Discrimination Tags Used in Events

And I remember that he was, we were talking in, I remember one time he was talking in Spanish. And back then I guess my Spanish wasn't that good. And he was trying to [unintelligible] me, I told him "oh my socks," "calcetines," I used to say "sacatines." And he would try to correct me and I could never say "calcetines." I would say "sacatines." I remember that.

And we didn't know him as “Gerardo,” we always knew him as “Jerry.” Everything was “Jerry”, all the paperwork. And then when he grew up, he found out his name was not “Jerry”. His official birth name, “Gerardo”. So he had to go back and redo all kind of paperwork for that. Nobody could say “Gerardo”. They say “Jerardo”. So “Jerry”, there you go.

Well, I think we spoke Spanish, but I don't remember. I remember speaking English all my life. I don't even even in, even after- in high school, we spoke English mostly, I think basically I don't- Marcos, I guess because he went to college, he he was immersed in Spanish. But I and Gerardo were not, were really not immersed in Spanish speaking after I graduated from high school, I don't think I spoke Spanish till I came back. I left in '65 came back in '63, and everything was in English.

So after we moved to Rainey Street, that was junior and high school, and I remember that more than 8th Street or Willow Street. And we lived right there in the corner of Daley- I mean, that's Daley, that's at San Marcos, but corner of Rainey and Holly, one house down from Holly. And we lived there. 66 Rainey and 68 Rainey, and we moved there. The streets were not paved, so there was real when the cars went by, it got dusty, and then when it rained, the streets got real muddy. But I remember a Rainey Street more than, say, the other streets, but it was a real nice neighborhood. We had, as far as I think most people were in my block were Hispanic. There was some, some Anglos for that by Driscoll and Red River. There were a lot of Anglos, but they you didn’t see them, but you knew they lived there, you know.

And then there was a maintenance plant there the City of Austin, with a street maintenance, and they had an alley. Our Alley was paved back then, all the alleys were dirt. But we had the only paved alley in our neighborhood, in that whole area. Because the trucks came in after working, they would come to the in from the alley, and the alley was paved, like really nice. I remember that. That's how we used to get to town. We's go the back alley, hit Driscoll down the first Red River in the first street, and go into town or to school. And on- in that alley, there was also a large vacant lot, and we spent a lot of time there, they had a lot of pecan trees. And it was very it was really nice. And we spent a lot of time there, hiking, playing around, stuff like that. During the fall, we would go pick up pecans and get bags and pecans and go sell them at, I forgot exactly where that place was, Miller something or other, but, but the neighborhood was mostly Hispanic. I remember most of my neighbors.

Okay, I can't- Palm School, it was pretty it was pretty simple, I can't remember that much. But going to junior high, I remember we used to- most of the time we would walk. And University Junior High was, I think, on Red River, 19th and Red River, not too far from Memorial Stadium. I don't know if it's still there or not, but we would, I would walk. We would walk from the house, on on, on Rainey street, cross, uh, 1st Street, Ceasar Chavez, and get on Red River and just walk. 19 blocks. And most we would- it was winter time. I don't think we had bus service back then. It was just a matter of fact, we didn't have school busses. There was the city busses, and they would cost, I think, five cents, four cents, something like that. But there was no busses that I can recall that would go to the University Junior High, so we would walk.

Well, I remember and we weren't we were not allowed to speak Spanish in the halls. I remember walking the halls. If you was heard- spoke in Spanish, speaking Spanish, they would correct you. So maybe that was a good thing, that I was able to learn English helped me later on in life. You know, being proficient in English, I think, helped me. But you know, being in school speaking Spanish to a teacher would- I don't know if they could speak Spanish at all. So it never occurred to me that I can’t remember exactly if we spoke Spanish in school, but I don't, you know within ourselves. I think we probably did, but I don't remember for some reason. I just remember speaking English all the time.

Yeah think it was where we lived, yeah, when we lived in- I remember when we came back from Pharr, that's where my mother died. We lived on Haskell Street, and that's on East Austin. That's by the old Fish Hatchery. My uncle, my uncle, Luther, that's my father's brother. We lived with him for a couple, and then we then we got our own place. So it was just basically that.

