Abstract
This essay analyzes the Latino political organization Amigos de Wallace, created to support the 1948 presidential candidacy of Henry Wallace under the Progressive Party ticket, as the earliest known organized attempt to mobilize Latinos as a national voting bloc in a US presidential election. Amigos de Wallace, the essay argues, rallied Latinos as a distinct electoral constituency who deserved to have their voices heard and votes counted in the national political arena, and thus serves as an important antecedent to the better-documented political efforts of the 1960s and onward, such as the Viva Kennedy clubs. The essay enlarges our understanding of Latinos’ political mobilizations and their contributions to the US Left prior to the 1960s and supports an earlier chronology and context in which to understand the construction of modern Latino political identities.
Resumen
Este ensayo analiza la organización política latina Amigos de Wallace creada para respaldar la candidatura a la presidencia de Henry Wallace por el Partido Progresista. Fue el primer intento conocido de movilizar a los latinos como bloque de votantes nacional en una elección presidencial de los Estados Unidos. El ensayo argumenta que Amigos de Wallace unió a los latinos como electorado particular que merecía ser escuchado y cuyos votos deberían contar en el escenario político nacional; por lo tanto, planteamos que la organización constituye un importante antecedente a los esfuerzos políticos mejor documentados que ocurrieron partir de la década de 1960, como los clubes Viva Kennedy. El ensayo amplía nuestro conocimiento de las movilizaciones políticas latinas y sus aportaciones a la izquierda de los Estados Unidos antes de los 60, además de apuntar hacia una cronología y un contexto anteriores dentro de los cuales se puede entender la construcción de las identidades políticas latinas modernas.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
The Amigos de Wallace national bulletin, along with other Progressive Party materials, are also found in ColónB (1948).
Bernardo Vega also documents “more than” 18 Latino delegates as well as twenty-three official observers from New York and more than 200 visitors. See ColónA (1948, p. 5).
For an excellent and comprehensive history of Mexican Americans’ labor and civil rights militancy during the Roosevelt years, from which Amigos de Wallace emerges, see Vargas (2008).
Wallace’s refusal to participate in segregated events in the South invoked not-unfounded fears of racist violence. On 7 May 1948, a 28-year-old maritime worker from Charleston was killed for being a “‘nigger lover’ and Wallace supporter” (Culver and Hyde 2001, p. 469), a tragic episode that underlines the political courage of Wallace and of the tens of thousands of supporters, many of them Latinos, who attended his integrated rallies across the Jim Crow South.
Prior to the rally, Wallace held a special meeting with Amigos de Wallace representatives, and after the rally, Amigos de Wallace hosted a reception for the presidential candidate across the border in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. See IndependentF (1948).
This political dynamic is similar to the one Márquez and Espino (2009, p. 309) identify with respect to the 1970s Chicano third party, La Raza Unida, which, as they argue, ultimately brought more Mexican Americans into mainstream politics, integrating them into the Texas Democratic Party.
References
48,000 Hear Wallace Assert Prejudice Will Fail in South. 1948. New York Times, 11 September, p. 1.
Alvarez, A. 1948. A Corrido to Wallace and Taylor. Tracks 13 and 14. In Songs for Political Action: Campaign Songs, 1944–1949. Remastered version. 2019. Doxy Collection.
Andreu Iglesias, C. (ed.). 1984. Memoirs of Bernardo Vega: A Contribution to the History of the Puerto Rican Community in New York. New York: Monthly Review Press.
Barreto, M. 2010. Ethnic Cues: The Role of Shared Ethnicity in Latino Political Participation. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Barreto, M., and G. Segura (eds.). 2014. Latino America: How America’s Most Dynamic Population Is Poised to Transform the Politics of the Nation. New York: Public Affairs.
Beltrán, C. 2010. The Trouble with Unity: Latino Politics and the Creation of Identity. New York: Oxford University Press.
Blair, W. 1948. Wallace Hits Bias at Mexican Border. New York Times, 1 October, p. 22.
Buelna, E. 2019. Chicano Communists and the Struggle for Social Justice. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
Burt, K. 2007. The Search for a Civic Voice: California Latino Politics. Claremont, CA: Regina Books.
