New to reddit - accidentally posted this in askreddit first so heres a repost. I've obviously learned about about the extent of oppression in the post-Civil War era towards blacks, but what was life like for Asians, Hispanics, etc? Were they subject to the same laws as blacks? I understand that their populations were tiny/negligible in many southern states, but surely there were laws/rules that applied to them.
For example, would Mexican children in the South attend a separate school? Were they grouped in the same category as blacks?
TLDR - were all minorities treated the same way during segregation era America? How were their experiences different? To what extent did different minorities take part in the civil rights movement?
I'm not an expert on this, but since the thread cited by /u/wjbc only covers anti-Jewish and Asian discrimination, I figured I could point you in the right direction a bit on the Hispanic experience.
First off, outside of Texas, nowhere in the south had a large Hispanic population until quite recently. On the state level, there wasn't any sort of Jim Crow equivalent to my knowledge, but I'm sure there were some exceptions on a local level.
In California, the original 1850 Constitution created a bilingual state and many early politicians were Mexican-American. However, a new constitution was adopted later in the century which did away weigh this.
Skipping ahead (a lot) to the 1930s - Immigration had already been heavily restricted and quotas implemented the previous decade. But with the onset of the Depression, the Federal government began a massive deportation program, sometimes even shipping legal immigrants and Mexican-Americans 'back' to Mexico. During WWII, this was reversed. This was a time of huge immigration from Mexico - both as part of the Bracero guest work program, and illegally, due to the manpower shortage because of the war (if you're interested in the era, look into the Zoot Suit Riots and pick up a novel by James M Cain).
Once again, this was reversed in the 50s with the mass deportations under Operation Wetback (yes, really).
Overall, as far as the non-black Hispanic experience goes, it's confusing! There wasn't really Jim Crow-level stuff going on. But clear institutionalized racism, nonetheless, even though in a legal sense they were often considered 'white'. Plus, as. far as I can tell, no one considered Lucy and Dezi to be an interracial couple. Anyway! Hope this answers some things for you and sets you on the right path!
You might find this previous thread helpful.
The experience in each state throughout the US was different for each "minority," a misleading term since non-whites were the majority in many jurisdictions. Jim Crow was assuredly the worst of the legal regimes, and sometimes did extend to non-whites other than African Americans. But states differed. In California, people of Mexican descent were legally "white" because of treaty with Mexico guaranteeing them rights of "white"citizens; CA miscegenation law struck down in 1947 (!) in suit brought by "white" woman of Mexican descent who marred a black man. Elsewhere they may have been treated as colored. American Indians were "colored" in Louisiana, went to separate schools. Segregation was common throughout US, federal law effectively created or reinforced racial segregation in housing, higher ed, through openly racist implementation of GI bills, etc. The US SUpreme Court in the 1920s decided the people born in India were not eligible for citizenship, subjecting them to virulent local discrimination as well as threat of deportation. For most of US history, only "white" immigrants were eligible for citizenship, and the last racial criteria for citizenship were not removed until 1952. People living in Indian Country still do not have all the constitutional rights of "white" citizens. The common factor was the near-universal belief in racial differences (Italians were sneaky, Jews were genetically predisposed for basketball, etc.) that was reflected in law at every level, laws whose effects persist. Specialized academic studies allow us to miss the overall reality, the image of a dominant "white" republic whose legally enforced borders, geographic and virtual, continually shifted. Some introductory reading: Daniel Kanstroom, Deportation Nation: Outsiders in American History (Harvard, 2007); Ian F. Haney Lopez, White by Law: The Legal Consruction of Race (2006).
Pardon me if this is a bit of a rant, but the larger question of equal citizenship is what I mostly am studying and teaching these days.