A, im going to come around with a microphone so that it can be picked up because cspan is here today so hold your questions until you get the microphone. That way the camera will pick up what you are saying. And bookpeople hosts over 300 invents a year. Its free and open to the public and its made possible by our bookpeople patrons so thank you for purchasing their books here. So without further ado, this is true max krochmal. And this is, he is currently an assistant professor at tcu and contributing to the development of their programs in comparative race and ethnic studies and African Americans and African Studies so lets give him a warm welcome. [applause] thank you for having me. Get this where it needs to be. Its great to be here with all of you and be in austin and at bookpeople in particular, the greatest mecca of independent books in texas. Thanks to all of you for being here today, thank you especially to the aflcio for cosponsoring and spreading the word about this project and to all my friends and family here with me today, its great to have. So im going to talk for maybe 30, 40 minutes. Ill do some mixture of reading and summarizing and then will have time for a q and a at the end so please wait fora microphone. After that i will be able to find , youhave to go downstairs and bring it back up. So i suppose will begin with this election. The results rolled in last week. We were learned rather quickly that despite all the early polls and prognostication, texas remains a as red estate as ever. Hillary clinton trailed donald trump by some 10 percent in the final polling. 800,000 votes so that means the idea of a blue texas remains more than aboriginal. Theres quite a bit of work to be done. Strange as it may seem, that wasnt always the case and in my book i show the beginning in the 1930s, africanamericans, mexicanamericans and white labor and Community Activists gradually came together in a broad circle for democracy in texas. Separate local organizing efforts in the barrios and ghettos, the storefront Campaign Offices of the states major cities gradually gave way to local experiments in multiracial collaborations. By the late 1960s the activists created a formal, involuntary and statewide alliance in support of politicians in a multiracial civil rights agenda. They created a vast network of black, brown and white activists and all the urban areas and many of the country crossroads in texas. They demanded not just immigration for black but an end to him discrimination against mexicanamericans. They called for labor rights, Economic Justice and real political power for all. Theyre called their partnership the Democratic Coalition. At this moment, i think its good to pause and look back at this history, the what we might learn from it. Some analysts in the wake of the election are saying the Democratic Party needs to focus its efforts on tempering its message to appeal to white suburbanites, white workingclass voters and taught not only of about class but about race. Many point to the rise of the female vote in texas and the inevitable demographic change and suggests the tide will turn on its own. History really pushes us in this other direction, to think about how activists subconsciously build coalitions that can tackle both class and abridge those divides and that can bring people together across some of the greater both in our culture. This coalition im writing about in the 1960s and that i explore in the book had some characteristics that i think offer lessons for today and the future and ill lay out a few of those and get into some of the meat of the history. The constituent part of the coalition worked separately. The first organizing in their own communities to meet their own needs. But gradually a process of trial and error, the organizers of each group approached activists across the color line. They did sell out of desperation and selfinterest. With each of them needing help to outrank the more conservative members of their own ethnic groups. Over time, the occasional forays to an interracial meeting across town led to more gatherings and marching on each others picket lines and a concerted access in the speech on the ballot box. Coming to ground together across racial lines did not make different or did it assume one persons agenda over anothers. The coalition consisted of independent parts that Work Together for a common cause despite disagreement in intention, the alliances built sometimes fell apart and had to be rewrote reorganized. Coalition building or as some parts college, coalition and remained contested and interested process. The process does not mean mexicanamericans and natural americans were allies nor did it mean many were antagonist, they were simply different. The can structure of jim crow necessitated that, they had different leaders, different priorities. Different cultures. Spoke different languages thomas practice differently religions so when they Work Together they first had to vote many of those differences and find out where to even hold a meeting. They had to make a series of disagreements and compromises that would hold them together for a time and often come apart. When it did occur, multiracial collaboration took place because of the human relationships forged experientially among the activists. Their Work Together produced bonds of friendship and trust. It was not rhetoric or vaguely similar histories of oppression that brought the groups together but years of struggling side by side in the trenches. Or as another activists put some