The San Antonio-based Mexican American Civil Rights Institute has received a cash injection from banker Wells Fargo to expand its digital programming.
The new $20,000 grant will help MACRI expand access to its online resources for teachers and stage its first digital exhibition. The organization is an independent nonprofit dedicated to chronicling and disseminating Mexican American civil rights history.
“We have all witnessed the power of digital connections during the pandemic, and we believe digital content will continue to be essential beyond the pandemic,” MACRI Interim Executive Director Sarah Zenaida Gould said in a release. “This grant will help us grow how we use digital media to connect today’s public to a vitally important past. Perhaps now more than ever, we need to know our nation’s full history to engage our present.”
MACRI’s digital exhibition will highlight Mexican American civil rights leaders and groups originating in San Antonio and South Texas. It will also reveal connections between the Alamo City and the national struggle for equal rights in education, employment, housing, voting and economic opportunity.
San Antonio has long been a center of Mexican American civil rights activism, from Emma Tenayuca and her work to organize pecan shellers in the ’30s to Willie Velásquez’s later fights to increase voter registration and education.
The grant is MACRI’s first from a corporate sponsor since it launched last year.
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This article appears in Jan 27 – Feb 9, 2021.
