The summer and fall months of 1968 were emotionally very difficult months for me. I could not accept the fact that I was leaving the Southwest, the Mexican-American border, and the many movements and programs with which I was associated. I sorrowed inside at leaving so many fine Mexican American and Anglo-American friends with whom I had worked so hard to establish anti- poverty programs in El Paso and in New Mexico. When walking the streets of South El Paso I often choked up after talking with the local people who had come to mean so much to me. South El Paso and northern New Mexico were the two poles of my spiritual home.
My basic reasons for returning to Utah were to be of assistance to my aging father and to permit my children to intimately know their living grandparents. Having grown up without grandparents it seemed important to me that my children should know theirs. I also hoped to find a protected academic base to foray into New Mexico without running the risk of being fired. I had grown tired of the constant threats and pressures exerted upon me by the administration of the University of Texas at El Paso and the primitive Board of Regents of the University of Texas system. I was a bit surprised that the University of Utah actually hired me in spite of all the efforts of the John Birch Society and other right wing groups to prevent my university employment.
The year was also darkened by the incredible assassinations of Martin Luther King and Senator Robert Kennedy. I could not help but wonder if both were the victims of some incredible right wing plot to assassinate liberal leaders. The fabric of American life seemed to be unraveling in the fires of burning ghettoes, the massive revolt against traditional American values, and the destruction of the War Against Poverty by middle class pseudo radical movements against the War in Viet Nam. I had little faith in the so called New Left lost in the illusions of sex, drugs, alcohol, and infinite freedom from responsibility. If they had forged a dynamic, vibrant political movement with well-defined political goals, the political history of the past twenty years might have been quite different.
When the 1968 fall quarter began at the University of Utah I enjoyed the collegiality and friendship of members of the Department. The majority were Mormon, who got along very well with each other. Ray Canning was the only sour note. I had not been on campus more than a week when two junior faculty, Donald Henderson and Charles Anderson told me that they had been savaged by Ray Canning to such an extent that they were leaving. Donald went to the University of Tennessee and Charles Anderson, a brilliant scholar with the potential of a star traveled to Sweden. Upon his return to the United States he secured a position in an Idaho University and later killed himself.
Ray Canning sought me out apparently believing that I was alienated from the Mormon Church. I had known Ray since we were together at the Brigham Young University in the 1940's. Ray at the time was a very devout member of the Church publishing regularly in Church journals. President Wilkinson securing tithing records of B.Y.U. faculty members that presumably were confidential found that Ray was not paying the amount of tithing that Wilkinson felt he should. Reed Bradford, chair of the Department of Sociology at B.Y.U. was asked to "council" with Ray. Ray became embittered toward the Church, resigned from the B.Y.U. and secured a position of dean of the summer school at the University of Utah. Later serving as an assistant dean he ended up as a tenured member of the Department of Sociology with a chip on his shoulder toward Mormons, Mormonism,
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Utah, and Department faculty. He asked me to help him "improve" the department. His friendship, even though I hired his daughter and daughter-in-law to work for me, cooled very rapidly when he found out that I was still active in the Church.
The people of the Parleys Fifth Ward into which we first settled were very talented, friendly, and congenial. Ruth found many musicians in the ward who shared her musical and artistic interests. Our boys were quickly absorbed into neighborhood peer groups. I also found a congenial group of seventies and high priests who shared my intellectual interests in Church History and Mormon Culture. Bishop Edson A. Porter had worked with my father on the Central Welfare Committee of the Church. He and his counselors did all they could to make us feel welcomed. We thoroughly enjoyed the year we lived in this ward and regretted leaving it.
Shortly after I arrived in Salt Lake City, Tom Jones from the Colorado Migrant Council appeared in my office to volunteer his assistance in the development of local programs benefiting low income people and Mexican Americans. He helped us develop the Utah Migrant Council and provided assistance in the operations of the Central City Community Center. Tom remained in Salt Lake City for several years and then wandered off to the Midwest ultimately ending up in Washington, D.C.
He and I visited Father Merrill, pastor of Our Lady of Guadalupe Parish and founder of the Guadalupe Center, a Mexican American settlement house on the West side. Father Merrill for years was involved in the affairs of the Mexican American Community. Respected by everyone, he played an important role in the organization of Socio, the Utah Migrant Council, and other Mexican American organizations and programs. A compassionate man born a Mormon, he became a Catholic priest. Later he left the priesthood and the Catholic Church, married, and became an Episcopalian minister interested in the peace movement.
Through him I met most of the Mexican American leaders of Salt Lake City such as Fred LeBlanc and Leonard Salazar, staff members of the University of Utah; Ricardo Barbero, an engineer employed at Hercules, and his wife Edna; Orlando Rivera, state employee and later vice president and faculty member at the University of Utah; John Florez; Jorge Arce-Lorretta, a Peruvian immigrant who became part of the Mexican American Community; Robert Nieves, a Puerto Rican absorbed into the Mexican American group and executive secretary of Socio for many years; and Robert, "Archie" Archuleta.
For the most part these leaders were educated middle class professionals, acculturated into Anglo American society. Many had married Anglo American women, and for the most part their knowledge of Spanish and of Mexican American history was shaky. Yet precisely because they were partially acculturated and knew how the Anglo mind worked, they were very effective leaders. But the passion and the fire that had touched my soul in New Mexico and Texas was absent. Deeply committed to the Chicano movement, they were willing to demonstrate or to take other non-violent steps to advance the Chicano movement. I liked and respected them.
As they immediately agreed to help us organize a Utah Migrant Council, I called my friend Henry Aguirre of the Migrant Labor Division of the Office of Economic Opportunity. Henry advised us to hold a series of public meetings in diverse sections of the state to secure public support, write up a program, send it to him, and he would fund it. Invigorated by his advice, we contacted every public agency in the state involved with Migrant Farm Labor to secure their support. Those in the northern part of the state with developed migrant farm programs were a bit negative until they realized the
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potentialities of a statewide council. So on November 16, 1968 we held a public meeting in Ogden to discuss the formation of a Utah Migrant Council. I chaired the sessions and spoke on the possible advantages of such a council. Old friends such as Tomas Atencio, director of the Colorado Migrant Council, Lalo Aguirre and Henry Aguirre of the Migrant Labor Division, O.E.O., and representatives of the Farmers Union, Vista, and several local community leaders spoke. The large majority of the audience primarily composed of social agency personnel favored the formation of a Utah Migrant Council. So, Father Merrill, Fred LeBlanc, Juan Florez, Jorge Arce-Loretta and myself drafted a proposal for the formation of the Utah Migrant Council. Henry Aguirre took the proposal back to Washington, D.C., had his staff review it, made some improvements, and funded it.
