Fort Worth's Mexicans in Search of Representation, 1960-2000
READY TO RUN: FORT WORTH’S MEXICANS IN SEARCH OF REPRESENTATION, 1960-2000 Peter Charles Martínez, B.A., M.A. Dissertation Prepared for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY UNIVERSITY OF NORTH TEXAS August 2017 APPROVED: Roberto Calderón, Committee Chair J. Todd Moye, Committee Member Sandra Mendiola-García, Committee Member Neilesh Bose, Committee Member Harold Tanner, Chair of the Department of History David Holdeman, Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences Victor Prybutok, Dean of the Toulouse Graduate School Martínez, Peter Charles. Ready to Run: Fort Worth’s Mexicans in Search of Representation, 1960-2000. Doctor of Philosophy (History), August 2017, 225 pp., 5 tables, 5 figures, bibliography, 99 titles. This dissertation analyzes Fort Worth’s Mexican community from 1960 to 2000 while considering the idea of citizenship through representation in education and politics. After establishing an introductory chapter that places the research in context with traditional Chicano scholarship while utilizing prominent ideas and theories that exist within Modern Imperial studies, the ensuing chapter looks into the rise of Fort Worth’s Mexican population over the last four decades of the twentieth century. Thereafter, this work brings the attention to Mexican education in Fort Worth beginning in the 1960s and going through the end of the twentieth century. This research shows some of the struggles Mexicans encountered as they sought increased representation in the classroom, on the school board, and within other areas of the Fort Worth Independent School District. Meanwhile, Mexicans were in direct competition with African Americans who also sought increased representation while simultaneously pushing for more aggressive integration efforts against the wishes of Mexican leadership.
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