Annotations for "Laredo"

Play All

Item	Time	Annotation	Layer
Voces Oral History Project Interview With Norma Cantú	29:05	Cantú and her colleagues carefully built their case against the State of Texas. They chose the name “Border Initiative” and framed the case as a class action lawsuit. While Cantú was doing her own research, she found racial undertones involved in the allocation of higher education funds across the state. The Texas Attorney General's office argued that higher education was not a fundamental right. Ultimately a federal judge ruled that State of Texas’ funding format was unconstitutional on the basis of denying students right to a public higher education, but it was not proven that the state acted with intent of racial discrimination.	Synopsis
Voces Oral History Project Interview With Norma Cantú	44:02	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.	Synopsis