By the end of 1969 the Utah Migrant Council was in operation directed by Arturo Estrada. Father Craig Merrill, John Florez, Sarah Yates, Bab Publicover, Juan Guzman, Bruce Phillips, the fascinating guitarist and folk singer, and myself served as the first Board of Directors. Tom Jones provided consulting services.
I began the 1969 fall quarter with mixed feelings of sadness and anticipation. I missed my Mexican American students and my courses on the border and the Southwest. The Utah students were quite different from those at UTEP. They were more self-assured, more confident of their abilities, more reluctant to debate issues, and less willing to express their emotions or their thoughts. The one characteristic they shared with my UTEP students was that of having to work. The number of minority students on campus was very small. I could find only 6 Mexican American students.
As I was still involved with New Mexican movements and was becoming ever more involved with the Utah Mexican American community, I decided that it was better for me not to play much of a role in campus movements that were beginning to develop at the University of Utah. I taught several courses in the so-called Free University organized in 1967 by the then student body leaders, John Kesler, Lee Burnham, and Steve Gunn. Approved by the administration the affairs of the Free University were managed by a Free University Council of around 6 students and 6 faculty representatives. Never a radical organization, it encouraged students to take non-credit courses in a wide variety of areas. Once the initial student sponsors left the campus and the attention of faculty sponsors shifted to other issues, the Free University died a quiet untroubled death.
The anti-Vietnamese War movement was the most important student cause in the late 1960's. The first rally against the war took place at Liberty Park in October, 1968. Organized by the International Student Mobilization, the April Movement, and the Peace and Freedom Party, it was a sparsely attended, very mild rally. Reverend Hugh Gillilan of the First Unitarian Church and Bruce Phillips, who often called himself Utah Phillips, the Peace and Freedom Party candidate for the U.S. Senate, spoke. Efforts by more radical speakers such as John Chanonat to turn the rally into a anti- capitalist demonstration failed. A few people came, listened to the guitar music and the folk songs of Bruce Phillips, tolerated the speakers and left. With the university recognition of the Students for a Democratic Society in 1968, campus affairs became more interesting. Jim Beever, a transfer student from Michigan State University, Steve Holbrook and Jeff Fox and several others tried to organize without success a student radical movement.
The Chronicle, the University of Utah student newspaper, in 1969 was as good as any Salt Lake City newspaper and frequently scooped them on local and national news. The editor, Sylvia Kronstadt, a lovely girl with a first class mind had an instinctive feel for journalism. She wrote a very fine series of articles on the migrant labor situation in Utah that helped the Utah Migrant Council win acceptance.
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Somehow she never quite managed to realize her potential in the outside world. Another fine student reporter, Sandy Gilmore, went on to a successful career as a reporter for NBC.
It was not until spring of 1969 that the university administration began to develop an interest in minority programs. Virginia Frobes, Dean of Students, an extraordinary talented and sensitive administrator attended a conference in Chicago at which she agreed that the University of Utah would accept 6 poor black students from the Christian Ministry Academy. Few really recognized the serious social and educational problems faced by 6 black students coming from a totally different social environment.
On February 17, 1969, the Academic Vice President Charles Monson, one of the finest men I have ever known, appointed me chair of a rather large ad hoc committee on Minority Affairs to initiate planning for the development of a comprehensive minority program at the University. By March 17, 1969, the committee contained the following members: Alfred Cave, Virginia Frobes, Norman Gibbons, Russell Gordon, Lindy Kumagain, Tom Collins, Larry Leslie, Ed Moe, Charles Nabors, George Stoumbia, Lyman Tyler and three students Laurie Hammel, Brenda Colter, and Sharon Smith.
The committee divided itself into three subcommittees focusing on American Indians, Blacks, and Mexican Americans.
I served on the Mexican American Committee.
The committee developed the following goals: (1) identification of young minority high school students who had potential for university study; (2) develop relations with minority communities to create an educational environment in which more and more minority students would want to go to college; (3) to secure the financial resources necessary to finance their education; (4) to recruit minority students by visiting high schools; (5) to develop an adequate college curriculum for them in the university; (6) to acquire library resources; and (7) to recruit and train support personnel. The committee issued a policy statement on the kinds of programs the university should develop for all economically disadvantaged students. The final goal of the committee was to recruit the same percentages of students from each minority as that minority represented in the state population.
The committee changed its name and personnel in the spring of 1970. Renamed the Committee on Education for the Disadvantaged and High Risk Students, it was chaired by Vice President Charles S. Monson. The following people served on the committee: Larry L. Leslie, Franklin L. MacKean, Charles J. Nabors, Seymour Parker, Thomas M. Reed, Linn R. Rockwood, Daniel I. Steward, Asahel D. Woodrufff, and myself. The committee developed a University Outreach fund Raising Committee that by 1970 had raised around $9,000 from students and faculty to support ten minority students. The number of Mexican American students during 1970 increased from ten to thirty-five, Blacks from 55 to 70, and we acquired ten Indian students. Fred Le Blanc and Harrison Whitney were hired to advise Mexican American and Black students. Our proposed budget was $357,575 for 1969-1970.
President James C Fletcher reorganized our committee on January 13, 1970 into three committees. Thomas W. Collins, Oakley J. Gordon, Fred LeBlanc, Harrison Whitney, Leonard Salazar, and myself served as a central planning committee. A faculty committee to work with vice presidents, deans, and faculty in the recruitment of minority faculty and students consisted of Larry L. Leslie, Frank L. McKean, Charles J. Nabors, Seymour Parker, Thomas R. Reed, Linn R. Rockwood, Daniel I. Stewart, and Asahel D Woodruff. The third committee, the Outreach Committee, with Lewis M. Rogers, Charles N. Whisner, Peter Grundfossen, Dennis Lothrop, Jerold Sorensen, J. Clark Whitehead, John Buffington, and Jim Leavitt concerned itself with fund raising. The committees
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served under Charles Monson, one of the best college administrators I have known. The committees were quite effective. I was able to get them to accept my suggestion that we develop not an independent ethnic studies program with its own faculty, resources, and degrees, but rather one based on faculty recruited by diverse university departments. The minority faculty would be able to move into tenure positions and tap department resources. To me, an independent ethnic studies program would be vulnerable in a future period of shrinking resources. The minority program as it developed never had the full support of the faculty, but the university rewarded departments that recruited minority faculty and thus was able to secure their tacit cooperation. The program thus developed has stood the test of time even though its resources and administrative support dwindled
through the 1980's.
