Chicano Labor and Multiracial Politics in Post–World War II Texas Two Case Studies
5 Chicano Labor and Multiracial Politics in Post–World War II Texas Two Case Studies Max Krochmal In late 1963 a group of Dallas political operatives left its campaign headquar- ters and staged a sit-in at El Fenix, the city’s first Tex-Mex restaurant and the economic foundation of the influential Martinez family. The protesters in this case were not students, and the restaurant was owned by Mexican Americans. It was also a holdout in a city where virtually all downtown lunch counters had already desegregated their seating. The sit-in featured an alliance of white, black, and Chicano/Chicana trade unionists and working-class community activists who left their storefront office, walked to the restaurant, and sat down as a group at a large table. The manager, a member of the Martinez family, asked them to leave and then promptly closed down for the day.1 The sit-in at El Fenix bubbled up from a larger underground reservoir of multiracial, working-class political activism that took place beyond the gaze of most historians, journalists, and social scientists. In the two decades following World War II, African American and Chicano/Chicana working people across Texas quietly and tentatively approached one another as well as white laborers for support in their efforts to counter discrimination at work, in their unions, and in the cities in which they lived. By the mid-1960s such collaboration had gradually expanded from its origins in the barrios, ghettos, union halls, and shop floors to become a broad-based coalition in support of liberal politicians and an expansive civil rights agenda.2 Scholars of the post–World War II black and brown freedom struggles have traditionally privileged the middle-class, public leadership of the most vis- ible civil rights organizations.3 Yet working-class activists such as the protes- tors at El Fenix represented the lifeblood of the effort to democratize Texas.
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