Acuna, Rodolfo F <rudy.acuna@csun.

edu>

There is talk once more of Chicanao Studies becoming a discipline. Once more Chicanao studies refers
to the corpus of knowledge that comprises Chicanao studies. This is not a method, the method is the
discipline used to study the various sources or areas/ The same goes for American and Latin American
Studies. A major problem in today's neoliberalism is that the market reduces education to a profit
making venture., e.g., Latino studies, transborder studies, etc.instead of a mode of analysis. The purpose
is to liberate the individual making her or him independent. Today with the advent of Netflix and its
programs on areas such as Foods and castes additional areas have been added to the corpi. If the
problem was merely Chicana/o studies we would not need methods that would be part of the
process.The method (historical etc) used would have already been built into it. I propose a discussion in
which we include teaching.

Becoming Chicana/o Studies

The process of becoming a Mexican was a long process marked by two major events: three

hundred years of Spanish Colonialism and the creation of the two thousand mile border. They

resulted in an identity crisis. At the time of the Spanish Conquest a population of 25 million

indigenous people lived in what is today Mexico—within eighty years it was reduced to about a

million Indians. The imprint of European colonialism and imperialism produced a genetic

makeup unique to who would become Mexicans.[i] The process of becoming a Mexican was

formed by Spanish colonialism that constructed categories based on race. At the top of the

hierarchy were those who were or looked Spanish; at the bottom the Indian and the African. On

the eve of the Mexican War of Independence in 1810, Mexico numbered just over 6 million

people: 1.1 million claimed to be Spaniards, 3.7 Indians, and 1.3 million castas or mixed races.

Since race was based on self-designation, many demographers question the number of Spaniards,

putting their number closer to 15,000.[ii]

According to Ellen Yvonne Simms, “although not exclusive in colonial New Spain, one’s

skin color governed what one’s status would be in society, and served as the basis of society in

colonial New Spain.”[iii] At the bottom were the full blooded Indian and the African. In the

nineteenth century, Mexican leaders officials sought to establish a new Mexican identity, which
resulted in civil wars.[iv] The indigenous natives’ share of the nation’s population fell

dramatically, from sixty percent in 1810 to 29 percent in 1920, while mestizos climbed from

twenty-nine to sixty percent. Meanwhile, the American filibuster of 1836 and invasion of 1846

took over half of Mexico’s territory further impacting Mexican identity.[v]

Becoming a Mexican changed in 1848. The American invasion of Mexico produced

another identity crisis. Isolated, most Mexicans lived in separate communities along the two

thousand mile border separating the United States and Mexico. Regional differences affected

how they identified themselves. They were not Americans because of the color of their skin and

their accents. They were not Mexicans because the Mexican nationality took time to become.

Mostly they identified with the place and the community they lived in.[vi] They were a minority

within a majority.

Historian Trinidad Gonzales shows the process identity building in the United States

through the collective use of México Texano, Mexicano and México Americano occurred from

1900 through the 1920s.[1] According to Gonzales, “A Mexicano identity relates to an immigrant

transnational identity as temporary residents living on what they perceived as occupied Mexican

land during the early 1900s and by the 1920s as American territory.” A México Americano was a

Mexico Texano that constructed his identity to call attention to his United States citizenship.

Over time identity was further changed by how people constructed space and meaningful

locations.[vii]

The Mexican border differs from the Canadian-U.S. border. Mexico has always had a

larger and more racially diverse population than Canada. As of 2009, 111.2 million people lived

in Mexico while 33.5 million people lived in Canada. Racially Mexico is 60 percent mestizo, 30

percent Indian and 10 percent white and other. Pure Europeans form two-thirds of Canada with
Native Americans making up 2 percent of that nation. In 2008, in GDP - per capita (PPP)

income, the United States ranked tenth in the world, $47,000 annually; Canada ranked twentieth

earning $39, 300; and Mexico ranked 82nd earning $14,200. Canadians like Americans speak

English; Mexicans speak Spanish and dozens of indigenous languages.[viii] Mexico is where the

Third World begins.[ix] The long border and location distinguish Mexicans from other Latin

Americans who are often poorer than Mexicans but have more difficulty migrating to the United

States because of distance. Further, most Latin American countries in North America are much

smaller than Mexico and this has affected the number and class of people migrating north.[x]

Newspapers are an excellent source of mapping the changing Mexican American identity.

According to Edward Lee Walraven, 165 Spanish-language newspapers were published in the

Mexican-Texas borderlands between 1830-1910, which promoted “cultural identity and

education, morality and political involvement.”[xi] Four hundred and fifty predominately

Mexican newspapers were published in the Southwest alone from 1910-1921. Some were

supplements to English language editions. The separation interests between the Mexican and

Mexican American identity appears with the publication of Ignacio Lozano’s La Prensa in 1913,

which served the incoming wave of Middle-class Mexican political refugees of that year.[xii] By

the 1930s Spanish-language newspapers followed the Mexican migration into the Midwest,

especially into Chicago, where newspapers were often published by Mexican organizations.[xiii]

In time, they also began to differ according to citizenship of the reader or whether she spoke

Spanish or English.[xiv] Proximity to Mexico and the fact that they settled what was once Mexico

distinguished them from other immigrants.

Today, other Latino groups are undergoing a similar process of identity formation.

Becoming Latino differs today, however, since these Latino groups share Spanish-language
television, radio, newspapers etc. with other Spanish-speaking groups. Even their intonation is

affected by this contact. These differences affect the filtering process that they pass through.

Affecting their identities are variables such as legal status and time of arrival. Today only 24

percent of Central Americans are native-born United States citizens – 16.7 percent of

Guatemalans, 18 percent of Hondurans, 18.3 percent of Salvadorans.[xv] Nativity is important

because of the maintenance of ties to the mother country.

Becoming Chicana/o Studies

Chicana/o studies as an academic area of study differs from the corpus of knowledge produced

by individual writers who contributed to that fund of knowledge. George I. Sánchez played an

important role in introducing Chicano studies to higher education as an area of investigation and

course of study. His efforts in bilingual education made him a precursor to the formation of

Chicana/o Studies in the late sixties. However, the seed that began the thrust toward Chicana/o

Studies was the movement for compulsory education that occurred in response to European

immigration. In 1872 the New York Times wrote the principle of universal education had been

popularized “in New England and other portions of the country” was changing owing “to foreign

immigration and to unequal distribution of wealth, large numbers of people have grown up

without the rudiments even of common-school education.” [xvi] Over 5.6 million people in the

United States did not know how to read or write. Only four states had passed compulsory

education laws. By the turn of the century, California was one of the few Southwestern states

that compelled children to go to school, but it enforced the law occasionally.[xvii]

In 1913 the Los Angeles Times wrote that Texas had enacted a compulsory education

bill; it was part of a strategy to prevent assistance at the polls to voters who could not read or

write. Lawmakers aimed the bill “at the Mexicans of the western and Lower Rio Grande
counties …”[xviii] According to rule the Russell Sage Foundation funding for schools decreased as

larger numbers of immigrants entered the schools. The quality of education was “almost wholly

a question of the dollar versus the child.” Hence, the states that “oppose child labor, have

compulsory education laws and enforce them, pay teachers well…have good buildings.” The

foundation also concluded that only nine states kept their schools open nine months or more,

South Carolina and New Mexico opened schools 100 or 101 days. The United States ranked last

among the “civilized” nations of the world in the length of school day and year. Texas ranked

thirty-eighth in the number of children enrolled in school and New Mexico ranked fortieth.

