JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY AND HISTORY OF EDUCATION, VOL. 49
SEGREGATING SPANISH-SPEAKING STUDENTS IN TEXAS SCHOOLS: 1900-1945
Mike Boone
Southwest Texas State University
For nearly a century, Texas law segregated white and African-American school children in the
public schools. Separate facilities for children of these two races was the norm from 1876 until
well after the Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954. During the same period another,
extra-legal, brand of segregation existed. Never sanctioned by law, the segregation of Mexican
and Spanish-speaking children from other white children in public school classrooms was every
bit as entrenched as was the legal segregation of black and white children. For many years,
three distinct school systems operated in the state of Texas: one white, one black , and one
brown. This paper explores the practice of separate schooling for Mexican children and
discusses some of the social, cultural, and intellectual assumptions underlying it.
In January, 1930, the board of trustees of the Del Rio Independent School District, located in Val Verde County in South Texas, voted unanimously to submit a $185,000 bond issue to school district voters. The trustees needed the money to build a new high school and to complete other remodeling projects, including an expansion of the existing two-room Mexican school. Although trustees considered their proposal to be routine not everyone in the community agreed. A group of Mexican parents, assisted by legal expertise from the fledgling League of United Latin American Citizens, sought an injunction to stop the board from spending the money as proposed and to force the school district to close down the separate school for Mexican children.1 At the time of the litigation the Del Rio school district consisted of four school buildings and an athletic field, all located on the same piece of land. The high school and two elementary schools for Anglos were on one side of the property and a two room school for Mexican students, called the West End school, was on the other. The schools were separated by the athletic field. It was the expansion of the West End school to which the parents objected. They argued that , unless the court stepped in, "school authorities will continue...segregation in the West End building...."2 The parents believed the intent of the school board was to:
"...affect, and...accomplish, the complete segregation of the school children of Mexican and Spanish descent...from the school children of all other white races in the same grades, thereby excluding the one from the classrooms of the other, and denying them the right and privilege of mingling with those of the other races in the common enjoyment of identical school facilities, instruction, associations, and environment."3
It was not the building of new schools to which the parents objected, but to the continuation of a segregated education for their children.
Although the Court of Appeals ultimately decided against the Del Rio parents, Independent School District v.Salvatierra is an historically important case because it represented the first time state courts had been asked to determine the constitutionality of segregating Mexican school children in Texas public school districts.4There had been other protests against this wide spread, but not universal, practice over the years, but nothing that had involved the state court system. Most protests against separate schools had ended with local school boards, although some had reached the level of the State Superintendent of Public Instruction, who routinely upheld local school board actions. More importantly, the decision in Salvatierra defined the targets for an ultimately successful challenges to separate schools for Mexican children. For while the decision made it clear that Texas school districts could not constitutionally segregate Mexican children on the basis of national origin , it did allow separation for unspecified "educational" reasons.5 These educational reasons would remain the object of legal challenges and political activity for the next fifty years. Finally, the decision is important because in arguing their case the defendants articulated many of the social, cultural, and intellectual assumptions supporting the assignment of Mexican children to separate school facilities across much of south Texas.
