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Reviewed by:
  • Fighting Their Own Battles: Mexican Americans, African Americans, and the Struggle for Civil Rights in Texas
  • Ramona Houston
Fighting Their Own Battles: Mexican Americans, African Americans, and the Struggle for Civil Rights in Texas. By Brian D. Behnken. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011. Pp. 368. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. ISBN 9780807834787, $45.00 cloth.)

In Fighting Their Own Battles, Brian D. Behnken explores the histories of the African American and Mexican American Civil Rights Movements in Texas from the post-World War II era to the early 1970s. He argues that concepts of race prevented attempts to build a united movement between the two communities. He also contends that cultural dissimilarities, class tensions, organization, and tactical difference and geographical distance reduced the potential for cooperative ventures between African Americans and Mexican Americans. Throughout his [End Page 415] study Behnken shows how both communities worked simultaneously but separately to challenge racial discrimination and segregation in Texas.

Texas has a unique history in the study of civil rights. Being part of both the South and the Southwest, Texas has significant African American and Mexican American populations. Like the South, Texas segregated and disfranchised African Americans. Having a significant Mexican American population, Texas segregated this community as well. Texas, therefore, created a triracial society. This social structure was most evident in the public schools, with some school systems having an Anglo, African American, and a Mexican school. In addition to segregated schools, both African Americans and Mexican Americans suffered all forms of racial discrimination as well as other unpleasant realities of Jim Crow.

Behnken evaluates the Civil Rights Movements in Texas over three decades. In each chapter Behnken treats the African American and Mexican American movements independently and then compares the movements, evaluating places of conflict and cooperation. Because the communities rarely cooperated as they challenged segregation and discrimination, this method is a good way to present this history. Behnken does a good job of discussing the organizations, leaders, strategies and key events in each community and how they affected the process of desegregation in Texas. As he explores the multiple stages of the movements, Behnken shows how African Americans and Mexican Americans were agents of change working purposefully to challenge the racial status quo.

The significance and shifting boundaries of race are at the core of Behnken’s argument. The author, however, fails to incorporate racial theory into his study or expound on the complexity of race in Texas. Race is a complex and constantly changing concept. Government is continuously defining various segments of its population, while simultaneously these groups are defining and redefining themselves. This explains why Mexican American leaders and organizations could move from classifying themselves as racially white during the early stages of the Civil Rights Movement to brown and an ethnic minority during the latter stages. As Behnken highlights, during the 1950s and parts of the 1960s some Mexican American activists and organizations embraced the idea of whiteness as a strategy for obtaining first class citizenship. Whiteness, however, eluded most Mexican Americans. For a variety of reasons including phenotype, culture, language, and class, identifying themselves or being identified by others as white was not a reality for most Mexican Americans, yet it remained a practice. These intricacies need further explanation. Delving into the complexity and ambiguity of race, and more specifically whiteness, would have enhanced Behnken’s argument of why the African American and Mexican American Civil Rights movements remained separate.

Although Behnken acknowledges comparative civil rights histories in Texas, he does not engage the scholarship or suggest ways that his study modifies or complements these studies. While I do not agree with all of the author’s arguments or conclusions, I credit the author for creating a much needed monograph on the history of the African American and Mexican American Civil Rights movements in Texas. [End Page 416]

Ramona Houston
Atlanta, Georgia
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