During the summer quarter of 1970, with funding from the Ford foundation the committee developed a special 8-week program for 40 Mexican American and 20 American Indian students. The program offered to the students who were brought on campus and housed in the dormitories contained (1) courses in American Indian and Mexican history and culture; (2) an intensive English course; (3) an intensive study skills course; and (4) a Physical education course. We lost very few students. the students were given special counseling and admitted into the university at the end of the summer. I was glad to note that by the end of their junior year their grade point average was higher than the grade point average of the general student body. I taught the Mexican American course. Others involved in the summer program as teachers or counselors were: Gabriel N. Della-Piana, J. Boyer Jarvis, Stanley M. Jencks, R. Edward Packard, Jr., Larry Palmatier, William R. Slager, Howard R. Sloan, Jr., and Oakley J. Gordon. The program recruited a large number of Mexican American students who eventually went on to law and other professional programs, creating the first group of Mexican American professionals of any size in Utah.
On November 3, 1969, I was appointed by Dr. Frank Johnson, Associate Dean of the Graduate School, to serve on an internal committee to evaluate a proposed Ph.D. program in Linguistics advocated by the departments of English and Anthropology. Members of my committee were Robert Erdman, Department of Special Education, and Fred W. Hagen, Department of Philosophy. We talked to members of both departments, looked at existing faculty and library resources, and supported the proposal.
After the death of my mother, My father found fulfillment in the writing of a book on the first three generations of Knowltons in Utah. The book published in 1971 won critical approval. I might add that he published a two volume autobiography in 1967 and 1968 that won considerable acclaim as one of the better Mormon autobiographies.
In spite of the constant attendance of his children and grand children, my father felt that he ought to remarry and announced to his children that he planned to find a wife. He wanted a woman who had never married, had no children, and had never been sealed to anyone in a Mormon temple. I had grave reservations about his criteria, but said little as I doubted that he would have paid much attention to my concerns. I felt that he ought to search for a widow with grown children, who had been happily married.
Old family friends in his ward, the Twenty First, introduced him to Clara Turkelson, a single woman with an adult daughter. After a brief courtship, they were married in the Salt Lake Temple on April 18, 1969. The marriage was a complete disaster. Shortly after his marriage, my father went into a deep depression that lasted until his death. My sister Jerry and I found out that Clara Turkelson nee
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Clara Schmidt had migrated to the United States with several members of her family from Germany after World War I. She found employment as a domestic servant in a Turkelson family home. During an affair with the head of the family she became pregnant and forced a divorce. Her marriage to the father of her daughter lasted a short time. She did not actually secure a divorce from him until just before she married my father. At the time of her marriage to my father she was working as a practical nurse in a Salt Lake City hospital.
It is my impression that she hoped that her marriage to an upper middle class professional man widely respected in the Church and the community would provide her with an active social life, and a secure financial position. Little did she know that my father was somewhat of a recluse who did not enjoy social activities, lived spartanly, and devoted his time to his intellectual activities which she never understood or appreciated.
She first tried to isolate my father from members of his own family which proved impossible. She also turned his life into a living hell, constantly attacking him to his face and to her friends in the German Speaking community. Little did she know that my father had helped many of these people migrate to the United States after World War II and that one of his daughters, my sister Jerry, was married to a German Swiss immigrant. As a result, not only did her position in this community deteriorate, but her comments came back to the family. She was a greedy, egocentric, malicious, temperamental, nervous, sarcastic woman who soon alienated most of my father's children and grandchildren. Ruth and I kept on moderately decent terms with her for my father's sake.
As I began to get involved with the Mexican American community in Salt Lake City, New Mexico and El Paso began to recede into the background. But all through the years, events in New Mexico erupted uncontrollably into my life. Thus in the last week of January, 1969, I was subpoenaed by the New Mexico Albuquerque District Judge Paul Larrazolo to appear in his court as a defense witness for Reis T. Tijerina. I flew to Albuquerque on December 5, 1969, and appeared in court the same day. District attorney Love, who had treated me so contemptuously in Reies' federal trial in Las Cruces, prosecuted the case for the state. Tijerina, conducting his own defense, was aided by Beverly Axelrod, a radical attorney with a national reputation and Bill Higgs, a debarred lawyer from the Southern Civil Rights Movement. Reies did a magnificent job. Alfonso Sanchez, the Santa Fe and Rio Arriba Counties district attorney was so carried away by Tijerina's eloquence and legal brilliance that turning to me he said, "There is nothing that man could not have achieved if he had but an education".
As soon as I appeared in the courtroom, Love protested my appearance before the court. Judge Larrazolo after considerable legal debate decided that I could testify the following day before the jury on social and economic conditions in northern New Mexico including land loss.
The next morning I spoke for over two hours in the courtroom on the harsh impact of Anglo American legal, economic, and political systems on the Spanish Americans, the poverty of the people, and on their sorrow and anger over the loss of their land grants. I felt inspired even though Mr. Love was constantly protesting my testimony before the jury. I had the judge, the jury, and the audience hanging on my words. Frances Swadesh, an old friend and ally, spoke just before I did on the same conditions. I managed to turn each question from Love into a comprehensive dissertation on Spanish American history and socio-economic conditions. I felt that I had avenged myself for Las Cruces.
During the noon hour I had a long discussions with Judge Larrazolo, the son of an early 20th century Spanish American governor of New Mexico. He did not identify with the poor Spanish American members of the Alianza nor with the village inhabitants. Rather he represented the
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remnants of the old Spanish American elite. Even though he was a judge, he was not pro-Anglo American. I deeply regretted that I would never be able to know him better.
As I left the courtroom for the airport Alfonso Sanchez jumped up and excitedly accused me through my writings and speeches of being responsible for all the unrest in northern New Mexico. Would that it were so. Several days later Tomas Atencio called me from Albuquerque to report that the jury had found Reyes innocent of all charges to the fury of the New Mexican Press and the New Mexican establishment.
All during the spring of 1970 we searched diligently for a family home with a large backyard in an area zoned for chickens and livestock. Bishop Edson A. Porter offered to build us a home for a moderate price on a lot that he owned. It would have been better for our family if we had accepted his offer, but I wanted a lot big enough for chickens, fruit trees and a garden. We finally found a large home on an acre of ground at 1229 Pondoray Circle in a semi-rural environment. The house cost us $35,900 at 7-1/2 percent interest on the mortgage.
