Blue Texas

This book is about the other Texas, not the state known for its cowboyconservatism, but a mid-twentieth-century hotbed of community organising,liberal politics, and civil rights activism. Beginning in the 1930s,Max Krochmal tells the story of the decades-long struggle for democracyin Texas, when African American, Mexican American, and white laborand community activists gradually came together to empower the state’smarginalised minorities. At the ballot box and in the streets, these diverseactivists demanded not only integration but economic justice, labor rights,and real political power for all. Their efforts gave rise to the DemocraticCoalition of the 1960s, a militant, multiracial alliance that would takeon—and eventually overthrow—both Jim Crow and Juan Crow.

Using rare archival sources and original oral history interviews,Krochmal reveals the often-overlooked democratic foundations and liberaltradition of one of our nation’s most conservative states. Blue Texasremembers the many forgotten activists who, by crossing racial lines andbuilding coalitions, achieved a degree of economic and political democracyin their cities and state that would have been scarcely imaginable just adecade earlier.