New Books in History Cecilia Márquez, "Making the Latino South: A History of Racial Formation" (UNC Press, 2023)
Feb 22, 2026
Cecilia Márquez, Hunt Family Assistant Professor of History at Duke, studies Latinx history in the U.S. South. She maps shifting racial categories from provisional whiteness to the 'hardworking Hispanic' label. Short takes explore how Blackness shaped Latino racialization, industry-driven migration, post-2008 immigration enforcement, and surprising moments of Southern racial politics and culture.
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Provisional Whiteness For Non-Black Latinos In The Southeast
- Latino provisional whiteness in the Southeast allowed many non-Black Latinos to access white institutions without passing as white.
- Cecilia Márquez shows this meant attending white schools and living in white neighborhoods while still facing limits like exclusion from fraternal groups and the Klan.
Three Decades Of Changing Latino Racial Categories
- Latino racialization in the South shifted across decades from provisional whiteness (1940s–70s) to hardworking Hispanicness (1990s) to criminalized illegal alien after the Great Recession.
- Márquez links industry recruitment, IRCA, and economic downturns to these shifts, explaining sudden welcoming in the 1990s and later draconian laws in the 2000s.
Carla Galarza Expelled For Being Non-Black
- Carla Galarza, stepdaughter of organizer Ernesto Galarza, was expelled from a segregated Black vocational school in D.C. for being non-Black.
- Márquez uses the case to show administrators prioritized protecting scarce Black resources and defined Latinos by relation to Blackness, not whiteness.
