Mexicans and Mexican Americans in the U.S. South, 1910-2010

FAIN: HB-50136-11

Julie Meira Weise
CSU, Long Beach (Long Beach, CA 90840-0004)

This project reshapes the fields of Mexican American, U.S. Southern, and Mexican history by bringing them into dialogue with one another. The historical actors under study are the thousands of Mexican immigrants and Mexican Americans who lived and worked in the U.S. South throughout the twentieth century. My book manuscript, the first to recover these migrants' stories, shows how their experiences in the South differed from those of their counterparts in the Southwest, due to the South's distinct racial systems. I show that Mexican state actors, stationed at consulates in the region, both influenced and were influenced by the Jim Crow system, and later, the rise of "color-blind" conservatism. Finally, I demonstrate that the "provincial" U.S. South actually existed within a transnational field of racial politics and ideologies, in which binary ideas of "black" and "white" encountered more flexible and culturally-based racial systems in the form of Mexican immigrants fighting for rights.

Media Coverage

Various media interviews on Latinos in the U.S. South (Media Coverage)
Publication: various
Date: 1/1/2016
Abstract: See complete list of media coverage at URL below.
URL: https://history.uoregon.edu/profile/jweise/

Associated Products

Corazón de Dixie: Mexicanos in the U.S. South since 1910 (Book)
Title: Corazón de Dixie: Mexicanos in the U.S. South since 1910
Author: Julie M. Weise
Abstract: When Latino migration to the U.S. South became increasingly visible in the 1990s, observers and advocates grasped for ways to analyze "new" racial dramas in the absence of historical reference points. However, as this book is the first to comprehensively document, Mexicans and Mexican Americans have a long history of migration to the U.S. South. Corazon de Dixie recounts the untold histories of Mexicanos' migrations to New Orleans, Mississippi, Arkansas, Georgia, and North Carolina as far back as 1910. It follows Mexicanos into the heart of Dixie, where they navigated the Jim Crow system, cultivated community in the cotton fields, purposefully appealed for help to the Mexican government, shaped the southern conservative imagination in the wake of the civil rights movement, and embraced their own version of suburban living at the turn of the twenty-first century. Rooted in U.S. and Mexican archival research, oral history interviews, and family photographs, Corazon de Dixie unearths not just the facts of Mexicanos' long-standing presence in the U.S. South but also their own expectations, strategies, and dreams.
Abstract: na
Year: 2015
Publisher: Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press
Type: Single author monograph
Copy sent to NEH?: No

Prizes

Merle Curti Award
Date: 5/1/2016
Organization: Organization of American Historians
Abstract: for best book in American social history

Public Engagement Fellowship
Date: 2/1/2018
Organization: Whiting Foundation

CRL James Book Award
Date: 5/1/2016
Organization: Working Class Studies Association

Corazon de Dixie companion website (Web Resource)
Title: Corazon de Dixie companion website
Author: Julie Weise
Abstract: Teaching-focused website with primary sources in English and Spanish.
Year: 2016
Primary URL: http://corazondedixie.org

Nuestro South podcast (Radio/Audio Broadcast or Recording)
Title: Nuestro South podcast
Director: Erik Valera
Producer: Erik Valera
Producer: Julie Weise
Producer: Ricky Hurtado
Abstract: Podcast in which Latina/o/x youth reflect on Corazon de Dixie's histories in the context of their own experiences growing up in the U.S. South.
Date: 05/01/2019
Primary URL: http://nuestrosouth.org
Secondary URL: https://nuestrosouthpodcast.buzzsprout.com/

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