“The thing that has gotten me going is discrimination. I tried to be equal to, and as good as, the Anglos. I wanted to make as much money, speak as well, and have all the goodies as the dominant society. But no matter what I did, I was always a ‘Mexican’.” Julian Samora (1920-1996)
Julian Samora (above) was a pioneer in the field of Mexican-American studies. He grew up in Pagosa Springs, Colorado, whose public park had a sign at its entrance reading, “No Mexicans, Indians or Dogs.” He was a History major at Adams State College and received a PhD in Sociology and Anthropology from Washington University in St. Louis. Samora taught for two years at Michigan State and spent the rest of his academic career at Notre Dame. In addition to his academic accomplishments, he helped found the National Council of La Raza, the leading Mexican-American civil rights organization. I read his book “La Raza: Forgotten Americans” (1966) in grad school. Ed Escobar and I included an excerpt from his 1967 publication with Richard Lamanna “Mexican-Americans in a Midwest Metropolis: A Study of East Chicago" in our 1987 anthology on Latinos in Northwest Indiana, “Forging a Community.”
I’m putting the final touches on “The Journeys of Maria Arredondo,” a talk I’ll be delivering at Michigan State during a conference celebrating the 30th anniversary of the Julian Samora Institute. Maria came to America from Mexico at age 7, 19, and 32, the final time after her mother had been deported. Describing a confrontation with customs official on the third border crossing, I’ll quote this passage from Ramon and Trisha’s “Maria’s Journey”:
Early in the day they reached customs.
“My children and I are going home to Indiana to join my husband,” she explained to the guard at the border.
“I think not, Senora,” replied the guard gruffly. “Nobody goes across without passports.”
It was true. She had no documents. She had left them at home. When she hurriedly left the States, her discouragement was such that she believed Mexico would be her home until she died; why bother with documents? She saw now that she had acted without thought, but it was too late.
She explained again her intentions, but with no proof of her story, no papers supporting her claim, she was turned away once more. Just when she was ready to abandon all hope, another border guard, noticing her distress, walked over to her. He took in the desperation on her face and the 8 wide-eyed children who clustered around her. “Go sit over there,” he pointed to some shade, “and wait until evening. The guards are no so hard then. They may let you cross, but be careful. Don’t make them angry.”
With that small amount of encouragement, Maria resolved to make one more attempt. She prayed hard to her saints, pleading for a miracle. That night the bedraggled little band tried to cross once more. At first demands for documents were repeated. As the night wore on, the guards relented somewhat and asked for proof that Maria had only been in Mexico a short time. Did she have some receipts or other evidence that their stay had been less than six months?
Tangible proof, however, was simply not to be had, no matter how hard they searched the two pathetic suitcases with their meager cache of clothes and sundries.
Another guard gazed at the mother and her children. Seeing the hopelessness in Maria’s lovely face, he cleared his throat and spoke for the first time since the border drama had begun: “I’ve been talking to this boy here [Pepe], and he’s answered every question in English. He knows his name, his age, and where he lives. He says his Dad is waiting for them in the States,” he said to his colleague.
“So what?” replied the other customs man, disgusted with the delay caused by the family. “They have no proof!”
“Let them go,” answered the other. “There’s no way this little boy could speak such good English if they’d been in Mexico any length of time.”
Pepe had been discussing his life with the second guard in great detail and with enthusiasm. His talkativeness proved the family’s salvation.
“Oh, very well, go. Take those snotty-nosed kids and get out of my sight before I change my mind,”said the officer, tired of the aggravation. It was late, and he wanted to relax and drink his coffee, not hassle with a nearly hysterical woman and her brood of sad-eyed kids.
The guard motioned for them to cross. Maria hustled the children into one of the many taxis stationed at the border before the guard could change his mind. They were squished into the hot car before Maria allowed herself to believe they were truly going home.
As they crossed the long bridge to stateside, Jenny looked back. “Wow, ma, look how long this bridge is!”
“Don’t turn around!” Maria admonished her. “What if they call us back?” Wiser than Lot’s wife, Maria stared fixedly forward until they were safely delivered onto America’s soil.
Young Pepe (José Arredondo, 1934-2017) went on to earn a doctorate in Education from IU and be elected sheriff of Lake County. This is my final paragraph: “Finally, I’d like to acknowledge my intellectual debt to Julian Samora whose 1967 book about East Chicago, Indiana, “Mexican-Americans in a Midwest Metropolis” (with Richard Lamanna) was the starting point for my intellectual journey into this subject. Samora proclaimed that family was the bulwark of Mexican tradition. Maria would have agreed.”
José Arredondo
Conservative commentator George Will criticized Republicans as “vegetative” for their “canine obedience” to that “scofflaw” Trump. Well put.
Ray Smock wrote:
President Trump likened the impeachment process to a lynching in the hopes of elevating the emotions of his supporters. He wants us to believe that impeachment, a provision of the U.S. Constitution that gives the sole power of impeachment to the House of Representatives, and the sole power of conducting an impeachment trial to the Senate, is the same as a lynching, a word forever etched in American history with the most illegal acts of violent murder suffered mostly by African American men during a hundred-year war with terrorists in organizations like the Ku Klux Klan.
Trump is accusing duly elected members of the House as being nothing more than vigilantes taking the law in their own hands just because they don’t like him and want to un-do the 2016 election. This emotional narrative is the kind that demagogues like Trump thrive on. In Trump’s case, it is the only kind of narrative he can use. He lives in a maelstrom of conspiracy theories, where everyone is out to get him. His current narrative is but an extension of what we have heard for three years, that any and all investigations of the president are part of an extensive witch hunt with no basis in fact.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and other members of the GOP have not described the process as a lynching. Indeed, most have eschewed such comparisons, except for the mercurial and inconsistent Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who agrees that Democrats want to lynch Trump.
