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  1. In defense of my people

    Perales, Alonso S., 1898-1960
    Houston, Texas : Arte Público Press, [2021]

    "In 1927, when his letters to two Texas governors about the assassination of Mexican Americans in police custody in South Texas were ignored, Alonso S. Perales wrote to President Coolidge, asking for the Justice Department to conduct an official investigation into their deaths. Perales believed US citizens of Mexican descent had an obligation to their country, "including offering our lives for this Nation when necessary." He also believed adamantly that the United States had a duty to protect the rights of all its people. Originally published in Spanish in 1936 and 1937, In Defense of My People contains articles, letters and speeches written by one of the most influential civil rights activists of the early twentieth century. When Mexican-American veterans of World War II were denied service in a South Texas pool hall, even while wearing their uniforms, Perales wrote about the incident for The San Antonio Express. He also exhorted his community to secure an education and participate in civic duties. His form letter, "How to Request School Facilities for Our Children," helped parents secure schools "equal to those furnished children of Anglo-American descent." Alonso S. Perales was the co-founder of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), an attorney, activist and US diplomat. He has been largely forgotten, in part because his writings were in Spanish. This first-ever English translation of his two-volume publication, En defensa de mi raza, will make Perales' contributions to equal rights for Mexicans and Mexican Americans available to a much larger audience. A long-lost gem of the civil rights movement, this book is a must-read for historians and anyone interested in the Latino community's fight for rights, dignity and respect. ALONSO S. PERALES (1898-1960) was born in Alice, Texas, and became an attorney, activist, author and US diplomat. EMILIO ZAMORA, a professor of history at the University of Texas, is a Fellow of the George W. Littlefield Professorship in American History and the author of several books, including Claiming Rights and Righting Wrongs in Texas; Mexican Workers and Job Politics During World War II (Texas A&M University Press, 2009). He edited and translated The WWI Diary of José de la Luz Sáenz (Texas A&M University Press, 2014)"--

  2. Encyclopedia of the Mexican American civil rights movement

    Meier, Matt S.
    Westport, Conn. : Greenwood Press, 2000.

    A record of the Mexican American struggle for civil rights. It provides factual information on the concepts, issues, plans, legislation, court decisions, events, organizations and people involved in that long fight. There are more than 300 entries, and six appendices.

  3. Labor rights are civil rights : Mexican American workers in twentieth-century America

    Vargas, Zaragosa
    Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press, c2005.

    In 1937, Mexican workers were among the strikers and supporters beaten, arrested, and murdered by Chicago policemen in the now infamous Republic Steel Mill Strike. Using this event as a springboard, Zaragosa Vargas embarks on the first full-scale history of the Mexican-American labor movement in twentieth-century America. Absorbing and meticulously researched, "Labor Rights Are Civil Rights" paints a multifaceted portrait of the complexities and contours of the Mexican American struggle for equality from the 1930s to the postwar era. Drawing on extensive archival research, Vargas focuses on the large Mexican American communities in Texas, Colorado, and California. As he explains, the Great Depression heightened the struggles of Spanish speaking blue-collar workers, and employers began to define citizenship to exclude Mexicans from political rights and erect barriers to resistance. Mexican Americans faced hostility and repatriation. The mounting strife resulted in strikes by Mexican fruit and vegetable farmers. This collective action, combined with involvement in the Communist party, led Mexican workers to unionize. Vargas carefully illustrates how union mobilization in agriculture, tobacco, garment, and other industries became an important vehicle for achieving Mexican American labor and civil rights. He details how interracial unionism proved successful in cross-border alliances, in fighting discriminatory hiring practices, in building local unions, in mobilizing against fascism and in fighting brutal racism. No longer willing to accept their inferior status, a rising Mexican American grassroots movement would utilize direct action to achieve equality.

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