Dr. Hinojosa-I’m Gilberto Hinojosa, professor of history here at the University of the Incarnate
Word. This is July the 28th, this is the Church in the Chicano Movement Project, and today we
have the good fortune of getting to interview Joe Bernal who was involved with the archdiocese
of San Antonio, Hispanic Affairs Commission. We’re going to talk about that, but before we get
into your role in the commission, let’s talk a little bit about your personal background. What did
you major in when you went to college?
Joe Bernal-Well, I started off as a PE major, I wanted to be a basketball coach. I went to Trinity
here in San Antonio. And one of the-St. Mary’s didn’t have-I wanted to go to St. Mary’s but they
didn’t have a PE major. And at Trinity, in order for you to be able to become a coach, a certified
coach, high school basketball coach, you had to letter. So, I went to Trinity also and enrolled in
the basketball team, and I made it, but then they decided that year that they would come out with
a scholarship program, athletic scholarship program, and they pulled in a lot of outstanding
national basketball players, especially from Indiana. So that knocked a few of us from San
Antonio out of the-out of play.
H-Uh huh.
B-And it knocked me out, so I had to change my major. So I went to sociology and education.
H-And at-is this where you sort of became aware of some of the issues that the San Antonio
community was facing? Or had you been in tune with them before? How did your interest in
social problems, social and political problems, how did that arise?
B-Well, when I was in high school, my home away form home-there were two homes away from
home, Our Lady of Guadalupe church where I was very involved, just using their yard to play,
and they used to have boxing matches and stuff like that in the backyard. It was a school also.
But my other home away from home was the Mexican Christian Institute, a social agency. And
the director, E. G. Luna, asked me to work there when I was in high school. So when I was a
senior, I had already done all my senior work and I had a half a day off, so I got to working with
kids. He asked me to come in and work with kids at MCI; we used to call it MCI, Mexican
Christian Institute. It was supported by the United Way and by the Christian church, and I did
some work the young kids, and I enjoyed it. And so, that was called social work and, you know,
part of it was the, Mr. Luna knew Charles Burrows, the professor from Trinity who was the head
of the sociology department. So I got involved in that and, he said, “Do you want to be a social
worker?’ And I said, “Yeah. This would be fitting, very fitting.’ So it worked.
H-So it was an easy transition from your PE major to the sociology?
B-Yeah, I was already taking sociology classes and education classes. So, as far as PE was
concerned the only thing that had stopped me from doing that was to be able to acquire the
licensiture, I guess, the license to become a coach, but-at Trinity anyway. But I couldn’t do it
unless I lettered.
H-Yeah, right.
B-And I knew I wasn’t going to be able to letter. And so, I was in the varsity when I started, and
then they dropped us off the following year.
H-So you-in, what in particular in your college career, this majoring in sociology, what issues do
you remember coming, you know, making you more aware of, you know, the problems in the
whole of the San Antonio community? Did you have some internship or anything of that sort
while at Trinity?
B-No, I was under the GI Bill. I had served; I had been-I’m a World War II veteran. And I had
come back form the service and I enrolled at Trinity under the GI Bill. So I was able to get all
my education.
H-Did you go into the service after high school, is that what happened? Or what?
B-Yeah, I was in high school. I enlisted in the reserves, and I got a scholarship as an engineer
student. And I went to Texas Tech for a semester, New Mexico, A&M, Las Cruces, which is
now New Mexico State for a semester. And I, I wasn’t really prepared to be an engineer because
my-I had gone to Lanier High School, a vocational high school that didn’t really prepare student
to go to college. So, a lot of the math that was required in engineering in the program-because we
were supposed to have a nine-month program in engineers, in engineering, and supposed to get a
second lieutenant rating out of it. And it was a little ambitious. And I though, “Boy that was
great,” you know. I passed the test when I was still in high school as a senior, in ’44, and that
same summer, I enlisted and I went to Tech, full scholarship, everything paid for. And then the
unit was transferred to New Mexico, so I went to New Mexico. And then I-there were supposed
to be three semesters, three terms. I just lasted two, and I came home. I just didn’t want to go any
further because they were giving me math that-I mean some of the students that were there werethey used to use a slide rule. I had never heard of a slide rule.
H-Yeah.
B-I had never taken some of the advanced math classes like calculus or any of the more
complicated math. I had, I was pretty much a wiz in algebra but other than that, I just didn’t,
hadn’t had the training.
H-Yeah, right.
B-And some of those guys had come from schools where they were really prep schools for
college.
H-Right.