Burt, K. 2010. Latinos con Eisenhower. Kenneth Burt’s Blog, 6 February. http://kennethburt.com/blog/?p=436/.
Cadava, G. 2020. The Hispanic Republican: The Shaping of an American Political Identity, from Nixon to Trump. New York: Harper Collins.
Candidate Makes Appeal to Mexican-Americans. 1948. Los Angeles Times, 17 May, p. 2.
Coffin, M. 2003. The Latino Vote: Shaping America’s Electoral Future. Political Quarterly 74 (2): 214–222.
Culver, J., and J. Hyde. 2001. American Dreamer: A Life of Henry A. Wallace. New York: Norton.
DeSipio, L. 1998. Counting on the Latino Vote: Latinos as a New Electorate. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia.
Devine, T. 2013. Henry Wallace’s 1948 Presidential Campaign and the Future of Postwar Liberalism. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Flores, Juan. 2000. From Bomba to Hip-Hop: Puerto Rican Culture and Latino Identity. New York: Columbia University Press.
Francis-Fallon, B. 2019. The Rise of the Latino Vote: A History. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
García, I. 2000. Viva Kennedy: Mexican Americans in Search of Camelot. College Station: Texas A&M University Press.
García, M.T. 1989. Mexican Americans: Leadership, Ideology, and Identity, 1930–1960. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
García, M.T. 1994. Memories of Chicano History: The Life and Narrative of Bert Corona. Berkley: University of California Press.
Gómez-Quiñones, J. 1994. Roots of Chicano Politics, 1600–1940. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.
Griffith, B. 1949. Viva Roybal-Viva America. Common Ground 10 (Autumn): 61–70.
Krochmal, M. 2016. Blue Texas: The Making of a Multiracial Democratic Coalition in the Civil Rights Era. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Macdonald, D. 1948. Henry Wallace, the Man and the Myth. New York: Vanguard Press.
MacDougall, C. 1965. Gideon’s Army. New York: Marzani and Munsell.
Márquez, B. 2003. Constructing Identities in Mexican-American Political Organizations: Choosing Issues, Taking Sides. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Márquez, B., and R. Espino. 2009. Mexican American Support for Third Parties: The Case of La Raza Unida. Ethnic and Racial Studies 33 (2): 290–312.
McNamara, S. 2016. From Picket Lines to Picket Fences: Latinas and the Remaking of the Jim Crow South, 1930–1964. PhD diss.: University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
Meyer, G. 1989. Vito Marcantonio: Radical Politician, 1902–1954. New York: SUNY Press.
Mora, C. 2014. Making Hispanics: How Activists, Bureaucrats, and Media Constructed a New American. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Oboler, S. 1995. Ethnic Labels, Latino Lives: Identity and the Politics of R(e)Presentation in the United States. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
A People’s Congressman. 1948. Union Film Productions. MoMa Film Archives.
Progressives Woo Latin Americans. 1948. Christian Science Monitor, 21 August, p. 9.
Ramos, J. 2004. The Latino Wave: How Hispanics Will Elect the Next American President. New York: Rayo.
Ruiz, V. 1987. Cannery Women, Cannery Lives: Mexican Women, Unionization, and the California Food Processing Industry, 1930–1950. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.
Schmidt, K. 1960. Henry A. Wallace, Quixotic Crusade 1948. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press.
Third Party Presidential Candidate Dons a Sombrero. 1948. New York Herald Tribune, 1 June, p. 11.
Thousands Cheer. 1948. California Eagle, 20 May, p. 5.
Toney, J. 2006. “Viva Wallace!” Tampa Latins, the Politics of Americanization, and the Progressive Party Campaign of 1948. MA thesis, University of South Florida, St. Petersburg.
Toney, J. 2018. Contested Ground: The 1948 Presidential Election in Tampa, Florida. Sunland Tribune 30: 19–30.
Underwood, K. 1997. Pioneering Minority Representation: Edward Roybal and the Los Angeles City Council, 1949–1962. Pacific Historical Review 66 (3): 399–425.
Vargas, Z. 1993. Proletarians of the North: A History of Mexican Industrial Workers in Detroit and the Midwest, 1917–1933. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Vargas, Z. 2008. Labor Rights Are Civil Rights: Mexican American Workers in Twentieth-Century America. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Wallace Has a “Spanish Day.” 1948. The Sun, 2 June, p. 15.
