Fort Worth's Mexicans in Search of Representation, 1960-2000
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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. Subsequently, this research moves the attention to political power in Fort Worth, primarily focusing on the Fort Worth city council. Again, this dissertation begins in the 1960s after the Fort Worth opened the election of the mayor to the people of Fort Worth. No Mexican was ever elected to city council prior to the rise of single-member districts despite several efforts by various community leaders. Chapter V thus culminates with the rise of single- member districts in 1977 which transitions the research to chapter VI when Mexicans were finally successful in garnering political representation on the city council. Finally, Chapter VII concludes the twentieth century beginning with the rapid rise and fall of an organization called Hispanic 2000, an organization that sought increased Mexican representation but soon fell apart because of differences of opinion. In concluding the research, the final chapter provides an evaluation of the lack of Mexican representation both in Fort Worth education and in the political realm. Furthermore, the finishing chapter places Fort Worth’s Mexican situation within the context of both Chicano history as well as identify some key aspects of the history of modern empire. This investigation poses pertinent questions regarding the lack of Mexican representation while African Americans end the century well-represented on the school board, in education jobs, and on the city council. Copyright 2017 by Peter Charles Martínez ii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page LIST OF TABLES ................................................................................................................................ iv LIST OF FIGURES .............................................................................................................................. v LIST OF MAPS .................................................................................................................................. vi CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................ 1 CHAPTER II. THE RISE OF FORT WORTH’S MEXICAN COMMUNITY .............................................. 22 CHAPTER III. MEXICAN EDUCATION ISSUES: THE FOUNDATION .................................................. 41 CHAPTER IV. MEXICAN EDUCATION ISSUES: THE FWISD BOARD OF TRUSTEES AND THE END OF FLAX v. POTTS ................................................................................................................................ 84 CHAPTER V. READY TO RUN ........................................................................................................ 107 CHAPTER VI. READY TO REPRESENT ........................................................................................... 131 CHAPTER VII. READY TO RUN AGAIN? ........................................................................................ 154 CHAPTER VIII. CONCLUSION ....................................................................................................... 201 BIBLIOGRAPHY ............................................................................................................................ 218 iii LIST OF TABLES Page Table 1: 2010 Mexican Population in 5 Non-Mexican Border States Compared to 1980 Texas Mexican Population…………………………………………………………………………………………………..32 Table 2: Enrollment of Mexican-American Students by Instructional Level………………………….....64 Table 3: Location of Mexican Teachers by School Composition, 1972-73 School Year…..…………73 Table 4: Mexican Teacher-Student Discrepancy Schools – 1972-1973 School Year………………….74 Table 5: Fort Worth City Council District Population by Race in 2000…………………………………....192 iv LIST OF FIGURES Page Figure 1: Mexican GDP Growth - 1961 to 1980………………………………………………………..………..…….25 Figure 2: Fort Worth Population by Race - 1960 to 2000…………………………………………………...…….35 Figure 3: Fort Worth Race Percentage – 1960…………………………………………………………………….……35 Figure 4: Fort Worth Race Percentage – 2000……………………………………………..……………………….....35 Figure 5: Median Income by Race in Fort Worth – 1969………………………………………………….……….39 v LIST OF MAPS Page Map 1: Schools with at least 25 percent Mexican population in 1972-73 school year………………66 Map 2: 1973 Fort City Council Residence Map…………………………………………….………………………...118 Map 3: 1975 Fort City Council Residence Map…………………………………………………….………………...119 Map 4: Proposed 10-District Map………………………………………………………………………………….……...162 Map 5: 8-District Map as Proposed by Jesse Aguilera of Hispanic 2000……………………………….…163 Map 6: 1993 City Council Map………………………………………………………………………………..……………..164 vi CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION During the 1960s and 1970s, United States’ Mexican political and community leaders established a new plan of attack in their pursuit for civil rights and political power. Thanks in part to civil rights legislation such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Bilingual Education Act of 1968, it became advantageous for Mexicans to fight for rights based upon the brownness of their skin rather depend on their previous legal assertions of whiteness. Additionally, the 1973 landmark Supreme Court case, White, et al. v. Regester, et al., served as a precedent for the implementation of single-member districts for Texas county, city council, and school board elections, thus encouraging more aggressive challenges to existing political structures that kept Mexicans out of power by utilizing at-large elections.1 Chicano historian, Carlos Muñoz, described this era as the “first attempt to shape a politics of unification on the basis of nonwhite identity and culture and on the interests of the Mexican American working class.”2 As this study will show, while Muñoz praised this effort to unify Mexicans, differing agendas in the Mexican community as well as challenges from outside the community prevented true unification both during the Chicano movement period and in subsequent decades. When considering the history of Mexicans within the geographical borders of the United States of America, one should not ignore how students of Modern Empire view social and 1 Teresa Palomo Acosta, “Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund,” The Handbook of Texas, Texas State Historical Association, https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/jom01 (Accessed April 16, 2017). 2 Carlos Muñoz, Jr., Youth, Identity, Power: The Chicano Movement, Verso, London, 2007, 22. 1 political constructions of colonial society when subject to the control established by the metropole. Americans often do not deeply consider how relationships between how groups of people that are perceived as foreign relate to U.S. political structure, but in many ways the U.S. can be studied as one of the most prevalent and powerful empires since the nineteenth century. While U.S. historians may not readily consider the United States as an empire, American economic and military power exerted throughout the world since the 1800s suggest otherwise. Aspects of imperialism are evident when studying foreign relations, particularly in Latin America, during the nineteenth century. The Monroe Doctrine of the 1820s, the Mexican- American War during the late 1840s, the Spanish-American War in the late 1890s, and efforts at establishing a presence using the Open Door Policy during the early 1900s are some of the most obvious examples of American Imperialism; but studying how American financial investments backed by U.S. military support in areas like Panamá and Guatemala during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries make the U.S. Economic Empire much more evident.3 If the U.S. truly is a modern empire then we should be able to apply theories and ideas to the American Empire just as easily as we can to traditional European empires