B-And there were two divisions, some that were coming in from some of the prep schools,
higher prep schools, that were larger, and then some of us that had gone to vocational school like
I hadH-Yeah.
B-Just weren’t college prep.
H-Yeah. So you got through at Trinity and what did you, what was the first thing you did after
finishing at Trinity?
B-Well, I shifted over to Guadalupe Community Center, because that was closer to my house
and it was close to Lanier, and that was my neighborhood growing up, all that area, Our Lady of
Guadalupe church, on El Paso Street. Sister Mary Victory, from Incarnate Word, was the director
at Guadalupe Community Center. It was also a United Way agency. And it fitted my nature a
little better to work in the neighborhood because then I started-part of what I was doing while I
was there at Guadalupe Community Center was that I had started teaching in the San Antonio
district a little later, because I started off in a rural, Wilson county, a school called Kosciusko.
When I went to first teach, Kosciusko Elementary-well Kosciusko School, first grade to tenth
grade, in Wilson county, and I came home, went to Edgewood, and then I ended up at Crockett,
it was part of my neighborhood. So, being at Guadalupe Center, I was able to combine my work
with the kids doing-it wasn’t really-at that point, I was aware of some of the things that were
occurring. You know, this was post-World War II, the beginnings of the movement to-on civil
rights, for example. I always place World War II as the crucible, I guess, when blacks and
browns, some of us, were used to whatever the majority was putting on us, prior to that. For
example, naming our school a vocational school and not giving us higher education courses wasbecame a problem, in the 60s, because there was more demand for our kids to go to college. And
when we came back from the service, and prior to that, I kept saying, we were Mexicans, when
we were in World War II, we were Americans, you know, there was no distinction. We came
back as Americans, right back to the neighborhood, back to being Mexicans and being
discriminated, you know, because I couldn’t get a job when I came back from the service.
H-Yeah.
B-I was trying to get a job and my first efforts were to get a job with the San Antonio Drug
Company. They were calling for some help, and I went, and I remember, I said, “You’ve got a-I
came here with a notice from the newspaper that you had an open job.” He says, ‘I’m sorry we
don’t have any.” I said, “But it says here that you have.” You know, so a lot of that, I think a lot
of us that came back form the service, especially some of the older veterans, that were a little
older, because I was eighteen, when I became active and trained as an infantry man and then
served overseas, some of the ones-the old veterans that had come back, I think, were that
combination of not having to take it anymore, you know.
H-Right.
B-The idea that we found ourselves to be Americans, and then coming back to the same old
crudH-Segregated, and discrimination that you had encountered before.
B-Yeah, that we had encountered before. Job discrimination, housing discrimination, vocational
schools, where people didn’t give you credit for having a brain. That was a kind of a mentality. If
you talk to people in my age category, that are now professors or retired professors or retired
educators and so on, they, most of them will tell you the same thing that we encountered. If the
councilors in school, if you suggested that you might be interested in going to college, they
would try to dissuade you. You know, that was a general thing, you know.
H-Yeah.
B-“You’re not cut to be-why don’t you take a nice job and work like at Kelly Field or some
place like that,” he says, “where you don’t have to have college training?” and like telling you
that you really weren’t capable. And the fact was that the curriculum in the school that I went to,
which was Lanier Vocational, that’s where the Voks came from, we didn’t have, ha, ha. We
wanted to have some kind of a representation on the football field like other schools had like the
Buffalos or the Lions, or the Tigers, or whatever.
H-Yeah, right.
B-We were the Voks. And people would say, “What’s a Vok?” V-O-K, “What’s a Vok?” And
the fact was that Vok was a short way of saying VOC, vocational, Lanier Vocational, Lanier
Voks. And people were-I always thought that it had something to do with the navy, because we
were blue and white, we had the Notre Dame Song, but we were blue and white. And we used to
have, like I thought it was, a steering wheel on a boat, you know. And I really felt that. And it
wasn’t. It was a cog, ha, ha, a metal, ha, ha, a metal tuerca, ha, ha.
H-Ha, ha. Is that right? Ha, ha.
B-That had to do withH-Vocation, fixing cars.
B-Yeah, fixing cars. We had vocational auto mechanic, we had body and fender, printing, which
was probably one of the better ones.
H-But did your experience in the military, however unprepared you may-ill prepared you may
have been for engineering, did that kind of give you confidence to come back and go to college
anyway?
B-Well, I had always thought, in my mind, that somehow or another I was going to go to college,
because my hero was my high school coach. He was a very prominent high school coach in
Texas. He had taken the school to state in 1939, in 1943 won state, in 1945 won state. I played in
’44, for Nemo Herrera. So he was my hero, he was myH-What was his name again?
