Even before the Depression, unemployment, low wages, 
substandard housing, and poor healthplagued many women in 
what was then one of America's poorest cities - San Antonio. 
Dividedby tradition, prejudice, or law into three distinct 
communities of Mexican Americans, Anglos, and African Americans, 
San Antonio women faced hardships based on their personal 
economic circumstances as well as their identification with a 
particular racial or ethnic group.

Women of the Depression presents a unique study of 
life in a city whose society more nearlyreflected divisions by 
the concept of caste rather than class. Caste was conferred by 
identification with a particular ethnic or racial group, and 
it defined nearly every aspect of women's lives. Historian Julia 
Kirk Blackwelder shows that Depression-era San Antonio, with its 
majority Mexican American population, its heavy dependence on 
tourism and light industry, and its domination by an Anglo 
elite, suffered differently as a whole than other American 
cities. Loss of migrant agricultural work drove thousands of 
Mexican Americans into the barrios on the west side of 
San Antonio, and with the intense repatriation fervor of the 
1930s, the fear of deportation inhibited many Mexican Americans 
from seeking public or private aid.

The author combines excerpts from personal letters, diaries, 
and interviews with government statistics to present a 
collective view of discrimination and culture and the strength 
of both in the face of crisis.



JULIA KIRK BLACKWELDER is associate dean and professor
of history in the College of Liberal Arts at Texas A&M University.
She holds a Ph.D. in American Studies from Emory University
and is the author of Now Hiring, published by Texas A&M Press
in 1997, as well as many articles and book chapters on women's 
history.


Number Two: Texas A&M Southwestern Studies