Title: Hispanic/Latino Civil Rights | American Civil Liberties and Rights
Headings: Hispanic/Latino Civil Rights
Hispanic/Latino Civil Rights
Hispanic/Latino Civil Rights
East L.A. Student Walkouts

Content: The Spanish-speaking population of the United States increased following the Spanish-American War in 1898 with the incorporation of Puerto Rico as a U.S. territory. In 1917, during World War I, the Jones Act granted U.S. citizenship to Puerto Ricans. In the early twentieth century, waves of violence aimed at Mexicans and Mexican Americans swept the Southwest. Mexican Americans in Arizona and in parts of Texas were denied the right to vote, which they had previously possessed, and Mexican American children were barred from attending Anglo-American schools. During the Great Depression of the 1930s, Mexican immigrants and many Mexican Americans, both U.S.-born and naturalized citizens, living in the Southwest and Midwest were deported by the government so that Anglo-Americans could take the jobs that they had once held. When the United States entered World War II, however, Mexicans were invited to immigrate to the United States as farmworkers under the Bracero ( bracero meaning “manual laborer” in Spanish) Program to make it possible for these American men to enlist in the armed services. Mexican Americans and Puerto Ricans did not passively accept discriminatory treatment, however. In 1903, Mexican farmworkers joined with Japanese farmworkers, who were also poorly paid, to form the first union to represent agricultural laborers. In 1929, Latino civil rights activists formed the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) to protest against discrimination and to fight for greater rights for Latinos. Just as in the case of African Americans, however, true civil rights advances for Hispanics and Latinos did not take place until the end of World War II.