UNM
Civil Rights Symposium: Tribute to Dr. Vicente Ximenes
September
27, 2007
As
much as we would like to believe that history demonstrates a constant
progression of humankind, many people continue to suffer as very
serious challenges have yet to be overcome. The Latino community is
far down the road from where it was in the 1950s, 60s, and even 70s
thanks to Dr. Vicente Ximenes and many others; but it also true that
the Latino high-school dropout rate is too high, that we work for the
lowest wages of any group in the United States, and that our
homeownership rate is 20 points under the national average. The
Latino level of savings and investment wealth is the lowest of any
ethnic group in the United States. The inequities continue and they
must be addressed.
If
we Latinos are going to make our full contribution to American
society we cannot do it without health insurance, without adequate
jobs, without completed educations, and without sufficient skills.
The task that lies before us is a major one that our civic activists
and our political leaders must commit to with the same courage, the
same vision, the same uncompromising spirit, the same relentlessness,
and the same sense of belief in America and an unwillingness to be
ground down as Dr. Ximenes and his contemporaries showed. That is
the task of our national leaders today.
Whatever
progress our leaders make along the traditional ladder of progress, I
hope they will always remember, as Dr. Ximenes and others have, their
roots and the people who were are still behind. Our narrative must
be more than a story of a few people making it to the top; rather it
must be a story of those few opening doors so that many others could
come behind them. That is the spirit of Dr. Ximenes and the spirit
future leaders should have, including many who are still in the
universities, high schools, and grade schools. This is a long-term
proposition—the building of a great nation and the sustenance of a
great people–and Dr. Ximenes certainly set the standard. It is up
to us to understand it and follow.
Dr.
Ximenes’ life was forged in the scrub brush of Floresville in South
Texas at a time when there was virulent discrimination against
Mexicanos despite the fact that Mexicanos had lived in that area of
Texas for hundreds of years. He worked hard within the system to
acquire the best education and skills, and, early in life, came to
the attention of very important figures like Lyndon Johnson who
recognized his political skills, his interpersonal skills, his
oratorical and communication skills and, very importantly in due
course, his managerial and national leadership potential. He held a
series of posts including positions at the United States Agency for
International Development (USAID) and at the State Department, and a
political position in the Viva Johnson effort in 1964. He eventually
ended up in a very key slot during the early formation of the Equal
Employment Opportunity Commission, one of the major 1960s civil
rights era organizations, and then made important contributions as
the coordinator, secretary, and chair of the effort to create the
first cabinet-level position to bring Hispanic affairs to the
attention of the national government.
In
the 1960s and 70s organizations such as the American GI Forum and
LULAC defined a new level of Latino engagement with the larger
society. They engaged on a broad front: education, senior issues,
children’s concerns, disability programs, economic progress,
corporate board representation, discrimination—in short, the gamut
of life for Latinos in America. Much of the energy for establishing
these organizations came out of that period and Dr. Ximenes not only
encouraged but facilitated the conditions in which these
organizations could prosper. At this point Latinos had capable
leaders backed by foundations, churches, and labor organizations and
sustained by their own sweat equity and recognition of the need to
advocate on behalf of our community. So what started in the earlier
era with individuals like Dr. Hector Garcia and like Dr. Ximenes
ended up later being an army of activists who could change things
dramatically—and have. Today we have some 45 national Latino
organizations under the roof of the National Hispanic Leadership
Agenda. They meet together to focus on what is important to the
44-plus million Latinos across the United States who are of diverse
origins: Mexican, Cuban, Puerto Rican, Dominican, Central American,
and South American.
It
is difficult today to comprehend the levels of discrimination and the
intensity of challenges which Dr. Ximenes had overcome: patronizing
attitudes and the subordination of Mexican Americans in Texas. In
some communities in South Texas, Latino veterans could not be buried
in the same cemeteries as other veterans who died fighting for our
country. Across Texas, New Mexico, and Colorado Latinos were often
denied the most basic of rights: the rights to go into public
facilities, the rights to vote without a poll tax, the rights to have
access to jobs that matched their skills and capabilities. That is
the world through which Dr. Ximenes fought his way. When finally the
tide began to turn, he was recognized as a figure who could bridge
the gap between disenfranchised Mexican Americans and the political
and power institutions of our society.
