Curatorial Statement for Brooklyn College Library Exhibit in Honor of Professor Paul Ortiz, Robert L. Hess Scholar-in-Residence (2023-24)

The exhibit in the Brooklyn College Library honors the scholarship and activism of this year’s Robert L. Hess Scholar-in-Residence, Professor Paul Ortiz.

Paul Ortiz is Professor of History and Director of the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program at the University of Florida. He is a scholar of African American history, Latinx history, labor and social movement history, and oral history and is the author of several books including, African American and Latinx History of the United States (2018) and Emancipation Betrayed: The Hidden History of Black Organizing and White Violence in Florida from Reconstruction to the Bloody Election of 1920 (2005). These volumes, along with works Professor Ortiz has edited and co-authored are featured in the exhibit.

Professor Ortiz is also deeply committed to labor rights activism and academic freedom. His pathway to academia included working as an organizer with the United Farm Workers, the Farm Labor Organizing Committee and many other unions and community organizations. Along with his scholarship, the exhibit features numerous photographs taken from the many rallies, readings, lectures, panels, protests and teach-ins he has organized or participated in throughout his life and career.

The exhibit was curated by Prof. Helen Georgas and is located in the main entrance lobby of the Brooklyn College Library.

The Robert L. Hess Scholar-in-Residence Program, established by Brooklyn College, is supported by the Robert L. Hess Fund. The program serves as a permanent tribute to the scholarly commitment of Robert L. Hess, exemplified during his tenure as president of Brooklyn College. It represents the ideal of the educated individual—knowledgeable, thoughtful, inquiring, alive to the shared purposes and concerns lining all intellectual pursuits. More particularly, it evokes the scholarly and academic virtues embodied in the curriculum at Brooklyn College.

In addition to this exhibit, please visit “Years of Hardship: Colonialism in the Horn of Africa, 1935-1941,” which examines the rise and fall of Italian colonialism in the Horn of Africa through the lives of individual Ethiopians, Eritreans, and Italians and draws upon materials from the Robert L. Hess Collection (exhibit is located near Special Collections, first floor of the Library).

Paul Ortiz is Professor of History and Director of the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program at the University of Florida. He is the author of several books including, African American and Latinx History of the United States (2018) and Emancipation Betrayed: The Hidden History of Black Organizing and White Violence in Florida from Reconstruction to the Bloody Election of 1920 (2005); co-editor of People Power: History, Organizing and Larry Goodwyn’s Democratic Vision in the Twenty-First Century (2021); and Remembering Jim Crow: African Americans Tell About Life in the Segregated South (2014). 

Ortiz’s An African American and Latinx History of the United States was identified by Bustle as one of “Ten Books About Race to Read Instead of Asking a Person of Color to Explain Things to You.” Fortune Magazine listed it as one of the “10 books on American history that actually reflect the United States.” 

He has published essays in The American Historical Review, Latino Studies, Cultural Dynamics, The Oral History Review, Kalfou, Florida Historical Quarterly, and many other journals. He has been interviewed by Agencia De Noticias Del Estado Mexicano, ARD German Radio and Television, Newsweek, Telemundo, The New Yorker, MoneyGeek, The Guardian, Washington Post, BBC, Hong Kong Daily Apple, The New York Times, and other media on the histories of social movements and immigration and other topics.

Prof. Ortiz is a former president of the Oral History Association. The Society of American Archivists bestowed its Diversity Award on the UF’s Proctor Oral History Program for its “relentless pursuit of community knowledge, local voices, and academic transformation that has created a monumental program impacting the lives of countless people in Florida and across the nation.” The Doris Duke Charitable Trust noted that the program’s “social justice research methodologies are the focus of scholars and oral history programs across the globe.” 

Prof. Ortiz is a PEN-award winning writer and a National Archives Distinguished Fellow in Latinx History. Paul was a consultant and featured narrator for Henry Louis Gates Jr.’s The Black Church: This is Our Story. This Is Our Song, which premiered on PBS in 2021. He is a consultant and featured narrator for John Leguizamo’s American Historia docuseries on Latino history that will air on PBS in 2024.

