Lynch Mob in Texas

 

Ginzburg, Ralph. 100 Years of Lynchings. United States, Black Classic Press, 1988.

The Texas slave who passed as Mexican

On the morning of March 14, 1909 …a tall man with penetrating brown eyes and carefully groomed mustache, attired in the latest fashion…caught the eye of authorities in Eagle Pass. Like the others on the Aztec Limited, the passenger had begun his journey from Mexico City in a first-class Pullman. Once he crossed the border into the United States, however, a new question arose. What race was he? For despite his elegant appearance, his skin had a somewhat swarthy tone—and, unlike Mexico, the Texas of 1909 possessed segregation laws, designed to limit contact between black and whites in everything from schools, restaurants, libraries, graveyards, and hotels to railroad cars. 

When asked, the newcomer insisted that he was a Mexican entrepreneur, on his way back to his office on Wall Street after negotiating the purchase of several rubber plantations in his homeland. His name, he offered, was Guillermo Enrique Eliseo—which,… could be translated into English as William Henry Ellis. Moreover, as an ethnic Mexican, he was legally white and not subject to Texas’s segregation statutes.

 Karl Jacoby , The Strange Career of William Ellis : The Texas Slave Who Became a Mexican Millionaire ( New York : W.W. Norton , 2016 )

The Jim Crow Accomplices

 

By 1948 a nine-square-mile community of 25,000 blacks, Mexican Americans, and poor whites lived on a low flood plain in West Dallas...

Desperation forced relatively prosperous blacks again to venture in the early 1950s in the Exline Park neighborhood, scene of the 1940-41 bombings. Twelve bombings in the next year and a half targeted homes sold to blacks in formerly all-white neighborhoods in a two-square-mile area of South Dallas. Not expecting white protection, African Americans armed themselves...

Dallas police arrested a series of suspects beginning in September 1951. The accused shared a decidedly working-class background and included parts pressers, machinists, and garage mechanics...

Yet only one of the suspects was ever put on trial- Pete Garcia, a member os Moore's South Dallas Adjustment League. Garcia was one of two Hispanics indicted in the bombings...

Garcia claimed Caucasian status, painting "For Whites Only"signs and placing them in the yards of families agreeing to not sell their South Dallas homes to black families. Garcia threatened other families at knifepoint to maintain the ban. Dallas newspapers, which had a policy of identifying black and Mexican American crime suspects by race, acknowledged Garcia's whiteness by frequently not mentioning his ethnicity. A chief witness at Garcia's trial testified that she had seen Garcia enter a vacant house moments before an explosion. She recanted her testimony, however. A jury deliberated for twelve hours before acquitting Garcia. 

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.

Reggie Jackson's White Girlfriend

At Arizona State I encountered another form of prejudice. My football coach there, Frank Kush, told me that the Sun Angels boosters were upset because I was dating a Mexican girl, and that I should be careful... 

 In 1966 I was on the Arizona State baseball team when Bobby Winkles called me in and said, "I want to tell you that you're probably not going to be the number one draft choice in the country, even though you're head and shoulders ahead of everyone in ability." I asked him why, because it was a prestige thing to me. "Because you're dating a white girl," Winkles told me. I asked him how he knew. He said he'd heard it from the Mets. "They think it might cause some problems in the minors," Winkles said.

"We Have a Serious Problem That Isn't going Away", Sports Illustrated, May 11, 1987.

University of Texas

 

 

In May 1945, an Anglo private in the U.S Army and graduate of the University of Texas, PFC Robert Jones, wrote to Governor Stevenson that he attended high school with many Mexicans, some of whom "obviously had traces of Negro ancestry," and that at the University of Texas he saw "boys and girls with kinky hair and Negroid features from Cuba, Puerto Rico, Brazil, Panama, Nicaragua, Venezuela and other countries... I know from almost a whole lifetime in contact with Mexicans that they deserve more. I think the same can be said for the Negros." 