When you say community, you're talking about the people that they live in an area? Yeah, yeah. Well, you know it to me, I'm always, I was always, am always glad. And when I live in San Marcos, I left, I left Austin in '65 to get out of high school. And every time when I pass, I enjoyed looking at the school. I you know, it's there. It's still there. Lot of things are not there, no more. Superior Dairies is not it's no longer there. That Good Year store, that drug store, you know, everything around there is gone. The whole, the whole section between 35 and Congress. I mean, I mean 1st Street between 35 and Congress. It's all changed. It used to be all- nice neighborhood. The whole area was pretty simple. You could go almost anywhere in that part of town. They used to be the warehouse district. Now it's used to be kind of a different kind of warehouses, businesses and stuff. It's all changed.

No. Excuse me. That's when. That's when we first were introduced to black students in junior high. We didn't have any in in Palm. But we did have black students. We didn't have that many, though, maybe a handful, that I can recall. Matter of- it was a handful even in high school.

My brother Frank, which you interview here, and then I have a baby brother Gerarldo. So the gabachos, the white guys, used to call because we used to bring tortillas with cheese, and they say, look, “there go the three blind mice.” When all three of us were in school, we all had little paper bags. We had tortillas they call quesadillas. They just cost less than a dollar but they'll charge you .75 for a quesadilla. it's real funny to us, but anyway, but I remember they used to cause us “the Three Blind Mice” because we had cheese, right? Yeah, interesting. We didn't eat in, I didn't eat into the cafeteria that I was in the fourth grade. Hildebrandt, which I know is it was at Palm school. The principal first of Mr. Boyd, one day we were not going to school, and he looked for us, and he found out we thought we just had nothing to eat. We just couldn't get into school. So he let Mr. Hildebrandt got us free lunch or a nickel, it cost a nickel to get lunch. And I remember one time, “because tu comas tortilla con puro mano”, eat with your hands. So that I was in the third grade eating, eating the food again, with my bread getting like a tortilla. And then one little girl said, “Marcus is dirty. He's eating with his hands. I don't want sitting next to him.” I remember that.

It hurt. So that's the way I eat. With tortilla, you take and you eat with the hands. They used to give us fork and knives, but I don't need forks and knives, I eat with a tortilla. And so there was no tortilla, it was bread. So I used bread. And the little girl and Miss Jones said “you shouldn't talk about that”, but she did move her, you know, and I think another, I think Lena Guiterez sat with me because, you know, it didn't bother her.

When I went, in 1954 was when I went to school, in first grade. You know, I was 6 then I turned 7, so I was older than the kids, and I was always older than my classmates. Going to school the first year my limited Spanish, there were a lot of Anglos still, it was an Anglo school mix, from the early times. I think in the 40s, they started, lotta Mexicanos started moving to the neighborhood. By '54 there were a lot of us. In the 30s they were, but I think by '54 there were a lot of us, that were really mixed. There were no blacks. It was a segregated school. No blacks were allowed to come. Because I had black friends on 8th Street and said, “we got our own school, Marcus. We go to John P, we go to Sims and Blackshear. We have our own school.” I said, “Well, how come we don't have one?” So I noticed that. And by I guess the third, third, fifth grade, it was primarily Raza. And I think my wife did a research with a law student, and the data that she had showed in 1954 to 1960 the Anglo community moved out of the neighborhood because they didn't want to- It was the brown- It was I went to school when the Brown versus the Board of Education, to be Kansas, Oliver Brown was daughter was not allowed to go to school, so he filed suit. Thurgood Marshall took the lawsuit all the way to the Supreme Court, and they voted that it was unequal and school should not be segregated. So according to the data, the Anglos fear that the black kids were coming to Palm and to Metz, because Metz with other schools all Anglo, because Zavala was a Mexican school and Metz was the Anglo school. So I think the fear of integration, a lot of Anglo community members moved to West Austin, North Austin, and went to- to at that time, Jollyville, which is Cedar Park now, and Round Rock, and then moved out of the neighborhood. So by the time I was in sixth grade, it was almost all Chicano.

When we lived, there were Anglo stores, community stores. There were Anglo people there. It's like, we just kind of look at it, and you don't feel it when you are kids sometimes. But then again, it made it easier when I brought my white friends with me. I know it was like, "Oh, okay." Like they was okay. But we, three or four of us, going there, me and my brothers going there. They just kind of look at us. Kind of look at us. We just felt it, just it becomes normal, like, okay, that's how they treat us. They don't like it, but we know how to deal with it. And then going to school like, Jerry Jones was a good friend of mine.

