Annotations for Discrimination: Segregation

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.

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.

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.