They Loved America Too!
Teresa Wright
HIS 206 United States History II
Instructor Anderson April 10, 2016

They Loved America Too! Mexican Immigrants faced many challenges when came to America. They came to better their lives and help their families. Americans treated them as if they were dirty, filthy people.
Fleeing the instability of their homeland during the decade of the Mexican Revolution (1910-1920), the early immigrants to Silvis were lured by the promise of work in the burgeoning American railroad, where they were offered low-paid but mostly steady work. The Quad Cities was an important hub, and the Mexican families were allowed at first to live around the railroad yard, in abandoned boxcars, before moving to Second Street, where they built modest homes and a solid, self-sufficient community. Though bigotry was rampant, the community took up America's sense of urgency after the attack on Pearl Harbor, answering the call for workers in the Rock Island Arsenal and young conscripts in the Army (Harrison, Vol.82, Issue 7). The Mexican families continue to do whatever was offered to them for work. They raised their children to be young men.There were many groups sending their children to war. A small, nondescript block of Silvis, Ill., gave more young men to fight and die in World War II and the Korean War than any other "similarly sized stretch" in the United States-22 families sent a total of 57 soldiers, eight of whom died (Harrison, Vol 82, Issue 7). The Mexican Immigrant endured significant discrimination and hardship in the United States in the years after 1877 due to the Great Depression but were able to gain equality by the 1970s.

Mexican Immigrants struggled hard during the Great Depression. They were forced out of America. They were told they were no longer needed. They were knocking on doors and finding every Mexican and getting