Download or read book From South Texas to the Nation written by John Weber and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2015-08-25 with total page 335 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the early years of the twentieth century, newcomer farmers and migrant Mexicans forged a new world in South Texas. In just a decade, this vast region, previously considered too isolated and desolate for large-scale agriculture, became one of the United States' most lucrative farming regions and one of its worst places to work. By encouraging mass migration from Mexico, paying low wages, selectively enforcing immigration restrictions, toppling older political arrangements, and periodically immobilizing the workforce, growers created a system of labor controls unique in its levels of exploitation. Ethnic Mexican residents of South Texas fought back by organizing and by leaving, migrating to destinations around the United States where employers eagerly hired them--and continued to exploit them. In From South Texas to the Nation, John Weber reinterprets the United States' record on human and labor rights. This important book illuminates the way in which South Texas pioneered the low-wage, insecure, migration-dependent labor system on which so many industries continue to depend.

Download or read book The Mexican American Workers of San Antonio Texas written by Robert Garland Landolt and published by . This book was released on 1976 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Labor Rights Are Civil Rights written by Zaragosa Vargas and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2007-10-28 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1937, Mexican workers were among the strikers and supporters beaten, arrested, and murdered by Chicago policemen in the now infamous Republic Steel Mill Strike. Using this event as a springboard, Zaragosa Vargas embarks on the first full-scale history of the Mexican-American labor movement in twentieth-century America. Absorbing and meticulously researched, Labor Rights Are Civil Rightspaints a multifaceted portrait of the complexities and contours of the Mexican American struggle for equality from the 1930s to the postwar era. Drawing on extensive archival research, Vargas focuses on the large Mexican American communities in Texas, Colorado, and California. As he explains, the Great Depression heightened the struggles of Spanish speaking blue-collar workers, and employers began to define citizenship to exclude Mexicans from political rights and erect barriers to resistance. Mexican Americans faced hostility and repatriation. The mounting strife resulted in strikes by Mexican fruit and vegetable farmers. This collective action, combined with involvement in the Communist party, led Mexican workers to unionize. Vargas carefully illustrates how union mobilization in agriculture, tobacco, garment, and other industries became an important vehicle for achieving Mexican American labor and civil rights. He details how interracial unionism proved successful in cross-border alliances, in fighting discriminatory hiring practices, in building local unions, in mobilizing against fascism and in fighting brutal racism. No longer willing to accept their inferior status, a rising Mexican American grassroots movement would utilize direct action to achieve equality.

Download or read book Traqueros written by Jeffrey Marcos Garcilazo and published by University of North Texas Press. This book was released on 2012 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Perhaps no other industrial technology changed the course of Mexican history in the United States--and Mexico--than did the coming of the railroads. Tens of thousands of Mexicans worked for the railroads in the United States, especially in the Southwest and Midwest. Construction crews soon became railroad workers proper, along with maintenance crews later. Extensive Mexican American settlements appeared throughout the lower and upper Midwest as the result of the railroad. The substantial Mexican American populations in these regions today are largely attributable to 19th- and 20th-century railroad work. Only agricultural work surpassed railroad work in terms of employment of Mexicans. The full history of Mexican American railroad labor and settlement in the United States had not been told, however, until Jeffrey Marcos Garcílazo's groundbreaking research in Traqueros. Garcílazo mined numerous archives and other sources to provide the first and only comprehensive history of Mexican railroad workers across the United States, with particular attention to the Midwest. He first explores the origins and process of Mexican labor recruitment and immigration and then describes the areas of work performed. He reconstructs the workers' daily lives and explores not only what the workers did on the job but also what they did at home and how they accommodated and/or resisted Americanization. Boxcar communities, strike organizations, and "traquero culture" finally receive historical acknowledgment. Integral to his study is the importance of family settlement in shaping working class communities and consciousness throughout the Midwest.

Download or read book Mexican American Civil Rights in Texas written by Robert Brischetto and published by MSU Press. This book was released on 2021-10-01 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Inspired by a 1968 U.S. Commission on Civil Rights six-day hearing in San Antonio that introduced the Mexican American people to the rest of the nation, this book is an examination of the social change of Mexican Americans of Texas over the past half century. The San Antonio hearing included 1,502 pages of testimony, given by more than seventy witnesses, which became the baseline twenty experts used to launch their research on Mexican American civil rights issues during the following fifty years. These experts explored the changes in demographics and policies with regard to immigration, voting rights, education, employment, economic security, housing, health, and criminal justice. While there are a number of anecdotal historical accounts of Mexican Americans in Texas, this book adds an evidence-based examination of racial and ethnic inequalities and changes over the past half century. The contributors trace the litigation on behalf of Latinos and other minorities in state and federal courts and the legislative changes that followed, offering public policy recommendations for the future. The fact that this study is grounded in Texas is significant, as it was the birthplace of a majority of Chicano civil rights efforts and is at the heart of Mexican American growth and talent, producing the first Mexican American in Congress, the first Mexican American federal judge, and the first Mexican American candidate for president. As the largest ethnic group in the state, Latinos will continue to play a major role in the future of Texas.