Early Texas Schools Although the period of European occupation of what is now Texas extends far back, the history of public education in the state is more recent. The colonial period (before 1821) saw little attempt to provide education in any form. A sparse population, harsh frontier conditions, and the concentration of the Catholic Church on converting and civilizing native populations pushed education far down the list of survival needs for most settlers.6 Some primary schools were established during this period, particularly in San Antonio, where the 1791 census recorded 285 boys and 264 girls of school age, and at La Bahia (Goliad,) but none of these early attempts to establish public schools were successful.7 After 1821 the new republican constitution of an independent Mexico guaranteed free public education for all children and made it the duty of the governor of each state to see to it that the local municipal authorities established and maintained appropriate school facilities. Unfortunately, local municipal authorities were perpetually short of funds and few schools were ever established, a problem that sparked frequent protests to the legislature of Coahuila-Texas. An 1834 survey conducted by Juan Almonte discovered only five public schools in all of Texas above the Rio Grande.8 The situation was only marginally better in the Anglo settlements of the same period. Three schools were in operation at San Felipe de Austin in 1828, enrolling 51 pupils out of a population of school age children totaling 434. By 1831, enrollment was only 77 students out of a potential population of over 1100 children. Although there were several private academies in the Anglo settlements, few operated for very long or were able to sustain any enrollment. The transition to a Republic of Texas and then to statehood brought about little improvement. A truly viable state financed public education system was not in place in Texas until the end of Reconstruction and did not enjoy widespread popular support until the late 1880's.9
Privately supported schools for Mexican children often filled the void left by a lack of public facilities. Private and parochial schools opened in many locations across the state but were most common in south Texas, where the largest concentration of Mexican children could be found. San Antonio, Brownsville, and El Paso all had private or parochial schools in operation before 1900. Two of the most successful of these privately sponsored schools were the Collegio Altamira, which opened in Hebbronville in 1897 and continued to serve Mexican children of that area until the 1930's10 and the Mexican Preparatory School, which opened in El Paso in 1887 under the direction of Olivas V. Aoy, a well educated Spaniard. The purpose of the Preparatory School was to prepare Mexican children for entry into the segregated El Paso public schools by teaching them the English language. By 1900, the school was serving over 500 Mexican children in double shifts. Eventually incorporated into the public school system on a segregated basis, Aoy Elementary School boasted the highest enrollment of any school in the El Paso system for many years.11
When public educational facilities became available in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, Mexican parents were quick to enroll their children. Some of the public facilities were segregated, others were not. Mexican school children were segregated in the public school systems of Brownsville, El Paso, and San Antonio from the beginning. In Corpus Christi, Mexican and Anglo children went to the same schools.12 Educational opportunities were less common in the rural areas of South Texas, where it was not unknown for local school authorities to actively discourage school enrollment of Mexican children. Some landowners operated "rancho" schools for the Mexican children of their employees. Located on a ranch (hence the name) or large commercial farm, the rancho school term was short, the facilities primitive, and the teachers untrained. Instruction was conducted in Spanish, since the students knew little if any English. Mexican families who had the means rarely sent their children to these schools, preferring to send them out of state or to a privately supported Mexican school if one was accessible.13
The geography of Mexican segregation in Texas schools is well defined. In a study of Americanization programs in Texas schools during the period 1920-1945, Simmons14 found that the practice of separating Mexican and Anglo children in local school districts was "highly concentrated" in Central Texas, along the Gulf Coast, and in the Lower Rio Grande Valley, while being less frequent in West Texas and in the Texas Panhandle. The first official listing of separate "Mexican" schools appears in the 1922 Texas Public School Directory. School districts in seven counties, Nueces, Kerr, Kleberg, Caldwell, Hidalgo, Lubbock and Williamson, operated separate school facilities for Mexican and Anglo children. The number of districts reporting separate Mexican schools rose until the 1936-37 school year.15 By then perhaps 90% of the school districts in south Texas were segregated.
In 1928 Herschel T. Manuel surveyed the conditions of education for Mexican and Spanish-speaking students in Texas,16 One part of his study examined segregation practices of common school districts in 48 south Texas counties. His findings are revealing. What he discovered was a variety of arrangements, including places where Mexican and Anglo children were taught together in the same schools and by the same teachers, places where fully or partially segregated facilities were common, and places in which no provision of any kind for the schooling of Mexican children had been made. For example, Mexican and Anglo children were being educated together in 4 "border" counties and in 7 of 21 "near border" counties. But as Manuel focused his attention away from the border, he found increasing instances of segregated schooling except in places where the Mexican population was "very small."17 School districts in Cameron, Hudspeth, Presidio, Starr, Jim Hogg, Kleberg, Matagorda, McMillan, Uvalde, and Wilson counties reported no separate schools for Mexican children in the 1928-29 school year. In Atascosa, Bee, De Witt, Frio, Goliad, Gonzales, Guadeloupe, Karnes, Live Oak, Medina, Rufugio, and Victoria counties, arrangements varied. Some districts in these counties segregated Mexican students, others did not. In Caldwell and Culbertson counties school facilities were totally segregated and in Brown County only summer schools for Mexican children were available. Superintendents of 17 school districts across Texas reported having no school facilities for Mexican children, even though Mexican children were living in the district. Manuel concluded "...It is certain that [this] does not tell even approximately the whole story. Even where facilities were technically available to all the white children of the community, a policy of antagonism on the part of the other white population too often means that actually the Mexican child has no school open to him."Adapted from Montejano, p. 247. 18
The most common method of segregation was to house Mexican children in separate facilities for the lower grades. Theoretically, Mexican students were to be admitted to Anglo schools when they completed the restricted grades. Schools in Abilene, Charlotte, Del Rio, Port Lavaca, and Temple, for example, segregated Mexican children in grades 1-3. Schools in Crystal City, Edinburg, Harlingen, Kerrville, McAllen, Mercedes, Mission, Pharr-San Juan, Raymondville, Uvalde, and Weslaco separated Mexican children in grades 1-4 or 1-5. Alpine, Brady, Goose Creek, Kenedy, Kingsville, Rosebud, Runge, San Benito, and Taylor maintained separate schools through grades 6-7.
