1950s
No war should be forgotten
As World War II began to fall into the history books, a Korean conflict sprang from its ashes. The U.S. was shifting its focus onto a bitter division in Asia and the threat of a red Russia. Affected was the political scene of the 1950s.
From 1945 to 1950, the Soviet Union and the U.S. were in a stalemate over hemispheric dominance and anti-Communism. Korea was at its center, literally and figuratively, bisected on maps by the 38th parallel. The north half of the country began to organize a militia, with the Soviets whispering in their ears and selling it arms. In the South, the U.S. struggled with weak forces and a populace that wasn't fond of them as the occupying force that had replaced Japanese domination. The country was cracking.
As the new decade started, Henry Daley Jr. was still a high school sophomore at Phoenix Technical School. After his basketball team played the season's last game, Henry and a few friends decided to drop out of school. They were going to enlist in the military. It seemed like something fun to do. So young Henry filled out his paperwork and brought it home for his parents to sign. It wasn't an easy task.
His mother was not happy. World War II had just ended. She'd been through the agony of her husband landing at Normandy and battling across Europe. He was captured during the Battle of the Bulge and became a POW. He had made it home. Her brother was not as lucky.
But her husband stood up for his son's decision. "You're missin' a lot of school." He turned to her, "The Army will make a man out of him."
Eventually they signed the papers. During the discussion, it had never crossed either parent's mind that Henry Daley Jr. was 16. He had changed his birthday to be accepted legally into the Army. Recruiters didn't seem to take notice, either.
On June 25, 1950, two months after Daley had finished his basic training and was accepted to a clerical school, Korea found itself ripping apart at the seams. North Korea, with Soviet resources, invaded the southern half. Two days later President Truman ordered air and sea support for South Korea.
In mid-November 1950 Gen. MacArthur was on a flight home. He turned to two generals seated with him, to remark, "You tell the boys that when they get to the Yalu (River) they are going home. I want to make good on my statement that they are going to eat Christmas dinner at home."1
At the start of the war, Daley was one of about 20,000 Hispanics serving in the armed forces. Within three years that number would swell to almost 148,000 Hispanic volunteers or draftees. Most would serve in the Army and Marine Corps. One largely Hispanic group was Charlie Company of the 13th Infantry Battalion in Tucson. Its men were from Arizona, Texas, New Mexico and California. Daley, though, was not with them on the front lines.
But his dream of joining them there was not so easy. He wanted to be an infantryman, just as his father. Before the U.S. entered Korea, he had already been put in a clerical school. He applied to transfer to the infantry, but was not accepted. He tried again and again. Eventually, his persistence convinced the Army to transfer him into the 25th Infantry Division in March 1953 after a short return to boot camp.
The delay may have saved him from one of the Korean War's tragedies.
All soldiers battle unseen dangers, sometimes deadly and sometimes haunting survivors across a lifetime. Soldiers in World War I were decimated by the 1918 influenza pandemic. Many Vietnam veterans came home carrying the hidden effects of Agent Orange. Desert Storm veterans struggled to gain attention and support for the little-known Gulf War syndrome.
In Korea, the men were caught in the jaws of a brutal winter. By December, MacArthur was battling criticism for thinking the war would be swift and that the boys would be home by Christmas. This comment was tragically tied to the decision not to send the men into Korea with winter gear. At night the soldiers huddled together, trying to fight off the dull pain of frostbite as the mercury was in freefall to minus-30 degrees.
When Daley stepped foot in Korea, the weather had improved only slightly. "To me the worst part was the winters there. I got there in March and it was very, very cold at the time.
"We just had World War II equipment. By that time, they had these boots that they had come out with, so I was wearing those but it was still cold.
"I had a lot of trouble with my feet. They turned sort of a grayish blackish color. I told a medic about it. He wrapped my feet up with a lot of bandage, and they started swelling up. And so I just took them off. But I never went to see a ... I never went on sick call for this reason. We'd never go on sick call, you know." Then Daley mumbles something about the risk of getting ribbed for not being macho.
But there were also moments of warmth and satisfaction. Of all places, it was on the front lines in Korea that young Daley saw a chance to finally get his high school diploma. The Army was offering G.E.D. tests. The company commander had asked one day if any of the soldiers wanted to take a shot at it.
Daley spoke up. "Yeah, I wanna try it. It's my last chance."
Five men joined him, and they were brought back to the reserves at the rear. Food was served. Beers were cracked open, and the men shook off the cold, hoping to forget their worries.
"I was the only one that passed the test. Now, some of those guys had three years high school. Not that I was smarter than them. They went through it just to relax and get something to drink and just get off the front line. That was the only reason. For once, I took something serious. And I went through it and I got my G.E.D."
Post member Tony Valenzuela remembered that following his friend into the service would take him to the Korean War,
"I came to ASU in 1948, that was before the Korean War... I had two years of college, started my third year. And one of my best buddies, he wasn't cuttin' it. He decided he was gonna quit and go in the Air Force. I said, 'Nooo! What the hell you gonna...' He said, 'I already enlisted.'"