Going on TV to announce that an American special operations raid resulted in the death of ISIS leader Abu Bakr-al-Baghdadi, Trump couldn’t resist taking swipes at leakers and whistleblowers, thanking Russia for its cooperation, bragging that this was more important than the mission Obama ordered that killed Osama bin Laden, and claiming that before blowing himself up, Baghdadi was “whimpering and crying.” The latter was palpably untrue and certain to inflame Islamic extremists. Replying to comments by columnist Jerry Davich, Robert Malkowski wrote: “Donald was rushed to the hospital for dislocating his own shoulder while patting himself on the back for 45 minutes.”
Michael Frisch emailed that it was good seeing me at the OHA conference, meeting Liz Wuerffel and Allison Schuette, and learning about their Welcome Initiative and Flight Paths project. He added, in a reference to my longstanding magazine: “Glad to know Steel is still being Shaved, and I look forward to seeing the current issue.” I replied that one was on its way.
In the Journal of American History Dylan Gottlieb’s “Hoboken Is Burning: Yuppies, Arson, and Displacement in the Postindustrial City” wrote that nearly 500 fires set by arsonists-for-hire in Hoboken’s Puerto Ricanbarrio killed at least 50 people and drove displaced residents to leave the city permanently, paving the way for a yuppie “rebirth” for the traditional blue-collar city (hometown of Frank Sinatra, son of Italian immigrants), situated just across the Hudson River from Manhattan. Similar trends occurred in Chicago and Atlanta, the author concludes, as the arrival of yuppies signaled the beginning of a new phase of exploitation and profit-seeking.
I informed University Advancement that former trustee James W. Dye passed away and invited Media Specialist Erika Rose to make use of an interview I conducted last year published in Steel Shavings, volume 48. My email stated:
At the request of IU’s Bicentennial Committee, I interviewed James Dye, 87, a retired builder and major university donor. I showed Dye the Rev. Robert Lowery library study area funded by the James and Betty Dye Foundation. It also offers scholarships to many IUN students.
Manager for IU’s football and basketball squads in the early 1950s, Dye recalled a Sigma Chi fraternity party that lasted 48 hours after the Hoosiers beat Notre Dame and then Kansas for the 1953 NCAA championship. He joked that IU probably gave him an honorary degree for attending so many losing gridiron contests.
Dye was an imaginative entrepreneur who built his first house by himself at age 20. His company, the Landmark Corporation, built Mansards Apartments in Griffith. On its tennis courts Dye competed with former Gary mayor George Chacharis and driver John Diamond. Dye praised past IUN chancellors Dan Orescanin and Peggy Elliott and asked me about Chancellor Lowe. I lauded Lowe’s participation in community affairs, History Department functions, basketball games, and student functions.
Jonathyne Briggs mentioned that he might include a unit of IU Northwest in his Spring seminar covering the year 1968. I suggested he expand the project to concentrate on the city of Gary and wrote him this explanation:
Early in the morning of January 1, 1968, Richard Gordon Hatcher was sworn in as mayor and became the first African American to serve as chief executive of a significantly sized city. During a year of riots (but not in Gary), assassinations, antiwar protests, and white backlash, Hatcher played a major role in national events, meeting with President Lyndon Johnson as Washington, DC, went up in flames, launching imaginative War on Poverty programs funded by the federal government, campaigning with Robert F. Kennedy as he sought the Democratic presidential nomination, and attracting major grants from foundations eager for his administration to be a success. On the other hand, white flight and business disinvestment escalated, fueled by fear, racism, and corporate decisions beyond Hatcher’s control. Detractors turned the slogan “City on the Move” on its head, adding the words, “Yah, moving out” and asking, “Will the last [white] person to leave, please turn out the lights?”
Students could make use of my Gary publications (“Gary’s First Hundred Years,” a Sixties Steel Shavings that includes an oral history of Hatcher’s first two years in office, a chapter in “Black Mayors”) as well as magazines, material in the Calumet Regional Archives, the Post-Tribune (on microfilm), as well as interviews on the Valparaiso University website Flight Paths and oral histories that students themselves conduct. Perhaps the entire class could produce a podcast or documentary as a final project. What was happening at IUN regarding Black Studies would fit within the context of Gary, regional, national, and international events.
In Elizabeth Strout’s “Amy and Isabell” daughter Amy resents her distant, nagging mother and enjoys the lunchroom chatter in the factory where she has a summer job. Stout wrote:
Everything talked about was interesting to her, even the story of the refrigerator gone on the blink: a half gallon of chocolate ice cream melted in the sink, soured, and smelled to high hell by morning. The voices were comfortable and comforting; Amy, in her silence, looked from face to face. She was not excluded from any of this, but the women had the decency, or lack of desire, not to engage her in their conversations either. It took Amy’s mind off things.
Fat Bev hit a button on the soda machine and a can of Tab rocked noisily in place. She bent her huge body to retrieve it. “Three more weeks and Dottie can have sex,” she said. “She wishes it were three more months,” and here her soda can was popped open. “But I take it, Wally’s getting irritated. Chomping at the bit.”
Amy swallowed the crust of her sandwich.
“Tell him to take care of it himself,” someone said, and there was laughter. Amy’s heartbeat quickened, sweat broke out above her lip.
“You get dry after a hysterectomy, you know,” Arlene Tucker offered this with a meaningful nod of her head.
“I didn’t.”
“Because you didn’t have your ovaries out,” Arlene nodded again she was a woman who believed what she said. “They yanked the whole business with Dot.”
“Oh, my mother went crazy with hot flashes,” somebody said, and thankfully irritable Wally was left behind; hot flashes and crying jags were talked about instead.
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