Title: Latino Social Movements | Encyclopedia.com
Headings: Latino Social Movements
Latino Social Movements
Latino Social Movements
LULAC, MENDEZ, AND THE STRUGGLE FOR CIVIL RIGHTS
SECOND-CLASS CITIZENS
MEXICAN AMERICANS AND UNIONS
THE CHICANO MOVEMENT
WOMEN AND THE MOVIMIENTO
MARGINALIZED MOVEMENTS
LATINO MOVEMENTS IN THE 1990S AND BEYOND
BIBLIOGRAPHY

Content: LULAC actively resisted segregation through the courts, playing a key role in the landmark 1946 Mendez v. Westminster School District decision that ruled that California’s segregated public school system was unconstitutional. NAACP lead counsel Thurgood Marshall later cited Mendez as a precedent when and he and his fellow colleagues argued the Brown v. Board of Education case before the United States Supreme Court in 1954 (Johnson 2005; Robbie 2002). The Mendez case thus helped reshape the entire nation. SECOND-CLASS CITIZENS
Mexicans were called “greasers,” “cholos,” “bloodthirsty savages,” and other demeaning epithets for decades after the U.S.-Mexico War. Vigilante groups regularly hunted down Mexicans and lynched them without any legal proceedings. The legal system was largely based on “gringo justice,” and the implicit assumption was that Mexican Americans constituted a separate, inferior “race” that did not deserve equal treatment under the law. The United States used this same ideology during the U.S.-Mexico War, claiming it was their “Manifest Destiny” to take territory controlled by “uncivilized people” (Horsman 1981). LULAC believed that Mexicans-Americans were neither inferior nor uncivilized. They flatly stated that they were American citizens and should receive equal, fair, and just treatment.