Educators From The United States

"It is as stupid to oust ancient history from the schools in favor of American and modern European history as it would be to knock out the first two stories of a skyscraper and expect the structure to stand."

"As a people, we Americans love the theatrical art and in order that the theater may be a significant factor in our national life, we have had it said we should produce plays representative of American life. This is obviously true, but is it not true also that a generous sprinkling of Shakespeare would be a fine racial tonic for us?"

"The digital world is the future."

"Debt can rob you of your future because you are using the money you earn today to pay off things from the past."

"Whoever created Bitcoin wanted to remain anonymous."

"But here came an order from the President to take all the five hundred Piutes under your care there and take them across the Blue Mountains, and across the Columbia River, to Yakama Reservation'. This order came in December. Imagine what a severe winter it is out there at that time. They could not disobey the order although everything was said that could be in our behalf. But we took up the march and the soldiers had good buffalo shoes and buffalo robes and prepared for their comfort, and here were my people. They were poor and had no clothing and no blankets and no buffalo robes, and nothing to make them warm, because we did not belong to a buffalo country. We took up our march and marched over drifting snow, my people carrying their little children. Well it took us a good while. Some times, after we camped here and there, some would come along making a great noise crying. Some white people would mimic and mock them. Women would be coming along crying, and it was not because they were cold, for they were used to the cold. It was not because they were sick, for they suffered a great deal. The women were crying because they were carrying their little frozen children in their arms"

"We came on here and I pleaded- at least my father did - and of course my father asked for that same reservation back again. Says he 'I did not do anything'. He said 'my people did not do anything'. He said that our people had saved the lives of white people, and were now scattered everywhere and why should my people be punished like that?"

"I was beginning to miss more and more meals, so...I’ve come from a family of eleven; I was one of the oldest. I couldn’t get a job, I couldn’t help, I couldn’t do anything, so I left San Antonio. I went to San Francisco and stayed there for twenty years, and to my surprise, I return and I find myself some sort of a heroine."

"I would like to see a history...not just of the Communists but of the Left Wing movement and its narrow, factional, sectarian approach."

"I attended one convention, that was all. The woman for whom I had the greatest admiration was, of course, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn. The man for whom I had the...was not Browder, who was the secretary, but was Foster – William C. Foster...along with those heroes whom I did have – women heroes – Mrs. Roosevelt, Amelia Earhart, Babe Diedrickson"

"We’ve been spending too much money on armaments. We haven’t had any peace since World War II. We had troops in Korea, Vietnam, South American, Europe. We cannot continue to do that."

"There were spontaneous strikes. You don’t have those if you have a good organizer."

"If I had to give any credit to myself, I would say that I was a darn good organizer, and if I did it was because I read the works of the...I read quite a bit about the anarchists’ organization."

"The Wobblies could come into a town and establish free speech. They’d bring in...one would come by railroad then – ride the rods and so forth and so on – they they’d come into a town. They had one group that would go out. That group would be arrested. They’d get another group to get up and speak, and then another group would fill the damn jail. And you had lawyers there."

"I was removed; because I was a Communist, I was removed from leadership of the Workers’ Alliance of the CIO."

"I would say that the times are absolutely different. Unfortunately, American history books, especially at the high school level...and I examined about three of them here in 1968, I haven’t examined any since then. But they were not analytical. They were not critical. You will find history books that will tell you we still don’t know why the Depression occurred – a world-wide Depression. England went on the bill. Certainly, World War I had a lot to do with it. Why did we have a World War II? The unbearable, actually, the unbearable load or money that Germany had to pay us, which actually stripped their economy. Germany never had what you would call a true democratic society."

"You had this factionalism all the time."

"Any effort of the Mexican workers to organize was met with brutal force, from the very beginning."

"The question was always one of land, and it wasn’t tackled in Mexico until the time of Cardenas. And it wasn’t tackled in Cuba until Castro."

"Theodore Roosevelt...he was an imperialist, but he had a liberal approach."

"1938 was the hardest year because by that time the Depression had really struck every city, every place."

"I don’t think that women will ever be completely and totally free – or any of the minorities – until you have socialism."

"Look, it was not the Black, the savages or the Indians who brought about a government such as the Hitler regime...I think after four, almost five hundred years of European domination that this next period would be one of revolt against European domination. And there are lots of lives being lost in Nicaragua and these other places."

"The Workers’ Alliance was an organization for the unemployed. And I think it did a tremendous job, because all of the housing projects that are here are due to the Workers’ Alliance...they were organized by the Communists and Socialists."

"I read quite a bit. I would say I read, well, I didn’t read all of Das Kapital, but I read that and Price and Profit, Wage, Labor & Capital, so I had an idea of how capital was made; how it was used, and so forth and so on."

"It would be difficult to say that minorities have not advanced. You will find quite a few members of the state legislature, a few senators, but quite a number who are Mexican. You will find a number who are in the Senate. You will find a lot of Blacks. But, again, you have a split there; you have a split."

"In 1929, the Wall Street crash; in 1932, the closing of all the banks... My grandfather lost some money in one of them, and he didn’t tell anybody. The person he told, I mean...he came over to me and told me, he says, “I’ve lost everything I have.” And he was already about, I guess, 65, close to 70. So, I don’t know, I felt that had an awful effect on me."

"I felt at first that I was more of an anarchist than anything else. And this came from the anarchist movement here;...The Magonistas, at one time, had about...I think they had about thirty or forty papers throughout south Texas, yes. And I remember the Wobblies, too. I know Mother Flor and Mother Jones were from here, from what I have read, so they work. Then you had some labor unions here. Not too many, but you did have railroad workers; and at that time, there were quite a number of railroad workers; and at that time, there were quite a number of railroad workers who were Mexicans."