The compulsory education laws impacted Mexicans within the United States as their

numbers grew, as they moved to the cities, and as the second and third generations

formed. Population growth and the shift to urban areas made them objects of study for church

groups, educators and sociologists. During the Spanish colonial period, many Spanish subjects

were home schooled, either taught by their parents to read, or by someone locally. Some such as

Francisco Ramírez, the eighteen year old publisher of the newspaper El Clamor Público (1855-

1859) in Los Angeles, achieved a high degree of literacy through home schooling.

Historian Guadalupe San Miguel writes that the available data on Mexican American

education is speculative, and much depends on whether students lived in rural or urban areas –

whether they were long time residents or immigrants. According to San Miguel, “Chicanos

encountered tremendous institutional and personal obstacles in their efforts to enroll in the public

schools. Racial antipathy, lack of school facilities, poverty, and discriminatory school policies

such as English only laws were some of the more obvious obstacles. Despite these barriers a

significant number of Chicanos, anywhere from 16 percent to 50 percent, matriculated in public

schools from 1850 to 1940.”[xix] For example, in Los Angeles 38 percent of Mexican children
attended schools whereas in Texas, “[a]pproximately 16.7 percent of Mexican school age

children were enrolled in the public schools in 1850.” Little progress was reported in Texas and

by 1900 only 17.3 percent attended school that year. Mexican enrollment in San Antonio was

30.7 percent. It fell to 17.8 percent in El Paso.[xx]

California passed a compulsory education law in 1874, but “working-class children of all

backgrounds often skipped school and entered the work force directly.” From 1908 and 1916, the

total number of pupils in Los Angeles jumped from 33,422 to 54,796.[xxi] One Lincoln Heights

elementary school in saw its percentage of "American" students drop from 85 percent in 1913 to

53 percent by 1921, while the percentage of Italian and Mexican students jumped from eight

percent to 22 percent and from four percent to 20 percent, respectively. A 1924 census listed

twenty- two elementary schools in mixed racial districts with 52.3 percent "white" students

(including European immigrants), 35 percent ethnic Mexican, 6.9 percent African American, 5.3

percent Asiana, and .6 percent "other."[xxii]

When the races lived in close proximity, white parents sought to segregate Mexican

children. The diversity in Los Angeles brought about curricular changes that “emphasized what

administrators termed ‘internationalism’ studies,” that anticipated the ethnic studies movement.

Any positive effects were muted with two-thirds of Mexican children testing "retarded" under

school administered intelligence exams in 1908—consequently the children were tracked, put

into remedial classes, and discriminated against along ethno-racial lines.[xxiii] In the Belvedere

district of East Los Angeles in 1918, the question of immigration became moot by the dramatic

growth of the Mexicans in the area.

New Mexico had one of the highest concentrations of Mexican Americans. “From 1850

until 1891, the Territory of New Mexico was a battle-ground where Anglo-American Protestants
and Native New Mexican Catholics fought over the issue of public education. Anglos made five

abortive attempts to dislodge Catholic clergy from the territory's few public schools and to

establish a nonsectarian, tax-supported educational system which would teach ‘American’ social

and political doctrines to both Protestant and Catholic children. The Catholic Church resisted

these efforts and attempted to preserve the status quo.”[xxiv] The first bishop of the Diocese of

Santa Fe, John B. Lamy, arrived in New Mexico in 1850. Lamy had been a priest in the Diocese

of Cincinnati, Ohio, from 1839 to 1850, where he witnessed the rise of anti- Catholicism. Lamy

also brought memories of tensions between Church and state from Europe, as France was at the

forefront of the movement to secularize education. In New Mexico, Lamy opened Spanish-

language parochial schools in Albuquerque and Santa Fe and maintained the Church’s hegemony

in 1856 by overwhelmingly defeating a referendum to approve the territory's first public school

bill. As bishop he imported orders of nuns and priests, led by the Jesuits, who conducted a

crusade to control the schools and achieved public financing for parochial schools. Due to the

work of Father Donato María Gasparri, Superior of the Society of Jesus in New Mexico, the

Catholic Church maintained control of education in New Mexico during the 1860s and into the

1870s.[xxv]

In 1850, 25,085 adults could not read, with that number increasing to 32,785 a decade

later, as New Mexico had only seventeen public schools with thirty-three teachers. In 1867 the

legislature decreed that all children between the ages of seven and eighteen must attend school,

but the law was never enforced. “Native New Mexican children went unschooled, while Anglo-

American children received an education only if their parents could afford to pay the per capita

fee.”[xxvi] Most schools were linguistically and racially segregated.[xxvii] By 1913 only seven of
eighty-seven students graduating from New Mexico’s public high schools were of Mexican

origin.

In 1863 the first Arizona Territorial Legislature allocated about $1,500 for public and

mission schools, most students were Mexican and Native Americans. The Tucson schools

received one-third of the funds with the stipulation that English would be taught. According to

the 1860 Census, Tucson was 70.6 percent Mexican. The children were almost entirely Spanish-

speaking.[xxviii] In 1866 a Catholic school for boys opened in Tucson, and in 1870 the Sisters of

St. Joseph opened a school for girls. The Mexican population preferred parochial schools

because they had the freedom to teach the Spanish language and religion. Many Mexican

families opposed coeducation, which was the norm at the public schools. In 1870 the sisters of

St. Joseph established a school for girls; San Agustin remained the school for boys. Rosa Ortiz

ran a Mexican private school where Spanish was the principal language. The teaching of Spanish

remained a source of friction, and in 1879, La Sonora complained, “The policy of our schools in

excluding the study of the Spanish language from its curriculum is somewhat to be wondered at,

especially in those places where a large percentage of the population is Spanish and the necessity

for a knowledge of that tongue is so apparent.”[xxix]

By the 1880s, the size of the Mexican population in the territory’s mining camps was

eclipsing that of Tucson. The mining centers of Clifton, Morenci, and Metcalf were Mexican

camps. For the first two decades the mine owners had little incentive to build and maintain

schools – most of the children were Mexican. The Shannon Company’s mines built the first

school in 1895. In 1899 the Arizona Copper Company started to take more interest in education

and built a new school. About thirty students, mostly Mexican, attended. They were the children

of smelter workers. As more white workers were employed at the turn of the century, the mine
owners built segregated schools, spending less on education in Mexican areas. The Clifton mine

owners spent $9.45 per student whereas the Morenci camp, with more Mexicans spent $5.37 per

student. At this point, no high schools existed in the three towns. Clifton had four elementary

schools. In North Clifton the school's mixed races was placed in separate classes. In South

Clifton, the school was all white. Chase Creek had a Mexican and a white school. In 1905 even

Mexicans voted against consolidating the schools, no doubt because of company influence[xxx]

The Secularization of Education

Protestant missionaries in creating public awareness of the need for a specific pedagogy has been

under research, have an impressive history of evangelization among Mexicans which includes

literacy courses. These efforts have been marred by Americanization programs. Protestant

missionaries broke the monopoly the Catholic Church and offered needed competition. In

