Among the most colorful of the stories is the pecan shellers strike that led to the founding of the Texas Civil Liberties Union. In 1936 the pecan shellers of San Antonio saw their wages fall to below subsistence levels. Poor and marginalized, this largely immigrant community organized a strike. The leader of this call for justice was Emma Tenayuca, a 20-year-old Latina. The movement gained national attention. In 1937, national labor leaders arrived in San Antonio, removed the existing leadership and developed the pecan sheller movement into an event of national importance. This helped cause a collapse of the city political machine which had largely favored these abuses, and the victory of Maury Maverick in his mayoral bid, and eventual election to the U.S. Congress. In January 1938, Mayor Maverick and others founded the Texas Civil Liberties Union. Today the work of the ACLU of Texas remains inspired by the founders?Maury Maverick, Emma Tenayuca and the Latina pecan shellers.

Source material shows that the first Texas Civil Liberties Union was probably founded in 1938 as a statewide organization headquartered in Austin (just a few years after ACLU was itself established by Roger Baldwin and others in New York in 1920). This entity soon disappeared, though chapters mushroomed throughout Texas. As a consequence of combating drive-by shootings, arson, and government surveillance, membership and clout grew during the 1940s and 1950s.

Finally in 1965, groups from Dallas, Houston, San Antonio and Austin united to create the Texas affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union. The real roller coaster ride of the Texas ACLU had begun. From 1961 to 1992 the organization was active and successful in vindicating people's constitutional rights, but in the 1990's friction arose between the Houston chapter and the national organization. The consequence was that the chapter's activities were terminated. The state affiliate disappeared with the termination of the Houston chapter, only to resume its existence in the mid-1990s under the guidance of Greg Gladden and Jay Jacobson. Today, the ACLU of Texas is on the way to regaining?even surpassing?its effectiveness as a civil rights advocate.

Emma Tenayuca