Two weeks later Valenzuela enlisted in the Air Force. He trained as an electronics specialist, repairing aircraft equipment and occasionally testing it while the pilot took the plane up into the clouds. It was job that would take him some place he hadn't expected when the base loudspeaker called out his name.
"Sgt. Valenzuela. Show up at Ops with your gear."
Valenzuela quickly walked into the operations area reporting for duty. The commanding officer spoke. "You're going on a mission." Valenzuela had never trained as a pilot, but he knew the equipment, and that was enough.
Valenzuela accepted his new role. "Holy Christ! So I did. I made several (missions). Never scared the hell out of me at all. It was an adventure! We'd go out. Five or six of us go... three of us come back."
In July word came that a cease-fire agreement was about to be signed. Henry Daley would always remember the day. "It was my wife's birthday. Well it was my girlfriend's birthday then. It ended on July 27. So I remember it for that day and everything. Of course at the same time you were happy to hear that the war was over."
Three months later, 20-year-old Henry Daley Jr. arrived in California. In a hurry to get home, he took a plane to Phoenix. He saw no ticker-tape parades. No celebrity veterans were honored for their impossible tales of bravery. "Coming home at that time during the Korean War, there was no fanfare going or leaving, like there is now. You just came home. Nobody noticing, other than your family.
"Nobody even knew you were gone. ... There was hardly anything in the papers. There was nothing on TV about the war. I just noticed there was no response. No emotion. No nothing by the people. It was just somewhere you went and then came back. The people who served and were involved in it and had family, and those were the ones that knew about it. It really is a forgotten war. To this day I still feel that way."2
The Korean War would, indeed, be largely forgotten between those of World War II and Vietnam. During the Korean War, nine Hispanics would receive the Medal of Honor and more than 100 more received Distinguished Service Crosses and Silver Stars for their bravery in combat.
Two days after Henry Daley, Jr. came home, there was a knock at his door. Pipa Fuentes had come to sign Daley up as a Post 41 member, and refusal was not an option. "Here's your card. Now sign it, and give me $2."
A veteran in every house
The tall, imposing rebel priest, Father Albert Braun, had survived numerous Japanese prison camps and was freed by American forces on Aug. 29, 1945, after the atomic bomb ended the war. He returned to the U.S., gaunt and tired. New aches spread through his aging legs. After visiting his former congregation, the Mescalaro Apaches of New Mexico, Braun took one final military assignment in Hawaii before retiring from the Army. It was 1949. He was as strong-willed and stubborn as ever.
The Catholic Church sent Braun to Phoenix. He took a teaching job at St. Mary's High School. He soon quit so he could minister to barrios in South Phoenix, more specifically the Golden Gate community.
When Braun came to South Phoenix, he found a community of aging houses with dirt floors lining dusty roads. Some families pulled water from old wells. No street lights graced the skies and no sewers ran underground. Contamination of the land was tragic, made worse by the industrial centers surrounding the neighborhoods and the city storm drains that had spewed storm water and untreated sewage into South Phoenix since the 1890s.3
In 1952, the closest church was Immaculate Heart of Mary on 9th Street and Washington. Built in 1928 after the community had been forced to worship in the basement of St. Mary's church, it was the first church built before the turn of the 20th century. But Golden Gate needed its own house of worship. Many residents had no car and there was no bus service to much of South Phoenix.
When Braun began his Sunday sermons, they were under a makeshift ramada. His weathered face showed every bit of his 65 rugged years in the dry air. He read bible passages under the thatched roof of brittle palm fronds as people fanned themselves with Bibles and empty hands. It was as elegant a church as the barrio could afford.
The congregation was slow to accept him. But when he proposed they build their own church, their skeptical faces lit with interest. For Father Braun, it was not a new proposal. Thirty years before he had helped the Mescalero Apaches in New Mexico build a church with only the materials of the area. Soon he was raising churches and eyebrows in South Phoenix.
Over the next two years, Golden Gate residents met Braun's challenge and the walls of Sacred Heart Church rose. In April 1954, the first baptism was held before the roof had been raised. Along the way, Braun secretly set aside bricks to build a parochial school. When the school's construction was done, he joyously announced its completion to the Catholic Diocese. Despite the surprise and displeasure of diocesan officials, this defiant man of God didn't stop there.
His involvement in the community was local legend. He was not afraid to get down into the dirt with his congregation. If a wife needed her drunk husband at home, Father Braun walked into the bar and dragged the man out.
He smuggled stolen goods back into the stores they were lifted from to save a young sinner from his crime. With smiles, community members remember the night a gang hung out near his chapel. Through the night they made noise, despite his verbal warnings to stop. Not one to shy away from confrontation, he stepped into the fray, tightened his fists and swung. The gang dispersed.4
By the time his health forced him to retire in 1962, Braun had founded three more chapels. He coerced the city into paving roads, building sidewalks, providing gas and adding a sewer system. He had even served on the Governor's Narcotics Study Committee. Crime dropped, pride lifted and seeds of a real community were sown.
