Claiming Rights and Righting Wrongs in Texas

cover

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Claiming Rights and Righting Wrongs in Texas

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pp. i-iii

copyright

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pp. iv-vi

Contents

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pp. vii-viii

Foreword

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pp. ix-xii

"Multiple forms of agency by diverse persons, along with intended, unintended, and contradictory consequences in a complex sociopolitical environment, is the broad topic of this work by historian Emilio Zamora. The research that he generates is informational, interpretive, and innovative. There..."

Acknowledgments

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pp. xiii-xviii

"This history, like many other histories of Mexicans in the United States, is more than the worthwhile scholarly enterprise of recovering a still neglected past and explaining how one situates their experiences within the larger world of peoples, processes, and institutions in the United States and Mexico. It is..."

Chapter 1: Introduction

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pp. 1-22

"This study examines employment discrimination, social inequality, the Mexican cause for equal rights in the United States, and the role that the government played in reinforcing and ameliorating the socially marginalized position that Mexicans filled in the urban and rural settings of..."

Chapter 2: Wartime Recovery and Denied Opportunities

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pp. 23-62

"“If there’s anything I hate worse than a Nigger, it’s a damn Mexican,” proclaimed a World War II veteran from South Texas.¹ Daniel Schorr opened his 1945 article in The New Republic with the veteran’s quote to explain how a resurgence of racial thinking in the postwar period threatened the “modest” occupational..."

Chapter 3: Elevating the Mexican Cause to a Hemispheric Level

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pp. 63-96

"Mexico and the United States had never been on friendlier terms than in 1943 when President Manuel Avila Camacho hosted U.S. diplomats at his country’s Independence Day celebration. The war, according to historian Lorenzo Meyer, had compelled the neighboring countries to end..."

Chapter 4: The Fight for Mexican Rights in Texas

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pp. 97-124

"In 1943, when the owner of the American Caf� in the Texas panhandle town of Levelland refused to serve a Mexican farm worker, Texans learned how quickly Mexican officials could turn a local case of discrimination into an issue of international importance. At another time, it would have been a..."

Chapter 5: The FEPC and Mexican Workers in Texas

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pp. 125-157

"After the United Nations meeting, Perales reminded a group of friends welcoming him back to San Antonio that the international assemblies in Mexico City and San Francisco called on nations throughout the world to enact the kind of civil rights statute that President Roosevelt had anticipated with his..."

Chapter 6: The Slippery Slope of Equal Opportunity inthe Refineries of the Upper Texas Gulf Coast

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pp. 158-180

"The oil refi neries in the upper Texas Gulf Coast region bounded by Texas City, Houston, and Beaumont were not unlike other war industries in the state. They also denied Mexicans, as well as blacks, equal hiring, wage, and upgrading opportunities. The record in oil, however, was also different. The..."

Chapter 7: Negotiating Mexican Workers’ Rights at Corpus Christi

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pp. 181-203

"Like the refineries in the upper Gulf Coast, the American Smelting and Refining Company and the Southern Alkali Corporation, two of the city’s largest war plants in the Gulf port city of Corpus Christi, denied Mexicans equal employment opportunities. The companies hired them at a lower..."

Chapter 8: Conclusion

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pp. 204-222

"I began this study by following a research trail that included provocative and suggestive primary texts, and I proceeded according to the evidence and research questions that came into sight. Traveling back and forth between primary and secondary sources allowed me to verify tentative discoveries,..."

Appendix 1: Demographic and Social Patterns among Mexicans in the United States, 1930–1945

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pp. 223-228

"Immigration from Mexico contributed significantly to changing demographic and social patterns in the Mexican community of the United States during the first half of the twentieth century. Ernesto Galarza, noted author and activist in the Mexican community, acknowledged this on the eve of..."

Appendix 2: Partial List of Mexican FEPC Complainants in Texas, 1943–1945

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pp. 229-240

"The following list of complainants is not exhaustive, although it does include all the names and addresses that appeared in the FEPC records examined for this project. Accents did not appear on all the personal names, but common..."

Notes

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pp. 241-294

Bibliography

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pp. 295-310

Index

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pp. 311-318