As far as the Civil Rights Struggle and Slavery I have 2 specific questions about what was going on with other races;
Was any other race used as slaves?
Did the colored drinking fountains apply to Asians, Indians and Mexicans as well?
and then I wanted to know if anyone had an idea what it was like in general if you were Asian, Native or Mexican. Was it as bad for them as for African Americans?
I attended a lecture by Ronald Takaki (“Strangers from a Different Shore”) years ago that, if memory serves, discussed the first “separate but equals” school case in the U.S. It was brought forth by a Japanese-American woman in the 1800s who petitioned the court to allow her child to attend the “white” school instead of the one for non-whites. I don’t remember how far she got, but I do remember the commentary that Asians and other non-African-American minorities historically have been overlooked in discussions on civil rights issues compared to African Americans.
Discussions on race almost invariably come down to simplified “black and white” issues for Americans. There is no collective guilt over how Asians, Hispanics, and others–with the possible exception of Native Americans–have been treated, in part because slavery is such a defining element of American history, but also in part because Baby Boomer heroes like JFK and Martin Luther King, Jr., are repeatedly showcased in media. Others who may have contributed are basically forgotten.
In the ancient world (Egypt, Greece & Rome, for example) a slave could be someone from any race. And any freeman could suddenly become a slave, either by financial catastrophe or just by an order from the ruler.
It was only in later times, 18th-20th century, when “slavery” was limited to ‘other’ races.
(This seems to have led to a significantly different social view of slavery. In the ancient world, there was a bit of “there but for the grace of God go I” view of slaves – any day, with bad luck, I might suddenly be a slave. Rather a leveling view of social classes.
In later times, slavery was seen as marking a significant difference between social classes: “I may be only a very poor white trash sharecropper, but at least I ain’t a slave!”)
Slavery in the U.S. was defined by perceived race. Only the descendants of people imported from Africa could be enslaved, by law. This does not reduce the discrimination and persecution that other non-white people suffered, but it places the discussion in context. Beyond that, Jim Crow laws in the South and discriminatory real estate and hiring practices in the North often explicitly targeted blacks while ignoring other groups. Jews were targeted in some deed restrictions and Catholics were ocasionally given fewer points in point-based systems, but Indians, Mexican immigrants and their descendants, and Asians were such tiny minorities in the Eastern U.S. (where most of the population lived and much of the civil rights struggle occurred), that they were often not included in either the discrimination or the fight for rights. (In the West, all those groups suffered discrimination, but the rights movement in the 1940s through the early 1960s was very much an Eastern event.)
(A thorough search will discover non-whites who were not black suffering discrimination in the East and blacks suffering discrimination in the West. However, I am addressing general trends that affected the overall patterns rather than trying to identify every event.)
The European settlers originally tried to enslave members of the tribes native to the “New World”, but the efforts didn’t work out. As this page says:
So blacks were captured and brought to the Americas because the Africans “were used to agricultural labor and working in field gangs”, and also “were virtually immune to European diseases that decimated most native populations.” The quotes in the previous sentence come from this page, which provides some “hidden history” of the Black Indian culture. As is discussed elsewhere on that page, many of the slaves in the British colonies that are now the southern states of the USA were of such mixed ancestry as Senegalese-Algonquian.
Also noted on that site is the fact that some Cherokees (and members of the other four “Civilized Tribes”*) kept African-American slaves. Here is an interesting account of the 1842 rebellion of blacks who lived in bondage among the Cherokee Nation.
*The “Five Civilized Tribes” were the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole.
I will respond to the question concerning what was going on with minorities other than blacks during the civil rights movement, specifically Mexican Americans.
To the best of my knowledge, In Texas, there was no law which specifically supported segregating Mexican Americans. Legally, Mexican Americans were considered “white.” However, in reality, there was a great deal of segregation going on. When my Mexican American father was a child (approximately 1940 to 1950), he remembers certain swimming pools being off limits to Mexican Americans. He also remembers an occassional “No Mexicans” signs in restaurants and barbershops and certain schools having seperate Mexican American classrooms. However, he remembers boy scouts, churches, sports teams and most public facilities being intergrated (Mexican Americans with Whites) with no problems whatsoever.
My Mexican American mother has described a sort of parallel development when it came to the social scene. In their 1950’s high school, there was a social club for the snooty white girls and a social club for the snooty Mexican girls. There would be a big dance at a cool dance hall with a great band for the white folk, and on the same night, a few miles away, there would be a similar event for all the Mexican folk. At the time, even though they had plenty of white friends, they did not think anything of it and thought it was just fine.
When my family moved to Alabama in the mid 60’s, they said that they had no problems with racism or segregation directed towards them. They said that there were few hispanics in their area so many people did not notice them or assumed they were Italians. My mother has mentioned an incident where they witnessed several white men drag out a black guy who was sitting at a whites only lunch counter. They did not get a second look from these guys and were left alone.
If you want to learn more about Mexican Americans during the civil rights movement, google LULAC, MALDEF, and the GI Forum to get started.
Funny. FTR I’m white. When I was about four, I was in a time and place where the usual term used by my elders to denote African American was “colored”. I didn’t have a clue what that meant; I thought they were talking about people who were rainbow colored, or wore rainbow hued clothing.
Robert Caro’s multi-volume biography of Lyndon Johnson touches on this. If I recall correctly, he says that they were considered white in part because then they could vote in the state’s Democratic primary, which was race-restricted. The powers-that-be wanted this because the Mexican vote was usually controlled by a few bosses who could help put a favored candidate over the top. That was one of the reasons a young Lyndon Johnson won (or, more accurately, stole) his 1948 race for the Senate.
I have no bone to pick in this argument, but I just thought this would be a great place to point out that I, as an East Indian growing up in the US, rever MLK Jr a great deal. If it hadn’t been for him fighting for black rights, I don’t think the rest of us would have had much of a chance.
It seems - and I could be wrong - that Asians tend not to stand up as much, and just get down and do their work. I’m not implying that either one is wrong, just that we may not have found a champion if it hadn’t been for Mr. King.
Since technically Mexican is a nationality and not an ethnicity…
CIA - World Factbook – Mexico
would it would be safe to say that white Mexicans had it a lot better than the others?
I wouldn’t discount the fact that many Europeans were brought to the American colonies as indentured servants, especially in the 18th century. Although in theory this condition of servitude was “only” for 5-7 years, as a practical matter many of these servants were worked in such wretched conditions that they wouldn’t necessarily live that long. Many Native Americans were also enslaved successfully in the 17th and 18th centuries, and there were a number of reasons that this was abandoned (no the least of which it was easier for them to run away than for Africans).
The condition of Chinese railway workers in the West in the 19th century was little better (and possibly worse) than indentured servants.
Probably depended a lot on how Mexican they were and what area of the country they were in. Look at the Irish in late 1800s New England or Midatlantic. Or Jews in New York at varying points. White, to a lot of Americans historically and even today means White Anglo-Saxon Protestant and if you aren’t all three of those (and a few other things, like heterosexual), you were or are going to be discriminated against.
When I was a child, I remember my mother referring to someone as a “black man”, and I think I said, “No, Mummy, he’s not black, he’s brown!”
Good point.
And of course technically, those of us who are white, aren’t really white either…
At 47, I’m old enough to remember when Italians weren’t considered completely white, to say nothing of Greeks, Pole, Jews, and a host of others…
In the 1800’s it sure wasn’t fun to be Irish. From this site: http://memory.loc.gov/learn/features/immig/alt/irish6.html
I’ve spoken to people here in California who have found some old “no Irish” signs.