Americanizing Mexican Women in Los Angeles, 1920s: Examining the Home Teacher Program as a Racial Project

• In Event: Voluntary Associations and Civil Society: Legacies of Systemic Inequality

Abstract

In 1915, California became the only state to legislate Americanization programs through the Home Teachers Act, an adult education program that targeted immigrant mothers. While intended primarily to Americanize European immigrants, we show how the Home Teachers Act functioned as a racial project that contributed to the “Mexican problem” narrative, solidified the idea that Mexicans were unassimilable, and reinforced their racial formation in California. We advance this argument through archival analysis and examining the structure and institutionalization of the Home Teachers program and the rhetoric of reformers and architects of the Home Teacher Act to highlight how the program reinforced racial dynamics, gave meaning to racial categories, and how it helped organized California’s emerging towns and cities on the basis of race. In California, the Home Teaching program served as an inadvertent racial project, enshrined legislatively and institutionalized in a way that advanced existing segregation and harmful stereotypes about Mexicans.

Authors

• Maria G. Rendon, University of California, Irvine

• Jes Torres Baker, University of California Irvine