Black and Brown Tumbling the Walls Together: African Americans and Mexican Americans Accessing Higher Education through Intersectoral Points of Contact and Interactions

2015 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Irene E. Vásquez
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
African American ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Mexican Americans ◽  
Mexican American ◽  
Student Activism ◽  
African American Student ◽  
Joint Activities ◽  
Cultural Centers ◽  
Secondary Sources

While studies of relations between African American and Mexican American communities often highlight conflict or collaboration as organizing principles, this article seeks to identify where organizing efforts and advocacy intersected between these constituencies but also where influences and ideologies conjoined their social critiques. While this article focuses on how African American activists and advocacies informed Mexican American struggles, the point is to demonstrate that these groups did not operate in isolation or in organizational vacuums. This article provides an analysis of the interstitial moments of interethnic solidarities between African American and Chicana/o student and community activists in their efforts to establish cultural centers and ethnic studies programs at UCLA in 1968. Highlighting the intersectional struggles by Chicana/o and African American students, this exploratory work examines primary and secondary sources including newspaper articles, group statements and proposals, and institutional reports. Collaborative moments in the history of Chicana/o and African American student activism occurred that reflected previous Black and Brown solidarity relations as well as newly developing interactions among students. Contextually, my research situates activism on behalf of Chicana/o studies within the Civil Rights period. First, I examine the Civil Rights contexts within which Chicana/o and African American collaborative relations developed and the influences they brought to bear on activists and their agendas. Second, I note some networks and associations that occurred between African American and Chicana/o activists seeking self-determination and empowerment. Third, I feature some joint activities at UCLA that resulted in concrete institutional outcomes. In conclusion, I argue that the 1968 struggles to reform higher education became a pivotal site for Black and Brown solidarity. 

Generations of Segregation

2019 ◽  
pp. 210-241
Author(s):  
George J. Sanchez
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Los Angeles ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Mexican Americans ◽  
Mexican American ◽  
American Citizenship ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Film Making ◽  
The City

Los Angeles was built by immigrants from the U.S. South, Asia, and especially Mexico. After 1900 the city grew as a rail terminus, Pacific port, and tourist destination. It became a focus of film making and petroleum production, and developed booming defense industries during World War II and the Cold War. Marketed as the city of dreams, continuing immigration made it increasingly Mexican while Mexicans faced residential segregation that constrained educational chances, economic opportunities, and political participation. Fragmented urban administration allowed Realty Boards and County officials to limit Mexican-American (and African-American) citizenship despite national civil rights policies promoting integration and participation. When defense, energy, and other industries declined in the turn to globalization, African American (1973-93) and Mexican American (2005-13) mayors offered images of opening while enduring segregation constrained education, employment, and life opportunities for Mexican-Americans and African Americans. New immigrants from Mexico, Central America and beyond faced lives of marginality.

New Directions in Latino/a/x Histories of Education: Comparative Studies in Race, Language, Law, and Higher Education

2020 ◽  
Vol 60 (4) ◽  
pp. 612-622
Author(s):  
Rosina Lozano
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Race And Ethnicity ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Student Activism ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
Language Instruction ◽  
Historical Inquiry ◽  
Legal Cases

The twenty-first century has seen a surge in scholarship on Latino educational history and a new nonbinary umbrella term, Latinx, that a younger generation prefers. Many of historian Victoria-María MacDonald's astute observations in 2001 presaged the growth of the field. Focus has increased on Spanish-surnamed teachers and discussions have grown about the Latino experience in higher education, especially around student activism on campus. Great strides are being made in studying the history of Spanish-speaking regions with long ties to the United States, either as colonies or as sites of large-scale immigration, including Puerto Rico, Cuba, and the Philippines. Historical inquiry into the place of Latinos in the US educational system has also developed in ways that MacDonald did not anticipate. The growth of the comparative race and ethnicity field in and of itself has encouraged cross-ethnic and cross-racial studies, which often also tie together larger themes of colonialism, language instruction, legal cases, and civil rights or activism.

