June is Immigrant Heritage Month. Throughout the month, we’ll be celebrating both our diversity and our shared American heritage by telling the stories of individuals that, together, comprise a uniquely American narrative.

Seth Mock

My father moved to Des Moines, Iowa, from Africa. Shortly thereafter, the rest of our family followed. We didn’t adapt well to Des Moines. My father learned that the majority of our South Sudanese Community was happy in Nebraska so he moved us to Omaha. I’ve been in Nebraska ever since. The people in Nebraska have been good to me.  

I learned from my father at an early age that I wanted to be a producer of change. My father founded the two largest refugee churches and organizations that helped thousands of refugees inside the refugee camps in Africa. In Omaha, my father also helped found Omaha’s Refugee Empowerment Center, which works directly with the refugees and South Sudanese community. The group he works with has developed many community leaders, and I really valued that.

I wanted to give back to the community in a meaningful way. I worked as a diversity consultant for Omaha Public Schools. Nebraska is home to many refugees from South Sudan, Congo, and many other countries. I enjoyed working with families of diverse backgrounds and helping the district become more inclusive.

Despite the great outcomes of this work, I wanted to do more. The community was lacking a place where Africans could feel at home. Where our youth and women were positively empowered. They were missing a place where some of their deeper needs as a community could be met and our African Heritage could be preserved and exhibited to the public.

I wanted to use art as a vehicle to help youth bring positive change while providing a platform for Nebraskans to experience and celebrate African culture.  Unfortunately, it was difficult to do this in Omaha at the time. We couldn’t find the right space at the right price. We looked into the possibilities of starting in Lincoln.

The African community in Lincoln was interested in having more cultural activities. In many ways, because of our persecution as a people, we could also connect with the Yazidi community in Lincoln. We felt that Lincoln was strategic because it’s the capital of Nebraska. Today, the Midwestern African Museum of Art is in downtown Lincoln, next to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and the Nebraska History Museum.

As a family, my wife Pamela and I have had to make many sacrifices to start the MAMA Culture and Resource Center in Lincoln, including moving our family to Lincoln and finding a new home. Despite these challenges, MAMA is now a non-profit organization that serves a very large, diverse community through various enriching and family-focused programs, and in the process helps Nebraska became a more attractive international destination.  

This is the only African art museum in the Midwest and the only one founded by an African immigrant in United States.

With many challenging things happening around the world, MAMA seeks to help bring positive change in our community. When you have a shared understanding, you have something to connect with.

Note: This is a post from Nebraska Is Home intern Adoni Faxas.

June is Immigrant Heritage Month. Throughout the month, we’ll be celebrating both our diversity and our shared American heritage by telling the stories of individuals that, together, comprise a uniquely American narrative.

I believe that America was a land of immigrants, and people can come. I think, “Why do we have label people like this?” I think everyone should be allowed to come to the United States, but very few people think that. I think it’s the land of the free and the home of the brave and people should be able to be allowed to come when they want.

I am a Hispanic/Latina, that’s how I identify with myself. I’m proud of my mom and my grandma and what they had to put up with. I realize now that it wasn’t an easy life for my mom and she had a lot of prejudices here, as we all do, some more than others.

Heritage: Mexican-American

Identities: Hispanic/Latina

It started with my mom when she passed away in June, four years ago. While we were going through her things, we discovered trunks, and inside of these trunks were documents, photographs, and letters. I didn’t really recognize the enormity and the value that I had at that time, but I wanted to preserve it for my own’s sake, so I grabbed as much as I could. I had all of those letters from my grandma and from the relatives from Mexico that I was curious as to what they said. No one seemed really excited about it, and then I emailed Dr. Lola Lorenzo, who’s the adviser for the Spanish major, at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and she got me in touch with Dr. Isabel Velázquez, a Spanish professor at UNL. From there I met with Dr. Isabel and Kate Walters, the head of the Center for Digital Research in the Humanities at UNL (CDRH). They came out to my house and they kind of saw what I had and they were really interested in the letters.

My grandmother was always a puzzle, and my mom was always kind of a puzzle too, because she would never talk about where she came from. Every time I would ask who her dad was, she still wouldn’t wouldn’t say a thing about who her father was or anything, she would just always give the thumbs down signal. The caregivers who took care of her actually got her to write down a little bit of information on like a little story. My grandmother’s name, as I always knew it was, Jesusita Barros Torres, and I knew my grandmother’s maiden name was Flemate. And so my mom and my uncle’s last name never changed. My mom and my uncle were always Baros, and then we just got to be more curious where my grandma came from too. Now, I know that my grandmother’s original name was Liboria Flemate, and she was born July 15th, 1896. Among the documents that I have, she had listed her name differently as Jesusita Flemate. We still don’t know where Jesusita came from or why she decided to change her name. She was married and had two kids. At some time Jesusita must’ve gotten pregnant again with my mom, and she was born October 30th, 1921, in Zacatecas, Mexico, and my grandma must’ve come up to the U.S. some time between 1921 and 1926. My grandma swam across the Rio Grande River with Santos and Jess, my mom and my uncle, on her back and that’s how she ended up getting into the U.S.

