How San Antonio’s History Of Redlining Stunted Opportunities For Latinos, Blacks – MySA

She’d tear the two sheets of paper even smaller: a snip for the minorities, another to represent the white population. From there, she’d pull apart the paper even smaller. The minority slice shrunk into the kids who would become teenage parents, the ones who would be incarcerated, the ones who would be trapped in the cycle of poverty. The tiniest bit, smaller than a penny, would be “the ones who would do something.”

“That’s going to be you,” she’d say. 

At 5 years old, I couldn’t understand how my family’s chances were reduced to a tiny shred because we were products of the west and south, but I followed her demonstration like the law of our household. If I ever brought home a bad grade or felt overwhelmed by my coursework, she’d find a sheet of paper to remind me. I didn’t realize my mother was conveying a larger history of disinvestment in our community — I’m not sure she did either. 

What was always evident is that we would have to make due with what we had, just the way my family had been sustaining for decades. We were unaware that children living 10 minutes north didn’t face the same barriers put in place by federal housing policies which decided our quality of life based on our zip code. 

It wasn’t until adulthood, when I entered a newsroom, that I learned the Goliath-size thumb we were kept under had a name: redlining. 

U.S. cities still bear scars of the Federal Housing Administration’s segregation policies of the 1930s. I can’t speak on the lived experiences of other U.S. cities, like Cleveland, Los Angeles, or Chicago, where communities like mine were also color-coded, but I’m a daily witness to the ways redlining continues to divide my city. 

The street names aren’t just places on a historic map, they’re my home. The people are my neighbors. I cherish the memories attached to the panaderias, the humble homes, and the low-frills restaurants where everyone is “mija” or “mijo.” These parts of the city are where some of the truest displays of the Mexican American experience unfold. They’re what make San Antonio. 

The scenes of a vibrant culture are what the local tourism department markets online. Folkorico dancers greet interested travelers perusing VisitSanAntonio.com. Those who buy in show up to enjoy Tex-Mex eateries dotting the River Walk under papel picado-draped ceilings while mariachis play. If they don’t come for margaritas and enchiladas, maybe Fiesta is the motivation. Each year without fail since 1891 (save the COVID-19-wrought 2020 and a few war pauses) the headline celebration that plays heavy on the Latino aesthetic, unfurls for 10 days and claims an economic impact of $340 million. 

The most-recent data collected by the 2020 decennial census show Latinos account for more than 900,000 residents of the city’s 1,434,625 people. That number is likely deficient – the U.S. Census Bureau reported Latino, Black, and Indigenous households were undercounted. Local government identified inequities in the city’s most-recent Racial Equity Report (2019) which used data from the American Community Survey. One of the most-glaring exhibits of stunted opportunity is the educational attainment of the 25-or-older population. Only 16 percent of the Latino population had a bachelor’s degree or higher. It’s the second worst, only higher than the “other” demographic. Meanwhile, 43 percent of the white population earned a bachelor’s degree or higher. In a city where Mexican culture is the biggest pull, how did its people get so pushed into a state of disconnection?

San Antonio’s history of deadly disinvestment 

The night of September 9, 1921, proved to be one of the most lethal in San Antonio history when a storm dumped more than 7 inches of rain on the sleeping city. The wall of water ripped through hotels and business in downtown, accruing $10 million in property damage, but the loss of a believed 80 lives was concentrated in the residential areas along the Alazan Creek, otherwise known as the Westside. 

Front page news of the days leading up to the flood centered on the drowning death of Harold F. Joske, the 32-year-old scion of the iconic local clothing company, who was caught under the current of the Guadalupe River. Society news — from country club dances to frolics in New York City — were also well-documented.

A September 8 front page welcomed the heavy rainfall, which exceeded the total precipitation for August, as an end to a drought and a relief for agriculture south of San Antonio. Another disturbance was heading in and was expected to be “the heaviest for 24 hours in six years,” September 9 headlines read. 

While the drought ended, the cracks in the system were revealed the following day. 

On September 10, the San Antonio Light banner described the catastrophe which ripped through the city the night before, catching residents off guard as they slept. Homes were swept off their foundations like “paper boxes,” babies were snatched from their mother’s arms by the waters.

A running list of the dead was published the following day. Zepeda, Ramon, Hernandez, Cavazos, Falcon, Ramirez, Rodriguez, Cardenas were some of the surnames listed. The “majority” of the bodies that were unidentified were Mexican. Ages ranged from 2 weeks old to 60 years old. 

The grasps of death didn’t discriminate based on age, but the addresses of the souls lost show a clear inequity. Tampico, San Marcos, South Laredo, South Flores, and more Westside addresses were listed as the city worked on relief. 

Archives said “thousands of Mexicans in the congested Mexican quarters are homeless and without food and water.” 

