The nation’s largest Latino civil rights advocacy organization, the National Council of La Raza, was founded here in Phoenix in 1968.

Now on the eve of their 50th anniversary, they’re coming back to the Valley.

The NCLR is bringing their annual Latino Family expo in Phoenix this July to celebrate the organization’s five decades of accomplishments and to highlight some of our state’s achievements.

I sat down with Janet Murguia, president of the National Council of La Raza, to talk more about this. And she said she thinks Phoenix has gone through a transformation since the days of SB 1070 when our state legislature passed the controversial “show me your papers” law.

They felt that 1070 codified racial profiling against citizens and noncitizens alike, and the NCLR helped lead the boycott of Arizona that took place afterwards, hurting Arizona economically and reputationally, Murguia says.

Now, she says as she outlined in an op-ed in The Arizona Republic on Sunday, they want to showcase Arizona as an example of how a state can change.