Abstract
This essay examines the politics of the Catholic Interracial Council (CIC) and Mexican American activism in Iowa from the 1950s to the 1970s. As a national church body, the CIC worked to bridge the racial chasm that existed in black and white Catholic churches in places like New York and Detroit. In the Midwest, and Iowa in particular, the CIC included an eclectic mix of Mexican American, African American, and Anglo religious activists. The CIC organized for an end to police brutality, fair housing, equal access to education, and farmworkers’ rights. By focusing on the CIC, this essay shows how religious activism was part of the larger project of community formation that helped give rise to Mexican American civil rights activism in Iowa and across the Midwest.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
“Minutes of Operation Jobs Sweep Meeting,” folder: “Immigration and Employment, 1975–1982,” Box 4, LULAC Council 10 Records, Iowa Women’s Archives, The University of Iowa Libraries, Iowa City (hereafter IWA). LULAC originally started in South Texas in 1929 and is the oldest Latina/o civil rights organization in the U.S. For this history and politics of LULAC see, Benjamin Márquez, LULAC: The Evolution of a Mexican American Political Organization (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1993); Craig Kaplowitz, LULAC, Mexican Americans and National Policy (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2005); Michael Olivas (ed.), In Defense of My People: Alonso S. Perales and the Development of Mexican American Public Intellectuals (Houston: Arte Público Press, 2013); and Carlos K. Blanton, George I. Sánchez: The Long Fight for Mexican American Integration (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015).
- 2.
Janet Weaver, “From Barrio to ¡Boicoteo!: The Emergence of Mexican American Activism in Davenport, 1917–1970,” The Annals of Iowa 68 (Summer 2009), 233; Discrimination Investigation, City of Davenport, March 11, 1959, organized at the request of Mayor Don A. Petruccelli, folder: CIC , Box 8, John S. Smith Collection, Archives and Special Collections, St. Ambrose University, Davenport, Iowa.
- 3.
Lilia Fernandez, “Moving Beyond Aztlán: Disrupting Nationalism and Geographic Essentialism in Chicana/o History,” in Carlos K. Blanton (ed.), A Promising Problem: The New Chicana/o History (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2016), 59–82. See also Marc Rodriguez, The Tejano Diaspora: Mexican Americans and Ethnic Politics in Texas and Wisconsin (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011). For the Rodriguez quote, see Ernesto Rodriguez, “The Chicano and Racism in the Midwest,” undated, folder: “Writings (Impressions),” Box 1, Ernest Rodriguez Papers, IWA.
- 4.
“Latinos in Iowa: 2016,” Iowa Data Center Publications, www.iowadatacenter.org. See Janet Weaver, “From Barrio to ¡Boicoteo!”; Theresa Delgadillo, Latina Lives in Milwaukee (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2015); Sergio González, “I Was a Stranger and You Welcomed Me’: Latino Immigration, Religion, and Community Formation in Milwaukee, 1920–1990” (PhD diss., University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2017); Felipe Hinojosa, Latino Mennonites: Civil Rights, Faith, and Evangelical Culture (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014).
- 5.
Thomas Tweed argues that religions function as “watch and compass” that help to locate “devotees in a religious-nationalist historical narrative and situating them in social space and the natural landscape.” From there, religious devotees “map, construct, and inhabit ever-widening spaces: the body, the home, the homeland, and the cosmos.” Thomas Tweed, Crossing and Dwelling: A Theory of Religion (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2008), 81–84. The notion of religion as “orientation” can be seen in Tomas Summer Sandoval’s work on the role of Guadalupe Church in San Francisco during the late nineteenth and much of the twentieth century. Tomas Summers Sandoval, Jr., Latinos at the Golden Gate: Creating Community and Identity in San Francisco (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2013).
- 6.
I agree with Thomas J. Sugrue’s argument against “sixties exceptionalism” as a way to understand the long history of activism and social engagement that remade the Catholic Church throughout much of the twentieth century. See Thomas J. Sugrue, “The Catholic Encounter with the 1960s,” in R. Scott Appleby and Kathleen Sprows Cummings (eds), Catholicism in the American Century: Recasting Narratives of U.S. History (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2012), 61–80.
- 7.
Moises Sandoval (ed.), Fronteras: A History of the Latin American Church in the USA since 1513 (Mexican American Cultural Center, 1983), 261.
- 8.
“Migrants and Police, 1969,” Four Reports from 1969, The Iowa Civil Rights Commission, folder: Re: Mexican Americans, Box 4, John L. Schneiders Collection, Putnam Museum Archives, Davenport, Iowa (hereafter PMA).
- 9.
