Sandra: This is Sandra Enriquez,
with the Civil Rights in Black and Brown
Oral History Project with David Rolis.
Today's June 24th of 2015,
and we're here with Dr. Miguel de los Santos,
at UT Pan-American in Edinburg, Texas.
So I'm going to ask you a few questions,
first, to kind of get the nerves off of you
and we'll get you going. -: Okay.
Sandra: I wanna ask you when and where you were born,
so tell us a little bit about your parents,
how you grew up and where you grew up.
-: I'm a native of Edinburg, Texas, born and reared here,
my father, Nasizuel los Santos was a laborer,
and later on in life, a carpenter.
During the time that I was growing up,
he was a crew leader, drove a truck,
and many of us went with him and we followed the crops
and moved, did a little bit of migrating.
He had probably a second or third grade education,
knew how to read and write, the English that he learned,
he learned mostly having to communicate
with people in the workplace.
My mother was a housewife, Eva Helena los Santos,
they were both U.S. citizens, both born on this side.
My father was born in Roma, my mother was born in Fronton,
which is close to Roma, but she was raised in Mexico,
and my father was raised here.
She had second, third grade education in Mexico,
also knew how to read and write well in Spanish,
but that's the only education that was afforded to them
in the early 19 hundreds.
So after they got married,
they moved around following whatever labor,
wherever the labor would take them or crops would take them.
They finally settled in Edinburg, Texas,
where myself and my four sisters were born.
Actually, my oldest sister was born in Mexico,
when they were visiting there,
and later on, she had to become a U.S. citizen.
But anyway, I went to school here in the Edinburg schools.
My first eight years were in Catholic School,
because my mother was a big proponent of Catholic...
And wanted us to have a Catholic education.
So my father sacrificed quite a bit,
even though it was only like eight or $10 a month
for the whole family.
When he was making 30, 40 cents an hour,
that's a lot of money.
But anyway, we did that,
and then we went through the Edinburg schools,
graduated from Edinburg High School,
and we were very fortunate to have this university,
Pan-American College at the time,
later, Pan-America University,
and now University of Texas Pan-American,
and starting in September,
University of Texas Rio Grande Valley.
So we're very fortunate.
This area, many of us who are educated, college level,
that it was right here in our backyard,
and especially those of us that lived in Edinburg,
it was right here in our town,
so we were fortunate to have the opportunity,
and that is how we ended up coming here to the university.
In the middle of all of that,
there were numerous experiences that we had.
I graduated from high school in 1963.
1963 was not a good year for Mexican Americans
in terms of the way that we were looked upon and treated
in the public schools, and I'll give you just one example.
When I was a high school student, a senior,
those of us that were kind of average kids,
and I was a little average, a little bit above average,
I wasn't one of the top kids or one of the bottom kids,
never saw any counselors in high school.
And when we were seniors,
the high school counselor called in all the seniors
one by one and basically sat us down and said,
"Well, what are you gonna do when you graduate?"
And we would tell her what we were gonna do, and then next,
that was the extent of the counseling session.
When she asked me what I was gonna do,
I said I wanna be a teacher,
and she said, "What subject are you going to teach?"
And I said, "I wanna be an English teacher."
And her response was, "You can't be an English teacher.
You can't be an English teacher because you have an accent
that's going to confuse the Anglo kids,
whenever you go to teach English."
And I always say that she never took the time
to study my grades or to know what my involvement
was in English, and the fact that I liked English a lot,
my teachers were some of the best that I ever had
and I enjoyed reading, and I enjoyed grammar,
and the whole thing.
So I say that that was one of the major thieves in my life
taking away one of...
I don't know if I would call it a dream,
but it was a goal that I had.
Sandra: Okay.
-: So what happened is that I came to the university
and I studied Spanish instead of English,
and as a consequence, I ended up with a Major in English
and Spanish and History,
and those are the subjects that I ended up teaching,
and later on moving into counseling and administration.
Sandra: Okay.
-: But when I look back on it,
when I came back later, and I'll go up to...
But when I came back later in 1991,
to be the Superintendent of Schools in the Edinburg schools,
I remember clearly the day that I was giving my speech
to the whole faculty in the auditorium,
and telling the story.
And the reason I told that story
was to impress on my faculty,
that if I ever heard of anyone doing that to somebody,
to one of our kids in our schools,
that we were gonna have a very serious conversation.
And I said it very seriously, because obviously,
if this in '63 and in 1995 I'm using it to make an example
for my teachers, I have never forgotten it,
and I always looked at it as, she did me wrong,
and no one, no teacher should ever do a kid like that.
So fortunately, I think we had come a long way from '63
to the early nineties,
although we still have a long way to go.
Sandra: Yeah.
Can you describe the makeup of your high school
in the sixties?
What kind of students went there?
And also if you heard of any other discrimination
or things like the counselor
that said they know you can't be because you have an accent.
Can you explain further?
-: We're probably about 75% Mexican American
and maybe 20, 25% Anglo, and we were very separated.
Very few white kids came across
and very few Brown kids went across.
Generally, Mexican American kids that crossed the line
to white were upper middle class,
their parents were professionals and so on and so forth.
White kids that crossed the line
were country kids generally,
that cross the line towards Mexico, or that befriended.
But if you walked into our cafeteria at lunch,
the white kids would be in one area
and the Mexicans would be on the other area,
so there wasn't a whole lot of socializing between groups.
The only other group where you saw some socialism
or some comradery was on the football field,
or in athletics, where everyone became a team,
but there were organizations that were exclusive,
like the Key Club, which was sponsored by the Kiwanis Club,
which was all white businessman,
so the Key Club was generally all white kids,
boys from the high school.
About that time is when there began to be some integration,
a few Mexican American kids began to go into those programs.
There were other organizations that were set up,
that we knew were off limits to Mexican American kids.
On the other hand, I have to say,
I had a teacher at the high school
who was our distributed education teacher.
We worked half a day in junior and senior year,
who treated us very, very well.
His name was Mr. Gardner,
and I'll use his name because he was one of the best
that anyone could ever have.
And we only had like one or two in a very large high school,
we had one or two Mexican American teachers,
and we always thought that Mr. Gardner might be one of us,
but Gardner, and he spoke perfect English and stuff,
green eyes, but kinda dark skin.