Mexico and Europe, Protestants supported movements to secularize education. Bloody

confrontations in France, Italy and Spain saw the pope intervene in the affairs of the states.[xxxi]

Mexico’s War of Reform, 1859-1861) was part of this worldwide struggle and as late as the

1920s, the bloody Cristero Revolt in Jalisco, attempted to restore Church privileges.[xxxii] These

events hardened the worldview of many Mexican and European clergy working with Mexican

Americans.[xxxiii]

Hostilities during the discourse over the separation of church and state in Spain affected

Mexican Americans because many of the priests and nuns that worked with them were from that

country.[xxxiv] The fight between parliament and the crown over secularization began in the early

19th century and bloody street battles raged into the 1930s. Bloody battles rage in Catalonia, the

Basque Province, Bilboa, Navarre, and Aragon at the turn of the century, with mobs led by

religious orders. [xxxv] The control of public education was the central issue. In Spain, more
Catholic schools existed than public schools which many said prevented the development of a

republic.[xxxvi] For a time, Church partisans won out but in 1931 the Second Spanish Republic

came to power, which again attempted to separate Church and State. This led to a renewal of

hostilities between those favoring the Church and the secularists that included multiple factions.

Conservatives won when a military coup led by General Francisco Franco and the Nationalists,

ended in the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) and imposed the fascist dictatorship of Franco that

lasted until 1975.

Secularization in Mexico

The struggle to secularize or modernize society is important to Chicanos because many of the

priests who missionized them were from France and Spain. They brought with them biases

toward unions and progressive causes.[xxxvii] The struggle to modernize Mexico was no less

intense and bloody there than it was in Europe, lasting for most of the nineteenth century and

into the 1920s. The separation of church and state was a major cause of the wars between liberals

and conservatives that began with Mexican Independence in 1821, and came to a head to the

War of Reform, 1858-1861 and the rise of Mexican President Benito Juárez, with the Church

Party attempting to impose Hapsburg Emperor on Mexico, thus leading to the French

Intervention of 1862-1867.

In the context of this struggle, Methodist, Presbyterians, Episcopalian, and other

Protestant denominations acquired space to work in Mexico. They were held in check during the

first years of the Mexican Republic because Catholicism was the official religion of Mexico. The

military and the Church enjoyed special privileges, that is, they were not accountable to civil law

and could be tried only by military and church tribunals. The Laws of Reform and Benito Juárez

ended the Church’s franchise and by 1873 these laws of religious tolerance became part of the
Mexican Constitution, which legalized Protestantism. Juárez and Melchor Ocampo (the Minister

of Interior who drafted the laws) encouraged Protestant missionaries and also promoted a

Mexican Catholic schismatic movement. Many schismatics merged with Protestant missionary

societies that established seminaries and schools throughout Northern Mexico.[xxxviii]

By 1892, 469 Protestant congregations ministered to about one hundred thousand

converts in Mexico, as they established a “network of private primary and secondary schools,

teacher training schools, colleges for men and women…” The Porfirio Díaz dictatorship had

reversed many religious reforms. This reversal alienated Protestant clergy who actively opposed

the dictatorship, publishing dissident newspapers and joining forces with anarcho-syndicalists.

Many Mexican Protestants later joined the ranks of the Mexican Revolution in 1910.[xxxix]

Aside from training Mexican ministers, Protestant schools developed courses of study at

their schools. Mexican ministers were sent to the United States to minister to the Mexican

immigrant population where they continued their educational work.[xl] By the early 1900s other

sectors of the Mexican American community were asking for teacher training programs to meet

the needs of Spanish-speaking students. In the late 1800s, Mexican Americans opened their own

schools in the United States. In the early 1900s in New Mexico, Mexicans pressured authorities

to establish a normal school to train teachers with courses of study to training teachers to educate

Mexican students.[xli]

World War I intensified movements directed at Americanizing the Mexican family's

cultural patterns. Public school authorities established English-only schools that isolated students

in Mexican schools, according to them, to meet their “special needs.” They openly derogated

Mexicans as being “dirty, shiftless, lazy, irresponsible, unambitious, thriftless, fatalistic, selfish,

promiscuous, and prone to drinking, violence, and criminal behavior.” Accordingly they
reasoned Mexicans lacked intelligence. IQ testing played a major role in justifying remedial

programs that trained Mexicans for subordinate roles in American society. During the 1920s

about half of Mexican students attended segregated Mexican schools. However, not all

Protestants supported the jingoist strategy of cultural annihilation. Many reformers wanted

programs stressing the cultural needs of Mexican children.[xlii] Reformers advocated for

compassionate Americanization programs, based on emphasizing the positive assets of Mexican

culture, and they sponsored cultural and teacher exchanges with Mexico.[xliii]

Protestant Ministers such as the Reverund Robert N. McLean, an associate director of the

Presbyterian Board of Missions in the United States, were active in the Mexican and Puerto

Rican communities, writing studies and establishing schools. They played an important advocacy

role.[xliv] Mexicans also reacted negatively to the English-only teaching requirements enforced in

Texas and other states during World War I, which intensified segregation.

During this decade Mexican organizations established escuelitas (little schools) that

offered reading and writing instruction in Spanish for preschoolers. California housed 30 percent

of the Mexican origin population. Mexican organizations there established libraries and

escuelitas (little schools) whose course of study provided “training in Mexican culture, Spanish,

and basic school subjects to supplement the inferior education many Chicanos felt their children

received in the public schools.”[xlv]

Early Formation of a Corpus of Knowledge

Among the early scholars contributing to the written fund of knowledge was University of

Southern California sociologist Emory Bogardus. Early theses and dissertations can be found at

the University of Southern California Library.[xlvi] By the 1920s agricultural economist Paul S.

Taylor was writing about farm laborers and Mexican anthropologist Manuel Gamio was
researching Mexican immigrants.[xlvii] O. Douglas Weeks’s work on Texas politics and the

founding of the League of United Latin American Citizens is essential literature for

understanding the basis of Chicano Studies.[xlviii] Equally important is folklorist, historian, writer,

and teacher Jovita González de Mireles, from Roma, Texas, collected Mexican folklore in the

Rio Grande valley. And, University of Texas historian Carlos Eduardo Castañeda wrote the

seven-volume Our Catholic Heritage in Texas, 1519-1936. During World War II, Castañeda

served as regional director of the President's Committee on Fair Employment Practice.[xlix]

A bridge between these early scholars and Chicana/o studies is University of Texas

Professor George I. Sánchez. Born in New Mexico, educated in Jerome, Arizona, Sánchez taught

in public schools and earned an Ed.D from the University of California at Berkeley. Sánchez

later taught at the Universities of New Mexico and Texas, and was a crusader for equal education

for Mexican Americans. His politics were gradualist --in line with labor oriented progressives of

his time. What makes Sánchez particularly relevant to Chicano studies is his work with the Julius

Rosenwald Fund’s teacher-training program at the Louisiana Negro Normal and Industrial

Institute at Grambling State College in Louisiana. He applied strategies learned there to Mexican

American students.[l] In 1936, he left for Venezuela, and then returned to New Mexico where he

helped form the Institute of the Southwest. Leaving for Texas in the fall of 1940, Sánchez sought

to continue blending African American and Mexican American educational strategies. Aalong

with his colleague University of Texas Austin Professor Herschel T. Manuel, historian and

professor conducted research on pedagogy for Mexican children; both were strong advocates of

bilingual education which is later important to the development of Chicano studies.

