Includes bibliographical references (pages 295-309) and index.

For Mexican workers on the American home front during World War II, unprecedented new employment opportunities contrasted sharply with continuing discrimination, inequality, and hardship.

In Claiming Rights and Righting Wrongs in Texas, Emilio Zamora traces the wartime experiences of Mexican workers as they moved from rural to urban areas and sought better-paying jobs in rapidly expanding industries. Contending that discrimination undermined job opportunities, Zamora investigates the intervention by Mexico in the treatment of workers, the response by the U.S. State Department, and the emergence of Texas as a key site for negotiating the application of Good Neighbor Policy. He examines the role of women workers, the evolving political struggle, the rise of the liberal-urban coalition, and the conservative tradition in Texas, as well as broader issues related to an activist state, civil rights, wartime recovery, and hemispheric relations.

Expanding his discussion to include the civil and labor rights program adopted by the league of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), Zamora considers LULAC s political relationship with Mexico s consular campaign. He also looks closely at the efforts of the Fair Employment Practices Commission to implements a nondiscrimination policy on behalf of Mexican workers and the political debates stimulated by those efforts.

As questions about immigrant labor, Mexico-U.S. relation, and discrimination continue to surface in today s political climate, readers will appreciate Zamora s thorough analysis of the Mexican worker s struggle during World War II to claim rights and right wrongs in Texas.

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