The Labor Rights Movement: May 2023

Session One: Preface to the Labor Rights Movement; Locating Latinos/as in the American Landscape

• Acuña, Rodolfo. Occupied America: A History of Chicanos. Boston: Longman/Pearson, 2011.
• Arias, Arturo. “Central American- Americans: Invisibility, Power and Representation in the US Latino World,” Latino Studies, 1 (2003): 168-187.
• Baba, Marietta L. and Malvina Hauk-Abonyi, Mexicans of Detroit. Wayne State University, Center for Urban Studies, 1979.
• Badillo, David A. Latinos in Michigan. East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press, 2003.
• Balderrama, Francisco E. and Raymond Rodríguez. Decade of Betrayal: Mexican Repatriation in the 1930s. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 2006.
• Chinea, Jorge L. “Ethnic Prejudice and Anti-Immigration Policies in Times of Economic Stress: Mexican Repatriation from the United States, 1929-1939,” East Wind/West Wind (Winter 1996): 9-13 and 16.
• “Michigan,” Encyclopedia Latina: History, Culture, Society, vol. 3, edited by Ilan Stavans, 150-152. Danbury, CT: Grolier/Scholastic Library Publishing, 2005.
• “Latinos,” Encyclopedia of the Midwest, edited by Richard Sisson, Christian Zacher, and Andrew Cayton, 262-264. Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press, 2007.
• “Puerto Rico,” Colonial America: An Encyclopedia of Social, Political, Cultural, and Economic History, vol. 5, edited by James Ciment, 706-707, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 2006.
• “Puerto Rico,” Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern World, vol. 6, edited by Peter N. Stearns, 280-283. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.
• “Puerto Rico” [co-authored with Jacquelyn Briggs Kent], Encyclopedia of Latin American History and Culture, vol. 5, edited by editor-in-chief, Jay Kinsbruner and Erick D. Langer, senior editor, 408-415. Woodbridge, CT & Detroit, MI: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 2008.
• “Latinos in Southeast Michigan,” Struggles and Triumphs of Peoples of Color in Michigan: A Collection of Personal Essays, edited by Matt Hoerauf, 18-21. Detroit, MI: W.K. Kellogg Foundation/Michigan Roundtable for Diversity and Inclusion, 2012.
• Daly Heyck, Denis Lynn. Barrios and Borderlands: Cultures of Latinos and Latinas in the United States. New York: Routledge, 1994.
• Duany, Jorge. Puerto Rico: What Everyone Needs to Know. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017.
• Eckstein, Susan Eva. Cuban Privilege: The Making of Immigrant Inequality in the United States. Cambridge University Press, 2022.
• Eduardo, Yajaira. Too American to Be Dominican. Too Dominican to Be American. Amazon Digital Services, 2017.
• Fernández-Jones, Delia. Making the MexiRican City: Migration, Placemaking, and Activism in Grand Rapids. Urbana, Chicago and Springfield, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2023.
• “Becoming Latino: Mexican and Puerto Rican Community Formation in Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1926–1964,” Michigan Historical Review, 39.1 (Spring 2013): 71-100.
• Gómez Quiñonez, Juan. “The First Steps: Chicano Labor Conflict and Organizing, 1900-1920,” Aztlán-Chicano Journal of the Social Sciences and the Arts, 3.1: 13-49.
• González, Juan. Harvest of Empire: A History of Latinos in America. Revised edition. New York: Penguin Books, 2022.
• Guevara Urbina, Martin and Sofía Espinoza Álvarez. Latino Police Officers in the United States: An Examination of Emerging Trends and Issues. Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas, 2015.
• Hoffnung-Garskof, Jesse. “Michigan.” In Latino America: State by State Encyclopedia, Vol. I. Edited by Mark Overmyer-Velazquez. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2008.
• Humphrey, Norman D. The Mexican Peon in Detroit. Ph.D. Dissertation. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1943.
