This part of the coursework brings us to the history of the formal Chicano Civil Rights Movement Era in San Antonio, Texas. I ask students to engage with selected sources to learn about a very important yet often silenced history of educational activism in our own front yard.
Texas was central to important civil rights legislation signed into law in United States during the 1960s. In fact, when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights in 1965, he focused on his experiences teaching at a segregated Mexican school in Cotulla, Texas, as shown in the following 2 minute clip of the speech he made at the signing. He drew from these experiences to create civil rights legislation for the nation.
watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kncINtBbVY
here are numerous ways to teach about the Chicano Civil Rights Movement Era in the region. Given the importance of education to the students I encounter at NVC, I like to introduce my classes to the hidden history of the Edgewood Walkout, the Supreme Court case that led to one of the worst court decisions in history, and National Hearing on Mexican American Civil Rights in Texas that took place over six days in San Antonio, Texas.
I like this history because it emphasizes the relationships between organized protests such as a walkout or a march to court hearings and the creation of policy to addresses patterns of power that exist at the structural level. Public actions, like protests, bring attention to things otherwise ignored and often have led to structural changes in society over time. I also appreciate the way this story emphasizes the willingness of those who came before us to work for a better educational system for all, in Texas and beyond. We still have a long way to go and, as I have emphasized throughout the course, the work begins with awareness.
This page teaches about race relations in 1960s San Antonio through a discussion about the (1) the young people who started a state-wide school walkouts, (2) a six-day national hearing on Mexican American Civil Rights in Texas, and (3) a court case that exposed and challenged unequal educational financing in Texas and led to changes in other states (though not in Texas).
Historical Context: Structural Racism in 1960s San Antonio
The history of redlining in 1930s San Antonio led to the creation of a highly segregated city. Redlining refers to the practice of using red lines on a city map to create racialized zip codes and keep Black and Brown people from entering into better-funded White-only neighborhoods. A generation later, in the 1960s, the city remained highly segregated (it still does). The following audio source tells the story of the 1968 investigative report that exposed the effects of historical economic segregation in the lives of many Mexican Americans in San Antonio. Listen for the attitudes about Mexican Americans and education during the 1960s.
Even today, San Antonio is consistently found to be one of the most economically segregated cities in the United States (Source: “City leaders address economic segregation in San Antonio (Links to an external site.)”) and just last year, 2020, city leaders passed a resolution declaring systemic racism in the city a public health crisis (Source: City Council Officially Declares Racism a Public Health Crisis).
There is a very long history of educational activism in Texas and historically marginalized groups have always fought for better access to better schools. In fact, as early as the 1880s, Mexican Americans had created their own schools in Texas to educate their children in the face of widespread anti-Mexican racism (Source: ‘Escuelitas Rose Out of a Response to Segregated Mexican Schools (Links to an external site.)).
The Edgewood walkout was focused on access to quality education. Students were not being prepared to attend college after high school and they wanted access to quality education that would provide them choices in life so that they could determine their own paths. Access to an education that prepared students for higher education was a life or death issue in 1960s San Antonio. Mexican Americans in Texas experienced disproportionate deaths in Vietnam and the Edgewood district was the hardest hit in the nation (Source: “Edgewood memorial ceremony honors 53 Vietnam War casualties (Links to an external site.)”). Access to higher education meant having a choice to enlist versus being drafted into the war.
As I explained on the Discussion Board this week, the Civil Rights movement radiated across the world and the country in 1968. The Edgewood High School Walkout was greatly inspired by the Los Angeles High School walkouts that occurred earlier that year. In turn, the Edgewood walkout inspired numerous student protests across Texas. The image below shows a list that traces the school walkouts across the state starting with Edgewood (This image is taken from the program for a conference on this history that took place in 2019 and shows a list of 18 school walkouts across Texas that followed the Edgewood walkout in San Antonio):
The following video source offers a good introduction to the walkout from the perspective of students who attended Edgewood in 1968. Listen carefully to their perspectives, particularly the reasons they give for deciding whether to participate in the walkout. Please note, a coat of paint and other cosmetic repairs to the building does not adequately address generations of segregation and exclusion. That is not the most important outcome of the Walkout. You must keep reading to learn more about the court cases and hearing that followed. For many of these students, the most important change occurred within them as they learned to expect and demand their rights.
Edgewood and the Hearing on Mexican American Civil Rights in Texas
The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights was paying attention to the effects of systemic racism in Texas and this led to the 1968 United States Commission Hearing on Mexican American Civil Rights that took place in San Antonio, Texas, December 9-14, 1968. Here is a photo of part of the audience at the hearing.