Manuel began his study of Mexicans in 1929. Outraged by the lengths to which many

Texan educators went to deny these children an education, he converted from objectivism to a
purposivism, which was describing what was, to reaching for what should, and could be. In 1940

Manuel shifted his research to Puerto Rican children and their historic struggle against

Americanization and English Only.[li] The Puerto Rican connection is underscored by the work

of Mexican missionaries with Puerto Ricans. For example, the Pastor Alberto Báez, from

Monterey, Mexico, was a Methodist minister, who worked with Puerto Ricans in New York,

advocating for their entitlements as citizens. Báez, the grandfather of singer Joan Báez, worked

with Puerto Rican congregations for almost twenty years.[lii]

The work of George I. Sánchez spanned four decades, the focus here is specifically on his

contribution to the area of Chicana/o Studies—especially the early development of

bibliographies, a tedious task that defined the known corpus of knowledge of the discipline.

Starting in the 1920s several scholars attempted to compile basic reading lists For example,

Bogardus in 1929 compiled a bibliography of books he considered essential reading on

Mexicans. However, the bibliography has little on Mexicans in the United States; most of the

sources he lists are about Mexico.

In 1942 Ernesto Galarza’s bibliography focused on Mexican Americans and included

history, sociology, farm labor, and education. Two years later University of New Mexico

professor Lyle Saunders compiled a bibliography that for the first time uses the term Mexican-

American. It has an excellent listing of educational materials, which is the preoccupation of

Mexican Americans in their quest for equality at the time. [liii]

Sánchez and Howard Putnam in 1959 published a seventy-six page annotated

bibliography. It goes way beyond its predecessors. Without a doubt, the most relevant is on

“Courses of Study.” As expected, many listings deal with bilingual education and English as a

second language, both of which are seen as keys to how to teach Mexican origin
students. However, listings dealing with content of instruction and developing curriculum for

Spanish-speaking students are also listed. Sánchez was well aware of the need for courses

specializing on Mexican Americans for not only teachers but all students.

Throughout the forties and fifties and into the seventies Sánchez remained an activist-

scholar. A conference on school attendance at Southwest State Teachers College at San Marcos,

in 1946, criticized school boards for not enforcing school attendance. “Figures were quoted at the

conference showing that in one county where school attendance and the school census are

approximately the same, annual per capita apportionments amount to $25. In another, where

attendance is not strictly enforced, those who do go to school benefit to the extent of $60 each

per year. The state per capita apportionment is $30.” Sánchez charged that that system was being

rewarded for nonattendance. At this late stage, Mexican Americans were still struggling with the

lack of enforcement of the compulsory education laws. “Of the 1,261,548 Anglo and Latin

American children counted, there were 244,129 Latin Americans, but only 71,643 attended

school... [of] the 228,511 Negroes, there was an enrollment of 197,961.”[liv]

Lost Opportunities

World War II heightened Mexican Americans’ awareness of their inequality—important in this

conscious building were the Fair Employment Practices Commission (FEPC) Hearings. During

the war 375,000–500,000 Mexican Americans served in the armed forces; this contribution to the

war effort increased their feeling of entitlement as American citizens.[lv] They became conscious

that they were not sharing in the “equality of opportunity,” that was supposedly part of the

American patrimony. According to the liberal thought of the times, segregation and

discrimination were individual abuses, and should not be sanctioned and eliminated—education

was a right, not a privilege.[lvi]

 For the first time, Mexican American leaders were to some degree a part of the national

discourse on equality, and they felt a measure of power just to be able to appear before a national

government regulatory agency. When Civil Rights attorney Manuel Ruiz testified before the

FEPC he found a lack of statistics proving discrimination toward Mexicans. The citing of data

was critical to making a case for equal treatment, and without solid evidence, the FEPC was

enabled to avoid enforcing a presidential executive order to support fairer practices.[lvii] The

hearing galvanized the Mexican American communities’ pursuit of civil rights. The inequality of

education was a benchmark in this discourse. It was the most provable grievance and helped

define the issues.[lviii]

It did not escape Mexican American leaders that the end of the war brought new

opportunities to white citizens that were being denied to African Americans and Latinos and

Latinas. For instance, the G.I. Bill and the development of the California State College System

gave millions of Americans the means to go to college. In California, white people had achieved

a median education of the eleventh grade, qualifying just under half its population for higher

education—blacks achieved a median of 9.4 grades in 1960 and Latinos had a median of 7.7 in

1960.[lix] Texas was even worse: the median number of years of education was 3.5 in 1950—half

that of California—compared with 10.3 for whites and 7.0 for nonwhites. In San Antonio, the

median number of years was 4.5, half that of the general population of the city. Cities like

Tucson, Arizona, mirrored California. In 1950, the median number of school years that Mexican

Americans completed in the city was 6.5. Many returning Mexican American veterans felt that

their community simply did not have the educational human capital to take advantage of the new

opportunities.[lx]
 The post war period saw a proliferation of national education conferences led by Mexican

American scholars. The First Regional Conference on Education of the Spanish-Speaking People

in the Southwest took place at the University of Texas at Austin on December 13–15, 1945,

focusing on school segregation and bilingual education. George I. Sánchez, Carlos E. Castañeda

of the University of Texas at Austin, A. L. Campa of the University of New Mexico and San

Antonio attorney Alonso S. Perales took leading roles. Delegates from the five southwestern

states were in attendance. The Santa Fe New Mexican reported that Sánchez chaired a New

Mexico conference that dealt “specifically with fundamental problems in the education of

Spanish-speaking people.” Carey McWilliams keynoted the event.[lxi] Throughout the next two

decades Sánchez helped define Mexican American education as well as Civil Rights issues.

In 1946, Judge Paul J.McCormick, in the U.S. District Court in southern California, heard

the Méndez v.Westminster School District case and declared the segregation of Mexican

children unconstitutional. Gonzalo, a Mexican American, and Felicitas Méndez, a Puerto Rican,

spearheaded the suit. In April of the next year, the

U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed the decision, stating that Mexicans and

other children were entitled to “the equal protection of the laws,” and that neither language nor

race could be used as a reason to segregate them. In response to the Méndez case, the Associated

Farmers of Orange County launched a bitter red-baiting campaign against the Mexican

communities.[lxii] On June 15, 1948, in another segregation case, Judge Ben H. Rice Jr., U.S.

District Court, Western District of Texas, found in Delgado v. Bastrop Independent School

District that the school district had violated the Fourteenth Amendment rights of Mexican

children. These two cases set precedents for

the historic Brown v. Board of Education case in 1954.[lxiii]

 The post war period also broaden organizational activity among Mexican Americans. Dr.

