The Annals of Iowa Volume 68, Number 3
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The Annals of Volume 68, Number 3 Iowa Summer 2009 A QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF HISTORY In This Issue JANET WEAVER, assistant curator at the Iowa Women’s Archives, University of Iowa Libraries, traces the emerging activism of a cadre of second-generation Mexican Americans in Davenport. Many of them grew up in the barrios of Holy City and Cook’s Point in the 1920s and 1930s. By the late 1960s, they were providing local leadership for Cesar Chavez’s grape boycott campaign and lending their support to the fiercely contested passage of Iowa’s first migrant worker legislation. KARA MOLLANO analyzes the campaign led by minority residents of Fort Madison in the 1960s and 1970s to oppose a plan to rebuild U.S. High- way 61 that would have included rerouting the road through neighbor- hoods disproportionately inhabited by African Americans and Mexican Americans. The multiracial and multiethnic coalition succeeded in block- ing the highway plan while exposing racial, ethnic, and class divisions in Fort Madison. Front Cover Ernest Rodriguez (right) was born in a boxcar in Davenport’s “Holy City” in 1928. By 1963, he was meeting with U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy (center) at the American GI Forum convention in Chicago , along with (left to right) Augustine Olvera, Mary Olvera, and Juanita Rodriguez. For more on the emerging activism of Davenport’s Mexican Americans “from barrio to ‘¡boicoteo!’ see Janet Weaver’s article in this issue. Photo courtesy Ernest Rodriguez. Editorial Consultants Rebecca Conard, Middle Tennessee State R. David Edmunds, University of Texas University at Dallas Kathleen Neils Conzen, University of H. Roger Grant, Clemson University Chicago William C. Pratt, University of Nebraska William Cronon, University of Wisconsin– at Omaha Madison Glenda Riley, Ball State University Robert R. Dykstra, State University of Malcolm J. Rohrbough, University of Iowa New York at Albany Dorothy Schwieder, Iowa State University The Annals of Third Series, Vol. 68, No. 3 Summer 2009 Iowa Marvin Bergman, editor Contents 215 From Barrio to “¡Boicoteo!”: The Emergence of Mexican American Activism in Davenport, 1917–1970 Janet Weaver 255 Race, Roads, and Right-of-Way: A Campaign to Block Highway Construction in Fort Madison, 1967–1976 Kara Mollano 298 Book Reviews and Notices 339 New on the Shelves A QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF HISTORY FOUNDED IN 1863 Copyright 2009 by the State Historical Society of Iowa ISSN 0003-4827 Book Reviews and Notices 298 DAVID HUDSON ET AL., EDS., The Biographical Dictionary of Iowa, by Tom Longden 300 WILLIS GOUDY, Iowa’s Numbers: 150 Years of Decennial Census Data with a Glance to the Future, by Daniel Scott Smith 302 GEORGE E. CONNOR AND CHRISTOPHER W. HAMMONS, EDS., The Constitutionalism of American States, by Silvana R. Siddali 304 GARY GOREHAM, ED., Encyclopedia of Rural America: The Land and People, by Pamela Riney-Kehrberg 306 DAVID A. LANEGRAN, Minnesota on the Map: A Historical Atlas, by Michael Conzen 308 GREG OLSON, The Ioway in Missouri, by Tanis C. Thorne 309 KRISTIE C. WOLFERMAN, The Indomitable Mary Easton Sibley: Pioneer of Women’s Education in Missouri, by Rebecca Schelp 310 JOHN R. WUNDER AND JOANN M. ROSS, EDS., The Nebraska-Kansas Act of 1854, by James L. Huston 312 LARRY A. RINEY, Hell Gate of the Mississsippi: The Effie Afton Trial and Abraham Lincoln’s Role in It, by Michael A. Ross 314 JAMES M. GILLISPIE, Andersonvilles of the North: The Myths and Realities of Northern Treatment of Civil War Confederate Prisoners, by William B. Feis 316 GREGORY F. MICHNO AND SUSAN J. MICHNO, Forgotten Fights: Little-Known Raids and Skirmishes on the Frontier, 1823 to 1890, by Michael L. Tate 317 ROBERT B. MITCHELL, Skirmisher: The Life, Times, and Political Career of James B. Weaver, by Peter H. Argersinger 319 CHRISTOPHER CAPOZZOLA, Uncle Sam Wants You: World War I and the Making of the Modern American Citizen; and ERNEST FREEBERG, Democracy's Prisoner: Eugene V. Debs, the Great War, and the Right to Dissent, by Bill R. Douglas 322 JOHN SORENSEN, ED., The Grace Abbott Reader, by Suzanne O’Dea 323 WILLIAM E. LEUCHTENBURG, Herbert Hoover, by Glen Jeansonne 325 GREGG R. NARBER, The Impact of the New Deal on Iowa: Changing the Culture of a Rural State, by Timothy Walch 327 SUSAN STEIN-ROGGENBUCK, Negotiating Relief: The Development of Social Welfare Programs in Depression-Era Michigan, 1930–1940, by Joan Gittens 329 MARILYN IRVIN HOLT, Mamie Doud Eisenhower: The General’s First Lady, by John Robert Greene 331 JUDITH M. DAUBENMIER, The Meskwaki and Anthropologists: Action Anthropology Reconsidered, by Douglas Foley 333 The Iowa Master Farmer Award History Book: A History of the Prestigious Award, Its Winners, and a Century of Iowa Agriculture, by John J. Fry 334 JEREMY VARNER, Forty Years of Growth and Achievement: A History of Iowa’s Community Colleges, by Thomas Burnell Colbert 335 DIANE ZIMMERMAN UMBLE AND