Chapter 3: Just Say No

Her mom was a teacher.

Her dad, he wasn't a teacher.

But he made his living from writing and educating.

He ran the local newspaper, the Big Ben Sentinel.

He was hired to be the managing editor and, like, publisher, but then he never really got paid.

You know, like a paycheck, it would be what was left after you paid the employees kind of deal.

Her parents had a modest home on the south edge of town, surrounded mostly by fields and a small RV park, just a couple minutes' drive from the courthouse.

And we always had other people living with us for some reason, it seems like.

You know, it was either exchange students or people that had broken down on the road and dad brought them home.

It was a busy house.

Martha's house was welcoming of people from different backgrounds and walks of life.

But most of the Big Bend region wasn't like that at all.

And as she got older, Martha started to see the reality more clearly.

The Big Bend region was really two places, one Anglo and relatively prosperous, and one Mexican-American and mostly poor and neglected.

Up until the mid-60s, the schools in the area were segregated.

You might hear that and think, no, that's wrong.

Brown v.

Board of Education was 1954.

The Supreme Court declared school segregation unconstitutional.

But what the Supreme Court said and what happened on the ground in places like far west Texas was very different.

Even after Brown, Mexican-American elementary kids in Marfa were taught in a separate schoolhouse.

When Marfa was segregated, you had Marfa Elementary and then you had the Blackwell School.

And then St. Mary's, there was actually the private Catholic school.

But everybody came together for high school.

And I guess it was probably even maybe late 60s before we had Hispanics.