And it wasn't until I had a master's degree,
and I was working for the Texas Education Agency,
years later, that I went to San Diego, California,
for a conference.
And at that time, Mr. Gardner, had moved on actually,
and later I found he'd been the (indistinct) movement
in Colorado and got his Doctorate at Colorado,
and then went on to San Diego where he was working
at a college there, and he got his doctorate.
So somehow or other, we ended up at the same conference,
and we ended up having a beer around the pool afterwards
and just talking and reminiscing,
and the whole conversation turned to Spanish,
and he spoke excellent Spanish,
and I said,
"Why didn't you give us a sign that you were one of us?
I mean, we wanted you so badly."
(laughing)
And he said,
"I couldn't because they would have never hired me,
and if they had found out that I was half Mexican,
I would have been let go."
So his mom was a Mexican-American,
but at that time he couldn't...
When he signed up, he was Gardner and he was German descent,
for all practical purposes.
But when we looked at it
and the fact that he was so good to us,
he had that in him that he was a Mexican American,
half Mexican American.
And then he continued on, he moved on in education
and he and I stayed in touch and not too long ago
he was back down and I got all of the kids,
and we're all Mexicans of course, over to my house,
and we had a big dinner for him and stuff.
My English teachers that I said were great teachers,
they were great English teachers.
I happened to be in what we knew at those times
as group one, which was,
we were leveled by performance and intelligence,
so I happened to be with the high group kids,
and as a consequence,
I was in classes with a lot of white kids,
and the white kids got the best teachers in the school.
So I had excellent teachers in English and in math.
On the other hand, many of my classmates
from the same barrio, I think were shortchanged.
I was not any more intelligent than them,
but I had better opportunities than they had,
within the same high school.
Sandra: When they were put into different groups,
they were based on their intelligence quote, unquote.
-: Ability is what they called it,
and generally, it was language.
Those of us who had a little bit better command
of the language.
A friend of mine who later on,
he was very successful educationally in his own right,
did his career at the college level as an administrator
in Chicago and in Wisconsin and in San Diego.
Just recently moved back.
He had a big party at his house and he invited mostly
about 30 or 40 of us from my high school class.
My wife went with me and she said,
"How come you knew all the guys
but you didn't know a lot of the girls?"
And I said, "Well, two or three of us from that group
were in high groups, the rest of them were in other groups."
So we didn't mingle in classes
because we were moving among different groups,
but the guys, we were in sports together,
or we'd hang out together or whatever,
but a lot of the girls, I knew who they were,
but I didn't have a relationship with them,
they didn't know who I was.
And I said,
"What really happened was that most of these young people
and most of these girls are not young anymore,
we're 70 years old now, but most of these girls,
were in separate classes.
We never had a class together, and the reason was that
I was in a high group and they were in lower groups,"
which was very unfair because all of these women,
many of them probably brighter than I was,
but maybe they had not had some of the opportunities
and did not have some of the teachers that I had.
And the best teachers were reserved for white kids.
And those of us who were able to get into those classes
had the best teachers in the schools, and they were good.
So those are the kinds of experiences that we were having
in our schools.
We had an American history teacher, we were discussing,
and I'll never forget it,
my favorite instrument is the accordion.
We grew up with it, I mean, in our vaudeville,
a man would come out with the accordion
and somebody would come up with a guitar
and the adults would dance in the street, any given night.
Somehow a group of us
were discussing cohuntu music and stuff.
And he heard us, and Mr. Dougan was his name, and he said,
"The accordion."
And we kind of...
He said, "They ought to get rid of that vulgar instrument."
Those were his exact words.
"They should get rid of that vulgar instrument."
Of course, we were like sophomores or juniors,
and we didn't speak back to teachers in those times,
but it registered.
I mean, it was kind of like, "Who is this guy?"
This is me, this is my culture,
this is the music that we love and that we've grown up with,
but we didn't challenge it.
Now, later as I learned, and I grow and find out
that the accordion actually came from...
And that he was German, and that it came from those areas,
I said, "What's wrong with this area?"
You know what I mean?
But it's too late to have a discussion with him about that.
So we were experiencing that.
In Edinburg, we were backwards,
but there were many communities in South Texas,
that were way, way behind us.
The first Mexican American superintendent
that came to Edinburg was probably in the...
I'm gonna say mid seventies.
And I remember I was working for the Texas Education Agency,
at that time.
I started working for the Texas Education Agency in 1971.
And one of the things that the job that we had
in our department, by that time...
Let me backtrack a little bit,
just to finish giving you my education.
There was no master's degree at UT Pan-American,
so any one of us that wanted a master's
had to go somewhere else.
I started teaching right after I finished my degree,
and I was one of maybe 20% Mexican American teachers
at far San Juan Alamo High School,
where they had the fire incidents, riots, and so on.
I was a teacher there,
and one of the counselors was Mexican American,
and she took a liking to me
because I was dating the secretary to the principal,
and they liked her a lot because she had just graduated
and moved into administrative secretary.
But anyway, the counselor said,
"You need to go get a master's."
And we hadn't thought of master's
because we weren't exposed to such a thing.
You need to go get a masters,
and it needs to be in counseling,
and you need to come back here,
because you need to be a role model for our kids.
The boys have no role models in our high school.
This is PSG.
And we had none in Edinburg High School either.
So she made the calls and stuff,
and she hooked me up with some people and some articles,
and I ended up going up there and started
my master's degree in Southwest Texas State.
So I got my Counseling Degree,
but I didn't get into counseling because about that time,
the late sixties, early seventies,
the civil rights movement were very much in place,
and whereas we had been denied in earlier years,
now, everybody was trying to find Mexican Americans
with an education.
So by that time I have a master's degree,
and there were very, very few of us in the early seventies
with a master's degree.
Sandra: Where did you get your master's degree, sorry.
-: Southwest Texas State. Sandra: No, when.
-: 1971. Sandra: '71.
-: Well, at that time, one of my professors, Dr. Conley,
who was a great professor at Southwest Texas State,
pulled me aside and he said,
"Miguel, you're gonna get your master's.
What are you gonna do with it?"
