World War II and Mexican American Civil Rights

Richard Griswold del Castillo

• Publisher: University of Texas Press
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN: 9780292717398
• eBook ISBN: 9780292794573
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social History
• Index: Social Sciences

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 The book concludes with a selection of key essays and historical documents from the World War II period that provide a first-person perspective of Mexican American civil rights struggles.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction
• 1. Mexican Americans in 1940: Perceptions and Conditions
• 2. The Federal Government Discovers Mexican Americans
• 3. Violence in Los Angeles: Sleepy Lagoon, the Zoot-Suit Riots, and the Liberal Response
• 4. The War and Changing Identities: Personal Transformations
• 5. Civil Rights on the Home Front: Leaders and Organizations
• Epilogue: Civil Rights and the Legacy of War
• Appendix A: Ruth Tuck, “The Minority Citizen”
• Appendix B: Statement of Carlos E. Castañeda before the U.S. Senate Regarding the Need for a Fair Employment Practices Commission, March 12, 1945
• Appendix C: Executive Order 8802 Establishing the Fair Employment Practices Committee, June 25, 1941
• Appendix D: The “Caucasian Race—Equal Privileges” Texas House Concurrent Resolution, 1943
• Appendix E: Manuel Ruiz, “Latin-American Juvenile Delinquency in Los Angeles: Bomb or Bubble!”
• Appendix F: Raul Morin, excerpts from Among the Valiant: Mexican-Americans in WW II and Korea
• Appendix G: Affidavits of Mexican Americans Regarding Discrimination in Texas during World War II (Collected by Alonso S. Perales)
• Notes
• Selected Annotated Bibliography
• Index