Hector Pérez García’s founded of the American G.I. Forum in Corpus Christi, Texas. The forum

burst onto the national acene when a funeral home in Three Rivers, Texas, refused to hold

services for Pvt. Felix Longoria, who had died in the Philippines during World War II. This

incident brought a moral outrage over the issue of race.[lxiv] Texas officials claimed that they

never denied Longoria a proper burial and accused the Forum of exploiting the issue. At hearings

of the state Good Neighbor Commission, Dr. García and the forum’s attorney, Gus García, did a

brilliant job of proving the forum’s case by presenting evidence of “Mexican” and “white”

cemeteries and racist burial practices. However, the all-white commission found that there was

no discrimination. The blatant bias of the commissioners further strained race relations, and from

that point on the forum became more proactive. “Unlike LULAC [League of United Latin

American Citizens], whose policy was not to involve itself directly in electoral politics, the

forum openly advocated getting out the vote and endorsing candidates.” The Forum did not limit

membership to the middle class and those fluent in English. It was less accommodating to the

feelings of Euro-Americans. Like most of the other Mexican American organizations of the time,

the forum stressed the importance of education. The G.I. Forum’s motto was “Education is our

freedom, and freedom should be everybody’s business.” [lxv]

A national Mexican American identity and consensus was being forged through

conferences and the interaction of regional leaders. Racism toward Mexicans became a national

topic with the epic film on 1950 racism toward Mexican Americans such as Giant (1956),

director George Stevens’s adaptation of the Edna Ferber novel about a great cattle ranch family

in Texas starring Rock Hudson, James Dean, and Elizabeth Taylor. Another book was Beatrice
Griffith is American Me, published in 1948. The first true history of the Mexican American was

Carey McWilliams’ North from Mexico, 1947.[lxvi]

Identity was also forged by the Korean War in which Mexican Americans again served

in the armed forces in disproportionate numbers. Six Mexican Americans won Medals of Honor

during this conflict. The Mexican American GI generation was expanded by the two wars.

Civil Rights: Numbers Count

In the first seven years of the 1950s, Mexican Americans filed fifteen school desegregation

cases. Guadalupe San Miguel makes the point that the litigation strategy was implemented by an

expanding Mexican American middle class that was conscious of its duty to protect the civil

rights of the entire community. Education was foremost on their agenda as a strategy for this

transformation. A priority was to end the policy of separate and unequal schools. [lxvii]

The professor along with Texas attorney Gustavo C. García worked with progressives

such as Robert C. Eckhardt of Austin and A. L.Wirin of the Los Angeles Civil Liberties Union.

García filed Delgado v. Bastrop ISD (1948), the decision of which made illegal the segregation

of children of Mexican descent in Texas. García played a leading role in revising the 1949

LULAC Constitution to permit non–Mexican Americans to become members. He was also

active in the Felix Longoria case and advocated fair treatment for the bracero.

In April 1955, Chicanos sued the schools of Carrizo Springs and Kingsville, Texas. In

Kingsville, Austin Elementary had been segregated since 1914; it was known as the “Mexican

Ward School,” with a 100 percent Chicano student population. The Texas G.I. Forum also fought

police brutality cases. At the same time, Sánchez worked with “Robert Marshall Civil Liberties

Trust of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)… the Marshall Trust [was] designed for

Spanish speakers of the Southwest, and in 1951 [it] appointed Sanchez, through the new
organization Sanchez founded--the American Council of Spanish-Speaking People (ACSSP)--to

administer block grants for the funding of civil rights lawsuits.” Sánchez used part of this money

to defend the rights of Mexican immigrants.[lxviii]

On May 3, 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously banned discrimination in jury

selection. In Edna, Texas, an all-white jury found Peter Hernández guilty of the murder of Joe

Espinosa and sentenced him to life imprisonment. The Court of Criminal Appeals turned down

this case because, according to the court, Mexicans were white and therefore was not a class

apart from the white population. Hernández appealed, and the U.S. Supreme Court found that for

25 years the Court of Criminal Appeals had treated Mexicans as a class apart, as proof it cited

that out of 6,000 citizens considered for jury duty, the panel had never selected a Mexican juror.

The lower court again tried Peter Hernández; this time he pled guilty and the court sentenced him

to 20 years.[lxix]

The Hernández case is a landmark civil rights case. While Black Americans were

guaranteed the right to serve on juries by the Civil Rights Act of 1875, Mexican Americans had

not won that right. Previous courts had held that Mexicans were not guaranteed this right by the

14th Amendment since they were legally white. However, the Mexican American attorneys

argued that Mexican Americans were “a class apart”; they did not fit into the black–white

Americans paradigm. The Supreme Court upheld the argument and ruled that as a “class apart”

that had suffered historic discrimination, Mexican Americans were entitled to the protections of

the 14th Amendment. “In his 1957 address to the Race Relations Institute, Sanchez got press

attention with his claims that Mexican American discrimination had unique sources: the United

States’ colonial subjugation of the Southwest and its rapacious desire for cheap labor.”[lxx]
 By the sixties, the strategy used by Mexican Americans since the nineteenth century, to

claim they were protected by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, and they had constitutional rights

was coming apart. In the early sixties bilingual education was a cornerstone of the struggle for

equal educational opportunity. Research on bilingual education had been conducted since the

1920s in response to race based studies on intelligence. According to Carlos K. Blanton, “By the

1960s, leading psychologists, linguists and educators increasingly reasoned that bilingualism

actually benefited intelligence.” Sánchez was a main actor in shifting the paradigm – “Sanchez's

political activism cannot be separated from his pedagogical work.”

On the Eve of Becoming Chicana/o Studies

Becoming involves developing a sense community, which is not an easy task. A sense of the

place and network where people live is essential. Becoming is a continual process of challenging

of the paradigms that are held to be true – they involve multiple small shifts—with communities

sharing and developing a common heritage. Becoming Mexican American or a Chicano was not

suddenly waking up and saying I am a Chicana/o. The same can be said of becoming a discipline

– it takes time and involves numerous mutations. Chicana/o Studies mutated from Mexican

studies, and developed a proper criterion for organizing its knowledge into disciplines. This

framework took years and the process of becoming Chicana/o Studies took a new form when

Mexicans came to the United States. The community went from a rural-sectarian society where

learning was not valued by those in charge. Becoming Chicana/o Studies involved forming a

common identity and the considering of separate and distinct cultures as well as the formation of

a community of scholars. In Chicana/o Studies it involved the collection of data and

interpretation.
Notes Chapter

[1] Gonzales uses the spelling Texano instead of Tejano. The “x” is the Mexican spelling that sets

Mexicans apart from Spaniards. It is México in Mexico and Méjico in Spain.

[i]
“Genetic Makeup of Hispanic Latino Americans Influenced by Native American, European and

African-American Ancestries," ScienceDaily (May 31, 2010):

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/05/100503161421.htm (accessed June 1, 2010).

George J. Sánchez, Becoming Mexican American: Ethnicity, Culture, and Identity in Chicano

Los Angeles, 1900-1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995).

[ii]
Robert McCaa, “The Peopling of Mexico From Origins to Revolution,” In Michael R. Haines and Richard

H. Steckel, eds, The Population History of North America (New York: University of Cambridge Press,

2000), 252-256, 263. 277. Gonzalo Aguirre Beltrán, La Población Negra De México (México, D.F.: Fondo

de Cultura Económica, 1972), 237. Austín Cue Cánovas, Historia social y económica de México (1521–

1854) (México, Editorial Trillas, 1972), 134.

