The Dallas Bombings of 1950

On a warm Monday night in May 1950, a handful of dynamite easily destroyed Robert and Marie Shelton’s American dream. The bomb ripped through the African American couple’s newly purchased home in South Dallas, demolishing their front porch, knocking the house off its foundation, and leaving behind a large hole in the ground… 

The main suspects were Mexican American men who felt threatened by the encroachment of African American families into white neighborhoods. One of these individuals, Pete Garcia, later admitted that he had painted “For Whites Only” signs in the neighborhood, threatened black home buyers with a knife, and chased two African American real estate agents out of the area.

Fighting Their Own Battles: Mexican Americans, African Americans, and the Struggle for Civil Rights in Texas By Brian D. Behnken

"The Sum and Substance of the White Race"

Mexican Americans did not object to the segregation of Blacks or challenge the assumptions of White supremacy. On the contrary, they supported strict segregation of Whites and Blacks in the schools and in public facilities. The basis for their claim for social equality was that they were also white...

A group of Mexican Americans, mostly urban and middle class, founded their own organization in 1929 in Corpus Cristi, the League of United Latin American Citizens... 

LULAC sought to set the racial record strait. In a 1932 article in the LULAC News titled "Are Texas-Mexicans 'Americans'?" the author asserted that Mexican Americans were "the first white race to inhabit this vast empire of ours." Another member of LULAC boasted that Mexican Americans were "not only a part and parcel but as well the sum and substance of the white race."

As self-constituted Whites, LULAC members considered it "an insult" to be associated with Blacks or other "colored" races. In 1936 a LULAC official deplored the practice of hiring "Negro musicians" to play at Mexican bailes because it led to "illicit relations" between Black men and "ill-informed Mexican girls." He urged fellow LULAC memebers to "tell these Negroes that we are not going to permit our manhood and womanhood to mingle with them on an equal social basis". 

Zinn, Howard. A People's History of the United States: 1492-Present. United Kingdom, Taylor & Francis, 2015.