Paul Ortiz is an award-winning author and oral historian. He has conducted oral histories with a wide variety of individuals and social movements since the late 1980s first as a labor activist and a radio producer for a public affairs radio program on KAOS-Olympia FM titled“Pathways To Justice.”
During the course of three years as a radio producer, Ortiz interviewed members of freedom movements from South Africa, the Philippines, Guatemala, El Salvador, West Virginia, and other parts of the world. As part of his work as an organizer with the United Farm Workers of Washington State, Ortiz interviewed migrant farm workers and labor activists. He also produced a radio documentary on the life of Paul Robeson that was a finalist for a documentary award by the Behind the Veil project. This book received numerous awards including the Carey McWilliams Book Award as well as the Lillian Smith Book Prize by the Southern Regional Council. The book and CD set may be ordered through American RadioWorks.
Ortíz’s interview work with “Behind the Veil” was heard on a four-part documentary program that aired on National Public Radio’s Morning Edition in 2002 and has been re-broadcast on stations in the US and abroad since then.
During the 2000-2001 academic year, Ortiz was a visiting assistant professor in History and Documentary Studies at Duke University.
Beginning in 2001 Ortíz has served as a professor in the Department of Community Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz where he has also taught and advised in the department’s pioneering
Research Focus
African American history, U.S. social and political history, social documentary, oral history, subaltern studies and theories of resistance, U.S. South, Latino studies, social movements, working class history; history of farm labor; history of farm labor, African diaspora.
Education History
In 1993, Paul enrolled as a graduate student in Duke University’s He conducted over one hundred and sixty-interviews for “Behind the Veil: Documenting African American Life in the Jim Crow South,” a National Endowment for the Humanities-sponsored documentary project based at Duke University’s Center for Documentary Studies. Prof. Ortíz received his Ph.D. in history from Duke University in 2000.
Ortiz earned his Bachelor's degree from the Evergreen State College in 1990 after transferring from Olympic Community College in his hometown of Bremerton, Washington. Between 1982 and 1986 Ortiz served as a paratrooper and radio operator in the 82nd Airborne Division and Special Forces in Central America. He attained the rank of sergeant and received an honorable discharge in 1986.
Ortiz also worked as the research coordinator for “Behind The Veil” between 1996 and 2001 and was part of the team that received the inaugural Outstanding Oral History Project Award by the Oral History Association.
Selected Publications
Emancipation Betrayed
Remembering Jim Crow
Teaching Assistants
Bios
Laura del Pilar Lopez Ledesma
My name is Laura. I am now a fourth year student attending UCSC. I have just completed my major in Latin American and Latino Studies and have begun my minor in Legal Studies. My goal is to become an immigration attorney. I migrated from Guanajuato, Mexico with my mother in 1989 to meet up with my father who’d migrated earlier that year. This background led me to participate in Students Informing Now, an immigrant support organization that began in 2006 during the winter of my first year. My peers in the organization have helped me grow as a person and have taught me how to organize to get our needs met. When I took this course (African American and Latino Histories) I found a disconnect between the struggles of African Americans and Latinos. However, this course opened my eyes to see the patterns of forced migration that both communities have endured. Their history is more intertwined then high school texts books care to write or that teachers may care to teach.
Marisol R. PIneda
Presently I am a graduating senior from, UC, Santa Cruz majoring in English Literature with a concentration on Spanish Literature. I will be participating in the UCDC program in the Fall of 08 and following my undergraduate experience I plan to attend law school and serve as an attorney in my hometown Santa Ana, CA. My long-run goal is to become a politician and contribute to my community and the interest of our unrepresented groups. I strongly believe in honoring the history of our ancestors and of those groups that have been forgotten in the past. Both the African American and the Latino Community share a history of struggle and pursue of liberty. Learning from/ and teaching this course has been a life changing experience that helped me understand our present by looking at our history, as Elizabeth Martines writes, "History makes the message clear"