A Distinct Minority: Lulac, Mexican American Identity, and Presidential Policymaking, 1965–1972

Journal of Policy History

Volumn 15, Issue 2, 2003, Pages 192-222

  Kaplowitz, Craig A ^a  

^a Department of Biology   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 4043072598     PISSN: 08980306     EISSN: 15284190     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/jph.2003.0012     Document Type: Article

References (65)

1. See, for example, Armando B. Rendon, Chicano Manifesto (New York, 1971), 1;
2. Juan Gomez-Quinones, Chicano Politics: Reality and Promise, 1940—1990 (Albuquerque, 1990), 109.
3. Julie Leininger Pycior, LBJ and Mexican Americans: The Paradox of Power (Austin, 1997)
4. Mario Barrera, Beyond Aztlan: Ethnic Autonomy in Comparative Perspective (New York, 1988)
5. Rudolfo Acuna, Occupied America: A History of Chicanos, 4th ed. (New York, 2000)
6. F. Chris Garcia and Rudolph O. de la Garza, The Chicano Political Experience: Three Perspectives (North Scituate, Mass. 1977).
7. The only institutional biography of LULAC focuses on membership incentives. It finds LULAC largely irrelevant to most of the Chicano community by the late 1960s, and has little to say regarding its role in national political life. Benjamin Marquez, LULAC: The Evolution of a Mexican American Political Organization (Austin, 1993).
8. Mario T. Garcia, Mexican Americans: Leadership, Ideology, and Identity, 1930-1960 (New Haven, 1989), 25-61.
9. On Johnson's preference for certain civil rights leaders, see Steven F. Lawson, “Mixing Moderation with Militancy: Lyndon Johnson and African-American Leadership,” in Robert A. Divine, ed. The Johnson Years, Volume Three: LBJ At Home and Abroad (Lawrence, Kan. 1994).
10. For the early history of LULAC, see Marquez, LULAC, and Garcia, Mexican Americans.
11. See also Garcia, Mexican Americans, 46–59.
12. Statistics showed that Mexican Americans suffered rates of unemployment, poverty, and education comparable to those of blacks. The 1960 census is the source for most statistics on the condition of the Mexican American population, as the Census Bureau identified people in the Southwest with Spanish surnames for statistical purposes. The insistence that Mexican Americans be considered white left most other government reports of the earlyto mid-1960s with only two categories—white and nonwhite. Helen Rowan, The Mexican American: A Paper Prepared for the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights—1968 (Washington, D.C. 1972), 5.
13. Leo Grebler, Joan W. Moore, and Ralph C. Guzman, The Mexican-American People: The Nation's Second Largest Minority (New York, 1970), conveniently reproduce statistics on Mexican Americans from both the census and government reports from the 1950s and 1960s.
14. The early history of LULAC is sprinkled with suggestions of racism, which most likely accounted for some of the disassociation with the cause of African Americans. See Marquez, LULAC, 33–34.
15. Gareth Davies, From Opportunity to Entitlement: The Transformation and Decline of Great Society Liberalism (Lawrence, Kan. 1996), 34.
16. It should be noted that this approach helped LULAC with the organizational problem of funding. The national leadership sought sources of income independent of membership dues and found some in Kennedy's housing program, through which LULAC received federal insurance to build housing for lowto middle-income Mexican Americans. See Craig A. Kaplowitz, “Mexican Americans and Federal Policy: The League of United Latin American Citizens and the Politics of Cultural Disadvantage” (Ph.D. diss. Vanderbilt University, 1999), 80-84, 95-99.
17. Hugh Davis Graham, The Civil Rights Era: Origins and Development of National Policy, 1960-1972 (New York, 1990), chaps. 7, 9, 10;
