The effort to coin a term to describe a wildly diverse group of Americans has long stirred controversy. Yet they have maintained their identity and culture and passed it on from generation to generation. FACT CHECK: We strive for accuracy and fairness. Heart disease and cancer in Hispanics are the two leading causes of death, accounting for about 2 of 5 deaths, which is about the same for whites. In the second half of the 19th century, the abbreviated words “hispano” and “latino” were in use in California among Spanish speakers, but eventually, other terms replaced them. The state with the largest Hispanic and Latino population overall is California with over 14 million Hispanics and Latinos. It took seven months for Judge Paul J. McCormick to render a decision. Many leave for Europe and the United States and the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is adopted, declaring all people of Hispanic origin born in the United States as U.S. citizens. The National Council of La Raza, known today as UnidosUS, led in lobbying the Census Bureau to change the way it categorized Latinos and uniting Puerto Ricans and Mexicans to “hammer out a Hispanic agenda.”, “In the late 1960s and early 1970s as people in the Census Bureau and bureaucrats in the Nixon administration were thinking about what this new group would be called, Hispanic became a term that people thought would probably be well-known because it was linked to hispano,” Mora says. Five states are home to two-thirds of all Latino eligible voters in 2018. Yet, as long as there have been people from Latin American countries living in the United States, there have been words to describe them. Lynchings, “repatriation” programs and school segregation may be in the past, but anti-Latino discrimination in the U.S. is far from over. Mendez, who was eight when the lawsuits began, later told reporters that she thought her parents were fighting for her right to attend a school with a nice playground. All Rights Reserved. The case culminated in a two-week-long trial. Despite the Pew Research Center finding in August 2020 that only 3 percent of Latinos use Latinx, it’s a term that gained momentum through the 2010s and up to 2020, cropping on TV shows and in politics. There are a few possibilities about how the word came to be. The majority of the U.S. population is Mexican American, followed in size by Central and South Americans, Puerto Ricans, and Cuban Americans. At the time, white miners begrudged former Mexicans a share of the wealth yielded by Californian mines—and sometimes enacted vigilante justice. After a fake trial, they marched her through the streets and lynched her. Of those, 6.5% are Hispanic –National Science Foundation, Survey of Earned Doctorates 2016 (this number only includes Hispanic/Latinos that are also US citizens) According to a Pew Research Center 2013 study, only one in five respondents described themselves as Hispanic or Latino. But though the bright tourist destination teems with visitors, few realize it was once the site of a terrifying raid. Grace Flores-Hughes, who claims to have come up with the term Hispanic for the Census, pictured at her Alexandria home in 2003. Bowles argues against this notion. Soon, parents in Texas and Arizona successfully challenged school segregation. Certainly the oldest on the list, … In some cases, that prejudice turned fatal. Olvera Street is a Los Angeles icon—a thriving Mexican market filled with colorful souvenirs, restaurants and remnants of the oldest buildings in Los Angeles. At first, the schools were set up to serve the children of Spanish-speaking laborers at rural ranches. “It was certain figures like Telemundo, Univision, who had a huge vested interest in connecting their audiences across the country and having those audiences across the country see themselves as one market.”. Hispanics have played a role in several key events since the War of Independence itself — helping to establish and preserve the union, defend the country in war, … HISTORY reviews and updates its content regularly to ensure it is complete and accurate. Unlike the South, which had explicit laws barring African American children from white schools, segregation was not enshrined in the laws of the southwestern United States. The Mexicans who decided to stay in what was now U.S. territory were granted citizenship and the country gained a considerable Mexican-American population. Others, like Rodriguez’s father, did not wait for raids or enforcement and returned to Mexico independently to escape discrimination and the fear of removal. Though Latinos were critical to the U.S. economy and often were American citizens, everything from their language to the color of their skin to their countries of origin could be used as a pretext for discrimination. Anglo-Americans treated them as a foreign underclass and perpetuated stereotypes that those who spoke Spanish were lazy, stupid and undeserving. “Latino is short for Latino Americano,” he says. The projected Hispanic population of the United States for July 1, 2050 is 132.8 million people, or 30.2% of the nation's total projected population on … Throughout the 1960s, Latino-American and Mexican-American history departments opened at many major universities. Another little-remembered facet of anti-Latino discrimination in the United States is school segregation. © 2020 A&E Television Networks, LLC. The terms Latino, Hispanic and Latinx are often used interchangeably to describe a group that makes up about 18 percent of the U.S. population. Many only provided vocational classes or did not offer a full 12 years of instruction. Hispanic History Hispanic Heritage Month is an annual celebration of the history and culture of the U.S. Latinx and Hispanic communities. As fears about jobs and the economy spread, the United States forcibly removed up to 2 million people of Mexican descent from the country—up to 60 percent of whom were American citizens. Few people, however, know what a major impact Latinos have had on the course of U.S. history. But though mob brutality eventually quelled, hatred of Spanish-speaking Americans did not. “But Hispanic was helpful because it seemed more American.”