Philanthropic (Dis)Trust and the Mexican American Civil Rights Movement, 1950–1965

Abstract

> Through a relational approach to regional western history, this article examines the ways organizers based in the American West negotiated with East Coast philanthropists over conflicting visions of civil rights activism. Ultimately, these debates reveal the possibilities and limits of philanthropic support within leftist movements. On a summer day in August 1951, seven men selected from a fifty-person delegation that included activists, attorneys, government officials, and union leaders met in Austin, Texas. They had been called together by respected scholar and activist George I. Sanchez to discuss the formation of a national organization to lead the cause of Mexican American civil rights advocacy. Roger N. Baldwin took his place beside representatives of the principal Mexican American organizations in the western states. His founding role in the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) brought him prestige, but his position as a trustee for the Robert Marshall Civil Liberties Trust reserved his seat at the table.1 The meeting was part of a larger effort sponsored by the Marshall Trust to galvanize “Spanish Americans” into a counterpart of the leading national movements for racial reform.2 Culminating from past efforts yielding few deliverables, and marked by a failed attempt to collaborate with Ernesto Galarza of the National Farm Labor Union (NFLU), the Trust agreed to sponsor the founding of a new organization, providing it be held to close watch by the trustees. At the conclusion of the conference, both Sanchez and Baldwin left hopeful of the lasting impact of their efforts, cautious of the challenging task, and unaware of the tensions that lay ahead. As high-profile cases of racial discrimination against …