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

Lynching Data

  

We combed through 2,850 records of lynching victims, ultimately confirming 1,319 victims and finding 15 lynching victims not recorded in any data set, for a total of 1,334 victims of lynching. Lynching spanned 33 states over this period, with only Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont totally untouched. While searching, we also found three lynchings within the Tolnay-Beck states, one of which was previously unrecorded and two of which were incorrectly recorded by the NAACP and Chicago Tribune as having occurred outside the South. There were also many cases for which our improved data allowed us to identify and name a victim who was lynched at a similar time and place as a victim listed by the NAACP or Chicago Tribune inventories as “unknown.”

When combined with the new Tolnay-Beck data, we record 4,467 total victims of lynching from 1883 to 1941. Of these victims, 4,027 were men, 99 were women, and 341 were unknown gender (although likely male); 3,265 were black, 1,082 were white, 71 were Mexican or of Mexican descent, 38 were American Indian, 10 were Chinese, and 1 was Japanese.

 

  Seguin, Charles, and David Rigby. “National Crimes: A New National Data Set of Lynchings in the United States, 1883 to 1941.” Socius, Jan. 2019

Civil Rights was for the blacks.

 

"They was all white."

Creoles understood the benefits of exploiting whiteness for material gain. Sometimes, even having a person of color who looked white with his hand on one's shoulder was enough to reap benefits. Earl A. Barthé recalled that, when traveling through the South as a young man while looking for work,

there were these little highway diners. But if you were black, you might be able to stop and get gas but you couldn't go in to eat. You couldn't use the rest room. Not unless you were white. So, me and Harold [Earl A. Barthé's brother], we were travelling with a dark-skinned fella, we would sit in the back seat of the car and pretend he was the driver when we pulled in. We would get out and say "boy, fill up the tank while we get some sandwiches," and we would walk right in and order the food "to go."... They thought we was white. They didn't know... A white man might look at you twice but he wouldn't ask you if you was white if you carried yourself like you were white...we could be Mexican or we could be Indians or Italians and they was all white...we just wanted to get our food and get on to the next job, man! We were looking for work! We weren't on vacation!

Barthé, Darryl. Becoming American in Creole New Orleans, 1896–1949. United States, LSU Press, 2021.

Learning about segregation in Texas

Mendez case "was NOT based on racial equality"

School desegregation brings to mind famous photos of African-American children integrating classrooms after the landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision. But over seven years earlier, five Latino families fought and won a case that helped integrate schools in California. On its 70th anniversary we look back at the mostly forgotten Mendez v. Westminster case.

When attorney David Marcus filed the lawsuit in 1945, his case was not based on racial equality. At that time, the Supreme Court’s Plessy v. Ferguson ruling allowed for the separation of races as long as there were equal facilities, so the courts were rejecting the argument that segregation based on race was unconstitutional. For Marcus, the key would be to prove not that segregation was wrong, but that Latino students were white and being discriminated against.

...

On Feb. 18, 1946, U.S. District Judge Paul McCormick of Los Angeles ruled in favor of the plaintiffs. “A paramount requisite in the American system of public education is social equality. It must be open to all children by unified school association regardless of lineage,” he wrote. This rejection of the idea that schools could be “separate but equal” stirred excitement among civil rights groups, who thought Mendez v. Westminster might be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, where a victory could be used to integrate schools across the country.

In the end, an appellate court narrowed Judge McCormick’s decision to apply solely to Latino students in the specific districts listed in the lawsuit. The case fell into obscurity and the civil rights spotlight focused on racial integration.

 

Kelly, Brigid. (2016, Feb. 22). 70 years ago, California ended a type of segregation. KCRW. 

"The niggers always get what they want - Chicanos never do!"

The biggest problem facing the Houston Independent School District in implementing its court-ordered desegregation plan is a city-wide boycott of public schools by an estimated 3,500 Mexican-American students. 

The strike was called by the Mexican-American Education Council (MAEC) following a meeting with the school board on August 27 concerning HISD's proposed pairing plan. The plan has zoned neighborhoods so that Chicano students, considered "white" by the federal court, are integrated with black students, leaving anglo schools largely unaffected and still lily white.  

...

The underlying racism in many students' decision to boycott, however, was obvious again at the Enrichment school. One ninth grader told me he was boycotting because "the niggers always get what they want - Chicanos never do!" A common feeling was that the students were afraid of going to schools that were predominantly black because "black kids are always bossing us around, picking fights."

