2.1 - CR - Ceasar Chavez

Question 1

1. What problems did Mexican Americans face and why were they not especially successful in gaining prominence by the early 1960s?

Answer 1

By 1968 around 80% lived in urban ghettos where they suffered from high unemployment segregated schools poor housing and police discrimination. Although civil rights organisations such as the league of united Latin American citizens had won some important local victories on segregation police brutality and voter restriction they do not gain great support attention or political cloud this is due to the fact that many Mexican Americans are poorly educated or not U.S. citizens and hope for an eventual return to Mexico therefore they avoided these organisations and mainstream US politics

Question 2

How successful were the United Farm Workers (UFW) and why?

Answer 2

The United farm workers were largely successful contributing to the eventual passage of the exceptionally worker friendly legislation in California helping galvanise Mexican Americans and Mexican immigrants into activism and played an important role in stimulating a civil rights movement that inspired formerly quiescent Mexican Americans throughout the southwest to a greater ethnic pride and purposefulness this in turn led to local and national government paying greater attention to the needs of Mexican Americans