Martha Menchaca > Quotes

“1949, Mexican American civil rights activists sought to challenge the exclusion of Mexican Americans from funeral homes reserved for white citizens. This time they met with mixed results. The governor’s office refused to assist them, yet they obtained the political support of Senator Lyndon B. Johnson, and their struggle received national attention.”
― Martha Menchaca, The Mexican American Experience in Texas: Citizenship, Segregation, and the Struggle for Equality

“If the US claim was correct, it would mean the loss of over 84,000 acres for Texas. Associated with the border dispute were grievances raised against Nemesio de Salcedo y Salcedo, the commander general of the Internal Provinces, who refused to allow US agents to enter Texas in search of runaway slaves. US officials charged that the commander’s interpretation of international-border policy was wrong. Salcedo had informed them that upon entering Texas, slaves gained their freedom and that this policy did not violate international law or the property rights of US slave owners. US official disagreed because Spain’s laws were encouraging slaves from Louisiana and the Carolinas to run away and seek refuge in Texas.”
― Martha Menchaca, The Mexican American Experience in Texas: Citizenship, Segregation, and the Struggle for Equality

“This chapter examines why the State of Texas considered the social segregation of Mexican Americans an ordinary part of life. It begins by examining two landmark cases in which Texas courts ruled that it was not unconstitutional to segregate Mexican Americans. Independent School District v. Salvatierra (1930) illustrates how district zoning laws were used to segregate Mexican American students. Terrell Wells Swimming Pool v. Rodriguez (1944) explores exclusion laws applied to public accommodations and the state’s application of these laws to Mexican Americans.”
― Martha Menchaca, The Mexican American Experience in Texas: Citizenship, Segregation, and the Struggle for Equality

“1948 in the case of Perez v. Sharp, the California Supreme Court removed Catholics from the state’s antimiscegenation laws. Andrea Pérez, a Mexican American, and Sylvester Davis, an African American, had been prohibited from marrying due to California’s antimiscegenation laws.102 Under California law, a mixed-Caucasian could marry anyone, but a person who was white could not marry an African American. Because the Los Angeles County Clerk’s Office considered Andrea to be a non-mixed Caucasian of Mexican heritage, she was prohibited from marrying Sylvester.103 Andrea and Sylvester sought legal counsel from the Southern California chapter of the ACLU, which at that time was working with the Catholic Interracial Council of Los Angeles to challenge California’s antimiscegenation laws.”
― Martha Menchaca, The Mexican American Experience in Texas: Citizenship, Segregation, and the Struggle for Equality

“Following the secretary’s directive, agents from the Commerce Department advised state legislatures to pass statewide zoning-enabling acts and avoid using terms such as “segregation” or “exclusion.” It was best to employ phrases such as “regulate and restrict” when referring to policies intended to separate groups into racial residential districts. The model statute made this explicit: “​‘regulate and restrict’: This phrase is considered sufficiently all-embracing. Nothing will be gained by adding such terms as ‘exclude,’ ‘segregate,’ ‘limit,’ ‘determine.’​”103 Such language could not be construed to be discriminatory and could not be legally challenged. The Commerce Department also advised state officials that it was necessary for state legislatures to enforce zoning ordinances by authorizing municipalities to impose fines or imprisonment penalties for violations of the law.”
― Martha Menchaca, The Mexican American Experience in Texas: Citizenship, Segregation, and the Struggle for Equality

“After the reforms, US immigration to Texas did not stop, and by 1835 the Anglo-American population had grown to over 30,000.40 The enslaved population increased from 2,000 when General Mier y Terán issued his report to 5,000 in 1836.41”
― Martha Menchaca, The Mexican American Experience in Texas: Citizenship, Segregation, and the Struggle for Equality

“The Constitution of the Republic of Texas (1836) extended citizenship to all persons residing in Texas on the day of the declaration of independence as long as they were not Black or Indian.49 Mexicans who were white and mestizo became citizens of Texas. With respect to land, officials adopted some of Mexico’s property laws, but placed racial restrictions on those who would be able to recertify their grants. Under Mexican law, occupational land rights were recognized, and a person did not have to hold a deed to the land he lived on. Under the laws of the new republic, however, Indians and Blacks were prohibited from validating their Spanish and Mexican land grants, regardless of whether they held a deed. They also became ineligible to apply for new land grants.”
― Martha Menchaca, The Mexican American Experience in Texas: Citizenship, Segregation, and the Struggle for Equality

“During oral arguments, Howard Wimberley, assistant attorney general for Texas, presented the state’s two-class theory, which had been used in previous trials to explain why Mexican Americans were not called for jury duty. Wimberley argued that in Texas there were only two races, Blacks and whites, and only Blacks on occasion needed the government’s protection from hostile whites.”
― Martha Menchaca, The Mexican American Experience in Texas: Citizenship, Segregation, and the Struggle for Equality

“The treaty, however, did not contain an article dealing directly with runaway slaves reaching Texas.166 Most likely, this was because agreements concerning slavery were such a sensitive issue that they could derail critical territorial negotiations.”
― Martha Menchaca, The Mexican American Experience in Texas: Citizenship, Segregation, and the Struggle for Equality

