“Thinking You Know Enough to Believe You are Right” with Mario Salas – Education must be honest in uncovering the past, for the past informs the present. It has a liberating goal to directly challenge the injustices that have been shored up with false narrations of reality. Today, we must speak truth to power and challenge a pseudo-history which says that the brutal system of slavery was “involuntary relocation.” Education must be a tool of liberation, not a tool for the justification of oppression, or the whitewashing of facts.
Professor Mario Marcel Salas is a retired Assistant Professor of Political Science, and author of several editorials, op-eds, essays and books including his latest, The Alamo: A Cradle of Lies, Slavery, and White Supremacy. He is considered a veteran of the Civil Rights Movement as he was very active in SNCC for many years and is a lifetime member of the San Antonio NAACP as well as an expert in African American History, championing the establishment of the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr Texas State holiday, among other projects promoting the history of Afro-Mexicans, Black Seminoles, and African Americans in San Antonio, Texas. He has been active in politics, serving many roles including City Councilman for San Antonio, Vice-President for the Judson Independent School Board of Trustees, and a 300-Year Tricentennial Commissioner for the City of San Antonio, and is currently President of San Antonio Community Radio (KROV), and a member of the City of San Antonio Tax Increment Finance Board 11. Salas is the recipient of many awards including the San Antonio Peace Laureate Award and an Honorary Doctorate of Humanity from the Baptist Association-Guadalupe College. He is married to Edwina Lacy Salas and has two children, Angela and Elena and 4 grandchildren.