Segregation persisted in south Texas twenty years after Manuel's initial study. Little's study of the education of Spanish-speaking children for the school year 1942-43 found segregation to be "...a fixed practice in many school systems of Texas."19 Although the grades into which Mexican-American children were separated continued to vary widely from school district to school district, the practice of providing separate school facilities did not. Housing patterns used by 122 school districts in 59 counties that school year indicated that the most common practice continued to be to separate Mexican school children in grades 1-8. Eighty-three of the one hundred and twenty-two districts followed this pattern. Only two school districts segregated Mexican children for all 12 grades. 20 The low incidence of separate facilities for Mexican school children after grade 8 is indicative of the low numbers of these children who continued their education beyond that point.
Although not legally prevented from joining their Anglo classmates in the public schools after completing segregated schooling, many Mexican children failed to take advantage of the opportunity. Either Mexican children were needed to work to help support their families or they were discouraged, some times physically, from further education. Mexican children who did attempt to move to the Anglo school in a community were often the subject of hazing and other forms of social ostracism.21 While some children persisted in continuing their education, many others refrained from even trying to attend school beyond the segregated grades out of fear or discomfort. The pattern of a prematurely terminated education for Mexican children was not universal across south Texas, but occurrences were frequent enough to reflect a deliberate pattern of discrimination.
School facilities provided for Mexican children were commonly substandard. School buildings tended to be small, ramshackle, ill-maintained and ill-equipped. Teachers were less well-paid and well-trained than teachers in the Anglo schools, and were frequently just marking time until a better paying position in an Anglo school became available. Conditions in Mexican schools were difficult, but not always because school districts lacked funds. Texas public schools of the time received an equal amount of state funds for each "scholastic" between the ages of six and seventeen residing within the district, regardless of race. These state funds could be supplemented by local funds. While not overly generous, funding for schools was at least adequate by the standards of the day. It was common practice for local school authorities to use the bulk of these funds, allocated for both Mexican and Anglo students, for Anglo schools. Little was left over to maintain and supply Mexican schools or to secure well-trained teachers for them. The practice of using school funds appropriated for Mexican children for the support of Anglo schools was a general practice in numerous districts across south Texas.22 One school superintendent in Nueces county was quoted as saying "Mexicans in this district draw about $2,000....We also have an $18,000 property tax and all that goes on the white school."23 Not everyone who benefited from the shift in funds to Anglo schools was comfortable with the practice. One large landowner in Dimmit County remarked that "...the school board uses money it gets from the State for the Mexican scholastics on the white school. If they didn't have to, they wouldn't have any school for the Mexicans....when you say anything to
them about it, their attitude is 'Oh, well, they're Mexicans.'"24 Mexican-American students were denied funds that were rightfully theirs.
David Monetejano suggests that several factors worked together to determine whether school
facilities in a particular county were segregated or not. Looking at data from fourteen counties in
Manuel's original sample, Montejano noted a relationship between population, land ownership,
and predominant economic activity. For example, in counties where the Anglo population was
under 20% schools tended to be integrated. On the other hand in counties where the Anglo
population exceeded 20% Mexican students were segregated.25 The following table illustrates this
pattern:
Integrated Counties % Anglo
Zapata 1.0
Jim Hogg 14.8
Brooks 17.2
Webb 10.6
Duva l8.4
Starr 3.6
Segregated Counties % Anglo
Cameron 34.3
Hidalgo 24.0
Kleberg 44.4
Jim Wells 42.5
Wilacy 37.7
Nueces 49.9
Dimmit 24.7
Zavala 30.3
Adapted from Montejano, p. 169.