Download or read book Leaders of the Mexican American Generation written by Anthony Quiroz and published by University Press of Colorado. This book was released on 2015-05-02 with total page 471 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Leaders of the Mexican American Generation explores the lives of a wide range of influential members of the US Mexican American community between 1920 and 1965 who paved the way for major changes in their social, political, and economic status within the United States. Including feminist Alice Dickerson Montemayor, San Antonio attorney Gus García, civil rights activist and scholar Ernesto Galarza, the subjects of these biographies include some of the most prominent idealists and actors of the time. Whether debating in a court of law, writing for a major newspaper, producing reports for governmental agencies, organizing workers, holding public office, or otherwise shaping space for the Mexican American identity in the United States, these subjects embody the core values and diversity of their generation. More than a chronicle of personalities who left their mark on Mexican American history, Leaders of the Mexican American Generation cements this community as a major player in the history of activism and civil rights in the United States. It is a rich collection of historical biographies that will enlighten and enliven our understanding of Mexican American history.

Download or read book Claiming Rights and Righting Wrongs in Texas written by Emilio Zamora and published by Texas A&M University Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For Mexican workers on the American home front during World War II, unprecedented new employment opportunities contrasted sharply with continuing discrimination, inequality, and hardship.

Download or read book African Americans and Race Relations in San Antonio Texas 1867 1937 written by Kenneth Mason and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 1998 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a study of how paternal race relations in San Antonio contributed to the rise of accommodation-minded African American leaders whose successful manipulation of the political and ethnic divisions provided goods, services and sustained voting rights during a period when African Americans throughout the South had lost such privileges. The unique demography of Mexican-, German-, Anglo- and African Americans; a service based economy of hotels, restaurants and saloons; and campaigns by white civic leaders to make San Antonio the premier commercial and vacation center of the Southwest nurtured a political machine that intended "to keep blacks in their place". This resulted in an assortment of Jim Crow laws; restrictive employment opportunities; and segregated schools, parks, and municipal services; albeit without mob lynching and racial violence.This paternal brand of racism resulted in the rise of one of the most powerful black political bosses of his time, Charles Bellinger. Challenges fromconservative white reformers and disgruntled black civil rights advocates failed to dislodge the hold Bellinger's machine had on the black community and the city, until the Great Depression. By examining employment, education, politics, and socio-cultural activities that contributed to the city's unique race relations; the study takes a hard look at whether "separate but equal" ever become a reality in San Antonio.

Download or read book Latinas in the United States written by Vicki Ruíz and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comprehensive, historical encyclopedia that covers the full range of Latina economic, political, and cultural life in the United States.

Download or read book Reconsidering Southern Labor History written by Matthew Hild and published by University Press of Florida. This book was released on 2020-11-03 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: United Association for Labor Education Best Book Award The American Dream of reaching success through sheer sweat and determination rings false for countless members of the working classes. This volume shows that many of the difficulties facing workers today have deep roots in the history of the exploitation of labor in the South. Contributors make the case that the problems that have long beset southern labor, including the legacy of slavery, low wages, lack of collective bargaining rights, and repression of organized unions, have become the problems of workers across the country. Spanning nearly all of U.S. history, the essays in this collection range from West Virginia to Florida to Texas. They examine vagrancy laws in the early republic, inmate labor at state penitentiaries, mine workers and union membership, and strikes and the often-violent strikebreaking that followed. They also look at pesticide exposure among farmworkers, labor activism during the civil rights movement, and foreign-owned auto factories in the rural South. They distinguish between different struggles experienced by women and men, as well as by African American, Latino, and white workers. The broad chronological sweep and comprehensive nature of Reconsidering Southern Labor History set this volume apart from any other collection on the topic in the past forty years. Presenting the latest trends in the study of the working-class South by a new generation of scholars, this volume is a surprising revelation of the historical forces behind the labor inequalities inherent today. Contributors: David M. Anderson | Deborah Beckel | Thomas Brown | Dana M. Caldemeyer | Adam Carson | Theresa Case | Erin L. Conlin | Brett J. Derbes | Maria Angela Diaz | Alan Draper | Matthew Hild | Joseph E. Hower | T.R.C. Hutton | Stuart MacKay | Andrew C. McKevitt | Keri Leigh Merritt | Bethany Moreton | Kristin O’Brassill-Kulfan | Michael Sistrom | Joseph M. Thompson | Linda Tvrdy