[iii] Ellen Yvonne Simms, “Miscegenation and Racism: Afro-Mexicans in Colonial New Spain,”

The Journal of Pan African Studies, vol.2, no.3, (March 2008): 233.
[iv] Rodolfo F. Acuña, Corridors of Migration: The Odyssey of Mexican Laborers, 1600-1933

(Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2007), 25-27.

[v] Identity and the theme of racism was expressed by the Apostle of Cuban Independence who

lived for many years in the United States, and confronted with racism, grew very bitter. José

Martí, “’My Race,’ April 16, 1893.” José Martí: Selected Writings, edited by Esther Allen,

translated by Esther Allen (Viking Penguin, 2002), 318–321. “Letter from José Martí to Manuel

Mercado, May 18, 1895,” Selected Writings, 346–349. Disillusioned he wrote of the United

States, “I lived in the monster, and I know its entrails…”

[vi]For an excellent discussion of the power of place see Dolores Hayden, The Power of

Place:Urban Landscapes as Public History (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1997).

[vii] Trinidad Gonzales, “The World Of Mexico Texanos, Mexicanos And Mexico Americanos: Transnational

And National Identities In he Lower Rio Grande Valley During The Last Phase Of United States

Colonization, 1900 to 1930,” PhD dissertation, University of Houston, 2008, v, 1-6. Gonzales cites 0.

Douglas Weeks, "The Texas-Mexican and the Politics of South Texas," The American Political Science

Review 24 No. 3 (August 1930), 606-627, Jovita González, "America Invades the Border Towns" in

Southwest Review 15, no. 14 (Summer 1930): 469-477 and Américo Paredes, George Washington

Gómez:A Mexicotexan Novel (Houston: Arte Público Press, 1990), as works indicative of the México

Texano identity. Note that Gonzales spells Texano with an “x” rather than a “j”. The use of the “x”

further distinguishes the identity.

[viii] CIA –The World Factbook, https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-

factbook/ (accessed May 19, 2010).

[ix] Anthony DePalma, “Income Gap in Mexico Grows, and So Do Protests,” The New York Times, July 20,

1996.
[x] Robert B. Kent and Maura E. Huntz. “Spanish-Language Newspapers in the United States,”

Geographical Review, Vol. 86, No. 3, Latin American Geography (July, 1996): 446- 449.

[xi] Edward Lee Walraven, “Ambivalent Americans: Selected Spanish-Language Newspapers’ Response to

Anglo Domination in Texas, 1830-1910,” PhD dissertation Texas A&M University, 1999, iii, 150-151, 165.

Kanellos, “A Historical Perspective,” 27ff. Nicolas Kanellos, “A Historical Perspective on the

Development of an Ethnic Minority Consciousness in the Spanish-Language Press of the

Southwest,”Ethnic Studies Review Vol. 21, (Apr 30, 1998): 27ff.

[xii]
Robert B. Kent and Maura E. Huntz. “Spanish-Language Newspapers in the United States,”

Geographical Review, Vol. 86, No. 3, (July, 1996): 446- 449. Kanellos, op.cit.

[xiii] Kent and Huntz, “Spanish-language newspapers,” 450, 454. Gonzales, “World of Mexico Texanos,

Mexicanos And Mexico Americanos,” 11.

[xiv] Raquel R Márquez, Louis Méndoza, Steve Blanchard, “Neighborhood Formation on The West Side of

San Antonio, Texas,” Latino Studies Vol. 5, Iss. 3. (Autumn 2007): 288.

[xv] Christopher A. Airriess, Contemporary Ethnic Geographies in America (Lanham, MD: Rowman &

Littlefield Publishers, Inc, 2006), 187.

[xvi] “Compulsory Education,” New York Times, February 28, 1872, 4.

[xvii] “Redlands,” Los Angeles Times, Sep 6, 1903, 10. “State School Law,” Los Angeles Times, May 14,

1904; 12. “Lax Parents To Be Prosecuted,” Los Angeles Times, September 6, 1908, V18.

[xviii] “Political Tips,” Los Angeles Times, March 16, 1913, II3.
[xix] Guadalupe San Miguel Jr., “Culture and Education in the American Southwest: Towards an

Explanation of Chicano School Attendance, 1850-1940,” Journal of American Ethnic History,

Vol. 7, No. 2 (Spring, 1988): 5.

[xx] Ibid

[xxi]
Mark Wild. "So Many Children at Once and so Many Kinds": Schools and Ethno-racial

Boundaries in Early Twentieth-Century Los Angeles,” The Western Historical Quarterly, Vol.

33, No. 4 (Winter, 2002): 456

[xxii]
Wild, “So Many Children,” 457, 458.

[xxiii]
Wild, “So Many Children,”462, 463.

[xxiv] Dianna Everett, “The Public School Debate in New Mexico: 1850-1891,”Arizona and the West, Vol. 26,

No. 2 (Summer, 1984): 107.

[xxv] Everett, “The Public School Debate,” 107.

[xxvi] Everett, “The Public School Debate,” 109-110.

[xxvii]
San Miguel, “Culture and Education in the American Southwest,” 6.
[xxviii]
Allen Pace Nilsen, ed. and others, Dust in Our Desks: Territory Days to the Present in Arizona Schools

(Tempe: College of Education, Arizona State University, 1985), 2, 4. Elise DuBord, “Mexican Elites and

Language Policy in Tucson’s First Public Schools,” Divergencias: Revistas de estudios linguisticos y

literarios 1 (octoño 2003): 5,

http://www.coh.arizona.edu/divergencias/archives/fall2003/Mexican%20Elites.pdf (accessed May 10,

2010).

[xxix] “Spanish In Our Public Schools,” La Sonora, November 30, 1879.

[xxx]
Allen H Rogers “Character and Habits of the Mexican Miner,” The Engineering and Mining Journal,

Lxxxv, #14 (April 4, 1908):700-701. Linda Gordon, The Great Arizona Orphans Abduction (Cambridge,
Mass: Harvard University Press, 1999), 177-179, 187, 194, 198. “Arizona House Good To Schools,” Los

Angeles Times, February 17, 1917, I4. The segregation of Mexicans up to this point were more de facto

than de jure. Blacks were legally segregated. Mary Melcher, "This Is Not Right": Rural Arizona Women

Challenge Segregation and Ethnic Division, 1925- 1950,” Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, Vol. 20,

No. 2, (1999):191-193.

[xxxi]
“The Popes,” New York Times, Mar 21, 1874. Frank J. Coppa, “Pio Nono and the Jews: from "reform"

to "reaction," 1846-1878,” The Catholic Historical Review v89 i4 (Oct 2003):671-695. “The Popes,” New

York Times, Mar 21, 1874.

[xxxii]
Jean A. Meyer, The Cristero Rebellion: The Mexican People Between Church and State 1926–1929

(New York: Cambridge University Press 2010).

[xxxiii] See Everett, “The Public School Debate in New Mexico,” 107-126. The early bishops during

the American Period were French –Jean-Baptiste Salpointe, the Rev. P. Bourgade, among others

were French and conservative.

[xxxiv] “The Condition of Spain – The Republican Element,” New York Times, Mar 28, 1854. “Debate In the

Cortes On the Spanish Monarchy,” New York Times, Jun 8, 1870. “Affairs of Spain,” New York Times, Jun

11, 1870. Rodolfo F. Acuña, Corridors of Migration:The Odyssey of Mexican Laborers, 1600-1933

(Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2007), 184-192.

