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Unpublished Manuscripts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of Mexican American print culture (including fiction, newspapers and periodicals, government documents, essays, unpublished manuscripts, images, travelogues, and other genres), it demonstrates that Mexican Americans in the 19th and 20th centuries envisioned themselves as U.S.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.

A Legacy of Neglect: George I. Sánchez, Mexican American Education, and the Ideal of Integration, 1940–1970

2012 ◽  
Vol 114 (6) ◽  
pp. 1-34
Author(s):  
Carlos Kevin Blanton
Keyword(s):  
Public Schools ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Mexican Americans ◽  
Mexican American ◽  
The United States ◽  
Compensatory Education ◽  
American People ◽  
Political Equality ◽  
The 1960S

This biographical study of Dr. George I. Sánchez, a leading Mexican American educator, intellectual, and activist from the 1930s through the 1960s, opens up the idea of compensatory education—the prevalent notion of the 1960s that schools use specialized instructional programs to combat the alleged cultural deprivation of some children, particularly minorities—to a wider focus. While George Sánchez addressed key themes of compensatory education in critical and even predictive ways since at least the 1940s, he was not known to the compensatory education movement, nor was his most passionate subject, Mexican Americans, much of a factor in compensatory education thinking. And this was most unfortunate. No one captured more forcefully the tension between liberal sympathy to offer special schooling to Mexican Americans and how such innovative educational programs maintained and perpetuated the widespread practice of racial segregation. I focus on several discrete, illustrative episodes of Sánchez's life and activism over a three-decade period: first, Sánchez's New Deal-era idealism from the late 1930s and early 1940s in which he used stricter sociological definitions of Mexican American culture as deficient and in need of government action; second, his efforts of the 1940s and 1950s to desegregate public schools in Texas and the Southwest on behalf of the nascent Mexican American civil rights movement; third, his support for bilingual education in the 1960s for reasons of civic and political equality, but not from the perspective of sociolinguistic theory; and finally, Sánchez's surprisingly persistent and pugnacious opposition throughout the 1960s to a preschool compensatory program that originated from within the Mexican American community. These four phases of Sanchez's career illustrate the degree to which Sánchez wrestled with, and even predicted, some key points of later criticism of the entire compensatory education intellectual project. These aspects of Sanchez's work also document just how invisible Mexican American struggles were to national intellectual and policy circles. But most of all, George I. Sánchez recognized that the Mexican American people in the United States, his people, suffered greatly from a sad legacy of neglect. One of the central consistencies to his pedagogical thinking regardless of the decade was his willingness to call attention to that tragic legacy in the hopes of correcting it. This underlying principle to Sánchez's life and work, as well as his sharp diagnosis of the leading educational theories of the day, makes his marginal, almost invisible position among compensatory education thinkers of the 1960s, who also sought to correct legacies of injustice, just as tragic. Educational thinkers today should know more about George I. Sánchez as well as his perspectives on Mexican Americans, schools, and justice.

Introduction

Troublemakers ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Kathryn Schumaker
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
The United States ◽  
Board Of Education ◽  
Chicano Movement ◽  
Legal Principles ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

The introductionexplains how and why student protest became common in the United States in the late 1960s and places these protests in the context of shifts in the history of education and in broader social movements, including the civil rights movement, the Chicano Movement, and black power activism. The introduction also situates students’ rights within the context of children’s rights more broadly, explaining the legal principles that justified age discrimination and excluded children and students from the basic protections of American constitutional law. The introduction identifies the two decades between the 1960s and 1980s as a constitutional moment that revolutionized the relationship of students to the state. It also connects students’ rights litigation to the issue of school desegregation and the legacy of Brown v. Board of Education.

The Postblack Ethos in “Texts Out of Time”: Rosa Parks and the African American Freedom Struggle in Cultural Memory

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carol Bunch Davis
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Cultural Production ◽  
Cultural Memory ◽  
American Identity ◽  
Freedom Struggle ◽  
Black Arts ◽  
African American Identity ◽  
The 1960S

This book challenges the cultural memory of the African American Freedom Struggle era that hinges on a master narrative focused on the “heroic period” of the Civil Rights Movement. It argues that this narrative limits the representation of African American identity within the Civil Rights Movement to Martin Luther King's nonviolent protest leadership in the segregated South and casts Malcolm X's advocacy of black nationalism and the ensuing Black Power/Arts Movement as undermining civil rights advances. Through an analysis of five case studies of African American identity staged in plays between 1959 and 1969, the book instead offers representations that engage, critique, and revise racial uplift ideology and reimagine the Black Arts Movement's sometimes proscriptive notions of black authenticity as a condition of black identity and cultural production. It also posits a postblack ethos as the means by which these representations construct their counternarratives to cultural memory and broadens narrow constructions of African American identity shaping racial discourse in the U.S. public sphere of the 1960s.

