Senator Eliot Shapleigh - El Paso, Texas

James C. Harrington

 AUSTIN, July 28, Not only did the Texas Board of Education embarrass the state by its recent anti-evolution foray, but now it has hired six "experts," at taxpayers’ expense, to determine what will be in our kids’ social studies and history textbooks. 

Some of these experts complain “too much attention” is being paid to César Chávez and Thurgood Marshall.

One consultant even wants to eliminate Thurgood Marshall, the prominent NAACP leader and first African American U.S. Supreme Court justice, because he is "not a strong enough example" of a historical figure for Texas students. 

An absurd comment in itself, but oblivious to Texas history. Marshall was one of the attorneys who successfully sued to integrate the University of Texas law school (Painter v. Sweatt) – the precursor of Brown v. Board of Education four years later (1954). In fact, when Marshall was helping try the case in Austin, he was denied hotel accommodations in the city and had to stay with friends.

Two consultants, one an evangelical minister, oppose César Chávez because he “lacks the stature, impact and overall contributions of so many others,” should not be listed with Ben Franklin as a prominent leader, and is not a role model who “ought to be held up to our children as someone worthy of emulation.”

Franklin opposed slavery and would be the first to laud any person who helped lead farm workers from their lives of virtual servitude, as did Chávez. These consultants also miss the Texas connection – the role of the farm worker movement in empowering South Texas and the Mexican American struggle generally – not to mention Chávez’ constant work to open the doors of higher education to Texas’ minority students. This is one reason his statue stands at the University of Texas in Austin.

I had the honor of working with César for 20 years in Texas. Not only did he constantly inspire people to organize politically, but he also always urged young persons on to college and spoke at schools, at every level, constantly to motivate students. He is precisely the kind of leader we need to hold up to our youth. In their day-to-day lives, he is as much an inspiration to them as Franklin. Perhaps more so. Franklin was an intellectual genius. Chavez struggled from poverty to help lead others out of poverty.  That is a greater challenge in a sense.

Board members and their appointees have complained about an “overrepresentation of minorities” in current social studies texts. This is ironic in light of Texas now being a majority minority state and in light of Texas’ early history.

The Board should welcome leaders like César Chávez and Thurgood Marshall, who taught us that social justice should come through non-violence and the legal system. We should set them as models for others – not simply because their principles are lofty, but because those principles have succeeded.

We should not miss the point of what’s really going on. The Board’s “experts” are undermining the civil rights movement by attacking its exemplary historical leaders. The civil rights movement is a major impetus toward a more just and democratic society, nationally and in Texas. The Board should embrace that human rights struggle so that students learn from it and, in turn, help make our society better for themselves and those who come after them.

James C. Harrington is director of the Texas Civil Rights Project, a nonprofit foundation that promotes civil rights and economic and racial justice throughout Texas.