A Brief and Partial Chronology of Texas
1973-1976
Researched, compiled & edited by Mario Longoria, Ph.D.
–1973. Case: San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez. The lawsuit was brought by members of the Edgewood Concerned Parent Association representing their children and similarly situated students. The suit was filed on June 30, 1968 in the District Court for the Western District of Texas.
In the initial complaint, the parents of the Edgewood ISD sued San Antonio ISD, Alamo Heights ISD, and five other school districts; that also included the Bexar County School Trustees; and the State of Texas.
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The EISD contended that the “Texas method of school financing violated the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.” The lawsuit alleged that education was a fundamental right and that wealth based discrimination in the provision of education created in the poor, or those of lesser wealth, a constitutionally suspect class. In other words, Mexican Americans in Texas were not protected under the current financing scheme that discriminated in the funding of their schools.
The court had previously reversed a District Court opinion and stated that the appellees did not sufficiently prove a textual basis for their complaint, within the U.S. Constitution. Notwithstanding, the Texas State school financing scheme is indeed wealth-based and discriminatory; In their racists reasoning, the Court also found that there was no such fundamental right and that the unequal school financing system in Texas was not subject to strict scrutiny.
–1976. Rolando Hinojosa, an English professor at the University of Texas at Austin, becomes the first U.S. Hispanic to win the International “Las Americas Prize” in Literature from Cuba.
Hector P. Garcia