I said, "I have a counseling position waiting for me
in Houston, that I'm gonna go to a junior high."
And she said, "Before you there,
why don't you go talk to my husband?
My husband works at Texas Education Agency,
and he's in charge of the desegregation
of public schools program,
which had been set up at the agency,
and he's looking for a Mexican-American
with a master's degree."
And what happened was in 1970 or '71,
William Wayne Justice was a federal judge
out of the Dallas area, and the whole country
was under the order to desegregate schools
as a result of the '65 civil rights movement.
So some of the larger districts across the country
had their own court orders from specific judges
in those areas that were ordering them to desegregate,
for example, Houston had their own judge,
Dallas had their own judge.
When William Wayne Justice got into the picture,
it was because of San Felipe Del Rio.
San Felipe was Mexican, Del Rio was mostly Mexican
but that's where the whites were.
And San Felipe petitioned for equal rights
and so on and so forth.
Anyway, that case was heard under William Wayne Justice.
And what William Wayne Justice recognized in his court order
was that Mexican-Americans were a suspect class,
if you will, a class that needed attention
that we're being discriminated against
because of ethnicity.
So one of the things that he did was he ordered
the Texas Education Agency.
He put the Texas Education Agency under court order
to develop a division and to send people
throughout the State of Texas,
to investigate school districts that might be discriminating
against not only blacks, but I guess Mexican Americans also.
There was a consequence,
the division for school desegregation was created at TEA.
Gilbert Cannoli, my boss,
the best man and best boss I ever had.
Gilbert Conley hired Franklin Torres,
who was a principal in San Marcos at the time.
And then he hired Harvey King, who was a black man.
So there was Gilbert, Harvey and Frank, okay?
First, one of each black, white, and brown,
for that department.
And Gilbert was intent on keeping his staff balanced
that way the whole time,
because if we're gonna be out in the field preaching this,
we needed to reflect and believe what we were doing.
So I came in the second round when Gilbert was allowed
to hire three more people,
and he hired a white man and me, and another black man.
So now we're six.
The following year, it's getting real big,
so he hires another three,
and he hires white woman, brown man, black man.
And it got all the way up to 1215.
But anyway, our purpose was to go out and visit
all public schools, and the court order said,
that any school district that had 66% minority students
within the school district,
or they had any campus within the school district
that was at least 66% minority,
and minority meant black or brown,
would be visited by the Texas Education Agency
to find out whether this groups
were being treated equally or not.
So that's how we were all over the state.
And when I say that we were backwards in Edinburg,
I mean, when I traveled all over the valley,
we were much more backwards in many other places
across the valley.
I say that some of the last vestiges
of racism and discrimination, were probably in Raymondville,
maybe in Harlingen,
some of the districts that had a real difficult time
letting it go.
We would go in and we would go into classrooms,
we would look at annuals and look at activities,
and we would find that there were clubs
where only whites were, and we're going to cafeterias
and see that the whites and the browns weren't mixing,
and so we would formulate recommendations
to the school districts to make things better,
and more inclusive of minority groups,
and that they would have to conform to the regulations.
One of the things that we found a lot was that particularly,
when we would walk into special education classrooms,
they were all brown kids,
and we found that many of these kids were being assigned
because of language difficulty,
not because they were necessarily deficient intellectually.
So we would file those kinds of reports and try to ensure
that the things...
We also responded to any complaints that were filed,
and at that time, because of the movement,
there were a lot of people whose awareness
was being increased in terms of their rights,
and their rights as minorities.
So we would get complaints from,
let's say from the Lubbock area.
I don't remember ever going to El Paso,
but the Lubbock area, East Texas,
where a group of parents would send a letter and say,
"This school district is discriminating against our kids
because they're black,
and these are the kinds of things that we're doing,"
and we would go and we'd meet with the parents
and they would meet with the school district
and try to help them find resolution
to some of their complaints.
In some cases, we were able to help,
in some cases, once we left, they ended up going back
to exactly what they were doing in the past,
and in some cases they're still doing that.
So that was the extent of the job that I had there
at the Texas Education Agency.
The reason that I say that Gilbert Conlin was the best boss
besides being a great human being and really the person
for that job, because if that person was gonna be white,
it had to be somebody who had a big heart
and really believed in equality for all, and he did.
Most white males at that time did not,
and Gilbert Conlin did.
But after having traveled throughout the State of Texas,
with the Texas Education Agency,
and the first visit when you were with TEA,
the very first person you visited in the school district
is a superintendent.
You tell them why you're there,
and tell them what you're gonna be doing
and what you're going to be observing.
It's courtesy.
So I came back one day after having made,
maybe a hundred visits, and I sat down with Gilbert Conlin,
and I said, "Gilbert,
I've met many superintendents who are at the State of Texas,
and I've come to the conclusion that I can do a better job
than many of these people."
And many of them were kind of dormant,
they were kind of laid back,
especially they had a large group of minority kids there,
and they didn't care.
And Gilbert said, "You're not gonna do a God damn thing."
And those were his words in a very strong...
The way he was, "Unless you get a doctorate."
And at that time, doctorate was not in my radar.
I mean, we were self-actualized, if you will,
with a master's degree.
So I said, "A doctorate?"
And he said, "Yep, you're right here.
This is Austin, Texas, the university is right there.
You need to go sign up."
I said, "But Gilbert, I'm all over the place.
I mean, I'm traveling all the time."
He said, "You just go sign up and I'll figure out a way
for you to travel and stay close
whenever you have night classes system."
So I went and investigated and I tried to get a doctorate
in the educational leadership department,
which is to prepare for a principal superintendent.
In the meantime, I would travel at night,
I would travel to San Marcos to get my certificate
to be a principal.
So I was taking classes in San Marcos.
I went to the educational leadership and they said,
"You don't qualify, your GRE score is too low."
So they said, "You need to take your GRE again."
And I said, "No, I'm not gonna take my GRE again.
I have a master's, I worked for TEA,
that says something about me."
But they wouldn't pick me.
But in the Department of Curriculum Instruction,
they had a minority recruitment program,
where they were actually looking for Mexican-Americans
and blacks to come into the doctoral program.
And that's how I got in.
I was enrolled in a doctoral program
at the University of Texas,
under their affirmative action program for minorities,
for Mexican American kids.