But growing up with with my two brothers, he was the oldest, and we always thought we could control him, until he kicked our ass (laughter) and it was “okay, brother, you're the leader.” You know, I was the one that I think I lived in two worlds. I was the one that- the conflict. Growing up, growing up with my brother was fine. Growing up with Anglos was fine. I understood em. I could work with them. Some of my friends could not. They this said “this gabacho”, and they were want to kick their ass, just beat the shit out em. Excuse my language. I wasn't like that, you know. I know that discrimination happened. I know they were gonna call us names, and I would just sometimes just ignore it, you know, but you don't feel good. But I wasn't one to fight. I was the one to find a common ground to live together. I mean, they're there. Sometimes they're smart. Use them.

Safe ? Yeah. As long as I was with my people, yes, as long as I didn't get too close with some not all the Anglos were nice to us. Same thing happened to me at junior high, and it happened to me at Austin high when I was jumped on and beat up.

Well, at the junior high, it was the first integrated school in Austin, Texas.

University Junior High, I find out Dr Moore, which was one of the doctors that worked in the Department Education. She knew him, and we found out through him, that he was one of the architects who approached the school district and say, we want to integrate. We have a building which is now the social work is now destroyed. But it said, why don't we create a school and takes kids from Allan, which is was, at that time, in 1960s was a predominant Chicano school, and O. Henry was a predominantly white school, Junior High Middle School, and John B Wynn was generally black. You take students from each one and bring them to Austin to UJH, in other words, get kids will normally go to Allen, which I was going to go. Can go to UJH, which were closer to it than Allen. People win can come over here and people from O. Henry they bussed, because they're way, you know, Lake Austin area to come to integrate in Junior high. So we became the very first integrated junior high, the full force. This is 67 this is almost what, 12 years after the 54 board of education versus Brown, and we were integrated. And it was hard, you know, it was hard for all of us, because we never went to school together. None of us did. We didn't go with blacks. We were the Anglo so we knew what they were like, and the blacks didn't go to school, with either one of us with Chicanos or blacks? I mean, for whites, it was hard.

Well, did nothing. Walked Alone. "What happened? Where were you?" I was just by myself. I was hanging around. Should have gone. I should have left with our group. We were all going groups down Red River. The whites got on bus and the blacks got bus. But we would go, mostly walked. So the blacks would walk, Martin Luther King and go home. We walk down Red River, which is not really good with it, they messed it up, but we would walk home that way. And I was just alone. The two guys just jumped me. No, I was lucky. They just kicked me, threw me on the ground and blood in my nose, and that was enough. They left.

My it was Gutierrez, my brother, my, you know, my two brothers. Sometimes, when Frank got went to Austin High, then it was just me and Gerardo, we would walk together. And then there was, there was my cousin Janie, who lived on 3rd, 3rd street, and couple others, and the rest of us, Guteirrez and the Cunias, and the Ramirez, you know, just it's una tangita we walk together. We just all walked because we knew that would happen. And but there were some fights in the school between blacks and whites and us and but there was a Civil Rights incident. The girls, I remember, Janie. Two things happened. One was they wore a Mary Jane shoe and a loafer two different shoes. And they was like “you can’t do that”, and wonder why. What it was is they had an annual powder puff flag football game between the girls and Janie was good. She had brothers. You know, she knows how to play football. No, I remember. Now. You remember what they did. They were boycotting they didn't want to play because they didn't allow her to be quarterback. They just want the Anglo girls to be quarterback. So they protested. So we joined them. We started wearing different socks. That was good for me, because I never had a good pair, but we joined them, and we started boycotting. We started wearing things in our socks, and they fighting at them. They realized the university realized they doing the same thing. They racist stuff. I was my first I remember, it's Junior High. I was like, in the seventh grade, and I remember we were all joining the girls. Yeah, we joined. We so we start protesting with them. It's a quiet protest, right? Just, just don't wear things. Like they want us to tuck in our shirts. We're, you know, we're pachuco, right? We wear shirts outside. Wear black stacey's and camisas we don’t tuck in the shirt, and we had to tuck in our shirt, so we showed up one day with a shirt, and we tuck and said, “Why do this?” “Because they won't let the brown Mexican girls play football”. And we just tuck the shirt, we tell them why why we had a shirts out so we wouldn't get kick out, that because they kick you out ofschool or they put you in detention, you know?