Download or read book The White Scourge written by Neil Foley and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1998-01-02 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a book that fundamentally challenges our understanding of race in the United States, Neil Foley unravels the complex history of ethnicity in the cotton culture of central Texas. This engrossing narrative, spanning the period from the Civil War through the collapse of tenant farming in the early 1940s, bridges the intellectual chasm between African American and Southern history on one hand and Chicano and Southwestern history on the other. The White Scourge describes a unique borderlands region, where the cultures of the South, West, and Mexico overlap, to provide a deeper understanding of the process of identity formation and to challenge the binary opposition between "black" and "white" that often dominates discussions of American race relations. In Texas, which by 1890 had become the nation's leading cotton-producing state, the presence of Mexican sharecroppers and farm workers complicated the black-white dyad that shaped rural labor relations in the South. With the transformation of agrarian society into corporate agribusiness, white racial identity began to fracture along class lines, further complicating categories of identity. Foley explores the "fringe of whiteness," an ethno-racial borderlands comprising Mexicans, African Americans, and poor whites, to trace shifting ideologies and power relations. By showing how many different ethnic groups are defined in relation to "whiteness," Foley redefines white racial identity as not simply a pinnacle of status but the complex racial, social, and economic matrix in which power and privilege are shared. Foley skillfully weaves archival material with oral history interviews, providing a richly detailed view of everyday life in the Texas cotton culture. Addressing the ways in which historical categories affect the lives of ordinary people, The White Scourge tells the broader story of racial identity in America; at the same time it paints an evocative picture of a unique American region. This truly multiracial narrative touches on many issues central to our understanding of American history: labor and the role of unions, gender roles and their relation to ethnicity, the demise of agrarian whiteness, and the Mexican-American experience.

Download or read book Grounds for Dreaming written by Lori A. Flores and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2016-01-05 with total page 363 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Known as “The Salad Bowl of the World,” California’s Salinas Valley became an agricultural empire due to the toil of diverse farmworkers, including Latinos. A sweeping critical history of how Mexican Americans and Mexican immigrants organized for their rights in the decades leading up to the seminal strikes led by Cesar Chavez, this important work also looks closely at how different groups of Mexicans—U.S. born, bracero, and undocumented—confronted and interacted with one another during this period. An incisive study of labor, migration, race, gender, citizenship, and class, Lori Flores’s first book offers crucial insights for today’s ever-growing U.S. Latino demographic, the farmworker rights movement, and future immigration policy.

Download or read book Revolutionary Women of Texas and Mexico written by Kathy Sosa and published by Trinity University Press. This book was released on 2020-12-01 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Much ink has been spilled over the men of the Mexican Revolution, but far less has been written about its women. Kathy Sosa, Ellen Riojas Clark, and Jennifer Speed set out to right this wrong in Revolutionary Women of Texas and Mexico, which celebrates the women of early Texas and Mexico who refused to walk a traditional path. The anthology embraces an expansive definition of the word revolutionary by looking at female role models from decades ago and subversives who continue to stand up for their visions and ideals. Eighteen portraits introduce readers to these rebels by providing glimpses into their lives and places in history. At the heart of the portraits are the women of the Mexican Revolution (1910–1920)⁠—women like the soldaderas who shadowed the Mexican armies, tasked with caring for and treating the wounded troops. Filling in the gaps are iconic godmothers⁠ like the Virgin of Guadalupe and La Malinche whose stories are seamlessly woven into the collective history of Texas and Mexico. Portraits of artists Frida Kahlo and Nahui Olin and activists Emma Tenayuca and Genoveva Morales take readers from postrevolutionary Mexico into the present. Portraits include a biography, an original pen-and-ink illustration, and a historical or literary piece by a contemporary writer who was inspired by their subject’s legacy. Sandra Cisneros, Laura Esquivel, Elena Poniatowska, Carmen Tafolla, and other contributors bring their experience to bear in their pieces, and historian Jennifer Speed’s introduction contextualizes each woman in her cultural-historical moment. A foreword by civil rights activist Dolores Huerta and an afterword by scholar Norma Elia Cantú bookend this powerful celebration of women who revolutionized their worlds.

