Settling
Settling in the North Side
The second phase took place between World War I and World War II. One of the most well know Mexican immigrants from this phase is Joe T Garcia. He was 16 when he came to the United States in 1914, worked for Armour, opened a grocery store in 1919 with his uncle, and as the barbeque and meals he and his wife sold as a side project at the store started earning his family more money than the store itself, opened Joe T Garcia’s in 1935 (Pate 139). While he and other Mexican immigrants succeeded in their industries, most Mexican immigrants simply got by.
The third phase started after World War II, but Pate didn’t give an exact range for how long it lasted. As the European families in the North Side started moving to better neighborhoods, the Mexican community that started on one block expanded, creating the largest Hispanic community in the city, La Empaka (Rich 172). The economic prosperity and immigration wave that followed World War II increased the demand for housing west of Main Street and north of 23rd Street. Gradually, the neighborhood became predominantly Hispanic.
Most of the Pate’s chapter that examined the change of the North Side to a majority Hispanic neighborhood detailed cases of successful Mexican immigrants and residents like Joe Garcia, but it seemed like they viewed the changes a little negatively. She claimed that because of the decline in readily available jobs in the North Side and because third phase immigrants had a “lack of education necessary to secure well-paid jobs,” married young, and had large families (when they implied large families was common for first and second phase immigrants as well (Pate 142)) “unemployment, welfare [my emphasis], crime and housing decay have become facts of life in much of the near North Side” (Pate 146) when crime in the North Side in the years before the third phase had its own chapter, and welfare wouldn’t have been a listed “issue” if the third immigrants were employed, which does lead one to question why the third phase was the largest if unemployment was a “fact of life.”
J’Nell Pate claimed that the Iglesia de San Jose in 1909 (Pate 145) that was started by the All Saints Catholic parish to serve Spanish speaking North Side residents (Cuéllar 100) was integral in the North Side becoming predominantly Hispanic as it did help with building a community between North Side residents (Cuéllar 105) but that seems to overlook other factors that were much more likely the reasons Hispanic people moved to the North Side. The declining industries in the North Side, the flight of anglo and European residents to better neighborhoods, and as Pate noted, “hispanic families often kept close relationships with extended-family members” (Pate 144), aligned to make moving to the North Side a good, cheap destination for Mexican immigrants.
Settling in Fort Worth
Outside of the North Side, after World War I, Fort Worth-based Texas Steel Company’s operations had grown and started employing Mexicans in its manufacturing facility in the 1920s. These workers lived in 16 company houses situated right across from the plant (Cuéllar 45). The rail industry also started employing Mexicans with rail experience all over Fort Worth (Rich 172) when they had previously kept Mexicans from working there before the early 1920s (Zamora 46). Mexicans from Michoacan, Jalisco, Guanajuato and San Luis Potosi who had experience working for rail companies in their states, saw moving to Fort Worth, the city “with the most lines of service and the most tons of shipping south of St. Louis,” as a viable and enticing option (Rich 171).
Since rail companies’ facilities were spread around the city, the Mexican immigrants in Fort Worth were spread around as well. This created several small neighborhoods such as La Yarda, El TP, and La Loma (Rich 172). Other occupations in Fort Worth included waiters, dishwashers, tailors, tamale peddlers, a Spanish teacher, a barber (Cuéllar 37), cooks, musicians, and a comedian (Cuéllar 38). But despite the variety of occupations, 90% of the city’s Mexican work force was estimated to be unemployed in 1921 according to the city’s welfare officials (Zamora 45). During the Great Depression, unemployment and fears of some xenophobic white Americans “convinced” half of Fort Worth’s 5,000 Mexicans residents to return to Mexico in 1930 (Cuéllar 49).
People continued to immigrate, settle, and build community in Fort Worth through different activities. From the 1930s onwards, several Mexican baseball teams were formed and played against each other (Cuéllar 141). In the 1950s, there was a dance almost every Sunday night at the North Side Coliseum or the Casino (Cuéllar 187). In 1973, community leader Pete Zepeda “organized what eventually became the Greater Fort Worth Hispanic Chamber of Commer” (Cuéllar 186).
Unlike earlier Mexican immigrants, the Mexican immigrants who arrived after World War II had a harder time finding employment. They also faced resentment from some naturalized Mexicans who had arrived earlier (Cuéllar 181). There was a social divide between the two groups of Mexicans – and citizenship was emphasized as the way to distinguish those who “deserve” or “earned” any sense of upward mobility (Zamora 89). As for the immigrants and their children who had been living in Fort Worth for a while, Cuéllar claimed that Mexican American service in World War II had changed white people’s attitudes towards Mexicans and discriminated against them less in housing, education, and employment (Cuéllar 151). After a city referendum in the 70s established districts for the city council, Louis Zapata became the first Hispanic councilman in Fort Worth history in 1977 (Cuéllar 190).
Cuéllar, Carlos Eliseo. Stories from the Barrio: A History of Mexican Fort Worth. Fort Worth: TCU Press, 2003.
Pate, J'Nell L. North of the River: A Brief History of North Fort Worth. Fort Worth: TCU Press, 1994.
Rich, Harold. Fort Worth: Outpost, Cowtown, Boomtown. University of Oklahoma Press, 2014.
Zamora, Emilio. The World of the Mexican Worker in Texas. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1993.