28.4: Civil Rights Beyond Black and White

A. Mexican Americans & Mexican Immigrants 1.Mexican Americans formed groups to fight for their rights and used the courts to challenge discrimination. 2.Legal and illegal Mexican migration increased dramatically during and after WWII. During the 1950s, efforts to round up undocumented immigrants led to a denial of basic civil rights and a distrust of Anglos.

Delegates to the 1948 National Convention of the League of United Latin American Citizens met in Kingsville, Texas. After World War II, LULAC grew to about 15,000 members active in 200 local councils, mostly in Texas and California.

B. Puerto Ricans 1.Although Puerto Rican communities had been forming since the 1920s, the great migration came after WWII. Despite being citizens, Puerto Ricans faced both economic and cultural discrimination. In the 1960s and 1970s, the decline in manufacturing jobs and urban decay severely hit them.

C. Indian Peoples 1.During the 1950s, Congress passed a series of termination bills that ended tribal rights in return for cash payments and division of tribal assets. 2.Indian activists challenged government policies leading to court decisions that reasserted the principle of tribal sovereignty. 3.Reservation Indians remained trapped in poverty. 4.Indians who had left the reservation lost much of their tribal identities. 5.Urban Indian groups arose and focused on civil instead of tribal rights.

D. Asian Americans 1.During the 1950s, Congress removed the old ban against Japanese immigration and naturalization. In 1965, a new immigration law increased opportunities for Asians to immigrate to the United States. As a result, the demographics of the Asian- American population drastically changed.

A Korean couple working behind the counter of their newly opened restaurant in Los Angeles, ca In the thirty-five years after the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, the city’s Asian American population had grown to over 1.2 million, including the largest Korean community outside of Korea.