 

Duncan, Cam. "La Raza vs. School Board." Space City News, September 19, 1970 , p. 3

"No question of race discrimination"

  "Mendez et al. v. Westminster School District of Orange County, 64 F. Supp. 544 (1946), Conclusions of the Court"

"Huelga! I don't want to go to school with those black people"

SR: What did you think about the huelga school movement that emerged in response to HISD’s so called integration plan? And what role did U of H MAYO play in this huelga movement? 

MJ: Well I think we were ambivalent about the huelga movement. Some people became teachers; I never did. I was always ambivalent about it because I think the leadership was saying this was an injustice but I think the community was saying, “I don’t want to go with those black people.” And so that’s what always there was a lot of that within the community. So it wasn’t like clearly…it wasn’t a clear movement of fighting for equality. The leadership may have been different in its conception but the grassroots had a different. There was a lot of racism. So I think we had ambivalent roles. Individually I think a lot of the Houston MAYO get those teachers out of the schools. 

SR: And did the… was the huelga school movement and CMAS connected in terms of leader faculty members or those who support CMAS? 

MJ: I don’t remember that being there. Because I think that the leadership of the huelga schools was entirely based in the neighborhoods. I mean if you looked at the leadership they were neighborhood leaders or political leaders or even religious leaders who were leading it. And again for the leadership, the question was one of fighting the bad plan of integration but the reason I think of the community response was there was a lot of racism.

 Jimenez, Maria. Oral history from the Houston History Project

Race relations in Texas

 

"Don't allow nigger integration in schools"

The patriotic Spanish-speaking Tejano organizations have their eye on you; they want to find out if you're a Tejano patriot or a simple traitor. My "Ochoa" newspapers have been instilling more patriotic American faithfulness to each resident in Texas. You will have noticed in your town, those persons that hated Texas and called themselves citizens of latin, hispanic or Mexican origin, etc., now they are informed by way of the press; and with pride they say "I'm an AMERICAN." No, no, it wasn't hunger that won them over. Help us make Texas better. You, your neighbor and I, of AMERICAN origin, are the example to be followed; this is our country. Don't allow nigger integration in schools or homes. Look for improvement and not retardation for your family. It's better to be alone than in the bad company of negroids. Equality means not permitting improvement. Millions of people of the black race hope that their candidates win the elections, and that way the niggers will be able to equalize and place themselves in high society and compete with your business. Your electoral vote is for you to improve your job and standard of living, and not to destroy social morality. 

Ochoa, Pedro. "Texas Necesita Mas Lealtad de Usted" The Dallas Americano May 28, 1958. Vol. 5 No. 58  Retrieved From The Dallas Public Library. 

Expelled for being white

 

Maria Varela and Luis Zapata joined SNCC in 1963, pre-dating the 1964 “Freedom Summer” and Elizabeth Mártinez came to Mississippi in 1964. Having each come to SNCC for different reasons, the three activists were joining what was, at the time, the vanguard of the Civil Rights Movement. The group was driven by students and young people and engaged in the direct action techniques that other civil rights groups hesitated to use. Founded in 1960 at Shaw University, with the guiding principles of nonviolence rooted in the Judeo-Christian tradition, SNCC was originally envisioned as a “channel of communication for the student movement.” Historians have remembered SNCC as being young, black and white activists from the Northeast and Southeast. However, the experience of Varela, Mártinez, and Zapata suggests that, in the early years, SNCC’s organizing model appealed to people from diverse backgrounds including activists from the labor movement, older people, people from the West and Southwest United States, and Latino/as. SNCC, which embraced inclusiveness in its early years, grew increasingly closed off and unable incorporate racially liminal subjects. When SNCC forced categorization of white or black, Mártinez and Varela were deemed white and were expelled from SNCC.

...the organization, led by a group working out of the “Atlanta Project,” agreed that “white activists needed to organize in the white community” and that black activists would organize in the black community. They maintained that whites organizing in their communities could still work under the banner of SNCC. However, months later, in December 1966, the SNCC staff met again at the New York estate of black entertainer Peg Leg Bates, where the decision was made, as Mártinez described it, to “expel white staff members.”