In the days that followed, the city was touted as “emerging triumphant” in the flood’s wake meanwhile a “tent colony” was set up in the hardest hit areas along the Alazan Creek. 

“The Red Cross is speeding up its efforts to provide a tent city for the homeless Mexicans,” the front page of the September 13 San Antonio Evening News reported. “The main problem promises to be to force the Mexicans to move from where their homes once stood — the bare ground that is still ‘home’ to them.”

Manuel Garza, whose mark in history starts with his participation as an Edgewood High School student who walked out in 1968 in response to education inequities, said he lost multiple family members in the flood — a sign that generations of his lineage have been entrenched in the disinvestment of the Westside. 

Though the flood was unprecedented, leaders were warned a deluge like it could happen. After two prior floods, the city tapped Metcalf & Eddy, a Boston engineering firm, to develop a flood prevention report in 1920. The engineering firm created a plan for the city, but the Westside was ignored because it had “no economic value,” environmental analysis and historian Char Miller wrote in his 2021 book “West Side Rising.” 

“Everything that could go wrong did go wrong on the Westside,” Miller said during a Westside symposium hosted to commemorate the centennial of the 1921 flood on November 20. 

Miller shared his research of telegrams and memos between city leaders and the American Red Cross which he found in the Library of Congress. He said in the immediate days following the disaster, city leaders painted a narrative that the flood wasn’t as catastrophic and San Antonio didn’t need outside help. The Red Cross questioned the portrayal, especially since the city was still asking for money privately. 

He said what he found was a “patrician” attempt by the local authorities to slow down the process and prevent intervention. 

“‘The poor are fine, we will rebuild their housing exactly the way it was,’” Miller said of the local tone. “And the Red Cross is going ‘No, you’re not, not using our money. You’re going to actually rebuild them better than they were.’ So you can see this inner struggle going on in which the National Red Cross is appalled by the racism that it’s encountering, racism that had been seen three months earlier, in Tulsa, just a different color in a different place.”

San Antonio shored up the city with the Olmos Dam construction in 1927, which Miller said the city knew should have been created in 1845. 

“They knew what they should have done, they just didn’t want to pay for it,” he said. “Now they do, not because they’re a richer town, but because people on the Westside died at such a level they felt they had to do it — so they built a dam that wouldn’t help the Westside one iota.”

In fact, Olmos Park, the neighborhood developed around the dam, had covenants restricting Black people and Mexicans from living there unless they were chauffeurs, maids, and cooks, Miller said.

Years of disinvestment in public works continued until 1974, when Communities Organized for Public Service began their work to secure funding to improve the Westside and protect the area from flooding along the Zarzamora Creek.

HOLC’s hold 

Less than 15 years later, the abandonment got federal teeth. Racial covenants restricting the neighborhoods already existed, but the New Deal Era Home Owners Loan Corporation (HOLC) reinforced the racist geography. Throughout the 1930s, federal agents were dispatched to U.S. cities to build out maps for investment, labeling areas “best,” “still desirable,” “definitely declining,” and “hazardous” for lenders. Field agents arrived in San Antonio in 1935. 

The majority of the East and Westsides and parts of the Southside were shaded red. The communities were mapped as knockout areas based on their racial composition and housing stock and were considered to be at a higher risk for home loans. 

On the West Side, Culebra divided the “hazardous” redlined areas from “declining” and “still desirable” neighborhoods. The southern boundary for hazardous areas ended at Division. The east, from Crockett Street downtown to the area near what is now Jefferson Heights, was also redlined. 

Corresponding outlook reports include language that was explicitly racist. The Mexican population had an “adverse” effect on the city, a survey report by the Mortgage Rehabilitation Division said in a summation of San Antonio. 

“There are many economic drawbacks in San Antonio’s large Mexican population,” the federal agent wrote in the official document. “As a class they are non-productive, socially inferior, and in times of stress, a burden upon the community.”

The report, which provided a lay of the land for the government, confirmed that 75 percent of new construction was reserved to the highest rated sections of San Antonio. Those sections got the green light and were highly racialized. 

John Bennett Sr., a wealthy stakeholder and president of the Standard Trust Company, was interviewed for the report. He raised a socially prominent family — every high tea and vacation was reported in local papers. He was also a founder of the San Antonio Country Club. His son, John M. Bennett Jr., ran for state comptroller in 1968, as education inequities surfaced, but did not win. The family went on to play a large role in Fiesta. The elder Bennett told the agent Mexicans were a “menace.”

According to the banker, San Antonio’s dependency on “nonproductive” class like Mexicans and retired people “has had something to do with failure of real estate to appreciate in values,” the report said. 