The people of the Winder 3rd Ward were primarily blue collar and white collar workers intermixed with a thin scattering of school teachers and professionals. Very conservative in their political orientation and little interested in books or ideas, they were not prepared to accept a reputedly radical university professor. Shortly before we moved in, the John Birch Society distributed a pamphlet throughout the neighborhood accusing me of being a Communist. After we moved in Bishop Bolander called me in to ask me point blank if I were a Communist. I left very angry and bitter. I doubt that anyone in the area had personally fought Communists as I had in social and ethnic movements. Our family was never quite accepted in the ward, which caused me little concern but did impact negatively on our children.
David and Daniel upon our arrival in Salt Lake City entered the 9th and 7th grades at Hillside Junior Highschool and Keith the fourth grade at Rosslyn Heights an experimental self motivational elementary school. David and Daniel adjusted very well to their new school making friends among faculty and fellow students. Keith on the other hand coming from a more rigorous authoritarian El Paso School System almost failed his grade. He found it difficult to adjust to freedom of the experimental school. I was quite surprised to find out that the Salt Lake City and Granite School districts were academically inferior to the El Paso School System.
During the summer quarter of 1969, Robert and William Dinsmoor lived with us and along with David and Daniel attended special university classes for young people in ecology and amateur radio. After their classes were over, the rest of the Dinsmoor family joined us from El Paso and we toured Yellowstone and Teton National Parks together.
My professional activities increased sharply during 1969. Mike Parsons and Larry Leslie of the College of Education and Dr. Wiscomb of the State Department of Education and I organized a summer seminar for high school students to discuss the history, culture, socio-economic conditions and educational needs of minority students. The seminar was well attended. During the same summer my center for the Study of Social Problems received a Federal grant for $31,800 to train and to place Vista Volunteers with local Wasatch Front Agencies. We did quite well. The grant was renewed for several years.
As the activities of the Center began to increase, I was given funds to hire Dennis Lothrop, a University of Utah Sociology graduate major, and social workers who had abandoned a position in Alaska after a major earthquake. I gave him the responsibility of helping low income and minority
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groups to organized and to secure federal funding for community projects. Coop, a program sponsored by the Center and several minority and low income agencies was
one of the more successful. For years it provided food and other commodities to low income families in need. The Center also provided office and secretarial assistance to Robert Nieves, executive director of Socio for a period of years. Many low income and minority programs were developed by the center funded, and turned over to community organizations whose staff were trained by the center and federal funding was secured. We also with some success mediated conflicts between minority groups, the university, and the community. For many years the center was a beehive of activity and had intimate connection with virtually all agencies working with the poor and with minority groups.
The Center for the Study of Social Problems sponsored a seminar, August 21 to the 23rd, 1969. Governor Calvin Rampton opened the seminar. I followed discussing the purpose of the seminar. Then the Salt Lake City Chief of Police, Dewey J. Fillis and the sheriff, Delmar Larson of the Salt Lake County spoke on the nature of police work. Then we had Rita Benson, Victor Gordon, David Ramos, Archie Archuleta, and Diana Reiter discuss the attitudes of minorities and other citizen groups toward the police. We went over various aspects of the problems of effective communication between police and the public using faculty from the department of community leaders with special emphasis on minorities. Discussed the nature of rumors and their impact, and wound up with a discussion of causes and control of urban riots. The police liked the seminar and wanted it taught every year, but we were forced to discontinue any seminar or class for the local police department. The Board of Regents had assigned to Weber College the training and education of police officers in Utah. I always regretted this decision, as I thought that we could develop an effective training program for local police departments.
The center was asked in the late fall of 1969 or early spring 1970 by the Migrant Labor Division of the Office in Economic Opportunity in Washington D.C. to service a migrant labor program in the lower Rio Grande Valley vetoed by Governor Connolly of Texas. We ran the funds through our center for several years without being discovered. Connelly through brutal tactics succeeded in blocking efforts to organize migrant farm labor in the Lower Rio Grande Valley. I received the news of his bankruptcy in 1988 with grim satisfaction. Few men ever deserved bankruptcy more.
Early in the spring of 1970, I received a call from the news division of the National Broadcasting Company. They had tried without success to send a camera crew into Northern New Mexico to film a documentary on Tijerina and his Alianza and had been warned not to come into the state. They requested my help. I first called the Alianza office and after pointing out the importance of such a documentary to their public image secured their full cooperation. I next contacted Facundo Valdez, a former student of mine and a social worker living in Espanola who agreed to take them into northern New Mexico and get them out as quickly as possible. This was done and the documentary was shown on NBC television. Although the camera crew came and went before any opposition could be organized Facundo paid a heavy price. Shortly after the documentary was put on the air, he was attacked by a group of thugs who came to killing him. He was in a hospital for several months. The police made little effort to track down the attackers.
During this same period an Anglo American deputy sheriff lost most of his right arm in a premature explosion of a bomb he was attaching to the door of the Albuquerque Alianza building in which several families were living. The police came and took the bomber into custody. Apparently no
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charges were filed. He was released and left the state. The Albuquerque police tolerated, if they did not encourage, violence against the Alianza, its leaders and its members.
It seemed as though I was on the road as much during 1970 as I had been in 1968 and 1969. On February 13, 1970, I gave the keynote address to the Santa Fe workshop of the Council on Social Work Education. I discussed in my speech the cultural and social problems of Northern New Mexico and the failures of modern social agencies, private and public, to even recognize many of them and what might be done to resolve them. Few Mexican Americans or Spanish Americans were on the program. None of the agency heads there were Spanish Americans or Mexican Americans, and here we were Anglo Americans talking about the problems of the Mexican Americans and Spanish Americans. All of the Mexican American and Spanish American workers walked out in protest. I went with them and was the only Anglo American who met with them. They used me as a go-between, which position I fulfilled quite nicely. I managed to get the two sides together and the workshop on track with some program modifications. The sponsors of the workshop were quite alarmed and puzzled by it all.
On April 14th, I flew to Denver to speak on Mexican American history and culture at a World Affairs Conference sponsored by Dr. Howard Higman, Department of Sociology, University of Colorado. Higman, a closet homosexual, a heavy drinker, and psychologically a very disturbed man, played a major role in training staff and personnel for numerous anti-poverty programs in the West. For a number of years I traveled to Denver and to the San Luis Valley to participate in training programs speaking. Higman was responsible for bringing my old friend Salvador Ramirez to the University of Colorado. Sal taught courses in the Department of Sociology.