Many people testified over the six days that this historic event occurred and the hearing proceedings are transcribed and published in book form and available for free through Google Books at the following link: Hearing Held in San Antonio, Texas, December 9-14, 1968 . There are many reports of police brutality against Mexican Americans and African Americans documented in the hearing. Many parts of the hearing expose a shared experience with systemic oppression in San Antonio.
Among the array of speakers at the hearing, five San Antonio youth, from the Edgewood-Lanier School District, testified to bring attention to their experiences with inadequate schooling. The students who participated in the hearing were: Martin Cantu, Homer Garcia, Edgar Lozano, Irene Ramirez, and Jose Vasquez and their moving testimonies begin on page 179 and end on page 204 of the hearing proceedings source linked here again for your convenience: Hearing Held in San Antonio, Texas, December 9-14, 1968 (Links to an external site.). Additionally, here is a fabulous photo of these awesome young people testifying at the hearing:
In one part of his testimony, young Edgar Lozano describes the Alamo myth while exposing the effects of that anti-Mexican story in his life. Lozano explains that he has been taught to believe that Mexicans lost at the Alamo and that the ideologies supporting that misinformation have had a serious effect on social relations in the region. He explains that he has grown up feeling like an outsider and describes his efforts to find information beyond the mainstream Alamo myth that was all around him.
The Hearing on Mexican American Civil Rights that took place in San Antonio added to the national attention it was receiving due to the investigative report on poverty and the walkouts that began spreading over the region. There was also a lawsuit that made it to the Supreme Court. Read on, to find out what happened.
Edgewood: The Supreme Court Case
On July 10, 1968, father of Edgewood students, Demetrio Rodrguez and seven other Edgewood parents filed a class action lawsuit called, Rodrguez et al. v. San Antonio ISD. The case exposed how the tax rates in the Edgewood school district were among the highest in the country but resulted in only $37 per student while the county’s wealthiest school district, Alamo Heights, afforded $413 per student. One of my favorite historical figures was also central to the case and I believe everyone should know about her extraordinary life and activism in San Antonio. Alberta Zepeda Snid worked endlessly for racial justice in San Antonio. Even her marriage to a Black man was in confrontation with laws about inter-marriage. Her personal and political identities merged because the political system always made its way into her intimate life. Here is a link to learn more about Alberta Zepeda Snid for those who are interested: TSHA entry (Links to an external site.).
In 1971, a federal district court declared the Texas school-finance system unconstitutional in this landmark case, but the celebration was short lived. The state of Texas filed an appeal, thereby sending the case to the United States Supreme Court as, San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodrguez. The attorneys general from twenty-five different states filed formal letters of support, or amicus briefs, on Rodrguez’s side. Even so, the newly appointed conservative members of the court decided against the Edgewood parents and brazenly declared that education is not a fundamental right in the United States, but a privilege. Legal scholars have referred to this ruling as one of the worst Supreme Court decisions in history that led to the perpetuation of unequal educational systems that we still feel today (Source: “The Worst Supreme Court Decisions Since 1960 (Links to an external site.)”). The Edgewood case led to changes in school financing in other states but not in Texas and we have work to do. Journalist, Matt Worthington, wrote an excellent series of investigative reports on the history of the lawsuit and unequal school financing in Texas and they are great resources for more information if you are interested in learning more. It is not necessary for this CTA and I am offering the info for those who want to learn more. Here are links to the four part series on the topic he published in 2017: “Why Americans have no right to an education (Links to an external site.),” “How San Antonio segregated its schools (Links to an external site.),” and “How San Antonio left Edgewood to fend for itself, (Links to an external site.)” and “ICYMI: This was all about racism (Links to an external site.).”
The point is, we have this history of people who came before us working for better education and, while they made progress and helped provide a legacy of court cases, they confronted resistance from those seeking to conserve inequity and we still have work to do. For these reasons we should know about these three important events in Mexican American History: The Edgewood Walkout, the Supreme Court Case that centered on unequal school financing practices in Texas, and The 1968 hearing on Mexican American Civil Rights.
writing assignment:
CTA Writing Instructions (1-2 pages, double-spaced, no format or citations required, point to course materials in your writing)
I shared many related sources on this page to teach you about the little-known history of the Edgewood Walkout, the Supreme Court Case that resulted in one of the worst decisions in our history, and the six-day Hearing on Mexican American Civil Rights that took place in San Antonio. For your critical thinking activity this week I ask students to teach one other person about any part of the history presented on this page. You may use social media if you want to. After you have taken some time to teach another person about this history, write a 1-2 page reflection that describes
what you did to fulfill this challenge,
which sources you used to teach,
how that other person/people responded,
and what you learned about Mexican American History in that process.
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