Download or read book The Human Tradition in Texas written by Ty Cashion and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2001 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The rich and unique history of the 'Lone Star State' is presented in this new book through the lives of a variety of Texans who put a human face on the state's history. Biographical sketches of fifteen famous and little-known men and women of different colors, religions, and economic backgrounds offer new insight into the history of the state. Starting in the sixteenth century with Alvar N?Òez Cabeza de Vaca, the first European to make contact with Texas Indian tribes, and tracing Texas history to the late twentieth century with a final sketch of Gary Gaines, a high-school football coach, The Human Tradition in Texas brings the state's history to life by showing real people and the events and times in which they lived. Written by leading and rising scholars of Texas history, this book presents the major themes and periods in Texas history, including the settling of Anglo-Americans in the region, bringing an American democ-racy that supported slavery; the Civil War and Reconstruction; technologi-cal developments in the late nineteenth century, including railroads and irrigation for crops and livestock; Texas's transformation in the early twentieth century from a world of cotton and cattle to a world of paved streets, electricity and running water; the challenges to modernization faced by the state with the development of the oil industry, the growth in industrialization, and the increasing size of Texas's cities; the new age, with Texas taking leadership roles in the oil, aviation, and entertainment industries; and the expanding inclusiveness of Texas society, nowhere more complete than on the sports field-particularly the football field. A collection of accessible and entertaining essays on this vast, vibrant state, The Human Tradition in Texas is an excellent resource for courses in Texas history and the history of the American West.

Download or read book Forgotten Dead written by William D. Carrigan and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2013-04-19 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mob violence in the United States is usually associated with the southern lynch mobs who terrorized African Americans during the Jim Crow era. In Forgotten Dead, William D. Carrigan and Clive Webb uncover a comparatively neglected chapter in the story of American racial violence, the lynching of persons of Mexican origin or descent. Over eight decades lynch mobs murdered hundreds of Mexicans, mostly in the American Southwest. Racial prejudice, a lack of respect for local courts, and economic competition all fueled the actions of the mob. Sometimes ordinary citizens committed these acts because of the alleged failure of the criminal justice system; other times the culprits were law enforcement officers themselves. Violence also occurred against the backdrop of continuing tensions along the border between the United States and Mexico aggravated by criminal raids, military escalation, and political revolution. Based on Spanish and English archival documents from both sides of the border, Forgotten Dead explores through detailed case studies the characteristics and causes of mob violence against Mexicans across time and place. It also relates the numerous acts of resistance by Mexicans, including armed self-defense, crusading journalism, and lobbying by diplomats who pressured the United States to honor its rhetorical commitment to democracy. Finally, it contains the first-ever inventory of Mexican victims of mob violence in the United States. Carrigan and Webb assess how Mexican lynching victims came in the minds of many Americans to be the "forgotten dead" and provide a timely account of Latinos' historical struggle for recognition of civil and human rights.

Download or read book The Injustice Never Leaves You written by Monica Muñoz Martinez and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2018-09-24 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the Caughey Western History Prize Winner of the Robert G. Athearn Award Winner of the Lawrence W. Levine Award Winner of the TCU Texas Book Award Winner of the NACCS Tejas Foco Nonfiction Book Award Winner of the María Elena Martínez Prize Frederick Jackson Turner Award Finalist “A page-turner...Haunting...Bravely and convincingly urges us to think differently about Texas’s past.” —Texas Monthly Between 1910 and 1920, self-appointed protectors of the Texas–Mexico border—including members of the famed Texas Rangers—murdered hundreds of ethnic Mexicans living in Texas, many of whom were American citizens. Operating in remote rural areas, officers and vigilantes knew they could hang, shoot, burn, and beat victims to death without scrutiny. A culture of impunity prevailed. The abuses were so pervasive that in 1919 the Texas legislature investigated the charges and uncovered a clear pattern of state crime. Records of the proceedings were soon filed away as the Ranger myth flourished. A groundbreaking work of historical reconstruction, The Injustice Never Leaves You has upended Texas’s sense of its own history. A timely reminder of the dark side of American justice, it is a riveting story of race, power, and prejudice on the border. “It’s an apt moment for this book’s hard lessons...to go mainstream.” —Texas Observer “A reminder that government brutality on the border is nothing new.” —Los Angeles Review of Books

Download or read book Tejano South Texas written by Daniel D. Arreola and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2010-01-01 with total page 374 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On the plains between the San Antonio River and the Rio Grande lies the heartland of what is perhaps the largest ethnic region in the United States, Tejano South Texas. In this cultural geography, Daniel Arreola charts the many ways in which Texans of Mexican ancestry have established a cultural province in this Texas-Mexico borderland that is unlike any other Mexican American region. Arreola begins by delineating South Texas as an environmental and cultural region. He then explores who the Tejanos are, where in Mexico they originated, and how and where they settled historically in South Texas. Moving into the present, he examines many factors that make Tejano South Texas distinctive from other Mexican American regions—the physical spaces of ranchos, plazas, barrios, and colonias; the cultural life of the small towns and the cities of San Antonio and Laredo; and the foods, public celebrations, and political attitudes that characterize the region. Arreola's findings thus offer a new appreciation for the great cultural diversity that exists within the Mexican American borderlands.