I returned to Denver on April 15th to participate in the Western Students Conference on Poverty sponsored by Dr. Daniel T. Valdez on the campus of the Denver Metropolitan College. I spoke on poverty, land loss, and the Alianza. Several University of Utah students, including Sylvia Kronstad, participated. Valdez was an important Spanish American intellectual who stressed the Spanish element and cultural contributions among the Spanish Americans and downplayed the Indian and Mexican contributions to their culture.
While in Denver, I visited Corky Gonzales at his Crusade for Justice headquarters in Denver. Corky had long interested me. A product of the Denver Barrio, he fought his way up from poverty as a boxer. He then became a Chicano leader in the formation and management of Denver's anti-poverty program. He was in frequent conflict with Anglo American and Black leaders, making sure that the Mexican Americans secured their fair share of federal funds. He became the dominant Mexican American leader in Colorado and influenced Mexican American youth throughout the Southwest. A marvelous Chicano poet, he was instrumental in filming a magnificent documentary on Mexican American history based on a long poem, "I Am Joaquin". He also developed a medallion with an Indian profile on one side, a Spanish profile on the other side, and a Chicano face in the middle that was worn by Chicano young people throughout the Southwest.
In the spring of 1970, I received an invitation from an old missionary friend James Barker, Salt Lake City Commissioner of Public Safety, to help organize the Central City Community Center. He and John Florez had secured a donation of land in the inner city from Mrs. Kyremos and built a large commodious federally funded settlement house in the teeth of resistance from the curmudgeon mayor of Salt Lake City, J. Bracken Lee. I served on the board off and on for over twenty years.
I had just returned home when on May 1, 1971, I flew to Boise, Idaho and then traveled to
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Ontario, Oregon at the behest of the Migrant Labor Division, Office of Employment Opportunity, to speak at an institute organized by members of the faculty of the local college to train school teachers and agency personnel to work with Mexican Americans who were then settling out of the migrant labor stream in large numbers. Many of their children were entering local school systems. I spoke on the origin, the history, the composition, and the socio-economic characteristics of Mexican American farm workers and why they were settling out of the stream. I was pleased when a number of Mexican Americans in the audience came up to me after the sessions were over to compliment me on my presentation. Several school principals asked my advice on how to work with the Mexican American students. Besides mentioning bilingual education, the incorporation of Mexican American materials into the curriculum, improved counseling, and effective liaison system with student families I urged the employment of Mexican American schoolteachers. They followed my advice and hired a number of young female teachers who quickly married into local families. I later suggested the employment of married Mexican American teachers.
The next day, I flew to Lubbock, Texas to read a paper on the Spanish Americans for the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Rocky Mountain and southwestern Division and to participate in another program sponsored by the Committee on Desert and Arid Zones Research, CODAZR, of which I was a member. Encountered many old friends. Among them were Florence and Peter Van Dresser who told me that large numbers of hippies were establishing communes close to Spanish American villages in Northern New Mexico. Startled, I surprised them by stating that culture conflicts would lead to violence as they did.
From Lubbock, I went to Albuquerque to attend the annual meetings of the Rocky Mountain Bilingual Council. Severo Gomez, my old friend from the Texas Educational Agency, was there. We had a long interesting discussion on the troubles of bilingual education in Texas. I was given the job of serving as a recorder to summarize the discussions of several groups and to report their conclusions to the general assembly. I was happy to note that the once formidable opposition to bilingual education in the Council had about vanished. I returned to Salt Lake City with an aching heart and strong feeling of regret at having left the Southwest.
And on May 9th, back to Denver it went to participate in a M.A.Y.A.(Mexican American Youth Association) conference sponsored by Salvador Ramirez, Howard Higman, and his assistant Robert Hunter. As I went up on the platform in a large auditorium filled with young Mexican Americans, just before I stood up to speak Salvador Ramirez told me that every other Anglo American speaker had been hissed off the stand. I suddenly realized that Ramirez had set me up. With a prayer in my heart, I stood up firmly resolved that I would not be hissed off the stand and gave one of the finest extemporaneous speeches of my entire life. I began by telling them that they were a chosen generation of Mexican American youth bought by the sacrifices of their parents and grandparents who had never had the opportunities that they had. As a result, they owed the past generations of Mexican Americans an enormous debt. They could discharge that debt by providing the intellectual, business, professional, and political leaders that their people so desperately needed. If they sold out to the Anglo American world for material reasons they would betray their people and be judged severely by history. Speaking for over 40 minutes, I sat down to thunderous applause. I turned to Salvador and said," This is one Anglo that they never hissed off the stage." Sal said nothing and in revenge for my surviving so well, retained the honorarium of $200.00 that I was to receive.
Returning home I caught up on my correspondence and taught my classes. On May 7th, I
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went to Albuquerque to attend a CODAZR planning committee and in the evening flew to Denver to present a paper on the Causes of Poverty in San Miguel County at the Rocky Mountain Social Science Association meetings. I quite enjoyed meeting a number of old friends from New Mexico and El Paso.
The strenuous pace never let up during the summer and fall of 1970. On June 10th, I spoke on Mexican American socio-economic characteristics and problems at an Equal Opportunity Conference on Mexican Americans sponsored by Socio. One July 16th I flew to Bozeman, Montana, to speak to a large number of public school teachers on Mexican American educational problems on the campus of the University of Montana. July 18th found me in Tulsa, Oklahoma, invited by the BASIS Educational Institute to participate in a program to train public school teachers to work with minority groups. I spoke on the educational needs of the Mexican American people and the type of programs that were needed to meet these needs in the public schools. Although I spoke about Mexican Americans I sat up until the wee hours of several nights engaged in a dialogue with Comanche, Cheyenne, and other Oklahoma Indian young people about their cultural problems. I urged them to learn their tribal languages, to participate in their tribal cultures, to study their tribal histories, and to become effective leaders for their people.
The most important trip I took during 1970 was to El Paso to attend a minority conference sponsored by the Ba'hai Church. I made my presentation on the Mexican Americans and then met with a very large group of UTEP Mexican American students to discuss my reasons for leaving El Paso. At the end of the meeting I was crying and so were many of them. I never realized how much I missed them and El Paso. I learned that the Department of Sociology under Stegleich had retrogressed. Winn Stegleich and Ellwyn Stoddard had come under sharp attack from minority students. Dean Ray Small commented to me that he much preferred the problems I may have created for the University than current problems presented by the department. He went on to say that the Mexican American students were now divided into a radical faction led by Samuel Pichardo and his brother and a more moderate faction led by Herman Blanco, both students of mine. I called them together and urged them to cooperate. I pointed out that both groups could be manipulated by their enemies.
