World War Ii And Mexican American Civil Rights

This historical study examines how Mexican American experiences during WWII galvanized the community’s struggle for civil rights. World War II marked a turning point for Mexican Americans that fundamentally changed their relationship to US society at large. The experiences of fighting alongside white Americans in the military, as well as working in factory jobs for wages equal to those of Anglo workers, made Mexican Americans less willing to tolerate the second-class citizenship that had been their lot before the war. Having proven their loyalty and “Americanness” during World War II, Mexican Americans began to demand the civil rights they deserved. In this book, Richard Griswold del Castillo and Richard Steele investigate how the wartime experiences of Mexican Americans helped forge their civil rights consciousness and how the US government responded. The authors demonstrate, for example, that the US government “discovered” Mexican Americans during World War II and began addressing some of their problems as a way of ensuring their willingness to support the war effort. The book concludes with a selection of key essays and historical documents from the World War II period that provide a first-person perspective of Mexican American civil rights struggles.

This historical study examines how Mexican American experiences during WWII galvanized the community’s struggle for civil rights. World War II marked a turning point for Mexican Americans that fundamentally changed their relationship to US society at large. The experiences of fighting alongside white Americans in the military, as well as working in factory jobs for wages equal to those of Anglo workers, made Mexican Americans less willing to tolerate the second-class citizenship that had been their lot before the war. Having proven their loyalty and “Americanness” during World War II, Mexican Americans began to demand the civil rights they deserved. In this book, Richard Griswold del Castillo and Richard Steele investigate how the wartime experiences of Mexican Americans helped forge their civil rights consciousness and how the US government responded. The authors demonstrate, for example, that the US government “discovered” Mexican Americans during World War II and began addressing some of their problems as a way of ensuring their willingness to support the war effort. The book concludes with a selection of key essays and historical documents from the World War II period that provide a first-person perspective of Mexican American civil rights struggles.

Contains alphabetically arranged entries that provide information on Mexican Americans' struggle for civil rights and equality.

Between 1940 and 1975, African Americans and Mexican Americans in Texas fought a number of battles in court, at the ballot box, in schools, and on the streets to eliminate segregation and state-imposed racism. Although both groups engaged in civil rights

A valuable book and the first significant scholarship on Mexican Americans in World War II. Up to 750,000 Mexican American men served in World War II, earning more Medals of Honor and other decorations in proportion to their numbers than any other ethnic group.

"A fascinating and beautifully argued interpretation of how the American war in Southeast Asia affected Chicano communities. The author provides the most complete and well-documented study to date of this important chapter in U.S. history and its impact on an ethnic group with long-standing traditions of military service, assimilation, and resistance to injustice. Oropeza's book is what students of the Chicano Movement, especially the Mexican American role in antiwar activities during the Vietnam War period, have been waiting for."—George Mariscal, author of Aztlán and Viet Nam: Chicano and Chicana Experiences of the War "¡Raza Sí! ¡Guerra No! is a superb first book. Maintaining a balance between national context and the activism in the every day, Lorena Oropeza seeks to understand and contextualize antiwar activism among a generation of Mexican American youth. Bolstered with an array of archival sources and oral interviews, she carefully delineates the nature of political organizing among Mexican Americans across the Southwest. To her credit, Oropeza avoids a narrative of solidarity as she interrogates the internal messiness and contradictions of movement politics and the result is a finely nuanced interpretation of Chicano youth rebellion, one rooted firmly in ‘the politics of confrontation.’ I highly recommend it!"—Vicki L. Ruiz, University of California, Irvine "With this important study, Lorena Oropeza grapples with some of the central questions in the history of ethnic Mexicans in the United States. Although the central thrust of the work is an exploration of the evolution, political trajectory, and eventual implosion of the Chicano mobilization against war in Viet Nam, the study is ultimately a meditation on much larger questions involving Mexican American's political and cultural orientations, loyalties, and sense of status and place in American society. In these unsettled times, Oropeza's analysis of the relationship between war, citizenship, and masculinity should also contribute a much-needed reassessment of these important issues in contemporary American and Mexican life."—David G. Gutiérrez, author of Walls and Mirrors: Mexican Americans, Mexican Immigrants, and the Politics of Ethnicity

Seminar paper from the year 2004 in the subject American Studies - Culture and Applied Geography, grade: 2,0, Dresden Technical University (Institut Amerikanistik), course: Latinos/as in the U.S., 8 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: The United States are a nation of immigrants. Mexican Americans are part of this country and make up about thirteen million people of Mexican descent these days. This minority group is the second largest ethnic group in the U.S. (Mexican A. /American M. 3-5) Since the U.S. is a nation of immigrants, frictions and conflicts between the different nationalities have never been avoidable in history and will not be in the future. Throughout this paper, the issue of racism and discrimination will always appear and be discussed because I think this is a burning issue which exists still today in the U.S. society. In this seminar paper I am going to analyze the influence of the Second World War on Mexican Americans in the southwest. I chose this topic because the Second World War had an important impact on the people living in the United States and marked a turning point in the lives of the Mexican American population. I will focus on Mexican American soldiers and their experiences they gained in the war and after their service. Furthermore, I am going to examine how Mexican Americans contributed to the war effort and if this had changed anything on their acceptance and acknowledgement among the Anglo society. While thousands of Mexican American soldiers were fighting in the war, their families back home in the southwest gained different experiences. With the help of two incidents that happened during the war years in the southwest of the United States, I want to show in what way Mexican Americans had to suffer unjust treatment and prejudice of the white population. I will also take into consideration the various changes in the labor force as well as the reactions of Mexican Americans towards discrimination. The main sources of the paper where I based my knowledge on and where I received the information necessary to provide a good overview of the situation during the war years, are Meier’s and Ribera’s books “Mexican Americans/American Mexicans” and “Readings on La Raza”, which offered a detailed and critic description of Mexican Americans living in the United States. At the end of this paper the reader should have gained an impression on the difficult times of the war period for Mexican Americans, an ethnic minority who always had to fight for acknowledgement and their civil rights.

“A refreshing and pathbreaking [study] of the roots of Mexican American social movement organizing in Texas with new insights on the struggles of women” (Devon Peña, Professor of American Ethnic Studies, University of Washington). Historian Cynthia E. Orozco presents a comprehensive study of the League of United Lantin-American Citizens, with an in-depth analysis of its origins. Founded by Mexican American men in 1929, LULAC is often judged harshly according to Chicano nationalist standards of the late 1960s and 1970s. Drawing on extensive archival research, No Mexicans, Women, or Dogs Allowed presents LULAC in light of its early twentieth-century context. Orozco argues that perceptions of LULAC as an assimilationist, anti-Mexican, anti-working class organization belie the group's early activism. Supplemented by oral history, this sweeping study probes LULAC's predecessors, such as the Order Sons of America, blending historiography and cultural studies. Against a backdrop of the Mexican Revolution, World War I, gender discrimination, and racial segregation, No Mexicans, Women, or Dogs Allowed recasts LULAC at the forefront of civil rights movements in America.