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)