But in 1923, “Greater San Antonio the City of Destiny and Of Your Destination,” a lengthy brochure published to lure visitors and travelers, said the city’s commercial standpoint to Mexico made it a “mighty metropolis.” The same publication told guests to take a look around the “Mexican District” where it’s like “going to a foreign country without the long voyage” to see the “huts.” The Westside was portrayed as a kitschy portion of Disneyland’s “It’s A Small World” ride, but a little more than a decade later, Mexicans came with a warning. 

Without investment and loans, the housing stock continued to depreciate. “Colonia” style housing became the norm in the hazardous parts of town. City utilities didn’t extend to these areas, so mules and then tractors were used by independent vendors to deliver water to homes. Roads were unpaved and lacked flood prevention. 

Garza along with Diana and Richard Herrera, all lifelong residents of the Westside, called their neighborhood “barrio de charcos,” or neighborhood of puddles, for the ways the streets would swell with water during the rain, making walkability impossible, causing days of lost wages and learning. 

In his 1997 book, “Texas School Finance An IDRA Perspective,” the late Dr. José A. Cárdenas, former Edgewood superintendent, wrote that there were only a handful of paved roads in the district in the 1960s. When approached, Mayor Walter McAllister dusted his hands and said the issues of West Side were of “no concern” to the city. 

Respected retired St. Mary’s University President Emeritus and political science professor Charles Cotrell analyzed the way racial covenants and redlining affected the infrastructure of areas that the government wasn’t interested in. He said the two racist policies dropped the chances of residents advancing. 

“When you look at the infrastructure – that being the streets, the lighting, the curbs, the sidewalks, the tendency to flood and the lack of any kind of governmental assistance in funding – the area had no way to improve itself,” he said. “There was no investment there.”

The disinvestment and urban decay of the parts of town south of Culebra Road, which Cotrell said was a clear boundary in what was considered north, created a ripple effect that swallowed up educational attainment, housing, and employment opportunities. 

“You had all of those things basically conspiring to keep the Westside poor in wealth value, poor in improvement capabilities, and poor in school districts, which basically statistically perpetuated the situation,” he said. 

In 1968, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Fair Housing Act, protecting people looking to secure a mortgage, rent, or seek assistance from discrimination. 

Though now illegal, it’s not uncommon for San Antonio homeowners to find deeds with outdated language restricting minorities. In 2016, Maggie Rios, a small business owner, and her fiance, Fidel Simmons, a Barbados native and adviser to international students at Alamo Colleges, shared the October 18, 1948 deed attached to the Northeast Side property they were in the process of buying. 

“No lot, site, structure, or dwelling, with the exception of bona fide domestic servant’s quarters shall be used or occupied by any person, or persons, other than members of the Caucasian or White Race,” the now-void document said. That deed was binding until 1974, but the Fair Housing Act was passed in 1968 and banned race-based discrimination in housing. 

Throughout the early 1900s, developers like B.G. Irish were credited for being a city builder responsible for developing neighborhoods like Beacon Hill and Alamo Heights after arriving in San Antonio from St. Louis with his partner H. E. Dickinson. Countless Bexar County deeds with B. G. Irish as the grantor include racist restrictions. In a 1918 deed for plats of land that were part of the “Queensboro Place Subdivision,” restrictions said the land could not be sold or leased to “Mexicans or Negroes.” An ad placed in the San Antonio Express-News a year earlier described the Queensboro subdivision and its surrounding Mahncke Park-area neighborhoods as the “winning side” of town for the proximity to the country club, parks, swimming, and golfing. 

Though no longer enforceable, racist deed language remains on records. A law passed in June 2021 now allows county clerks to remove discriminatory clauses. 

Cracks in education 

In the 1950s, San Antonio’s school districts began consolidating. Areas that were able to raise more money off property taxes had a better chance of being invited to group up. Edgewood, which had a substandard housing stock, was left to fend for itself, becoming one of the poorest districts in the nation. 

The consolidation paired with the Gilmer-Aikin education laws, which had gone untouched since its 1949 inception, set the scene for a historic moment in Texas education. By the 1960s, redlining’s effects on education became painfully clear. 

Cárdenas, who taught in Edgewood before becoming superintendent in 1969 and later resigned to become a champion for school equity, recalled in his papers that teachers had no choice but to catch frogs for dissections, because the district could not afford to supply them. Labs weren’t equipped with much more than a few Bunsen burners, so students would use them to heat tortillas. 

Garza and the Herreras were classmates at Edgewood. Mario Compean met the Edgewood kids as the walkout plans developed. Compean, founder of Chicano-led political party La Raza Unida, was part of Mexican American Youth Organization (MAYO) at the time and offered support and legal counsel to the students and families involved in the walkout. MAYO also funneled grant money to the Edgewood Concerned Parents Association, the group that first filed suit in the district court in 1971, to open a small office, Compean said. 