Prof. Ortiz is a third-generation military veteran and a first-generation college graduate. He served with the 82nd Airborne Division and 7th Special Forces Group in Central America where he worked in multiple combat zones. He received the US Armed Forces’ Humanitarian Service Medal for meritorious action in the wake of the eruption of the Nevado del Ruiz stratovolcano in 1985. 

Prof. Ortiz received his PhD in history from Duke University in 2000. He earned his BA from the Evergreen State College in 1990 and his Associate of Arts degree from Olympic College in 1988. His pathway to academia included working as an organizer with the United Farm Workers, the Farm Labor Organizing Committee and many other unions and community organizations. 

Professor Ortiz is deeply committed to labor rights activism and organizing. In 2013, he received the César E. Chávez Action and Commitment Award from the Florida Education Association, AFL-CIO for “outstanding leadership through engaging in activities which dignify workers and by making notable contributions to the labor movement and demonstrating resilience in organizing workers, especially those who have been traditionally disadvantaged.”

In 2024, he received the National Council for Leadership’s César Chávez Liderazgo Award which reflects on the legacy of César Chávez as a Civil Rights and Labor Leader for Farmworker Rights. The award celebrates and recognizes individuals who continue to make an impact today—leaders that are building on the legacy of César Chávez through advocacy, civil and labor rights, economic empowerment, education and impacting social change.

Prof. Ortiz is a past president of the United Faculty of Florida-UF (FEA-AFL-CIO), the union that represents tenured and non-tenure track faculty at UF.

Photos (clockwise from above):

Prof. Ortiz during a speech in support of unionized campus workers at UC Santa Cruz, 2008.

In front of the UF Library, during one of the many protests and teach-ins held in advance of Richard Spencer’s visits to UF, 2017.

Prof. Ortiz with Manuel Cortez, President of the United Farm Workers of Washington State and Baldemar Velasquez, President of the Farm Labor Organizing Committee. They are marching to the state capitol in Olympia, Washington in support of the eight-year boycott of Chateau Ste. Michelle wines, 1993.

At the UF Graduate Assistants United “No Fees” rally speaking on behalf of United Faculty of Florida at UF, 2015.

Prof. Ortiz met his wife Sheila in the late 1980s as labor organizers with the United Farm Workers of Washington State.  Here they share the stage at a rally at Sylvester Park in Olympia, Washington building support for the boycott of Chateau Ste. Michelle wines, 1993. In 1995, the boycott resulted in a union contract for the vineyard workers in the Yakima Valley and remains in force to this day.

Prof. Ortiz and his wife Sheila at a Black Lives Matter march with Veterans for Peace, Gainesville, Florida, 2015.

In 2023, the number of challenged books reached the highest levels ever documented by the American Library Association (ALA). Titles representing the voices and lived experiences of LGBTQIA+ and BIPOC individuals made up 47 percent of challenged books. 

Prof. Ortiz’s An African American and Latinx History of the United States is one of the many books that have been targeted for removal from school libraries and classrooms.

In the photo above, Prof. Ortiz is participating in the “Banned Books Readout” hosted by the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH), the oldest African American History organization in the United States, in Jacksonville, Florida, September 21, 2023.

Other distinguished social justice leaders who read from banned books that day included Angela Davis, Johnetta Cole, Angie Nixon, Rodney Hurst, Charlie Cobb, Jr., and Ryan Sinclair, among others.

Prof. Ortiz read from Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five. Other banned books included in the Readout were James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time, Toni Morrison’s Paradise, Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, Jacqueline Woodson’s Brown Girl Dreaming, and Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.

As a scholar of African American history, Latinx history, labor and social movement history, and oral history, Prof. Ortiz is frequently invited to share his research with colleagues, students, and community members at colleges and institutions across the country including the African American Policy Forum, Yale University’s Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition, Florida Gulf Coast University, and the CUNY Graduate Center, among many other venues.

The group photo (left) was taken at the 2014 Confronting RacialCapitalism Event at the CUNY Graduate Center honoring Cedric Robinson. Pictured along with Prof. Ortiz is Angela Davis, Cedric Robinson, and Ruthie Gilmore, among others.