Encyclopedia of the Mexican American Civil Rights Movement


Book Description

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




No Mexicans, Women, Or Dogs Allowed


Book Description

Founded by Mexican American men in 1929, the League of United Latin-American Citizens (LULAC) has usually been judged according to Chicano nationalist standards of the late 1960s and 1970s. Drawing on extensive archival research, including the personal papers of Alonso S. Perales and Adela Sloss-Vento, No Mexicans, Women, or Dogs Allowed presents the history of LULAC in a new light, restoring its early twentieth-century context. Cynthia Orozco also provides evidence that perceptions of LULAC as a petite bourgeoisie, assimilationist, conservative, anti-Mexican, anti-working class organization belie the realities of 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.




Encyclopedia of the Mexican American Civil Rights Movement


Book Description

Mexican Americans, like many other Americans, have a long history of struggle for equality and civil rights. Yet only in recent decades has that history begun to be included as part of mainstream American history. Bringing together a wealth of information on the Mexican American struggle for civil rights, this authoritative encyclopedia provides factual up-to-date information on the concepts, issues, plans, legislation, court decisions, events, organizations, and people involved in that long fight. It includes such leading figures as Corky Gonzales, Héctor Pérez GarcÍa, Jovita Idar, and Alonso Perales, as well as many secondary leaders, and is rounded out with objective discussions of such topics as leadership, the movimiento, lynching, political exclusion, voting, and stereotyping. Appendices include a chronology and several basic documents critical to an understanding of the Mexican American Civil Rights struggle. The first comprehensive encyclopedia on this aspect of Mexican American history, the book fills a noticeable gap in the literature. It includes more than 300 entries, six appendices, sources of additional information, cross-referencing, and a detailed index that makes the history readily available. The book is a valuable resource for anyone interested in the Mexican American experience.




Civil Rights and Beyond


Book Description

Civil Rights and Beyond examines the dynamic relationships between African American and Latino/a activists in the United States from the 1930s to the present day. Building on recent scholarship, this book pushes the timeframe for the study of interactions between blacks and a variety of Latino/a groups beyond the standard chronology of the civil rights era. As such, the book merges a host of community histories--each with their own distinct historical experiences and activisms--to explore group dynamics, differing strategies and activist moments, and the broader quests of these communities for rights and social justice. The collection is framed around the concept of "activism," which most fully encompasses the relationships that blacks and Latinos have enjoyed throughout the twentieth century. Wide ranging and pioneering, Civil Rights and Beyond explores black and Latino/a activism from California to Florida, Chicago to Bakersfield--and a host of other communities and cities--to demonstrate the complicated nature of African American-Latino/a activism in the twentieth-century United States. Contributors: Brian D. Behnken, Dan Berger, Hannah Gill, Laurie Lahey, Kevin Allen Leonard, Mark Malisa, Gordon Mantler, Alyssa Ribeiro, Oliver A. Rosales, Chanelle Nyree Rose, and Jakobi Williams




Chicano! The History of the Mexican American Civil Rights Movement


Book Description

Chicano! The History of the Mexican American Civil Rights Movement is the most comprehensive account of the arduous struggle by Mexican Americans to secure and protect their civil rights. It is also a companion volume to the critically acclaimed, four-part documentary series of the same title, which is now available on video from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Both this published volume and the video series are a testament to the Mexican American communityÍs hard-fought battle for social and legal equality as well as political and cultural identity. Since the United States-Mexico War, 1846-1848, Mexican Americans have striven to achieve full rights as citizens. From peaceful resistance and violent demonstrations, when their rights were ignored or abused, to the establishment of support organizations to carry on the struggle and the formation of labor unions to provide a united voice, the movement grew in strength and in numbers. However, it was during the 1960s and 1970s that the campaign exploded into a nationwide groundswell of Mexican Americans laying claim, once and for all, to their civil rights and asserting their cultural heritage. They took a name that had been used disparagingly against them for years„Chicano„and fashioned it into a battle cry, a term of pride, affirmation and struggle. Aimed at a broad general audience as well as college and high school students, Chicano! focuses on four themes: land, labor, educational reform and government. With solid research, accessible language and historical photographs, this volume highlights individuals, issues and pivotal developments that culminated in and comprised a landmark period for the second largest ethnic minority in the United States. Chicano! is a compelling monument to the individuals and events that transformed society.




Encyclopedia of Activism and Social Justice


Book Description

This is an important historical period in which to develop communication models aimed at creating opportunities for citizens to find a voice for new experiences and social concerns. Such basic social problems as inequality, poverty, and discrimination pose a constant challenge to policies that serve the health and income needs of children, families, people with disabilities, and the elderly. Important changes both in individual values and civic life are occurring in the United States and in many other nations. Recent trends such as the globalization of commerce and consumer values, the speed and personalization of communication technologies, and an economic realignment of industrial and information-based economies are often regarded as negative. Yet there are many signs - from the WTO experience in Seattle to the rise of global activism aimed at making biotechnology accountable - that new forms of citizenship, politics, and public engagement are emerging. The Encyclopedia of Activism and Social Justice presents a comprehensive overview of the field with topics of varying dimensions, breadth, and length. This three-volume Encyclopedia is designed for readers to understand the topics, concepts, and ideas that motivate and shape the fields of activism, civil engagement, and social justice and includes biographies of the major thinkers and leaders who have influenced and continue to influence the study of activism. Key Features Offers multidisciplinary perspectives with contributions from the fields of education, communication studies, political science, leadership studies, social work, social welfare, environmental studies, health care, social psychology, and sociology Provides an easily recognizable approach to topics, ideas, persons, and concepts based on alphabetical and biographical listings in civil engagement, social justice, and activism Addresses both small-scale social justice concepts and more large-scale issues Includes biography pieces indicating the concepts, ideas, or legacies of individuals and groups who have influenced current practice and thinking such as John Stuart Mill, Rachel Carson, Mother Jones, Martin Luther King, Jr., Karl Marx, Mohandas Gandhi, Nelson and Winnie Mandela, Dorothy Day, and Thomas Merton