• “The Migration and Settlement of Detroit Mexicans,” Economic Geography, 19.4 (1943): 358-361.
• “Mexican Repatriation from Michigan Public Assistance in Historical Perspective.” Social Service Review, 15.3 (1941): 497-513.
• Iber, Jorge, et al. Latinos in U.S. Sport: A History of Isolation, Cultural Identity, and Acceptance. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics, 2011.
• MacDonald, Victoria Maria. Latino Education in the United States: A Narrated History from 1513 to 2000. New York: Pelgrave Macmillan, 2004.
• Martínez, Rubén, ed. Latinos in the Midwest. East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press, 2011.
• Meléndez, Edgardo. “The Beets of Wrath: Migration Policy and Migrant Discontent in Michigan, 1950.” In his book: Sponsored Migration: The State and Puerto Rican Postwar Migration to the United States. Ohio State University Press, 2017, 159-185.
• Moore, Joan and Harry Pachón. Hispanics in the United States. Englewood Cliffs, N.J. Prentice Hall, 1985
• Munemitsu, Janice. The Kindness of Color: The Story of Two Families and Mendez, Et Al. V. Westminster, the 1947 Desegregation of California Public Schools. California: NP, 2021.
• Pérez Rosenbaum, Rene. “Migration and Integration of Latinos into Rural Midwestern Communities: The Case of Mexicans in Adrian, Michigan.” Ph.D. Dissertation, Michigan State University, 1997.
• Ramírez Berg, Charles. Latinos Images in Film: Stereotypes, Subversion, Resistance. Austin: The University Press of Texas, 2002.
• Rodríguez, Clara. Latin Looks: Images of Latinas and Latinos in the U.S. Media. New York and London: Routledge, 1997.
• Rosales, Steven. “’This Street is Essentially Mexican’: An Oral History of the Mexican American Community of Saginaw, Michigan, 1920–1980,” Michigan Historical Review, 40.2 (Fall 2014): 32-62.
• Sáenz, Rogelio and María C. Morales. Latinos in the U.S.: Diversity and Change. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2015.
• Salas, Gumersindo and Isabel Salas. “The Mexican Community of Detroit.” In: Hartman, David W. (editor). Immigrants and Migrants: The Detroit Ethnic Experience. New University Thought Publishing Company, 1974.
• Skendzel, Eduard Adam. Detroit’s Pioneer Mexicans: A Historical Study of the Mexican Colony in Detroit. Grand Rapids, MI: Littleshield Press, 1980.
• Taningco, Maria Teresa V, et al. STEM Professions: Opportunities and Challenges for Latinos in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. A Review of Literature. ERIC Clearinghouse and contributor, Tomas Rivera Policy Institute, 2008.
• Valdés, Dennis Nodín. “Betabeleros: The Formation of an Agricultural Proletariat in the Midwest, 1897–1930,” Labor History, 30.4 (1989): 536-562.
• Barrios Norteños: St. Paul and Midwestern Mexican Communities in the Twentieth Centuries. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2000.
• “Divergent Roots, Common Destinies? Latino Work and Settlement in Michigan,” The Julian Samora Research Institute, Occasional Paper, No. 4, May 1992.
• Valdés, Vanessa K. Diasporic Blackness: The Life and Times of Arturo Alfonso Schomburg. New York: State University of New York, 2017.
• Valier Alvarado, Rudolph and Sonya Yvette Alvarado. Mexicans and Mexican Americans in Michigan. East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press, 2003.
• Vargas, Zaragosa. Proletarians of the North: A History of Mexican Industrial Workers in Detroit and the Midwest, 1917-1933. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993.
• “Life and Community in the ‘Wonderful City of the Magic Motor’: Mexican Immigrants in 1920s Detroit,” Michigan Historical Review, 15.1 (Spring 1989): 45-68.
• Wood, Gregory, “‘The Paralysis of the Labor Movement’: Men, Masculinity, and Unions in 1920s Detroit,” Michigan Historical Review, 15.1 (Spring 2004): 59-91.

Videos

• Latino Americans, 6-part series, PBS, premiered 2013.
• Harvest of Empire: The Untold Story of Latinos in America, premiere 2012.

