-: I had a panc...uh...
Appenticritis? Appen... Appendicitis?
No, what was it?
-: [Moisés Acuña-Gurrola] Appendicitis?
-: No, right in under the stomach.
It's a pancreas? -: Pancreatic?
-: Ooh, bad. -: Yeah.
-: Horrible. -: Yeah.
James Wall: What's the time?
-: Oh, man.
(background chatter)
Okay.
James Wall: All right, I'm James Wall.
Today is June 17th, 2016.
-: Good day.
James Wall: We are at the home of Mr. Arnold Gonzalez.
We're speaking with him
on behalf of the Civil Rights and Black and Brown Project.
Did I missing anything?
Oh, if you need to stop the video at any time,
that's absolutely fine.
And we're in his home in Corpus Christi, Texas.
All right.
So first question, we like to go way, way, way back.
So tell me about your roots.
Where's your family from originally?
How'd you make your way to Corpus eventually?
-: Born and raised. -: Yeah?
-: Born and raised in Corpus Christi.
I think you'll find very few of us
born and raised in Corpus Christi.
My dad was born here in 1916.
My mother was born in Floresville.
Her father was born in Mexico.
My father's mother was born in Mexico.
My great grandfather was born Italy.
I understand he was a mafioso,
kicked out of Italy.
Yeah. Came into Cuba.
I think met my grandmother there.
Came into Mexico
which is around Brownsville Monterey area.
History tells,
there's a lot of history of course you,
a lot of it's not verified,
but he crossed my,
brought my grandfather over during the revolution
with his wife and two children.
And my grandfather was very young.
My great-grandfather went back to Mexico.
He was part of the Federalistas.
And when he came back
to pick up the his wife and the two children,
they refused to go back.
He was not happy.
He was not a guy, he was not a nice guy.
According to my aunts, he was not a nice individual
but we turned out okay.
That's on my mother's side.
On my father's side,
grandfather, Marcos Gonzalez was born in Piedras Negras.
He died very young, I think at 21.
And my grandmother on my mother's side
died when she was very young, she was about 24.
So they didn't last so long during those periods
they had hard times, but my grandmother, like I say,
she was born in Monterey and, and through Kingsville.
And so we've been here for a very long time.
James Wall: Gotcha.
And your mother and father, tell me about them.
-: My mother was a cotton picker, and proud.
A wonderful woman, went to the fourth grade.
My father was like I said, was born here
in this area, in Corpus Christie Kingsville area.
And he got to the fourth grade
had to quit cause his father died when he was very young,
had to support his mother.
He went into the service.
He worked in the CC camps during the depression.
So he learned a lot during that time.
But he went to the service and learned a great trade,
but couldn't find jobs in Corpus Christi when he came back
and mostly worked out of the country.
My mother raised the family
when my dad worked out of the country when we were older.
But he was a great guy.
He really was a great guy.
He was very, very smart.
Good looking, good looking guy with curly hair, blue eye.
Loved to tell jokes.
So I got a chance to know him very well.
My mother was just a beautiful person, died when she was 96.
My father died when he was 76, very young.
So had a good family, fun.
I had two brothers and two sisters, all military.
Well the whole family, very military.
Marines and Navy. Yeah, that's my family.
James Wall: What side of town did you guys live on?
-: West side, west side of town.
Well, during the,
when my dad was at war
they built projects, government projects, great places.
Beautiful. Well kept.
The people were very proud
because they were probably the best places in the city.
Then we moved to a government,
my dad was able to use the GI bill to buy a house.
We moved out into the newly developed areas.
And then my mother still, she died there.
And so went to mostly west side schools, went to Southgate.
Nobody knows where Southgate is now,
it's part of the east part of Corpus Christi,
west side of Corpus Christi.
But we went to the west side.
I went to that school
and then we moved into the new area where the GI bill was
and went to to Travis Elementary,
it was mixed mostly Anglo, Mexican American
but then there were too many Mexican Americans.