Vicente Ximenes, LBJ's Great Society, and Mexican American Civil Rights Rhetoric


Book Description

Beginning as a grassroots organizer in the 1950s, Vicente Ximenes was at the forefront of the movement for Mexican American civil rights through three presidential administrations, joining Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society and later emerging as one of the highest-ranking appointees in Johnson's administration. One of the most influential government representatives of Mexican American issues in recent history, Ximenes succeeded largely because he could adapt his rhetoric for different audiences in his speeches and writings. In Vicente Ximenes, LBJ's Great Society, and Mexican American Civil Rights Rhetoric, Michelle Hall Kells elucidates Ximenes's achievement through a rhetorical history of his career as an activist. Kells draws on Ximenes's extensive archive of speeches, reports, articles, and oral interviews to present the activist's rhetorical history and begins each chapter with an excerpt from the collection that showcases Ximenes's ability to negotiate multiple public spheres. Exploring Ximenes's legacy against the backdrop of the Cold War era, Kells's analyses illustrate how Ximenes effectively agitated for open, inclusive, and pluralist democracy at regional and national levels. After a discussion of Ximenes's early life, the author focuses on his career as an activist, examining Ximenes's leadership in several key civil rights events, including the historic 1967 White House cabinet committee hearings on Mexican American Affairs, and highlighting his role in advancing Mexican Americans and Latinos from social marginalization to greater representation in national politics. Kells concludes by reflecting on the later years of Ximenes's life and his contributions to the post-World War II civil rights movement. Vicente Ximenes, LBJ's Great Society, and Mexican American Civil Rights Rhetoric shows us a remarkable man who dedicated the majority of his life to public service, using rhetoric to mobilize activists for change at the grassroots level as well as at the highest levels of government to secure civil rights advances for his fellow Mexican Americans.




The Crusade for Justice


Book Description

Recounts the history of a Chicano rights group in 1960s Denver.




Encyclopedia of American Civil Rights and Liberties [4 volumes]


Book Description

Thoroughly updated and featuring 75 new entries, this monumental four-volume work illuminates past and present events associated with civil rights and civil liberties in the United States. This revised and expanded four-volume encyclopedia is unequaled for both the depth and breadth of its coverage. Some 650 entries address the full range of civil rights and liberties in America from the Colonial Era to the present. In addition to many updates of material from the first edition, the work offers 75 new entries about recent issues and events; among them, dozens of topics that are the subject of close scrutiny and heated debate in America today. There is coverage of controversial issues such as voter ID laws, the use of drones, transgender issues, immigration, human rights, and government surveillance. There is also expanded coverage of women's rights, gay rights/gay marriage, and Native American rights. Entries are enhanced by 42 primary documents that have shaped modern understanding of the extent and limitations of civil liberties in the United States, including landmark statutes, speeches, essays, court decisions, and founding documents of influential civil rights organizations. Designed as an up-to-date reference for students, scholars, and others interested in the expansive array of topics covered, the work will broaden readers' understanding of—and appreciation for—the people and events that secured civil rights guarantees and concepts in this country. At the same time, it will help readers better grasp the reasoning behind and ramifications of 21st-century developments like changing applications of Miranda Rights and government access to private Internet data. Maintaining an impartial stance throughout, the entries objectively explain the varied perspectives on these hot-button issues, allowing readers to draw their own conclusions.




Pioneer of Mexican-American Civil Rights


Book Description

In this wide-ranging biography, historian Cynthia Orozco examines the life and work of one of the most influential Mexican Americans of the twentieth century. Alonso S. Perales was born in Alice, Texas, in 1898; he became an attorney, leading civil rights activist, author and US diplomat. Perales was active in promoting and seeking equality for “La Raza” in numerous arenas. In 1929, he co-founded the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), the most important Latino civil rights organization in the United States. He encouraged the empowerment of Latinos at the voting box and sought to pass state and federal legislation banning racial discrimination. He fought for school desegregation in Texas and initiated a movement for more and better public schools for Mexican-descent people in San Antonio. A complex and controversial figure, Alonso S. Perales is now largely forgotten, and this first-ever comprehensive biography reveals his work and accomplishments to a new generation of scholars of Mexican-American history and Hispanic civil rights. This volume is divided into four parts: the first is organized chronologically and examines his childhood to his role in World War I, the beginnings of his activism in the 1920s and the founding of LULAC. The second section explores his impact as an attorney, politico, public intellectual, Pan-American ideologue and US diplomat. Perales’ private life is examined in the third part and scholars’ interpretations of his legacy in the fourth.