. Though no formal decree was ever issued by immigration authorities, INS officials deported about 82,000 people during the period. A Brief History of Latino Voting Rights Since the 1960s Culture Nonetheless, she pushed to succeed and became a nurse and civil-rights activist. Each year, we celebrate the history and culture of Hispanic and Latino Americans and their contributions to society. On February 18, 1946, he ruled that the school districts discriminated against Mexican-American students and violated their Constitutional rights. Behind the impressive precision of this official Census Bureau number lies a long history of changing labels, shifting categories and revised question wording on census forms – all of which reflect evolving cultural norms about what it means to be Hispanic or Latino in the United States today. In 1945, along with four other families, they filed a class action lawsuit against four Orange County school districts. In the United States the terms "Hispanic" and "Latino" (or "Latina" for a woman; sometimes written as “Latinx” to be gender-neutral) were adopted in an attempt to loosely group immigrants and their descendants who hail from this part of the world. As the 19th century wore on, political events in Mexico made emigration to the United States popular. Twice a week we compile our most fascinating features and deliver them straight to you. Euphemistically referred to as “repatriations,” the removals were anything but voluntary. Though the school districts challenged the ruling, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with McCormick. For example, a popular bumper sticker declaring, “Don’t Call Me Hispanic, I’m Cuban!” circulated in Miami during the early 1990s, according to Mora. For more, read the accompanying blog post, “ Key facts about U.S. Hispanics and their diverse heritage.” Hispanic and Latin Americans come from diverse social, economic, and geographic backgrounds making them all very different depending on their family heritage and national origin. Juana Arias/The Washington Post via Getty Images. However, there some cultural similarities that tend to bring these diverse backgrounds together. Hispanic or Latino ethnicity is defined as being "a person of Cuban, Mexican, Puerto Rican, South or Central American, or other Spanish culture or origin regardless of race." Colorado even ordered all of its “Mexicans”—in reality, anyone who spoke Spanish or seemed to be of Latin descent—to leave the state in 1936 and blockaded its southern border to keep people from leaving. They are the ones who used the word. And many of them have a history as complicated as trying to unify multiple nationalities under one banner. “Mexicans are inferior in personal hygiene, ability and in their economic outlook,” said one official. The U.S. is the fifth largest Hispanic country in the world. But though Latinos are the country’s largest minority, anti-Latino prejudice is still common. It was created by English-speaking U.S. Latinx people for use in English conversation.”. Then Mendez’s parents fought back. The U.S. has a long and largely forgotten history of violence against Latinos, ... anti-Latino sentiment.” ... And so it was celebrated as an era of nation-building in the United States. For those who fall outside the gender binary, this word fails to represent them, which is where the gender neutral “Latinx” comes into play. Besides, they argued, Mexican-American students didn’t speak English and were thus not entitled to attend English-speaking schools. Their goal: Ensure that all children could attend California schools regardless of race. Immigration from Latin America—and the attendant growth of the nation's Hispanic or Latino population—are two of the most important and controversial developments in the recent history of the United States. Let's take a look at some of their influence on American culture. The impact on Spanish-speaking communities was devastating. In 2016, 52 percent of Latinos surveyed by Pew said they had experienced discrimination. Grace Flores-Hughes, who worked as a secretary in what was then known as the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, has said she coined the term. Our little subgroup of the community created that. She writes about Latinx culture and social justice issues. In 2014, Hispanics and Latinos accounted for 16.1 percent of the 146.3 million employed people in the United States. Rather than let him serve time in jail, townspeople lynched him and dragged his body through the streets of Thorndale, Texas. Since the 1840s, anti-Latino prejudice has led to illegal deportations, school segregation and even lynching—often-forgotten events that echo the civil-rights violations of African-Americans in the Jim Crow-era South. Several thousand Hispanic volunteers, mostly from the southwestern United States, fought with distinction in the U.S. Army during the Spanish-American War. He became the first Hispanic four-star general of the United States Army in 1982, and received a number of military honors, including the distinguished … There are a few theories about the origins of Chicano, including that it comes from mexicano (pronounced meshicano), a word that some “groups of Nahuas (Indigenous speakers of Nahuatl) began calling their language,” writes David Bowles, an author and professor at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. In addition to being an influential Hispanic American, drag queen Sylvia Rivera is also … In 1911, a mob of over 100 people hanged a 14-year-old boy, Antonio Gómez, after he was arrested for murder. (Credit: Tim Sloan/AFP/Getty Images). Thanks to Mendez v. Westminster School District, California officially ended all segregation in its schools. Mendez’s attorney countered with testimony from experts in social science. The story of Latino-American discrimination largely begins in 1848, when the United States won the Mexican-American War. These and other horrific acts of cruelty lasted until the 1920s, when the Mexican government began pressuring the United States to stop the violence. Mexican-Americans hold a rally at the California state capitol to protest discrimination. Since 1988, the U.S. Government has set aside the period from September 15 to October 15 as National Hispanic Heritage Month to honor the many contributions Hispanic Americans have made and continue to make to the United States of America. Hispanic peopleare those coming from areas where Spanish is spoken, especially from Latin America. By 1920, they had “virtually disappeared,” Gutiérrez writes. While it’s now common to use umbrella terms to categorize those with ties to more than 20 Latin American countries, these words haven’t always fostered a sense of community among the people they’re supposed to describe. Instead of going to the pristine, well-appointed 17th Street Elementary, she was told to attend Hoover Elementary—a dilapidated, two-room shack. Mexican-Americans were discouraged and even forbidden from accepting charitable aid. While 1980 marked a milestone, this pan-ethnic term didn’t really catch on until about the 1990s. The latter frustrated Mexican-American activists because they had no data to prove that their communities needed resources for programs, such as job training. Anti-Latino sentiment grew along with immigration. Around one third of Los Angeles’ Mexican population left the country, as did a third of Texas’ Mexican-born population. Sor Juana Inês de la Cruz – 17th century feminist writer and thinker. In another early example, a March 17, 1973 issue of the Black Panther Party’s newspaper described a program drawn up by an “action group composed of Blacks, Latinos and Whites.” By 2000, Latino was on the census, with the question, “Is this person Spanish/Hispanic/Latino?”. At age 8, Mendez played a pivotal role in a 1946 landmark court case that desegregated California schools. The railroad and other companies flouted existing immigration laws that banned importing contracted labor and sent recruiters into Mexico to convince Mexicans to emigrate.