No Mexicans, Women, or Dogs Allowed

Founded by Mexican American men in 1929, the League of United Latin-American Citizens (LULAC) has usually been judged according to Chicano nationalist standards of the late 1960s and 1970s. Drawing on extensive archival research, including the personal papers of Alonso S. Perales and Adela Sloss-Vento, No Mexicans, Women, or Dogs Allowed presents the history of LULAC in a new light, restoring its early twentieth-century context. Cynthia Orozco also provides evidence that perceptions of LULAC as a petite bourgeoisie, assimilationist, conservative, anti-Mexican, anti-working class organization belie the realities of the group's early activism. Supplemented by oral history, this sweeping study probes LULAC's predecessors, such as the Order Sons of America, blending historiography and cultural studies. Against a backdrop of the Mexican Revolution, World War I, gender discrimination, and racial segregation, No Mexicans, Women, or Dogs Allowed recasts LULAC at the forefront of civil rights movements in America.

Cynthia E. Orozco chairs the History and Humanities Department at Eastern New Mexico University in Ruidoso, where she teaches U.S. history, Western civilization, and world humanities. An editor of Mexican Americans in Texas History and associate editor of Latinos in the United States, an Historical Encyclopedia, she is also a businesswoman, served as campaign manager of the Leo Martinez congressional race in New Mexico, was appointed by New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson to the New Mexico Humanities Council, and was president of LULAC in Ruidoso.