Footage from the Alien Enemy Detention Facility at Crystal City, Texas. This film was distributed by the U.S. Dept. of Justice Immigration and Naturalization Service in 1945. It is now part of the U.S. National Archives (ID# 13206).
The Harris County Law Library is happy to announce a three-part lecture series hosted in collaboration with Harris County Attorney Vince Ryan titled Immigration Law and Internment Camps in Texas: Legal Perspectives on The Train To Crystal City by Jan Jarboe Russell. An hour-long lecture will be offered at noon on October 4, October 11, and October 18 at the Law Library's downtown Houston location. Lunch is provided and attorneys can earned 3.0 hours of CLE credit and 1.0 hour of ethics credit in Texas. For more information and to RSVP, visit the event page on the Harris County Attorney Office website.
At each event, distinguished speakers will discuss legal aspects of this year's Gulf Coast Reads featured title The Train to Crystal City. The book presents the story of internees of German and Japanese descent who found themselves at the family internment camp in Crystal City, Texas during World War II. The stories are told on a personal level with references to the federal legal mechanisms that affected each internee, many of whom were U.S. citizens, and the international politics that led to many internees being repatriated to their ancestral nations in exchange for American prisoners of war. With a story line that takes place in the Lone Star State and an author who is a native of the Texas gulf coast, this book is a natural candidate for the Gulf Coast Reads program, through which a book with local ties is read at libraries and book clubs through the month of October. Visit the Gulf Coast Reads website for more on this year's read and archives of past featured titles.
