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The Brownsville Pan American Round Table I, a women’s group founded 90 years ago, was honored by the Brownsville City Commission with a proclamation read aloud by Precinct 2 Commissioner Linda Macias, a member of the organization, during the commission’s Aug. 1 regular meeting.
According to the proclamation, which Macias said she was “excited and honored” to present, the organization was founded in 1932 by Bessie Kirkland “Mother” Johnson, a Houston native who spent many years in Mexico, forging a deep connection with the country and its people in the process.
Johnson, a charter member of PART in Mexico City, moved to Brownsville in 1932 with Pan American Airways.
Macias read that Johnson was a “kind and friendly person” and “wife, mother, aviator and landscape architect” who beautified the airports in Brownsville and Mexico with friendship gardens, and who was “very influential in organizing and supporting the first Charro Days of friendship between Mexico and the United States” and “planting the seed of Pan Americanism in the cities of the upper (Rio Grande) Valley.”
The inaugural meeting of Brownsville PART took place Sept. 30, 1932, at Hotel El Jardin with 20 charter members, making it the fifth PART in Texas. Today it has about 50 active and senior members.
The proclamation celebrated Brownsville PART’s nine decades of promoting “mutual understanding and friendship among the women of the Western Hemisphere, give academic scholarships to local graduated high school students, wear authentic costumes from Latin American countries, and (making) no political, religious or ideological demands on members.”
Florence Terry Griswold organized the first PART, in San Antonio in 1916, according to the state organization’s website. She was born near Eagle Pass in 1875 and, thanks to the family’s Spanish-speaking maid, learned to speak Spanish before English.
“Whereas, Pan American Round Table of Brownsville takes pride in continuing the work of promoting the culture and customs of the Western Hemisphere, and deserves the acknowledgment of 90 years of contribution to the community … now therefore, we the members of the city commission of the city of Brownsville … on behalf of all our citizens, do hereby recognize and celebrate 90 years of the Pan American Round Table in the city of Brownsville and for their significant contribution to the local community of Brownsville,” read the proclamation.
Five PART members in traditional Mexican clothing, displaying a framed copy of the document, posed for photos after the presentation by Macias. The group’s director, Dr. Lourdes Deytz, took to the podium to express gratitude “on behalf of my sisters.”
“It humbles us and we hope God will allow us to serve our community that we love so much for another 90 years,” she told commissioners.
Deytz told the Brownsville Herald that PART chapters have been established throughout the Western Hemisphere, united by the Alliance of Pam American Round Tables. She said that Griswold’s idea in starting the very first PART was for people from different cultures to understand each other, which fosters friendship, which precludes war.
“That’s what she wanted to create, to work for peace through understanding and friendship,” Deytz said.
She said it was an honor to be recognized by the commission and mayor, singling out Macias in particular as a PART member.
“We want to continue with that legacy of loving our culture and getting the youth to continue to love the great culture that we have, which is the Mexican American, Latin American and the (United States) that’s part of the Pan American Round Table,” Deytz said.
Pan American Observance Day, on which all PART chapters from the Upper and Lower Valley gather together, is scheduled for April, she said.
