Reference no: EM133351876
"Jim Crow" may appear to be an odd description of the situation of Mexicans in Texas. There was no constitutionally sanctioned "separate but equal" provision for Mexicans as there was for blacks. According to the prevailing jurisprudence, Mexicans were "Caucasian." But in political and sociological terms, blacks and Mexicans were basically seen as different aspects of the same race problem. In the farm areas of the South and West Texas, the Caucasian schools were nearly always divided into "Anglo schools" and "Mexican schools," the towns divided into "white towns" and "little Mexicos," and even the churches and cemeteries followed this seemingly natural division of people. This was not a natural phenomenon, however, but the cumulative effect of local administrative policies. In the farm districts, the result was a separation as complete - and as "de jure" - as any in the Jim Crow South. To emphasize these commonalities, I use "Jim Crow" to refer to a situation of nearly complete separation and control of blacks or Mexicans. This use of Jim Crow also swerves as a reminder that this demise was regional in nature. Throughout the South, the movement of people from farms to cities and industries was accompanied by the collapse of the South's rigid race segregation. The institutional supports of southern conservatism, as V.O. Key identified them - the one-party structure, malapportionment of state legislatures, and disenfranchisement of blacks - all crumbled. A similar institutional collapse occurred along the greater Texas border region.
What caused the demise of Jim Crow for Mexicans? The segregated order was based ultimately on the political influence of the farmers, and herein lay the weaknesses of segregation in Texas and, by extension, the Southwest. Already by World War II, growers had begun to give way to urban commercial interests as a social and political force in Texas. Agribusiness itself gradually became "urbanized" as resident farm ownership passed into corporate hands. The bottom layer of the segregated order also collapsed as farm workers emigrated to the cities or to the fields of other states.
For their part, the new urban elites, in spite of their conservatism, constituted a weakened foundation for Jim Crow. Financiers, industrialists, and merchants had never been as dependent as growers on labor repression. In the absence of repression, an element of competition characterized the posture of Anglo merchants in their relations with Mexicans. Such competition signified vulnerable points in the racial order, points that Texas Mexicans leveraged (as workers, consumers, and voters) to secure concessions and "rights." Mexicans in the cities remained second-class citizens, but Anglos were more cautious and respectful. Thus, the character of Mexican-Anglo relations in recent memory has manifested a clear rural-urban dichotomy: segregation and repression in the countryside; partial integration and patronage in the cities. These differences were evident in the 1940s but would become increasingly sharper over the following two decades...
Social conflict and national crises provided the necessary impulse for the decline of old race arrangements. World War II, in particular, initiated dramatic changes on the domestic front. The need for soldiers and workers, and for positive international relations with Latin America, meant that the counterproductive and embarrassing customs of Jim Crow had to be shelved, at least for the duration of the emergency. In more lasting terms, the war created a generation of Mexican American veterans prepared to press for their rights and privileges. The cracks in the segregated order proved to be irreparable.
The cracks did not rupture, however, until blacks in the South and Mexicans in the Southwest mobilized to present a sharp challenge from below in the 1960s. In Texas the protest activity among all segments of the Mexican American community - farm workers, factory workers, students, professionals, businessmen - was unprecedented. This complex movement accelerated the decline of race restrictions in the cities and initiated a similar process in the rural areas.
1. What does Montejano argue are the differences between black and Mexican "Jim Crow" in Texas?
2. Describe, as best you can, the main factor of the disappearance of the Jim Crow system on Texas Mexicans?
3. What does Montejano argue about World War II?
4. Describe what Montejano means when he states "from below" in the last paragraph?
5. Describe what caused the final "rupture" of the Jim Crow era for Mexican Americans in Texas?