Americanizing Mexican Families in Los Angeles: Examining the Home Teacher Program as a Racial Project

Maria Rendon, University of California, Irvine
Jes Torres Besvaresh , UC Irvine

In 1915, California became the only state to institutionalize an Americanization program through the Home Teacher Act, epitomized as an Americanization “model” for the nation. We examine how the Home Teachers program, rather than promoting the integration of Mexican immigrants in the 1920s, evolved into a racial project. We trace the origins of the Home Teachers Act, initially institutionalized through the California Commission on Housing and Immigration, and female reformers’ Neighborhood School movement in Los Angeles. We center the rhetoric and practices of female reformers who developed the program and examine how it was institutionalized through neighborhood schools and labor camps in ways that reinforced Mexicans’ racialization and segregation.

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 Presented in Session 37. Marginalization, Exclusion, and Inclusion