Confronting Jim Crow in the ‘Lone Star’ capital: the contrasting strategies of African-American and ethnic-Mexican political leaders in Austin, Texas, 1910–1930

Abstract

Focusing upon the interaction between ethnic political elites in Austin, Texas, during the early twentieth century, this study examines (1) the impact of migration upon the dominant white elite's attitudes towards and dealings with the city's subordinate nonwhite ethnies, and (2) the agendas adopted by local African-American and ethnic-Mexican leaders. The article explains why in their efforts to improve conditions for their respective ethnic communities, the African-American and ethnic-Mexican leaderships pursued very different strategies from each other -the former concentrating upon the attainment of more universalist goals, the latter on more multiculturalist ones -and evaluates the effectiveness of these contrasting policies.Focusing upon inter-ethnic politics in an early-twentieth-century American city, this article examines the relationships between migration, ethnic pluralism and democracy. After World War I and the quota acts of the 1920s effected a sudden decline in European immigration, ethnic population mobility in the United States came to be dominated by three phenomena : Mexican immigration, black emigration from the South and the increasing urbanization of both African Americans and ethnic Mexicans. 1 These migrations had a major impact on inter-ethnic politics in twentieth-century America, which were characterized by two themes:(1) the struggle for civil equality and a colour-blind interpretation of the