Title: A Civil Rights History: Latino/Hispanic Americans |
Headings: A Civil Rights History: Latino/Hispanic Americans
A Civil Rights History: Latino/Hispanic Americans
Content: And they have taken on the struggle to gain civil rights, and political and economic equality, that’s marked so much of U. S. history. Throughout the first half of the 20th century, for example, the American government seemed to be of two minds regarding immigration. In 1942, as millions of young men went off to war, the United States needed cheap labor. The government instituted the bracero program, which admitted thousands of Mexican nationals to the U.S. under contracts to work in agriculture and other seasonal jobs. Some called the program “legalized slavery.” But in 1953, the U.S. Government launched “Operation Wetback,” a program to send people of Mexican descent to Mexico. More than 3.8 million people were deported through the operation, many of them, American citizens. Latino and Hispanic resistance to discrimination, violence and the United States’ push-pull immigration policy began to take shape as early as the 1920s. Cannery and factory workers in the Southwest formed unions. The League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) opened its doors in 1929 with the mission of fighting injustices such as racially segregated West Coast schools and discriminatory hiring practices at railroads.