How Did The Black Civil Rights Movement Influence The Chicano Movement

With the horrific events of World War 2 still fresh on America’s mind, many citizens were working to recover and resolve the issues within America. However, fed up with the continuous discrimination and unjustified treatment, the African-American community ended up organizing and raising more attention to their prejudice to earn their justified freedom and civil rights. Not only did these African Americans manage to end racial segregation, but they also influenced other ethnic groups to take up hands. For instance, take how the Mexican Americans launched the Chicano Movement a few years later. The black civil rights movement influenced the Chicano movement to a considerable degree, which can be noted through both groups’ similar motives, awareness

For example, black civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. used “non-violent protests to promote civil rights reform” (Biography 2), and similarly, Chicano civil rights activist Cesar Chavez “employed nonviolent means to bring attention” (Biography 2). Chavez, like MLK, focused on nonviolent means to draw attention towards his goals of improving pay and work conditions, suggesting that he too believed in MLK’s peaceful methods. Black and Chicano civil rights activists also “created the community union model of fighting poverty” and “utilized a holistic strategy” (Bauman 15), indicating that both sides had the same idea on how to approach their goals of civil equality. Fortunately, these two movements did leave to their own achievements of legal civil rights, which highlights how Mexican Americans were influenced to follow the same methods as African-Americans and yielded similar positive

This can be proven through the words of Carlos Montes, one of the leaders of the Chicano revolutionary group Brown Berets; when questioned on the Brown Berets’ interactions with the black civil rights party Black Panthers, he replied, “We supported them when the police attacked them. We also set up similar programs like the East L.A. Free Clinic and free breakfast programs” (Fight Back News 2). Thanks to their alliance with the Black Panther Party, Chicano activists decided to support their alliance and set up similar events and programs to theirs’, thus revealing that Chicano activists were motivated to act due to black civil rights activists. Although some may argue that “Los Angeles’s blacks and Latinos had a history of disagreement and strife formed over competition for jobs” (Bauman 9), those conflicts were due to the competition over jobs at the time of segregation. Consequently, thanks to the rise in civil right awareness, both groups gained more donations and support from other parties, and realized that they should be working together. This is mentioned when black activist Sargent Shriver wrote, “We should be doing much more with Mexican-Americans” and Latino groups began to focus on “inclusion and representation” with the African-American party. It is said