April 27, 2008
Albuquerque Journal
Racism Has No Place at My Alma Mater
By David Roybal For the JournalLas Cruces has become one of my favorite communities in our great state, New Mexico State University, one of my favorite schools. That's why it pains me to see some of what has unfolded at both places recently.
Editor of its student newspaper, I graduated from NMSU in 1974 with a double major (journalism and mass communications, sociology). That year, I was one of three student members of the university's board of regents.
University President Gerald W. Thomas returned my phone calls. So did the mayor, the DA and other county officials.
For a while, though, I thought I'd never make it out of the Mesilla Valley with even one year of college under my belt. Culture Shock 101 probably best describes my introduction to both the community and the university that sprawled within it along I-25.
I was born and raised in Española and never got far for long from the northern Rio Grande Valley until my venture into Cruces one hot summer day for freshman registration in the Pan American Center.
Harvey C. Jacobs gave me a cordial welcome from his post as head of journalism and mass communications. But despite people like Jacobs, Thomas and William Humphreys on the board of regents, intolerance of minorities like me was as easy to find as onions and cotton in the fields.
If there was any consolation, it was that I found things better than conditions that awaited young students who ventured into the Mesilla Valley not too long before me. I tell of one case in my new book, "Taking on Giants, Fabián Chávez Jr. and New Mexico Politics," just released by the University of New Mexico Press:
Only recently married, Reginald and Bonnie Barrow of Santa Fe made their way to what was then New Mexico A&M in Las Cruces in 1952 after having been granted space in married student housing on campus. But when the Barrows arrived, university officials discovered the teens were black. The New Mexican reported that a college official told the couple that the university "shall be happy to try to help you locate satisfactory quarters in Las Cruces" off campus.
The couple said they wanted the apartment-trailer on campus for which they had already paid a deposit.
The issue would have to be resolved by the university's board of regents, said A&M President John Branson. "The institution can hardly be said to have a policy," he offered. "We've had two or three similar cases before and Negroes were welcomed on the campus, but were told they'd probably be happier living in Las Cruces. ... The community up to now has hardly been ready for a move as drastic as (this)," he said of blacks being granted housing on campus.
Fabián Chávez Jr. was in his first term as a Santa Fe legislator and jumped to the Barrows' defense. He phoned fellow lawmaker Jesse Richardson of Doña Ana County, who was also chairman of the university's board of regents. "I called Richardson right away and asked him what the hell was going on down there," Chávez recalled. "He says, 'Well, Fabián, you have to understand that we're only 40 miles from the Texas border.'
"My reply was, 'Damn Texas.' And, frankly, my language was a bit more colorful than that. 'This is a New Mexico state institution supported by New Mexico taxpayers and they shouldn't be treating this couple that way.' ''
The A&M regents met 12 days after the Barrows story broke and unanimously adopted a policy that prohibited distinctions among students based on race, creed or color.
I arrived on the campus bright-eyed and naive less than 20 years later. By then, people like former Air Force pilot Bobby Mayfield, who had just completed a decade as an influential state legislator, and lawyer Dan Sosa, who would go on to serve on the state Supreme Court, had already nurtured much-needed social advances in their beloved Mesilla Valley. But far more needed to be done, and it drew as much of my attention as any class en route to a degree.
Now, more than 30 years after I graduated, comes frank talk from within the campus of alleged festering sores that have no place in our state. And more open than what stirs in a few hidden corners, come screaming, anonymous threats to several faculty members and at least one student at New Mexico State who have spoken out about perceived wrongs.
"(epithet) shut the (expletive) up and get out of las cruces and nmsu and go back to Africa asap or else," read one note slipped under a door, according to a recent report by Martin Salazar of the Albuquerque Journal.
None of it belongs in the Cruces that so many have grown to admire.
David Roybal can be reached at 505-351-4053.