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What was Operation Wetback? |
The civil rights movement expanded past the African American Civil Rights movement. Latinx, Asian-Pacific Americans, and Natives all had their own respective Civil Rights movements in the United States. To kick off the movement was the Fair Employment Practices Bill, which was implemented by a Latino senator Dennis Chavez. The goal of this was to provide repercussions for employers that tried to discriminate against people based on race and ethnicity. Although this Bill was not successful, it was a pathway to many future acts.
While the Brown v Board of Education is known as the court case that de-segregated schools, there was a preceding case, Mendez v Westminster. This court case involved a young girl named Sylvia who was not allowed to attend a white school. The result of this case allowed Sylvia to attend this school and this case was used in the determining of Brown vs Board of Education. This was the beginning to the government realizing the injustices occurring to the Latinx community. The League of United Latin American Citizens was a plan to unify all of the different Latinx cultures together. Often, people in the United States generalize all Latinx as Mexican, but that is not the case. Latinx is consisted of all of the different countries in Latin and South America. Another unification was the GI Forum. This was used to unify the Latinx war veterans. Although there were many Latinx in the United States, there was still a anti-immigration sentiment. This led to Operation Wetback, the mass deportation of Latinx. This mass deportation was a result of United States Citizens feeling like their jobs were being taken, again a false idea. The people they were deporting were also apart of the people that the United States recruited to fight for their different wars, but then would not allow them to stay in the country they helped fight for freedom for. In the case of Hernandez v Texas, it became about who was protected and given rights under the fourteenth amendment. The lawyer brought up that the Latinx community was not given their fair share of representation in the court system. This was an infringement on the fourteenth amendment because they were not given a fair trial due to lack of Latinx in the juries and judges. In relation to this, many years later, came the MALDEF. This promoted equity in the judicial and educational systems. The most popular, and usually the only known Latinx Civil Rights movement is the United Farm Workers and the influence of Cesar Chavez. This movement united Latinx farm workers who realized they were not receiving the treatment they deserve and were working under harsh conditions. This led to the Grape boycott and strike. The Cuban Americans too had a reform that directly changed their lives. This was known as the Cuban Adjustment Act. This act allowed Cubans to become permanent residents of the United States. This is very important as it took many, many years for Natives to even be considered as humans in the United States and took many years for other Latinx to be considered citizens. In the wake of the United States making Puerto Rico a United States territory, the Puerto Ricans started migrating to the United States and building families there. There goal began as helping to aid the crimes in the neighborhoods of minorities. However, their goals soon expanded to many other areas. It is a common misconception that when African Americans got the right to vote, so did Latinx. This is not the case as there were still many restrictions on voting. There were many revisions to the Voting Rights act and the revisions allowed Latinx to vote. However, when Latinx were finally allowed to vote, there was a low turn out rate. This led to SVREP which helped many Latinx register to vote. There were many other acts that benefited the Latinx community but also benefited other minority groups directly as well. These are all listed in the Extra Resources section. |