Now, I see and understand the amount of courage it took my grandma to come up here all by herself, not knowing the language, not knowing anybody, coming into a foreign country, and having to leave her whole family behind. For me it’s like, “Would I have done that, would I have had the courage to do that?” I don’t know. It was all for a better life for her children. My mom and my uncle were able to go to grade school and also went to junior high. Afterwards they started following the migrant sugar beet path and they left Albuquerque, NM all of a sudden to go to Wyoming and then to Denver. My mom by then had gotten a job and was out of school. She started working for the railroad and my grandma worked for the railroad. My grandma later ended up in Ft. Lupton, Colorado and was able to buy a lot there. My mom met my dad in Denver at a dance and they got married in 1946. My dad and my mom moved back to Lincoln, Nebraska, where my mom ended up moving in with my paternal grandparents.

I think it’s really neat to know all of this stuff.

I acknowledge that both my grandma and mother came to this country as undocumented immigrants and that’s where I come from. My mom being in southeastern Nebraska and even how she was able to live with people that she didn’t know. She changed her name from Santos to Sandra, so when she would go back to Colorado, she would be Santos, but when she’s over here in southeastern Nebraska, she’s Sandra. My mom at that moment was becoming acculturated being with my dad. They loved each other very much. She married my dad, who is a U.S. citizen. My dad, before he retired from the Burlington, he did all of this documentation to get her her own social security, her own I.D., and her own railroad retirement number.

She got her Social Security number and she got everything else, and so she was taken care of for the rest of her life, and my dad didn’t have to worry for when she passed away. My grandma became a U.S. citizen. It took her 9 years and it was quite a struggle with the INS back then. She started in the 1950s and she didn’t succeed until 1964. She received her citizenship papers and was able to go back down to Mexico to finally seen her kids that she left down there 40 years ago. She had left these kids and she never saw them again for 40 years, which I thought was “Wow, that’s amazing!”

I believe that America was a land of immigrants, and people can come. I think, “Why do we to have label people like this?” I think everyone should be allowed to come to the United States, but very few people think that. I think it’s the land of the free and the home of the brave and people should be able to be allowed to come when they want.

I am a Hispanic/Latina, that’s how I identify with myself. I’m proud of my mom and my grandma and what they had to put up with. I realize now that it wasn’t an easy life for my mom and she had a lot of prejudices here, as we all do, some more than others.

June is Immigrant Heritage Month. Throughout the month, we’ll be celebrating both our diversity and our shared American heritage by telling the stories of individuals that, together, comprise a uniquely American narrative.

“A lot of people don’t realize what others sacrifice to come here. They don’t always come because they are poor or need a job. Like my dad, he was a professional in Mexico, never worked a day in his life in the fields or in manufacturing. And then he came here and had to work in a bean packing plant, minimum wage, for years. The blow to his pride was immense. But, he was willing to do anything for the success of his family.”

David’s story:

My father is from the Ukraine; he immigrated after World War II to Canada and made his way to a refugee settlement camp. So I was born and raised in Canada, it’s where my mother is from. We had a lot of the same television shows that Americans watch but we also had a lot of homegrown talent that we are proud of. When Brian Adams won some sort of award we would always root for the Canadians, the John Candy’s and Jim Carrey’s of the world.

I went to the University of Toronto for my undergrad and University of Windsor for Law School. I came to the U.S. in 2000. I had met a gal in California. We met at the right time and got engaged. I moved down here to Lincoln and got a new job.

I practice immigration law. I give someone hope and a future here in the United States. I have not yet met anyone who is not excited to become a U.S. citizen. To me, it is a great benefit and exciting opportunity. We do our best to try to work with people who are doing it the right way and at the same time call the government on mistakes that they make. The majority of what we do is business-related, a lot of people from Europe and Canada, entrepreneurs who want to set up shop here. And when they come they don’t want to leave. So that is the next step to try to help them with business visas.

Immigration is a hot button topic in the press but it is one of these issues where you are often taken advantage of if you are undocumented. It is much easier for somebody like me because of the NAFTA agreement and the similar cultural experiences. If my wife and I came from a different culture, if I was Latino or Chinese for example, I would expect to be asked a lot more questions in an interview than I personally received. At times I think there is an institutional bias that people see a certain type of skin color and feel like they have to look out for something.

