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CORVALLIS, Ore. – The shifting experiences that black Americans and black Mexicans have had along the United States borders during the past two centuries is the subject of a free public lecture at Oregon State University on Thursday, Feb. 7, by Ben Vinson III.

Vinson is professor of Latin American history and the director of the Center for Africana Studies at Johns Hopkins University. His talk, “Blackness Beyond Borders: African-Americans, Afromexicans, and Transnational Experiences of Blackness in National Spaces,” begins at 7 p.m. in the C&E Auditorium at OSU’s LaSells Stewart Center.

His presentation is the 25th annual George and Dorothy Carson History Lecture, which annually brings scholars of international standing to OSU.

A specialist on race in colonial Mexico, Vinson is working on an analysis of the colonial Mexican caste system. He is the author of “Bearing Arms for His Majesty: The Free-Colored Militia in Colonial Mexico” (2001), and “Flight: The Story of Virgil Richardson: A Tuskegee Airman in Mexico” (2004).