Book Review: From the Barrio to Washington (Via Sacramento)

Rodriguez experienced discrimination but always remained optimistic, confident that education provided the avenue to a better life. He also focused his efforts on opening doors for Latinos while embracing people from other ethnic and racial backgrounds.

His military service during World War II facilitated his becoming a U.S. citizen so that he could obtain the clearance to become a code breaker.

During the 1950s he helped organize the Community Services Organization (CSO), the dominant Mexican American civil rights organization in California. Through CSO he met César Chávez from San Jose, Dolores Huerta from Stockton, who went on to found the United Farm Workers, and other emerging Latino leaders who became Democratic Party activists and leaders in the Mexican American Political Association (MAPA), which was founded in 1960.

Rodriguez became the first Latino vice principal in the San Diego Unified School District in 1959, and the first principal in 1965.

This was also the time he emerged as a political leader. He hosted a Viva Kennedy fundraiser at his home in 1960, featuring Ted Kennedy. Two years later he won the Democratic nomination for the state Assembly (with future Assemblyman Phil Isenberg as campaign manager).

As a Lyndon B. Johnson delegate to the 1964 Democratic National Convention, Rodriguez was among the first set of Mexican American Californians outside Los Angeles to be so honored.

He was then hired by the state superintendent of public instruction to work on minority-related education issues along with Wilson Riles, an African American who would himself become superintendent of public instruction.

The politically connected school administrator then did something that—for many—might have seemed out of character. He led the walkout against the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission that was meeting in Albuquerque, demanding the appointment of a Latino EEOC commissioner and insisting that the EEOC address Latino concerns.

President Johnson apparently did not bear a grudge because he soon hired Rodriguez to run a new Latino office at the Health, Education, and Welfare agency. In an ironic twist, Rodriguez got the Hearst family, whose newspapers had sensationalized the Zoot Suit Riots, to underwrite the development of federal bilingual education that Congress refused to fund.

In between service in the Nixon and Carter administrations, Rodriguez served as president of East Los Angeles City College.

This is a story both well told and worth telling. The narrative is straightforward and accessible, designed to capture the reader’s imagination; some parts will make you cry and some will make you laugh, while other sections are designed to transmit acquired wisdom.

The book is enriched by number a photographs: Rodriguez’s family, and Rodriguez with activists such as César Chávez and Corretta Scott King and with elected officials such Pat Brown, U.S. Senator Dennis Chávez, and President Jimmy Carter.

It is significant that Rodriguez, at age 87, decided to publish his autobiography. It fits well with the handful of books about other members of the Mexican American generation, most notably fellow Californians Bert Corona, Julian Nava, and Dionicio Morales. It also augments the academic literature, particularly Ignacio M. Garcia’s Viva Kennedy and Julie Leininger Pycior’s LBJ & Mexican Americans.

Still, some academics and political junkies will come away wishing Rodriguez had written more about the texture of political life in San Diego and the nation.

In this regard, I am fortunate to have interviewed Rodriguez for my own book, The Search for a Civic Voice: California Latino Politics.

From the Barrio to Washington would have benefited from mini bios of more of those individuals, such as Alfredo Salazar, who influenced Rodriguez’s life and the community in Barrio Logan.

Hired as San Diego’s first Latino firefighter after his service in World War I, Salazar became the pride of the Latino community with his elevation to San Diego’s fire chief, a post he held until his retirement in 1948, at which time he ran unsuccessfully for the state legislature.

An example of the book’s insufficient political context is Rodriguez’s meeting, at the 1964 Democratic Convention, Latinos from other states with roots in Central and South America and his deepening
understanding of the historic plight of white ethnics.

This experience resulted from his participation in the party’s nationalities division, a body set up under President Roosevelt to reach out to the foreign-born and their children. It emphasized coalition politics and produced the structure to court the once relatively small number of Latino voters.

Such quibbles aside, From the Barrio to Washington is a must-read for those seeking to learn about the past or to become inspired to create a better tomorrow. The book is available from Amazon.com.

Kenneth Burt is the author of The Search for a Civic Voice and the political director of the California Federation of Teacher. For more information, go to www.KennethBurt.com. The site features Jackie Kennedy speaking Spanish in the first television ad to target Latino voters.