In Texas, as many of you know, children were required to be educated in either the white or the colored school. Officials in Texas, and I have in min… - Vilma Socorro Martínez

In 1970, of 15,650 major elected and appointed positions at all levels of government, federal, state, and local, only 310, or 1.98 percent were held by Mexican Americans. This result is no mere coincidence. It is the result of manifold discriminatory practices which have the design and effect of excluding Mexican Americans from participation in their own government and maintaining the status quo.

We do not fulfill our role as a university when we, effectively, abdicate our charge to foster and maintain diversity in the university environment.

In order to prevail in Texas, we have to argue what is now known as the northern de jure segregation cases. We culled through the school board minutes going back to 1919. We traced the development of their school construction policies, their school assignment policies. We noticed that even toys were provided on the basis of race; twice the amount was spent for children in the Anglo schools as for children in the Mexican school, even though there were double the number of children in the Mexican schools as in the Anglo schools.