Ignacio García - When Mexicans Could Play Ball: Basketball, Race, and Identity in San Antonio, 1928–1945

When Mexicans Could Play Ball

BASKETBALL, RACE, AND IDENTITY IN SAN ANTONIO, 19281945

By Ignacio M. Garca

University of Texas Press

Austin

Copyright 2013 by the University of Texas Press

All rights reserved

First edition, 2013

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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Garca, Ignacio M.

When Mexicans could play ball : basketball, race, and identity in San Antonio, 19281945 / by Ignacio M. Garca. First edition.

pages cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-292-75377-8 (cloth : alk. paper)

1. BasketballTexasSan Antonio. 2. BasketballSocial aspectsTexasSan Antonio. 3. SportsTexasSan AntonioHistory. 4. Mexican AmericansTexasSan Antonio. 5. Mexican AmericansSocial life and customs. 6. San Antonio (Tex.)Social conditions. 7. Hispanic American basketball playersTexasSan Antonio. I. Title.

GV885.73.S34G37 2013

796.32309764351dc23

2013008527

ISBN 978-0-292-75378-5 (library e-book)
ISBN 978-0-292-75379-2 (individual e-book)

doi: 10.7560/753778

This book was made possible by some incredible young basketball players, and so it is to them that I dedicate this book: Tony, Joe, David, Henry, Raul, Ruben, Ramiro, Kino, Frank, David, Indio, Mosca, Santos, Carlos, Jesse, Walter.... And to their coach, William Carson Nemo Herrera, who saw their worth and helped them become the best they could be.

Contents

Acknowledgments

BOOKS ARE USUALLY MADE POSSIBLE BY LOTS OF PASSION and good sources, and for this book I had an ample supply of both. My passion for this story comes from my having grown up in the barrios of the West Side of San Antonio and attending Sidney Lanier High School. Like the basketball players I write about, I spent much of my life across the street from the high school or within a short walking distance. My family bought their food at the H-E-B a block away from our home and half a block from the school, got our hot and tasty Mexican bread across the street on the corner, our tortillashandmadea block the other way, and our medicineand shakesat the corner pharmacy only about thirty yards from our front door. On the way there, wed pass the local theater, separated from my familys duplex by an alley. Across the street from the movie house was the restaurant where my father worked. From the big storefront window he could see both our house across the street to the west, and my elementary schoolalso across the streetto the east. Mine was what President Jimmy Carter once described as an ethnically pure neighborhood.

The extended version of that Lanier community was also the fertile ground in which grew those young men who donned the basketball uniform of the Voks on their way to numerous championships. Like me, they became lifelong Lanierites and thus natural allies in the writing of this book. I was lucky enough to interview seven former Lanier players, two sons, two spouses, and several die-hard fans. Their recollections of their playing time and of their friends and former teammates provided the foundation for this story.

The first two players I interviewed, and probably the biggest fans of Lanier, were brothers Jesse and Carlos Camacho, who played in the late 1930s and early 1940s. I spent two days in two different years talking about the team, the players, the school, and 1940s San Antonio with them. Later I followed up the interviews with Jesse in his home and had the pleasure of meeting and interviewing his wife, Jessie, a former member of the pep squad and later a secretary at Lanier. The next player I interviewed was Tony Rivera, two-time all-state player and the hero of the first state championship team. More than any other player, he spoke openly about the hostilities he and his teammates faced from white players and the discrimination in out-of-town gymnasiums.

Those three led me to the one player that proved to be the most helpful and the one I most pestered with questions and engaged in long conversations with: David Rodrguez, all-state player, who played in the two state championship teams and would later go on to coach alongside William Carson Nemo Herrera, the legendary coach who guided these young West Side boys to five regional titles, two third-place finishes, one second-place, and two state titles. I interviewed this junior college All-American in his home in El Paso. He was the only player to have a scrapbook handy. We spoke for hours the first time and then spent numerous hours on the phone every time a new question arose and when I simply needed to have someone provide me feedback on a thought I had about the Lanier Voks or the West Side of San Antonio. His scrapbook turned out to be crucial in reconstructing the basketball seasons from 1942 to 1945. I had tried the school to find old school newspapers and yearbooks, but of the former they had none, and it took the school district almost two years to provide me copies of the yearbooks from 1940 to 1945.

I then interviewed Walter Kelley, the half-gringo on the 1943 team whom players lovingly called Rough-House Kelley because he was all of one hundred pounds but could still play a mean defensive game. He exuded love for Lanier during the interview, and because of himand his brother, whom I did not interview became a discussion of the partly Mexican students at Lanier.

And just when I thought I would not be able to, I got to interview Tony Cardona, the all-state guard/forward, who helped win Laniers first regional title and helped me open the book with the story of the riot his last-second shot caused. Other than Jesse and Carlos Camacho, no other player had married a Lanier girl. Rebecca, a tall, sophisticated, and charming woman, gave me insights that none of the other players had even thought about. To my dismay, Tony Cardona and Walter Kelley passed away before I finished the book. They joined team captain and all-around athlete Henry Escobedo, the only player alive at the time that I did not interview (because he was ill), in the basketball courts up in heaven.

The final player to be interviewed was the one who had started it all with an anecdote he gave a research assistant of mine almost twenty years earlier, when I was working on another book. It was then that I found out that Mexicans could play basketball and that at one time they had dominated Class 1A basketball in Texas. Joe Bernal provided not only memories of his time in high school, but as a veteran civil rights legislator he provided a perspective on race relations, segregation, and growing up Mexican American that few others could. David Rodrguez and he were the ones with the sharpest minds, and they were only in their eighties when interviewed.

Through the players, I contacted Charles Herrera, one of Nemo Herreras sons, who has a scrapbook kept by his father. It is a large scrapbook that covers Nemo Herreras sports career, from middle school to the years after he retired from coaching. It has poems, slogans, and picture upon picture of his youth, his playersboth football and basketballand a number of articles and news clippings that covered his life. Charles became a good source and a strong supporter of this project. One other person, Raul Zunigahimself a basketball player, but after the Nemo erawas helpful in providing perspective on Lanier sports and the community around the school.

Also extremely helpful were some friends who graduated with me twenty-four years after the last state basketball championship. They gave me tidbits about their growing years, the places where the students hung outI was always too poor to attend most dances and student activitiestheir lives in the Alazan federal housing projects, the nicknames we used, the teachers and the administrators who watched over us, and so forth. Why was this important? Because many of the players lived in the same housing projects, hung out in some of the same places years before, gave each other nicknamessome similar to the ones we usedand knew teachers who were still there when my cohorts and I arrived at Lanier. This allowed me to tie the 1940s to the 1960s and in some way to connect all Mexicans and Mexican Americans that have ever attended a segregated school and lived in the barrios of the United States.