So I started up with my Doctorate in Curriculum Instruction.
I'm sitting in my class one day, and this guy walks in,
and we were in high school together.
And this guy is now working for the Austin Public Schools,
and he had been a principal there,
and now he's an area director,
he's got several principals under his leadership.
And he said, "Hey, what are you doing?"
I said, "I worked for TEA," and we started a conversation,
and he said, "I need you as a principal, man.
I need a Mexican-American principal.
I have a school where I have a black principal,
she's been there too long, and they need new blood,
and faculty is demanding that they want Mexican American.
The community was a Mexican American."
So I went to Gilbert, my boss, and I said,
"Gilbert, I have this opportunity."
He said, "Take it.
That's something that you need.
If you're gonna be a good superintendent someday,
you always wanna be sure that you say
you've experienced the principalship."
So I become a principal in the Austin public schools.
Sandra: When was this?
-: 1975.
Sandra: Okay, so you worked for a TEA,
for about four or five years? -: Four years, four years.
Sandra: Okay, so you can go on.
-: Okay.
And then I go to the Austin public schools.
Well, now I'm a principal in the Austin public schools,
and one day a professor,
from Educational Leadership Department
comes to visit my school because he's got some interns
in my school, and we meet and he said, "Why are you in CNI?
Why aren't you in that leadership?"
I said, "Because you wouldn't take me
because of my a GRE score."
He said, "Well, reapply, we need you,
and the program is on."
I'm a principal now, I'm in school leadership,
and I always it's to their advantage now to have someone
out there that they can say, "He's one of ours."
I mean, departments like that.
Departments would like `for you to get your doctorates
and be successful because they can always claim you.
I claim my students, he's one of mine.
So I said, "No sir, all ready have like 30 hours,
I mean, I'm all ready deep in this other program."
He said, "No, no, no, we'll figure out a way to..."
So it's coming out of them now, they're asking me.
And by this time, they're also feeling the pressure
in that department to begin to get some Mexican-Americans.
So a program comes up at the university,
where they're trying to develop superintendents
for urban school districts, and it was in its second year,
and he said, "Apply for the superintendency program."
It's what Dr. Harris said to me.
So I did.
And we were selected.
And I remember being in the Austin Public Schools
as a Principal for two years,
and I went to see Dr. Davidson, my superintendent,
I said, Dr. Davidson, "I wanna be a superintendent,
and this is an opportunity for me."
I remember him smiling, he said,
"Are you sure you wanna be a superintendent?"
And he was going through hell right there,
and superintendents generally do,
there's a lot of problems with the job.
So I said, "I need a letter recommendation,"
and he gave me one and I got into the program.
At that time, there were 12 of us selected.
Three of the 12 were Mexican American, okay?
Dr. Samora, who's across from me, myself and Judy Loretto,
who was coming from San Antonio.
There were two blacks, a male and a woman.
The black woman was my assistant principal
in my school where I was, so both of us got accepted
at the same time.
And then there were seven whites.
That was a group which was...
Now they're beginning to look at the value of having a group
that's mixed and from different parts of the State of Texas.
The reason I give you that breakdown
is because the first three people who finish the program,
were the three Mexican-Americans.
Dr. Samora finished first,
and Judy and I were right behind him one semester later.
Two of the white guys thought that there was a gimme,
that there was going to be a freebie
and it got a little hard for them,
they dropped out and then the others eventually finished
but over a four or five-year period.
We finished in two years.
And I say that proudly because we got after it.
I mean, we didn't have any time to mess around,
we went in there to get things done,
and then we had families and we had to go back to work
and support our families.
But everything that happened in my life,
I always say, there was somebody that opened a door for me
somehow or another.
And I was a Mexican American at the right place,
at the wrong time.
The right place was this is the right place for me,
but the wrong time was the sixties when I was in school,
but I was also a Mexican American at the right place
at the right time, which is at the Texas Education Agency,
at Southwest Texas State, getting a masters,
when Mexican Americans with master's degrees
were highly valued.
And I'm not saying we're not highly valued now,
but the competition is much tougher.
In 1971, for me to be 25, not even 26 years old,
and go to work for the Texas Education Agency,
I didn't know a damn thing.
I had just been teaching three years,
and to be going before superintendents,
and they would look at me like I was...
And I was.
I didn't have any experience to offer,
or expertise of any kind, and very little knowledge.
But I grew a lot in those years.
For me to be a Mexican American in the Austin Public Schools
as a Principal before the age of 30, that was big.
But it was the right time, right place.
And we had the right credentials and the right ethnicity.
When I to talk to my class, I always say that in a way,
it worked for me both ways.
When I was with TEA, when I first joined TEA,
we came to Edinburgh to see my hometown.
And Franklin Therese and I were both in the department,
and we're sitting across the desk from the superintendent,
who was the last white superintendent.
No, there was another white one in between.
With the last white or a long line of superintendents,
Mr. Evans, and I'm sitting in front of him
and Franklin Therese and I,
and I'm saying to him, "You really need to integrate
your upper administration."
But this time I was getting cocky,
and he said, "What do you mean?"
I said, "Well, look, you're the superintendent,
you've got two assistant superintendents, are both white."
He said, "Well, I have Jorgan too.
He's a director of personnel."
I said, "Yeah, but that's third level."
I said, "Why can't you have Mexican Americans in
at higher levels?"
He said, "Well, why would you have me do?"
I mean, he tried to put me on stop and asked,
"What would you want?
What would make you happy?"
I said, "What would make me happy would be for one of us
to be in your chair."
And Frank was a lot more seasoned than I was,
and like I said, I was getting cocky,
and I had been involved a little bit in the movement.
Actually, in Southwest Texas State,
we had organized a Mexican American youth
into the Mexican American Youth Organization,
and I had been elected President of that organization.
So we were involved.
I wasn't like the freestyle guys
and the Karissa Spring guys, where they were much advanced
as far as the Josanco Ruteras were leading those groups
at that time,
but we still recognize that we needed attention
and the way we're gonna get it somehow or another,
or become educated, and this whole movement.
So when I said that to him, I meant it.
And Frank pinched me under the table.
(chuckles)
And I went like...
