This is Part One of Two Parts, each highlighting six distinguished individuals from San Antonio, Texas, for a total of twelve outstanding persons. I joined the Bexar County Historical Commission in the 1990s, and served as Chairman of the Oral History Committee. During my tenure as Chairman, these are some of the notable people I personally interviewed:
(1) Emma Tenayuca
She was a well-known labor organizer and a civil rights activist during the 1930s through the 1950s. Emma Tenayuca started her crusade for social justice when she was sixteen years old, and after joining a picket line striking against the Finck Cigar Company, she was arrested. She was a fiery orator and a superb organizer, and is best known for her active role in the pecan-shellers’ strike in the late 1930s. She held a Communist rally in the Municipal Auditorium in 1939 that turned into a full blown riot. In the 1960s, she became an educator, having received an M.A. degree in Education from Our Lady of the Lake University. And, in 1982, she retired from teaching from the Harlandale Independent School District. She was seventy-five years old when she granted me an interview, which I conducted at her home in San Antonio on February 27, 1991. Her home was on East Congress Street and very close to Mission San José. I vividly remember the interview because she still had the passion and the drive that inspired her many years ago to fight for social and economic injustices being committed against Mexican Americans in her beloved hometown of San Antonio. She passed away eight years later on July 23, 1999, at the age of 82. The South Texas Civil Rights Project dedicates the annual Emma Tenayuca Award to a deserving person who is working to protect civil rights.
(2) Maury Maverick Jr.
From 1951 to 1957, he served in the Texas House of Representatives as a liberal Democrat, taking on the McCarthyites. At the time that he became co-chair of the National Advisory Council of the American Civil Liberties Union and was an active member of the ACLU’s board of directors, he also taught political science at Incarnate Word College and at St. Mary’s University. He is best remembered for being a successful civil rights attorney, having won major legal cases, like ending Jim Crow in professional boxing and many First Amendment rights. Shortly after he received the prestigious John Minor Wisdom Public and Professional Award from the American Bar Association for providing legal assistance in over 300 cases, I interviewed him on December 5, 1991, at his home located on Bellview Street and off Broadway and close to Lamar Elementary School. At the age of 69, he was a mild-mannered gentleman, who was very polite and courteous, and claimed that he never got rich from his law practice, and never got tired of defending unpopular causes. In the 1980s, he began writing a Sunday column for the San Antonio Express-News and continued for the next twenty-three years until his death on January 23, 2003, at the age of 82.
(3) Joe J. Bernal
He was an educator who taught in two school districts in San Antonio before serving two years in the Texas State House of Representatives and six years in the Texas State Senate during the 1960s. It was during this time when he was an active member of an organization called Texans for the Educational Advancement of Mexican Americans that I met him and we became very good friends. As a state legislator, he is best known for getting a bill approved that established bilingual education and was a primary author of a law that provided free kindergarten education. In 1972, he worked as an educational researcher for the Intercultural Development Research Association and was appointed Regional Director of ACTION under President Jimmy Carter. He obtained a Ph.D. degree from the University of Texas at Austin, and during the 1980s and 1990s, he worked as an elementary school principal, and later as an Assistant Superintendent of Instruction with the Harlandale Independent School District. And, he was working in this capacity, at the age of 64, when I interviewed him on January 25, 1991, in his office. Five years later, he was elected to serve on the State Board of Education where he continued to be a strong advocate for bilingual education and was instrumental in making Mariachi Band competition an integral part of the University Interscholastic League. In 2014, the Northside Independent School District paid homage to him by naming a new middle school in his honor.
