He is assistant professor of history at texas university. Texas christian university. He received a phd in history university. And he has a forthcoming book. He will discuss his just about to be released book. Entitlediscuss. Lue texas [applause] thank you for that wonderful introduction. And for having me here again today. It is a real honor. It is especially an honor since the book is not yet out. Since like some of my esteemed colleagues it got , delayed, it will be out in august. It deals with the to condo oovement with the chican movement. It is also good to be here and that my work, is a relational multiethnic study. That is an important part of the field and i am glad to be here doing that part. There is my cover, new title. Im excited about it. Im going to give a quick overview of the book. On august 20 8, 1963, much of america nervously watched the march on washington. Nearly a thousand demonstrators gathered in texas to march towards the state capital in 102 degrees heat. From across the state, groups of White College students and mexicanamerican activists also joined. The protesters assembled, listening and cheering to Movement Leaders as they gave a series of speeches. So, calling for a acts, inf civil rights an unusual manner. They will never separate the latin american and negroes again in politics. Were going to march on the street, pray on the streets, sit in the streets, welcome the streets. We are going to fight at the ballot box and in the courts. And as the last message i have gotten for my governor. I can talk more about him whenever you like, not right now. He said, negroes today asks justice. At the time was the most militant of the mexicanamerican organizations in the state. Strange as it may now seem, this march was just the tip of a much larger iceberg. Beginning in the 1930s, africanamericans, mexicanamericans, and white labor activists gradually came together in a broader struggle for democracy in texas. Separate local organizing effort efforts in the ghettos a storefront in the offices gradually gave way to local experiments in multiracial collaboration. By the mid1960s, the diverse activist created a formal egalitarian statewide alliance in support of liberal politicians and then expansive multiracial civil rights agenda. They called it, the Democratic Coalition. My book tells a story of how these otherwise ordinary groups of activists first organized their separate bases, then cross the color line, and connected their freedom struggle to the Labor Movement and the electoral arena. It shows how building bridges between cultures became the crucial weapon and destroying jim crow and the state, and transforming electoral politics in texas and the nation. Lets begin with the famous strike in san antonio in 1938. It is a wellknown tale. I know many of you are familiar. Featuring heroic organizing. The story often depicts the strike itself as a victory, in which they won the strike to lose their jobs. Those stories are true and they are important, but i use a multiracial lens to understand how the strike turned into a mass uprising in the city. Particularly in the west and south side barrios. I see the political activity of the union, the alliances with separated faction of africanamericans, the naacp. I showed how this alliance puts mavericks into office. Although the coalition was shortlived, it dealt a permanent blow to statewide supremacist power structure. Looking at this moment through a multiracial lens renders a different by connecting it to politics and this larger world. Of activism becomes visible. It also allows for new continuities to become clear. A decade after the strike, the leader of the cities militant africanamerican factions, and activist undertaker on the east side, he moves these experiences forward. In 1948 he formed a tactical alliance, and both men were elected to form on local school boards. Soon thereafter, the man in the middle begin organizing the barrios to a group called the loyal american democrats. It has a somewhat orthodox name. Its true purpose was an insurgent club. In 1952, they lord a campaign activist to give a speech. He also began building a relationship with the africanamerican leader, who was elected in 1952 but continue to serve as a key organizer of the citys black civil rights movement. Together, they helped to elect henry to the city counsel. Three years later in 1956, opinion himself when pena himself won a seat. Over the next decade and a half. Pena began reaching out to liberals, you can see him here with john f. Kennedy. When the senator at the time came to stump for stevenson in 1956. In 1960, he was able to cash in on his work, becoming the lead organizer for kennedy in texas. Sutton also did. They were in these positions i drawn on a decade or more of committee organizing, electoral mobilization, and by building coalitions across the lines. Just one example. When pena received an offer to work for kennedy, he demanded and received a phone call from bobby kennedy, who gave pena complete control over the mexicanamerican wing. He promised him independence from the white democratic party, and they promised him patronage for the new administration, which are becoming a touchstone for mexicanamerican activism into the 1960s. Sutton also brokered his way into the party as the first africanamerican to represent the state from that region when he went to the National Convention in 1960 in los angeles. More immediately, by the winter of 1961, they transitioned into a series of permanent organizations. In texas and california. Pena was elected first state chairman. Mexican americans were looking ahead to collecting the spoils of victory. Throwing their weight around at democratic parties. Remember the context here. In 1960s, texas is still part of the solid south. It is a oneparty state dominated by a conservative party. The primary elections are the all important place where politics get contested. The party had been split since the new deal between a loyal democratic faction of liberals and the conservative dixiecrats. By 1960 still included the governor price daniel. As it turns out, as the kennedy did not deliver much. Over the next two years the , organization grappled with its future. How do we continue to advocate, how do we move forward . It repeatedly split apart. In 1962 the group narrowly endorsed the segregation of price daniel for governor. He was the incumbent. That did a walkout of the organizations liberal members. Which included many liberals and labor organizers. Conservators in the organization bolstered the state convention in protest with