One
of the decisive turning points in the struggle was the 1967 El Paso
hearings which Dr. Ximenes organized and chaired and which was the
first time the government of the United States explicitly created a
forum in which Latino grievances and longstanding concerns could be
addressed. One of the most significant things about it was the fact
that it had the support and endorsement of the President of the
United States. We were fortunate to have a President who not only
understood civil rights and basic fairness and who fought for the
disadvantaged people with whom he grew up—depression-era poor
people from Central Texas—but who broadened his understanding to
include African Americans and Latinos. President Lyndon B. Johnson
never forgot his experiences as a teacher of young Latino children in
Cotulla in South Texas! The civil rights movement touched his
conscience. Latinos had never been included in the narrative of what
was unfair about America and what needed to be changed about America
until President Johnson and those 1967 hearings. They were seminally
important and the beginning of a massive turnaround in thinking.
Another
critical piece of context is the African American civil rights
movement. Dr. King’s leadership of the Montgomery bus boycotts and
organization of a national movement, the new commitments which
followed in the wake of President Kennedy’s assassination in 1962,
President Johnson’s pushing of civil rights and breaking the
legislative logjams created by those who were opposed through the use
of the filibuster and other legislative techniques available to
them—all played a part in the lead-up to the Civil Rights Act, the
Voting Rights Act, the formation of the Equal Employment Opportunity
Commission, and the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Also enacted were new commitments student financial aid, fair labor
practices, fair housing, and other measures that touched the lives of
all Americans, reaching far beyond one group. The Civil Rights
Movement created parallel paths within the Latino community, the
women’s movement, the environmental agenda, and the quest to aid
persons with disabilities. Basically, as Dr. King said, when we open
the doors of opportunity, they are opened for everyone. That is
exactly one of the most powerful changes which has occurred in our
country over the last 50 years. America has been transformed from a
society which was unjust, exclusive, overtly discriminatory and
segregationist to an inclusive society which though not perfect is
clearly more fair and open. Dr. Ximenes was a contributor to that
breakthrough period, faithful to those principles, recognized for his
skills, and one of our civil rights pioneers.
In
the wake of that period, national organizations were founded which
have changed life for Latinos, such as the National Council of La
Raza, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, and the
Southwest Voter Registration and Education Project—each of which
have touched countless lives. Who could have imagined then that
those institutions would so effectively alter the trajectory of
Latino integration into American society?
Young
leaders modeled their activism on those who came before, including
men such as Dr. Hector Garcia of Corpus Christi, Congressman Henry B.
Gonzales of San Antonio, Senators Joe Montoya and Dennis Chavez of
New Mexico, and Edward Roybal, the first Latino City Council member
in Los Angeles and later Congressman. These were giants and Dr.
Ximenes was one of them. He is a key figure in the tremendously
important evolution of Latino progress in the United States. I have
faith that subsequent generations will continue the momentum; perhaps
not in the same ways, perhaps not fighting overt discrimination or
manifesting the physical courage that Dr. Ximenes and his
contemporaries needed to show, but acting upon a vision appropriate
to the times. Hopefully the next generation will complete the job of
taking Latinos into the mainstream of American life.
The
Latino progression is one of the most important dynamic forces in the
United States. There are major trends which we can see will shape
our country—globalization, the continuing evolution of technology,
the aging of the population, the migration of populations across
America. Certainly one which will be among the most decisive is the
Hispanicization of the United States. That is not to suggest the US
is going to be a majority Hispanic country, but it is clear that one
of the most important demographic realities in the American future
will be the energy, the youthfulness, the capacity for hard work, and
the ambition that the American Latino community brings to the United
States. This is massively important to the American future. A drive
by a schoolyard today in almost any major American city reveals a
population of children playing in the schoolyard that reflects the
shape of the American future captured in the many faces of minority
children. Many of those children are Latino, not just in New Mexico,
Texas or California; not just in Arizona, Colorado or Florida, but in
Arkansas, Georgia, North Carolina, Nebraska, Illinois, New York, and
Washington State. All across America as this process unfolds Latinos
will take our place among the shapers of America’s destiny.
Because we love this country, we want to work for it and make it
greater. As we do, let us remember the pioneers, the visionaries,
the courageous few, those who were unwilling to settle for lives of
discrimination and segregation, and who used their skills for the
benefit of a people and a nation. Dr. Ximenes is foremost among
those who have worked to create the better life that we enjoy today.
c/o Professor Michelle Kells, Associate Professor, Rhetoric & Writing, University of New Mexico