Two other factors which appeared to be related to segregation of Mexican school children were the extent of Mexican land ownership in a county and its predominant economic activity. Counties in which Mexican land ownership was widespread and ranching was the predominant economic activity ("Mexican counties") were integrated. Counties in which land was concentrated in the hands of Anglo ownership and in which the predominant economic activity was commercial agriculture ("Anglo counties") were segregated. The following table illustrates this relationship:
"Mexican Counties:" Economic Category
Zapata: Ranch
Jim Hogg: Ranch
Brooks: Ranch
Webb: Ranch
Duval: Ranch-Farm
Starr: Ranch-Farm
"Anglo Counties:" Economic Category
Kenedy: Ranch
Kleberg: Ranch-Farm
Jim Wells: Ranch-Farm
Wilacy: Farm
Cameron: Farm
Hidalgo: Farm
Nueces: Farm
Adapted from Montejano, p. 247.
It should be noted that the "Mexican" counties were older in terms of settlement than were the "Anglo" counties. Mexican counties had a longer history of occupation and a sociocultural environment dominated by large ranches (haciendas) and the quasi-feudal relationships which characterized this way of life.26 "Anglo" counties, on the other hand, were more recently settled, with newer towns and economies dominated by large commercial agricultural enterprises. Relationships between Anglos and Mexicans in the "Anglo" counties were governed by temporary, contractual work relationships and widespread segregation in all aspects of community life.27 As Montejano concludes:
In ranch counties, where there were landed Mexicans, one found Mexican office holders, access to schooling, lack of officially sanctioned discrimination, and other evidence suggesting that being Mexican carried with it no significant pejorative meaning....In the farm counties, where there were no Mexican landowners, everything was to the contrary and segregationist rules separated Anglo and Mexican thoroughly.28
Rationalizing Segregation.
Justification for segregation of Mexicans in schools and in other aspects of community life was a consequence of a changing social order in south Texas which began shortly after the turn of the century and accelerated after 1920. Large commercial agricultural enterprises displaced the ranch society which had dominated the area for decades. The world of the cattleman and the vaqueros gave way to the world of commercial farming and migrant labor.29 Paternalistic relationships with the haciendado and complacent patriarchal attitudes were replaced by wage labor, impersonal labor contracts and a "rational market orientation."30 Anglo-Mexican relations in South Texas were governed primarily by three forces which served to keep Mexicans separate: the need of commercial farmers to maintain a permanent and docile pool of wage laborers; the temporary and impersonal nature of labor contracts; and "race thinking," which played upon already existing beliefs in Mexican inferiority. One of the characteristics of the new social order in south Texas was its blatant racism.31
There were two variations to be found in "race thinking." While both variations wove together elements of Texas history and folklore, experience with other races, biological-medical theories and Anglo-Saxon nationalism, there were some differences.
"Old-timer" ideas, characteristic of Anglos who had been in Texas for more than one generation, utilized racial stereotypes rooted in frontier memories, and in war and conflict with Mexicans and Indians. "Newcomer ideas," on the other hand, tended to use themes of hygiene and germ theories prevalent in the popular culture of the times.32 The two sets of stereotypes were not exclusive to one group or the other. What differentiated old timer's views from those of newcomers was the readiness with which each group referred to one set or ideas of the other. Over time, ideas from each group tended to merge and differences in racial stereotype became less important.33
A common element running through old timer stereotypes grew out of Anglo-Texas memories of the Alamo, Goliad, the Mexican War, and years of border conflicts with Mexicans. In these memories, Mexicans were always portrayed as the enemy that Texans had fought and defeated in several declared and undeclared wars fought throughout the nineteenth century. The ambiguities of the Texas Revolution and the subtleties of international border disputes were submerged in a folklore in which Texans came to view themselves as a chosen people. The myth, embodied in the battle cry "Remember the Alamo!" became a stalwart of popular culture and an essential part of school curricula and state wide celebrations. The "Mexican as enemy" myth made it easy to denigrate Mexicans as inferior and to render any suggestion of equality between Texan and Mexican totally unthinkable.