Okay, I love school. School was, education was important to me. I love to learn. You see the Indian part and the Anglo part, the two worlds I wanted to learn. I love school. But then again, it was hard. And it was hard because there were no Mexican teachers. There was only two. Miss Herrera and Miss Reyes. Hortensia got lucky, she had Miss Reyes. I wasn't lucky because I spoke English. I guess I learned English too fast, I don't know, but there were only two in the whole Palm School. But I love school. My father said you need to go to school. Causing a lot of problems in first grade. This is the part being American Chicano in the class we’re reading Jane. And no, I know you don't know that if you go back in the 50s, “Jane run, Jane, see, Jane run,” right? Simple English, and the teacher would just not call me, you know, and like so I got my so I got my pencil. This is the first grade. And I just, I just tore up the book and they sent me to the office. They call my father, and it's gonna cost him a quarter to pay for the book, and he whipped me all the way home. My father did not spare the rod, old fashioned. And every time the red light come going from 1st Street, Cesar Chavez, 3rd Street, and then their lights at 5th Street, 6th Street and 8th Street. And I would push the light, I would just afraid of the green, because every time you turn red, se acordaba what I did right and I he asked me, why did I tear up the book? I said, because the teacher wouldn't call my name. You know, the Anglos got girls and guys got the called. I didn't get a call, and I wanted so bad, because I worked so hard to learn those two pages, and she didn't call on me. So I just so…. I was always I was like my father said I was always one. The reason I was that way was because I was born backwards. I was born on the floor. I was breached when I was born.

No, no. No. I learned that in the first grade, and I thought I knew English, I thought I could read, but no, and I think that's what she didn't want to call on me, because estaba “quebrado”. There were a heavy accent, probably, and I didn't see that. I was just frustrated. But I would hang with what I did with, you know, my Anglo friends. I would hang out with them to learn more English, because there's where you gonna learn it. They'll teach you, because you can hang around with them. I go hang out with anybody.

No puro Español en la casa. okay? Mi papa hablaba puro Español. Spoke mainly Spanish around the neighborhood a lot of us did, but the older guys were speaking English, so you learn it now. By the time I got out of high school, I was, I was I wasn't Marcos De Leon. I was Marcus De Leon. We laugh about that, but (laughter).

At Palm when I first went, we had our own sack lunch. And then by the third grade, we ate what the kids ate. It was good Fridays. Friday was great. Good pizza and weekly meatloaf. You always had greens. I love greens. I'll eat the other kids' greens. Give it to me. Give me the green beans. Give me the squash. I will eat it well, because I'm starting half the time! But going to school, I wanted to always be in there, but it was hard for me. Math was hard. English. I never learned English. Obviously, we'll tell you. We share with you one story about how I never learned English, even when I was to school. I was in the 10th grade, and I took an English class, and I was turning in hundreds, and then when I got my grade was a 'B.' I went to Mr. Ziegler, my report card, B, so I went to Mr. Zigler. I said, "Mr. Ziegler," "yeah, Marcus," "can you? Can I… my test grades?" because they have log books, 90, 100, 95 85, 100, 95 was it not an A, He says “I can't give you an A” I says, “why not? He says, “Because you… this class is a remedial class.” We no he said this, "well, I can't let me, let me see a report card”. I showed my report card next to my name was a box and it was white out. He pulled his drawer out. Get a you know, a razor blade. He scratched all off the the white out, and there was an R there. "See that R? Marcus. It means remedial." "What does that mean?" “Marcus, you know, I don't give you go, look it up”. You always do that. “Go, look it up.” What is it? How? What is it? “Go, look it up”. So I went to the library. And now many old library is 19, what? 65-64 anyway, big books open up and look up “remedial”. And, you know, at remedial when they read, they have a lot of words. One of the paraentheses said, “retarded.” That's all I remember. It said last then, or whatever. But right there in the middle was “retarded.” So I went back to my teacher, Mr. Ziegler, said, “get me out of here.” Said, “I don’t want to be here. This is going to follow me for the rest of my life. I don't want to be here. I'm not retarded. Or remedial.” He said, "Well, Marcus you are going to struggle," “I know, I don't care”. So I got put back. Guess what I made my English, senior English, "what?" A “D”, really it was an “F” but Miss Hathaway was so proud of the way I worked, and I worked so hard she couldn't flunk me. She knew if she flunked me that I couldn't go to college. And D back in the 60s was okay. It's like a 69-70 so she put me a “D.” So when I went to college, I never passed English I. I finally did. But guess what? In 1979 when I was graduating, you go through all the stuff, they said, I need to take an English. I said “what?” I passed English one, “no, you took it at HT, we don’t accept Black English.” That's the exact words! They're not up to par with what UT has? I didn't understand that, and that's been something going on a lot with HBCUs. This is 1960s right? 70s. So guess what? I already graduated '79 but I had to take an English course during the summer here. And I was 33-34 years old, you know. And I'm with 16, 17,18, year old students.