Felipe Hinojosa, “Medicina Sí, Muerte No!: Race, Public Health, and the ‘Long War on Poverty’ in Mathis, Texas, 1948–1971,” Western Historical Quarterly 44 (Winter 2013), 443; Laurie B. Green, “Saving Babies in Memphis: The Politics of Race, Health, and Hunger during the War on Poverty” in The War on Poverty: A New Grassroots History, 1964–1980, eds. Annelise Orleck and Lisa Gayle Hazirjian (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2011), 141.
- 10.
“Housing, Police, Migrants, Education, Four Reports from 1969,” The Iowa Civil Rights Commission, folder: Re: Mexican Americans, Box 4, John L. Schneiders Collection, PMA.
- 11.
“Cook’s Point, Davenport,” http://migration.lib.uiowa.edu/exhibits/show/barrio-settlements/cooks-point--davenport; Weaver, “From Barrio to ¡Boicoteo!” 220; “Migration is Beautiful” http://migration.lib.uiowa.edu/exhibits/show/barrio-settlements/holy-city--bettendorf, which indicates that the barrio was situated on land owned by the Bettendorf Company in Bettendorf, Iowa; and “Iowa LULAC History 1957–1972,” folder: General 1959–1979, Box 1, LULAC Council 10 Records, IWA.
- 12.
“Call up Contractor to Oppose Mexican Family,” The Daily Dispatch (March 18, 1952); Rev William T. O’Connor, “Racial Injustice in Iowa,” October 1963. Both in John S. Smith Collection, folder: CIC , Box 8, Archives and Special Collections, St. Ambrose University, Davenport, Iowa.
- 13.
George McDaniel, “Catholic Action in Davenport: St. Ambrose College and the League for Social Justice,” The Annals of Iowa 55 (Summer 1996): 242, 246.
- 14.
Ibid., 257, 261; Rev. William T. O’Connor, “Citizen 2nd Class,” Rev. George McDaniel Collection, Archives and Special Collections, St. Ambrose University, Davenport, Iowa.
- 15.
McDaniel, “Catholic Action in Davenport,” 240, 270; letter from Chaplain M.A. Mottet to Archbishop Carboni, Nov. 20, 1962, folder 4: Topical Files, CIC Administration 1962–1969, Box 3, John L. Schneiders Collection. PMA.
- 16.
Weaver, “From Barrio to ¡Boicoteo!,” 227–233.
- 17.
McDaniel, “Catholic Action in Davenport,” 239; John T. McGreevey, Parish Boundaries: The Catholic Encounter with Race in the Twentieth-century Urban North (University of Chicago Press, 1998), 161; and Gina Marie Pitti, “Into One Parish Life: National Parishes and Catholic Racial Politics at Midcentury,” in Roberto Treviño and Richard V. Francaviglia (eds), Catholicism in the American West: A Rosary of Hidden Voices (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2007), 128.
- 18.
There are many sides to this debate on Black–Brown solidarity movements. My essay contrasts with the argument put forward by Neil Foley in Quest for Equality: The Failed Promise of Black–Brown Solidarity (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010), and aligns more closely with works like Laura Pulido, Black, Brown, Yellow, and Left: Radical Activism in Los Angeles (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006); Gaye Theresa Johnson, Spaces of Conflict, Sounds of Solidarity: Music, Race, and Spatial Entitlement in Los Angeles (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013); Carlos Blanton, George I. Sánchez: The Long Fight for Mexican American Integration (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015); and Max Krochmal, Blue Texas: The Making of a Multiracial Democratic Coalition in the Civil Rights Era (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2016).
- 19.
Alan J. Watt, Farm Workers and the Churches: The Movement in California and Texas (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2010), 45; and George Sánchez, Becoming Mexican American (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 157–59.
- 20.
Watt, Farm Workers and the Churches, 4; Lara Medina, Las Hermanas (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2005), 16. See also Sergio González, “Juntos en el Nombre de Dios: Milwaukee’s Mexican Mission Chapel of our Lady of Guadalupe, 1924–1929,” paper presented at the Newberry Seminar in Latina/o and Borderlands Studies, April 10, 2015.
- 21.
Moises Sandoval, ed., Fronteras 419.
- 22.
Ibid.
- 23.
The classic statement of liberation theology is Gustavo Gutierrez , A Theology of Liberation (CEP, Lima, 1971). On the work of the Muñoz sisters, see Janet Weaver, “Barrio Women: Community and Coalition in the Heartland,” in Kathleen A. Laughlin and Jacqueline L. Castledine (eds), Breaking the Wave: Women, Their Organizations, and Feminism, 1945–1985 (New York: Routledge, 2011), especially 179–180.
- 24.
