Fighting for Caucasian Rights: Mexicans, Mexican Americans, and the Transnational Struggle for Civil Rights in World War II Texas

Abstract

In the spring of 1943, the Texas state legislature unanimously passed and Gov. Coke R. Stevenson signed a peculiar civil rights resolution, the “Caucasian Race—Equal Privileges” resolution. It stated that “all nations of the North and South American continents are banded together in an effort to stamp out Nazism and preserve democracy”; that “our neighbors to the South are cooperating and aiding us in every way possible”; and that “the citizens of the great State of Texas are interested in doing all that is humanly possible to aid and assist the national policy of hemispheric solidarity.” For all those reasons, the resolution declared, “all persons of the Caucasian Race within the jurisdiction of this State are entitled to the full and equal accommodations, advantages, facilities, and privileges of all public places of business or amusement.” Since the state of Texas had, at...