My middle school students asked me this when we talked about the Civil Rights Movement and MLK, and I realized I hadn't been taught much about how Hispanics fit into the white vs black society we discuss in relation to the Civil Rights Movement. I know some about Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers movement, but just learning about that piece of Hispanic history suggests that most Hispanics in the US in the 60s were farm workers. That seems too simplistic.
I think the question I'm trying to get at is, in social interactions with white Americans, and in the eyes of the law, were Hispanics considered second class citizens to the same degree as African-Americans during this time period?
Discrimination against Hispanics existed, but the racism was never identical to the de jure discrimination that African Americans endured. Prior to the civil rights era, it was more beneficial for Hispanics to seek integration and legal recognition as whites than to pursue protection as a separate racial group. Unlike African Americans, Hispanics in the U.S. had a notable history of fighting for their civil liberties by fighting for their legal status as Whites within the racist American social structure, rather than fighting for racial equality between all races.
In 1942, for example, an Indiana Appellate Court analyzed the whiteness of Mexicans in Inland Steel Co. v. Barcena. 39 N.E. 2d 800 (Ind. 1942). The Court cited the Encyclopedia Britannica as a source claiming 20% of Mexicans were white, 40% were Indian, and the rest were of mixed race. The Court’s observation reflects a key problem of race categorization of Hispanics, in that Hispanics could not be categorized racially based on national origin any more than Americans in Mexico could have been categorized as black or white based on their last name or country of origin.
Latin Americans, like Americans, were racially diverse. A unifying Latino identity among Hispanics of all colors did not supersede the white racial identity of many Hispanics until the civil rights era brought real benefits to the recognition of a person’s minority status. Moreover, Hispanics possessed an advantage on an international level that African-Americans lacked. Namely, they had relevant foreign countries advocating for Hispanics in the United States and pressuring Federal Government to recognize Hispanics as White.
In In re Rodriguez, a Federal Court analyzed the legal whiteness of a Mexican immigrant seeking naturalization. 81. F. 337 (W.D. Tex. 1887). At the time, naturalization was limited to blacks and whites. The Rodriguez Court observed that the petitioner was likely not white by an anthropologist’s scientific criteria. However, the Rodriguez Court went on to note a number of treaties entered into between the United States and Mexico in which the right of Mexicans to become U.S. citizens was clearly established. This persuaded the Rodriguez Court that Mexicans were White as a matter of law, at least insofar as immigration was concerned.
In 1929, a group of urban, middle-class Latinos in Corpus Christi founded the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) to further the civil rights and assimilation of Mexican Americans. The group restricted membership to U.S. Citizens and stressed knowledge of the English language. A 1932 article published in the organization’s newspaper bore the title “Are Texas-Mexicans ‘Americans’?” and bore obvious racial prejudice favoring the idea of whiteness. The article claimed Mexicans were “the first white race to inhabit this vast empire of ours.”
Early LULAC members saw themselves as part of the white race and fought the insult of being associated with or segregated like blacks. However, the impetus of the organization was not originally for the advancement of all colored peoples, but for the identification of Latinos as constituent members of the dominant racial group in America. This agenda was pursued with mixed success throughout the first half of the 20th century.
In Independent School District v. Salvatierra, the Texas Court of Appeals established as a matter of law that Mexicans could not be segregated in schools from “other White races, merely or solely because they are Mexicans.” 33 S.W.2d 790 (Texas Civ. App. 1930). However, the Court also ruled that segregation was permissible based on language difficulties, drawing a line for practical purposes between assimilated Hispanics and those who still spoke Spanish at home.
Recognition of the legal whiteness of Hispanics certainly imbued them with certain rights denied blacks. This legal white status encouraged assimilation and the abandonment of their linguistic and cultural heritage. However, whiteness as a matter of law did not protect against private, cultural discrimination, much in the same way that the First Amendment did not protect against private religious discrimination against American Jews and Catholics.
Despite the aspirations of self-identified white Hispanics, discrimination against Hispanics was very real, although localized and varying greatly between regions. In 1951, the Texas Supreme Court held that the exclusion of Mexican Americans from juries was not a violation of the 14th Amendment based on the precedent that Mexicans were white people of Spanish descent, and that Anglo-only juries were therefore composed of their peers. Sanchez v. State, 243 S.W.2d 700 (1951). This precedent was eventually overturned three years later when the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear the issue in Hernandez v. Texas. 347 U.S. 475 (1954).
In 1954, the Warren Court recognized that Hispanics could be a minority in practice despite legal recognition as Whites. The decision was based on overwhelming evidence that Hispanic last names had been systematically avoided in the random jury selection in the subject judicial district for as long as records had been kept. This recognized that local prejudice and cultural, private discrimination was actionable and overturned the monochromatic interpretation of the 14th Amendment. The fight to be white was thereafter greatly diminished, and the Latin American community’s fight for civil rights became parallel and complimentary to African-Americans’ fight.
An aside about Cubans and Puerto Ricans:
Aside from the Mexican-American experience, America also has experienced large influxes of Hispanics from Cuba and Puerto Rico. Those countries had slave-based plantation economies and did not formally abolish slavery until 1886 and 1873, respectively. Neither Cuba nor Puerto Rico developed the de jure Jim Crow segregation of the U.S., largely due to the universality of the Roman Catholic Church's and its recognition of interracial marriages as valid. But when Plessy v. Ferguson established “separate but equal” as the law of the land, both islands were still made up of white plantation-owning elites, their former slaves, and the diverse groups in between. Neither society was an egalitarian paradise free from native forms of racism, despite the abundance of intermixing between whites, blacks, and the Taino natives who bore children to the conquistadors.
Due to the racial similarity of those countries to the American South, the racial classification of Cubans in segregated Florida would have matched the treatment of other native Floridian's of the same skin color. The racial classification of Cuban immigrants was never litigated because the naturalization acts of the era allowed for the naturalization of whites and those of African heritage, and Cubans would have qualified as one or the other.
Puerto Ricans received citizenship through the Jones Act during World War I and were likewise racially characterized based on their physical appearance. Hair and skin color would have determined racial perception rather than national origin.
Sources: Foley, Neil. "Becoming Hispanic: Mexican Americans and Whiteness." White Privilege (2002): 49-57. The Legal Construction of Race: Mexican-Americans and Whiteness, October 2000
Did people before the 20th century really see 'hispanics' as non whites? Spaniards and Portugues are seen as white here in Europe, when did the distinction start in NA?
As a follow up question, how did Japanese-Americans fare during segregation?