Brown, Not White: School Integration and the Chicano Movement in Houston

11. A Racist Bunch of Anglos

chapter 11 A Racist Bunch of Anglos For the first several weeks in the fall of 1971 MAEC conducted another boycott . Unlike the one the previous year, the 1971 boycott included all public schools rather than only those affected by the pairing plan. This boycott was not as successful as expected, although MAEC encouraged between two thousand and six thousand students to boycott the schools. A significantly smaller number attended the huelga schools. Local school officials, downplaying the number of students out of school, argued that most Mexican Americans failed to heed MAEC’s call for a public school boycott. Interim superintendent J. Don Boney stated that the enrollment figures for the first day of school were within the normal range at 199,664.1 According to him, the district expected 20,752 students to be enrolled at the paired schools. However, only 14,141 students enrolled in them on the first day of school. In other words, about 25 percent , or 5,611, of those expected to enroll in the paired schools failed to show up. It is unclear how many other students in those schools not included in the pairing plan failed to attend. But even without the exact figures , the number of students who failed to enroll in the paired schools suggested that absenteeism was much more serious than officially reported to the public.2 The local mainstream media also reported that the “threatened boycott failed to materialize.” A Houston Chronicle article noted that “Only a scattering of Mexican American students failed to attend school.” These reports did not consider the large numbers of students who failed to enroll in the paired schools. As late as October, HISD reported that it could not account for several thousand students.3 Most of these “missing” students were from the paired schools.4 This chapter documents MAEC’s involvement in protest activities during the 1971–72 school year and the impact of increasing disunity and fragmentation within the Mexican American community on the struggle for recognition. rapid erosion of support for boycott The strong support for the boycott rapidly eroded within the first week. By the middle of the first week of the boycott more than 2,722 of the students out of school enrolled in the paired schools. By Friday of that week approximately 17,098 of the estimated 20,752 who were supposed to be attending the paired schools were enrolled in them. By the second week enrollment stabilized and a constant number of children were reported not showing up at their assigned schools.5 Several factors probably account for this rapid erosion of support for the boycott, including lack of support from African Americans and middle-class Mexican-origin organizations, growing disenchantment, disunity within MAEC, and growing concerns with the education provided at the huelga schools.6 The rapid erosion of support for the boycott led to two unexpected political developments: the organization of Mexican American parents within the paired schools and the leveling of racial bias charges by Chicanos against the local school district. Increased enrollment in the public schools quickly led to the formation of a new group of parents called The Paired Parents (TPP). This loosely organized group was not associated with MAEC since it accepted the pairing decision and sought to improve its implementation. Once formed, probably during the middle of the first week of school, TPP called for a meeting with local administrators to discuss problems involving Mexican American children attending paired schools. At their meeting with local school officials held at the end of the first week of school, parents raised three major concerns: danger at bus stops and on the buses, poor schedules, and lack of student discipline in the vehicles. They charged that serious problems concerning busing were making “instant dropouts” of their children. One woman predicted “a disaster ” at one of the bus stops due to narrow streets, unsupervised children, or rapidly moving buses. She also noted that since school had begun, her eight-year-old child had not returned home until after five p.m., two hours after school dismissal time.7 For two hours TPP, comprised of over two hundred parents, comA Racist Bunch of Anglos 175 plained to local administrators. TPP parents also protested the transfer from neighborhood schools and the lack of free breakfasts. Likewise they cited nonsupervision by adults at school-designated bus stops and urged of...