...as White as any Anglo-Saxon

 

LULAC leaders like [Paul] Andow clearly worried that too close an alliance with black civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King and endorsement of their tactics would imperil the position of Latinos and Latinas in a white supremacist society. Andow further implied that blacks succeeding in the wake of the civil rights movement did not deserve their good fortune. Meanwhile, LULAC sought a white identity for its members, campaigning against racial designations on government forms that classified Latinos as Mexicans. The term Mexican referred to a nationality, not a race, LULAC insisted, and Latinos were as white as any Anglo-Saxon. 

Jacob I. Rodriguez of LULAC bristled at the Mexican label. "There's no sense of shame in being, or being, a Mexican - IF YOU ARE A CITIZEN OF MEXICO!" Rodriguez wrote in a 1963 letter to the Sand Antonio Express. "There's just no reason why we - as U.S Citizens - should be called what we are not."

Phillips, Michael. White Metropolis: Race, Ethnicity, and Religion in Dallas, 1841-2001. United States, University of Texas Press, 2010.

Expelled from LULAC

 

This ideology shaped the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), founded in 1929 in Corpus Christi, Texas. LULAC drew its membership from "small business owners and merchants, small landowners, skilled workers, artisans, [and] professionals." English was declared LULAC's official language. LULAC's racial politics can be deciphered by its name. By labeling themselves "Latin American," the middle-class group emphasized the community's European origins and American citizenship. 

Some LULAC chapters expressed their white identity by erecting a color line between the membership and blacks. One LULAC council expelled a member for marrying a "Negress,"and members socially shunned the interracial couple. A member of the council bitterly complained that "An American mob would lynch him. But we are not given the same opportunity to form a mob and come clean."

Phillips, Michael. White Metropolis: Race, Ethnicity, and Religion in Dallas, 1841-2001. United States, University of Texas Press, 2010.

Latin Americans are not to eat with the Negros.

 

Ending discrimination against Caucasians.

 

LULAC leader Alfonso Perales ... believed that Mexicans ought to be entitled to rights and privileges routinely denied to African Americans. He proposed that Anglo-Americans conduct a "vigorous campaign" in Texas "to end all racial prejudices in so far as members of the Caucasian race are concerned." The Mexican foreign minister and Mexican consuls continued to insist that Texas and California end all discrimination against Mexicans with little concern for discrimination against African Americans or Asian Americans.

  Foley, N., 2010. Quest for equality. Cambridge Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. 

"Vote against integration. Don't look to a black future"

Mexican American civic groups fought to eliminate segregated Mexican Schools on the basis that Mexican-origin pupils were white. They made little mention of the segregation of African Americans in black schools. When the Supreme Court handed down the Brown v. Board decision, Mexican American civic groups barely took notice...

And when the state legislature began passing laws to prolong segregation, the most prominent Mexican American organizations sided with the state government and not African Americans.

For example, some in LULAC debated the idea of joining forces with the NAACP to defeat the flood of racist bills coming from the legislature in 1957. League president Tijerina dismissed this idea. Similarly, LULAC's legal advisor, Phil Montalbo, explained to Tijerina, "[A] stand taken by you on such bills would tend to admit to our Anglo-American (sic) friends that we considered ourselves separate and apart from the majority of American citizens." Montalbo reminds us once again that, as whites, Anglos were the Mexican Americans' allies.

Numerous LULACers, and Mexican Americans more generally, agreed with this stance. For instance, A.G Ramirez stated succinctly, "[M]y district does not want our people and our beloved LULAC to be affiliated with the Negroes. We are white..."

Similarly, Dallas newsman Pedro Ochoa berated anyone wishing black-brown unity, explaining that many Mexican Americans "do not accept the integrationist precept at public schools, and perhaps churches and housing projects." Ochoa also warned Mexican Americans to "preserve your white race, vote against integration, don't look to a black future".

Behnken, Brian D. The Struggle in Black and Brown: African American and Mexican American Relations during the Civil Rights Era. University of Nebraska Press, 2012.

"We are above that. Leave that to the Negros."

Many Mexican Americans opposed black protests at both the state and the national level. They did not participate in demonstrations with African Americans, and they generally detested the fact that blacks throughout America engaged in these protests. As labor leader Pancho Medrano remembered, LULAC, the G.I. Forum, PASO, and other groups always rejected protesting. 

“Even at their state conventions,” Medrano stated, “when you tried to say, ‘Start demanding or picketing or marching,’ they say, ‘No. We are above that.’ Especially the LULACs; they say, ‘We have more pride or education than that. You leave this to the Negroes.’”... 

Some leaders rejected demonstrations, others denigrated protests, and some went so far as to criticize the most momentous protest of the 1960s: the March on Washington. LULAC, for example, drew up a resolution denouncing the march... 

Once again the league’s leaders firmly communicated to African Americans that they could not look to LULAC for aid or support. Like Felix Tijerina before them, Paul Andow and William Bonilla made sure that association with groups like the NAACP would not besmirch LULAC’s image.

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.

"Let the Negro fight his own battles!"

When a few Mexican Americans associated with the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) suggested working with blacks in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), LULAC national president Felix Tijerina sternly reprimanded his colleagues, saying: "Let the Negro fight his own battles. His problems are not mine. I don't want to ally with him."

Fighting Their Own Battles: Mexican Americans, African Americans, and the Struggle For Civil Rights in TexasBrian Behnken - University Of North Carolina Press - 2011

Felix Mexican Restaurant

A prominent and respected restauranteur, Felix Tijerina practiced a form of white supremacy that was common in the 50s. For one thing, he took the unusual step of posting a detailed policy statement, titled "Negroes," on the serving of blacks in his Felix Mexican Restaurants... 

Tijerina charted out specific situations and gave his staff stock statements to use if African Americans attempted to be seated at one of his restaurants... 

Other entrepreneurs shared his view. G.I Forum official Manuel Avila told Forum leader Ed Idar "The Negro knows he can't go into white businesses," Avila argued, "but he will try and use the Mexican as an ally and as self defense unless the Chicano says "I'm white and you can't come into my restaurant." Like Tijerina and other Mexican American business people, Avila wished to show no sign of unity with African Americans in order to promote cooperative relations with whites.

Fighting Their Own Battles: Mexican Americans, African Americans, and the Struggle For Civil Rights in TexasBrian Behnken - University Of North Carolina Press - 2011

"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.