years later, working unity is better than talking unity. More generally the coalition succeeded because it recognized and transcended racial difference. It prioritize the needs of its most vulnerable partners. It did not trio treat all members as analyzed individuals nor did it employee colorblindness to avoid issues of racial inequality as some people are proposing we do now. Rather it developed an internal structure that allowed for discord and disagreement while still burying team to each of its constituents andequal voice and fair representation. The more liberal , the more explicitly integrationist, the more militant the tactics, the more effective the coalition became. I showed throughout the book that in many cases we tend to collapse different groups into one. We think of a socalled black community or a Mexican American community of those communities had to be constructed and were often right with internal conflict much as communities are. We wouldnt expect automatic unit unity among all white people. And often the driver of the story was that there was intraracial conflict among different communities. Most militant, the most liberal, often the working class mexicanamericans and africanamericans clashed with their social betters and it was this intraracial conflict that force them to build interracial coalitions all across the color line. They learn this experientially after countless flareups. They separated themselves from their conservative counterparts, their socalled race leaders and in distinctions of class, ideology, tactics all matter as much as the ties of race and ethnicity. Over time as they came together, the causes of civil rights broadly defined in political liberalism grew inseparable. Africanamerican, Mexican American and can immunity activists all rallied around the Democratic Coalition as a small democracy. They demanded freedom now but they also aimed to overthrow the oligarchy that had oppressed the states black, brown and white working people. They fought for all these goals by working together. And they forever transformed politics in texas in the process. The coalition carried out an unprecedented Voter Registration and mobilization drive and face direct action demonstrations that brought some semblance of democracy to the state. Decades from the reign of the border bosses that had restricted black and brown votes, africanamericans and Mexican Americans and their white allies and large their electorate and broke down the doors of the Democratic Party. These organizers finally overturned jim crow and one pro and to a degree of Economic Justice and power in the state they it was scarcely imaginable a few years ago. At the same time, the activists had a feeling how much power they can wield. The work that remains to be done today. And a blueprint for how to do it. When i talk about the different pieces of this coalition and how they evolved a little bit and to get the whole story, you need the whole book. It bears quite a lot of detail. It was a challenge to write in the sense that i had to do these for interwoven narratives happening in different places following what they ended up calling the legs of the coalition by the late 1960s so its africanamericans, mexicanamericans, white labor, the organized labor which was predominantly white and white political activists who do work in the precinct and the liberal leaning Democratic Party and each of these groups were internally divided. They didnt agree on tactics. It took a while for each of them to figure out they needed each other and in their own self interest once again to Start Building these alliances that were fragile and fraught with tension. So the book begins in san antonio, primarily in the 1930s in the Labor Movement and among Mexican American workers who joined in the great uprising of 1938. Historians documented this moment pretty well but it was in the public space, if you drive around san antonio you will see murals in the great brand shall uprising. Theres statues. What i do in exploring this chapter is to zoom out and think about its broader political implications. So rather than being a flash in the pan, a pure victory in which the union one for a moment and got crushed by automation, we see that it permanently cracked the political edifice of the city and state. Mexican American Workers allied with the cio, the industrial organizations, they formed of our powerful political alliance. They helped elect morey maverick senior to mayor in the city and they did so in coalition with African Americans. The very First Movement in which African Americans in that city broke away from san antonios political machine, organized independently and did so in coalition mexicanamericans and whites. The man reading that was a guy named jj sutton who was a young member of the National Negro congress, elected alliance of civil rights activists and he ends up being a key figure in the story for the next several decades and someone who helps build the bridges on the ground between these different groups. The story starts there and from that moment i follow each of the actors forward in san antonio and each of the hotspots in the state. I turned to houston where during world war ii africanAmerican Workers built what we call a civil rights unionist movement, an early phase of the civil rights struggle in which as one scholar put it, neither race nor class trumped the other and both were understood so black working people in houston flooded into the naacp. They belted in the second largest branch in the country