(4) Judge Carlos C. Cadena
On a Thursday evening, January 31, 1991, I interviewed Judge Carlos C. Cadena in the dining room at his home in San Antonio. He was a pioneer civil rights lawyer and a brilliant legal mind who joined forces with Gus García and three other attorneys in the landmark case, Hernández v. State of Texas, which went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. All five attorneys became the first Mexican Americans to win a case before the highest court in the country. The unanimous decision was issued by Chief Justice Earl Warren and stated that Mexican Americans had equal protection under the 14th Amendment, and it was discriminatory to classify them as “White,” for the purpose of jury selection, which there were none during the trial of Pedro Hernández in 1950. He had been accused of murdering Joe Espinoza in Edna, Texas. During the 1950s and 1960s, he taught Constitutional Law at St. Mary’s University. In 1965, Governor John Connolly appointed him an Associate Justice of the 4th Court of Appeals, being the first Mexican American to hold such a high ranking judgeship. Twelve years later, he was appointed the Court’s Chief Justice, a position he held until his retirement in 1990. In 1970, he was one of the founders of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF), becoming its first national president. Judge Carlos C. Cadena was the husband of Gloria Cadena, and she was very active with the Los Bexareños Genealogical Society in San Antonio for many years. My wife and I were also members and that is where we met them. She invited us to their house on several occasions. It was during one of these visits that I became interested in doing an oral history interview with him. Judge Cadena passed away in 2001, at the age of 83.
(5) Dr. José A. Cárdenas
On September 6, 1991, I had the pleasure and the honor of interviewing him in his office at the Intercultural Development Research Association, a non-profit research and public education organization he founded in 1973, which focuses on bilingual and multicultural education, equity in school finance, early childhood education, parental and community involvement, and other important programs. He received his Ed.D. degree from the University of Texas at Austin. From 1961 to 1967, he worked as an associate professor and chairman of the Education Department at St. Mary’s University. In 1969, he served as superintendent of the Edgewood Independent School District, becoming the first Mexican American superintendent in San Antonio and Bexar County. He established the first district-wide Early Childhood Education Program for all three-and four-year-olds. In 1984, I worked with him in implementing an innovative program named the Coca-Cola Valued Youth Program (VYP) in my school district (South San Antonio Independent School District). Over the years, the VYP, a cross-age tutoring and mentoring program between high school or middle school students (tutors) and elementary students (tutees), became extremely successful in preventing student dropouts. Now, the VYP is an internationally recognized dropout prevention program, being implemented across the United States, and it has been in Brazil, England, and Puerto Rico. It garnered numerous awards and national recognition when it received the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for Hispanics. In the late 1990s, he was a visiting professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio. Dr. José A. Cárdenas passed away on September 17, 2011, at the age of 80.
(6) Charles O. Kirkpatrick
After operating a small newspaper in Nacogdoches, Texas, he moved his family to San Antonio in 1950, and took a job as a copy editor with the San Antonio Express-News. In 1971, he became the publisher, editor, and president of the San Antonio Express-News until his retirement in 1990. With him at the helm, the circulation and advertising revenues increased, and consequently, he received numerous awards and prizes, making the San Antonio Express-News the top newspaper in San Antonio and South Texas. He was well-known for hiring and promoting minorities and women. Moreover, he interviewed every Mexican president from 1958 until 1990. His presence was felt in many civic and community projects, like the revamping of Milam Park and moving the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México to HemisFair Park. I interviewed him on November 19, 1991, in his apartment located in downtown San Antonio by the Riverwalk. Charles O. Kilpatrick passed away on June 26, 2013, just ten days after celebrating his 91 birthday.
Serving as the Chairman of the Oral History Committee was hard work, time consuming, but it was extremely rewarding. I had a wonderful time, and I learned a lot about the people I interviewed and their contributions. It certainly was my pleasure and an honor to have met these outstanding men and women. The learning experience of conducting the oral history interviews was invaluable and added another educational dimension to my repertoire of knowledge for a better understanding and appreciation of these people’s accomplishments. More importantly, I will never forget them for as long as I live. These fond and indelible memories will live in my mind and heart forever.
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Copyright 2025 by Gilberto Quezada. Photo of Emma Tenayuca copyrighted by Barrio Dog Productions, Inc. Photo of Maury Maverick Jr. is in the public domain. All other photos used in this blog under the “fair use” proviso of the copyright law.