But how does one man achieve this? Certainly not through his efforts alone. No individual is wholly responsible for this mid-century barrio renaissance of Phoenix, any more than Rembrandt or Da Vinci could ever be called the driving force of the European Renaissance.
Braun would go door to door and bring people to church. He knew most every household and had eaten dinner with many of them. With such a connection, he found many veterans sitting at those dinner tables. The veteran chaplain of two world wars saw immediately that almost every house in Phoenix had a veteran of the last war. Here was a connection that could be nurtured. The priest joined Post 41 and the legend grew bigger.5
Before long, Father Braun could be found at Post 41 most evenings, draining more than a few glasses of beer with his fellow veterans after a day of fighting for his community's needs. Barry Goldwater was one of those fights. It was not uncommon to hear the two clash at city council meetings in a bout of colorful language.
In the late 1950s, Goldwater stepped into the post and walked briskly up to the Ronda Room bar. He had just come from city hall where he had been verbally ripped apart by Braun, who was demanding amenities for his community. Goldwater slid onto a bar stool. “I sure need a good strong drink. That Father Albert Braun just damn near ripped me apart!"
A shot of whiskey was set in front of him.
Then the room brightened with sunlight as the front door opened. Looking up, Goldwater saw the good father walk in. Not wanting to suffer more, he slid his drink off the bar and attempted to head for a dark corner.
"Barry, I saw you!" the priest bellowed. "You know what? I'm gonna have one, too."
Whether the future senator wanted company or not, Braun joined the politician. They traded shots of whiskey through the night, and out of arguments, a friendship was born.
Many a night, joined by Pipa and others, the men could be seen in a dark corner, talking politics, arguing about the community's needs, fighting over the value of worker's unions or laughing at jokes as they lifted another glass. It was here that Braun was known to whisper -- and often yell -- his community's needs into the ears of men who could do something about it.
With a commanding priest and respected politician at its side, Post 41 had become well-connected to the city's heartbeat. With close-knit friendships among the veterans, the church, activists and families, the barrio was pulling itself up and out of the dust. Communities that always had to provide for themselves now began to assert themselves. At last the barrios of South Phoenix were becoming a unified community and tearing down segregation.
Thunderbird Post 41 was also gaining national attention as one of the better known American Legion posts. By 1954, Ray Martinez had served as commander of the American Legion Department of Arizona and been named as the national representative of the American Legion Child Welfare Program.6 That year, Ray would even make a bid to the state senate.
When he failed to win the election, he decided he'd rather help others, and not run for office again. His daugher, Norma Keirmeyr, remembers one of her father's quips, "If dogs and kids could vote, I"d be president."
The post was becoming a voting force of which the new charter government had noticed. With help, of course, from Barry Goldwater. He had asked Ray Martinez for advice on winning the Hispanic vote if he should run for office. Ray told Goldwater that if he joined Post 41, he would have that vote. Goldwater's growing affection for the Mexican American post would soon lead to an honorary lifetime membership bestowed on him, whether he wanted it or not.
During a 2006 interview, Lencho Othon remembered the events surrounding the honor. Goldwater was persistent about refusing to be repaid for money he'd given the post.
"He used to come down and walk around, look around and do things for the post. As a matter of fact, when we were building a second addition to the post, Barry loaned us ... he gave us, I think it was about $3,500, which was a heck of a lot of money at that time for the refrigeration unit we wanted to put in there. We didn't have the money. So he gave us a check for $3,500 so that we would continue with the project. Later on I started a bingo program with the intent of making enough money to pay back Barry Goldwater ... which we did, after a year or two...
"He became a life member a little bit later because at that time we presented a check to him, and ... he said, 'we didn't give you a loan.' He says 'that was our contribution to the post.' So he wouldn't accept the check. So I told his wife that it will make the boys feel better if he would accept it. But Barry go ahead and take the check. Right about that time he was made a life member of the post.
"But about a couple of weeks later, we got a check in the mail for, I think it was close to $3,500 or something like that as a donation. So what are you going to do?"7
Barry's wife had sent the money back. The post decided to make him an honorary member. It was all it could do.
Goldwater had certainly earned the honor for his support and for the many nights of camaraderie drinking with his post friends. He also gave them an ear and an in-road to the political halls of Phoenix. But as Barry Goldwater's political star continued to rise, he decided to run for the U.S. Senate and those friendships became more distant. Soon enough, though, more of them would find themselves decision-makers in those same halls.
The failure of commission
Politics were not only changing nationally. There would also be a political shift in Phoenix, and Post 41 found itself involved with the city's inner workings.
In its earliest years, Phoenix had been a mayor/city council system. In August 1913, this changed to a city manager/city commission system. Unlike the old process that elected representatives from each of its wards, the new commission members would from then on be elected "at-large."
