in the struggle for Civil Rights in the Rio Grande Valley. He is the author of the book The Alton Bus Crash co-author of The Deadly 1940 Alamo Train Crash and co-author of The Queen Isabella Causeway Collapse.

Juan Carmona

member

Juan P. Carmona is a Social Studies teacher at Donna High School and a dual enrollment History instructor through South Texas College. He graduated with honors from the American Military University with a master’s degree in American History and was awarded the 2018 James F. Veninga Outstanding Teaching Humanities Award by Humanities Texas and was Donna I.S.D.’s Secondary Teacher of the Year for 2017-18. He is a member of the NACCS Tejas Foco Committee for Mexican American Studies K-12. Mr. Carmona is also a member of the award-winning Refusing to Forget Public History Project. His primary field of research is the history of the South Texas borderlands. He is also the Co-founder of Nosotrxs Por El Valle a community public history project with a traveling exhibit highlighting important events in the struggle for Civil Rights in the Rio Grande Valley. He is the author of the book The Alton Bus Crash co-author of The Deadly 1940 Alamo Train Crash and co-author of The Queen Isabella Causeway Collapse.

Annette Rodriguez

Member

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annette.rodriguez@austin.utexas.edu

Annette M. Rodríguez is an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Texas at Austin. Rodríguez concentrates on perennial racist violences in the United States as communicating events that construct and reinforce ideologies and hierarchies of race, gender, citizenship, and national belonging. Her analysis of historical method emphasizes the use of visual culture and is demonstrated in her first book in progress Inventing the Mexican: The Visual Culture of Lynching at the Turn of the Twentieth Century. In addition, Rodríguez has initiated a data, mapping, and social history project on U.S. bounty land grants. This project tracks the over sixty million acres of land granted by both the U.S. federal government and individual states as incentive to serve in the military and as a reward for service. It is provisionally titled Intimate Acquisitions: A Relational History of U.S. Bounty Lands.

Annette M. Rodríguez is an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Texas at Austin. Rodríguez concentrates on perennial racist violences in the United States as communicating events that construct and reinforce ideologies and hierarchies of race, gender, citizenship, and national belonging. Her analysis of historical method emphasizes the use of visual culture and is demonstrated in her first book in progress Inventing the Mexican: The Visual Culture of Lynching at the Turn of the Twentieth Century. In addition, Rodríguez has initiated a data, mapping, and social history project on U.S. bounty land grants. This project tracks the over sixty million acres of land granted by both the U.S. federal government and individual states as incentive to serve in the military and as a reward for service. It is provisionally titled Intimate Acquisitions: A Relational History of U.S. Bounty Lands.

Annette Rodriguez

member

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annette.rodriguez@austin.utexas.edu

Annette Rodriguez

Member

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annette.rodriguez@austin.utexas.edu

Annette M. Rodríguez is an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Texas at Austin. Rodríguez concentrates on perennial racist violences in the United States as communicating events that construct and reinforce ideologies and hierarchies of race, gender, citizenship, and national belonging. Her analysis of historical method emphasizes the use of visual culture and is demonstrated in her first book in progress Inventing the Mexican: The Visual Culture of Lynching at the Turn of the Twentieth Century. In addition, Rodríguez has initiated a data, mapping, and social history project on U.S. bounty land grants. This project tracks the over sixty million acres of land granted by both the U.S. federal government and individual states as incentive to serve in the military and as a reward for service. It is provisionally titled Intimate Acquisitions: A Relational History of U.S. Bounty Lands.

Nati Román

RTF digital editor

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natirmn@gmail.com

Nati Román is a student majoring in Mexican American and Latina/o Studies and minoring in digital humanities at the University of Texas at Austin. She is an alumni of San Antonio College where she served as President of Somos La Gente, a Mexican American Studies student organization that led the effort to remove the Texas Ranger mascot from the campus.

Nati Román

RTF digital editor

Nati Román is a student majoring in Mexican American and Latina/o Studies and minoring in digital humanities at the University of Texas at Austin. She is an alumni of San Antonio College where she served as President of Somos La Gente, a Mexican American Studies student organization that led the effort to remove the Texas Ranger mascot from the campus.

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natirmn@gmail.com

Nati Román

RTF digital editor

Envelope

natirmn@gmail.com

Nati Román is a student majoring in Mexican American and Latina/o Studies and minoring in digital humanities at the University of Texas at Austin. She is an alumni of San Antonio College where she served as President of Somos La Gente, a Mexican American Studies student organization that led the effort to remove the Texas Ranger mascot from the campus. 

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