and Allied Workers of America (UCA-
PAWA), won strikers union recognition
and a lower decrease in wages than had
been expected. That same year UCA-
PAWA organizer Luisa Moreno, a
Guatemalan-born labor leader who had
immigrated to the United States from
Mexico, founded the Spanish-Speaking
Peoples Congress, which held its first
conference in Los Angeles. More than a
labor union, the organization was dedi-
cated to winning equal rights for all
Hispanic Americans.
The Spanish-Speaking Peoples
Congress was not the first Hispanic-
American group to organize for such
broad aims. The League of United Latin
American Citizens (LULAC), an organi-
zation of U.S. citizens of Hispanic
descent, was established in the late 1920s
in Texas to fight discrimination against
Mexican Americans. Largely made up of
middle-class people, it encouraged
Mexican Americans to learn English,
become citizens, and exercise their voting
privileges. It sought to end discrimination
and segregation in education, housing,
and employment and to achieve equal
protection under the law. It remains the
nation’s oldest Hispanic organization.THE WORLD WAR II ERA
Though precise figures are not known,
about 250,000 to 500,000 Hispanic
Americans are believed to have served in
the U.S. armed forces during World War
II. Though most were Mexican
Americans, their numbers included 53,000
Puerto Ricans. Yet the record of American
valor in combat is only part of the story of
how Hispanic Americans contributed to
winning the war, and how the war
changed their history.
The United States did not immediate-
ly enter World War II (1939–1945), but it
mobilized to improve its own defenses
and to supply countries fighting the Axis
Powers (chiefly Germany, Japan, and
Italy). This mobilization, which stepped up
dramatically once the United States
entered the war in December 1941, pulled
the country out of the Great Depression.
Suddenly jobs in defense and other indus-
tries were widely available, the more so as
conscription and voluntary enlistment put
more than 16 million men in uniform.
During the Great Depression,
Mexican Americans had been thrown out
of jobs and pushed back to Mexico; now
jobs lay open for them, and the United
States needed the workers it had only just
pushed out. One result was the bracero
program, a program for recruiting tem-
porary laborers from Mexico, who were
called braceros because they worked with
their brazos, or arms (the term was the
equivalent of the English phrase “hired
hands”). The program, launched in 1942,
brought hundreds of thousands of
Mexicans into the country during the
war, and many more in the years after-
ward (see chapter 7 for more details).
Another result was upward mobility
for Mexican Americans, who now accepted
jobs that had previously been closed to
them. Mexican Americans migrated from
the Southwest to urban areas throughout
the country in even greater numbers than
in World War I, taking on many kinds of
work. Educational opportunities improved;
for example, the New Mexico Department
of Vocational Education expanded its train-
ing programs, teaching such skills as weld-
ing and mechanics. Mexican Americans
were helped by the Fair Employment
Practices Committee, a federal body
founded in 1941 to eliminate employment
discrimination in defense industries and156 ATLAS OF HISPANIC-AMERICAN HISTORY
A CHRONOLOGY OF LULAC,
1929–1946
1929 The League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) is founded in Texas
by representatives of several other organizations, including the Order of
the Sons of America, the Knights of America, and the League of Latin
American Citizens. Its objectives are to improve the social, political, and
economic rights of Mexican Americans.
1930 LULAC successfully desegregates hundreds of public places in Texas,
including swimming pools, rest rooms, barber shops, beauty parlors, drink-
ing fountains, hotels, and restaurants.
1931 LULAC instigates and funds the first class-action lawsuit (Salvatierra v. Del
Rio Independent School District) seeking to desegregate schools in Texas.
1936 To better protect Mexican Americans from discrimination, LULAC urges the
U.S. Census Bureau to reclassify Mexicans from the designation of
“Mexican” to “White.” The change is reflected in the 1940 Census.
1940 LULAC files numerous antidiscrimination lawsuits before the Federal
Employment Practices Commission, the first federal civil rights agency.
1941 LULAC launches a campaign to protest discriminatory hiring practices by
the Southern Pacific Railroad.
1945 LULAC successfully sues to integrate the Orange County School System,
which had been segregated on the grounds that Mexican children were
more poorly clothed and mentally inferior to white children.
1946 LULAC files Mendez v. Westminster, in Santa Ana, California, a lawsuit that
results in the end of a century of segregation in California’s public schools.