B-Nemo Herrera, Herrera.
H-Herrera?
B-Uh huh, Herrera. He’s in the hall of fame here in San Antonio, produced two state
championship teams from Lanier. And that was a time, I had a brother who played in ’43, and I
played in ’44, and I had a little brother who played in ’45, ’46.
H-So, what was your job at the Guadalupe Center, at the community center there? What did you
do as theB-I was taking the kids swimming, teaching them how to play ball, having-organize them for
clubs, teaching them parliamentary procedure, andH-How long were you there?
B-From 1947, when I was at Trinity, after I left MCI, I came over, probably ’47 until I started
working in 1950 in Kosciusko, and then I came back to it the following year when I came to San
Antonio. When I stared working at Edgewood, I was at Edgewood for three years. I was working
at Guadalupe Center, part time.
H-What were you teaching at Edgewood?
B-Uh, sixth grade, seventh grade at Edgewood, seventh grade.
H-What subject?
B-It’s all subjects.
H-All subjects, yeah.
B-Contained, self con-what they call self-contained.
H-Oh I see, OK.
B-They had an eighth-they had an eighth grade system in Edgewood, eighth and high school.
H-Yeah.
B-So it’s elementary all the way to the eighth.
H-Right.
B-And then the last four years.
H-That’s right, that’s before they actuallyB-Eight four.
H-Yeah, sort of sectioned out middle school.
B-Right.
H-Yeah, I went to the same kind of school in a different situation but um. And so you were there
for three years at Edgewood?
B-I was at Edgewood for three-well Kosciusko for one year, Edgewood three years, and when I
came to San Antonio District, and then landed in an elementary school called Davy Crockett
thereH-Oh, yes.
B-on Buena Vista Street, Commerce Street. I was right back into my neighborhood, so I knew
the parents, I knew their kids, and I continued to work with them.
H-How long were you in the San Antonio Independent School District?
B-Ten years.
H-Ten years? What made you leave? Where was your next position? What was your next
position?
B-I thought the end of the-I thought the best thing that I could ever do in my lifetime would be, a
principal, of a school. So I applied for a principalship. Let me go back, when I first applied as a
teacher, I went to the San Antonio School District, because I had gone to-through eleven years,
because it was only eleventh-you graduated from high school in the eleventh grade. I went
through eleven years in the San Antonio school district, two schools, J.T. Brackenridge and
Lanier, J.T. Brackenridge on Brazos and Guadalupe, and then Lanier. So that was my barrio
growing up, the right-what we called la mera mata del west side. The-when I applied for a job. I
felt the same thing that I had-when I had first applied with a job with the San Antonio Drug
Company. And they were calling for work there and saying, “We don’t have them.” And I knew
that-because I continued to read the paper that they had openings you know.
H-Yeah.
B-But I never did-I had no idea what I would be doing for the Drug Company but they had
openings for a job there. I had the same feeling when I went to the San Antonio School District.
The head of the elementary division, assistant superintendant, had been my principal at J.T.
Brackenridge, and she remembered me. And she says, “Joe, yeah.” Well, after an interview, I
was told, “Well, you need to have some experience, pick up some experience. You need to go
out of town maybe. Find a job out of town or some small district, and then come back to us.”
Really, no need for that, you know, but when you looked around I had gone to both J.T.
Brackenridge and Lanier. One Hispanic, at J.T. Brackenridge, and he was a Boy Scout leader
part time, and his name was Mr. Jiron and then his mother or sister was teaching Spanish, both of
them, was teaching Spanish at Lanier. So I had her in junior high school. And then there was
another one, Miss Lozano, who was also teaching Spanish at Lanier in high school, and then
Nemo Herrera. In my lifetime, in my youth, all the way through college, those were the only
people that I knew, other than Mr. Luna, the director from the Mexican Christian Institute, that
had degrees in college. You know, because nobody in the neighborhood, you could go to and
say, “What’s college all about?” You know, “I’d like to go.” So these were the people that I
remember as being the only Hispanics at that timeH-So, when you applied for that principalship, and they told you, you needed out of town
experience?
B-No, for the job first.
H-Oh, for the job.
B-For the job; that I needed some out of town experience. When I first appliedH-For the teaching job.
