The headline about Rocky Marciano mentions a decision,
so it was his June 17 win over former Champion Ezzard Charles.
June 10, 1954: A Republican President wanting to deport large numbers of people is not a new thing. Dwight D. Eisenhower did it when Donald Trump was a few days short of his 8th birthday.
"Operation Wetback," beginning on this day, was the biggest mass deportation of undocumented workers in United States history. This campaign with a racist name was designed to root out undocumented Mexicans from American society.
The short-lived operation used military-style tactics to remove Mexican immigrants, some of them American citizens, from the United States. Though millions of Mexicans had legally entered the country through joint immigration programs in the first half of the 20th Century, Operation Wetback was designed to send them back to Mexico.
This wasn't about a dispute between the U.S. and Mexican governments, either: The Mexican government were complicit, working with the U.S. government, to alleviate a labor shortage.
Border Patrol agents and local officials used military techniques and engaged in a coordinated, tactical operation to remove the immigrants. Along the way, they used widespread racial stereotypes to justify their sometimes brutal treatment of immigrants. Inside the United States, anti-Mexican sentiment was pervasive, and harsh portrayals of Mexican immigrants as dirty, disease-bearing and irresponsible were the norm.
Tens of thousands of immigrants were shoved into buses, boats and planes, and sent to often-unfamiliar parts of Mexico, where they struggled to rebuild their lives. A lot of Americans don't realize this, but Mexico is a very diverse country, and, as with the United States, different sections have different cultures. A person from Mexico City might not fit in in Tijuana, and both might have trouble fitting in in the Yucatán.
In Chicago -- which, despite being closer to New York than to Texas, has always had Mexicans, rather than Puerto Ricans or Cubans, as their leading Hispanic group -- 3 planes a week were filled with immigrants and flown to Mexico. In Texas, 25 percent of all of the immigrants deported were crammed onto boats, later compared to slave ships; while others died of sunstroke, disease and other causes while in custody.
It's not clear how many American citizens were swept up in Operation Wetback, but the United States later claimed that 1.3 million people total were deported. According to historian Francisco Balderrama, the U.S. deported over 1 million Mexican nationals, 60 percent of whom were U.S. citizens of Mexican descent, during the 1930s. Balderrama told Fresh Air’s Terry Gross that the program was referred to as "repatriation," to give it the sense of being voluntary. In reality, though, it was anything but.
As another historian, a conservative no less, once put it, the only worse thing than unchecked immigration is some of the ways we've tried to stop it.
*
June 10, 1954 was a Thursday. These baseball games were played:
* The New York Yankees beat the Detroit Tigers, 9-5 at Yankee Stadium. Jim McDonald got hurt, and had to leave the game after 4 innings. Bob Grim pitched the rest of the way, and got the win. Mickey Mantle, Yogi Berra and Bobby Brown hit home runs.
* The New York Giants beat the Milwaukee Braves, 1-0 at Milwaukee County Stadium. Bill Taylor hit a home run in the top of the 10th inning. Rubén Gómez went the distance, allowing 9 hits. Willie Mays went 0-for-3 with a walk. Rookie Hank Aaron went 2-for-4.
* The Brooklyn Dodgers beat to the St. Louis Cardinals, 7-4 at the original Busch Stadium in St. Louis. (It had been Sportsman's Park until the previous year.) Russ Meyer outpitched former Yankee Vic Raschi. Unusually, Jackie Robinson played left field, and went 1-for-3 with a walk and an RBI.
* The Baltimore Orioles swept a doubleheader from the Boston Red Sox, 5-1 and 9-0 at Fenway Park in Boston. Duane Pillette pitched a 5-hit shutout in the 2nd game. Ted Williams was injured, and did not play in either game.
* The Washington Senators beat the Cleveland Indians, 8-4 at Griffith Stadium in Washington.
* The Cincinnati Reds beat the Pittsburgh Pirates, 6-0 at Crosley Field in Cincinnati. I should say, "the Cincinnati Redlegs," because, from 1953 to 1958, the team bowed to the pressure of this stupid Red Scare, and changed their name. It did bring a few laughs the next time the Reds won the Pennant, in 1961, because the World Series turned out to be "Yanks vs. Reds." Anyway, Fred Baczewski allowed 11 hits, but kept the shutout.
* The Philadelphia Phillies beat the Chicago Cubs, 6-0 at Wrigley Field in Chicago. Steve Ridzik only went 4 2/3rds innings, and Jim Konstanty went the rest of the way, and was credited with the win, completing an 8-hit shutout. Ralph Kiner got 3 of those hits for the Cubs, and rookie Ernie Banks got 2.
* And the Chicago White Sox and the Philadelphia Athletics were rained out at Connie Mack Stadium in Philadelphia. The game was made up as part of a doubleheader on August 26. The White Sox won the opener, 8-1. The A's won the nightcap, 4-1.
No comments:
Post a Comment