Melita Garza wins 2024 essay contest sponsored by 'Journalism History'

Melita Garza, associate professor and Tom and June Netzel Sleeman Scholar in Business Journalism, won the 2024 essay contest sponsored by AEJMC's Journalism History.

The competition in Journalism History, the academic journal of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication’s history division, first began in 2018 and has featured essays around specific themes. This year’s theme focused on civil rights in light of the 60th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Garza’s essay, titled “Ruben Salazar: Beyond Postage Stamp Memory,” highlights the work of Salazar at the "Los Angeles Times" and at a Spanish-language station KMEX regarding the Mexican American freedom struggle.

“I am grateful that Journalism History chose to commemorate this milestone legislation, whose spirit, more than a half-century after its passage, is still hauntingly unfulfilled,” Garza said. “Moreover, I’m thrilled to bring greater recognition to pathbreaking journalist Ruben Salazar, who lost his life in 1970 while covering one of the nation’s largest Mexican American civil rights marches.”

(Postage stamp image is copyright United States Postal Service. All rights reserved.)