The funny thing is that when I was a kid I wanted to be Prime Minister of Canada. I was very happy in Canada. The issue with me was that I just hadn’t found the right person, and I happened to find her while on vacation in California. She was in school and really there was not a comparable program in Canada. And here I was studying U.S. immigration law in Canada, and it was a perfect opportunity to make the move. I feel like my opinion is valid now that I’m a U.S. citizen. I can vote and I can have an opinion on what this country does in the world. Before it was always “Well you Americans think this or that.” This is my country now. It feels good, it is a source of pride.

Jezharela’s story:

I was born in Tijuana, Mexico. I got to the United States when I was seven. I have three siblings who are deaf, so my parents wanted to give them a better education — one that we could only get in America. We moved to Nebraska when I was seven. My brothers didn’t understand much of what was going on. We left our dog behind, and I cried when we crossed the border. I never went back. The different culture and language was a big adjustment. I consider the United States my home, but I still feel like a piece is missing. That deep connection I have to some other place is difficult to explain. Here it feels like some place I was brought to and just had to deal with. We have done well, but in the back of my mind I still wonder what would have happened if I had stayed.

I work in immigration today interestingly enough. For professionals there is a way in, for normal people not so much. A lot of people don’t realize what others sacrifice to come here. They don’t always come because they are poor or need a job. Like my dad, he was a professional in Mexico, never worked a day in his life in the fields or in manufacturing. And then he came here and had to work in a bean-packing plant, minimum wage for years. The blow to his pride was immense. But, he was willing to do anything for the success of his family.

My father is a pastor of a Spanish speaking church here in Lincoln. When I graduated from high school with honors, I couldn’t get scholarships. I often wonder if I had gotten them, where I would be now. It feels like this barrier that has been in my life for a very long time. People just do not understand these barriers.

Imagine how much greatness people could contribute not only to the country, but to the world with the proper opportunities. And this is all through no fault of our own by the way. I was brought here, I didn’t choose it. I thought about going back, but I never had a driver’s license, I never had anything there so to the Mexican government I am basically dead.

June is Immigrant Heritage Month. Throughout the month, we’ll be celebrating both our diversity and our shared American heritage by telling the stories of individuals that, together, comprise a uniquely American narrative.

“I kind of like the mystery of my heritage because then there are no ties to the past and I get to think about just moving into the future.”

VJ:

I work at an ice cream store.

Mary:

I work at a coffee shop.

VJ:

We work below the poverty line but we can pay for utilities, pay to get around, and still have time for our art. We found a nice balance of doing what we love and working. We aren’t worried about the struggle and competing like in some other cities. We live in a community here where people want you to share your work, and it makes a big difference, especially in happiness.

Mary:

VJ and I met in 2008. I ended up in Nebraska because of my dad’s job and because my brother played football at the university. My family lived all over the Midwest and West. We lived in Utah for a while, and Colorado. My dad is from Alabama and mom is from Hawaii. I don’t know much other than that. She is Samoan, born in Honolulu, then lived in Samoa and Fiji. My parents met in California, my mom was on a mission trip and my dad was just working out there. I moved here in 2005 in the middle of high school. I don’t speak Samoan or Fijian or Tongan or anything. She does, and I wish she had passed that down a little bit more. Food is a big thing that I learned from her, some traditional Hawaiian meals. After my parents met in California they traveled around a while and then landed in Utah. They’re still together. They currently live in North Dakota. I don’t really know if I have a hometown considering all the moving that I’ve done.

VJ:

I really don’t know where my parents are from. I was adopted so there is not much history about my family. My mother was a drug addict in New York City in the ‘80s. I was adopted at the age of five, lived upstate in New York until I was a freshman in High School, then I was shipped to a boarding school. I really don’t know what my heritage is. Some people say I look like I am from Brazil. Some people say I’m Middle Eastern. I kind of like the mystery of my heritage because then there are no ties to the past and I get to think about just moving into the future. I believe it is all about cutting the negative cords. Being a person of color is a great experience because it forces you to look at yourself outside of what is considered to be the norm.

Mary:

Exactly, because you are already marginalized. So it makes you think “Ok, who am I as an individual?”

VJ

America is a great place because there are so many cultures that have converged. People out here in Nebraska are connected to the Earth; this is a historically agricultural community. People have a love for the planet. There is a heritage of farmers out here, a ton of people love to garden and share food. There is an abundance, and when people have that, you are in a good spot.

Mary:

I think in Lincoln there is a great and loving community that is connected to the Earth, who put their creative lives first. The people are progressive about spiritual healing as well. That kind of separates race from the connection you have with other people. You want to know people because of the energy someone is giving off to you above all other descriptors of who they are or their physical appearance.