Texas Mexican Americans and Postwar Civil Rights

190 Pages·2015·9.877 MB·English

by  Maggie Rivas-Rodriguez

Texas Mexican Americans and Postwar Civil Rights
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[ Maggie Rivas- RodRiguez ]
Texas Mexican Americans
and Postwar Civil Rights
University of Texas Press austin
Copyright © 2015 by the University of Texas Press
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
First edition, 2015
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♾ The paper used in this book meets the minimum requirements of ansi/niso
z39.48- 1992 (R1997) (Permanence of Paper).
libRaRy of congRess cataloging- in- publication data
Rivas-Rodriguez, Maggie, author.
 Texas Mexican Americans and postwar civil rights /
Maggie Rivas-Rodriguez. — First edition.
  pages  cm
 Includes bibliographical references and index.
 isbn 978-0-292-76751-5 (cloth : alk. paper) — isbn 978-0-292-76752-2
(pbk. : alk. paper) — isbn 978-0-292-76754-6 (library e-book) —
isbn 978-0-292-76753-9 (non-library e-book)
1. Mexican Americans—Civil rights—Texas. 2. School integration—
Texas—Alpine. 3. Discrimination in employment—Texas—El Paso. 
4. Police—Employment—Texas—El Paso. 5. Mexican American Legal
Defense and Educational Fund—History. 6. Race discrimination—Texas. 
7. Texas—Race relations. I. Title.
 f395.M5R528 2015
 323.1168′72073—dc23 2014046111
doi:10.7560/767515
To the World War II– era civil rights warhorses
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Contents
Preface ix
Acknowledgments xiii
Introduction 1
paRt 1. Claiming Rights on a Local Level
chapteR o ne. Integration a Mordidas in Alpine Schools 13
chapteR two. The Multistep Integration of the El Paso Police
Department 45
paRt 2. Claiming Rights on a National Level
chapteR thRee . Maldef: Born into the Crosswinds of the
Chicano Movement 65
conclusion. Of Oral History and Research Possibilities 119
Notes 125
Selected Bibliography 157
Index 165
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Preface
In 1992, Maldef was in the middle of a long- running class- action
lawsuit against the state of Texas and its two flagship universities:
the University of Texas at Austin and Texas A&M University. The
suit, LULAC et al. v. Richards et al., alleged that the state concentrated its
higher- education wealth on the flagship campuses at the expense of the
colleges and universities on the Texas-M exico border. (Although the case
would be decided in favor of the state, the lawsuit led to large- scale im-
provements in the allocation of funds and would create several affiliations
with both the Texas A&M system and the University of Texas system.) At
the time, I was a reporter, covering the U.S.-M exico border for the Dallas
Morning News and staying abreast of LULAC et al. v. Richards. As journal-
ists do, I was writing a “takeout”—a story that explores some aspect of a
larger issue, a device often used to stay current with a major ongoing story.
That takeout was a profile of Maldef; an interview with the attorney Pete
Tijerina was part of the story.
As we sat in his San Antonio office, Tijerina told me about the early
days of the organization. At the close of the interview, Tijerina mentioned
that he was a veteran of World War II, as was my own father. “All us old
civil rights warhorses are World War II vets,” Tijerina said.
That offhand comment led me to write another story about the
Mexican American World War II generation and civil rights. My article,
“Brothers in Arms,” ran as the cover story of the now- defunct Dallas
Morning News’s Sunday magazine for December 6, 1992, and the piece
would inspire what has become the Voces Oral History Project.
In the course of reporting that longer story in 1992, I became aware of
the dearth of literature on the Mexican American wwii civil rights work.
This volume, then, has its roots in those 1992 interviews with Pete Tije-