All four said they never realized how disadvantaged they were until they were teenagers. They were punished for speaking Spanish, but didn’t realize the far-reaching racism behind it. 

“In science labs, water would freeze during the winter because it was so cold,” Garza remembered. 

He recalled a time when the principal told one of his teachers to remove his jacket in front of the class to trick students into believing the biting temperatures weren’t so unbearable. 

Compean, who graduated from Edgewood a few years earlier, said a teacher refused to teach textbook material because he felt the content was too difficult for students to understand. Besides, all that mattered to his students was that they had “stomachs full of tamales,” Compean said his teacher told his class. 

“If I would have listened to that —  every day he was saying that to us — then I would have never made it out of high school,” Compean added. “But I had made up my mind that I was going to graduate from high school and go to college. The problem is, not all of the kids had that attitude, so those that didn’t fell out of school really quickly.”

Compean said the fallout was noticeable by middle school. 

“By the time I got to the sixth grade, almost all of the kids from my neighborhood that started with me had dropped out,” he said. “By the sixth grade.” 

The Herreras’ memories echoed Garza’s and Compean’s. 

“My history book had been signed by a friend who had gone to Vietnam 10 years earlier,” Richard Herrera said.

Diana Herrera said friends who attended University Interscholastic League tournaments hosted by different districts returned with a dispatch of the new resources and technology that they didn’t have at their campuses, like electric typewriters.

“None of us knew it was bad because when you grow up like that, that’s what you know,” she said.

“Our parents told us ‘Que te dan (what they give you), mijo, that’s what you accept, don’t be complaining, you’re getting a free education,’” Richard Herrera said. “I was taught to respect my elders and authority. So if they told us this, we thought it was solid and actually, it really wasn’t. They lied to us. They lied to our parents.” 

While the walkouts sparked a national conversation and are etched in the history of the Chicano movement, Diana Herrera said the dismissal of Edgewood students continued after 1968. She recalled a day early in her senior year when names of students were summoned to the cafeteria to complete paperwork for college admissions. She was confused because her name was never called. 

“So I go to the counseling department and I said ‘I’m going to college, why am I not on the list,’” Diana Herrera asked. “The office told me that I was going to marry Richard and have children and that I wasn’t going to college.” 

Diana Herrera said she insisted that she was going to continue her education. 

“No you’re not,” the administration told her. 

Diana Herrera did end up marrying her high school sweetheart. She raised two children with Richard Herrera, but that was after she received her teaching degree from Our Lady of the Lake University (OLLU). 

“I drove myself from 34th Street (Edgewood High School) to 24th Street (OLLU), because that’s what I knew,” she said in describing the day she was excluded from the college process. “I walked in by myself, did the paperwork by myself. No grants, no scholarships — nothing. Richard and I paid off every single penny, interest rates and the whole bit, we paid off everything. Nothing was given to me. No one helped. No one assisted. Nothing.” 

Years of being dismissed and neglected compounded with barriers of achieving a better life post-graduation. Some of the issues the students were fighting against included a lack of certified teachers, a need for college-ready curriculum, and crumbling facilities. 

On May 16, 1968, the students walked out against the disparities. Garza, Compean, and the Herreras recall the walkout day perfectly. Compean, now 81, was 25 at the time and was on standby to help. Garza, now 71, was 17. The Herreras were both 16. 

Garza said some teachers used their bodies to block the teens from leaving the classrooms. Other students were threatened that they wouldn’t receive their diplomas. Garza said some teachers stood in solidarity with the students and followed them outside where they carried out their lesson plans in the street. 

The kids walked from the campus to the superintendent’s office with their demands. 

“The superintendent wouldn’t come out. If he was there, we don’t know, but he wouldn’t come out and meet with us,” Garza said. 

The police were also called on the hundreds of students who walked out. Garza said the police who responded were from the neighborhood and were facing similar discrimination in the department. They formed a protective line to guard the teenagers. 

The Herreras described the time in the 1960s as a “walkout atmosphere” influenced by the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr., and the Vietnam turmoil. 

The couple pointed to the war as another way Edgewood was disproportionately affected. Fifty-five young men from the 16-square-mile community died in Vietnam. The couple said they weren’t drafted, they volunteered under the false pretenses that if they did, they’d be able to decide their role in the war. Instead, they fought on the frontlines. The Herreras said the dispatch of young men wasn’t happening in wealthier districts where college was a choice. 

“They had no choice. They were lied to by recruiters. They weren’t drafted, they were just picking you up,” Richard Herrera said. “We were preparing our guys to go to war, we weren’t preparing them for anything else.” 