DAVID L. WEAVER-ZERCHER, EDS., The Amish and the Media, by Steven D. Reschly 337 VIRGINIA O. BENSON AND RICHARD KLEIN, Historic Preservation for Professionals, by Paula A. Mohr From Barrio to “¡Boicoteo!”: The Emergence of Mexican American Activism in Davenport, 1917–1970 JANET WEAVER ON NOVEMBER 18, 1969, Cesar Chavez addressed an enthu- siastic gathering of some 500 local supporters at a grape boycott rally in Davenport, Iowa. He spoke of the “miserable wages, working and living conditions” of California grape pickers, and urged local activists to join him in a three-day fast over Thanks- giving to support the “hundreds of farm workers who cultivate the food for us, but who do not enjoy it themselves.”1 His mes- sage resonated with the audience, which included a core group of Mexican American activists who had worked together to promote racial justice within their community for many years 1. Davenport-Bettendorf Times-Democrat, 11/9/1969, 11/18/1969, 11/19/1969. The research for this article developed out of my work for the Mujeres Latinas Project of the Iowa Women’s Archives at the University of Iowa Libraries. I acknowledge the many members of LULAC Council 10 who generously do- nated their time and expertise to make this research possible. In particular, I thank Salvador Lopez for his brilliant suggestion that we investigate the attic space above the old LULAC hall in Davenport, where, indeed, many treasures lay hidden. I appreciate the assistance of archivists Kathy Byers, St. Ambrose University Library Archives; and Karen O’Connor, Richardson-Sloane Special Collections Center, Davenport Public Library. I am grateful to the State His- torical Society of Iowa for a research grant and to Sharon Lake, Karissa Hauge- berg, Beatrice McKenzie, Roberta Till-Retz, and anonymous reviewers for reading earlier drafts of this essay and making helpful comments and sugges- tions. Thanks also to Shelton Stromquist and Omar Valerio-Jiménez, faculty members of the University of Iowa history department, and Kären Mason, curator of the Iowa Women’s Archives, for critiquing late drafts of this essay. THE ANNALS OF IOWA 68 (Summer 2009). © The State Historical Society of Iowa, 2009. 215 216 THE ANNALS OF IOWA and had been supporting the grape boycott actively for the past 11 months. They were, in effect, a generation of leaders forging a grassroots civil rights movement for whom the message of the Delano grape strike and boycott, delivered by its charismatic leader, sparked like tinder on a dry prairie. The farm workers’ struggle for justice stimulated what came to be known as the Chicano movement in the 1960s and 1970s. In this article, I trace the emerging activism of a small cadre of second-generation Mexican Americans in Davenport who led the local grape boycott campaign in the late 1960s. I explore how the grape boycott campaign, known as La Causa, provided a ve- hicle for broadening Mexican American activism in Davenport when local leaders concurrently took up the cause of Tejano mi- grant workers in Iowa, lending their support to the fiercely con- tested passage of the state’s first migrant worker legislation.2 THE LEADERS of the Quad City grape boycott campaign were children of working-class Mexican nationals from the Cen- tral Plateau region of Mexico whose parents had settled in Iowa in the early decades of the twentieth century.3 During that pe- 2. The term Tejano refers to Mexican Americans from Texas, the majority of whom were U.S. citizens. Relatively little has been written about Mexican Americans in Iowa, due at least in part, until recently, to a lack of primary source documentation. For the history of Mexican Americans in the Midwest more generally, see Juan R. Garcia, Mexicans in the Midwest, 1900–1932 (Tucson, AZ, 1996); Jim Norris, North for the Harvest: Mexican Workers, Growers, and the Sugar Beet Industry (St. Paul, MN, 2009); Dionicio Nodín Valdés, Barrios Norteños: St. Paul and Midwestern Mexican Communities in the Twentieth Century (Austin, TX, 2000); idem, Al Norte: Agricultural Workers in the Great Lakes Region, 1917– 1970 (Austin, TX, 1991); Zaragosa Vargas, Proletarians of the North: A History of Mexican Industrial Workers in Detroit and the Midwest, 1917–1933 (Berkeley, CA, 1993); David A. Badillo, “The Catholic Church and the Making of Mexican- American Parish Communities in the Midwest,” in Mexican Americans and the Catholic Church, ed. Jay P. Dolan and Gilberto M. Hinojosa (Notre Dame, IN, 1994); and Richard Santillán, “Latino Politics in the Midwestern United States: 1915–1986,” in Latinos and the Political System, ed. F. Chris Garcia (Notre Dame, IN, 1988). 3. George T. Edson, “Mexicans in the North Central States,” 3, folder 38, box 13, Paul Taylor Collection, Bancroft Library, University of California Berkeley, Berkeley, CA (Bancroft microfilm reel 2414); Ernest Rodriguez, “Historical Syn- opsis of the Mexican Americans of the Quint-Cities,” undated, “Impressions,” Ernest Rodriguez Papers, Iowa Women’s Archives (hereafter cited as IWA), University of Iowa Libraries, Iowa City.