Emma Tenayuca was a troublemaker. At least she was for many of San Antonio's politicians and businessmen. Emma was a brilliant student at Main (and later Brackenridge) High School with a real talent for debate and public speaking. Her first mention in a San Antonio newspaper was as one of only two student speakers at a school ceremony. A month later she took part in a citywide high school speech competition. In November of 1932 she was named to an all-city girls' basketball team, while the next academic year she was described as a "sensational" baseball player. Emma Tenayuca had a lot going for her. In fact, she only had two things going against her when she graduated from high school in 1934 - she was a woman, and she was Hispanic (or as she sometimes described herself, Indian). In the Depression, Hispanic women could choose menial labor or motherhood, and not much else. Emma chose the "not much else."

Emma jumped into labor union activism as soon as she got out of high school, and was in charge of organizing women in the newly-formed Confederation of Mexican and Mexican-American Laborers here just two years later. A few months after that the San Antonio Light noted that Emma had proclaimed herself the leader of a group she called the Unemployed Council of San Antonio and had received a promise from mayor C.K. Quin to hire more people to hand out food to the unemployed. On that day, Emma got her nickname. "Terming Miss Tenayuca 'a troublemaker,' Mrs. Hugman [of the local welfare bureau] said the 19-year old had told people...they would have to join her organization if they wanted to get attention."

But this was Emma going easy on the powers that be. In February of 1937 Emma first became front-page news under the headline "Throng Again Besieges Quin." Now Emma had a hundred followers in a group called the Workers' Alliance of America. It was heady stuff for someone just barely an adult, and Emma was just getting started. Later that month she came back to Mayor Quin's office with more demands, then led a group into the local federal building (the downtown post office) demanding that two border patrolmen be disciplined for beating several members of her group. The next month she brought an estimated 500 workers to back her up as she tried to pressure Mayor Quin into more relief just before the city election. "The only apparent result of their wrangling," the San Antonio Light noted, "was that Mayor Quin was a half hour late for lunch." It was clear whose side the newspaper was on from the headline: "Jobless Parade Under Red Signs." In those days all troublemakers were assumed to be communists, or Reds. It was several paragraphs in the story that the writer noted the "red" signs were simply red paint.

In late April she and her troops took over Mayor Quin's office, demanding a parade permit for a demonstration. It was denied. On April 27th the group was ushered out of city hall by local police, the story big enough that it outranked news of the completion that day of San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge. Emma had wanted to hold a big May Day parade to honor world labor, but the move identified her a bit too much with communists, then a worrisome factor for politicians and the public.

Although Mayor Quin tried to be polite in public, it was clear the Anglo establishment was getting tired of Emma. They'd throw her a bone or two but she kept showing up and making trouble. On June 29th, she tried the sit-in routine at the local offices of the WPA, a Depression-era make-work group that built the Riverwalk and Alamo Stadium, among other things. That irked the local WPA director Edward Arneson (yes, the one the river theater is named for), who called police. Not only did officers march the protestors out of the building, they arrested Emma and two others, then went to the Workers' Alliance offices on Travis Street and broke a few windows and furnishings to make a point. Now Emma was in the position of being the bad guy and facing charges, just where the exasperated politicians wanted her. The next day the police commissioner forgave police for damaging the workers' headquarters, and added "Miss Emma Tenayuca for the last several months has caused the police department any amount of unnecessary trouble," adding that Emma deserved "what she got." Two weeks later, Emma was on trial for unlawful assembly and disturbing the peace. It was front page news. The jury found her not guilty two days later. That was on page three next to a photo of Anglo labor leaders signing a pledge to organize peacefully. It was clear local bosses had had enough of Emma.

She felt otherwise. Emma not only continued organizing, she married Homer Brooks, who'd been the Communist Party candidate for governor of Texas (getting 248 votes statewide). She started organizing pecan shellers, striking at what was then a huge industry here. With passage of a federal minimum wage law in late 1938, Emma thought she had succeeded in improving the lives of her workers. The new minimum was 25¢ an hour, up from the nickel or less being paid. Instead of obeying federal law, pecan businesses shut down altogether and started installing shelling machines. Emma's reaction was to have her workers walk out and call it a strike, but no real progress occurred.

Emma's downfall came after what should have been her biggest boost. Maury Maverick was elected mayor in 1939 after serving in Congress. In Washington, Maverick had given many speeches (and accepted many fees) for defending the rights of radicals to speak, assemble and organize workers. So in the summer of 1939 Emma asked for the use of the Municipal Auditorium for a protest meeting by local Communists. The American Legion went nuts at the idea of an auditorium that honored fallen soldiers being used by Reds. So did the local Catholic Church, the Ku Klux Klan, and most everybody but the Communists.

But Maverick was backed into a corner by his own prior statements. He had to grant a permit for the meeting. Disaster ensued. On August 25, several thousand protestors charged the Auditorium during the meeting of a few dozen Communists. Police were under orders not to shoot or club anyone, so they used fire hoses, but plenty of damage was done to the auditorium. The mayor was burned in effigy. Emma was whisked away by plainclothesmen and she promised another meeting, but something got in the way. A day before the riot the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany had signed a nonaggression pact dividing up Poland, putting the lie to Communist claims that they were as anti-Nazi as anyone else. The next week World War Two began and the Soviet Union did nothing. Communists were no longer harmless kooks but likely enemies. Maury Maverick's reputation was shot (he faced trial in a poll-tax scandal later that year), and Emma no longer got positive press. She left for California and a quieter life as a teacher.

But that doesn't mean Emma Tenayuca failed. She may have made mistakes - and who doesn't at the age of 19? - but she made it clear that both Hispanics and women were no longer to be ignored in politics. It's easy to see a connection between Emma Tenayuca's protests and most of the political and social gains made by minorities since those days.

(In 2001, Chris was inspired enough by Emma's story to write a musical about her entitled "Troublemaker," with music composed by local educator Suzanne Becht. Images from the San Antonio Light, April 26, 1937 and August 25 and 26, 1939. Courtesy newspaperarchive.com)

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