Richard and Diana Herrera, 1969 Edgewood High School yearbook photos. Madalyn Mendoza/MySA

The deaths don’t account for the mental effects Vietnam War veterans returned to Edgewood with. 

“If you’ve seen what we’ve seen in our lives, you’d be crying every day, but we just can’t do that,” Richard Herrera added. 

Students at Lanier faced similar issues. The school’s mascot, the Voks (short for vocational), underscores the trade-focused tracts the students were set on. From December 9-14, 1968, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights met with San Antonio residents and students. It was the first meeting of its kind, designed to identify some of the major barriers encountered by Mexican Americans in education, economic stability, and equality. The nearly week-long commission resulted in a thousand pages of testimonies and exhibits from more than 70 witnesses, ranging from educators to students to Westside residents.

Jose Vasquez, a Lanier student, told the commission that his campus didn’t bring in doctors, lawyers, or the like to speak with kids and motivate them about their futures. Instead, criminals would be presented to the student body to scare the teen away from jail. He added that vocational trades like carpentry and plumbing were pushed on them since elementary. 

Edgar Lozano, another student from Lanier, testified and said not being able to integrate with peers who were white or teachers who looked like him created a sense of inferiority. 

“You have never met this type of people, maybe only as your teacher, or your boss, or something. So consequently you have an idea that they’re always your boss, your supervisor, and they always dress better, nicer and they always tell you what to do,” he told the commission. “I wouldn’t have met them right off in a position where they were right on top of me all the time, where they would tell me what to do. So the only picture I ever had of an anglo was a boss telling me what to do.” 

Years later, when Dr. Cárdenas published his Intercultural Development Research Association perspective, he recounted the same concept of teaching minority students to follow orders he’d experienced in his years of education. 

“They were more focused on having cheap labor than equalizing education,” he wrote. 

Like their Edgewood counterparts, the Lanier students told the commission they were hit with  belts on the mouth for speaking Spanish, were taught that their culture was “bad,” learned from teachers who were not certified, and knew “nothing” of scholarship opportunities. 

Lozano told the commission he felt he was falling behind in his studies and wouldn’t be able to compete in college or get a high-paying job that would set him free from the cycle of poverty.

“Well god bless me, I don’t want to dig holes,” Lozano told the commission. “I don’t think I’ll make it to college. I know I’m not going to be a doctor or lawyer, that’s for sure.”

The teenager, who was a junior at the time he went before the commission, had already written himself off thanks to the part of town he was born into. 

Like Diana Herrera, Irene Ramirez from Lanier told the committee the only option outside of high school for her was marriage and motherhood. 

“Everybody assumes and they rarely emphasize education to the girls in my high school. I mean, they think that probably the June after you graduate you will probably get married,” she said.

Edgewood in courts 

The issues came to a head in July 1968, when Demetrio Rodriguez, Martin Cantu, Reynaldo Castano, and Alberta Snid formed the Edgewood District Concerned Parents Association and filed suit against San Antonio Independent School District on behalf of their children, who they said were receiving a low-quality education. 

The state filing was the start of a landmark Supreme Court decision that would spark education equity conversations nationwide. 

Lawyer Arthur Gochman, representing the parents, argued at the state level that education was protected as a 14th Amendment right and was being violated. He also said Mexicans were treated as a “suspect class.”

On December 23, 1971, the three-judge federal district court sided with the plaintiffs after giving the state time to work through the issues in the legislative session. The ruling found the school finance system unconstitutional. Texas appealed and the case went to the U.S. Supreme Court. 

SCOTUS went against the district court on March 21, 1973. The majority held that education is not a fundamental right protected by the U.S. Constitution. In his dissenting opinion, Justice Thurgood Marshall called the court’s ruling “a retreat from our historic commitment to equality of educational opportunity.” 

While SCOTUS did not uphold the decision, the San Antonio case set a precedent for public school funding. Immediately following the SCOTUS decision, Cardnas resigned as Edgewood superintendent to focus on pioneering an equitable education for Latinos. He formed Texans for Educational Excellence, now called the Intercultural Development Research Association (IDRA), that year. 

Legal inertia continued until the 1980s, when Edgewood went back to court in a lawsuit filed by Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF) on behalf of the district. From 1984 to 1989, back-and-forth between the plaintiffs and the state at times appeared to mirror the 1970s. Then on October 2, 1989, the Texas Supreme Court ultimately sided with the plaintiffs and required the state legislature to develop a more equitable plan by the 1990-1991 school year, more than 20 years after the original case. 

The litigation didn’t end there. From the Texas Supreme Court decision to May 28, 1993 legislature reworked the school funding formula. The legislature’s multi-step plan to remedy funding issues gave property-rich districts with local revenue that exceeded the equalized wealth level options to share their wealth. The district could merge tax bases with poorer districts, send money back to the state, or move some of their taxable property to another district. 