"I had become very, very interested in the labor movement. I mean, I had...first there were the anarchistas and so forth. And then you had, also, the influence in the CTM [Confederacion de Trabajadores de Mexico]."

"The Klan was very, very strong here, particularly on this side of town."

"It’s only recently that I have been able to talk about some of the things that I saw here. I mean as far as poverty – because it was just too difficult."

"Remember, at that time here, ’24, the Palmer raids, the Ku Klux Klan"

"I have expected my country, your country, to become the scientific Athens, but I don’t think that will be the case."

"Remember this – we didn’t have radios, we didn’t have this, we didn’t have that, we didn’t have a lot of things. So, this going to the plaza and just listening...(to people) speak to a crowd"

"I just have a feeling, a very strong feeling, that if ever this world is civilized, that it would be more the work of women."

"It wasn’t until the ‘30s that Spanish began to be taught in the schools – in the high schools. And there was a woman by the name of Esther Caravajal who wrote one of the first text books for the teaching of Spanish in the schools here."

"What really kept us (our neighborhood) together was the church – St. Agnes."

"I once read that people from...among those graduates at West Point you wouldn’t find any liars and cowards: you get Poindexter; you got North. I mean, these guys filled their minds that covert actions, terrorism – the same type that we’re trying to fight"

"El Espanol que yo hablaba era un Espanol que los Conquistadores trajeron aqui, verdad, porque era “vide por vi; ansina por asi”, and when I went to school and started to learn Spanish, I had an awful time, because some of these teachers were not from the city or from Texas. They were from the east, you see. And they’d tell me, “Senorita, usted no sabe hablar el Espanol, verdad?” And they mixed it up with this Texas-Mex and that sort of thing."

"(Ronald Reagan is) nothing but a bag of hot air."

"But where are the intellectuals: Where are the Clarence Darrows?...Where are all of those writers who went out and picketed when Sacco and Vanzetti were put in jail? You see, we do have a big movement against war. Against nuclear war, in particular. But I just don’t know...if I could see in the future somebody who could take the presidency and have a knowledge of the program... I would hate to see another Carter or another movie star, because they don’t know foreign policy; they don’t know history."

"The 20th anniversary Chicano Activists Reunion organizers had made efforts to recognize women's accomplishments. The featured speaker at the Labor Lunch and guest of honor at the banquet was Emma Tenayucca, the young leftist heroine of the huge Mexican pecan shellers' strike in San Antonio in the 1930s, called "La Pasionaria" by local people, and now in her 80s."

"As a twenty-three-year-old member of the Workers' Alliance and secretary of the Texas Communist Party, Emma Tenayuca emerged as the fiery local leader. Although not a pecan sheller, Tenayuca, a San Antonio native, was elected to head the strike committee. During the six-week labor dispute from 6,000 to 10,000 strikers faced tear gas and billy clubs "on at least six occasions." Emma Tenayuca courageously organized demonstrations and she along with over 1,000 pecan shellers were jailed. Known as "La Pasionaria," Tenayuca, in an interview with historian Zaragosa Vargas, reflected on her activism as follows: "I was pretty defiant. [I fought] against poverty, actually starvation, high infant death rates, disease and hunger and misery. I would do the same thing again.""

"Less than five feet tall, she was a powerful speaker and excellent writer, lovingly called La Pasionara (the Passionate One)...Emma became chair of the Texas Communist Party, then a strong voice for the oppressed. Forced to leave Texas by Red-baiting, she returned later to be a teacher and a beloved inspiration always."

"Communist Mexican-American labor activist Emma Tenayuca, "the Passionflower of Texas," led protests, walkouts, and demonstrations to protest the deplorable working and living conditions that Latino workers faced in her native San Antonio...Like many labor activists of her generation, Tenayuca was later blacklisted for her political affiliations, but there was no erasing the impact she'd made on San Antonio and the labor movement as a whole."

"Chicana labor leaders and politicians, like Denver's Dolores McGran González, testified before congressional committees, ran for local office, and served as national delegates to the Progressive Party Convention in the late 1930s. Other women who have become models of female-inspired activities of the period are Dolores Hernández, who was killed on October 10, 1933 during a strike of 15,000 farm workers in Visalia, California. Another woman labor union leader made history in 1936 when she led pecan sheller strikers in San Antonio in a successful strike effort. Emma Tenayuca Brooks, then a 17-year-old labor organizer and orator, became a beacon of hope to beleagured workers throughout the United States. For her efforts, she has had to live 40 years in obscurity and anonymity. In civil rights and educational reform, a strong women's advocate, Mariá L. Hernández of Lytle, Texas, worked tirelessly throughout the 1930s demonstrating, speaking, and protesting the educational status of Mexican-Americans in the United States."

"With such crucial truths to document and establish, an ounce of fact is worth a pound of controversy"

"Schomburg belonged to a circle of "race men" who were also book fiends, sharing and trading recent acquisitions. Before there was such a thing as the New Negro movement, he had cofounded the Negro Society for Historical Research, was a member of the Negro Book Collectors Exchange, and had served as president of the American Negro Academy.... The desire of these men to uncover the forgotten history of black people was matched by a desire to protect and steward that knowledge."

"Though it is orthodox to think of America as the one country where it is unnecessary to have a past, what is a luxury for the nation as a whole becomes a prime social necessity for the Negro. For him, a group tradition must supply compensation for persecution, and pride of race the antidote for prejudice. History must restore what slavery took away, for it is the social damage of slavery that the present generations must repair and offset. So among the rising democratic millions we find the Negro thinking more collectively, more retrospectively than the rest, and apt out of the very pressure of the present to become the most enthusiastic antiquarian of them all."

"The American Negro must remake his past in order to make his future."