"The niggers always get what they want - Chicanos never do!"

The biggest problem facing the Houston Independent School District in implementing its court-ordered desegregation plan is a city-wide boycott of public schools by an estimated 3,500 Mexican-American students. 

The strike was called by the Mexican-American Education Council (MAEC) following a meeting with the school board on August 27 concerning HISD's proposed pairing plan. The plan has zoned neighborhoods so that Chicano students, considered "white" by the federal court, are integrated with black students, leaving anglo schools largely unaffected and still lily white.  

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The underlying racism in many students' decision to boycott, however, was obvious again at the Enrichment school. One ninth grader told me he was boycotting because "the niggers always get what they want - Chicanos never do!" A common feeling was that the students were afraid of going to schools that were predominantly black because "black kids are always bossing us around, picking fights."

 

Duncan, Cam. "La Raza vs. School Board." Space City News, September 19, 1970 , p. 3

"Huelga! I don't want to go to school with those black people"

SR: What did you think about the huelga school movement that emerged in response to HISD’s so called integration plan? And what role did U of H MAYO play in this huelga movement? 

MJ: Well I think we were ambivalent about the huelga movement. Some people became teachers; I never did. I was always ambivalent about it because I think the leadership was saying this was an injustice but I think the community was saying, “I don’t want to go with those black people.” And so that’s what always there was a lot of that within the community. So it wasn’t like clearly…it wasn’t a clear movement of fighting for equality. The leadership may have been different in its conception but the grassroots had a different. There was a lot of racism. So I think we had ambivalent roles. Individually I think a lot of the Houston MAYO get those teachers out of the schools. 

SR: And did the… was the huelga school movement and CMAS connected in terms of leader faculty members or those who support CMAS? 

MJ: I don’t remember that being there. Because I think that the leadership of the huelga schools was entirely based in the neighborhoods. I mean if you looked at the leadership they were neighborhood leaders or political leaders or even religious leaders who were leading it. And again for the leadership, the question was one of fighting the bad plan of integration but the reason I think of the community response was there was a lot of racism.

 Jimenez, Maria. Oral history from the Houston History Project