[Mario Salas] It took place here too, and I think quite
effectively. I've got some things done.
I got St. Phillip's being
accepted as a result of black and brown unity,
being accepted eventually into
what's now called the Alamo
Community College District as a result of that unity.
There's a big boycott of Walter McAllister's bank as
a result of that black and brown Mexican American unity.
[Steve Arionus] Was Nick involved with this or support it?
[Mario Salas] Yes. All of that is all very interesting.
The City Council in
the days of McAllister was very racial.
It was an at-large voting system
which meant that whoever had the most registered voters,
and of those registered voters
whoever had the biggest turnout,
will always win every election,
and that was the north side of the Anglo side of town.
They had a vested interest in making sure
that when you ran for city council,
you can run in a place,
but that everyone in the whole city could
vote either for you or against you for that place.
Not until 1978 did we switch over
until single-member districts as a result of a MALDEF.
Here again is an example of
black-brown unity MALDEF and NWACP cooperation
to file a suit against the city of
San Antonio for at-large elections.
That suit was accomplished in 1978.
I want to say the suit
might have been filed earlier than that.
Probably originally file was
'77 and might even been in 76.
He was in the works for
a while and I think it finally came to fruition in
'78 because that would have been close to
the first year when we think
finally has single-member districts.
That first time we had that,
it was a total shock to
the Anglo business community because now you had six,
sometimes seven minority sitting
on the council and they just ran,
Henry Cisneros was part of that before he was mayor,
Roughshod over the old McAllister machine.
McAllister machine just fell apart.
It fell in part because of Nick.
I would make the argument Nick destroyed McAllister,
or at least at the very least sit in motion to
destroy his racial setup of the city politics.
Later MALDEF and NWACP
put the legal final touches on that.
Nick didn't do it by itself,
it was also done, like I said,
with the help of the Mexican-American community,
progressive whites as well.
Especially whites who were Quakers.
Members of the American Friends Service Committee.
Tom Flower who died not that long ago.
Tom flower was a very big supporter
of black liberation, of Mexican-American liberation.
He let all kinds of
radical groups
use the American Friends Service Committee office,
which was on Durango Street.
There's a hotel there now on the corner of Durango and
Flores was where we met every Saturday.
At some point, I'm going to
put a historical marker there,
because that was the first office
that's Nick had at that location.
By the way, I'm on the ship of San Antonio
tax Increment Finance Board zone 11.
We have a cultural committee.
I'm on that cultural committee.
I offer the plaques that we stick
in the ground around the city.
I've done three. I'm shooting for 20.
Well, we've done three already.
What I'm trying to do is identify those areas of
town that had strong radical,
leftist progressive persuasions,
where there was a presence that has
now been erased because if it's not done,
the story won't be told.
That's why this digital oral interviews,
so very, very important.
[Steve Arionus] Yes. We think so too.
Can you talk a little bit more
about the Quakers in San Antonio. I've never.
[Mario Salas] Really?
[Steve Arionus] Yes.
[Mario Salas] The American Friends Service Committee
it was here before Tom Flower.
But Tom Flower was the person that I met in
1968 who had heard of me.
somehow, I guess
the same way those students pointed me out.
The only thing I can think of it now,
let me digress a little bit.
At Wheatley High School,
I was one of the leaders
of the school boycott or the cafeteria.
It was something as simple
as flies were always in the food.
Every Wednesday in San Antonio,
enchilada days on Wednesday.
If you don't need to rest of the week,
you're going to eat on Wednesday because everybody
loves enchiladas, me especially.
On Wednesday we go to eat,
I'd go to eat and
every Wednesday someone would complain,
and other days too, but Wednesday was more obvious to me.
Someone would complain there's a fly in the food.
I got a job in the kitchen,
washing the dishes, and that way I could eat for free.
Me and a couple of other guys, we would wash
all the dishes and run them through the machine.
One day, one of the young ladies,
students, female said these flies keep getting on food.
Do you know where it's coming from?
I don't know.
We just started looking around
the kitchen and there was a tiny hole,
in a small small window like
a minor vent tiny hole
and you can actually see the flies coming through there.
We decided to go to the principal,
it's a black school now.
They say, all black students
we all decided to go to the principal and say,
you need to fix that screen to
cafeteria or we're not going to eat in cafeteria anymore.
He said, yes we'll get around
to it. He never do anything.
A couple of weeks later,
a very sensitive young black female
found a flying on her food,
and it had been more than once.
She just started crying.
People went over to her.
I never forget this experience. What's wrong?
She says, another fly in my food. I experienced this.
The guy who was with me asking her
the questions. So that's it.
We're done. Everybody,
we started screaming it out loud.
Nobody is going to eat in here tomorrow.
This is a boycott.
The next day, there was no food being served.
I'd say 90 percent of
the student body obeyed the boycott.
The principle was looking to execute one of us.
He never caught me,
because my skills at evasion are quite good. (laughing)
[Steve Avionus] He caught me. I knew his route,
I did what the military calls recon work.
Of course, I didn't know what that was at that time,
but that's what I did.
I knew his route and he'd take
the same route walking the hallways and everything.
Purposely when he changed classes,
I knew which route he would take because he'd monitor.
When you change classes,
that's when you've got to monitor the students
because they get out of hand,
we're rowdy in the hallway.
I always knew his route, it was pretty much the same.
I went all the way around
the building to avoid him so he never
could put his thumb on me to expel me.
