Political Quotes

“I rise today to recognize an important part of Colorado history and of our Nation's history, the case of Francisco Maestas et al. v. George H. Shone et al. (1914)-- ``Maestas''--one of the Nation's oldest school desegregation cases. In 1848, at the end of the Mexican-American War, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ceded most of present-day Colorado from Mexico to the United States. The resulting influx of Mexican settlers brought major economic, industrial, political, linguistic, and cultural challenges to the region, including questions regarding public education. In the early 1910s, railroad foreman Francisco Maestas and other Mexican American parents sought to place their children into the public school on the ``White side'' of town in Alamosa, CO. After the school district repeatedly denied to enroll their children, Maestas and other parents formed the ``Spanish-American Union'' and brought together 180 parents on a petition to challenge Alamosa's school segregation. Their petition was denied, as was their attempt to seek assistance from the Colorado State superintendent. Following these denials, the community staged a boycott for 3 months to protest these injustices, to no avail. Colorado's Constitution has long prohibited public schools from classifying and distinguishing school children based on color and race, but as the Maestas case demonstrates, school districts sometimes fell short of ensuring equity before the law.…”