"We Can't Be Ignored Anymore': A History of the Latinx Voting Rights Movement, 1960-1975"
Author
Estrada, Josue Q
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“‘We Can’t Be Ignored Anymore’: A History of the Latina/o/x Voting Rights Movement, 1960-1975,” and explores how Puerto Ricans and later Chicanas/os mobilized through distinct organizational and political tactics to claim citizenship rights, specifically by invoking race strategically to reshape race and politics in the U.S. Focusing on decades of the 1960s and 1970s when Black people pressed for voting rights legislation and built political influence in the electoral system, my study traces the efforts of the two Latina/o/x communities to expand the voting rights debate and to challenge prevailing notions of race. Although Chicana/os and Puerto Ricans wrestled with different statuses under U.S. law, neither was officially recognized as a “race” eligible to claim the race-based constitutional protections of the 14th amendment, the foundation for the 1965 Voting Rights Act. In response, they built their own political leverage to enter the voting rights debate and organized against English literacy tests even after they had supposedly been outlawed. The Latina/o/x movements for voting rights, I argue ultimately, contested and facilitated the emerging colorblind hegemony of U.S. racial politics.
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