The majority, I think, did, I don't remember, the majority of them had two parents. Had a mother and a father that I remember, that's something you didn’t ask, but just something that you showed up they were there. And the church, some of the, some of the kids I went to school, went to my church too. And I remember them having parents, two parents. My father was a Catholico. He was raised a Catholic. So he would go to Guadalupe in the mananas, and then we made sure we were at the church by 10 o'clock, and he would go, and sometimes he would go to the church with us, but the men were over here, Bible study, and then we were going to the church, he would sit with us. And I got baptized at that church after I got hit by car. I kid you not. Yeah, I got hit by car. Running to my school dude. I was so excited to get to school I got hit by a car.

1800s, 1892 something like that? It was a prominent Anglo school for many years. You know the only school, Mexican school was Zavala. Now, Hortensia, her story was her mother took her and said “No, she's gonna learn English,” moved her back to Palm. So they moved residency so they could be close to Palm, you know. So by that time I was there that this students would still say, because we speak English, they're sent to Zavala. That was the Mexican school, you know. They were not integrated, but Metz was our Anglo school. We have Metz. There you have Zavala, you have Palm, you know, schools, but there were some were segregated, so we actually couldn't go, because we live so close to it that they, they allow us to go to Palm I was like eight blocks, when I walked. Always walked until I had the car accident, I was I always walked to school. We never, we never had a car. My father never drove a car. The day he died he was 85 in 1995 and he never drove a car in his life. We learned to drive cars ourselves.

Yeah, The Adrana’s, the Desmas, Desmas, the Castillos, the Anglos, the Martinettes, the Anglo that lived there on Rainey. We knew them, they're as poor as us. So could relate I guess. We had no blacks living in our neighborhood.

Well, when I walked, we walked into a store in South Austin. We have mainly been hung around downtown, me and brother and I went to the store in South Congress. And that's we were must have been about 11, 12, years old, and we met Jerry- Gerardo. He was called Jerry for me, that's the name they gave us Marcos and Jerry not ger-, they couldn't say Gerardo so they call him Jerry. Anyway, we went to the store, and the guy told us, he says, “What are you Mexicans doing here?” And we didn’t identify as Mexicano, as Mexicans, that's just something, just so we said “What do you mean?” He says “Are you guys are supposed to be in the back with the trash?” Ugh. Jerry it made Jerry real, Gerardo real mad, you know, we just cussed him out and walked out. That's when you felt it, you know. And because by then, most of the Anglos were gone, and most of, the few Anglos that lived in our neighborhood, like on Rainey street, they were nice people. They got on Garfield Street, they're very nice, and we just got along. But you begin to feel it. "You're a Brown, you're a Mexican". We would never called Americans they called us Mexicans. “Spics”, I have a poem about that. They call us, yeah, it's called “500 years.” "They call us everything but human beings and what they call us “savages.” It was a “sausage”, then it was “spics,” “brownies,” “Greasers,” “wet backs,” all these names they call us, but they never call us human beings. But just imagine if we could share the beans with them. What would they call us? They'd have to call us human beings." It's a long poem, but that's the short of it.

