Introduction

Blacks alone of America’s various racial and ethnic groups for the most part came unwillingly to the country. Native Americans were already in it when Europeans arrived, as was to happen to many Mexicans when they were absorbed into the US in the late 1840s. Members of these two groups were by no means always happy in their transformed circumstances, but they had not been brought forcibly to the New World. Inspired by African American, success other groups including women, students, gays and lesbians the disabled and the elderly started to advance their respective causes. America’s non-black racial and ethnic minorities did the same. The ‘Chicano’ movement of Mexican Americans got a boost through the publicity that accompanied a 1965–1970 grape boycott organised by the trade union leader Cesar Chavez on behalf of downtrodden Californian fruit pickers, the great majority of whom were from south of the border.