From Immigrants to Citizens: Mexicans and Settlement Houses in Gary, Indiana, 1919-1965

This dissertation examined how Mexicans who migrated to Gary, Indiana from 1919 to 1965 forged their own path to integration. US Steel company town Gary epitomized American industrial might at the turn of the twentieth century. Gary’s immigration and economic ties expanded its importance far beyond the city’s physical boundaries: steel production and heavy recruitment of a diverse immigrant labor force transformed the city into Greater Gary, a place of national and international significance. The city existed at the epicenter of broad change for both twentieth-century industrial America, and for the emerging national ethnic Mexican community in the United States. Gary played an important part in moving the Mexican population in the US eastward, and the city had a transnational significance in drawing migration from Mexico.

This dissertation argued that Mexican immigrants in Gary competed with settlement house workers and religious leaders to manifest their own vision of recognition and acceptance in public life. Mexicans, settlement houses, and church leaders created relationships over time that hinged on converting private aspects of everyday life into matters of public importance. Settlement house workers and church leaders wanted to convert aspects of the private lives of immigrants into public displays of religious and ethnic traditions. For settlement houses, the path to Mexicans’ acceptance in public life was performing ethnic traditions and religious worship. Public acceptance of Mexicans meant being visible in a physical sense: in the streets, engaging in folk dances or festivals, and collective religious worship. Mexicans had their own concepts of what constituted public importance. From the 1930s, Mexicans opened social work records with settlement houses to acquire a more permanent and visible status as naturalized citizens and permanent residents. For them, the path to public recognition was attaining legal status and representation on paper for themselves and their families.