...While Zapata left SNCC before the battle over the role of whites in the movement took place, both Mártinez and Varela were deeply affected by the changing nature of SNCC. Writing many years later, Mártinez’s memory was increasingly focused on her identification as Chicana and the improper classification of her and Maria Varela as white during the expulsion. She wrote “as far as anyone seems to remember, we [Varela and herself] were classified as white, even though I did not consider myself either white or black.”

Writing after the Kingston Springs decision to expel whites, Mártinez defended whites put in a seemingly impossible position. “How could they defend themselves,” she asked, “when attacked for their whiteness.” Like Varela’s earlier discussion of white womanhood, Mártinez use of “they” and “them” in reference to whites suggests she saw herself as racially nonwhite, even if those in SNCC disagreed. She wrote: “From time to time, the question of whether I was to be classified as white or Mexican (i.e., non-white) has come up in SNCC. People talked about me but never asked me what I considered myself.” She goes on to make clear that she has always identified as Mexican, and therefore nonwhite. However, in SNCC she found her self reclassified. “One day,” she went on, “I found myself unable to vote in SNCC because I was ‘white.’”

 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) 

The Mexican Slave Catcher

The most explosive incident involving runaway slaves in Laredo came ... on November 5, 1860. In a letter written to Henry and William Maltby's secessionist pro-slavery Corpus Christi Daily Ranchero, a forty-one-year-old Irish-born clerk named Michael Lidwell, a political ally of Santos [Benavides] who was living in Laredo at the time, said that a black man claiming to be a "free Negro" had arrived at Laredo with two dun horses and persuaded the ferryman to allow him passage to Nuevo Laredo. After the news was quickly passed along to Santos that the man was probably a runaway slave, he gathered ten vigilantes armed with rifles and pistols and at eight that evening crossed to Nuevo Laredo. "In the face of the entire population of the place," Santos was said to have "seized the negro" and succeeded in "making good his retreat [with] his men to the boat." ... Reaching the north bank of the river, the men dragged the wounded Mussett along with the runaway slave up the steep bank and scurried off to the safety of the town, where their captive was lodged in the city jail.

The Ranchero went out of its way to praise Santos for being "foremost in confronting danger in support of the laws and institutions of Texas." It was not the first time Santos had "distinguished himself in restoring runaway slaves to their owners," the Ranchero went on to say. The newspaper also praised him for his refusal to "receive any recompense for his exertions." The writers hoped that Santos, through his actions, had gone a long way toward alleviating the widely held idea in Texas that people of "Mexican origin" were not loyal to the state. His daring actions had proven that citizens on the Rio Grande frontier were as committed as the most "rabid orator." In a few comments on November 17, 1860, the Ranchero again praised Santos for daringly crossing into Mexico to retrieve the runaway slave."

Jerry D. Thompson. Tejano Tiger: José de los Santos Benavides and the Texas-Mexico Borderlands, 1823-1891. The Texas Biography Series. Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press, 2017.

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) 

"There is no connection!"

 

A year after Sweatt v. Painter, the U.S District Court for the District of Kansas heard Oliver Brown's suit against the Topeka School District for refusing to allow his third-grade daughter, Linda, to attend the white elementary school, which was nearer to her house than the segregated grade school on the other side of a railroad switchyard.

When Wirin suggested in 1953 that the Mendez and Delgado segregation cases in California and Texas would likely influence the outcome of the Brown cases, [George] Sanchez exclaimed: "There is no connection!" Our cases really were on the "due process' clause[that segregation was] ('arbitrary, capricious') much more than on the equality...clause - whereas the present [Brown] cases attack the right of the states to legislate segregation (something which has never been done for Mexicans). "Does one of the present cases attack Negro segregation where there is no law decreeing such segregation? Only in such a case would we be concerned."

For Sanchez the overriding issue was not the constitutional right of states to legislate segregation, but rather the illegality of segregating Mexicans from other whites in the absence of state law. While Thurgood Marshall sought to overturn a half-century-old Supreme Court decision, Sanchez challenged local school districts that arbitrarily segregated Mexicans for their alleged language handicap.

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