YOLANDA CHAVEZ LEYVA
  • Home
  • Fierce Fronteriza Blog
  • Callegrafias Fronterizas
  • What I do
  • Publications
  • Comunidad
  • Connecting
  • Curriculum Vitae
  • South Central - Alameda Street
  • Untitled
  • Callegrafia
Fierce Fronteriza
Picture

Mexican American whiteness and Dr. Lawrence Nixon's challenge

2/23/2018

4 Comments

 
Picture
Dr. Lawrence A. Nixon
On July 26, 1924, Dr. Lawrence Nixon walked into  Fire Station #5 to cast his vote in the Democratic primary. When he walked up to the election officials and showed them his poll tax receipt, they denied him the right to vote. He recalled that the two election judges, C.C. Herndon and Charles Porras, were his friends. They asked about his health, and proceeded to tell him that he could not vote. "I know, but I've got to try," he answered. The two men agreed to sign a statement that had been prepared by the NAACP saying that they had denied Dr. Nixon the right to vote because he was Black. I thought about him as I voted in the primary this morning. 
Picture
Photograph from ​http://www.preservationtexas.org/endangered/east-el-paso-fire-station-no-5/
In Texas, whoever won the Democratic primary was sure to win the election. The primaries were important. In 1923, the Texas State Legislature passed a law making the Democratic primaries "white only." This law was part of decades of actions on the part of Southern states to disenfranchise Black voters, along with extra-legal violence that intended to keep African Americans away from elections following Reconstruction and the rise of Jim Crow.

​When Dr. Nixon was denied the right to vote that day in El Paso, he and the NAACP took the election officials to court. The case, Nixon v. Herndon eventually made it to the Supreme Court where the ruling stated that Texas had indeed violated the rights of African Americans under the 14th Amendment. The Court went on to add that it would be constitutional, however, for the Democratic Party (rather than the State of Texas) to declare white-only primaries because they were a private organization. Dr. Nixon went on to challenge this again when he tried to vote in 1928. It was not until the 1944 ruling in Smith v. Allwright that white primaries would be ended forever.
Picture
The site where Dr. Nixon challenged his exclusion from voting in 1924 as it looks today.

 For much of our history in this country, we have turned to "whiteness" to claim our rights. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo offered citizenship to the 60,000 to 100,000 Mexicans incorporated into the United States through war, yet the Nationality Act, also known as the Naturalization Act of 1790  restricted citizenship to "any alien, being a free white person." This was a conundrum for Mexican Americans. The 1887 case re Rodriguez  stated that because the  Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo made us eligible for citizenship, we must be white.  We were not treated as "white," facing segregation and myriad kinds of economic and social discrimination yet we had to claim to be white in order to be citizens. While Blacks were excluded by law, we were segregated by practice. There were "Mexican wages" and "Mexican schools." When the local El Paso bureaucracy tried to classify Mexican American births as "colored," there was great opposition from LULAC and other Mexican Americans. 

​As "whites," we were not excluded from voting in the Democratic primary and, in fact, El Paso's Democratic Ring relied on the Mexican vote in the first decades of the twentieth century. When Charles Porras denied Dr. Nixon the ballot that day, he was reinforcing his own sense of whiteness. Porras was a World War I veteran, a local LULAC leader, and went on to organize laundry workers and domestic workers into a kind of union in 1933. When he ruffled the feathers of El Paso's powerful by doing this, they asked for his deportation. There was only one problem: he was born in New Mexico. 

​When Dr. Nixon walked into Firehouse #5 that day in July 1924, he was challenging the exclusion of Blacks from the political process in Texas. But he was also challenging Mexican Americans to take a side. Would we claim whiteness (in opposition to Blackness) in order to claim some kind of rights? For decades to come, that would be the case.​
​
Picture
For more information on Dr. Nixon, I recommend this book by Dr. Will Guzman, a graduate of UTEP's History Department.

4 Comments
male enlargement Review link
3/12/2018 08:54:03 am

i like your post..this is very interesting

Reply
testogen: best testosterone booster link
3/13/2018 08:49:49 am

All the details are in this post is awesome and very interesting.

Reply
unique hoodia review link
3/13/2018 09:00:49 am

I like this post so much and great work is done on this post and all the details are in this post is awesome

Reply
findbodyinshape link
3/18/2018 10:05:50 am

I have perused your online journal it is exceptionally useful for me.

Reply



Leave a Reply.

    Archives

    September 2019
    August 2019
    November 2018
    August 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017

    Categories

    All

Picture
My father used to tell me about sneaking into this theater to watch movies as a kid in the 1910s. It showed Spanish language films. In the 1940s, it was transformed into a "whites only" theater but that didn't last long. By the 1950s, it was headquarters to the Mine, Mill, and Smelter Workers Union, a radical labor organization. Before it closed, it housed the Mine and Mill Bar.
Picture
Picture
This message is painted on the east side of the old Mission movie theater.
Picture
The bell tower of Guardian Angel Catholic Church, built in the 1910s to serve the growing Mexican immigrant community in what was then the "east side" of El Paso.
Picture
This pinata shop caught my attention as I was driving west on Alameda Street on my way to work.
Picture
Hawaiian dancer, Alameda Street.
Picture
Unicorn pinata on Alameda Street.
Picture
Proud graduate pinata.
Picture
Love message on the east side exterior wall of the old Mission Theater.

Segundo Barrio
Father Rahm Street
​July 2022

Picture
Looking into Padre Pinto Plaza, Sagrado Corazon Catholic Church.
Picture
Treasures on the window sill.
Picture
La bici
Picture
Tres vatos.
Picture
Esperando el bus.
Picture
Two generations.

 La Virgensita en la frontera
Picture
Woman reflected on la Virgencita, Segundo Barrio, 2021.
Picture
La Virgen de Guadalupe, 12 de diciembre 2017, Centro de Trabajadores Agricolas, El Paso
Picture
Protecting Barrio Duranguito 2019

 Cd Juarez downtown
​December 2017
Picture
Raramuri father and son musicians, downtown Juarez, 2017.
Picture
The smell of copal, downtown Juarez, December 2017.
Picture
Ciudad Juarez limpia, downtown, December 2017.
Picture
Selling at the mercado, downtown Juarez, December 2017
Picture
Telcel payaso, downtown Juarez, December 2017


 La Mariscal, Ciudad Juarez, 2017

Picture
Dos perros, La Mariscal, December 2017
Picture
Mujer con cabello verde, La Mariscal, Juarez, December 2017.
Picture
Beautiful death, La Mariscal, Ciudad Juarez, December 2017.
Picture
Tin Tan, La Mariscal, Ciudad Juarez, December 2017.
 
Montana Vista 2019
Picture
Red high heels in the desert 2019
 El Centro July 2022
Picture
A tree reaches out to Oscar Zeta Acosta (mural by Lxs Dos), El Paso, Texas July 2022
  • Home
  • Fierce Fronteriza Blog
  • Callegrafias Fronterizas
  • What I do
  • Publications
  • Comunidad
  • Connecting
  • Curriculum Vitae
  • South Central - Alameda Street
  • Untitled
  • Callegrafia