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Voces Oral History Project Interview With Norma Cantú
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22:09
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Cantú sets the scene for the case of LULAC v. Richards (later Clements), introducing the lawyers on the case and their respective roles. She explains some important events and court cases leading up to LULAC v. Richards. The team of lawyers received advice from higher education officials, forming a plan centered around third party reports saying the State of Texas disproportionately distributed higher education funds across economic lines. She also cited an investigation of the State of Texas made by the US Department of Justice regarding segregation of higher education; as part of the settlement, Texas promised to invest in minority heavy colleges, but then failed to do so.
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Voces Oral History Project Interview With Norma Cantú
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44:02
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In response to the ruling of unconstitutionality, before the case was heard at the Supreme Court, the Texas legislature under Ann Richards acted to request a settlement proposal from the border region. This unified the border communities as they came together to decide how much each area needed for higher education. The state approved at total of $660,000,000 to go towards investing in higher education along the border. It was after the allocation of these finds that the case was seen in front of the Supreme Court, where they LULAC lost because the region had already been awarded that money. In the years following, that money was put into master's and doctoral programs as well as the creation of medical schools and other professional schools in cities such as Laredo and Corpus Christi. However, Cantú sees threats to public higher education funding in Texas today.
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Voces Oral History Project Interview With Norma Cantú
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56:23
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Cantú reflects on her career as MALDEF lawyer, citing specific cases and their impact on the state and Latino communities as a collective. She speaks on some of the testimonies during LULAC v. Clements and tells a story about her first time in Austin at the capitol during Vietnam protest. Cantú talks about the sociopolitical climate when she was at Harvard. She also goes into more detail about higher education funding discrepancies, the future of higher education in Texas, and working within the federal Department of Education.
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