So they quickly built,
they got some barracks from the Naval base
and tied 'em together and built a school to the west side,
further west,
and named it Crockett for David Crockett.
And they moved all the Mexican Americans back across.
Port street was the main street that divided the city
at that time.
And so moved most of the Mexican Americans back across Port.
Graduated from Crockett, went to Wynn Seale.
Again, mostly Anglo.
At that time, Ocean Drive, very nice school
and lasted one year there
and quickly they built another school
across Port called Cunningham.
So all the Mexicans went back across Port
and we went to, I went,
I finished school there at Cunningham.
Did okay there, was selected favorites.
I was okay. Played football, baseball.
And then we went to,
I had no choice.
I had to go to Ray because I was on the boundary.
Went to Ray high school.
Had just become, that was in '58.
So I went into Ray High School in '56.
Miller was the only school till '50.
And then they built Ray High School.
So it was a brand new school.
W. B. Ray was a brand new school.
Not a very good experience there.
They just passed you.
And I wasn't the smartest kid in the world at that time,
but I learned, they put me in printing.
They had me print.
In senior year I was in
printing, typing, study hall and history.
That was my classes in my senior year.
And the rest of the day, I had time off to go work.
So I got a job at Channel 10.
And the only reason I got a job at Channel 10
was cause I knew how to use a printing machine.
So because they put me on printing at Ray High School.
I was able to use that, the little they gave me
to work at Channel 10.
Great work, great bosses there.
Mr. and Mrs. Van Kennedy.
He owned the station and she took care of me.
And I worked there till I finished high school.
And then I went to the service.
When I came back from the service, Mr. Van Kennedy,
Colonel van Kennedy,
had this thing that he hired veterans when they came back
cause he was a veteran.
So he hired me back back into Channel 10.
And I worked there and I got married while I was there.
And then I went to Del Mar College,
got my two year degree at Del Mar College,
I don't think I got my degree there.
I just finished. -: Hmm.
-: And my wife had already finished at Kingsville
at that time.
And so I went to Kingsville for my next two years.
-: This is the early sixties or mid sixties?
-: Yeah. I graduated from Kingsville in 1965.
That's when, Kingsville was tough.
That's when Kennedy was killed in '62, right.
I was there at Kingsville playing in the little pool area.
They had a little pool recreation hall there in Kingsville.
And we heard that the president had been shot.
So we all ran to the TV area,
and they were announcing, Walter Cronkite was announcing
that the president had gotten shot
and we almost got into some big fights there
because some jokers from South America
some cocky guys, you know, were making fun
about getting shot, things like that.
James Wall: Had you considered yourself a Democrat
or politically active at all before then?
-: Hey man, we were all Democrats in this area at that time,
there were no Republicans around here.
We didn't allow,
Republicans didn't come into this area
during that period.
James Wall: Were there any Viva Kennedy clubs
or things like that?
-: No. No.
When I came back from the service,
we were of course Kennedy, my father and all that,
and I remember seeing him give the speech on Cuba
on why we were, I was at Channel 10.
As a matter of fact I'm glad you brought that up because
I used to be, I used to work.
When Kennedy was killed,
I worked at night at the TV station for Channel 10,
which is located in Robstown,
and I remember seeing the clippings coming in
where they had thrown eggs at,
at, I wanna say like Stevenson I think it was,
they threw an egg in his face
and there was trouble in Dallas.
And I said,
the people's defense is gonna be trouble in Dallas
and sure enough, next day.
And I remember, I remember very clearly
because it was, it was a sad day. Even my mother was crying.
And I remember, I remember having my son Arnold
who's now 50 something, Arnold junior,
I had him on my lap and we were looking at the,
Oswald, coming out of the jail in Fort Worth or Dallas
and he got shot and, and we go, oh my God
we were just watching TV.
I remember that clearly, yeah.
