Brown Not White: School Integration and the Chicano Movement in Houston: A Review

Running head: BROWN NOT WHITE: SCHOOL INTEGRATION AND THE CHICANO
MOVEMENT IN HOUSTON: A REVIEW
BROWN NOT WHITE: SCHOOL INTEGRATION AND THE CHICANO MOVEMENT IN
HOUSTON: A REVIEW
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

Running head: BROWN NOT WHITE: SCHOOL INTEGRATION AND THE CHICANO
MOVEMENT IN HOUSTON: A REVIEW
The book “Brown not white: school integration and the Chicano movement in Houston”,
was composed by Guadalupe San Miguel, Jr, a Scholar of U.S history and has completed his
Ph.D from the Stanford University and has been extensively working in social and ethnic issues
governing Mexican Americans. San Miguel Jr. has served as an executive of the History
Department and the Graduate Committee and has also been the president of the National
association of Chicana and Chicano studies. He was awarded for the book “Brown not white” in
2001. The book was published in 2001 by Texas and A&M University Press (Guadalupe 2005).
The book is set in the backdrop of the semantic segregation of the Mexicans in America
which aroused activism in the latter half of the twentieth century. Guadalupe San Miguel has
travelled throughout the various episodes of Hispanic activism, and has explored the social crisis
that they have faced due to policies that classified them with as ‘Whites’ by completely
eradicating their identity as Mexican ‘Browns’. The struggle for their identity has been
continuing over demands that San Miguel has examined closely and has described that in the
first part of the book.
The history of Mexican descent in Houston, Texas started during the later part of the
1800 and earlier half of the 1900s with the expansion of the railways and with the change of the
government in Mexico. The Porfirio Diaz, government started modernization which created
hardships for the people and encouraged them to migrate to Houston. The expansion of the
transport system facilitated the migration (Gratton, Brian, and Merchant 2013). The major
migration took place during the 1942 to 1964 wherein the United States sponsored large scale
worker programme which was undocumented and was termed as the Bracero programme.

Running head: BROWN NOT WHITE: SCHOOL INTEGRATION AND THE CHICANO
MOVEMENT IN HOUSTON: A REVIEW
During this period, the list of migrants increased many folds and resulted in the Hispanic
settlement in Houston.
With the segregation policies and classification of the Mexican Americans as ‘Whites’ in
order to desegregate them and integrate them with Afro Americans in elementary and secondary
schools. The orders were passed with the efforts of the HISD or the Houston Independent School
District and were faced with extensive criticism and activist movement from the Mexican
American community or the ‘Chicanas’. The term Chicano was a racial reference to the Mexican
community in America, which was picked up by the movement as a symbol of pride rather than a
symbol of discrimination. The Sociedad Mutualista Mexicana Benito Juarez stressed in serving
the working class of the community than serving the other social classes. This promoted cultural
expansion of the community in Houston and in America. This also provided relief services to the
community during the period of the great economic depression.
Within its narration of the events that happened, Miguel talks about the various
organisations that formed during the time. The ‘la federacion de sociedades mexicanas y Latino
latinoamericanas’ or the FSMLA was the most prominent organisation formed in the 1930s and
was involved in looking after the promotion of diversity of their cultures and loyalty to the
United States during the period.
The Lorenzo de Zavala Elementary School, in Houston was involved in parting
elementary education and was the first institution responsible in serving Hispanic children. The
school was established in the Magnolia park region and Mexican Americans were mostly
accommodating Anglo American students, which gradually changed to Hispanic American
students.