(laughing)
And then when we walked out, Frank said,
"Don't you ever talk to a superintendent like that,
because superintendents,
there's only a thousand of them in the State of Texas,
and they're very powerful people,
and all of them have a direct line
to the Commissioner of Education, and they can call and say,
"Who the hell is this kid that you sent over here?"
And that's what Frank was expecting
that he's gonna call up to Austin,
and we're gonna get our butts kicked when we get back home.
Well, he didn't, but sure enough,
Sam Evans retired two or three years later,
and Dr. Ruben Gallegos, who was in Dallas the time,
as a Director of Bilingual or something like that
became Superintendent of Edinburg.
And that was the time when we began
to get the top level positions in the Rio Grande Valley.
When I became superintendent, it was fairly late,
I mean, Brownsville had a Mexican American PSJA,
McAllen did not, La Joya did, Rio Grande City, Roma did,
Weslaco, and so on and so forth.
So there were a lot of people that had opened the door
for people like myself to come into the superintendency.
Dr. Gallegos had all ready opened the door for me.
So today the majority of our folks
that are leading our schools down here are Mexican American
and have been through this program or programs at UT Austin
or Southwest Texas State or wherever throughout the state
and across the country,
but they're in charge of our schools.
Most of them are good people,
most of them are really doing good things,
especially to help those kids that are the most needy,
some of them need a little attention.
It's kind of like what Dr. Gutierrez said.
When he and I were discussing I hadn't seen him a long time,
he finished law school,
a year before my wife finished law school at UOH,
so we socialized.
His wife at that time had been an administrator
under my superintendency in La Joya,
and then when I was in Houston,
I hired her as a principal in the schools.
So we had a relationship and she's from Mission.
So it's kind of like he said, "I'm retiring.
I went there trying to change the system,
and then I realized that the system was changing me."
And we all go through that.
We accommodate to what the system is,
and to the degree that's beneficial to us.
Sometimes we get comfortable,
other times we continue with the la lucha, if you will.
I like to think that we continued within the system,
that we continue to try to do things
to better the lives of Mexican-American kids.
So that's my story, and I'm sticking to it.
What else do you wanna ask me?
Sandra: I wanted to ask you a few more questions.
Right now, you mentioned that you helped found
an organization at Southwest Texas State,
and I wanted to ask you about your educational experiences
as a Mexican American,
and if you could talk about any mobilization
by Mexican Americans or even African-Americans on campuses,
and if you were a part of them at Pan-Am,
at Southwest Texas State, or even at UT,
when you were in the PhD Faculty.
-: At UTPA, there was no such animal.
I was there from '63 to '67.
In fact, I tell the story,
in 1967, when I was doing my student teaching
right here in Edinburg, at Edinburg High School,
my professor to observe me,
and then later I came to his office
so he could give me feedback on my teaching.
And what he said to me, he said,
"I have something that I wanna share with you
that I think it's important for you,
if you're gonna be a successful teacher."
This is UT Pan America in 1967.
And of course, I was all ears right now,
he's gonna help me to become.
And he said, "I think it would be beneficial to you,
to change your name."
I said, "Excuse me."
And he said, "You need to drop de los from your name
and just be Miguel Santos,
because it's gonna be difficult for Anglo kids,
with your name, de los Santos."
This is for real. (chuckles)
Sandra: Okay.
-: Dr. Hunter, may he rest in peace,
and hopefully he's upstairs.
Dr. Hunter, thank you very much for your comments,
but I don't believe my father
would appreciate that very much.
Thank you very much.
I didn't get into a discussion with him or anything,
and at that time, (speaking in foreign language).
We had been taught to be polite,
but for this man to even suggest that to any one period,
was some criminality, as far as I'm concerned.
How dare he?
No, we were asleep,
and right about the time that I finished,
and I went to PSJA to teach in 1967,
and '68 I went to Southwest Texas State.
That's about the time that people were beginning
to open their eyes, and PSJA and Orange, and Raymondville,
and that's when you had the people actually walking out.
They'd walk out of (indistinct).
I was in San Marcos at the time.
Same thing was happening in Crystal City
and Carrizo Springs, and in that area.
And actually what happened at Southwest Texas State,
the movement was really started by the guys
from the Crystal City.
There was a lot of undergraduate students at the time.
Southwest Texas State, what happened is this.
I was a teacher all ready.
I was a teaching assistant at the university.
I was teaching Spanish classes as a Teaching Assistant
at Southwest Texas State,
I was older than the undergraduate students,
but they're the ones that started the momentum.
They're the ones who start raising hell,
but the professors that were going to to mentor us,
or to be in charge of the organization
that we're gonna form, were relatively conservative.
They were of a generation or two, even older than I.
And Crystal thing was not the thing to do
at a university that was relatively conservative.
So they geared us through the organization process,
although Dr. Hussein Hossa was,
but he was new and he was an instructor,
he wasn't a professor, but he finished his career here,
by the way, and he's no longer around,
he would have been a wonderful, wonderful subject for you.
But they set the tone.
The professor set the tone, and in the end,
when we organized and called meetings for Mexican-American
at the university together, 40, 50 of us showed up,
and we began discussions going back and forth,
and the Crystal City folks wanted us to be MAYO affiliated,
Mexican American Youth Organization,
which was the militant organization
as it was known at the time, and we went back and forth.
And the guidance that we received from our mentor professors
was that we should be more mellow
because of the the landscape at the university.
So we did.
The majority of the group there,
opted to call ourselves the...
Association of Mexican American Students, AMAS.
And then we had elections,
and that's how I became President of that organization.
But what we did at the time, we agreed,
the majority vote at that time is San Marcos,
agreed that what we wanted was to be better informed
on what the movement was and what was happening.
So during my tenure there, I was on there as President,
maybe six months or so, and then I left there,
got married and moved on to Houston area,
but what we did was we had, at that time,
Henry B. González had just been elected to Congress,
and we had him come down as a speaker for us,
but City Councilman in San Antonio, I forget his last name.
Sandra: Pena?
-: I think he was Pena.
In other words, we were bringing in these heavy duty guys
at the times to come and speak to our group.
And we were becoming educated
and the movement was out there.
I don't think it was Young Hill, came.