This effectively robbed poorer wards of any say in city decisions, a result that was acknowledged and desired by defenders of the new system. As secretary of the Phoenix Good Government League, R.L. Dyer noted at a meeting in February 1914, "The Third and Fourth wards (both in South Phoenix) are composed of people who do not meet the high ideals of those here present."8
Throughout the 1930s and well into the 1940s, Phoenix politics slipped quietly into corruption: "the home of some of the wildest political manipulations imaginable, a curious combination of big city bossism and old west frontierism."9 With World War II, then the return of soldiers and loss of military work contracts, the city seemed in a constant shifting confusion. Local government struggled to keep up with the needs, services, changing factions and backroom deals that plagued it daily.
With Democrats in complete power during the 1940s, they became the "force to copy." Alliances were made with the party, regardless of one's difference in political beliefs. These connections were in turn used to secure elections and legislation that met their needs -- with the freedom of a non-partisan election system.
But by 1945, Phoenix had become mired in its political disasters, prostitution rings, union strikes and deteriorating slums. The at-large system had fallen far short of the lofty ideals Phoenix needed as it grew. Its supporters committed the sorts of sins they had suggested only the impoverished southern half of town would create.
With the end of World War II, veterans returned to the Valley, and war-time workers settled into new jobs in the growing city. Its population began a sharp growth. John F. Long and Del Webb, who had started his business with government construction contracts such as the Harry S. Córdova project, were now building a new housing trend. Their ideas would soon create a nation of suburbia and urban sprawl. And, as a baby boom generation began to take its first steps, the homes were being filled as fast as they were built.
To politicians, this population growth translated into something simple: thousands of new voters. In Phoenix, a new elite coalition, called the Charter Government Committee, would be formed of conservative Democrats and the growing Republican Party. At the start of the 1950s this group was poised to take advantage of the blundering city government, to seize control and right their sinking ship. Through this storm of political and cultural activity, several Latino leaders would find their way into power. Just as Danny Rodriguez had told his niece by Tempe Beach Pool, times were indeed changing.
A change of politics
In 1946, a new man was put in charge of the city of Phoenix, Mayor Ray Busey. The following year he announced a plan to revise the city's charter, as he strongly opposed the non-partisan politics that had become the norm in Phoenix. His plan would eliminate the at-large election system that had excluded poorer regions three decades before. This unpopular change upset many politicians, and they united against him almost as soon as he had been elected. Mayor Busey was quickly left out of the city's loop, in a political freefall, made easier when he became sick and recovered at home from an operation.10
But before Busey fell entirely out of power, he struck back by creating the Charter Government Committee (CGC) to study city government and suggest charter revisions and reforms so his goals could be realized. Forty prominent citizens were asked to join the committee. One was a prominent businessman and veteran from South Phoenix: Barry Goldwater.
Goldwater had grown up in South Phoenix, the son of a well-known local mercantile family. The future Sky Harbor Airport was a cabbage field he would land on while teaching himself to fly shaky, primitive airplanes. By the late 1940s, he was one of Arizona's most celebrated pilots, along with Frank Luke. But in 1948, with the creation of the CGC, he was willingly thrust into local politics.11
Mayor Busey had set the stage but his creation, the CGC, had a mind of its own. Busey found the CGC quickly serving its own desires. Ray Busey lost the 1948 election to Nicholas Udall, a member of the CGC, who had run his campaign on claims he would restore the city to political calm waters. Once in office, Udall unwisely resigned from the CGC and quickly found the committee uncontrollable as well.
Unfettered, the Charter Government Committee plugged away at its work, as the new mayor found his control of city politics bogged down by the same back-door deals gone bad and political backstabbing that had plagued Busey.
In February 1951, sensing they could take control of the city, 30 of the original CGC members began planning their own vision of the future. For several months, they plotted a re-election strategy that would include showing their opponents links to the sinister politics of the 1930s and 40s, but also showing the modern successes of the city council.
To appeal to the voting public, they attempted to seed the city council with nominees that could be seen as every-men, and not elite businessmen. Their star nominee was E.H. Braatelien, a member of the local plumber's union. He felt that Phoenix was “being ruled and dictated to by people from the Country Club." The opposition responded in kind, when men such as Gus Rodriguez, a native of Mexico, and auto body shop owner, ran for office; and Charles Romaine, a retired railroad conductor and security guard.
The CGC's effort had nose-dived miserably; it lost in a 4-to-1 landslide.
Then, in the blur of one year, three of the most prominent charter office holders resigned -- Mayor Udall, Harry Rosenszweig and Barry Goldwater, who had decided to run for the senate. Jack Williams was selected. The Charter Government Committee swiftly retooled its plan and decided to try again in the summer of 1953.
The CGC, a predictably white elite selected by Mayor Busey, decided to break new ground and broaden the "every-man" tactic. It made a bold move across ethnic boundaries, and asked Adam Diaz to try his hand at campaigning.
First Hispanic council member
When Adam Diaz was 14 and about to enter high school, his father died. His mother had weathered riots, Mexican rebellions and the bullets of Porfirio Diaz with her husband in 1906. She had managed to escape to Flagstaff and have her first child with him in 1909, young Adam. But now, she had to survive alone with five children and no money. She had helped raise money by selling enchiladas and tamales to build the new Immaculate Heart of Mary Church. But raising a family was different. So Adam left behind his education and found a job delivering messages and medicine by bicycle -- at a nickel per delivery.
