The Priest and the Hispanic Politician

 

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.

Singled out.

At a young age, the South was the place where Cortez learned what it meant to be Jim Crowed, while for nonblack Latinos it was where they learned what it could mean to be free from that violence.  

Growing up, Cortez’s family was upper middle class. She attended a French Catholic private school where she was the only “colored” girl in her class. While she was the only “colored” girl, there were also two light-skinned Dominican girls in her class, the goddaughters of a member of the Trujillo family, a Korean girl and a Filipina. To the Dominican girls, Cortez was “just an American colored girl.”

During her senior year of high school, Cortez’s school decided to take the graduating class on a trip to Washington DC. Cortez, however, was excluded from the trip after the school decided to have the group stay in an all white hotel. Even in her racially diverse group, with a “Korean [girl] who was darker...the Filipina who was about [her] complexion...and the two girls from the Dominican Republic,” it was Cortez’s status as an African American that prevented her from staying in the hotel. Alienated by her classmates who she “lunch with everyday for four years,” Cortez was destroyed. When she spoke to her mother about the incident, Cortez’s mother lamented, “that’s just how white people are.” But “they’re not white,” Cortez responded. “Well,” her mother said, “that’s how they’re considered.” 

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) 

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)