It was very sad for all of us because it was just,
it doesn't happen.
People couldn't believe it.
But the one that cried the most was my mother.
She was just...
like a lot of people did.
But came outta Kingsville.
And I got a job teaching art in Corpus Christi
at Wynn Seale Junior High.
James Wall: Tell me more about,
cause you you're going to college during the early 1960s,
during the civil rights movement.
Were you cognizant of the civil rights movement?
The sort of the bigger civil rights movement
in the early sixties?
-: No. No, no.
Tell you the truth. I wasn't.
Let me tell you, I came out poor as heck out of the service.
My job was survival.
Like, I was fell in love with my wife,
high school sweetheart
and we were having, we had a young boy Arnold Jr.
And we were both going to college and it was all survival.
You know, I worked during the day, went to college at night
for a long time, for a couple of years.
And then we worked Saturdays and she worked Saturdays
just to make ends meet.
And we was just surviving, that survival mode.
And then when I went to Kingsville, the same thing,
I didn't have a car.
And so I met a friend at Channel 10 who had a truck
and he would come pick me up.
And well, we had one car that
my wife used the car for transporting the kids
and going to work.
And he picked me up in his truck
and we'd take off for Kingsville early in the morning.
And sometimes he didn't have a truck
and we'd hitchhike or catch a ride.
And in Kingsville, I stayed there most of the day
then I'd catch a ride from Kingsville to Robstown
to the studio.
And I'd work there till midnight at the studio.
Because we didn't have videos at that time
or wonderful cameras
compared to the camera that's facing me right now.
Our cameras were huge and the tripods were tremendous.
Huge.
And we stayed there till 12 o'clock
cause Colonel Kennedy loved to have live news.
So at midnight we have live news at midnight.
That means I had to stay there
till one o'clock in the morning
and come home and I can catch a ride with Gene Luper
or one of those guys would gimme a ride home.
And I get home about 12:30, 1 o'clock in the morning
and my son would be waiting for me.
He hadn't seen me all day.
So we'd play around.
So I didn't have time for that.
Didn't have time for that kind of politics,
Democrat politics kind of stuff.
Our politics were just survival.
And so when I finished my degree and came home
and got involved,
got me a little art studio and painted
and I was an artist at that time.
And my wife was a teacher and I was teaching.
So we're making, we were coming out of the hole,
financially.
And so she got me involved in politics again,
she got me involved in politics.
She said, the president wants you to run
for president of the classroom teacher association.
I said, why do I wanna run for president?
Cause they need a strong male figure.
We need somebody strong in there.
Oh, okay.
So I won by one vote.
My first experience, I won by one vote
and there was about 2000 teachers.
So I ran, I served there for two years
as the president of the classroom teachers.
James Wall: What did you campaign on?
-: We campaigned on being fair to teachers,
good working conditions for teachers,
a good calendar for teachers.
We had a negotiating board.
I negotiated the contract for the teachers
and then negotiated the calendar for teachers.
I was a troubleshooter.
I was very cocky, I really was.
I worked half a day and I and I was president for half a day
and I would go into the principal's office
and I demand them to treat my teachers right.
And I was like a union person
but I would go in there.
James Wall: So the teachers were unionized?
-: No, it was a non-union
at the classroom teachers association.
-: Yeah. -: It was an AFT.
It was the national association of education, NEA.
It was the NEA, not the AFT.
And so I had that opportunity to work with teachers.
So when I left Corpus Christi,
I left to go to University of Michigan,
I was selected by the Mott foundation to be a Mott fellow.
And I stayed there for two years, got my master's degree.
Then I walked over to the University of Michigan
and got my Ph.D in educational policy.
James Wall: So you went from Corpus Christi to Ann Arbor?
-: From Corpus Christie to Flint, Michigan.
James Wall: To Flint, Michigan.
-: And then my wife taught at,
the Flint, the general motors people
the Mott foundation controlled Flint, Michigan.