Online Resources

• Hispanic Heritage Month, Census.gov
• Key Facts About US Latinos for National Hispanic Heritage Month, Pew Research
• Latin@ Ethnonyms
• Juan Rodriguez's Way
• Latin@s in the US Armed Forces
• Latin@s in Sports
  • Latino Sports
  • American Latino Theme Study: Sports, National Park Service
  • Hispanic and Latino Athletes in American Sports
• Latin@s in Technology
  • Hispanic Scientists and Engineers, ScienceBuddies.org
  • 100 Most Influential Hispanic Leaders in Tech, FairPlayTalks.com
  • Issues and Trends in STEM Education, HispanicEngineer.com
  • U.S. Hispanics and Technology: A Dichotomy of Trust, Edelman.com
• Latin@s in Education
  • Latino Education And Economic Progress
  • Excelencia in Education
  • Latinos for Education
  • UnidosUS: Education and the Latino Community
• Arturo Alfonso Schomburg
  • Smithsonian: Arturo Alfonso Schomburg
  • Biography: Arturo Alfonso Schomburg
  • New York Public Library: Arturo Alfonso Schomburg
• Latin@s and the Legal System
  • Constitutional Rights Foundation: BRIA 23 2 c Mendez v Westminster: Paving the Way to School Desegregation
  • Library of Congress: 1946: Mendez v. Westminster
  • PBS American Experience: A Class Apart
• Latin@s in Law Enforcement/Criminal Justice System
  • The Mob Museum: Hispanic Heritage Month: Latinos in Law Enforcement
  • Neighborhood Data for Social Change: Latino Representation in the Criminal Justice System
  • League of United Latin American Citizens: Criminal Justice Reform

Session Two: Understanding Manifest Destiny; or How Annexionism Laid the Groundwork for Latin American Labor Migration in the US

• Manifest Destiny
  • History: Manifest Destiny
  • The American Yawp Reader: John O’Sullivan Declares America’s Manifest Destiny, 1845
• Silk Road to Asia
• La Reconquista
  • Britannica: Reconquista
  • The Collector: Reconquista: How the Christian Kingdoms Took Spain from the Moors
• Treaty of Tordesillas (A Luso-Spanish accord that led to the Line of Demarcation)
• Line of Demarcation (artificial boundary line that divided the Americas and Africa between Spain and Portugal)
• Domingo Faustino Sarmiento (President of Argentina in 1840s)
• Frederick Jackson Turner (U.S. historian)
• The bandeirantes (compared to conquest & settlement of the U.S. West and Southwest)
• The Mission (1986 movie starring Robert de Niro)
• Mexicans and Chicanos/as, 1848-1910
  • How the Chicano Movement Championed Mexican-American Identity and Fought for Change
  • A History of Mexicans in America (1848–2015)
• Central America/Caribbean as the U.S. “Backyard”
  • Our Own Backyard: The United States in Central America, 1977-1992
  • Another Look at the Backyard: Caribbean Peoples Past and Present
  • America's Backyard
• Porfirio Díaz and the “Modernization” of Mexico
  • The Mexican Revolution and the United States in the Collections of the Library of Congress
  • From Porfiriato to Mexican Revolution
• William Walker: America’s Grey-Eyed Man of Destiny
  • American Heritage: “The Gray-Eyed Man of Destiny”
  • William Walker, the Grey-Eyed Man of Destiny
• Central American Diaspora in the U.S.
  • Central American Immigrants in the United States
  • Central Americans in the US
• El Norte (1983 Film about Guatemalan political emigration)
• Juan José Arévalo, deposed ex-president of Guatemala, and author of the scathing allegory, Fable of the Shark and the Sardines
• Spanish-American War (1898)
• Platt Amendment (a clause in the Cuban constitution that allowed the U.S. to establish a protectorate over the island-nation)
• Latin American Immigration into U.S.
  • South American Immigrants in the United States
  • Latin American Immigration to the United States
  • Push and Pull Factors of Mexican Migration to the US
• Forms of Labor Exploitation in Latin America (which included encomienda, repartimiento, slavery, forced labor and debt peonage)
  • AP World History: Coercive (Forced) Labor Systems in the Early Modern Period
  • Indentured by hegemony - US builds slavery empire by exploiting other countries
• Mutualistas (mutual aid societies) among Mexican-Americans
• Labor Activism/Unionism/Labor Rights Movements among Mexican-Americans
  • Mexican workers in the United States: A profile
  • Labor Activism
  • 5 Hispanic Leaders Who Changed Labor History
  • American Latino Theme Study: Labor
• Chicano/a Social Banditry, including “Las Gorras Blancas” (the White Caps)
  • Social Bandits In The American Past: Juan Nepomuceno Cortina And Tiburcio Vasquez
  • The Outcast Bandits
  • How a Mexican forty-niner turned into the legend of Zorro
  • Las Gorras Blancas
• Chicano/a Civil Rights Movement (coincided with the Ethnic Renaissance Movement of the 1960s-early 1970s)
  • El Movimiento: The Chicano Movement and Hispanic Identity in the United States
  • Chicano! History of the Mexican American Civil Rights Movement
  • History of the Chicano Movement
  • El Movimiento: A Brief History of the Chicano Movement | Race and Culture
• The Young Lords Party
  • 1968: The Young Lord's Organization/Party
  • 5 Things History Books Won’t Tell You About the Young Lords’ Activism
  • The Roots of Organizing: The Young Lords’ revolution.

