In Houston, John Herrera and Alfonso Vázquez, a photographer and political cartoonist, created the Civic Action Committee (CAC) in 1958 to assist the gubernatorial candidacy of Henry B. Gonzalez. The CAC registered thousands of voters to support Gonzalez. After he lost, the CAC continued to mobilize Mexican Americans by funding poll tax and voter registration drives...
Like other civic groups, the CAC drew on the whiteness strategy. For example, when the Houston Police Department (HPD) redesigned traffic tickets, it listed three racial designations: “W” for white, “M” for Mexican, and “N” for Negro.
The CAC, LULAC, and G.I. Forum demanded the city change the tickets. “There are only three races,” the CAC stated, “the Mongoloid the Negroid and the Caucasian.” Listing “M” for Mexican was discriminatory, it asserted, because “when race is designated we belong to the Caucasian Race.” The civic groups continued to vie for whiteness to win rights and to show a remarkable amount of touchiness when they perceived their whiteness threatened.
Behnken, Brian D. Fighting Their Own Battles Mexican Americans, African Americans, and the Struggle for Civil Rights in Texas. The University of North Carolina Press, 2014.
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