By the time newcomers came to dominate much of south Texas, the world of the old timer had passed. Tales of frontier conflict appealed largely as history or as romanticized tales of adventure. What was more relevant to the new entrepreneurs who developed large commercial agricultural holdings and to other Anglos who moved within their world was reference to hygiene. Mexicans were "dirty." Among farmers and others members of the farm society, hygienic concerns became a useful vehicle for separation of Mexicans.34 The pejorative term "dirty" referred to more than just bodily uncleanness . It was also a synonym for dark skin color and an inferior social position. It became, moreover, a description of the Mexican's status as a field laborer. When Anglos spoke of Mexicans being "dirty," they frequently didn't mean unclean in a physical sense, but dirty in the sense of being one who grubs in the dirt for a living. "Dirty " also came to denote the status of living conditions in the "Little Mexicos" of south Texas. Ultimately, the metaphor of Mexicans as a dirty people came to symbolize the fact that farm labor was exclusively the province of Mexicans and to generalize about the physical conditions of Mexican communities.35 The reality of living conditions for many poor Mexican families was deplorable. Unpainted one- or two-room shacks, dirt floors, and outdoor toilets were commonplace. Cooking was often done out of doors over open fires when weather conditions permitted. Children slept on dirt floors rolled up in quilts. Clothing was stored in boxes or on open shelves. Under such conditions cleanliness was impossible and sickness rampant. That such conditions might be the result of low wages and seasonal employment largely escaped the notice of many Texans.
The theme of Mexican hygiene thus carried with it several meanings for Anglo Texans. It referred to race, to work positions, to living conditions, as well as general hygiene. The theme recurred several times in segregationist statements as justification for keeping Anglos and Mexicans apart, especially in public schools. The theme was broad enough to include matters of hygiene, race, and class. As Montejano says, "...The idea of dirtiness was sufficiently ambiguous to accommodate the various interpretations of why the Mexican had to be kept separate; yet it was sufficiently meaningful to represent the collective sentiment---the Mexican was inferior, untouchable, detestable."36
Rationalizations for separating English-speaking and Spanish-speaking children were often disingenuous. For instance, in presenting the Del Rio school district's case for separate facilities, the school superintendent voiced a generally accepted justification. He argued that the assignment of Mexican children to the West End school was based not on prejudice, but on sound educational considerations. "The whole proposition was from a standpoint of instruction and fair opportunity of all children alike. That was the only consideration I had in the matter."37 In fact, the presence of large numbers of Mexican children did present two major problems to school authorities. First, Mexican children did have irregular attendance habits:
We [find] that a great number of these people are at work in cotton fields and on ranches, and some of them go entirely out of the district in the fall season, that is, return in the fall and enter school late, and in considerable numbers, and where you have already organized your classes on a basis of certain size...you are greatly hampered if a great number of people continue to drop in. 38
Little found a similar pattern of attendance among Mexican students in his 1942 study. School attendance of Spanish- speaking children tended to follow a predictable cycle : lowest in September, peaking in December through March, and then declining as the weather warmed and the fields were ready for work. While the need of poor Mexican families to have their children working certainly contributed to the lack of regular attendance, Little also suggested that "...It {irregular attendance] may be a direct result of the school's failure to make the necessary adaptations in curriculum content and in methodology."39
The second major educational justification for placing Mexican children in separate schools was the issue of a non-English home language. School authorities argued that when Spanish-speaking children were placed in the same classroom as English-speaking Anglo children , they were at a distinct disadvantage. Mexican children were "handicapped because they are slow in reading English and read it with difficulty, and as a consequence, fail in considerable numbers in English and history."40 It was thought to be kinder to Spanish-speaking children to be placed in their own classrooms where they could learn to communicate in English, rather than in classrooms with children who already knew the language. The theme of language deficiency was still being sounded by school authorities in the 1940's. Little asked several superintendents why Spanish-speaking children received a separate education in their districts. These were some of the answers he received:
We think that in the elementary schools we can give them better opportunities to learn English and other fundamentals so difficult to get otherwise.
They [Spanish-speaking students] are not at the disadvantage of being graded in English on the same standards as Anglo-Americans who are speaking their native tongue.
