HispanicVista Columnists

The Latino Vote: Historical Analysis

By John P. Schmal

The act of voting is one of the most important privileges of American citizenship.  Through this action, Americans can choose their leaders and attempt to make changes in governmental policy.  For many Americans, the act of voting is the most significant manifestation of American citizenship.

The Fifteenth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States, ratified in 1870, promised that “the rights of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” In theory this amendment gave Mexican Americans, African Americans, Asian immigrants, and other minorities a voice in both local and national politics.

However, the Federal Government, from time to time, has taken action against certain alien groups.  For example, the Chinese Exclusion Acts of 1882 and 1892 effectively stopped Chinese immigration and denied citizenship to Chinese people living in the United States.  In addition, the Federal Government also gave each state broad powers to set up its own qualifications and restrictions for voters.  These restrictions varied considerably from one state to another, but, over time, state governments would employ a plethora of insidious tactics in an effort to prevent African Americans, Asian Americans, and Latino Americans from exercising their voting rights.

In 1889, Florida enacted a poll tax that would effectively keep poor Blacks out of the voting booth.  Eleven more Southern states followed suit and enacted their own poll taxes. In 1901, the Texas Legislature passed its own poll tax, which required voters to pay $1.75 at the voting booth. In November 1902, Texas voters ratified the poll tax by a two-to-one margin.  Such an expense was effective in keeping many poor Tejanos from exercising their right to vote. In effect, the poll tax was able to circumvent the rights that had been guaranteed to Tejano citizens by the Fourteenth Amendment.

In California, strong anti-immigrant sentiment against Asians, Eastern Europeans, and Latin Americans led to a more unique undermining of voting rights. In 1894, the people of California voted to approve an English literacy requirement for California’s voting booth.  Because of these restrictions on the voting rights of Mexican-American citizens, many native-born American citizens who were uneducated or whose primary language was Spanish were unable to vote. Both the poll tax and the literacy requirement stayed in effect for several decades until they were declared unconstitutional in court cases.

At the end of World War II, a new generation of Latinos returned to America from their overseas duties.  The young Hispanic soldiers who had defended America so bravely on the battlefields of Europe and Asia returned home with new ideas about their rights as citizens and, in particular, about their rights as voters.  The Federal Government – which had been so effective in enacting anti-immigrant and anti-minority legislation – provided these young veterans with the weapon of education.

The G.I. Bill Act of June 22, 1944 – or the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act [Public Law 346, 78th Congress, Title III, §§500-503, 58 Stat. 284, 291-293 (1944)] – put higher education within the reach of thousands of Chicano veterans. The Veterans' Readjustment Assistance Act of 1952 [Public Law 550, 82nd Congress, July 16, 1952, Ch. 875, 66 Stat. 663, 38 U.S.C. 997] provided similar privileges to Korean War veterans. Over the next decade, Mexican-American veterans attended local and nationwide colleges and universities to obtain college degrees. Armed with the weapon of education, the veterans formed organizations that advocated for Hispanic voting rights in many parts of the country.

The American G.I. Forum, founded in March 1948, was organized by Mexican-American veterans in Texas. When a funeral home denied use of its facilities for the wake of a decorated veteran, Felix Z. Longoria, the incident received national coverage and helped the G.I. Forum to consolidate its power base and grow into a national organization.

Stressing their patriotism and service to country, the Forum campaigned to increase electoral participation in the political arena.  In 1949 and 1950, they initiated local “pay your poll tax” drives to register Tejano voters. Although they were unable to repeal the tax, their efforts did bring in new Hispanic voters who would begin to elect Tejano representatives to the Texas House of Representatives and to Congress during the late 1950s and early 1960s.

In California, a similar phenomenon took place.  When World War II veteran Edward R. Roybal ran for a seat on the Los Angeles City Council, community activists established the CSO (Community Service Organization).  The CSO was effective in registering 15,000 new voters in the Latino neighborhoods of Boyle Heights, Belvedere, and East Los Angeles.  With this newfound support, Roybal was able to win the 1949 election race against the incumbent Anglo councilman and become the first Mexican American since 1886 to win a seat on the Los Angeles City Council.

The Mexican American Political Association (MAPA), founded in Fresno, California came into being in 1959 and drew up a plan for direct electoral politics. MAPA soon became the primary political voice for the Mexican-American community of California.  Edward Roybal, elected the first president of MAPA, would become the first Chicano representative to Congress from Los Angeles in the Twentieth Century, in large part because of the efforts of MAPA and the CSO.

One of the primary Latino organizations contributing to increased Latino voter registration on a nationwide level was the Southwest Voter Registration Education Project (SVREP).  Reminding Latinos that the democratic process was their right and privilege, the SVREP conducted 2,200 voter registration campaigns in fourteen states and initiated “Get-the-vote-out” campaigns throughout the Southwest.  Because of these extraordinary efforts, Latino voter rates increased from 2 million voters in 1974 to 7.7 million in 2001.  In 1997, the Southwest Voter Research Institute changed its name to the William C Velasquez Institute (WCVI) in honor of their founding father.