B-For a teaching job. They didn’t have any teachers you know that-. They had one principal,
Manuel Gonzalez, who had been in the San Angelo School District that had been incorporated
into the San Antonio School District, and then Mr. Tafolla, who was a vice principal at Lanier,
they were the only administrators. At a later time, when I looked for an administrative position,
that’s what I encountered, the only two administrators in the San Antonio School District. And I
applied twice, and something happened that changed my life completely because while I was
trying for a principalship-because I was practically running the school. Every time there was a
problem, a discipline problem, or when a parent was really angry, the principal would come into
my office into my schoolroom and ask me, “Would you talk to this parent?” a very angry parent,
about some child, and so on. So I would go to the principal’s office and sit there and talk to the
principal. Or if we had any problems with the kids, fighting or something like that, the principal
would come in, “I’d like to take your-“ I said, “Well this is really preparing me to take over a
school.”
H-Yeah.
B-And I knew that I could do that. So when I applied, I was turned down the first time, and it
was the head of the personnel who was someone who had been what we called very antiMexican. I had gone to him when I first tried it, and he said part of the problem that I had was
having to go out of town when I first tried. He was still there, his name was Wheeler. And some
of the guys that had gone to St. Mary’s for example, when I went to him for a principalship, he
asked me he says well, “You know, why don’t you try a Catholic school? You’re Catholic aren’t
you?” I said, “Yes, but I’ve been a public school student all my life, you know. I went to public
schools in elementary, public schools in junior high school, in high school, and you want me to
go to a Catholic school to apply for a principalship? Why not here?” And he had no answer. But
some of the guys that had graduated, that we talked to later, they were Hispanic, Mexicanos,
Chicanos, would tell me, “You went to St. Mary’s?’ He says, “Well why don’t you go look for a
job at a Catholic school?” And that’s how they would get rid of them.
H-Yeah.
B-Now with me, they had a hard time because they really couldn’t justify their biases, their
feelings, their expression of prejudice, you know. Anyway, you live with that.
H-What happened the second time? So, a year later you applied again, or?
B-I applied a second year, and I told the principal, I said, “I want you to write a letter.” And my
principal, that I had helped with a lot of the problems that they had in the school, discipline
problems, she says, “I did write a letter.” You know, I didn’t know whether the letter was
written? How could I ask her, “Well I don’t believe you.” Ha, ha.
H-Yeah, right, ha, ha.
B-You want me to be here as your assistant, but not give me the opportunity to take over a
school.
H-Yeah.
B-And I knew that I was ready. You know at that time I was thirty five, thirty six. Anyway, what
happened there was some community people that had noticed-I was involved in Boy Scouts, I
was a west side director, not paid, supporting Boy Scouts because I thought Boy Scouts-I had
tried being a Boy Scout when I was a kid but I failed because I didn’t have the money for my
uniform when I was a kid. So, but I though the program was a good program. I also helped with
the Junior Red Cross and I helped with the Alamo Kiwanis had a baseball league and I had my
Guadalupe Center kids involved in there, I had them involved in CYO, so I was the coach of the
year in 1950 in the CYO. Somebody took notice, and they asked me to run for office, some west
side businessmen that were associated with the establishment group from San Antonio called the
Good Government League. And they were the prominent promoters of politics, you know. And
they asked me to run. And you know I said, “What do I have to do?” They said, “You don’t have
to do anything. We’ll raise the money. We’ll put you in with a group of people.” I ran with Sam
Jorrie and Ms. Meyer and *Col. Stauly and former mayor of San Antonio Morman
H-This is for the city council?
B-The, for-no, no. This is for state representative.
H-Oh, for state representative.
B-Yeah, it was a delegation, a Bexar county delegation.
H-Right, it was a multiple delegation district, right.
B-Yeah, it was at large. We had to run county wide, so if you didn’t run with a team, you didn’t
have a chance.
H-That’s right, that’s right.
B-So, and they-I was the only one that won, ha, ha.
H-Oh, is that right? Ha, ha.
B-Well, I had the advantage of having associated with them and I was able to pick up-we didn’t
have any black on the ticket at that time.
H-You picked up the-all the Mexicano vote plus some of theB-Plus the Good Government League vote that went with Sam Jorrie and Ms. Meyer and Col.
Stauly and Gus Morman, former mayor. And I ended up with their votes. I had worked in
Edgewood, I had been a teacher in Edgewood, I had been at MCI, I had been at Guadalupe
Center.
H-Yeah.
B-I had been involved in all of these good things for the young kids like Junior Red Cross and
CYO, and so on. So they asked me to run. And I said, “Well what do I have to do?’ He says, “No
you don’t have to do anything. We’ll raise the money for you-“
H-Yeah.