To try more things. I took German as a foreign language in my freshman year. Seventh grade at UJH I took choir, couldn't sing. I can't sing. I cannot, I don't have a tune. I can't sing. I can't play an instrument, okay, all right. I can't compose anything, but I can dance. That I can do. So when I went to UJH, I wanted, I wanted foreign language, Spanish. “No ya se Espanol. I don’t need that.” But again, have Ms. Weber, not Ms. Weber, Ms. Weber. Does she? None? Thought so. and I lasted seven weeks, eight weeks, nine weeks. Nein. Nine. “You have a Mexican accent. That's not gonna work for German. Out of my class,” she threw me out. So I went and took Spanish with Ms. Newman. But I actually took German. Think about that. Why would I do that? Foreign language. I thought it would be so cool to learn it something totally different from mine. That's part a thing that I learned from Palm, all that learning that took empowerment, being diverse in my own self, and being open to different things that I think that's part of the nurture that I had in Ms Schulte telling me, go ahead, you know, go ahead and experiment that. And I took German as a language. And I can, I know how to count in German, say a few words. I wanted to take French, but they wouldn't let me. This is how you doing Spanish? Because I did terrible. I met a "B", barely a "B," good. I spoke by then. I spoke slang. We put, we put a, we put on the board. I put on the board “te sales” T, E. She says, “What do you mean? Te sale.” And she goes, “who wrote te sale,” because you see it, s, a, l, e, and then Guiterez says “that’s ‘te sales’, you know what that means?” what “that you're out of bounds and you've been-" it was terrible. It was by then, by time I was in junior high, “hey ponte trucha watche la jura.” Know what that means? “Be careful about the cops.” You know, we spoke like that. My Spanish was gone. It's all slang. It was all pachuco. I grew up in the Barrio.

They were boat races they would come every summer, three times, and run the boats real loud, jet power, huge, loud. But the people that woudl show up. What they did was very disrespectful. All La Raza live right up to the east town, like East Town Lake. Right up to Chicano Park, which is now every right there on Selina Street. And they would come and they would trash, and they would pee in the yard, defecate, throw up, and then they would block driveways. They called the cop. The cop would say, doesn't, “you know, move, please move something” they would move. We we could have called wreckers. We didn't know that. But there was just ugly and disrespected the people. They would call us name, they call him “wet backs” and stuff like that. It was just ugly. Just the ugly people. There were nice people show up and join the races and go home, but then there were ugly people who just didn't care, you know, and it just got real bad, and we couldn't do nothing. We couldn't get a park there. We couldn't do nothing because of the boat races. We couldn't build nothing there. We couldn't put nothing up because they would tear down put fences and tear it up. So there was demonstration. And the last demonstration was in '77, they knew we were coming. It was set up. They beat up Paul. They beat up Sam. And they beat up Adela. They beat up Guerra. She was pregnant with Viria. They beat up some of the guys. And the one cop was Duplo. He hated us. He's a bad cop, real bad cop. And he finally got disciplined, but all the charges were dropped.

Just- when they came down, I was in a demonstration when they demonstrated for for jobs and stuff, we were part of the getting the people involved, and then later on, with the Black Citizen Task Force and other groups. We always invite one another. You know, we have a racist hotel here in Austin, don't you? "Which is it?" There was- it was called the Marriot out there on 11th Street. Sister Turner calls me up. “Marcus. Marcus, we got, twelve noon we got to be on 11th Street, the racist hotel.” “Dorothy, what do you mean? Racist hotel?” “That racist hotel, the building here on 11th Street, right across from our neighborhood.” “What are you talking about?” “They ain't got no windows facing East Austin” I said, “You got to be kidding me”. “Marcus, need you and Paul and Francis need to be there. The consilio needs to be there.” “Okay, Francis, we'll be there.” So we show up. It's true. If you see the east wall of the, I don't know what's called now, I think it's a good night hotel or something. It used to be the Marriott, right on 11th Street, and IH 35 the windows, there are no windows facing East Austin. You know how hotels have windows all the way around, even in New York, I was standing at a Holiday Inn, and they were head forward, and you faced another hotel. It has no windows. It was the best thing you did because in the Marriott ended up giving said job for progress, to do all the hiring. I don't know, for just said Jobs for Progress, but GI Forum was a Mexican American organization. GI Forum, the one of their businesses, is set for, set for, set for, for jobs, and they appointed them to do all the hiring isn’t that great? A Chicano organization?