Severo Gomez, the assistant commissioner of the Texas Educational Agency invited me to come to Austin on July 29th as a member of a team to develop an effective bilingual program for the Texas school districts. I fought for a program that would help students to develop an effective mastery of both Spanish and English. I quite enjoyed working with Severo, one of the most effective educational administrators I had ever met.
On August 3rd, I traveled to Pocatello to lecture to teachers on Mexican American history, culture, socio-economic conditions and educational needs in a conference sponsored by the Educational Department of the University of Eastern, Idaho. This was my first real visit to Pocatello, a railroad town. I enjoyed the opportunity of touring Pocatello and the surrounding country. I attended the meetings of the Rural and National sociological societies in San Francisco in August. As I was reading my paper in the rural meetings, the hotel in which we were meeting caught fire, and everyone was evacuated. William Kuvlesky and I adjourned to a cafe across the street and enjoyed watching the firemen putting out a fire caused by a cigarette dropped on a couch. All in all 1970 proved to be a most strenuous professional year.
An intrusion of Puerto Ricans into Salt Lake City made my life more complex. On the
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morning of November 19th, Ricardo Barbero, president of Socio, called me to tell me that carload of Puerto Rican members of the Young Lords, a Puerto Rican gang traveling from San Francisco to New York, had been arrested and jailed by Salt Lake City police for possession of a stolen car. We were able to get them out of jail by proving that they did not know the car was stolen when they bought it. One of them, Eliseo, remained in Salt Lake City for several years as a Public Schools liaison with the community.
One of the most important events in 1970 in the development of the university minority program was a $10,000,000 Ford Foundation grant to develop an experimental program for Mexican American and American Indian students. We brought on campus 40 Mexican American and 20 American Indian high school graduate students, for a special summer program. They were housed in university dormitories for eight weeks. Unable to rely on high school principals or counselors to put us in contact with minority students, we recruited directly in the high schools themselves. Students were given free tuition, fees, books, school supplies, and room and board. One counselor was provided for every ten students. Joe Torres and Fred LeBlank performed extremely well as Mexican American counselors. During the summer, the Mexican American students were given three special courses in English, Mathematics, and Chicano History and Culture which I taught. For the first two years the students were given every assistance possible. By the end of their sophomore year their grade point average was higher than that of the regular University students. All but a tiny handful graduated from college and went on to graduate training in law, social work, education, business, and other professional fields. Upon graduation they greatly enlarged the very small Mexican American professionals in Salt Lake City. The program was a great success. Unfortunately, the University as a whole never adopted the programs.
The University went through a year of mild turbulence in 1970 as a result of Nixon's decision to send American troops into Cambodia and the May 4th Ohio National Guard massacre of protesting Kent State University students. On May 7, around 1,000 students marched on the administration building to present a non-negotiable list of demands to the university administration, including the right to bring speakers on campus without administration approval, the right to freely distribute literature on campus, and the removal of fire arms from the campus police. To underline the seriousness of their demands, 85 students occupied the second floor of the Administration building disrupting traffic but not invading private offices. President Fletcher spoke to them adroitly finessing their demands claiming that he did not have the power to grant their demands that power belonged to the Board of Regents. Supported by faculty friends from the Department of Philosophy as well as several other faculty members, the students refused to leave. They were all arrested peacefully by the university police, taken to court, charged with trespassing and other offenses, and released on their own recognition. Conservative elements in the community including many locally elected officials demanded that the city and state police be brought in to handle this and other student demonstrations.
Student demonstrations swirled on and off all through the spring quarter with demonstrators trying to break up classes and calling for a student strike. The majority of students voted resoundly against such a strike.
A spirited dialogue between radical and moderate student leaders and between the radicals and the administration broke out in the center of the campus. During one such dialogue on May 10th, a wooden building condemned for demolition was destroyed by fire. The fire was condemned by the majority of students and faculty alike and marked the beginning of the end of the radical movement
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sponsored by S.D.S. As tensions were running high that night I removed all my belongings from campus. Word reached us through minority student contacts that a bomb would explode on campus. Apparently as effort was made to smuggle a bomb on campus, but security being too tight the bomber finally place his bomb in front of the main door of the nearby Utah National Guard building and blew up the front of the building. No one was ever caught although suspicion pointed the finger at the S.D.S. leaders. by the end of the summer quarter the radical student movement had about vanished from campus.
The Hippie movement began a little earlier and lasted a bit longer. For many years during the 1970's scantily clad, bizarrely dressed long-haired hippie students attended my classes. I finally imposed a rule that no students could remain in my class unless their bodies were covered and their feet shod. Streaking or students dashing across campus or through classes nude was a fad for several years. I got along extremely well with all of them. I delighted in holding long discussions with them on their values and attitudes toward society. Here my radical reputation broke down student mistrust.
The community emotions aroused by the student protest activities came to focus upon an extremely bright, articulate, and talented young Black instructor by the name of Gordon from the Central City. I had known him for years at the Central City Community Center. A fine poet and a good writer he commanded respect from those who knew him. He had been arrested on campus for allegedly using an obscene word at a campus anti-war rally. The University Institutional council, Vernon B. Romney, an obnoxious Utah Attorney General, and of course, the Deseret News demanded that he be fired from the university and charged with obscenity. Judge Paul Grant, a city judge, dismissed all obscenity charges against him. Vernon B. Romney promptly filed a petition in the Third District Court without success asking for a judicial review of the judge's decision. Deputy County Attorney Oberhansky commented that such charges should never have been filed in the first place. He stated that "blind rage at people using four letter words was a major motivation for the suit" and went on to say that the real issues were "local politics, the university, and the downtown community people with their monetary contributions". (Utah Daily Chronicle, November 24, 1970) Gordon resigned from the university even though supported by the majority of faculty and students, went to California, returned to Utah some years later, and secured permanent employment with the Utah state government.