18. John David Skrentny, The Ironies of Affirmative Action: Politics, Culture, and Justice in America (Chicago, 1996), chaps. 4, 5;
19. Davies, From Opportunity to Entitlement, chaps. 3, 4.
20. New York Times, 17 October 1965, 82.
21. See also “Another Civil-Rights Headache—Plight of Mexican-Americans,” U.S. News & World Report, 6 June 1966, 46–48.
22. LULAC News, March 1966, 1;
23. Hernandez cited statistics that showed Mexican Americans made up just over one percent of employees in the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare and less than one percent in grades GS 9-18, the highest-paying positions. The Mexican American: A New Focus on Opportunity: Testimony Presented at the Cabinet Committee Hearings on Mexican American Affairs (Washington, D.C. 1967), 227-32.
24. Graham, Civil Rights Era, 129–34, 145-52, 177-80, 189-90.
25. LULAC News, March 1966, 1; May 1967, 1.
26. New York Times, 1 April 1966, 18; 22 May 1966, 44; LULAC News, May 1966, 1; December 1966, 1.
27. Republicans gained similar percentages of the Mexican American vote across the Southwest in 1966, including 23 percent for the Republican gubernatorial candidate and 24 percent for the Republican senatorial candidate in Colorado, and even 13 percent for archconservative Barry Goldwater in the senatorial election in Arizona. Mark R. Levy and Michael S. Kramer, The Ethnic Factor: How America's Minorities Decide Elections (New York, 1972), 232-40.
28. See, in particular, Rodney E. Hero, Latinos and the U.S. Political System: Two-Tiered Pluralism (Philadelphia, 1992).
29. Steven Skowronek, The Politics Presidents Make: Leadership from John Adams to George Bush (Cambridge, 1993)
30. Hugh Davis Graham, “Richard Nixon and Civil Rights: Explaining an Enigma,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 26 (Winter 1996): 93-106.
31. See also Richard Nixon, “Statement on Signing the Bill Establishing the Cabinet Committee on Opportunities for Spanish-Speaking People,” 31 December 1969, Public Papers of the Presidents: Richard Nixon, 1969, 1048-49.
32. David A. Caputo, “Richard M. Nixon, General Revenue Sharing, and American Federalism,” in Leon Friedman and William F. Levantrosser, eds. Richard M. Nixon: Politician, President, Administrator (Westport, Conn. 1991), 59-76;
33. James Reichley, Conservatives in an Age of Change: The Nixon and Ford Administrations (Washington, D.C. 1981), 154-73.
34. CETA itself represented a compromise between the Democratic Congress and Republican administration. Democrats insisted on authorization for public-sector jobs to fight unemployment and in turn gave Nixon funding for local prime sponsors to develop manpower training programs. See Grace A. Franklin and Randall B. Ripley, CETA: Politics and Policy, 1973—1982 (Knoxville, Tenn. 1984).
35. Hugh Davis Graham, The Uncertain Triumph: Federal Education Policy in the Kennedy and Johnson Years (Chapel Hill, 1984), 155.
36. Hearings before the Special Subcommittee on Bilingual Education of the Committee on Labor and Public Welfare, U.S. Senate, 90th Cong. 1st sess. (Washington, D.C. 1967) (hereafter cited as Hearings, 1967).
37. For the sponsorship of the bill, see Hearings, 1967, 2.
38. See William Mackey and Von Nieda Beebe, Bilingual Schools for a Bicultural Community: Miami's Adaptation to the Cuban Refugees (Rowley, Mass. 1977). I am grateful to Gareth Davies for bringing this fact to my attention.
39. This program, run at the local level and then in Texas with state assistance, was called the Little Schools of the 400. See Guadelupe San Miguel Jr. “Let All of Them Take Heed”: Mexican Americans and the Campaign for Educational Equality in Texas, 1910-1981 (Austin, 1987), 140-45;
40. Carolyn Hernandez, LULAC: The History of a Grass Roots Organization and Its Influence on Educational Policies, 1929-1983 (Ph.D. diss. Loyola University of Chicago, 1995), 84-93.
