Brown and Blue: Mexican Americans, Law Enforcement, and civil Rights in the Southwest

Mexican-origin people have since the 1830s been the victims of heavy handed and often abusive treatment at the hands of law enforcement and the criminal justice system in the Southwestern United States. Brian Behnken has spent nearly 15 years working on a two-part book project on this history. The first part, Borders of Violence and Justice, was published in 2022 and explored this policing situation from 1835 to 1935. His most recent book, Brown and Blue, was published in 2025 and examines the period between 1935 and 2025. Brown and Blue demonstrates the central role that the struggle for police reform played in the twentieth-century Mexican American civil rights movement, and the ways its relevance continues to the present. In this talk, Prof. Behnken will illuminate how the policing issues of today developed and what reform remains to be done.

Your Historians Series presented in partnership by Iowa State University Department of History and Ames History Museum