White Allies

 

Other Latinos native to the South seem to have taken a different approach than Enriquez. Mary Gonzalez, for example, joined an organization called “The Concerned White Citizens of Alabama.” This group worked in support of the Civil Rights Movement and Gonzalez, along with several other white identified women marched with Dr. King at the now-iconic Selma march. 

In the face of a march that felt like a “battle,” Gonzalez and her peers struggled to maintain “order and dignity.” “We wanted people to know that we were not just a band of, I don’t know how to describe it,” Gonzalez paused, “but you know people who didn’t have anything better to do than go around getting into trouble and stirring up trouble.” “We wanted them to know,” she continued “we were serious citizens who really cared about what was happening.” Returning from the march Gonzalez recalled an icy welcome at the local YWCA from those who knew she had marched. While Enriquez never seemed hostile to the Civil Rights Movement, she maintained her distance from any activism. Gonzalez, on the other hand, still firmly claimed her whiteness but instead deployed it in service of the movement.

Cecilia Márquez, “The Strange Career of Juan Crow: Latino/as and the Making of the US South, 1940–2000,” PhD thesis, University of Virginia (2016) 

Race not at issue in Mendez

Méndez, along with four other parents, decided to hire David Marcus to represent them in their suit on behalf of “some 5,000 other persons of Mexican and Latin descent and extraction”against four Orange County school districts. In California, Section 8003 of the Education read, “the governing board of any school district may establish separate schools for Indian children…and for children of Chinese, Japanese, or Mongolian parentage.” Because Mexicans were not one of the groups that the law permitted to be segregated, the school district’s attorney argued that the segregation was not based on race.

Mexicans, after all, were legally Anglo. Instead, the segregation was a result of Mexican children’s lack of English-proficiency. David Marcus, attorney for the Méndezes, also argued, “race discrimination” was not the issue at hand “since persons of Latin and Mexican extraction are members of the ‘white’ race.” If Mexican children were white, it was illegal to segregate them from other white children. Marcus had to prove, then, that language proficiency was not being tested equally and that many of the Mexican students unfairly segregated were actually fluent English speakers. Judge McCormick agreed, and on February 18, 1946 he ruled in favor of the Méndezes because the school district had failed to prove they were testing for English proficiency in ways that did not specifically target Mexican students.

The school district appealed the case to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Marcus again emphasized the whiteness of Mexicans so the court did not have to confront Plessy v. Ferguson’s “separate but equal doctrine.” Because, as Marcus argued, the case was not about racial segregation, the court could uphold that the segregation of Mexican children was unconstitutional because they were Anglo, while preserving the legality of racial segregation.

 

 Cecilia Márquez, “The Strange Career of Juan Crow: Latino/as and the Making of the US South, 1940–2000,” PhD thesis, University of Virginia (2016) 

Mexican girl barred from black school

                                    

The Galarza family returned to Washington, D.C. so that Ernesto could continue his work for the Pan-American Union. In his capacity as an organizer for the Pan American Union, he was developing a booklet that “told the story of America” which would aid new immigrants in becoming “better acquainted with one another’s customs, habits and modes of dress.” While meeting with people he hoped would assist him in this project, he was introduced to Mrs. Cordelia Wharton who taught dressmaking at the Margaret Murray Washington Vocational School. Galarza and Wharton developed a friendship, and when his daughter expressed a desire to take a course in dressmaking, Galarza enrolled her in Wharton’s class at the M.M. Washington Vocational School. In addition to their growing friendship, Wharton’s particular skill-set made the M.M. Washington school an appealing place for Karla to learn dressmaking.

...

On February 3, 1947 Karla enrolled at the Margaret Murray Washington Vocational High School to take Wharton’s course on dress design and costume making. However, one month into her attendance at the M.M. Washington school, Assistant Superintendent Dr. Garnet C. Wilkinson, requested that Karla voluntarily withdraw and enroll instead at the white vocational school, Burdick Vocational High School. During their March 10, 1947 meeting, Dr. Wilkinson informed Karla that, in his assessment, she was white and as a result not “entitled to attend” the M.M. Washington Vocational school.

...

As a result of Karla’s refusal to leave the school voluntarily, the school board met on April 2nd, 1947 to make a decision regarding her attendance. The Superintendent, Hobart M. Corning, submitted a report to the board that outlined his case for removing Karla from M.M. Washington. He opened the report by writing: “Since the admission of Karla Rosel Galarza to the Margaret Murray Washington Vocational High School question has arisen to her racial status and as to whether she is entitled to the privilege of attending the Margaret Murray Washington Vocational High School.”... Corning argued that Karla, because of her prior attendance at white schools in the area, was “not entitled” to attend M.M. Washington. The schools she attended “do not admit Negroes as students,” and her attendance, Corning went on, “indicates that she is not a Negro.”

...

The white newspapers reported the case as a white girl being barred from a black school. The Toledo Blade referred to Karla as a “pretty, 22-year-old white girl,” The Times-Picayune chronicled “a white girl ousted from a Negro public school,” and The Sunday Oregonian introduced Karla as a “white girl” and the “daughter of former educational adviser to the PanAmerican union.” For the white media this was an interesting story of a reversal of the traditional

 

 Cecilia Márquez, “The Strange Career of Juan Crow: Latino/as and the Making of the US South, 1940–2000,” PhD thesis, University of Virginia (2016)