In the mid-1960s, the charismatic Cesar Chavez led members of California's La Causa movement in boycotting the grape harvest, and melon pickers in South Texas called a strike against growers, contesting unfair labor and wage practices in both states.
In "Farm Workers and the Churches," Alan J. Watt shows how the religious and social contexts of the farm workers, their leaders, and the larger society helped or hindered these two pivotal actions.
Watt explores the ways in which liberal expressions of Northern Protestantism, transplanted to California and combined with the pro-labor wing...

In the mid-1960s, the charismatic Cesar Chavez led members of California's La Causa movement in boycotting the grape harvest, and melon pickers in South Texas called a strike against growers, contesting unfair labor and wage practices in both states. In "Farm Workers and the Churches", Alan J. Watt shows how the religious and social contexts of the farm workers, their leaders, and the larger society helped or hindered these two pivotal actions. Watt explores the ways in which liberal expressions of Northern Protestantism, transplanted to California and combined with the pro-labor wing of the...

Mexican Texans, fighting for the Confederate cause, in their own words . . . The Civil War is often conceived in simplistic, black and white terms: whites from the North and South fighting over states' rights, usually centered on the issue of black slavery. But, as Jerry Thompson shows in "Tejanos in Gray," motivations for allegiance to the South were often more complex than traditional interpretations have indicated. Gathered for the first time in this book, the forty-one letters and letter fragments written by two Mexican Texans, Captains Manuel Yturri and Joseph Rafael de la Garza, reveal...

Claiming Citizenship spotlights a community where Mexican Americans, regardless of social class, embraced a common ideology and worked for access to the full rights of citizenship without confrontation or radicalization. Victoria, Texas, is a small city with a sizable Mexican-descent population dating to the period before the U.S. annexation of the state. There, a complex and nuanced story of ethnic politics unfolded in the middle of the twentieth century. Focusing on grassroots, author Anthony Quiroz shows how the experience of the Mexican American citizens of Victoria, who worked within the...

Winner, Clotilde P. Garcia Tejano Book Prize and Texas Institute of Letters Most Significant Scholarly Book Award "Thompson's book provides not only a powerfully written history of a Mexican American who symbolizes 'resistance to oppression and intolerance, ' but also a clear, cogent explanation of the relationship between the United States and Mexico as they face each other across the Texas border." -Journal of American History "With stunning research and a crisp narrative, Jerry Thompson takes us beyond Juan Cortina's famous 'war' against Anglo-controlled Brownsville and into Cortina's...