Good Neighbor in the American Historical Imagination: Mexican American Intellectual Thought in the Fight for Civil Rights, 1930s–1940s

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Natalie Mendoza
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Identity Formation ◽  
Mexican Americans ◽  
Mexican American ◽  
The United States ◽  
Historical Narrative ◽  
Historical Imagination ◽  
American Intellectual ◽  
Good Neighbor

Abstract This article argues that historical narrative has held a significant role in Mexican American identity formation and civil rights activism by examining the way Mexican Americans in the 1930s and 1940s used history to claim full citizenship status in Texas. In particular, it centers on how George I. Sánchez (1906–1972), a scholar of Latin American education, revised historical narrative by weaving history and foreign policy together through a pragmatic lens. To educators and federal officials, Sánchez used this revisionist history to advocate for Mexican Americans, insisting that the Good Neighbor policy presented the United States with the chance to translate into reality the democratic ideals long professed in the American historical imagination. The example of Sánchez also prompts us to reexamine the historiography in our present day: How do we define the tradition and trajectory of Mexican American intellectual thought in U.S. history? This article posits that when Sánchez and other Mexican Americans thought about their community’s collective identity and civil rights issues through history, they were contributing to a longer conversation driven by questions about identity formation and equality that first emerged at the end of the U.S. War with Mexico in 1848. These questions remain salient in the present, indicating the need for a historiographic examination that will change how we imagine the tradition of intellectual thought in the United States.

People, Get Ready

2019 ◽  
pp. 172-196
Author(s):  
Lauren Parish
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Economic Growth ◽  
Social Capital ◽  
African American ◽  
Educational Achievement ◽  
Educational Opportunities ◽  
African American Student ◽  
American Student ◽  
College And Career ◽  
It Education

Education proves to be a positive and an impactful benefit to those who choose to pursue it. Education is associated with professional stability, economic growth, and social capital. More than ever, there is a strong emphasis on educational achievement and the acquirement of a postsecondary credential. However, achievement gaps persist in the African-American student population. These students need to be adequately prepared to successfully complete a rigorous collegiate program. There are magnitudes of programs designed to assist underrepresented student populations prepare for their college careers. More than ever, considerations regarding postsecondary educational opportunities need to be thoroughly explored. The pursuit of higher education can be daunting, especially for first generational college students. It is imperative that students and families become cognizant of preparatory possibilities that are designed to empower and educate them about the myriad college and career choices.

Brownover “Other White”: Mexican Americans' Legal Arguments and Litigation Strategy in School Desegregation Lawsuits

2003 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 145-194 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven H. Wilson
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Mexican Americans ◽  
School Desegregation ◽  
Voting Rights ◽  
Board Of Education ◽  
Approaches To Teaching ◽  
Legal Arguments ◽  
Law Professors

The landmark 1954 decisionBrown v. Board of Educationhas shaped trial lawyers' approaches to litigating civil rights claims and law professors' approaches to teaching the law's powers and limitations. The court-ordered desegregation of the nation's schools, moreover, inspired subsequent lawsuits by African Americans aimed variously at ending racial distinctions in housing, employment, and voting rights. Litigation to enforce theBrowndecision and similar mandates brought slow but steady progress and inspired members of various other minorities to appropriate the rhetoric, organizing methods, and legal strategy of the African American civil rights struggle.

Before Chicano

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alberto Varon
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Cultural Production ◽  
Mexican Americans ◽  
Mexican American ◽  
Cultural Life ◽  
Government Documents ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Unpublished Manuscripts

Before Chicano: Citizenship and the Making of Mexican American Manhood, 1848-1959 is the first book-length study of Latino manhood before the civil rights movement of the 1960s. Mexican Americans are typically overlooked or omitted from American cultural life of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, despite their long-standing presence in the U.S. This book dislodges the association between Mexican Americans and immigration and calls for a new framework for understanding Mexican American cultural production and U.S. culture, but doing so requires an expanded archive and a multilingual approach to U.S. culture.Working at the intersection of culture and politics, Mexican Americans drew upon American democratic ideals and U.S. foundational myths to develop evolving standards of manhood and political participation. Through an analysis of Mexican American print culture (including fiction, newspapers and periodicals, government documents, essays, unpublished manuscripts, images, travelogues, and other genres), it demonstrates that Mexican Americans in the 19th and 20th centuries envisioned themselves as U.S. national citizens through cultural depictions of manhood. Before Chicano moves beyond the resistance paradigm that has dominated Latino Studies and uncovers a long history of how Latinos shaped—and were shaped by—American cultural life.

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