“Cynthia E. Orozco has written a superb history of LULAC . . . [that] represents a masterful history of the lesser-known, but no less important, civil rights movement in U.S. history.”

—Journal of Southern History

“. . . one of the most important books on Mexican American civil rights that has ever been produced. . . . the most detailed history of the beginning of this premiere Mexican American organization in the 1920s. . . . [with] fresh, often critical, commentary about previous interpretations.”

—Western Historical Quarterly

“. . . a masterful job with a most difficult subject matter. I am amazed at the historical records, documents, and oral histories compiled.”

—Ruben Bonilla, past national president of LULAC, 1979–1981

"Cynthia E. Orozco forces us to reconsider both the periodization and our fundamental understanding of Mexican American Political and social activism."

—American Historical Review

Founded by Mexican American men in 1929, the League of United Latin-American Citizens (LULAC) has usually been judged according to Chicano nationalist standards of the late 1960s and 1970s. Drawing on extensive archival research, including the personal papers of Alonso S. Perales and Adela Sloss-Vento, No Mexicans, Women, or Dogs Allowed presents the history of LULAC in a new light, restoring its early twentieth-century context.

Cynthia Orozco also provides evidence that perceptions of LULAC as a petite bourgeoisie, assimilationist, conservative, anti-Mexican, anti-working class organization belie the realities of the group's early activism. Supplemented by oral history, this sweeping study probes LULAC's predecessors, such as the Order Sons of America, blending historiography and cultural studies. Against a backdrop of the Mexican Revolution, World War I, gender discrimination, and racial segregation, No Mexicans, Women, or Dogs Allowed recasts LULAC at the forefront of civil rights movements in America.