Children with language difficulty can be given special treatment and special methods in teaching my be employed.41
But if gaining proficiency in the English language were the only reasons for housing Spanish-speaking children in separate schools, Little considered it a "...tremendous waste, both of human resources and of money...."42 This waste was most glaring in light of the fact that "...a respectable share" of Spanish-speaking students were not enrolled in the public schools at all and that the majority of those who were enrolled, were concentrated in the first three grades.43 Why then, Little asked, the irregular patterns of separate school facilities reaching in some cases all the way to the twelfth grade? Moreover, as George I. Sanchez argued, there is more to education than learning English:
There are many phases of the curriculum and many activities of the school life that are not dependent upon proficiency in English...... English is but one small part of the education to be attained in the primary grades, and many significant parts of that education arise out of school activities that depend very little on proficiency in English.... [E]ven if English could be learned best under segregation, there is no doubt that the rest of education would suffer....44
Sanchez also noted that children from homes and communities where other non-English languages predominated were not segregated as were Spanish-speaking children. Indeed, in these communities, school authorities accepted the "very logical and pedagogically sound" idea that foreign home-language children learn English best when they are in constant contact with English-speaking children.45 The practice of segregating Spanish-speaking Mexican students could not be justified on educational grounds
. Reliance on suspect educational justifications for segregating Spanish-speaking children were supported by other questionable practices. One of the most widely adopted of these was the failure to enforce the compulsory attendance laws of the state. During the period under discussion, Texas law required all children between the ages of eight and fourteen, living within two and one-half road miles of a school house, to attend school for 100 days a year.46 In many places across south Texas, school authorities either neglected or were strongly encouraged not to enforce the law for Mexican children. Taylor recorded the following comments from four superintendents of small Nueces County towns:
The board won't let me enforce the compulsory attendance law....If I tried to enforce the compulsory attendance law here the board would get sore ....so I don't say anything.
The trustees say "We have too many Mexicans [in school] now. Don't build up any more Mexican enrollment...We would have to have a new building and three or four teachers."
We have absentee owners and they are not interested and the Mexicans are not interested, so we let the law slide.
The compulsory attendance law is a dead letter. There is no effort to enforce it. Nobody cares.47
Some of the most powerful influences on school authorities to ignore the compulsory attendance law was the attitude of large farm owners. Many farmers served on local school boards, especially in the rural areas, and did not want Spanish-speaking children to receive much of an education. It was generally believed that the more education Mexicans received, the less amenable they were to field work and the more likely they were to move to the cities for higher paying jobs.48 Thus, keeping an available labor pool played a role in the non enforcement of the compulsory attendance law.
In communities where schools were provided for Mexican children, the school year tended to be shorter than the year for Anglo children. In Nueces County, for example, open periods for Mexican schools ranged from one to four months shorter than periods during which Anglo schools were open. One school trustee in the county noted that "We start the Mexican school one month after the whites' and not four or five would come if we opened it [earlier.] We stop the Mexican school term one month early for cotton chopping."49
The quality of instruction in the Mexican schools was also frequently lower than that offered to Anglo children. This was because teachers in the Mexican schools were often poorly trained and less experienced than teachers in Anglo schools. Teachers in Mexican schools were also paid less, partly because of shorter school terms, but also because school officials staffed the Mexican schools with inexperienced teachers and with teachers who were not considered good enough to teach Anglo children.50 Some Anglo teachers simply did not like to teach Mexican children, citing lack of regular attendance of their students, an unfamiliar cultural background, and a native language they did not understand. But other teachers preferred to work with Mexican children, finding them "eager and appreciative" and hard workers when teachers treated them well and they understood what was expected of them. Others felt that Mexican children were easier to discipline than Anglo students. One Neuces County school teacher told Taylor " The Mexicans are easier to handle than the Americans. The parents come to me and say 'Give me back the bones.'"51 As a consequence, the education Mexican children received in their segregated schools was of an uneven and uncertain quality. Taylor's summation of the factors affecting the education of Spanish-speaking children in Nueces county is worth quoting at length, since it represents conditions in many south Texas school districts of the time. Taylor summarized his findings this way:
To the historical and contemporary factors in the
failure of such a large number of Mexicans to obtain sufficient education to alter their socio-economic status a few more points may be cited which elaborate or add to those already mentioned....Wrong methods of instruction, unsuitable text books, improperly trained, low-salaried and sometimes uninterested teachers, poor and often unattractive buildings and equipment, all retard the educational advance. The fact of a different home language is the most serious instructional handicap. A sense of shame and dissatisfaction arising from failure to maintain the educational pace of other is a further obstacle to many. Segregation of Mexican from American school children sometimes, but not always, operated to the same end; frequently it contributed to the provision of substandard [education] for the Mexican children. 52
Problems of poverty and discrimination both in education and in other aspects of community life, would continue to plague Texans of Mexican heritage for many decades to come. It would take the
determination of Mexican-Americans no longer willing to be treated as second class citizens, the
impact of the civil rights movement, and a shift from private to corporate ownership of large
commercial farms before the situation would change and an era of extra-legal segregation would
come to an end. The evolution of Anglo-Mexican relations along the border in the twentieth
century has been slow and painful and much more still remains to be done. But sometimes in the
face of what appear to be unsolvable social problems, it is important to remember how far we