The Department of Sociology began the long process of disintegration in 1970. Ted Smith, the finest department chair we had up to the election of Ed Kick in 1988, resigned to be replaced by Glen Vernon. A closet homosexual, Vernon packed the department staff with homosexuals. A loner, he was never comfortable with either faculty or students. A purist, he eliminated the undergraduate social work program in the department and ended joint programs that several of us were developing with other departments. For example, Ted Smith and I had secured a promise from Dr. R. Thayne Robson, Director of the Bureau of Economic and Business Research to finance two graduate students to research areas of mutual interest for their dissertations. Ted and I intended to chose very good students, but Glen Vernon took the project away from us and selected two mediocre students who failed. The department lost the funding.
Vernon was forced to resign as Department Chair in 1973. He published a book on the sociology of death that was treated harshly by professional reviewers who accused him of plagiarism. Dean Procacky and an element in the department headed by Ray Channing wanted him fired. I protested and led a delegation of department members to see the dean who let him stay on campus.
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While all of this was going on, the Chicano students, their numbers increasing steadily, decided to form a student association. Unable to agree on a name they called themselves the Brown Student Association. With federal funding, a Chicano Mobile Institute was organized. Chaired by Leonard Salazar the institute sponsored appearances of National Chicano leaders on campus. I had become quite familiar with most of them during my New Mexico and Texas days.
I found it interesting to watch the influence of Utah on militant Chicano students. Three or four came up from El Paso to be with me. One of them, Teron, whose first name I have forgotten, was unable to endure the lack of a militant movement and moved to Denver where he joined the Brown Berets. He was killed in a bomb explosion in a car in which he was traveling from Denver to Boulder, Colorado. Opinions diverged on the cause of the explosion. The majority of those familiar with the case believed that the bomb was in his lap when it exploded, a bomb destined for the University of Colorado. Others, a minority, argued that his car was booby trapped by the police or by some hostile organization.
It was very hard to remain militant in Utah. The minorities in the state did not have the long- festering memories of past injustices and atrocities that were part of the cultural heritage of the Chicano communities of Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, and California. The violent prejudice against Mexican Americans so common in Texas did not exist in Utah. Law enforcement officers treated demonstrators in Utah with more respect and restraint. State agencies and political leaders were most anxious to discuss problems and to find mutually acceptable solutions.
The family continued to progress during 1970. David entered high school and had a most successful academic career at Cottonwood. In high school, he developed a good group of friends, belonged to numerous high school clubs such as music, Spanish, Jazz, and Ecology. He was chosen president of the Jazz and Ecology clubs. He began playing bassoon in the Granite Youth and Mormon Youth Symphonies.
Daniel, on the other hand was in constant trouble at Bonneville Junior High School, run by a very rigid principal and assistant principals who operated a tightly controlled school. Daniel was challenged to fight by one boy after another to their regret. He became a member of a restless, alienated, hedonistic, beer-drinking, middle class group of boys with little interest in school. He abandoned his clarinet which saddened us as he has as much musical talent as David. He was active in track setting school records that were not broken for many years. Keith, happy go lucky Keith, never took school seriously. He did the minimum to get along, was very popular in school among both students and faculty, wrote poetry, and developed a deep interest in the history of World War II and other wars. He delighted in wearing my army jacket. Ruth took private organ lessons from Dr. Alexander Schreiner, went to the Genealogical Library whenever she could, and taught many piano and organ students.
In many ways 1971 was a continuation of 1970. Probably the most important event for me was tenure. I received the unanimous vote of the faculty except for Ray Channing who not only voted against me but tried to get students to attack me. My student friends, both Mexican American and Anglo American shut them up.
During 1971 the department continued to expand. Gerald Smith was hired in 1970. Lionel Maldonado, William and Susan Gustavus, and Kent Mommsen came aboard about this time. I was immediately struck by the childishness, the intellectual and personal immaturity, the jealousy, the egocentrism, the lack of professionalism, the amorality, and the quarrelsomeness of this generation of
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sociologists emerging from graduate school in the late 1960's and early 1970's. They had not acquired the values of academia.
During 1971, I headed a committee of three, Garth Mangum of the College of business and Aggeler of the English Department to conduct an internal evaluation of the Department of Philosophy. We talked to every faculty member of the department and to most of their graduate students. Our impression was that it was a very insular department that had steadily declined in significance and in intellectual importance in university life. The Department of Philosophy at one time was one of the most important departments on campus and provided considerable intellectual leadership for the academic community. Very few of the current graduate students had job prospects. The faculty published almost nothing. We criticized the department rather strongly suggesting that their graduate program ought to be discontinued. Our report drew an unprincipled and mendacious attack from the department faculty. The Dean did not support us and as my fellow committee members refused to respond to the attack I firmly resolved never to chair or to participate in such a committee again. I developed considerable contempt for the department and its gentle anti- Mormonism.
At about the same time I served on two other college committees. One, the College Appointments Committee was a pleasant assignment with agreeable colleagues: Donel Currey, Department of Geography; Robert Administer, Department of Economics; Jesse Jennings, Department of Anthropology; William A. Johnston, Department of Psychology; Gerald H. Coffer, Department of Naval Science; and Dennis Thompson, Department of Political Science. Our responsibility was to evaluate department requests for recruiting new faculty members.
The second committee, an ad hoc library committee composed of librarians, minority students, and minority faculty had the pleasant task of spending a $10,000 gift to library to buy books on Mexican Americans. I managed to persuade the library to buy microfilm runs of the Las Vegas Daily Optic, the Santa Fe New Mexican, and the Albuquerque Journal.
A very interesting conference sponsored by the Spanish speaking committee on government Employment was held in Salt Lake City from May 19th to May 20th. Workshops were organized for social workers, business men, teachers. and interested people on the economic problems of local Mexican Americans. I chaired several workshops and gave a presentation. Many old Mexican American friends such as Henry Ramirez, Chair of the Cabinet Committee on Opportunity for the Spanish Speaking, Samuel Martinez, regional O.E.O. director, and Tom Robles, regional director for the Equal Employment Opportunity commission attended.
Professionally, the year 1971 was as busy as 1970 had been. Besides my research, teaching, and publication, I was employed by several Washington D.C. consulting firms to fly hither and yon in the United States to assist diverse anti-poverty programs serving the Mexican American people. The money earned was always welcome. Thus on March 12th, I took part in an Institute of Cultural Awareness directed by Sarah bishop of the University of Albuquerque, now closed. Numerous teachers and social agency personnel in attendance still remembered me and asked many questions about Northern New Mexico, the Alexia, and Reins L Tijerina.
