Mario Marcel Salas

Mario Marcel Salas (born July 30, 1949 in San Antonio, Texas) is a civil rights leader, author and politician. His parents were an Afro-Mexican father and a mixed race mother. He graduated from Phyllis Wheatley High School, an African American segregated school, and like many black schools across the country remained segregated long after the 1954 Brown Vs. Board decision. It was soon after high school that he joined the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and became a civil rights worker for over 30 years. He entered San Antonio College and graduated with two Associates degrees, in Applied Science-Engineering Technology and Liberal Arts. He received his Bachelor of Arts degree in English from the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) in 1987. He married Edwina Lacy, of Chicago, Illinois, on July 9, 1988, to whom were born Elena Patrice and Angela Christine.

Salas organized most of the Black Student Unions on San Antonio college campuses in 1969, and was co-founder of the Barbara Jordan Community Center in San Antonio. Along with former SNCC member Rick Greene and former Speaker of the Texas House Gib Lewis, he negotiated the Martin Luther King, Jr. state holiday. Salas writes for several African American newspapers, and was the chief negotiator for the first cable television franchise in San Antonio.

Salas has been critical of the Iraq War and has formulated a concept he calls the colonial matrix. Under this theory, Salas claims that the racist colonial structures that were in place when America was settled are still operating in a "morphed form."

External links

• Civil Rights Leader Speaks at MLK activities
• A Guide to the Mario Marcel Salas Papers, University of Texas at San Antonio Libraries (UTSA Libraries) Special Collections.