Red-blooded Americans: racial identity and the Mexican-American crusade for equal education, 1924-1946

This thesis primarily looks at Mexican immigrants and Mexican Americans resistance to school segregation in southern California from 1924-1946. Particularly, it examines how these individuals used race to make claims for educational equality. By charting a shift in activists rhetorical use of race during these years, it suggests that Mexican Americans conceptions of their own racial identities diverged substantially from those of their largely Mexican-born parents. The thesis further suggests that the Chicano Movements celebration of a non-white identity perhaps had its roots in the racial conceptions of the Mexican-American Civil Rights Movement.