Forging an American Pluralism: The Mexican Revolution and American Civil Rights

Ruben Flores

This project analyzes the history of cultural diversity and civil rights in mid-20th century American society by tracing the intellectual path of American social scientists for whom postrevolutionary Mexico became the premier example of national integration in the Western Hemisphere. Using evidence from the United States and Mexico, it examines the reasons why the education experiments of the postrevolutionary Mexican state became institutional models in the 1930s and 1940s for American social scientists committed to eradicating segregation in the public schools of the American West and reconciling American racial diversity into a unified national culture. My project adds to a growing literature on U.S. civil rights that emphasizes events before 1954 and around the world as influences on the development of political opposition to American segregation. It also shows the ways in which American policy debates about the “melting pot” cannot be understood apart from national integration projects in Latin America. Last, it examines the influence on American politics of alternative models of the role of government in lessening social conflict in the years before the American state began to play an increased role as a mediator of ethnic tension in American society.

About Ruben Flores

Ruben Flores is Assistant professor of American studies and Courtesy professor of History at the University of Kansas. He received his bachelor's degree in history from Princeton University in 1994 and his Phd in history from the University of California, Berkeley in 2006. He specializes in the comparative histories of the United States and Mexico, with an emphasis on 20th-century reform movements and the use of the social sciences as instruments for creating social consensus. Professor Flores was a visiting fellow at UT Austin's Institute for Historical Studies in 2008-09, where he completed the research for a book manuscript exploring the institutional influences of Mexico's postrevolutionary education projects on the 20th-century school integration movement in the American West. Flores is a native of El Paso, Texas and resides in Lawrence, Kansas with his wife and two young children.