Wallace Talks Their Lingo.” 1948. Austin Statesman, 31 May, p. 2.
Walton, R. 1976. Henry Wallace, Harry Truman, and the Cold War. New York: Viking.
Waltzer, K.A. 1977. The American Labor Party: Third Party Politics in New Deal-Cold War New York, 1936–1954. PhD diss.: Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.
Weber, D. 1994. Dark Sweat, White Gold: California Farm Workers, Cotton, and the New Deal. Berkeley: University of California Press.
White, G., and J. Maze. 1995. Henry A. Wallace: His Search for a New World Order. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Wise, J. 1948. Meet Henry Wallace. New York: Boni and Gaer.
Manuscript Collections
ColónA. 1948. Amigos de Henry Wallace. Report by Bernardo Vega. Series VIII: Subject Files, box 26, folder 3. The Jesús Colón Papers.
ColónB. 1948. Los Amigos de Wallace national bulletin, September, np. Series X: Clippings, box 35, folder 4. The Jesús Colón Papers.
Henry A. Wallace Papers (MSC0177), The University of Iowa Libraries, Iowa City, Iowa.
Independent Progressive Party and Californians for Liberal Representation records (Collection 1614). Box 15, folder 1. UCLA Library Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library, UCLA.
IndependentA. 1948. Los Amigos de Wallace national bulletin. September, np. Independent Progressive Party records.
IndependentB. 1948–9. Call. Second Regional Meeting, Phoenix, Arizona. Independent Progressive Party records.
IndependentC. 1948. Informe de la Conferencia Nacional Wallace Para Presidente: A los Ciudadanos de Habla Española. np. Independent Progressive Party records.
IndependentD. 1948. Invitation from Frank S. López, Jr. to Amigos de Wallace supporters. August, Los Angeles. Independent Progressive Party records.
IndependentE. 1948. Manifesto. Comité Nacional de Amigos de Wallace, New York. Independent Progressive Party records.
IndependentF. 1948. Memoradum from Isabel Gonzalez. September, El Paso, Texas. Independent Progressive Party records.
IndependentG. 1948. Saludos. May, Los Angeles. Independent Progressive Party records.
IndependentH. 1948. Program: Amigos de Wallace Rally. 16 May, Los Angeles. Independent Progressive Party records.
IndependentI. 1948. Speech by Henry Wallace. 16 May, Los Angeles. Independent Progressive Party records.
IndependentJ. 1948. Wallace Habla A los Mexico Americanos. Independent Progressive Party records.
IndependentK. 1948. Special Guests: Lincoln Park Stadium. May, Los Angeles. Independent Progressive Party records.
MarcantonioA. 1948. Film. Amigos de Wallace. Box 82. Vito Marcantonio Papers.
The Jesús Colón Papers; 1983-01; Archives of the Puerto Rican Diaspora, Centro de Estudios Puertorriqueños Archives, Hunter College, CUNY.
Vito Marcantonio Papers, Manuscripts and Archives Division, The New York Public Library. Series XI: Photographs, Motion Picture Film, Phonograph Discs, and Audio Tapes.
WallaceB. 1948. Campaign address. Amigos de Wallace Rally, Los Angeles, California, 16 May. Series 10, box 69. Henry A. Wallace Papers.
WallaceC. 1948. Campaign address. Albuquerque, New Mexico, 3 June. Series 10, box 70. Henry A. Wallace Papers.
WallaceD. 1948. Campaign address. El Paso, Texas, 30 September. Series 10, box 72. Henry A. Wallace Papers.
WallaceE. 1948. Peace, Freedom, and Abundance: The Platform of the Progressive Party as Adopted at the Founding Convention, Philadelphia, July 23–25, 1948. Series 4, box 1. Henry A. Wallace Papers.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Pérez Jiménez, C. Los Amigos de Wallace: Henry Wallace’s 1948 presidential campaign and the bid to capture the Latino vote. Lat Stud 19, 286–309 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41276-021-00335-2
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/s41276-021-00335-2
Keywords
- Latino Vote
- Henry A. Wallace
- 1948 Presidential Campaign
- Progressive Politics
- Latino Politics
- Left-wing Activism