41. Hearings, 1967, 244–47, 399-403. Quotations in this paragraph are taken from these pages.
42. Newswire release, “President Johnson Better Not Tuck Away Those Votes Early,” cited in LULAC News, July 1967, 12. George Bush, head of the Republican National Committee, encouraged his party to develop programs for Mexican Americans to take advantage of the Democrats’ failure to do so. Corpus Christi Caller, 25 March 1968, 1;
43. New York Times, 22 October 1968, 29;
44. Stan Steiner, “Chicano Power,” New Republic, 20 June 1970, 16–18;
45. Dallas Morning News, 17 March 1968.
46. Dallas Morning News 27-31.
47. José de la Isla, “The Politics of Reelection: Se habla espanol,” Aztlan 7, no. 3 (Fall 1976): 427-51.
48. New York Times, 28 July 1972, 12.
49. See also José de la Isla, “The Politics of Reelection,” although de la Isla questions Nixon's success in gaining the Spanishspeaking vote because the president won “only” 30 percent.
50. Jack Greenberg, “Litigation for Social Change: Methods, Limits, and Role in Democracy,” Records of the New York City Bar Association 29 (1974): 9-63;
51. For a discussion of the LDF model in the context of MALDEF, see Karen O’Connor and Lee Epstein, “A Legal Voice for the Chicano Community: The Activities of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, 1968-82,” Social Science Quarterly 65 (1984): 245-56.
52. While LULAC had a reputation for success in the courts, it had always used litigation as a last resort, preferring moral suasion and threats of lawsuits to bring change. Guadeloupe San Miguel Jr. “Mexican American Organizations and the Changing Politics of School Desegregation in Texas, 1945-1980,” Social Science Quarterly 63 (December 1982): 709-10;
53. Interview, Oscar J. Martinez with William Flores, William Flores papers, LULAC.
54. For a brief overview of the proliferation of interest groups during these years, see Jeffrey M. Berry, The Interest Group Society, 2d ed. (Glenview, Ill. 1989), 16-34.
55. For a discussion of the politics of pan-Latino identity, see Louis DeSipio, “More Than the Sum of Its Parts: The Building Blocks of a Pan-Ethnic Latino Identity,” in Wilber C. Rich, ed. The Politics of Minority Coalitions: Race, Ethnicity, and Shared Uncertainties (Westport, Conn. 1996), 177–90.
56. Sidney M. Milkis, “Remaking Government Institutions in the 1970s: Participatory Democracy and the Triumph of Administrative Politics,” Journal of Policy History 10 (1998): 51-75.
57. For a study of Nixon's attempts to gain control of the executive branch through administrative means, see Richard P. Nathan, The Administrative Presidency (New York, 1986).
58. For the growth of interest groups and the changing nature of the American policy environment, see Berry, The Interest Group Society;
59. Hugh Heclo, “The Sixties’ False Dawn: Awakening, Movements, and Postmodern Policymaking,” in Brian Balogh, ed. Integrating the Sixties: The Origins, Structures, and Legitimacy of Public Policy in a Turbulent Decade (University Park, Pa. 1996), 34-63;
60. Richard A. Harris and Sidney M. Milkis, eds. Remaking American Politics (Boulder, 1989)
61. Marc K. Landy and Martin A. Levin, eds. The New Politics of Public Policy (Baltimore, 1995): Anthony King, ed. The New American Political System, 2d ed. (Washington, D.C. 1990).
62. For an overview of MALDEF's organization and activities, see O’Connor and Epstein, “A Legal Voice for the Chicano Community”
63. for a critical view of MALDEF's organization and funding structure, see Peter Skerry, “The Ambivalent Minority: Mexican Americans and the Voting Rights Act,” Journal of Policy History 6 (1994): 73-95.
64. Gareth Davies, “The Great Society After Johnson: The Case of Bilingual Education,” Journal of American History 88, no. 4 (March 2002): 1405-29.
65. See Allen Matusow, Nixon's Economy: Booms, Busts, Dollars, and Votes (Lawrence, Kan. 1998).