New funding and policies have been released and implemented since then, such as the $11.2 billion in federal money to help schools with learning recovery amid the pandemic, but Garza said public school finance in Texas remains inequitable. 

He, along with Compean and the Herreras have continued their work for equity. Garza and Compean worked mostly through the La Raza Unida Party. Garza said he was part of the push that led to the city’s 1970s move to elect single member districts. The change followed the Voting Rights Act of 1975, in which the Justice Department found the city’s previous annexations disenfranchised minorities. While there was local pushback and a fight to challenge the decision, the districts were approved in January 1977. 

Garza now works for Southwest Voters Registration Education Project. Compean currently heads Academia America, a Westside based non-profit he founded in 2008 which helps immigrants apply for naturalization. Participating in the walkout 54 years ago was the catalyst for both men, who have made a life of empowering oppressed Latino communities. 

They said the Edgewood education upheaval had to happen. 

“It all had a purpose. We knew what we were doing,” Garza said. “We may have been young, but we knew what we were doing.” 

Compean, who has spent more than 50 years galvanizing the Westside against inequities, said his work isn’t piecemealing, but “transformational change for the long term.” 

Diana Herrera has represented teachers’ unions in the district and lends her voice and experience to hosting workshops and speaking at conventions. As an educator, she wishes more children would be taught about the fight for equal education in the 1960s.

“The power of a vote, the power of grouping together, the power of a goal, and the power of Edgewood — little 16 square miles in Westside San Antonio — it has history,” she added. “I don’t give a darn if you go to Yale, Harvard, I don’t care where you go, you’re going to learn about Edgewood [but] our own children and our own community cannot learn about it.”

Compean and Garza shared similar frustrations. They admitted to feeling tired by the workload, but said the mission isn’t complete.

“It’s important for people to know, but not only to know, but to do something about it,” Garza said.

Current efforts 

The Economic Innovation Group’s interactive maps of Distressed Communities show how longlasting San Antonio’s history of racist policies are. One hundred years or 86 years later —  depending on which disservice you want to start with — the descendents of San Antonio’s marginalized people remain poor. The maps, which are built from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey show, the 78207 area code, which encompasses the Westside, is 98.5 percent distressed. Nearly half of its residents do not have a high school diploma and 40 percent of adults are jobless. Edgewood fares a bit better, but is still 87.3 distressed. Alamo Heights maintains its history of affluence with a 35.9 percent score of “comfortability” where only 6 percent of residents do not have a high school diploma. While the EIG maps and the redlining maps have contrasting intents — one evaluates the uneven experiences while the latter solidified the genesis of economic segregation — they appear almost identical nearly 90 years later. 

Demetrio Rodriguez’s daughter Patty Rodriguez was born after her father and the Edgewood Concerned Parents Association battled for equal education opportunities for their children in court. The learning conditions Alexander Rodriguez, the eldest son of Demetrio Rodriguez, experienced motivated the father to join the lawsuit. 

While the 1960s fight happened before her time, she still felt the unevenness when she went through the Edgewood system in the 1970s and 1980s. 

“You don’t really know you’re poor until you grow up later and you realize ‘Oh, I missed out on stuff,’” she said, echoing the generations before her. 

Like Garza, Compean, and the Herreras, Patty Rodriguez’s work has not lost focus on the Edgewood legacy. Patty Rodriguez has worked for the Edgewood School District for 27 years. She’s currently a dyslexia teacher for the district. Outside of the classroom, she advocates for equality and champions for Edgewood, whether it be speaking to the media or going before boards. 

“Once I grew up and learned more about the case and what was happening, it just kind of drove me into that direction and I wanted to really come back to Edgewood after I graduated,” she said. 

A position like hers would not be an available resource for children in the 1960s and was a “missed opportunity” for students like her brother Alexander, who she said might have benefited from having a dyslexia teacher.  

“He just never had that opportunity to get that type of intervention or treatment that I do with my students now. Not to say that his job as a bus driver is menial is not important, but if that would have been taken care of sooner or dealt with better, who knows what he could have done,” Patty Rodriguez added. 

Patty Rodriguez said working in Edgewood schools is the best way she can help her community. 

“I’ve always just kind of stuck to being in the classroom, which is where I think I feel the most effective and can probably see the most change,” she added. “I might not be able to change things politically or funding wise, but I can at least change what a student learns and how a student learns.” 

Though the 1990s changes in school funding worked to equalize wealth, school districts like Alamo Heights have proposed adjusting school funding formulas to make space for “golden pennies,” or funds that are unrecapturable. Alamo Heights has paid the state back $622 million since the start of the Robin Hood plan, according to San Antonio Express-News reports. 

