“The story of the Department is really a big story. Before (Jim) Hightower took over, that agency was pretty white. There weren’t very many minorities in that agency and that’s one of the things that was a real concern to Hightower…I feel like, if you have a more diverse department, then you have a better department, because you have a […]
Paul Lewis
“When I got there, everybody but Jerry Avaya was white. It wasn’t like we said we want people of color. We said we want people with experience, and language ability, and cultural experience from these areas that we’re trying to do exports to. That’s what drove it. It wasn’t like we had a quota or anything.“ Paul Lewis, as Director […]
Barbara Lange
“If you remember one thing, it’s the educational part (of the Black Farmer Conferences). We talked about taxes. We talked about tax credit. We talked about funding, we talked about developing….That’s where Gus (Townes of the Texas Department of Agriculture) and the rest of the high-tech people came in. They knew where to go find specialists. There’s so many different […]
Melissa Hield
“I co-founded People’s History in Texas in 1976 to bring to life stories of ordinary people and significant social and political movements.“ Melissa Hield is PHIT’s executive director. A founding member of PHIT, she also serves on the board. In 2019 she retired as an executive at a Texas state agency where she specialized in strategic, business, and project planning. Hield […]
Casey Hayden
“I wanted to do direct action.“ Casey Hayden (she was known then as Sandra Cason) had been instrumental in organizing the Students for Direct Action, based in the University Y near the campus. Her group talked and decided on a creative strategy. They would all go in a group, line up, ask to buy a ticket for themselves and their […]
Karen Haram
“He (Hightower) was such an enthusiastic promoter, and that he did such a good job getting the word out about Texas foods and Texas wines. California was always the end-all, be-all with the whole California food movement. Suddenly, we were doing the same thing here in Texas, with more personality. I think we sold it better, frankly. What I remember […]
Lacy Fryer (D)
“Lacy (Fryer) took me underneath his wing. I would not have been a regional director had he not been here. Before he left, he said, I have been training you, I’ve been watching you for years because I want to leave a legacy behind. I want someone to follow in my footsteps to make sure that the things that have been done in […]
Lonnie Fogle
“In Nacogdoches the theaters integrated. When they said ‘integrated’, it means the blacks sit in the balcony and the whites sit downstairs. But in Austin on the Drag, we were not even offered that opportunity at the Varsity and the Texas Theater. There was a newspaper article that featured Booker T. Bonner sitting on a upside down bucket with some […]
Rebecca Flores
“In July of 1988, Cesar (Chavez) started a fast, and he call it the Fast for Life. And this was really around the issue of pesticides, because he had seen that even though we’d been talking about it and we knew there were cancer clusters and we knew children were dying at a very, very young age. They’re like 10,11 […]
Kate Fitzgerald
“(M)y mandate from Hightower…was: “Do something with existing resources within TDA to help create new markets for farmers and at the same time address hunger.” …In the same way that agriculture was becoming concentrated, the grocery store industry was becoming concentrated…The effect it had was the creation of what’s now known as the food desert. (Hightower) saw it as a […]