[xxxv]
William G. Carr, “The Spanish Revolution,” Chapter 12, Pawns In The Game

http://www.biblebelievers.org.au/pawns1.htm (accessed May 10, 2010). The New York Times has

excellent coverage of the struggle over Church control of the state.

[xxxvi] Peter Anderson, “Why did the Spanish Civil War start in July 1936?” History Review i48 (March

2004): 36-41. “Martial Law In Madrid; General Weyler, as Captain General, Proclaims It. He May Be
Contemplating a Coup d'Etat -- Disturbances in the Provinces Continue,” New York Times, February 15,

1901.

[xxxvii] See Everett, “The Public School Debate in New Mexico,” 107-126. The early bishops during

the American Period were French – vehemently intent on keeping their privileges among

Mexicans. Jean-Baptiste Salpointe, the Rev. P. Bourgade, among others were French and

conservative.
[xxxviii]
Deborah J. Baldwin, Protestants and the Mexican Revolution: Missionaries, Ministers, and Social

Change (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1990). Mark Tollie Banker, They made haste slowly:

Presbyterian mission schools and southwestern pluralism, 1870-1920 Ph.D. dissertation, The University

of New Mexico, 1987. Monica Irene Orozco, Protestant missionaries, Mexican liberals, nationalism and

the issue of cultural incorporation of indigenous peoples in Mexico, 1870--1900, Ph.D. disseration,

University of California, Santa Barbara, 1999. James W. Dow, “The Expansion of Protestantism in

Mexico: An Anthropological View,” Anthropological Quarterly, Vol. 78, No. 4 (Autumn, 2005): 827-851.

[xxxix] Carlos Kevin Blanton, The Strange Career of Bilingual Education in Texas, 1836-1981

(College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2007), 24-30. Some of the privileges of the

Church were returned during the regime of Porfirio Díaz. See Acuña, Corridors of Migration,

184-188.

[xl] Michael Werner, Concise Encyclopedia of Mexico (New York: Routledge, 2001), 652-653, 654.

[xli] Marilyn Cochran-Smith, Sharon Feiman-Nemser, D. John McIntyre, eds. Handbook of Research on

Teacher Education: Enduring Questions in Changing Contexts, 3rd Edition (New York: Routledge, 2008),

428.
[xlii] Ernestine M. Alvarado, “A Plea for Mutual Understanding between Mexican Immigrants and Native

Americans,” Annual session of the National Conference of Social Work, 264–266. In Rodolfo F Acuña and

Guadalupe Compeán, eds. Voices of the U.S. Latino Experience [Three Volumes] (Westport: Greenwood,

2008), 476-477.

[xliii] Merton E. Hill, The Development of an Americanization Program (Ontario, CA: The Board of Trustees

of the Chaffey Union High School and the Chaffey Junior College, Ontario, California, in co-operation

with the County Board of Education of San Bernadino College, 1928), 3.

[xliv] R. N. McLean and Charles A. Thompson, Spanish and Mexican in Colorado (New York: Board of

National Missions, Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A., 1924), vii–x. Ernesto Galarza, “Life in the United

States for Mexican People: Out of the Experience of a Mexican” Proceedings of the National Conference

of Social Work, 56th Annual Session (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1929). Robert McLean, Grace

Petrie Williams, Old Spain in New America (New York: Council of Women for Home Missions, 1916),

155-156, write that there were 60 Mexican Protestant churches in Texas with more than a thousand in

Mexico and Texas, noting that the Methodist Episcopal denomination established had established the

Frances Pauw industrial school for girls in Los Angeles, the Harwood Industrial School for girls in

Albuquerque, another school for girls in Tucson, and a settlement house in El Paso. The crown jewel

was the Spanish American Institute, which was a boarding house and out school for boys. It focused

on vocational education, and was opened in 1913, closing in 1971 due to a lack of funds and stricter

immigration laws. According to McLean, these boys were bridge between the churches in Mexico and

the U.S. Many of the leaders of the Mexican American Movement in the 1930s and 1940s were

educated at this school located in Gardena, California. The school attracted students from as far away as

South America and had benefactors such as the Maxwell family of Maxwell House Coffee. It started out

as a full time school but because of economic reasons many academic subjects were taught at the local
public school. The boys returned to the Institute for their vocational training. Many were orphans or

from divorced households. San Miguel Jr. “Culture and Education,” 9.

[xlv]
Lee Stacy, Mexico and the United States (Tarrytown, NY:Marshall Cavendish Corporation, 2002), 48-

49, the Mexican consul in 1923 set up literacy classes for Mexican children. Five years later the Mexican

Ministry of Education sent emissaries to help set up escuelitas whose aim it was to disprove the popular

notion that Mexicans were backward peasants and did not have to be Americanized to be modern. “A

History of Mexican Americans in California: Revolution To Depression: 1900-1940,” Five Views: An Ethnic

Historic Site Survey for California,” National Park Service,

http://www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/5views/5views5c.htm. In the 1950s League of United

Latin American Citizens (LULAC) and the American G.I. Forum sponsored a string of schools, teaching

children basic English vocabulary. Guadalupe San Miguel Jr. “Culture and Education in the American

Southwest: Towards an Explanation of Chicano School Attendance,” Journal of American Ethnic History,

Vol. 7, No. 2 (Spring, 1988): 6.

[xlvi] Evangeline Hymer. “A study of the social attitudes of adult Mexican immigrants in Los Angeles and

vicinity,” Thesis, University of Southern California, 1923. Alice Bessie Culp, “A case study of 35 Mexican

families./ Originally presented as the author's thesis (M.A.), University of Southern California, 1921;

William Wilson McEuen. “A survey of the Mexicans in Los Angeles,” Thesis (M.A.)--University of

Southern California, 1914. Helen Walker, “The conflict of cultures in first generation Mexicans in Santa

Ana, California,” Thesis--University of Southern California, 1928. Mary Lanigan, “ Second Generation

Mexicans in Belvedere,” Thesis--University of Southern California, 1932

[xlvii]Carlos Cortes, ed, The Mexican American (An Arno Press Collection, 1974); Cortes, The

Chicano Heritage (An Arno Press Collection, 1976)

[xlviii] O. Douglas Weeks, “The League of United Latin-American Citizens: A Texas-Mexican Civic

Organization,” Southwestern Political and Social Science Quarterly, December 1929, pp. 257–

278.

[xlix] Félix Díaz Almaráz, Knight without armor: Carlos Eduardo Castaneda, 1896-1958 (Texas A&M

University Press, 1999).

[l] In 1931 it published A Course of Study for Negro High Schools and Training Schools. Greta De Jong, A

different day: African American Struggles for Justice in Rural Louisiana, 1900-1970 (University of North

Carolina Press, 2002), 50. Carlos K. Blanton, "George I. Sánchez, ideology, and whiteness in the making

of the Mexican American civil rights movement, 1930-1960". Journal of Southern History (June 26,

2009). http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb6532/is_3_72/ai_n29284596/ (accessed May 11, 2010)

[li]
Hershel T. Manuel, “Results of a Half-Century Experiment in Teaching a Second Language,” The

Modern Language Journal, Vol. 36, No. 2 (February 1952): 76–77. Note the work of Victor S. Clark who

wrote two scathing reports on Mexicans and Puerto Ricans with largely the same racist

stereotypes. Victor S. Clark, “Mexican Labor in the United States,” Bureau of Labor Bulletin, No. 78

( Washington, D.C: Department of Commerce and Labor, 1908): 467, 472–473, 477, 480, 482, 485–486,

494–497, 501, 503. Victor S. Clark, Porto Rico and its Problems (Washington, D.C.: The Brookings

Institution, 1930).