“Congress gave the legislative bodies of the ceded territories the authority to determine which Mexican people would be given US citizenship. At this time, the states and territories had the legal right to determine citizenship eligibility requirements, a power given to them by the US Constitution.”
― Martha Menchaca, The Mexican American Experience in Texas: Citizenship, Segregation, and the Struggle for Equality

“The Salt War Riots Begin In early September 1877, José María Juárez and Macedonio Gandera organized local residents to stop paying the salt fee. They were prominent local citizens and salinero merchants who harvested salt and sold it across the border in Ciudad Juárez.”
― Martha Menchaca, The Mexican American Experience in Texas: Citizenship, Segregation, and the Struggle for Equality

“McNelly’s Special Forces were also known for committing brutalities across the border, and in Mexico they were considered outlaws with licenses to kill. In 1875, McNelly and his Rangers crossed the border without federal authorization and attacked the Mexican village of Cachuttas.”
― Martha Menchaca, The Mexican American Experience in Texas: Citizenship, Segregation, and the Struggle for Equality

“A new era, however, began toward the end of Reconstruction when the US Supreme Court’s ruling in the Slaughter-House Cases (1873) gave state legislatures the authority to determine what actions constituted violations of a person’s civil rights. The”
― Martha Menchaca, The Mexican American Experience in Texas: Citizenship, Segregation, and the Struggle for Equality

“The federal government could intervene in civil rights disputes only when a state violated political rights associated with citizenship. After the Slaughter-House Cases ruling, state assemblies went far beyond passing segregation legislation aimed at keeping African Americans apart from whites.74 They passed exclusionary laws discriminating against Jews, Mexican Americans, Native Americans, and Asian Americans.”
― Martha Menchaca, The Mexican American Experience in Texas: Citizenship, Segregation, and the Struggle for Equality

“Complicating matters, American spies, with the aid of Canary Islanders, were expected to enter Texas and instigate revolts. Canary Islanders had the right to obtain a license to enter Texas as Spanish subjects seeking to relocate to New Spain. Twenty years earlier, when Louisiana belonged to Spain, Canary Islanders were brought in to populate the region. Over 2,000 of them settled in Louisiana. Spanish officials now feared that these settlers’ loyalties lay with the United States.”
― Martha Menchaca, The Mexican American Experience in Texas: Citizenship, Segregation, and the Struggle for Equality

“In February 1873, the US Supreme Court heard the appeal of a group of cases from Louisiana consolidated as the Slaughter-House Cases (1873). The Court’s ruling reversed the liberal direction that the nation was moving in, that is, toward equalizing the political rights of all citizens. The justices ruled that state legislatures had the power to determine what social practices in everyday life constituted discriminatory actions and violated a person’s constitutional rights.”
― Martha Menchaca, The Mexican American Experience in Texas: Citizenship, Segregation, and the Struggle for Equality

“The act of February 5, 1840, entitled “Concerning Free Persons of Color,” forced all free Black people to leave Texas. If they refused, they would become slaves. Under the act, persons of African descent already in residence in Texas had two years to leave, and potential immigrants of African descent were prohibited from entering. The law did not make exceptions for afromexicanos, whose ancestors were part of the founding families of Texas. Black people who refused to obey the law were to be incarcerated, sentenced to a life of servitude, and sold at auction.”
― Martha Menchaca, The Mexican American Experience in Texas: Citizenship, Segregation, and the Struggle for Equality

“After the Brown ruling, García and Sánchez wanted to work with African Americans to desegregate schools. But they met stiff opposition from conservative LULAC and GI Forum members, who instead favored working with the state government to desegregate only the Mexican schools. At the time, Mexican American and African American coalitions were rare, organized mainly during elections to support candidates who opposed segregation. For”
― Martha Menchaca, The Mexican American Experience in Texas: Citizenship, Segregation, and the Struggle for Equality

“A court hearing held in the city of Monterey in 1820 illustrates what was required of escaped slaves hoping to stay in Mexico. To be emancipated and allowed to become immigrants, they had to demonstrate good character and convince a judge or audiencia that they had suffered intolerable cruelty at the hands of their masters. The Monterey hearing dealt with five emancipated African Americans who were given asylum in Texas but were later charged with being part of a band of thieves and stealing a horse. If found guilty, they were to be extradited to the United States.”
― Martha Menchaca, The Mexican American Experience in Texas: Citizenship, Segregation, and the Struggle for Equality

“The US government needed to accelerate food production. Crop production needed to more than double, since the Allies and American soldiers stationed in Europe and the Pacific depended on food exports. The problem for American farmers was that they were being required to increase food production while the military draft was shrinking their labor force.70 In Texas, in anticipation of a projected farm labor shortage, and to avoid having to ask the Mexican government for assistance, Stevenson petitioned the Selective Service to exempt Texan agricultural workers from the draft. He requested that men employed in farm labor not be allowed to enlist. His petition was denied.”
― Martha Menchaca, The Mexican American Experience in Texas: Citizenship, Segregation, and the Struggle for Equality

