Porter Broyles

“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

“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

“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

“In Pecos County, the county commissioners banned people of Latin American descent from using community swimming pools reserved for whites. Attorneys for the consul-general of Mexico informed Governor Stevenson that the Pecos ordinance was unlawful because under federal law, a segregation ordinance could not be enforced in a government-owned facility. Segregation ordinances were legal only if they involved private property. Because the swimming pools in question were owned by the county and the ordinance had been passed by county officials, the commissioners were clearly violating federal law. Furthermore,”
― Martha Menchaca, The Mexican American Experience in Texas: Citizenship, Segregation, and the Struggle for Equality