And on April 8th, I flew to Mason City, Iowa, to strengthen a migrant labor program in trouble. Mason City seemed to be a small nondescript rural marketing and service center for a large farming area in serious economic difficulties. The local newspaper was filled with notices of farm bankruptcies and sale of livestock and farm equipment. The migrant labor program in Iowa City was
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organized by a local lady politician to provide services for Mexican American migrant farm workers. After some misuse of funds, a very interesting Cuban refugee by the name of Hyme Duran was appointed director. In pre-Castro Cuba, he had been a naval lawyer on active duty. He had helped bring Castro to power. One day Castro ordered him to execute a number of naval officers. Instead of killing them, he quietly loaded them and their families on a small warship and brought them to Miami. Unloading them he sailed off to sink Cuban boats and raid the Cuban coast. After the Bay of Pigs, he became an American citizen. Trained as a teacher of Spanish, he was sent to the Mason School District to teach the language. He became involved with the Migrant Labor Project, and was asked to serve as its director. I noted that his relationships with the Mexican American farm workers was not good and that problems existed between Mexican American and Anglo American employees of the project. I suggested ways that relationships with the farm workers could be improved and advised conscious raising seminars for the employees.
On May 19th, I was once more in the traveling by air to college Station, Texas, invited by William Kuvlesky to a conference on Mexican Americans at Texas A and M. I spoke for several hours on the rural Spanish Americans of Northern New Mexico. I had the pleasure of meeting Joan Moore who had written extensively on the problems of Mexican Americans in California. Kuvlesky drove me over to Prairie View, an all black Agricultural college, where I spoke on rural poverty in New Mexico and what I thought ought to be done including land reform to solve the problem.
In late August I attended a meeting of the Rural Sociological Society committee on the impact of Department of Agriculture programs on the rural poor and rural minorities. I managed to include in our report numerous suggestions for the improvement of these poverties after some debate on the existing negative impact of many Department of Agriculture programs on these people. I did enjoy exploring Knoxville in the evening.
Most members of the family continued to progress during 1971. David was totally absorbed in music composing and playing. During the summer he played the bassoon in the Promised Valley theatre orchestra and continued on with Granite Youth and Mormon Youth Symphonies. He also enrolled in university courses in German and in Anthropology. Ruth quite enjoyed her organ lessons with Dr. Alexander Schreiner and had become a leader in stake musical circles. She started to organize a stake youth choir and orchestra. Keith continued in school doing the minimum to stay alive, writing poetry, reading histories and accounts of World War II, and charming his teachers and fellow students alike. He was active in track and Little League Baseball. Daniel hurt a knee badly in a bicycle accident in Mount Aire Canyon where the family cabin was located that laid him up most of the summer. Unfortunately his grades had collapsed and there was nothing we could do about the situation. He defied us completely, spending large amounts of money with his alienated, shiftless peer group.
During the summer, Ruth and I took the family on a nostalgic tour of New Mexico. We approached Durango with some trepidation. Sure enough, our car broke down. The rear axle fractured. We were told by the mechanic that General Motors had sold us a large station wagon with a rear axle designed for a sedan. From Durango we drove to Aztec to see the ruins. The tour guide told us that a Knowlton had come into Aztec, married a local girl, and settled down into the community.
From Aztec, we drove to the Gran Chaco ruins in a very heavy rain. The road into the ruins from the highway was a dirt road along which we drove sideways for many miles. We spent two days at the pueblo deeply impressed at what must have been a highly developed economic and religious center for a large area. From the Gran Chaco we drove to Las Vegas, visited friends, looked over the
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community, stopped at the Pecos National Monument on the way back to Santa Fe, and then spent the rest of the day at the Indian Fair in the city. Ruth bought some lovely Indian jewelry.
Leaving Santa Fe, we traveled to El Rito for lunch with the Van Dressers who were running a restaurant. They told us that Tomas Atencio with a grant from the Presbyterian church had organized La Academia de la Raza to collect local history and folklore and to publish collections of studies in both Spanish and English. He was living with his Anglo wife and children in Penasco in an adobe house he had built himself. I quite liked his family. Later he divorced his Anglo wife and married a Spanish American woman.
On the way home we stopped in Tierra Amarilla to look over the bullet pocked courthouse. Tensions were still high. We were followed into Tierra Amarilla by a state trooper and followed out. I was uncertain whether we had been under any other surveillance during our tour of New Mexico. We spent the night in Pagosa Springs, noting that a local Knowlton was still selling worms in the community.
While in New Mexico, I learned that Reies Tijerina had spent more than eight months in solitary confinement at the Federal Prison at Lu Tuna, New Mexico with minimal rights to visitors, correspondence, books, and legal materials. All his medication had been stopped. His bad treatment seemed to be part of a brain-washing effort, behavior modification I think they called it. I at once organized a massive letter writing campaign to public officials protesting such treatment. He was shortly transferred to the federal prison at Springfield where he was given the wrong medication for his serious health problems. He was a political prisoner in every sense of the word.
The year 1972 started out to be as busy as 1970 and 1971. Dr. Garth Mangum active in government manpower programs and a member of the College of Business asked me on January 12th to teach classes for him in his nation-wide M.B.A. manpower program. Groups of students in any part of the United States were organized into classes and taught by University of Utah faculty. I taught courses in the Sociology of Poverty at St. Mary's College in Berkeley, California, at the University of Kansas in Kansas City, Kansas, and at Clearfield, Utah. While in Kansas City, I rented a car and explored the Mormon sites around Independence, Missouri. The majority of these students were people in their thirties and forties. I quite enjoyed working with them.
During January, David Bryne, a graduate student in educational administration, called together a small group of scholars and educators including myself to assist the Salt Lake City School District develop an educational program for minority students. Within a short period of time, the School District hired minority teachers and counselors, developed a bilingual program, and introduced minority materials into their curriculum. I was most astonished at their eager willingness to accept advice and to do all they could for minority students. What a refreshing contrast with New Mexican and Texan schools that stonewalled any attempt to develop adequate minority programs.
On February 3, 1972, Frank Cordova, one of my Mexican American students, came into my office to tell me that his brother and a companion had been shot down by the Albuquerque police. The Police claimed that the two unarmed boys were attempting to steal dynamite from a locked shed. Contacts in New Mexico informed me that it was the consensus among the Spanish Americans that the two boys defined as troublemakers and members of the Black Berets, a New Mexican version of the Brown Berets, had been shot down in cold blood by the Albuquerque police.
Invited by the Department of Sociology, Texas Tech University, I flew to Lubbock on February 17th and lectured for several days to diverse groups of students and faculty on Mexican
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