We may have invited him and he didn't come speak to us,
but he was raising hell in Crystal City at the time.
So that's how it started.
I don't know how it developed,
later on, I heard that as time went on,
it became more of a social organization,
for Mexican Americans to come together and share and grow
from one another and so on and so forth.
I wouldn't call us a change organization,
we were trying to understand
what this whole thing was about.
That's about the time that I began to read
some of the literature out there,
I began to become aware of what's happening in the Valley,
although I was up in Central Texas.
And then I got married and I moved to the Houston area.
I continued my teaching career there,
and was more into my wife and my kids and stuff,
for a couple of years.
-: How was your experience working in a large urban center
in Houston, and could you talk about if you've had to deal
with both African-American and Mexican American students,
and I'm not sure if it's too early,
but Houston is one of the most diverse cities, right?
-: Exactly. Sandra: And having
a different diversity of groups.
How was that experience?
-: Okay, I had two experiences in the Houston area.
My first was the one I'm talking about.
Actually, I was in Baytown as a teacher.
Sandra: Oh, Baytown, yeah.
-: And I was there two years,
and from there, I came to the Texas Education Agency,
which I spoke about earlier.
Texas Education Agency.
I went to La Joya as the Superintendent of schools.
I was there for eight years.
And from there, I went to Houston,
as a Deputy Superintendent in the schools there.
I was the number two person in the school district,
the General Superintendent had five deputies.
Sandra: Was this at HIST?
-: HIST. Sandra: Okay.
-: At that time we had 220 schools,
maybe a couple of hundred thousand kids,
so very black and very brown, white flight.
By that time, the court order had been removed from Houston,
we still had the Magnet Schools that have been put in
by the court order, whereas we had the high school
for the health professions that was built
in the black community,
and the high school for the performing arts
was built in the white community to attract black kids
and to attract white kids into the health professions.
And they worked to a certain degree, but I became Deputy,
and the reason, say, I was at number two,
was because I was a Line Officer.
I reported to the General Superintendent,
and then I had a lot of people
with the title of superintendent under me,
and they had the schools.
So I had the line to the schools.
The other four deputies, one was in charge of finance,
these are support services to school, human relations,
human resources, support services to the schools.
They're all support services.
The only line was mine.
And by line, I mean, power and authority over,
which I didn't exercise, but I'm the one that,
if a principal was to be removed or to be hired,
I would make that recommendation
to the General Superintendent.
What happened in coming Houston,
actually, the way it happened is this,
I'm Superintendent of La Joya.
I'm Superintendent of La Joya,
I have all ready applied twice
to be Superintendent of Edinburg.
There was this ego thing that I had,
that I needed to be superintendent
where I had gone to school, and later been a janitor,
because when we were going to college here,
that part-time job that we had,
actually, it was a full-time job.
We would go in at four o'clock and clean the schools
until midnight for two years.
I did that, so I had this thing about,
I wanna be superintendent where I did these things.
Well, twice, I was not a match or I was denied.
I always say I was the best qualified
but the chemistry wasn't there, so I wasn't hired.
So one day after having been denied twice,
I get home one day from deer hunting
with a compadre of mine, we were they're at my house,
actually, my compadre, and you may wanna interview him,
Dr. Ruben Olivarez, he's from Rio Grande City,
but right now, he..
He was a Superintendent of San Antonio
for a number of years,
and now he leads the Superintendency Program
at the University of Texas.
Sandra: Okay.
-: But anyway, we're sitting there,
and my wife brings me the phone,
or tells me that there's a phone call.
And this is before mobile phones, or even before handhelds,
that you walked around the house with this.
(laughing)
You have to go to the counter.
And I say, "Hello,"
and the caller says, "This is Dr. Joan Raymond,
I'm the Superintendent of schools in Houston ISD.
"Yes. Dr. Raymond."
"You have been recommended to be part of my faculty,
to be part of my staff."
And then we started a conversation.
She said, "Can you come visit with me?"
So I fly to Houston,
I sit down with her and we have a conversation,
and she's trying to balance the staff.
She's white, having come in from New York,
she has a white business manager,
she's hired a white woman to do instructional,
and a black man to do human resources.
So now she needs a top Mexican.
She's trying to reflect the composition of the district,
which is majority Mexican-American and black at the time.
So we have a conversation,
and I ended up going to Houston to work
in the Houston public schools as a Deputy Superintendent.
And the way that she identified me,
to call me to go out there and work with her
was she didn't know anybody in Texas,
she only knew the superintendents of the...
We call it the big seven.
Dallas, Fort Worth, Austin, El Paso, Houston,
Corpus Christi, and some other one.
There were seven school districts,
and those guys had a council of big seven superintendents.
So she goes through this big seven,
and she asked these guys,
since they're the only ones she contact with.
I need a Mexican American with a doctor's degree
and superintendents experience to join my staff.
So I knew four of the big seven superintendents
that I had had occasion to meet throughout my career.
Dr. S. had been my professor,
and he had been Superintendent of Dallas,
Dr. Rodriguez had entered the program that I exited
with my doctorate from San Antonio ISD,
at the time that I was coming out,
and we formed a relationship.
Dr. Candolly was Superintendent of Fort Worth,
and I had applied for a job in Fort Worth,
and he and I had gotten to know each other
as part of the interview process.
So these guys all mentioned my name,
because they had all had a good experience with.
And that's how she called me.
She didn't call anybody else, she called me.
And I ended up with her and I'm the Deputy Superintendent,
the district is divided into North of I-10
and South of I-10.
Two areas.
One, the North of I-10, I have an Assistant Superintendent
under me in charge of that area, and for the South of I-10,
which is majority black and brown,
another Assistant Superintendent.
North is white, South is...
Or vice versa, I forget.
Black, man and woman.
And we're always balancing staffs.
Each of them has seven district superintendents
under them, okay?
So now that we have 14 districts,
that would be like 14 Edinburg's are 14 PSJA's or 14...
And each of those districts has anywhere from 15
to 20 schools under them.
So they report to the District Superintendent,
the District Superintendent reports
to the Assistant Superintendent,
and the Assistant Superintendent report to me,
and I report to the General Superintendent.
The District superintendents, we try to balance them.
