Southwest - League of United Latin American Citizens- Civic Organization

In its history of over eight decades, LULAC has worked to bring about many of the positive social and economic changes that Hispanic Americans have seen. In 1945, a California LULAC Council successfully sued to integrate the Orange County School System, which had been segregated on the grounds that Mexican children were "more poorly clothed and mentally inferior to white children." Additionally, i

n 1954, LULAC brought another landmark case, Hernandez vs. the State of Texas, to protest the fact that not a single Mexican American in Texas had ever been called to jury duty. Since that time, LULAC has fought for voting rights and full access to the political process, and equal educational opportunity for Hispanic children. It has been a long and often difficult struggle, but LULAC's record of activism continues to this day, as LULAC councils across the nation hold voter registration drives and citizenship awareness sessions, sponsor health fairs and tutorial programs, and raise scholarship money for the LULAC National Scholarship Fund. This fund, in conjunction with the LNESC (LULAC National Educational Service Centers), has assisted almost 10 percent of the 1.1 million students who have gone to college. General Information
LULAC's activism has extended to the realm of language and cultural rights as well. In response to an alarming increase in xenophobia and anti-Hispanic sentiment, LULAC councils have fought back by holding seminars and public symposiums on language and immigration issues, and its officers have spoken out on television and radio against the "English Only" movement to limit the public (and in some cases, private) use of minority languages. What follows is the struggles that LULAC and its members have had to endure in order to get equality in justice, employment, housing, health care, and education for all Hispanics in this great nation known as the "United States of North America."