“In the aftermath of the Slaughter-House Cases ruling, the Texas Legislature and state courts passed laws giving clubs, organizations, and businesses the authority to refuse entry or services to any person, for any reason.”
― Martha Menchaca, The Mexican American Experience in Texas: Citizenship, Segregation, and the Struggle for Equality

“President Harry S. Truman’s attempt to dismantle segregation in the United States was monumental in igniting political shifts in the federal bureaucracy. It was soon followed by national changes in marriage laws and school segregation policies. In 1948, Truman issued Executive Order 9981 mandating the desegregation of the US Armed Forces.100 His executive action came in response to criticism from the Soviet Union that the US government enforced racial policies like those of the defeated Nazi regime.”
― Martha Menchaca, The Mexican American Experience in Texas: Citizenship, Segregation, and the Struggle for Equality

“In 1825, the legislators of Coahuila-Texas began writing the state constitution, and in article 13 they supported abolishing slavery.23 When Stephen Austin learned of this, he contacted other Anglo-American leaders, and they sought the support of influential Mexican Tejanos.24 Austin warned his allies that if slavery were abolished in Texas, most colonists would leave. Austin projected that this exodus would ruin the nascent, flourishing cotton economy and endanger the commercial ties that US companies were forming in Texas. According”
― Martha Menchaca, The Mexican American Experience in Texas: Citizenship, Segregation, and the Struggle for Equality

“1840, the Republic of Texas began to address the liberal racial policies it had inherited from Mexico. The political status of afromexicanos and emancipated slaves was the most critical issue at hand. For most Anglo-Americans, afromexicanos were a nuisance, since they had the freedom to move freely among them and act as equals.52 Plus, free persons of African descent posed a political threat to Texas’s new racial order because they were”
― Martha Menchaca, The Mexican American Experience in Texas: Citizenship, Segregation, and the Struggle for Equality

“Overall, out of the nineteen senior public colleges in Texas, seven had desegregated by 1959, and twelve refused to do so. Desegregation”
― Martha Menchaca, The Mexican American Experience in Texas: Citizenship, Segregation, and the Struggle for Equality

“On April 14, 1873, in a 5–4 decision, the justices offered their interpretation of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments and destroyed the legal basis for federal intervention in most civil rights disputes involving racial minorities. The Court ruled that the amendments were not designed to protect a person’s profession. The Thirteenth Amendment had been specifically designed to prohibit the enslavement of African Americans and prevent the indentured servitude of Mexicans and Asians. The justices wrote: “While the thirteenth article of amendment was intended primarily to abolish African slavery, it equally forbids Mexican peonage or the Chinese coolie trade, when they amount to slavery or involuntary servitude; and the use of the word ‘servitude’ is intended to prohibit all forms of involuntary slavery of whatever class or name.”69 The Court ruled that the Fourteenth Amendment likewise did not apply to the professions, since it had been designed to solely protect a person’s political rights as a US citizen.70”
― Martha Menchaca, The Mexican American Experience in Texas: Citizenship, Segregation, and the Struggle for Equality

“Smith v. Smith became the precedent in Texas for upholding Mexico’s marriage and inheritance laws. The legal and cultural arguments used in defense of the Smiths’ interethnic marriage were later found to be equally applicable to interracial marriages. That is, although immediately after independence the Texas Legislature passed a series of “antimiscegenation” laws prohibiting the marriage of whites and Blacks, this type of interracial marriage was deemed legal if it had been conducted during Spanish and Mexican rule, and the children born from these marriages were eligible to inherit.”
― Martha Menchaca, The Mexican American Experience in Texas: Citizenship, Segregation, and the Struggle for Equality

“Schools on military bases and public schools accepting the children of service members also desegregated. Many of these schools had no choice in the matter, since they were ordered by the Department of Defense to integrate or close down. The secretary of defense, Charles E. Wilson, ordered that all military base schools and all public schools attended by military dependents be integrated by September 1, 1955, or prepare to be sanctioned.46 These schools were not allowed to submit choice plans.”
― Martha Menchaca, The Mexican American Experience in Texas: Citizenship, Segregation, and the Struggle for Equality

“Over May 5–7, 1824, when the states and territories of the republic were constituted, the delegates voted to merge Texas and Coahuila into one state.18 The Texas delegation, including Stephen Austin, vigorously opposed the union because Coahuila was an older, extensively populated region and would be apportioned more representatives than Texas.19 At that time Texas had 3,334 inhabitants, and Coahuila, 42,937.20 It was likely that slavery would be abolished in Texas because Congress authorized each state to draft its constitution and establish state laws, including those regarding slavery.”
― Martha Menchaca, The Mexican American Experience in Texas: Citizenship, Segregation, and the Struggle for Equality

“Austin introduced a plan designed by Peter Ellis Bean, and obtained the support of the Bexar Ayuntamiento. Bean had found a loophole that allowed immigrants to continue introducing slaves into Texas. Enslaved people would be brought to Texas as indentured servants. First, while slave owners were residing in US territory, they would take their slaves to a notary public, emancipate them, and afterward require them to sign a contract indenturing themselves and their children for life.”
― Martha Menchaca, The Mexican American Experience in Texas: Citizenship, Segregation, and the Struggle for Equality