have already come.ENDNOTES
1. Independent School District v. Salvatierra, 33 S. W. 2d, 790.
2. Quoted in San Miguel,-Let All of Them Take Heed: Mexican-Americans and the Campaign for Educational Equality in Texas, 1910-1981. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987. p.79.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.See also Foley, Douglas E., Clarice Mota, Donald E. Post, and Ignacio Lozano, From Peones to Politicos: Class and Ethnicity in a South Texas Town, 1900-1987. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1988. and De Leon, Arnoldo, The Tejano Community, 1836-1900. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1982.
6. Eby, Frederick. The Development of Education in Texas. New York: The Macmillan Co., 1925. And Berger, Max, "Education in Texas during the Spanish and Mexican Periods." The Southwestern Historical Quarterly , LI, July, 1947: 41-53.
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid.
10. San Miguel, Let All of Them Take Heed..
11. San Miguel, Let All of Them Take Heed; Garcia, Mario T., Desert Immigrants: The Mexicans of El Paso, 1880-1920. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981.
12 San Miguel, Let All of Them Take Heed; Garcia, Desert Immigrants, Taylor, Paul, An
American-Mexican Frontier: Nueces County, Texas. New York: Russell and Russell, 1934.; San
Miguel,"From a Dual to a Tripartite School System: The Origins and Development of Educational
Segregation in Corpus Christi, Texas." Integrated Education, 17 (September-December, 1979) :
27-38.
13. San Miguel, Let All of Them Take Heed. Manuel, Hershel T., The Education of Mexican and Spanish-Speaking Children in Texas.Austin: The University of Texas Press, 1930.
14. Simmons, Thomas E. "The Citizen Factories: The Americanization of Mexican Students in Texas Public Schools, 1920-1945." Unpublished Ph. D. dissertation, Texas A & M University, 1976.
15. Ibid.
16. Manuel, The Education of Mexican and Spanish-Speaking Children in Texas.
17. Ibid
18. Ibid, p. 72.
19. Little, Wilson, Spanish-Speaking Children in Texas. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1944.
20. Ibid.
21. Taylor, An American-Mexican Frontier. Little, Spanish-Speaking Children in Texas.
22. San Miguel, Let All of Them Take Heed.
23. Taylor, An American-Mexican Frontier.
24. Taylor, Mexican Labor in the United States.
25. Montejan, Anglos and Mexicans in the Making of Texas.
26. Ibid.
27. Ibid.
28. Ibid, p.253.
29. Montejano, Daniel, Anglos and Mexicans in the Making of Texas, 1836-1986. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987.
30. Ibid.
31. Ibid. See also Taylor, Mexican Labor.
32. Montejano, Anglos and Mexicans.
33. Ibid.
34. Ibid. See also Taylor, An American-Mexican Frontier
35. Ibid.
36. Ibid, p. 228.
37. Quoted in San Miguel, Let All of Them Take Heed, p. 80.
38. Ibid.
39. Little, Spanish-Speaking Children in Texas , p. 56.
40. Quoted in San Miguel, Let All of Them Take Heed, p.80.
41. Little, Spanish-Speaking Children in Texas, p. 60.
42. Ibid, p. 62.
43. Ibid.
44. Sanchez, George I. Concerning Segregation of Spanish-Speaking Children in Public Schools. Inter-American Education Occasional Papers, IX, Austin: University of Texas Press, 1951, p. 23.
45. Ibid.
46. Taylor, An American-Mexican Frontier.
47. Ibid., pp. 194-95.
48. ibid.
49. Ibid., p. 201.
50. Taylor, An American-Mexican Frontier; Manuel, The Education of Mexican and Spanish-Speaking Children in Texas.
51. Taylor, An American-Mexican Frontier .
52. Ibid., pp. 209-210.