[lii] Alberto B. Báez, Franklin Delano Roosevelt Library, President's Personal File, Entry 21, Box 22, October

11, 1935.

[liii] . E. S. Bogardus, The Mexican Immigrant: An Annotated Bibliography (Los Angeles, The

Council on International Relations, June, 1929). In Carlos E. Cortés, Mexican American

Bibliographies ( New York: Arno Press, 1974). Ernesto Galarza, Mexicans In the United States:
A Bibliography (Washington, D.C.: Division of Labor and Social Information of the Pan

American Union, 1942). In Cortes, The Mexican American. Lyle Saunders, Spanish-Speaking

Americans and Mexican-Americans In the United States: A Selected Bibliography (New York:

Bureau for Intercultural Education, 1944). In Cortés, The Mexican Americans.

[liv] Goerge I. Sánchez and Howard Putnam, Materials Relating to the Education of Spanish-

Speaking People in the United States: an annotated bibliography (Austin: The Institute of Latin

American Studies, The University of Texas, Austin, 1959), 55-58.

[lv]
Dave Cubayens, “School Financing May Become Hot Issue,” The Paris News, April 22,

1946.Hart, “Making Democracy Safe for the World,” 53. “FEPC Head Sees Job Shortage For

Minority Groups,” The Chicago Defender, Octobe 21, 1944, 16. Raúl Morín, Among the

Valiant: Mexican Americans in WWII and Korea (Alhambra, CA: Borden Publishing Co., 1966),

16. Robin Fitzgerald Scott, “The Mexican-American in the Los Angeles Area, 1920–1950: From

Acquiescence to Activity”(PhD dissertation, University of Southern California, 1971), 156, 195,

256, 261. David G. Gutiérrez, Walls and Mirrors: Mexican Americans,Mexican Immigrants, and

the Politics of Ethnicity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 120–22.

[lvi]Gunnar Myrdal, An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy

(Transaction Publishers, 1995), 573. Mydal’s 1944 study was revolutionary. It showed how

Americans discriminated against blacks and then blamed them for their poverty.

[lvii] Clete Daniel, Chicano Workers and the Politics of Fairness: The FEPC in the Southwest, 1941–1945

(Austin: University of Texas Press, 1991), 8–9. Manuel Ruiz, Jr., “Closing Remarks,” Making Public

Employment: A Model of Equal Opportunity, A Report of the Proceedings of Regional Civil Rights

Conference II. Sponsored by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights in Boston, Massachusetts, September

22–24, 1974, 34–

35. http://www.law.umaryland.edu/marshall/usccr/documents/cr12an72.pdf (accessed November 5,

2009). Richard Griswold del Castillo, ed., World War II and Mexican American Civil Rights (Austin:

University of Texas Press, 2008), 75–78. Robert Garland Landolt, The Mexican-American Workers of San

Antonio, Texas (New York:Arno Press, 1976), 76–77, 88–117. Pauline R.Kibbe, Latin Americans in Texas

(New York:Arno Press, 1974), 161–62. Charles Loomis and Nellie Loomis, “Skilled Spanish-American War

Industry Workers from New Mexico,” Applied Anthropology 2 (October–December 1942): 33.

[lviii] Hart, “Making Democracy Safe for the World,” 83. Emilio Zamora, Claiming Rights and

Righting Wrongs in Texas: Mexican Workers and Job (College Station: TAMU Press, 2009),

126.

[lix] David E.Hayes-Bautista,Werner O. Schink, and Jorge Chapa, The Burden of Support: Young Latinos in

an Aging Society(Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1988), 15, 18–21. Mario García, Memories of

Chicano History: The Life andNarrative of Bert Corona (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994),

161–63. Rodolfo F. Acuña, A Community Under Siege: A Chronicle of Chicanos East of the Los Angeles

River, 1945–1975 (Los Angeles: Chicano Studies Research Center Publications, 1984), 21–106, 275–94,

407–50.

[lx] Grebler et al., The Mexican-American People, 150, 154.Thomas E. Sheridan, Los Tucsonenses: The

Mexican Community in Tucson, 1854–1941 (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1986), 235–36. David A.

Badillo, “From West San Antonio to East L.A.: Chicano Community Leadership Compare,” Working Paper

Series, No. 24 Stanford Center for Chicano Research. (April, 1989),

http://ccsre.stanford.edu/pdfs/wps24.pdf (accessed May 12, 2010).

[lxi] “Hold Meeting on Spanish Education,” Santa Fe New Mexican, December 13, 1945.

[lxii] Mendez v.Westminster, A Look at Our Latino Heritage,

http://www.mendezvwestminster.com/ (accessed November 5, 2009). The 60th Anniversary of Mendez

vs. Westminster, http://uprisingradio.org/home/?p=1896 (accessed November 5, 2009).

[lxiii] Delgado v. Bastrop ISD, Handbook of Texas Online,

http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/DD/jrd1.html (accessed November 5, 2009).

[lxiv] Henry A. J. Ramos, The American G.I. Forum: In Pursuit of the Dream, 1948–1983 (Houston, TX: Arte

Público Press, 1998), 23. Patrick J Carroll, Felix Longoria’s Wake: Bereavement,Racism, and the Rise of

Mexican American Activism (Austin: University of Texas, 2003). American G.I. Forum,

http://www.pbs.org/kpbs/theborder/history/timeline/19.html (November 5, 2009). “A Class Apart,”

WGBH American Experience,

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/class/photoGallery/ (accessed November 5, 2009).

Felix Z. Longoria: Private, United States Army,

http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/longoria.htm (accessed November 5, 2009).

[lxv] Rosales, Chicano!, 97. Ramos, The American G.I. Forum, 23.

[lxvi] Beatrice Griffith, American Me (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1948). Carey McWilliams, North

from Mexico: The Spanish-Speaking People of the US (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1949).

[lxvii] Guadalupe San Miguel Jr., “Middle-Class Mexican Americans and the Desegregation Campaign in

Texas, 1929-1957,” In Manuel G. Gonzales and Cynthia M. Gonzales, eds, En Aquel Entonces Readings in

Mexican-American History (University of Indiana Press 2000), 211, 215. Guadalupe San Miguel Jr.

Contested Policy: The Rise and Fall of Federal Bilingual Education in the United States, 1960-2001

(Denton: University of North Texas, 2004), 5, 118.

[lxviii]
Blanton, “George I. Sanchez, ideology, and whiteness,” 569ff.

[lxix]
García. White But Not Equal, 177. Years later, Sánchez claimed that he and his former

student Carlos Cadena, a lead attorney on the case, had come up with the class apart-argument –
saying that he and Cadena had outlined the brief. James de Anda refuted this claim, saying that it

was his idea.

[lxx]
Blanton, “George I. Sanchez, ideology, and whiteness,” 569ff.