only behind detroit which was another site of an Industrial Union movement and they interviewed the Civil Rights Era with a broad vision, and expansive set of goals that included Racial Justice but also economic issues, access to good jobs, promotions, access to quality housing and access to real political power and this vision was born out of the wartime struggle that really became the foundation for the black freedom struggle in texas for decades moving forward. Not just access or immigration or civil rights in the narrow terms we often think about those things but also time that with Economic Justice and with political power, independent political power. The same thing jj sutton and black activists in san antonio are struggling for. I organized the book around key characters and theirlives. In the opening chapters you see george lambert, a pair of Union Organizers wore white from other sources in the south and migrate to join the piquant shell struggle. In the houston chapters, you see herbal roy, moses is a black Railroad Worker who assumes a position of leadership in his segregated union and uses it to break down the doors of discrimination at work and in the Larger Community in which he lives area along with his wife irma who runs for office as one of the first black women in texas to do so as an independent in 1949. On a progressive, both coming out of the progressive party. I next turned to the ways in which the cold war changed the struggle. It meant that some of the more outspoken radicals had to go underground but they didnt disappear is the argument that i take in the book. They redirect their activism into new channels in this broad vision of civil rights and trade unionism and independent political power gets carried forward even in the conservative 1950s and a similar story occurs to a lesser extent among the states mexicanamericans. In houston by the 1950s, white liberal political activists are getting organized, they build an Organization Called the derek county democrats, they build level alliances, to ultimately elect Ralph Yarborough to the United States senate and eventually spawn a statewide body of predominantly white liberals known as the dot. I followed the origins of that story and i focus on a man named chris dixie was a plaintiff lawyer who, a labor lawyer who did a lot of the grassroots work building an organization along with Frankie Carter landau, a figurehead of the white liberals in this period. So all those pieces are coming together and in the 40s, in the 1950s in san antonio, the Mexican American struggle really jumps to a new level. There was an alliance with gj, an africanamerican man and activists. In 1948 they come togetherin a tactical electoral partnership. They managed to both get elected through various local offices, sutton is the first africanamerican from the region elected to construction. And for garcia, the Mexican American counterpart, and allows him to get on the school board and fight for equal access to schools among Mexican Americans in the city. But out of those early efforts comes a reconfiguration of local politics and san antonios been written about a lot, the government, but more importantly a new activist tradition and a key player in this is a man named albert. Albert becomes active in the early 1950s area he forms another local Democratic Political club that aimed at organizing among Mexican Americans in san antonio and he uses that to build a massive get out the Vote Organization and political machine on san antonios southwest side which brings Adlai Stevenson as a president ial candidate to san antonio to speak at a major victory and moving forward for this organization and a year later in 1953 they elect Henry Gonzalez to the city council, the first Mexican American in that capacity in some decades. Gets elected to the county commission as a commissioner and from that post, build a Civil Rights Movement of his own. Its a Movement Working to desegregate schools, of movement fighting for labor rights among Mexican Americans and the political struggle in which he has made his home. So those are the wings, africanamerican, naacp with a broad vision of civil rights. The naacp is destroyed by the cold war but they come up with a new organization in this place which eventually is called the Texas Council of voters. Theres Mexican Americans led and other key activists that ill tell you why pain is so important in a minute. And then theres liberals forming the democrats of texas to support Ralph Yarborough. The last pieces labor and since labor is our cosponsor i will talk about that. But in san antonio, labor had been active throughout this period, it remained a predominantly white movement. Many local movements practiced forms of discrimination and africanamerican and Mexican American workers did their best to break that discrimination down. Sometimes with white allies. But by the 1950s, labor across the United States was eventually, had settled in at least as the story goes, and settled in to a more scrutinized labor relation. A along with big business as the story goes. Case in texas pushes us in a different direction. What we see instead is a Labor Movement getting increasingly liberal through the 1950s. Increasingly militant in terms of engaging other social movements and increasingly committed to civil rights and the main reason for that shift is the leadership of a guy named hs james brown, a plumber from san antonio who marries into the plumbers trade. Hes originally from outofstate. He comes in as an officer and his