B-I ended up-my life changed, because I-from being a hopeful principal to being a candidate for
office was a major change.
H-Oh, I imagine.
B-And I really didn’t, in some ways, I didn’t know what the hell I was getting into, ha, ha.
H-Yeah, ha, ha. Hey you took the dive.
Both Laugh
B-Two years later, when I ran for the Senate, it was because there was a vacancy, the guy that
asked me he says, “Hey this guy only has one term in the house, and he didn’t know where the
front door to the capitol was.” You could say, that I didn’t know where the capitol was.
Both laugh
B-But I used to laugh at that and I’d make a joke out of it and say, “Hey I didn’t know that the
capitol was in Austin.” Of course, I was kidding. But the other one was I really didn’t know
where the front door was. After you go to the front door, where did you go after that, you know?
But it was an adventure-a tremendous adventure for me. For the next eight years, I was in the
house for two years, and then after that six years in the senate.
H-So you were already in the house when you applied the second time for the principalship is
that-?
B-I applied for the principalship, I was-no, no. That was a choice. I just gave up the fact that I
had some very antagonist administrators in the San Antonio School DistrictH-I see.
B-and that I would not, I should’ve said that, that I didn’t think that I would make a principal foreven trying for the third year so I said the heck with it.
H-So you stayed in the classroom?
B-I stayed in the classroom when I was applying, thatH-Yeah, right.
B-I stayed in the classroomH-But when you were in the house, what were you doing, you know, on the off times?
B-Well that’s-I was working at Guadalupe Center.
H-I see, OK.
B-It was a private agency, yeah.
H-OK. So that gave-working with the Guadalupe Center gave you the time to be in Austin part
of the year and hereB-No, well I taught-my first term, I taught all the way into-because I ran in’64. I ran for office
and the elections were in November, so I didn’t go to my office until January of ’65 for the first
term. So I stayed teaching all the way until the Christmas holidays.
H-Yeah.
B-And that was it. That was it for my teaching. I didn’t go back into it until I came back after my
years in the legislature. I came back to it.
H-So you stayed working in the Guadalupe Community Center, is that the name of it, right?
B-Guadalupe Community Center.
H-While you were at the house and at the senate.
B-Yeah. At the senate, I went back to work at MCI. Later it was changed to Inman Christian
Center as an adult-working with adults and a little more on the-I wasn’t doing the recreational
stuff that I had done when I was in my younger years. ButH-What were-what kept you in touch with some of the things that were going on in the church?
Were you-that got you into this Hispanic Affairs Commission?
B-WellH-How were you connected with the church through this time?
B-Well, first of all, I kind of grew up in the backyard of Guadalupe Church, you know, as a kid,
and I was able to I guess, I would almost say flavor, absorb a lot of the church activities that
were promoted by Father Trancasey who was a Jesuit. It was run by Jesuits and I just found out
when my brother died this year, that at one time I think they were under the Claretians, and the
Jesuits had a church in El Paso and they switched. They took over Guadalupe. They were very
relevant to some of the things that I started reading, because, in my twenties, I wanted to be a
priest. And I started reading the lives of all the saints and so on, and so forth. And so that got my
mind into that kind of situation. I didn’t get married until I was twenty nine. So part of the
connection to, later on, getting involved in church activities, especially with a commission, was
maybe that connection to GuadalupeH-Uh huh.
B-where we-one of the things that I used to laugh at was the fact that they would send a band,
this guy with a-he was a sergeant or a corporal, from Fort Sam or somewhere, but he could play
the trumpet and he had some drummers, and he had some people blowing not a trumpet but a
coronet or whatever, ha, ha.
H-Bugle.
B-Bugle, yeah right, ha, ha. They would go through the streets for nine o’clock mass at
Guadalupe.
H-Oh is that right, like a drum and bugle corps? Ha, ha.
B-Oh yeah, like a, what do you call that?
H-Banda de Guerra, kind of thing.
B-Yeah right, right.
H-Yeah.
B-They would go through all the streets and alleys and so on, and pick up kids for nine o’clock
mass.
H-Oh wow.
B-And you could hear-and of course at that time, as soon as you could hear the band playing, ha,
ha, ‘the band’.
Both laugh
H-That got you out of bed, ha, ha.
B-Claps. ‘Levantense, levantense’ you know, and we had to go to church. And it was a good
reminder. So, we were like the children following the como se llama, the storyH-Yeah right, right, the story of the trumpeter or whatever that goes around picking up the kids
and going out.
B-Yeah, yeah, anyway.