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

9. Continuing the Struggle

chapter 9 Continuing the Struggle For the next several months, from March through June, 1971, MAEC as well as groups of Mexican American parents, students, and community members continued to struggle on behalf of school reforms. Setbacks in the courts and inequitable treatment in the schools fueled the growing disenchantment within the district. During this period MAEC responded to the challenges raised by the courts and the schools in diverse ways. It pursued litigation, engaged in the politics of protest and group pressure, and took steps to increase its organizational stability. More significantly, MAEC underwent a transformation from an activist group to a quasi–social service organization. This chapter discusses these developments and its impact on MAEC’s school reform efforts. litigation Although MAEC had filed a lawsuit to intervene as defendant in the local desegregation case in September, 1970, by May of 1971 the court had failed to rule on the case. On May 20, 1971, Abraham Ramírez, MAEC’s legal representative , asked the district court judge for a hearing on its request for intervention since the Supreme Court had refused both the school board’s stay of the pairing order and its request to intervene in the case.1 The court held this hearing and issued its decision on the May 24, but it was not a favorable ruling for MAEC. In his ruling Judge Connally castigated Mexican Americans for trying to intervene in the desegregation case at this late stage. He argued that HISD had always treated “Latin Amer- icans as of the Anglo or white race.” For all purposes, Mexicans were considered as whites or regarded as a race apart. There never was a “separate but equal” policy applied to them in the schools, as was the case with African Americans. “Never in the fifteen years since the initiation of this action have they [Mexican Americans] complained of this treatment [being claimed as white],” he said. That is, Mexican Americans did not complain until the court of appeals ordered the pairing of certain predominantly Mexican American schools with predominantly African American ones. The motion to intervene, he argued, was filed September 11, 1970. The pairing order of the court of appeals was dated August 25, 1970. “Content to be white for these many years,” he added, “now, when the shoe begins to pinch, the would-be-intervenors wish to be treated not as whites but as an ‘identifiable ethnic group.’” “In short,” he concluded, “they wish to be ‘integrated ’ with Whites, not Blacks.”2 Even if Mexican Americans were considered an identifiable minority group, Connally noted, it did not follow that they were entitled to the relief sought. The courts, especially the Swann case, emphasized that it was the effects of “state-imposed segregation” that the courts were obligated to eliminate. Connally continued, “Neither Swann [sic] nor any other authority with which I am familiar suggests that every identifiable minority group—as Italian-American, German American, Polish American— who have been treated by the law only as white-Americans, are now entitled to escape the effects of school integration.”3 The motion to intervene was denied. MAEC’s response to Connally’s ruling was predictable.4 Leonel Castillo, chairperson of MAEC, described the decision as “disappointing” and said that he was sorry Judge Connally could not understand “the problems of Mexican Americans today.” MAEC, for instance, was not trying to “escape integrating with any group,” as Connally had stated; rather MAEC was calling for a triethnic desegregation plan, i.e., one that would involve all groups, not simply Mexican Americans and African Americans. Castillo charged that Connally was “simply unaware” of the history of Mexican Americans in Houston. “Fifteen years ago we were a small, almost insigni ficant percentage of the school population,” he said. “Since then the number of Mexican Americans in the school district has almost doubled.”5 Mexican Americans had indeed become a significant part of the total population since 1950. In 1950 they comprised less than 1 percent of the total population in Houston, a mere forty thousand out of six hundred thou148 The Struggle for Recognition, 1970–72 sand residents. Their numbers increased significantly over the next two decades so that by 1970 they comprised 12 percent of the total population.6 As for the right to be considered an identifiable minority group, Castillo said that the judge was “distinctly at...