Districts that have a lot of schools
that were Mexican-American, we had district superintendents
that were Mexican American, blacks and so on.
So we'd try to balance that.
What was happening in Houston in 19...
I went there in 1987.
What was happening in Houston in 1987,
is that the Mexican Americans were beginning to awaken.
Okay?
The blacks had been awakened since the mid sixties,
and the Mexican Americans to a degree,
but not to the degree that they were being awakened
when I came in.
The reason I say that is because we had a lot of turmoil,
good turmoil, the kind that causes, pay attention to me.
I'm here in the schools led by Mexican American activists
who were raising hell in some way or another,
and demanding Mexican American principals,
and demanding bilingual programs, and so on.
This is during my tenure there.
So I'm the guy that was in the news
whenever the Mexican-American community
needed to be addressed, I'm the guy that had a radio show
every week with Elsa, I forget her last name.
But anyway, so I'm the guy that's speaking to the community
every week about what's happening
in the schools, in Spanish.
Elsa Garcia, who was also tremendous,
she had her own band, wonderful band, (indistinct) band.
So she's a singer and also has her own program,
and I'm a regular guest on that program.
I'm the one who has a relationship
with the Department of Justice,
because when there were complaints
to the Department of Justice,
about the mistreatment of Mexican Americans,
the Department of Justice guys would come talk to me.
And so I'm trying to make things right with the department.
I'm the one that goes whenever there's a walkout
of Mexican at a campus, and I'm the one that has to go
and bring in the parents and just talk about it,
and how are we gonna get...
What are the needs that need to be met,
and so on, and so forth.
So it wasn't the blacks that were doing this.
They had done that all ready,
and they had received quite a bit
as a result of what they did.
It was Mexican Americans doing it and saying,
"Hey we need some attention here."
And as a consequence, we responded to it.
And I'll give you an example.
Austin High School at the time, was the largest high school
in the State of Texas.
It had close to 4,000 kids.
The community there, including Roman Martinez,
who was the State Representative from that area,
who was a legislator,
was demanding a Mexican American principal.
And at the time, the principal who was there,
had been there for 20 or 30 years.
He was a nice, man, good man, but time for a change.
So we go through the whole process,
and the superintendent recognizes it,
and we had one Mexican American only
on the school board at the time.
And she's also demanding
that we need a Mexican American principal
at Austin High School.
Not only at Austin High School,
but some of the other high schools,
that had majority of Mexican American kids.
So whereas that has all ready happened in the Valley,
for example, and I'm not sure what was happening in El Paso,
to be honest, but in other parts of the state,
but for sure it had all ready happened here,
it's just beginning to happen in Houston.
So we developed a process, we move some principals out
into other areas and we open up the schools
where the demand is, and we begin to fill those positions
with Mexican Americans.
That's when mid eighties to late eighties, when it started.
I remember when I left, and I'll be honest with you
about why I left Houston.
I had been a superintendent for seven years
and I didn't like being number two.
I had all ready experienced being the final decision maker,
and I worked for a superintendent that was very hands-on,
very autocratic, very dictatorial in her way,
that was her style, and I didn't like it,
because I didn't like being second guessed
when I was making calls.
And she was more cautious about the calls than I was.
And she needed to be,
because she looked at the whole school district
and I was partial in a way,
to the Mexican American community.
So when I was asking for that,
she was always making sure that I understood
that she had other things to worry about.
And I understood that, but I didn't like it,
so I started looking for another job
because I didn't want to be number two
and I didn't want to be second guessed.
I wanted to be the superintendent,
and if I made the wrong call, I paid for it.
If I made the right call, we move forward.
So I started looking for work elsewhere,
and I had several opportunities out of state
that I chose not to pursue,
and I ended up being superintendent in San Benito,
coming to South Texas, again.
The other thing that I didn't like about Houston,
on a personal level,
was that my kids were losing their Spanish.
Okay, my two little ones.
My older one was over here at UT Pan American,
getting her degree, my two little ones were in the fifth
and seventh grade respectively,
and they were losing their Spanish,
and I wanted to come back home
because over here they had their grandparents
and they had to talk Spanish, and they knew Spanish.
My wife was in law school at the time.
My wife started law school when we went to Houston,
she had a Bachelor's Degree from from here
in Communications, and if I was a moderate in the movement,
she was a hell raiser in the movement, okay?
In fact, I think Ross Angel interviewed her at one time
when he was doing some work on Mexican Americans
in the movement.
But if I was moderate, she didn't hold back.
But she decided, "What am I gonna do
when we move to Houston?"
And I said to her, "You're gonna go to law school."
And she didn't think she was capable of law school,
but she's very bright, so she went to law school,
and then she was successful.
But when I moved from Houston and came to San Benito,
it was critical that she not leave law school,
and she still had a year ago.
So when I moved to San Benito, she stayed in Houston,
and I took the kids with me, and it was a difficult time
in our personal lives because mom wasn't home,
but she would fly in every weekend
and spend three or four days with us and then fly back
to law school.
This happened for about a year and a half,
and finally it was over,
and we got our family back together again.
And I think the real miracle is that we stayed together,
because a lot of folks that separate that way,
sometimes it's very difficult, especially with the kids.
So I came to San Benito, because I didn't wanna do
what I was doing in Houston anymore.
So I came to be the chief in San Benito.
And then when I was in San Benito,
is when one night when we were at home,
and actually we were having a party for my wife
who had just finished law school,
and we had hundreds of people at our house celebrating that
in San Benito, when a couple of guys walk up to the party
that I didn't know, and my wife knew,
and what happened is that one of them had just been elected
to the Board of the Edinburg schools,
and he was coming to encourage me
to come to Edinburg as Superintendent.
So at this time I'm not looking for Edinburg,
Edinburg comes looking for me.
And we went through the process and everything,
but I became Superintendent of Edinburg in 1991,
and that's where I finished my career in 1995.
I started as superintendent in 34,
it's a very early age for a person to begin
to be the chief executive officer of a school district.
But like I said earlier, I was at the right place
at the right time, getting my degrees,
and getting my experience at the agency, at TEA, and so on.
So when I became Superintendent of Edinburg,
I did it for four years, I was age 50 and I decided
I don't wanna do this anymore.