Martin Zielniski, “Working for Interracial Justice: The Catholic Interracial Council of New York, 1934–1964,” U.S. Catholic Historian v. 7, n. 2/3 (spring/summer 1988): 233–262; Rev. M.A. Mottet, “CIC Memo to the Membership,” November 17, 1962, CIC folder, FJLS24, Box 3, M.A. Mottet Collection, PMA.
- 25.
“Housing, Police, Migrants, Education, Four Reports from 1969,” The Iowa Civil Rights Commission, folder: Re: Mexican Americans, Box 4, John L. Schneiders Collection, PMA; Weaver, “From Barrio to ¡Boicoteo!,” 233; and “Statement by the CIC regarding certain charges made by the city of Davenport,” May 11, 1964, folder: CIC, Box 3, FJLS25, John L. Schneiders Collection, PMA.
- 26.
Henry Vargas quoted in Weaver, “From Barrio to ¡Boicoteo!,” 229. For the collaborations between LULAC , the NAACP , and Catholic Action, see Ernest Rodriguez, “The Mexican American and the Catholic Church: A Position Paper,” folder: “Writings (Impressions),” Box 1, Ernest Rodriguez Papers, IWA. Articles on Chicana/o issues frequently made it into black newspapers, such as New Times: The Only Quad-Cities Newspaper with Soul. See folder: “Newspaper Clippings 1969–2004,” Box 7, Ernest Rodriguez Papers, IWA.
- 27.
See “Iowa LULAC History 1957–1972,” folder: “General 1959–1979,” Box 1, LULAC Council 10 Records, IWA; “Housing, Police, Migrants, Education, Four Reports from 1969,” The Iowa Civil Rights Commission, folder: “Re: Mexican Americans,” Box 4, John L. Schneiders Collection, PMA; and Weaver, “From Barrio to ¡Boicoteo!,” 237.
- 28.
“Housing, Police, Migrants, Education Four Reports from 1969,” The Iowa Civil Rights Commission, 2–4, folder: “Re: Mexican Americans,” Box 4, John L. Schneiders Collection, PMA; Peggy Nordeen, “Mexican Americans Rap Tactics Used by Police” (December 9, 1968), folder: Clippings, Box 4, John L. Schneiders Collection, PMA. See also “Iowa LULAC History 1957–1972,” folder: “General 1959–1979,” Box 1, LULAC Council 10 Records, IWA.
- 29.
Peggy Nordeen, “Mexican Americans Rap Tactics Used by Police”; “Notes on ‘Police Community Relations Meeting’,” Jan. 1969, folder: “Clippings,” Box 3, John L. Schneiders Collection, PMA; and “Latins in Iowa want Equal Treatment” (May 30, 1972), folder: Migrants 1969–1972, Box 4, John L. Schneiders Collection, PMA.
- 30.
David Gutierrez, Walls and Mirrors: Mexican Americans, Mexican Immigrants, and the Politics of Ethnicity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 195.
- 31.
Pat Sweeney, “Chicano Office Busy,” Catholic Post July 1972, folder: “Area Board for Migrants,” Box 3, Ernest Rodriguez Papers, IWA.
- 32.
“The Church y La Raza,” folder: “La Raza, 1972–1974,” Box 4, LULAC Council 10 Records, IWA.
- 33.
Pitti, “Into One Parish Life,” 120.
- 34.
Armando Rendón, Chicano Manifesto (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1971), 294.
- 35.
Roberto Treviño, “Faith and Justice: The Catholic Church and the Chicano Movement in Houston,” in Roberto Treviño and Richard V. Francaviglia (eds), Catholicism in the American West: A Rosary of Hidden Voices (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2007), 140.
- 36.
Ibid. See also Hinojosa, Latino Mennonites.
- 37.
Letter from Chaplain M.A. Mottet to Archbishop Carboni, Nov. 20, 1962, folder 4: “Topical Files, CIC Administration 1962–1969,” Box 3, John L. Schneiders Collection, PMA.
- 38.
Weaver, “From Barrio to ¡Boicoteo!,” 239.
- 39.
Mark Silk and Andrew Walsh, “The Midwest: The Common Denominator?,” in Mark Silk and Andrew Walsh, One Nation, Divisible: How Regional Religious Differences Shape American Politics (Rowan and Littlefield Publishers, 2008), 204.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Hinojosa, F. (2018). The Catholic Interracial Council and Mexican American Civil Rights in Davenport, Iowa, 1952–1974. In: Danielson, L., Mollin, M., Rossinow, D. (eds) The Religious Left in Modern America. Palgrave Studies in the History of Social Movements. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73120-9_9
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73120-9_9
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-73119-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-73120-9
eBook Packages: HistoryHistory (R0)