Patty Rodriguez said she has witnessed strides in infrastructure improvements and the implementation of efforts like ASPIRE, an initiative which pairs school districts with universities to create academic programs and provide resources. Gus Garcia University School, powered by Texas A&M San Antonio, is an Edgewood school where ASPIRE has been in action since 2019. In October, U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona visited Gus Garcia to promote the Biden administration’s Build Back Better plan. He said the framework would create more funding for programs like ASPIRE, which he called “powerful.” 

Though grateful for the improvements, Patty Rodriguez said gaps remain in the district. 

“We just don’t have enough teachers. We don’t have enough counselors, social workers, those types of support that are needed the most,” she continued “That’s where we’re lacking.” 

Patty Rodriguez said the pandemic revealed the digital divide and lack of high-speed internet in historically redlined communities. She said there are still neighborhoods without sidewalks. 

She is frustrated with the blow back which follows proposed taxation methods to equalize education. She said her late father would be too. She recognizes that some homeowners want their taxes to benefit their schools, but offered the following hypothetical. 

“In 20-30 years, when you are in a hospital or in a nursing home, these kids from these neighborhoods are going to be the ones taking care of you. They’re going to be the RNs, the LVNs, the ones coming to your home to give you a shower because you can no longer walk,” she said. “Don’t you want those types of people in those positions to have a better education? So that when it comes time for you, you can reap that benefit? I just don’t see why it’s so hard for people to get behind this.” 

While school funding policy is a state function, a local institution like the city-funded early childhood program Pre K 4 SA, spearheaded by Julian Castro, has worked to bridge the gap for minority and low income families and reinvest in these communities since opening in 2013.

According to a 2019 impact study conducted by the University of Texas at San Antonio, the program, which includes “labs” or campuses on each side of the city, had “pronounced” effects on economically disadvantaged children and limited English proficiency students. The study followed the original cohort through elementary. Of the noticeable effects were higher reading and math scores, improved attendance and a decrease in the number of students that were enrolled in special education classes. 

The Heckman Equation, by Nobel Prize winning University of Chicago Economics Professor James Heckman, evaluates the investment of early education. It finds that holistic approaches to confronting socioeconomic and educational disparities have long-term effects including high school graduation rates, blood pressure, drug use, and employment and income. 

In his March 1 State of the Union address, President Joe Biden made a commitment to equitable education. Biden made provisions for early childhood education in his Build Back Better bill, but it has been inert for months. While it remains to be seen if programs like Pre K 4 SA will provide a blueprint for national concepts, Cárdenas’ IDRA is working to make sure redlined areas have the educational resources they need. 

The IDRA has taken on the issue of digital redlining and expanded on the issues Patty Rodriguez introduced.

Christina Munoz, a research analyst for IDRA, said there is a “heavy correlation” between historically redlined areas and the communities where connectivity lags or is nonexistent. 

“Internet service providers just don’t invest in those areas. It’s not a huge profit margin. So unfortunately, those areas either have no access in terms of the infrastructure that’s there, or it’s very outdated,” she said. “We’re talking copper wire versus fiber, which might be very prevalent in North San Antonio or those areas where it’s a little bit more developed.”

Michelle Vega, chief technology strategist for IDRA, said redlining has “tentacles” that have wrapped up communities. The digital impact was recently revealed by the disconnect in learning, working, and receiving healthcare during the pandemic, but it’s been around since the inception of the internet. 

Munoz said Texas has stringent state policies that make the internet being a utility difficult and keeps hands “bound.” Community-driven initiatives like Texas A&M San Antonio’s Connected Beyond the Classroom, which works to provide internet access for 50 target neighborhoods in the city, help but are “Band-Aid” remedies, she said. 

Thomas Marshall, a policy communications strategist with IDRA, expects more action to follow the completion of state-mandated broadband maps, which will reveal which communities the services are not being extended to. 

Luis Silva, Vice President of AT&T South Texas, said residents who are 200 percent below the poverty level can sign up for a $30 monthly voucher to be used toward home internet or cell service. Silva said AT&T is committed to investing and strengthening its network in southern San Antonio. 

While Texas Broadband Development Office awaits the January 2023 completion of the maps, Christine Drennon, director of the urban studies program at Trinity University, said new issues are weighing heavy on already disadvantaged neighborhoods. 

Reflecting on the wrongs of the past is easy because it absolves people of responsibilities, she added.

“It’s easy to look backwards and say, ‘Well you were very bad people and you did this, but we’re very good people and we’re aware of what you did and we would never do it again,’” Drennon said. “And then we move into these old neighborhoods and gentrify them.”

Drennon said the 2008 recession and the foreclosure crisis which followed hit the inner city of San Antonio hard. 

