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The Citizens Committee for Defense of Mexican American Youth deplores attacks against the Mexican youth by
organized civilian hoodlums and army and navy forces. We feel that incitement for such action comes directly
from newspapers which in the last few days have run rampant in their headlines, stories and editorials.
It is because of a similar hysteria that 17 Mexican-American boys were convicted in a Los Angeles courtroom
filled with prejudice and hatred, six months ago. Our Committee is now appealing this case in an effort to obtain
justice for these boys.
We feel that behind the confusion created by the obvious disruptive forces in the last few days, lied a well
thought-out Axis plan, carried out most successfully by Axis agents in our midst.
We believe that we owe it first of all to our Nation now locked in a death struggle against Hitlerism to get to the
bottom of this outrage and to root out the rats gnawing at our vitals.
In the name of our Good Neighbor Policy, we must get to the source of this outbreak. Our Latin-American
neighbots[sic] will seriously question our integrity when they learn that we mistreat and terrorize our minorities.
We believe it is imperative that all of our elected representatives, national, state and city, as well as our state lawenforcement agencies get on the job at once to make a thorough investigation and to punish the culprits for their
acts of treason.
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If we are to win the war and the peace for democracy, we must unite now in a concerted effort to rid ourselves of
the Hitler plague on the home front.
CITIZENS COMMITTEE FOR DEFENSE OF
MEXICAN-AMERICAN YOUTH
(Signed)
Chairman
About this text
Courtesy of Dept of Special Collections/UCLA Library, A1713 Charles E. Young Research Library, 405 Hilgard
Ave, Box 951575, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1575; http://www.library.ucla.edu/libraries/special/scweb/
http://content.cdlib.org/view?docId=hb3199p1kp&brand=oac4
Title: Citizens' Committee for the Defense of Mexican American Youth deplore attacks against Mexican youth
By: Citizens' Committee for the Defense of Mexican-American Youth, Author
Date: June 1943
Contributing Institution: Dept of Special Collections/UCLA Library, A1713 Charles E. Young Research Library,
405 Hilgard Ave, Box 951575, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1575; http://www.library.ucla.edu/libraries/special/scweb/
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Sleepy Lagoon Defense Committee
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