Sunday, January 6, 2013: 9:10 AM
Nottoway Room (Sheraton New Orleans)
Working-class immigration has long been controversial. The entry of first wave working-class immigrant groups to an urban area often leads to residents racializing and discriminating against the newcomers, despite the fact that many of these native residents celebrate their ancestors’ heritage and journey to the United States. Times of economic hardship can intensify the level or amount of nativism, anti-immigrant sentiment, and restrictive legislation. As unemployment increases, so do the calls to deport those who “take our jobs.” Using oral histories, historical documents, census data, news reports, and secondary sources, this paper will investigate the many variables that created an environment that not only villainized immigrants and made anti-immigration laws popular throughout the Deep South, but also motivated Latinos, immigrant advocates, activists, and civil rights veterans to organize at the international, national, state, and grassroots levels. This study will examine the creation and organization of Birmingham’s late twentieth-century, first-wave Latino immigrant community and compare it to the first-wave Mexican immigrant community of Chicago during the interwar years. Much can be learned by examining the striking similarities of the Latino immigrant communities in these two areas during their respective time periods. Latino immigrants to late twentieth-century Birmingham had many of the same experiences as early twentieth-century Mexican immigrants to Chicago. These similarities include: the creation of a new ethnic community when immigrants enter into area with few or no similar working-class immigrants live; a significant level of harassment and discrimination against the immigrants; environmental racism; organized nativist campaigns to rid the areas of working-class immigrants during times of economic hardship; and subsequent organized rights campaigns by immigrants, immigrant advocates and civil rights groups.