The following year, after a brief time delivering messages for Western Union, he became an elevator operator at the new Luhrs Building. The faces of white politicians and businessmen would pass him every day, heading to and from the meetings that made Phoenix. After Adam took a few accounting classes at a business school, George Luhrs offered him a job as a building manager and bookkeeper. Diaz found himself talking to these prominent personalities in the hotel's club, and he slowly became one of George Luhrs' most favored and dependable employees.
In 1929, Diaz stood facing his bride, Feliz, under the roof of the church his mother's tamales had helped build. Flush with the possibilities of a new life together, they bought a new home at 25th Street and Monte Vista Road. But when community Anglos harrassed Diaz and his new family, Feliz asked that they move for the safety of their children. They moved to Grant Park. He already had the memories of being forced to take his first holy communion in the basement of St. Mary's church while he heard the excitement and music as Anglo children celebrated above.
Adam might have stayed in the neighborhood, but his wife was not willing to risk life in a place they weren't welcome. They moved into the Grant Park neighborhood. As a teen pedaling messages around town, he had seen the lush green lawns and beautiful suburbs. Now he found he wasn't welcome to enjoy them for himself.
With the fire of his parents' revolution in his blood and the taste of segregation on his lips, he became active in his new community. From 1930 on, Diaz was intricately involved with local Mexican American organizations. He also fought to bring improvements to his barrio, improve education and help provide jobs.
During World War II, Diaz saw many of his neighbors from the south barrios of Phoenix in the Luhrs Building. As a member of the Arizona National Guard, he assumed he would be sent to fight after Pearl Harbor. But he was spared from the battlefield and given the task of recruiting young soldiers. He oversaw the largest induction center, set up downtown in the Luhrs Building. It was close enough for Latinos to enlist without venturing into the north half of the city.
With the end of World War II, Diaz stepped in to help an organization that had been close to his heart since its earliest days. In 1925, while delivering messages around town on his bicycle, a 14-year-old Adam Diaz saw a different world, north of Van Buren. Neighborhoods spread out before him into manicured lawns with fancy cars and clean streets. He dreamed of this new life.
There was one place that helped Latinos improve their lives; the Friendly House. Between deliveries, Adam pedaled off in search of the Friendly House. Soon he was walking up the sagging steps of a worn out old home and through the front door. He wanted advice on finding better employment.
"And I remember what Mrs. Green told me. She said immigrants needed to know how to make their own living. Learn to do a job that would keep them off the welfare cycle."12
More than 20 years later he took over the board of Friendly House. In 1949, the building had not improved. Faced with a leaky roof and a building that was falling apart, Diaz acted quickly. He approached New York Giants owner Horace Stoneham and suggested a benefit baseball game to help Friendly House.
Stoneham was impressed with the idea, but Diaz had to provide the other team. With the help of ballplayer Marin "Mike" de la Fuente, he "scrounged the best players Mexico had and the game was a sell-out."
On hand were the St. Mary's High school band and the Post 41 color guard. Luke-Greenway Post 1 arrived with its drum and bugle corps, and from Nogales came a singing trio and a mariachi band. Both Mayor Nicholas Udall and and Gov. Dan Garvey were joined by the Mexican Consul, Jesus Franco.
The exhibition game raised $10,000. With that and a bank loan, Friendly House had a new building. Thunderbird Post 41 agreed to share its brand new parking lot, with a little convincing from Diaz.13
Through such involvement in the community and after years of hobnobbing with elite Anglos at the Arizona Club on the 10th floor of the Luhrs Building, it's no wonder the charter commission approached him with an idea.
Adam Diaz wasn't simply a good fundraiser. He had also become a trusted leader in his community. He was a property manager of George Luhrs' hotel, and an honorary member of American Legion Post 41. He had organized the first Parent-Teacher Association in his community.14 He knew influential Mexican American publishers and activists such as Pedro Garcia a de La Lama and Jesus Melendrez. Adam Diaz seemed to have been bred for political office. Barry Goldwater hand-picked him to join the 1953 ballot. The candidates and their campaign leader were announced in the summer of 1953.15
Adam Diaz was one of seven candidates the CGC had pinned its hopes on. The other names were Margaret Kober, John F. Sullivan, Clarence H. Shivers, Wesley Johnson, Newton Rosenszweig for councilmen and Frank G. Murphy for mayor.
The CGC ticket was off to a running start, benefiting from the late entry in the race by its opponent, the Economy ticket, three weeks before election day.16
The two opposing tickets met for a debate on Nov. 6 in which Diaz was cited by the Arizona Republic as saying, "There are rumors that if some of the opposition and their supporters have made promises that if they are elected the town will be opened up." This led to a libel case against Eugene Pulliam's Phoenix Newspapers that would not be decided until 1957. The claim was that the newspaper implied Diaz's comment meant the Economy ticket would turn a blind eye to prostitution.17
Then, in a blur, the election was over four days later with 11,431 votes cast for Adam Diaz. It was enough to put him in the win column.