In 1981, the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials Educational Fund (NALEO) was established to promote the integration of Latino immigrants into American society and encourage them to become citizens so that they might participate in the electoral process.  The efforts of MAPA, SVREP, NALEO, CSO and several dynamic individuals would become instrumental in the dramatic increase in the Latino electorate that took place between 1960 and 2000.

Voting Rights Act

On January 23, 1964, the U.S. Congress ratified the Twenty-fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which stated that “the right of citizens of the United States to vote in any primary or other election… shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any State by reason of failure to pay any poll tax...”

The Twenty-fourth Amendment paved the way for the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson on August 6, 1965. Section 2 of this act prohibited any state or political subdivision of a state from using any “standard, practice, or procedure” which would result “in denial or abridgement of the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color.” 

The Voting Rights Act suspended or banned literacy tests and other racially discriminatory devices, and it guaranteed direct federal supervision of voter registration, voting procedures, and elections in seven Southern states and several non-Southern states as well. 

The Voting Rights Act had not included a provision prohibiting poll taxes, but had directed the Attorney General to challenge its use. In Harper v. Virginia State Board of Elections [383 U.S. 663 (1966)], the Supreme Court held Virginia's poll tax to be unconstitutional under the Fourteenth Amendment, thus nullifying Texas’ poll tax.  The literacy law remained on the books in California until it was challenged in the California courts by the landmark court case, Genoveva Castro et al. versus the State of California[CASTRO v. STATE OF CALIFORNIA, March 24, 1970. L.A. No. 29693. 2 Cal. 3d 223].
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 gave African Americans access to the voting booth in places where access had previously been denied to them.  The law was so effective that a quarter of a million new Black voters had been registered to vote by the end of the year.

Latino activist groups took note of this fact and began to believe that it could do the same for Chicano voters in the Southwest. The Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF) soon began to lobby intensely for the extension of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) to Latinos. Upon hearing extensive testimony about voting discrimination that had been suffered by Hispanic, Asian and Native American citizens,

Congress responded to these lobbying efforts in 1975 by amending the Voting Rights Act to include provisions that affected Latinos and “minority-language citizens.”

The revised Act now prohibited discriminatory election devices, including both literacy tests and poll taxes.  The Act also required bilingual ballots in areas where a minority group exceeded 5 percent of the vote, and it safeguarded minorities against gerrymandering schemes that would dilute the power of their vote. These legislative interventions permitted that Latino voting base to expand.

The Voting Rights Act and the judicial invalidation of literacy tests and poll taxes led to a gradual increase in Latino participation around the country.  The issues of reapportionment, gerrymandering and low voter registration continued to adversely affect the Hispanic communities of many communities, especially large cities like Los Angeles.  But the emergence of determined individuals, such as Richard Alatorre, Gloria Molina, Antonio Villaraigosa, Hilda Solis, and Edward Roybal led to important changes in the political landscape of Los Angeles.  The struggle for Hispanic representation in the Los Angeles City Council has been discussed in some detail by this author at:

http://hispanicvista.com/HVC/Opinion/Guest_Columns/101104schmal.htm

At the beginning of 1970, California was represented by one Latino in the State Assembly.  More than thirty years later, after the November 2000 elections, the number of Latinos in the 80-member State Assembly had increased to 20, giving them 25% of the seats. The struggle for Chicano representation in California is described by this author in more detail at:

http://www.latinola.com/story.php?story=1433

The state of Texas witnessed a similar evolution.  At the time of the 56^th Session (1961-62) of the Texas Legislature, six Latino representatives served the State House of Representatives.  One man (Henry B. Gonzalez) served as the only Tejano Senator.

Almost four decades later in the November 2000 elections, six Senators and 28 representatives of Latino heritage served in the State Legislature.  In addition, six Tejano Latinos served as representatives of Texas in the United States Congress.  An article entitled “The Tejano Struggle for Representation” discusses the topic of Tejano representation in greater detail at:

http://www.houstonculture.org/hispanic/tejano1.html

According to census information, the Latino population reached 35,305,818 in 2000, representing 12.5% of the national population. Voter registration of Latinos has increased dramatically in the last decade and political candidates from all parties have begun to recognize that the highly diverse Latino population cannot be ignored nor can it be taken for granted.

Today, some Americans take the act of voting for granted. However, anyone who studies the long struggle for Latino and African-American representation in the United States will realize that voting is, indeed, a privilege not to be taken for granted.

_____________________________________________

John Schmal, a contributing columnist to HispanicVista.com (www.hispanicvista.com), is an historian and genealogist, specializing in Mexico and the Southwestern U.S.  He has published four works, including "Mexican-American Genealogical Research:  Following the Paper Trail to Mexico" (published by Heritage Books, 2002).  In recent months, Mr. Schmal has written several articles discussing various aspects of Latino representation in American government. Contact at: JohnnyPJ@aol.com