Introduction -- Transnational networks and the Fair Employment Practices Committee: Mexican consuls, FEPC officials, and Mexican American civil rights leaders come together -- Identifying and exploring: discovering people of Mexican origin -- State building on the ground: the institutional development of the FEPC and people of Mexican origin -- Good neighbors and good citizens: people of Mexican origin and the FEPC -- Laboratories of democracy?: people of Mexican origin and fair employment in Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas -- Conclusion
Summary
Immigration across the US-Mexican border may currently be a hot topic, but it is hardly a new one. Labor issues and civil rights have been interwoven with the history of the region since at least the time of the Mexican-American War, and the twentieth century witnessed recurrent political battles surrounding the status and rights of Mexican immigrants. In Mexican Inclusion: The Origins of Anti-Discrimination Policy in Texas and the Southwest, political scientist Matthew Gritter traces the process by which people of Mexican origin were incorporated in the United States' first civil rights agen