"Our Very Pronounced Theory of Equal Rights to All": Race, Citizenship, and Populism in the South Texas Borderlands

Abstract

On May 11, 1896, a "copper-colored" man with "dark eyes, straight black hair, and high cheek bones" walked into the federal courthouse in San Antonio, Texas, and applied for American citizenship. He was Ricardo Rodriguez, an illiterate thirty-seven-year-old laborer who spoke no English. A native of Guanajuato, Mexico, he had lived in Texas since 1883. By all he accounts was an industrious, law-abiding man with only one stated reason for desiring citizenship: "because he lived here." 1 There to contest Rodriguez's application were the Populist attorney Theodore J. McMinn and the Republican attorney Andrew Jackson Evans. Both men were familiar figures in the courtroom of the presiding judge, Thomas S. Maxey, a Democrat appointed to the bench in 1888 by President Grover Cleveland. Intent upon making a test case of Rodriguez's application, the attorneys filed an amicus brief challenging the application on the grounds that Rodriguez was not white and therefore ineligible for citizenship under American immigration law. The case held enormous implications not only for immigrants but also for thousands of Mexican Americans in Texas and the Southwest. It also would have far-reaching political reverberations, as Mexicanos constituted an important voting constituency of the Democratic party. 2 Two broad categories of scholars have studied In re Rodriguez. One group has been concerned primarily with what the case reveals about the history of race in the United States. The relatively recent recognition that race has no meaningful biological basis and is socially (and legally) constructed has led them to examine the case through new cultural studies and critical race theory. They have considered Rodriguez in the context of the body of immigration laws and jurisprudence of the era, hoping to explain the sources and nature of racism.

The Political Consequences of Racialized Ethnic Identities

“…The 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, ending the Mexican American War, conferred citizenship eligibility on Mexicans living in land that was newly part of the United States. In 1897, the Supreme Court decision In re Rodriguez reinforced the right of Mexicans to naturalize according to the 1848 treaty and, consequently, asserted that Mexicans were considered legally white (Cantrell 2013).…”

Immigrant Declarants and Loyal American Women: How Suffragists Helped Redefine the Rights of Citizens

“…18 Republicans were thought to have included it in the 1869 Texas constitution to "catch the vote of the German immigrants" (who had largely voted against secession). 19 Nationally, the practice had declined in popularity by 1900, when only eleven states still allowed it, and four of those states ended the practice before 1917.…”