On Nov. 10, 1953, 43-year-old Adam Diaz walked onto the political stage as Arizona's first Mexican American city council member. Since Adam Diaz's tenure, there would be six more Latinos elected to the Phoenix City Council: Valdemar Córdova (1955-57); Dr. Ray M. Pisano (1962-63); Frank Benites (1967-69) Armando de Leon (1970-74); Rosendo Gutierrez (1976-80); and Mary Rose Wilcox (1982-90).
Just as swiftly as the run for office had taken Diaz onto the city council, he stepped down. At the end of his term, he decided not to seek re-election because his work was demanding too much of his time. Later he would admit he'd stepped out of the race, “because I felt ill at ease sitting on the council. I believed I lacked the education."
But it would not be the end of his endeavors. Diaz quickly found his way back to community involvement. He helped found an organization called LEAP (Leadership and Education for the Advancement of Phoenix) and joined the Phoenix Elementary School's Board of Trustees. He also would serve on the board of directors for Friendly House, the Urban League, Chicanos Por La Causa and the National Conference of Christians and Jews. He was also a member of the Aging Services Commission.
Educating equally
While the barrios waited for their young men to pass safely through the rigors of the Korean War, they found their younger children struggling to gain a fair education. Despite the fight against Japanese, Nazis and a super-race ideology, the Anglo community seemed to continue its own form of racial elitism in classrooms across Arizona.
The divisions started early in life, namely at school. Hispanic and Black children were separated in classrooms across the U.S. Yet, like slow dominoes, the nation's segregated areas were beginning to fall and build the argument for a landmark case, Brown v. Board of Education.
As early as 1930, Mexican Americans fought for their equality in schools. Independent School District v. Salvatierra was a Del Rio, Texas, case in which a town's school board was sued on the grounds that Mexican American students were not being afforded the same resources given to white students. The district judge ruled in favor of Salvatierra and the Latino students, but the decision was overturned by the state's higher courts on the grounds that there was not sufficient evidence of discrimination in separating the children.
In 1945, the first blow was truly struck by an 8-year-old Mexican girl -- Silvia Mendez -- in Westminster, Calif. Mendez v. Westminster gained support from a lawyer named Thurgood Marshall, who filed an amicus curiae brief. A year later, the case would lead to federal Judge Paul J. McCormick using the Fourteenth Amendment to repeal segregation.18
Arizona had earned the worst of reputations for segregation in its school systems. American Indian school segregation was made possible by their relative confinement to reservations and by boarding schools such as The Phoenix Indian School. Arizona legislated some of the most severe segregation of African Americans out of any state in the Rocky Mountains or Pacific West. The educational segregation of Mexican Americans up until the 1940s may not have been as heavily legislated, but it was certainly a de facto practice across the state.19
In Phoenix, the struggle wasn't simply for students' rights, nor always in the most obvious places. One veteran, Ray Flores, found his options as a teacher narrowed when looking for employment. After being refused at Anglo schools, he approached Washington Carver High school, a local all-Black school. Even they refused him employment. But this time, he chose to fight minority separation for the right to teach there.
In 1950, Flores became the first Mexican American teacher at Carver High. And the first Mexican American teacher in the Phoenix Union High School District.
As school segregation began to die out, Carver High School closed in 1954. Another member of Post 41 would play a key role in that fall.
A student's request
Throughout the early 1940s, Guy Acuff, principal of Cashion Grammar School, would write numerous articles in the Westside Enterprise paper, his words often skewering the status quo of racially-biased education.
In October 1943, a principal in Tolleson drew Acuff's attention. One year after his new promotion, Principal Kenneth R. Dyer was making big changes. He published an article in the Westside Enterprise describing how school overcrowding had made his classrooms inefficient and difficult in which to teach. He went on to explain how he had begun to shrink class sizes by putting Mexican children in a separate schoolhouse until they were done with sixth grade. Before this change, the two groups sat separated in one classroom.
Frustrated with Tolleson Grammar School's new segregation of Mexican children for six years, Acuff wrote an open letter in response to Dyer's article to ask, "Is Mr. Dyer's scheme (of segregating classes) merely an administrative convenience or has there been an overall gain in citizenship training as a result?"
He continued to add subtle venom. "Are Mexican American children basically so different from other children that they require specially trained teachers to handle them after they learn English? Will not six years of segregation intensify any antagonistic feelings Mexican children have for children of other parentage?"
It wasn't the first time school segregation had been challenged. At the turn of the century Arizona's Joseph H. Kibbey tried to stop the developing policies of separating Black and brown children from whites. In 1909, as governor of Arizona, he vetoed new legislation to segregate schools, only to see his veto overridden by the state legislature. He went on to serve as attorney for a Phoenix African American family hoping to fight segregation on the claim it did not provide equal educational opportunity for all Arizonans. He won in Maricopa County Superior Court. Then his case was overturned by the Arizona Supreme Court. Kibbey died in 1924, unable to stop the divisive practices he detested.