the leaderships alliance the teamsters and other labor unions. They were a force for progress. Where most historians have interpreted the splits as evidence of the fragmenting of some kind of idealized process, with this multiracial lens, we see the splits advancing the efforts of people like pena and other liberal activists who wanted the group to expand outward. He wanted to deepen his relationship with African Americans, white liberals, to extend the Labor Alliance at a statewide level. It could work across texas, he argued. Rather than being defeated, these splits represented opportunities. Freed from his more conservative partners, pena did just that. Ultimately, the statewide Democratic Coalition this cartoon reflects this philosophy. This is from the liberal labor wing of the organization. You can see labor cutting the ties. You can see the examples of san antonio and crystal city. This wing of the group wanted texas to sorry, wanted a paso to become more liberal, more more committed to civil rights, more prolabor. By the summer of 1963 this coalition came together and was upon the march. Some 300 representatives of these various groups came together and laid out an ambitious agenda for civil rights. Economic justice and real political power. They pledged to support liberal candidates, they made civil rights their top policy issue. They demanded complete and immediate immigration rather than voluntary or gradual forms. They coordinated a series of massive Voter Registration and get out the vote efforts that forever transformed state and urban politics. Unprecedented numbers of mobilizations of africanamericans and mexicanamericans. They threw itself completely into the black and brown civil rights movement. The supported demonstrations, they participated. They even demanded that the governor of texas call a special session of the legislature to address civil rights. They got into it as well. I dont have time to go into detail about all of these activities and its eventual disintegration, but stay tuned, the book will be out in august, available at a bookstore near you. But suffice to say now that these networks that were established between mexicanamerican activist and their likeminded counterparts remained robust throughout the decade into the 1970s. These are photos from la mancha. These are united farmworkers procession. This story looks rather different through this multiracial lens. The photo on the right shows the states most recognizable militant leader in the black civil rights movement, greeting chicano farmers. He had just led a group of africanamerican youth on a march through east texas and was tying it to media mexicanamerican farmers when they arrived on labor day. On the left, another photograph. They all came together to demand this minimum wage increase as well as civil rights and labor rights. The third of this coalition i think helps us to rethink important questions around relationships. Scholarships, ash fall into one of these two camps. Emphasizing cooperation. Africanamericans and mexicanamericans were neither natural allies nor inveterate enemies. They were simply different. They had different leaders, they lived in different neighborhoods, practice different religions. Sometimes spoke different religious, different cultural practices. All sorts of different lines of difference. They were so disparate, that just getting them together for a meeting represented a monumental task. Where you hold such a meeting . These activists wanted to get together and they understood that successful coalitions depended on them recognizing the differences between them rather than pretending they did not exist. They agreed to not always agree or even get along. They understood the distinction between the house and the coalition. The house is the phase space, the coalition is where you together to Work Together even though you disagree. The Democratic Coalition of texas, each of the groups remained separate. But they still Work Together for a common cause. That is why i have this funnel diagram, which is the best representation, rather than a pyramid. The Coalition Building was an active, contested and contingent process. As one member called it, coalitionee. A process, a messy process, coalitions fell apart and had to be reorganized. Despite these obstacles, there are many examples of coalitions coming together. I am recovering those. In fact, in texas, there were often several competing coalitions at any given time. The liberal coalition i focus on today, a more conservative coalition, and at times, particularly in the late 60s, a more radical African American coalition. For all of these activists, the use of multiracial coalitions proved critical. For liberals, it was a key tool in their achievement of civil rights and some semblance of democracy in the state and nation, however in complete the process of been. I want to close by highlighting how the book highlights the Chicano Movement. Im talking more about the previous group, the mexicanamerican generation, rather than strictly the chicano youth movement. But history invites us to think about how the line between these groups is fuzzy or than we commonly assumed. It is not strictly generational, but rather class, ideologies, strategy, gender, and other differences continually divided both age cohorts. They split apart because of all these reasons. The more militant activists use their independent to then forged new ties across the color lines. It opened up new opportunities. In many ways, their politics parallel those of the chicano radicals. They were proudly ethnic. They were unafraid to take to the streets to demonstrate, they to organize the barrios. Their stories reveal the dispute over how to approach those questions represented the central debates among the socalled mexicanamerican generation. That age alone did not prefigure these older activists politics. They were more militant and less right than the character that is commonly described to activists of their era. His original formulation was much broader, much more diverse. We have somehow lost sight of that. I want to take us back to that and extend the chronology of the Chicano Movement backwards. It tells us a great amount about the roots of the Chicano Movement. Where does that politics come from . They were directly involved in the later movement. They handed down the politics to the socalled young turks. They participated themselves as the next wave of people got underway. Thank you for having me, it has been wonderful to share this with you. 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