He expelled several of
the other leaders of the boycott,
and I got away from him.
Years later, I want to say like two years ago,
I see my whole class alumni
and they tease me all the time,
how did you ever get away from that?
My answer is what I gave to you.
So I think that that may have
been what triggered the sneak organizer or what
triggered the students at Shack to
identify me to him and it
also may have been the trigger that
identified me to the American French or to the Quakers,
to the American Friends Service Committee
, the acronym AFSC.
They were very active here and I had a long history of
Quakerism here in San Antonio and
I'll go back to the Battle of the Alamo.
There was a very famous Quaker named Benjamin Lundy.
You got to Google his name,
do the research on him,
he was an abolitionist Quaker.
He wanted to start a state in Mexico and actually
negotiated with Mexican leaders
to create a free state, not of Jones,
but a free state and Mexico
where African Americans could move
to who would be escapees from slavery,
or could negotiate with the United States to
allow a black to move to
Mexico since they can't be free in your country.
He actually worked out some of the details.
There was a Mexican Revolution for one week they say.
So it didn't happen that power
changed hands so very often.
But Benjamin Lundy, a Quaker,
wrote a very famous book called The War in Texas,
and in it he explained,
I keep a copy of it on my desktop,
you can Google it and get a free copy,
and in it he explained that the battle against Mexico,
and these are his own words,
was a slave owner rebellion.
He might have said holder rebellion,
I think he used both terms,
slaveholder rebellion, a slave owner rebellion,
and that the real reason for the Battle of
the Alamo and the war against
Mexico was to institute slavery,
that's the central reason for the war.
Of course, that proved out to be true
because after the battle,
they wanted all property returned because
many blacks joined the Mexican army,
runaway slaves would run to Mexico and could be free.
Especially after 1829-1830 when
the only black president of Mexico,
Vicente Guerrero,
State Of Guerrero was named after him by the way,
abolished the Caste system and abolished slavery.
By the way, he did it on the celebration of DCCs,
during the celebration of the victory against Spain.
He freed all blacks in Mexico
and eliminated the Caste system,
which is based on skin color.
Mexico became a haven for runaway slaves.
The underground railroad out of Texas was
Mexico and underground railroad
out of Louiena was Mexico,
it was closer than Canada and so you
have the ancestors of black families still living there,
large black population on the relatives of
blacks from slavery in Costa Chica and
relatives of Black Seminoles in a little town called
(inaudible) I can't remember the name of the river,
it might be the Shabina's River,
there's still black population there.
Matter of fact, when Pancho Villa invaded Columbus,
New Mexico, General Pershing
went after him with black Buffalo Soldiers.
But here's the interesting thing.
I teach a class in
African American Studies here at the university,
and one of the things I heard
over the course of many years was
the black Buffalo Soldiers were
never defeated in any battle.
That's not true, they were defeated in one.
But let me tell you how their defeat
occurred, most interesting defeat.
Pancho Villa got cornered around a little town,
he got off, but his troops stayed there,
and Pershing met up with those in a battle
and you might have to
research yourself because I
can't remember the name of the town.
I want to say it was (inaudible),
it might have been (inaudible).
But at that battle,
a black Buffalo Soldier named
William Ryan deserted the United States Army,
took his 50 caliber machine gun to
a Pancho Villa side and
put his fire over on the American troops.
He took with him
a bunch of black Buffalo soldiers who deserted
the United States Army and fought General Pershing at
the Battle of (inaudible) and
they did not lose that battle.
Black Buffalo soldiers might have lost a battle by
other black Buffalo soldiers who were
now under the command of Pancho Villa.
By the way, William Ryan
became a colonel in Pancho Villa's army.
His ancestors still live in Mexico City.
(laughing) Now,
there is another example of
cross-border black brown unity.
Back to your original question, which was what?
[Mario Salas] Just general information about the Quaker activism or.
[Steve Avionus] Well, Benjamin Lundy,
that goes back to 1836 or
1847 and then Quakers were very much against the draft,
The World War I draft.
African-Americans here, God,
the rate of African-American refusal to
be drafted in San Antonio was pretty high.
There's a book you have to read called
Investigate Everything by Theodore Kornweibel.
Strange last name, spelling-wise.
I want to say K-O-R-N-W-E-I-B-E-L something like that.
Strange for me, probably not that strange, Kornweibel.
Maybe German, very interesting name.
But Investigate Everything,
and that was the FBI at the time not called the FBI,
called the Federal Bureau or something like that.
They were investigating blacks who were
refusing to be inducted in
the US Army and during World War I,
and a lot of blacks in San Antonio
ran to Mexico in order to keep from being drafted.
By the way, Langston Hughes,
his father lived in Mexico in Toluca.
When I was in Mexico City a few years back,
I asked a mayor of Toluca,
didn't somebody connected to Langston Hughes live here?
He actually knew, he said,
yeah, his father lived here.
That's another black-brown connection.
Jack Johnson, the heavyweight
champion of the world, the black,
he received a hero's welcome in
Mexico City at the same time he was being
sought as a criminal
basically because he had a white girlfriend.
That would've been an early 1900s.
You had all these stuff going on.
You had Blacks in Pancho Villa's army,
you had Afro-Mexicans in Pancho Villa's army,
you had Black Seminoles in Pancho Villa's army.
Blacks come in different categories,
Afro-Mestizo, Afro-India,
Afro-Mexicano, and African-Americans,
and Africans too if
you take the case of younger, the black slaves.