Making the Latino South

“An often-engaging and capacious reading of the ways non-Black ‘Latino people’ (the author Cecilia Márquez’s term) have long been located within, rather than simply peripheral to, the Jim Crow, Black-white, racial script in the South. . . . A fine case study.”—Journal of American History

“Making the Latino South offers a groundbreaking history of how Latino racial identities evolved in the twentieth century, from Latinos being perceived as 'provisionally white' in the mid-twentieth century to being labeled 'illegal' at the beginning of the twenty-first century.”—Southern Historical Quarterly

"“Making the Latino South provides a nuanced historical analysis of the role of Blackness in the racialization of non-Black Latinos by the latter part of the 20th century. . . [and] is grounded by rich archival research across different Southern states and exceptional oral histories that highlight various perspectives histories from activists, veterans, migrants, and their children, among others.”—North Carolina Historical Review

“Wonderfully engaging. . . . Making the Latino South is thought-provoking and raises questions and potential new research threads for future scholars . . . [and] reminds its reader that the South is not a new destination for Latinas and Latinos. Instead, the South is significantly defined by its Latino presence. . . . [A] must-read for those interested in the US South and its history of race, civil rights, and immigration.”—Journal of Working-Class Studies

“Márquez has recovered a fascinating history of racial formation that deserves a wide readership, both among specialists in Latino history, migration/immigration history, and southern history, but also more generally among historians of the US.”—Oral History Review

“Márquez significantly historicize[s] and spatialize[s] Latinx presence in the US South prior to the late twentieth century. . . . [Making the Latino South] call[s] on readers to reject a monolithic definition of latinidad, specifically by paying attention to histories and politics of ethnicity, race, gender, labor, geography, and generational cohorts.”—Southern Spaces

“By offering an analysis of Latino-based immigration struggle toward the end of the book, Márquez has advanced one of the first historical studies of Latino activism in the twenty-first century.”—Western Historical Quarterly

“Concise [and] well-researched. . . . Making the Latino South and its clear, easily digestible format is a useful introduction to the history of Latino migration to the South and will be useful to students and teachers of history, as well as to lay audiences and Latino activists.”—Register of the Kentucky Historical Society

“Márquez brings a key insight to the study of Latino history: the centrality of African Americans to white conceptions of race and citizenship, specifically, that anti-Blackness is the foundation on which inclusion and exclusion stand. . . . Márquez’s scholarship illustrates an American Studies approach to history, with as much attention to culture as traditional archival materials.”—American Historical Review

“This is an important contribution to understanding the history of Latinidad in the US through the lens of southern history.. . . Márquez guides readers through the racial landscape of the South, offering a new history of race in the postwar US that uncovers the anti-Blackness and white supremacy embedded in the creation of Latina/o as a racial category.”—CHOICE