Arizona playwright James E. Garcia will premiere his newest stage production, Post 41, on Sunday, May 18 at 7 p.m. at the Herberger Theater Center in downtown Phoenix. Additional performances will take place Tuesday through Thursday from noon to 1 p.m. through May 28. Tickets start at $11 at and are available at herberger theater.org
The new work tells the story of the founding and legacy of American Legion Post 41, a South Phoenix institution that became a center of Latino civil rights activism following World War II.
The one-act play examines the experiences of Mexican American veterans who returned home after fighting overseas and began advocating for equal treatment and civil rights in Arizona communities during the 1940s and beyond.
“When people talk about the American Civil Rights Movement, they’re usually referring to the wave of Black activism of the 1950s and ’60s,” said Garcia. “But there were also these guys, local Latino WWII veterans, people who grew up in barrios, who were making real change here in the mid-1940s. Simply put, they had fought overseas to save democracy and figured the Mexican American community deserved better treatment at home.”
Chartered in 1945, Post 41 recently celebrated its 80th anniversary. Garcia said the veterans who founded the post largely built it themselves using donations and support from the local community.
One of the central historical figures connected to the story is Ray Martinez, co-founder of the Tony F. Soza-Ray Martinez Thunderbird Post 41, whose generation of Mexican American veterans helped lay the groundwork for Latino civil rights activism in Arizona following World War II.
The production will premiere as a one-act play before eventually expanding into a future full-length production.
“Most of my work is inspired by history or current news events,” Garcia said. “Post 41 is a spin-off of sorts that builds on a scene from a play I wrote 20 years ago.”
That earlier work, Voices of Valor, premiered at ASU Gammage in 2006 and was based on oral histories of Latino WWII veterans and their families archived at the University of Texas at Austin.
“There was a scene in Voices of Valor about a Navy veteran from Tempe who confronts a local housing developer for refusing to sell homes to Latino WWII veterans,” Garcia said.
Although discriminatory housing practices were prohibited under the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944, commonly known as the GI Bill, many veterans still faced segregation and unequal treatment upon returning home.
Garcia noted that members of Post 41 were also involved in efforts to desegregate public swimming pools in Phoenix and Tempe and opposed plans to use federal funds for segregated public housing projects in Phoenix.
“I’ve thought a lot about that scene in Voices of Valor over the years and how it could be the basis of another great story,” Garcia said. “This one-act is the first iteration of that story.”
Tickets are available through the Herberger Theater Center HERE or by calling the box office at 602-252-8497.
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