Session Three: The Long Road of the Latino/a Labor Movement

•  MLK and the Labor Movement
  • MLK fought for workers’ rights, bridging the labor movement with the civil rights movement
  • Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on Labor
• Marcus Garvey, founder of the Universal Negro Improvement Association
  • African Americans and the American Labor Movement
  • Marcus Garvey
• Reies López Tijerina and the Alianza Federal de Mercedes (Federal Land Grant Alliance, New Mexico)
  • Britannica: Civil Rights
  • Alianza de Mercedes Libres
• Anti-Mexican Sentiments, Attitudes, Prejudice and Discrimination
  • Anti-Mexican sentiment
  • The Long History of Anti-Latino Discrimination in America
  • Texas has a long history of anti-Mexican racism. My family lived it.
• League of United Latin American Citizens, founded in 1929
• American GI Forum, founded in 1948
• Mexican Repatriation Movement (plan to rid the U.S. of the so-called “Mexican Problem” during the Great Depression)
  • By the Train Loads: Mexican Repatriation Movement in the Midwest, Part I
  • Mexican Repatriation (1929-1936)
• Syndicalism/Labor Unionism in Mexico
  •  Revolutionary Syndicalism in Mexico
  • Mexican Workers in the IWW and the Partido Liberal Mexicano (PLM)
• The Borinqueneers (name given to Puerto Rican soldiers who served in the 65th
  Infantry Division of the U.S. Army that was deployed in Korea and other war fronts)
• Latin@s in WWI and WWII
  • Hispanics in Defense of Our Nation
  • Los Veteranos
  • Hispanic and Latino Americans in World War II
• Bracero Program (bilateral agreement between the U.S. and Mexico, wherein the former
  recruited laborers to toil in wartime industries)
  • The Bracero Program
  • 1942: Bracero Program
• Operation Wetback (mass deportation of Mexican workers in the U.S. in 1950s)
  • The Largest Mass Deportation in American History
  • Operation Wetback
• MALDEF (Mexican-American Legal Defense and Education Fund, founded in 1968)
• PRLDEF (Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund, founded in 1970; renamed
  Latino Justice)
• César Estrada Chávez and Dolores Huertas (co-founded the National Farm Workers
  Association, NFWA, in 1962)
• Rodolfo “Corky” González: formed the Crusade for Justice, 1966)
• José Ángel Gutiérrez (founded the La Raza Unida Party, 1970)
• Brown Berets (militant Chicano/a civil rights organization formed in 1966)