Border Citizens: The Making of Indians, Mexicans, and Anglos in Arizona

Chapter 6. Shadows in the Sun Belt

▼ ▼ ▼ ▼ ▼ ▼ ▼ ▼ ▼ ▼ ▼ ▼ ▼ ▼ ▼ ▼ ▼ ▼ chapter 6 shadows in the sun belt Phoenix Mayor Samuel Mardian Jr. testified before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights in 1962 that ethnic minorities in Phoenix faced little or no discriminatory treatment. “Indians are not discriminated against in employment , services, or housing,” he said, and offered an even more sanguine assessment of Mexican-American prospects: “These people hold high positions in the city government, in industry, and in the professions.” To prove the point he noted that one Mexican American held a seat on the Phoenix City Council and that others had recently been elected to the state legislature . Only when discussing the status of the growing population of blacks did Mardian admit to a few lingering problems, noting that certain private businesses avoided hiring them and that “the purchase of homes by Negroes in areas previously all-white meets with resistance.” Still, he claimed that “Negroes have made great progress toward complete integration.”1 These advancements, Mardian concluded, resulted largely from the Anglo community’s generosity and civil stewardship, which precluded any need for the federal government to intercede. He maintained that Anglos in Phoenix were imbued with “Yankee self-confidence, southern hospitality , western friendliness, and Midwestern conservatism.” It was these traits, inherited from Anglo “pioneers” and settlers from elsewhere in the United States, that defined the essence of citizenship in Arizona and that made federal intervention in civil rights unnecessary. “Minority groups,” he declared, “would accomplish more on a voluntary basis than by looking to legal remedies.”2 Shortly after Mardian’s testimony, Herbert Ely, president of the Phoenix Council of Civil Unity, directly challenged his claims. Ely criticized the 156 border citizens assertion that a spirit of civility had led Anglos to graciously dismantle discriminatory policies. To the contrary, a series of court cases and protests had forced the desegregation of schools, housing, swimming pools, and other public facilities. Moreover, many employers still would not voluntarily hire “a member of a minority group—a Negro and, in many instances , a Spanish-American.” Residential segregation remained rampant and racial discrimination persisted in many forms. “In conclusion, I think it is an illusion to suggest that Phoenix has progressed in the field of civil rights and human relations because, or in spite, of the fact that there have been laws. The antithesis of this statement is closer to the truth.”3 As this chapter will show, Ely’s analysis was indeed more accurate than Mardian’s, which was a defensive attempt to keep the federal government out of local civil rights affairs, much like the claims made by local officials in the South as a response to the civil rights movement.4 But in the twenty years after World War II, ethnic Mexicans, indigenous people, and other subordinated ethno-racial groups found that they could not wait patiently on the sidelines for the cities, the state, or even the federal government to pass ordinances and laws ending segregation and discrimination. These groups faced not only a continuing system of discrimination and segregation but also an array of new challenges, as the region entered a phase of rapid economic, political, and cultural change. For Indians, blacks, and ethnic Mexicans alike, urbanization and mechanization rapidly undermined the pattern of seasonal farmwork that had sustained their communities for decades. Some were able to find jobs in the new manufacturing sector, but discriminatory hiring and promotion were still widespread. At the same time, large-scale recruitment of Mexican braceros—yet another example of the state’s shaping of the regional political economy—reinscribed the notion that so-called stoop labor was a job for an “alien” Mexican race. This raised new barriers for Mexican Americans who hoped to be accepted as white or, at least, as patriotic citizens.5 From the mid-1940s to the early 1960s, Mexican Americans, Indians, and blacks began to organize in new ways to achieve equal citizenship and chip away at the racialized class structure. Yet, the interests of these groups often differed, and at times they worked at cross-purposes. Mexican Americans who fought to end segregation and gain full citizenship sometimes reinforced racial boundaries between themselves and the regional black and indigenous populations, both of whom the government had officially designated as nonwhite. Indigenous and black activists of the era also tended to focus on integration, but generally without challenging the Anglo-defined cultural foundation of citizenship. Indeed, the myth that shadows...