The Chicano Movement: Mexican American History and the Struggle for Equality

2018 ◽  
Vol 17 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 31-52
Author(s):  
Carlos Muñoz
Keyword(s):  
High School Students ◽  
Los Angeles ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Mexican American ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
School Students ◽  
Mexican American History ◽  
Mass Protest ◽  
The 1960S

Abstract The Chicano/Chicana movement was a product of the global eruption that took place in 1968. A critical understanding of this movement requires that it be put into a historical context and theoretical framework of an indigenous people who were internally colonized by the expanding us Empire after the end of the us-Mexico War of 1846-48. Violent and nonviolent struggles took place prior to the 1960s over the issues of land, social justice, and civil rights. The first nonviolent and largest Mexican American mass protest in us history occurred in the Spring of 1968 in East Los Angeles, California, where over ten thousand Chicano high school students walked out of their inferior and racist barrio high schools. The student walkouts ignited the emergence of the Chicano civil rights movement. The movement’s positive contributions and failures will be discussed. Discussion will conclude with a critical analysis of Mexican American struggles in the present age of “Trumpism”.

scholarly journals British Black Power: The anti-imperialism of political blackness and the problem of nativist socialism

2019 ◽  
Vol 67 (5) ◽  
pp. 945-967 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Narayan
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Black Power ◽  
British History ◽  
Black Power Movement ◽  
Black Activism ◽  
The Us ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 1960S

The history of the US Black Power movement and its constituent groups such as the Black Panther Party has recently gone through a process of historical reappraisal, which challenges the characterization of Black Power as the violent, misogynist and negative counterpart to the Civil Rights movement. Indeed, scholars have furthered interest in the global aspects of the movement, highlighting how Black Power was adopted in contexts as diverse as India, Israel and Polynesia. This article highlights that Britain also possessed its own distinctive form of Black Power movement, which whilst inspired and informed by its US counterpart, was also rooted in anti-colonial politics, New Commonwealth immigration and the onset of decolonization. Existing sociological narratives usually locate the prominence and visibility of British Black Power and its activism, which lasted through the 1960s to the early 1970s, within the broad history of UK race relations and the movement from anti-racism to multiculturalism. However, this characterization neglects how such Black activism conjoined explanations of domestic racism with issues of imperialism and global inequality. Through recovering this history, the article seeks to bring to the fore a forgotten part of British history and also examines how the history of British Black Power offers valuable lessons about how the politics of anti-racism and anti-imperialism should be united in the 21st century.

Negotiating Fragmented Subjectivities from within the Archive

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen R. Roybal
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
Mexican Americans ◽  
Mexican American ◽  
Residual Effects ◽  
Mexican American Women ◽  
Mexican American War ◽  
History Of ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S

This final chapter describes how the women in this study contribute to an ever-expanding archive and cultural history of the Southwest that aids contemporary scholars in understanding the residual effects of colonialism and the reasons why Chicanas/os struggle with fragmented subjectivities that leave them within a liminal, or in-between space. The chapter suggests that Mexican American women in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were precursors to the more radical involvement of women in social movements of the 1960s and 1970s. This chapter also calls attention to the importance of acknowledging the importance of gender displacement alongside the physical displacement experienced by Mexican Americans across the U.S. Southwest just after the Mexican-American War in our understanding of Borderlands, Chicana/o, and feminist history.

Black Power in Philadelphia: Selective Patronage and the Effectiveness of Direct Action Protest

2017 ◽  
Vol 48 (4) ◽  
pp. 373-390 ◽  
Author(s):  
Justin Gammage
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Black Power ◽  
Direct Action ◽  
African American Community ◽  
Racial Justice ◽  
Local Networks ◽  
The Core ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 1960S

Black Power during the 1960s is a shift in direct action protest with its aim at procuring power (economic, political, educational, etc.). The manifestation of Black Power in Philadelphia in the late 1960s provides us an elaborate model of direct action protest that included central components of the African American community. Moreover, the selective patronage movement successfully maintained organization and momentum without the prototypical one leader model that was prominent in the civil rights movement that preceded it. Much like the Black Lives Matter movement, the selective patronage movement in Philadelphia drew on the national outcry for racial justice but largely built the core of its strength on local networks. This article explores the history of the selective patronage movement in Philadelphia during the early 1960s. Next, it assesses the strengths and weakness of the movement. Lastly, it provides recommendations for future movements aimed at economic development.

From protests to practice: Confronting systemic racism in LIS

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Renate L. Chancellor ◽  
Paige DeLoach ◽  
Anthony Dunbar ◽  
Shari Lee ◽  
Rajesh Singh
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
The United States ◽  
Police Brutality ◽  
Systemic Racism ◽  
National Response ◽  
Real Change ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 1960S

The death of George Floyd, at the hands of the Minnesota police on May 25, 2020, sparked a global uproar that many have argued has not occurred since the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. It is unclear why this particular incident elicited such a visceral and widespread response, especially in light of the fact that police brutality towards Blacks in America is not a new phenomenon. This paper examines the national response to Floyd’s death within the contexts of CRT, the history of systemic racism in the United States, and questions how race and inequity issues have been addressed in LIS. The authors provide actionable measures that could go a long way in moving the discipline toward a shift in thinking. However, they find that these efforts need to be sustained, because one-shot events, training sessions, or activities rarely result in any real change. Real progress, they conclude, will require more than new laws. It will also require a seismic societal shift in attitude.