“Some people were able to survive the foreclosure crisis much, much better than others and they took advantage of it,” she said. “They took advantage of the plethora of inner city housing becoming available and bought it all up.”

During the 1921 flood commemoration, Graciela Sanchez, executive director of the Esperanza Peace and Justice Center, hit back at the issue in her address to the crowd gathered at the Westside’s Guadalupe Theater. 

“You have to be able to stop it and say ‘No more.’ We’ve dealt with it 100 years ago, when you didn’t care about this neighborhood, you ignored us. You erased us. Now you see how important this land is, you see how important living downtown is. Now you want this land and you want these properties and you want to just be here because you’re going to be close to downtown. No, we deserve to be here. We’ve been here, we’ve toiled and struggled, and we haven’t gotten paid for it. We have died through these floods and we have died through these diseases. We have built this city on our sweat and our tears and you haven’t paid us, but we’re going to stay here because this is what we have built. Now as we improve this neighborhood, we deserve to stay here.”

Drennon said the mortgages of the inner city homes are favorable, meaning they could be manageable, but it’s the increase in taxes that “kill” homeowners and force them out of their homes. San Antonio has an affordable housing stock that could accommodate working class families, but the interest of developers will “exacerbate” it, Drennon said. 

“The future really is in the housing stock that we have and taking care of it, instead of building a whole bunch of new apartments,” she continued. “We have the bones of a housing stock that really can accommodate almost all income levels. A lot of cities don’t have that.” 

“But if we lose that, which I think is the fear right now, we’re going to have trouble. We are losing it like crazy to gentrification, but also to demolition on the Westside.”

Though inner city neighborhoods are facing the blight of gentrification, Drennon said the issue needs to matter to those living in developed and higher quality homes. 

Drennon offered a two-prong approach to why San Antonians living in more comfortable conditions should be concerned that the city remains economically segregated. 

One is ethical: 

“If we’re not exposed to difference, we become extremely intolerant of it as adults,” she said.

The other looks at the price of poverty: 

“When we tolerate such a large population in poverty or without wealth — no home-ownership or equity in housing — poverty itself becomes incredibly expensive with all of the social services that have to be really funded in order to try to address it,” she added. 

Drennon said Austin, San Antonio’s I-35 neighbor which is currently facing a housing crisis, is an example of what the city could become if the problem goes unchecked. 

San Antonio is at an auspicious and historic opportunity for investment as city council approved the $1.2 billion bond in February. City leaders spent months leading up to the vote working with bond committees to decide how the money should be spent. In May, residents will vote on six propositions: affordable housing ($150 million), parks ($272 million), streets ($472 million), drainage ($170 million), public safety facilities ($78 million), and library and cultural facilities ($58 million). 

Cotrell, the former St. Mary’s University professor, is optimistic about local efforts to create a more equitable San Antonio, but said he can’t be naive after years of unchanged statistics in employment, housing, and education. 

“When we look at the socioeconomic statistics and the growth statistics for San Antonio over three or four census counts, so 30-40 years, we haven’t seen a terrific amount of change,” he said. “I’m more optimistic that more youthful conversations are pervading the discussions, but it has not all been delivered yet.”

Similar to Drennon and Cotrell, Rodriguez is worried about the 50-year outlook of San Antonio. She pointed to the Westside’s first bookstore, an initiative by the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center funded through the 2012 city bond, is only months old. 

“You would think after almost 50 years, somebody would have figured out what to do and got it done already. Or is it going to be another 50 years? What’s going to happen in the next 50 years?,” she asked. 

Each year, the Texas Education Agency publishes the Texas Academic Performance Report. Due to the pandemic, the state waived accountability ratings for the 2020-2021 school year. The 2018-2019 report for Edgewood gave the district a C accountability rating. Though ratings were not issued for the pandemic years, student information for 2020-2021 shows 75.9 percent of Edgewood’s 9,148 students were at-risk of dropping out. For the class of 2020, 83.9 percent of students received their diplomas. The high school dropout rate for that school year was 1.9 percent, the previous school year it was 3.6 percent. 

Alamo Heights received an A accountability rating for the 2018-2019 school year. The most-recent student information data shows of the district’s 4,826 students, 24 percent were at-risk of dropping out. In 2020, 97.1 percent of high school students received their diplomas. The high school drop out rate for the school year was 0.1 percent, the previous year it was 0.3 percent. 

Rodriguez said her father would be upset at the lull in progress and “clamoring” for a remedy. 

“It’s just very frustrating and I’m kind of glad that my dad is not around to see it, because with these last couple of legislative sessions, where they’ve tossed up ideas and redid funding, it’s kind of seemed like they’re just kind of going around in a circle,” she added. “It’s never actually gotten corrected or implemented properly. It’s kind of like a Band-Aid or like a ‘Here, shut up about it.’”