Kibbey may not have succeeded, but Acuff's concerns would soon receive needed attention.
The Tolleson Grammar School's new Mexican schoolhouse was built at old army barracks north of Van Buren in the West Valley. The original school was a sturdy red brick building on the south side of Van Buren.
One 15-year-old student, Juan Camacho, was not pleased. He decided to take action in 1948. At first the boy tried alone and found no traction in his cause. He needed help. Angelita Fuentes Contreras, Patsy Murrietta and Guadalupe Ramirez Favela, together with Camacho, managed to arrange three entirely unsuccessful meetings with Dyer. The young man still needed more help.20
In 1949, he convinced Faustino Curiel Sr., Porfirio Gonzalez, Joe Gonzales (no relation), Isuaro "Chago" Favela, Trinidad Gem Jr., Manuel Peña Sr. and his son, "Lito" Peña Jr., to get involved.
By 1950, they had formed a group called the Movimiento Unido Mexicano (the first of several names). John Camacho was elected president, and "Lito" Peña and Faustino Buriel were part of the Committee for Better Citizenship united forces.
Lito had seen some success already battling the Valley's education system as a member of Post 41. When the post was swamped with complaints in 1947 about overcrowding and double sessions in schools across South Phoenix, post members decided to jump into the fray and find the source of the problem. When they found an unequal distribution of tax levy money, they clashed twice with special interest groups before successfully getting the funds released and spent to help the suffering schools.
In December, Peña, Camacho and several members of the farming community spoke with Kenneth Dyer and the Tolleson Elementary School Board. The problem seemed to reach an easy resolution when a promise was finally made to eliminate segregation by September.
But in a follow-up meeting the men were told that no such promise had been made and that "if they had, they certainly didn't mean it."21
To be better positioned in helping the district, and because Post 41 was overwhelmed with its own obligations at the time, Lito applied for his own post; Post 51 of Tolleson. He was made commander, and meetings were held to plan an attack on segregation.
In February 1950, young Juan Camacho's group signed and sent a letter to Arizona Sen. Carl Hayden in Washington. In the letter they detailed the steps they had taken.22
A lawsuit was filed in the name of one of the Mexican American parents, Porfirio Gonzalez, claiming his children were put into a separate school because of their national origin. This was in direct violation of the Fifth Amendment of the Federal Constitution.23
The defendant named was the Tolleson Elementary School District 17 board of trustees, led by Ross L. Sheely, Frank Babcock and Principal Kenneth Dyer.24
Three people testified: Faustino Curiel Sr., Faustino Curiel Jr., (a student at the time) and Manuel "Lito" Peña Jr.
The Thurgood Marshall-supported Mendez v. Westminster School District of Orange County, decided just four years earlier, was still fresh in legal minds, and provided the basis of much of the plaintiff argument in the Tolleson case.25
In mid-November 1950, Judge David Ling was sympathetic to the plaintiff's goals:
"I think the petitioners are correct in their contention that such practices as applied to them are discriminatory. Petitioners are entitled to judgement."26 But the court rejected their argument of segregation based on nationality, but replaced it with the decision that the school district was actually segregating students by Spanish surname.
A preliminary injunction ruled "Segregation of school children in separate school buildings because of racial or national origin, as accomplished by regulations, customs and usages of respondent, constitutes a denial of the equal protection of the laws guaranteed to petitioners as citizens of the United States by the provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. ... A paramount requisite in the American system of public education is social equality. It must be open to all children by unified school associations, regardless of lineage."
Tolleson Elementary had to desegregate. "And they didn't. They just kept right on doing it," explains Lito Peña in a later documentary.
"So I called Judge Ling and told him that kids were still being discriminated. And he came into Tolleson and ... brought the United States Marshall with him." The men took a tour of the school district, and the next day discrimination ended.27
Unfortunately, desegregating one school did not automatically ensure the rest would follow the same path. But it did start the move toward their goal. In 1952, the Alianza Hispano-Americana's magazine reported that segregation continued throughout Arizona in places such as Glendale, Miami, Winslow and Douglas. Threats of lawsuits ensued. Glendale acquiesced swiftly by building a new integrated school before the lawsuit could come to fruition.28
Another case of segregation at a swimming pool in Winslow interrupted the Alianza's plans to continue its strategies, and the rest of Arizona schools would be slow to follow suit.
At the start of the year, Judge Ling issued his final decree on the Tolleson elementary school segregation case. Months after the January 1952 decision by Judge Ling, Brown v. Board of Education opened. On Dec. 9, in Topeka, Kan., the opening arguments of Brown v. Board of Education were begun. In the course of its proceedings it would cite the Tolleson case. But nobody was waiting for Brown v. Board of Education to be their savior.
As the watershed case continued, segregation activists in Phoenix would push another court challenge through superior court in 1953. In their case, Superior Court Judge Fred Struckmeyer declared segregation unconstitutional a full year before Brown v. Board of Education had been decided.