I've done it for 16 years and I wanna do something else.
And I just got tired of it, okay?
My board members would say, "Why do you wanna leave?
I mean, we're doing good things,
I mean, we just passed the multi-million dollar bond
so that we can build buildings, and so on,
let's see them through, and so on."
And I said, "It's not fun for me anymore.
I need to do something else."
And I didn't know what I was gonna do,
but I knew that I could retire and get a fair retirement
from my retirement and then do something, whatever else,
and make the money that I was making as a superintendent.
So I decided to do it.
About a half a year into my announcement of my retirement,
this position came up and this is how I ended up here
20 years ago.
And I thought I would be here for a few years,
and I've been here for 20 years,
and I'm the senior professor in the department.
And in those 20 years, 17 of the 34 superintendents
that sit in positions right now,
from Brownsville to Roma, are mine.
And I say mine, I'm very possessive about them.
They went through our program,
and I had hopefully something to do with their preparation.
If you look at Edinburg, the Superintendent,
and the five Assistant Superintendents are mine.
All of them, all six of the top people.
And then you look at the next tier,
and probably the majority of them went through our program.
So these have been very fruitful 20 years for me,
personally and professionally,
in the sense that I feel like I still have my hand
in the school districts across the area,
even across the state, because some of our folks
have moved up North.
In terms of the things that we're doing for kids out there.
I'm going back to your question,
when I left Houston and I sat down with the superintendent
and said, "Hey, I'm moving, I don't wanna do this."
And I was very upfront with her.
"I don't wanna do this."
And her response was, "I knew you wouldn't last very long."
She knew, I mean, "You've been a superintendent,
you don't wanna be an assistant."
Well, at least I didn't.
She wished me luck and so on,
and she said, "Before you leave,"
she said, "Tell me what your observations are.
What are the expectations?
What are the major issues that I'm going to face
between now and the next few years
that you see from your perspective?"
And I said,
"Dr. Raymond, the black and white issue is behind you.
The brown and white issue is not going to end."
And the brown, actually brown, white, black issue,
because some of the problems that I was experiencing
was in brown black schools, where the majority were brown.
The majority of student population was brown,
yet it was governed by by black administrators and so on,
and the community wanted brown representation.
So I said, "It's now gonna be a brown, white issue,
so get prepared for that kind of a movement.
And she knew it.
I mean, she wasn't asking me anything she didn't know
the answer to.
And that's what happened.
Shortly after she left,
there was another woman superintendent,
and then after, another was a black superintendent,
I know he was the first black superintendent
that they had had there, and then after he left,
he was replaced by a white woman, and then after that,
the first Mexican American superintendent of the Houston ISD
came about, and that was Dr. Saavedra,
and we were all happy to see that.
It took a little time
but finally we have a Mexican American superintendent.
And then after Dr. Saavedra,
there have been mostly white males.
They're kind of like, "Okay, we've satisfied the Mexicans,
now it's time to move on."
And during that time,
I think the Mexican American population
in the Houston schools gained a lot.
Actually during even my time,
we placed several Mexican Americans in positions,
actually, high school principals,
and as district superintendents overseeing.
So the superintendent saw and the board saw
that there was a need to take care of that particular part
of the community.
Sandra: And then how did you see the effectiveness
of hiring Mexican-American superintendents
and other board members in the school?
Did things in these schools change?
-: And I don't know whether I was there in the Houston ISD
long enough to see the fruits of that labor,
but the communities themselves, the parent groups,
the activists that were asking for this settled,
in that respect saying,
"Okay, we've got one of our demands met."
And I don't know whether I would be fair to say,
"Well, the schools did better or they didn't do better,"
and I never went back to study the results,
to see whether that happened or not.
I think the victory during my time,
and really the victory of the community at the time,
not mine, was that they had some small victories,
if you will.
The big victory is for kids to be successful,
but small victories in the sense
of their community demands, really they weren't requests.
They were, we want a Mexican-American principal.
We want somebody that speaks Spanish,
and can communicate with our parents.
Those kinds of small victories were accomplished.
Sandra: When you came to Edinburg,
and you became superintendent after you were in San Benito,
what was the state of Edinburg school district,
and how was your tenure as a superintendent?
-: By that time that I came to Edinburg,
the school board was seven Mexican-Americans,
and they were all male.
Or when I came to Edinburg,
I replaced a white superintendent
that kind of had snuck in, I think.
But anyway, he had a chemistry with the board, I guess,
but he spent a couple of years and then he moved on.
I don't think that the issue in Edinburg
was a Mexican-American issue anymore,
I think the issue was trying to balance
social economic classes.
And the reason I say that, is when I came to Edinburg,
Edinburg had just built a new high school,
so it had all ready been staffed,
the student population had all ready been divided,
so I was coming in to administer the first year
of two high schools, but the board had been very careful
in the way that they divided the kids.
They made sure that the division lines
were such that socioeconomic...
And these are all 99% Mexican American.
Their social economics were represented in both.
In other words, the Lake James area,
which is high social economics, was going to North,
and the free Gonzalez area was going to South,
and that's where most of the professionals live.
They made sure that the population of migrant students
was equally divided, special education was equally divided.
So it was more of a socioeconomic
and a social division or equalization,
then Mexican American equalization.
It wasn't Mexican Americans being discriminated against,
ensuring that poor Mexican Americans
weren't being discriminated against.
Those were the things that were happening
at the time in Edinburg.
The problems that I faced were not necessarily...
It was more individual problems that we were dealing with.
And as we opened schools,
that we ensured that we were being equal,
as we were going about dividing kids
and putting them in different schools,
always making sure that we were doing that.
It wasn't an issue of Mexican American
high school principals, they were all Mexican Americans
by that time, or 99% of them.
So the reflection of the population was all ready there.
Some of the major issues that we had at the time,
was, okay, how are we gonna improve our instructional?
Or how we're gonna ensure that kids
are doing better in school.
The major focus was on instructional programs
and making sure that we were coming up to state standards
and things of that nature.
Sandra: Speaking of standards, I wanted to ask you,
what was this?
I guess, the big, final question,
although the question isn't the last.
-: I wanna ask you for a really short break.
Sandra: Yes, we can do that before.
-: I need to go to the bathroom.