Chicana Studies

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bernadette Marie Calafell
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Women Of Color ◽  
Mexican American ◽  
Mexican American Women ◽  
Virgin Of Guadalupe ◽  
The Public ◽  
Educational Rights ◽  
Chicana Studies ◽  
The 1960S

The field of Chicana studies was born out of the experiences of Mexican-American women in the southwestern United States. Chicana leaders, such as Dolores Huerta were central activists in the Chicano civil rights movement in the 1960s, working alongside leaders like Cesar Chavez and cofounding the UFW. Others were involved in social movement activity in New Mexico, Colorado, and Texas with activists Reies Tijerina, Rodolfo “Corky” Gonzáles, and José Ángel Gutiérrez. While fighting for labor, political, and educational rights, Chicanas contested the machismo, sexism, and heterosexism that they experienced from Chicanos. Chicanas were urged to perform stereotypical feminine roles or activities, while men served as the public face of the movement. They were disciplined further by the invocation of the virgin/whore dichotomy, based in Catholicism around the Virgin of Guadalupe; and Malintzin Tenépal, Spanish conquistador Hernan Cortes’s translator and lover. In addition, Chicanas were encouraged to take a single-axis approach to social justice and keep silent about their concerns in order to highlight the fight against ethnocentrism and racism, which were deemed by male leaders to be of the utmost importance. Similarly, Chicanas who looked for solidarity in the mainstream women’s movement were encouraged to put aside their racial concerns in favor of an agenda that focused solely on their identity as women. Put in the untenable position of lacking a space in which their complex and intersectional experiences were honored, and of being subjected to the virgin/whore dichotomy and its unrealistic expectations, Chicanas needed to create a space of their own. The late 1970s and 1980s saw the birth of Chicano Studies departments in academia, as well as the rise of Chicana studies and Chicana feminism. Chicana studies blossomed through works by artists such as Yolanda Lopez, Judy Baca, Patssi Valdez, and Ester Hernández, and scholarship by Deena J. González, Antonia Castañeda, Angie Chabram, Rosa Linda Fregoso, Sandra Cisneros, Cherríe Moraga, Gloria Anzaldúa, and Ana Castillo. The publication of This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color became an important benchmark for Chicana feminist writings, and women of color feminism in general. In addition, Moraga’s Loving in the War Years: Lo que nunca pasó por sus labios and Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza were foundational texts in the development of Chicana feminist thought. Moraga’s work (originally published in 1983 and republished in an expanded edition in 2000) addresses her experiences as a queer Chicana born to a White father and Mexican mother, while Anzaldúa’s book (published in 1987) theorizes about the possibility of a mestiza consciousness or borderlands identity. A central theme in Chicana feminist writings is the reinterpretation of Malintzin Tenépal, also referred to as La Malinche, through poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, while Chicana feminist artists have visually reimagined the Virgin of Guadalupe queerly and in their own images as everyday women. Through the reinterpretation of these figures, Chicanas have created possibilities for Chicana identifications that resist the binary virgin/whore dichotomy.

Palomino

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
James J. Lorence ◽  
Donna Lorence
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Mexican American ◽  
Civil Liberties ◽  
Social Good ◽  
Mccarthy Era ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Mexican American Identity

This book presents the first comprehensive biography of progressive labor organizer, peace worker, and economist Clinton Jencks (1918–2005). A key figure in the radical International Union of Mine, Mill, and Smelter Workers (IUMMSW) Local 890 in Grant County, New Mexico, Jencks was involved in organizing not only the mine workers but also their wives in the 1951 strike against the Empire Zinc Company. He was active in the production of the 1954 landmark labor film dramatizing the Empire Zinc strike, Salt of the Earth, which was heavily suppressed during the McCarthy era and led to Jencks' persecution by the federal government. The book examines the interaction between Jencks' personal experience and the broader forces that marked the world and society in which he worked and lived. Following the work of Jencks and his equally progressive wife, Virginia Derr Jencks, the book illuminates the roots and character of Southwestern unionism, the role of radicalism in the Mexican American civil rights movement, the rise of working-class feminism within Local 890 and the Grant County Mexican American community, and the development of Mexican American identity in the Southwest. Chronicling Jencks' five-year-long legal battle against charges of perjury, this biography also illustrates how civil liberties and American labor were constrained by the specter of anticommunism during the Cold War. The book highlights Clinton Jencks' dramatic influence on the history of labor culture in the Southwest through a lifetime devoted to progress and change for the social good.

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