Standing Up for Justice

During the Depression, thousands of banks shut down. Many people lost their life savings. At the same time, nearly 25 percent of America’s workforce lost their jobs. Families struggled to support themselves.

Even before the Depression, Mexican Americans endured severe discrimination. They made less money than White workers who did the same jobs. Their children went to inferior schools. The Depression was making these inequalities worse. 

The injustice made Emma angry and sad. Who is going to help? she wondered.That day in the park, Emma felt powerless. But she would soon find her voice, becoming a fierce advocate for her community.

Emma was born on December 21, 1916, in San Antonio. Her family had deep Tejano roots. Their ancestors could be traced to Spain and the Native peoples of Mexico and Texas.

Emma’s parents eventually had 11 children. There wasn’t enough money—or space—for everyone. So at a young age, Emma was sent to live with her grandparents.

At the time, San Antonio—like much of the country—was deeply segregated, or separated by race and ethnicity. Forty percent of the city’s residents were of Mexican descent. Most lived on the west side of the city. Many dwelled in shacks with dirt floors and no indoor plumbing. 

Emma grew up on the west side but in comfortable conditions. Her grandfather, Francisco Zepeda, earned a good living as a carpenter. But his true passion was politics. He believed in racial equality and voted for candidates who shared that view. His beliefs shaped young Emma.

On Sundays, Zepeda took Emma to Plaza del Zacate for ice cream. They listened to activists discuss religious freedom, workers’ rights, and other causes. Those afternoons inspired Emma for the rest of her life.

“My grandfather was the one who really influenced me more than anything else,” she later said, “because I loved him so much.”

Still, there was no way to avoid prejudice in San Antonio. Like housing, schools and eateries were segregated. Emma once saw a restaurant owner deny service to a group of Mexican students because of their ethnicity. 

“You had things like that happening all the time,” she recalled later. 

During the Depression, such mistreatment became even more obvious. When work became scarce, White Americans blamed people of Mexican descent. They wrongly believed immigrants had taken all the jobs. Some of that anger turned into threats and violence.

At the same time, federal programs were set up to help provide struggling Americans with money, food, and jobs. But people of Mexican descent were often left out, says Marla A. Ramírez. She is a historian at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.  

“Emma saw those in her community face discrimination,” says Ramírez. “I think that might have been one of the harshest effects of the Depression on her.”

Emma entered high school in the early 1930s. Despite the upheaval around her, she excelled in her classes. She joined the debate team and an after-school book club. Club members discussed works by influential thinkers such as Thomas Paine and Karl Marx. Those writers believed in empowering ordinary people. Emma took note. 

One day, a newspaper article caught her attention. A group of female workers in San Antonio, most of them Mexican American, were planning to strike for better treatment and higher pay. The women hand-rolled cigars for a local company. They were forbidden from leaving their posts for more than four minutes at a time. And they earned only $2 to $7 a week. White women rolling cigars at other companies averaged nearly $17. 

The situation wasn’t unusual. In those days, U.S. factory workers often endured long hours for low wages. People of color were even more vulnerable to mistreatment, particularly women. 

The article said that a local sheriff had vowed to break up the cigar strike by force if necessary. Emma, 16, decided to go anyway. “I felt there was something that had to be done,” she later said.

She joined the picket line—and was promptly arrested. But Emma had found her calling. After graduating from high school in 1934, she devoted herself to fighting for workers’ rights. 

By the mid-1930s, the Depression showed no signs of letting up. So the U.S. government passed a series of laws to help protect workers. One was the National Labor Relations Act of 1935. It guaranteed people’s right to organize into unions. Those were large groups of workers from the same industry. By uniting, workers had more power.

But few of San Antonio’s Mexican and Mexican American workers benefited from the new laws. Their bosses often threatened to get them thrown out of the U.S. if they joined unions. Emma was determined to help these people, especially women. 

She started knocking on doors and speaking with women workers directly. She encouraged them to stand up for their rights. In 1935, she helped organize local chapters of a female garment workers’ union. After that, she joined picket lines, wrote letters, and staged protests to draw attention to unfair conditions.

Her work wasn’t easy. In addition to prejudice, Emma faced sexism. Many people believed women should stay quiet—not march and chant in the street. When people saw Emma, she often heard them say, “Here comes the little girl who confronts men.”

The strike swelled to 10,000 shellers from several pecan factories. They marched and chanted. They waved signs reading, “This shop unfair.” Emma joined them on the front lines.

Police used clubs and tear gas on the strikers. More than 700 people were arrested—including Emma. Still, the strike continued until March. That’s when both sides agreed to let an independent group step in. 

The group ruled that the shellers should be paid higher wages. But the workers’ success was short-lived. In October 1938, a new law set the federal minimum wage—the lowest amount people legally could be paid—at 25 cents per hour. Rather than raise shellers’ pay again, the pecan companies replaced 10,000 workers with machines. 

By the late 1930s, Emma had joined the Communist Party. At that time in the U.S., the Communist Party was a political party focused on workers’ rights. But anti-Communist feelings ran strong in many places. And Emma’s work made her a target. After receiving death threats, she fled the city a year after the pecan strike. 

During the 1940s, Emma left the Communist Party. She lived a quiet life as a teacher in California, moving back to Texas two decades later. In the 1980s, historians began to rediscover Emma’s story. They recognized her as a pioneering Mexican American labor organizer. 

Emma Tenayuca died in San Antonio in 1999 at age 82. Today the park where she spent happy afternoons with her grandfather has a prominent marker honoring her life. And around the city, colorful murals celebrate her achievements.

Meanwhile, the pecan strike is now considered an important early action in the Mexican American struggle for justice. 

In 1983, an interviewer asked Emma whether she was ever scared to stand up for her community. “I never thought in terms of fear,” she answered. “I thought in terms of justice.”