Protests Changed San Antonio: The Story of Half-Truths and Erasures
Protest and the threat of direct action integrated San Antonio. There was a completely peaceful end to segregation as the business community wanted to believe. The power structure allowed desegregation to take place in San Antonio to prevent further protests and the threat of violence. It all happened in 1968, years after the 1964 Civil Rights Act. In 1968, the business community of San Antonio was worried about losing millions of dollars in tourist spending during the opening of HemisFair ’68. Black activists and civil rights leaders had protested for years to end school segregation and lunch counter racism. Protests were led by Re. Clause Black, Harry Burns, G.J. Sutton, Homer Rodgers, Colonel Roy Burley, the local NAACP, SNCC, the Ghetto Improvement Association (GIA), and many others. The perfect storm came together to desegregate San Antonio which at the time was as racist as any other southern city, only more shrewdly accomplished. In the San Antonio area, desegregation was accomplished by calling Mexican Americans “White” and leaving the schools in the “Sundown Suburbs” white only. Alamo Heights, Terrel Hills, Olmos Park, Los Angeles Heights, and other apartheid racist cities remained white only for years.
The perfect storm came when HemisFair ’68 was being scheduled for opening in 1968. It was also the year that SAPD officers murdered a Black man named Bobby Joe Phillips. The business community was on pins and needles from the protests that were taking place and disrupting the Fiesta parades in the central business district. The mayor, Walter McAllister, referred to as “MAC” by racist radio personalities, was a white supremacist and called for violent action against protesters who were planning demonstrations at the HemisFair grounds. Years before this, Black San Antonio civil rights leaders protested at city hall and around the city against racism, police brutality, and segregated schools. For anyone to suggest that segregation ended without protest is parroting the lies of local white business leaders. One local banker, went so far as to claim that the local white supremacist Good Government League (GGL) led the way to desegregate the city. The Black press, including the San Antonio Register, and SNAP News carried the stories of protest that the white media played down. There was even a bomb threat called in to blow up the Tower of the Americas at one point which many said was called in by radicals in the Ghetto Improvement Association. One large demonstration took place in June of 1968 against the racist policies of the San Antonio City Council.
Throughout the history of San Antonio, the lens from which history was taught was along white business interests. White Supremacy prescribed the depth of information about the African American experience and how it developed into an underserved educational component; an educational barrier which lacks precise historical information about the legacy of racism and the fight against it. Hence, the real history of protest in San Antonio was paved with falsehoods and incomplete knowledge. This was done to protect whitewashed history painted with racialized brushes. Much is being done to correct the false narratives that have been presented in history and political science books, but much is still missing. Today, conservative attempts are in full swing to deny truthful educational experiences by calling slavery “Involuntary Relocation,” or describing enslaved people as “migrant workers” or just “servants,” and refusing to teach the role of white supremacy in public policy. Along with the other lies is the falsehood that San Antonio was desegregated without protest. Another complete fabrication!