A new lawyer's star rises
Tolleson's problems seemed to escalate when a Mexican teenager, Jesus Hernandez, was injured by police and arrested for no apparent reason. He was on his way home from Avondale sometime after 9 p.m. Along his route, he saw police officers detaining several others. Curiosity got the best of him. He stopped to watch the commotion. Police were a common fear around Tolleson and other parts of the Valley. They had a reputation for attacking Mexicans, as if for sport.
When Hernandez was spotted, a police officer demanded he get into the police car. As he stepped into the back seat, the group that had already been detained began crying out for him not to comply. He was spooked, remembering the violent notoriety that police had earned. The young man bolted from the police car. He heard two gunshots and ran faster. No bullets ever hit him, but a stone caught his foot and sent him crashing to the ground.
Before he could get up, a police officer struck him over the head. He fell to the ground, and blood began to gush from a four-inch cut in his temple, soaking his shirt. He was taken into custody and sat in a jail cell for 13 hours. A later group of arrested Mexicans stepped into the cell and saw the red stain on his shirt, and pointed out to the guards that he was still bleeding. Finally, he was given medical attention and set free -- after his mother paid $45.29
The Tolleson Peace Court reviewed the charges made by the arresting officers and found nothing worthy of an arrest.30
Valdemar A. Córdova stepped in.
After 18 months as a POW in the German Stalag Luft 1 Berth, he had been liberated and came home with honors in 1945. He married the girl he’d fallen for in 1940, Gloria. Then a fascination with law took him to the College of Law at the University of Arizona in Tucson. There he excelled as a student, won several honors and was elected student body president in 1949. Driven by his studies, he often doubled classes to earn his degree faster. In 1950, his class sat down to take the state bar exam. Córdova finished with the second highest score of his group. In May 1950, the former POW who had grown up near the Grant Park barrio of South Phoenix graduated with a bachelor of law degree.31
After his return to Phoenix, he heard the Tolleson boy's story of police harassment. It was an opportunity to put what he had studied to the test. Valdemar Córdova partnered with attorney Gregorio Garcia to file a civil suit.
Córdova and Garcia's civil suit was a success, aided by the absence of Tolleson's presiding justice of the peace. Another, more sympathetic justice from Glendale was called in and ruled that the police officers who had arrested Hernandez would pay $1,000 to Jesus for his damages.32
Soon after successfully winning his case in Tolleson, Valdemar Córdova, the activist's son and legal advisor to Post 41, would step beyond the realm of lawyers and eventually onto the judge's bench. But first he would find himself diverted on a political campaign.
Two years after Adam Diaz broke new ground as the first Mexican American on the Phoenix City Council, Córdova would follow in his steps. It was 1955 and the Charter Government Committee's easy successes led them to try again.
As the campaign began to announce the new ticket, Diaz announced his reluctant departure from the charter committee's lineup. Some in the community attempted to get Diaz to join another ticket, but he would not be swayed from his decision. Diaz approached his close friend, the young lawyer Valdemar, and asked him to be his replacement on the ticket.33 Valdemar, already a member of the city adjustment board, agreed to join the ticket and was named in August as the charter government's next Latino nominee.
The election proved a simple campaign34 as mayoral candidate Jack Williams sought re-election, invoking the memories of bad politics in the 1940s. “Would you like to see the city run the way it was in 1948 -- before charter government councils and mayors took over?"35
After two terms on the City Council, Córdova returned to practicing law in 1958, but he had already made his reputation. By 1959 he was a consultant to the Mexican consulate in Phoenix.36 He filed suit against Nato Manuel Gloria Jr. and the Garin Bus Co. of Salinas, Calif., in the name of 17 Mexican migrant laborers who lost their lives when Gloria, a substitute driver, fell asleep and careened off the road in South Phoenix. The makeshift bus plowed into a tree and burst into flames. Sixteen died that day. Days later, one more man died of severe burns. Another 31 men were injured.
Judge Ling, who had ordered the desegregation of schools in Tolleson, presided over the case. In March 1960, the young driver was found guilty of gross negligence for having fallen asleep at the wheel.
In 1965, Córdova would achieve a first of his own. He was elected as the first Mexican American superior court judge. He was reappointed in 1966 but quit after a year for personal reasons and returned again to private law practice.37
Another decade would pass before Córdova was called on to be a judge once more. In August 1976, Gov. Raul Castro named Valdemar Córdova as a new judge of Division 22 of the Maricopa County Superior Court, replacing Judge Charles Roush who had resigned.
Three years later, upon Sen. Dennis Deconcini's recommendation, President Jimmy Carter would nominate Valdemar Córdova to his highest position yet -- a U.S. Federal District Court judgeship in Arizona.
Future Post 41 member and politician Alfredo Gutierrez would recall a cup of coffee he had with Córdova, soon after joining the Arizona Senate in 1972. The young Sen. Gutierrez listened as Córdova "described his role ... and mine at that time ... as the 'convener of the community.' Val never felt he was a leader in the community, and he didn't feel he could pronounce the direction in the community, but he felt strongly that it was important that there be somebody to bring it together. And I think he certainly was that for a number of generations. My generation held him in high esteem."
