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microphone's built in. This is Irene Reese interviewing Doctor Solomon Flores. At the Alameda Hotel in Kansas City, Missouri. This is tape 54A. Doctor Solomon Flores is an associate professor of education at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee. Doctor Flores, I would like to get a little

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information about your. Early life, like where you were born and when I was born in 1928 in Kansas City, Kansas, and I lived most of my 1st 26 years in Rosedale and attended Rosedale High School. Uh, this was, uh, I grew up during the Depression as

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a child and lived within a quarter of a mile during all of these 1st 26 years. All right, and the names of your parents, the name of your father and your mother. My parents were both from the state of San Luis Potosi in Mexico. My father

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was from a little town named Cerritos uh in in that state and my mother was from San Luis Potosi and they came to Kansas in 1818. And why did they come to Kansas? They came to Kansas like most of the other people of this period, uh,

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that were fleeing the, the revolution in Mexico. And first they spent some time in Texas as migrant workers that worked in the fields and then, uh, came on up and located in Kansas City and my father worked at the meat packing company. Was there any reason

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why, particularly Kansas City, or did they have friends or relatives or? Was this a random choice? My father had a brother that lived here and, and he had already been here about 3 or 4 years, so it was very easy for him to get located in

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Kansas City, Kansas. And and your father's name and your mother's name. My father's name is Canuto Flores Rosales, and he's still alive. He's 79 years old now, and he's unfortunately confined to a nursing home. My mother was Natividad Hernandez de Lopez, and she. Died in 1947.

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About how many brothers or sisters were there or are there in total? This marriage produced 8 children. 5, boys and 3 girls, and all of them are still alive and 7 of them live here in the Kansas in Kansas City, Kansas, and I'm the only one

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that is straight away. I live in Milwaukee, Wisconsin now and you've moved around quite a bit. OK. You say you spent, uh, most of your childhood in those early years within a certain area, so can you give me a little description of the, uh, socioeconomic makeup

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of the community where you. The place where I grew up was known as La Colonia and it was between Rosedale really and Armadale and Argentine and it consisted of about 15 Mexican American families or Mexican families and they uh were all, all of the parents. Were

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from Mexico as I recall and all of the men were either working for the railroad or working for the packing companies. The, uh, socioeconomic status of all of these people was quite low by today's terms of middle class societies as we know it. So the area

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where you lived was predominantly Mexican or Mexican American? And uh what about the early years of your school? I know you said you went to high school, but what about the the elementary grades at the time that I attended school in Kansas City, Kansas, we had.

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Uh, some very segregated schools, uh, and we attended a school named Major Hudson School which still still exists today, and, um, there was, uh, the Major Hudson annex building which was a wood frame building that had two rooms and that had an outhouse and was heated

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by a furnace at the time. This was in from about 1934 to about 1940 and, uh, I attended there for four years. And I remember the teacher that we had taught this all sixth grades somehow and then I spent 2 years but still in a segregated

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setting at the Major Hudson School that was the brick building, the nice building for the Anglo children went to school. Yeah. Now, um, Can you give me any other information? I know you said your father worked mostly at the packing house in those years. Yes, well,

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the uh life back in the 30s was, was, uh, well, that, that was a time when there wasn't too much employment for some people, but fortunately that always had a job. But I recall that uh most of us were. The children at that time. Uh I

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had situations in which there was some type of welfare assistance. Uh, I remember my father worked for WPA at that time and so, uh, during the 30s I grew up with this atmosphere. It wasn't until the beginning of the Second World War that we sort of

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broke out of this thing and my brother was drafted and uh dad was very employable at the time and about this time I started high school in the seventh grade in 1941 and then from then on I was exposed to. To, uh, things above and beyond

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the range of the barrio where I grew up, mhm. All right, uh, what about, uh, all along this, um, same time did your family was, was your, were your different family members of the any church there? There were at that time, uh, some, uh, Protestant groups,

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uh, working in the community, but most of the people were Catholic. Uh, there wasn't a Catholic church in the area and for those that were practicing Catholics they had to go a considerable distance. I remember most of them used to go to the Holy Name, uh,

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Catholic Church on Southwest Boulevard, which was a little distance from the barrio where I grew up. Uh, the rest of us, there were about not more than 2 or 3 families that were, uh. Uh, attending some type of Protestant services in the area. So what were

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you and your family then attending one, or did you move around? I think that my family was, uh, predominantly Catholic, and they really never did break out of this except for, oh, maybe 2 or 3 of us that became involved in the Protestant Church. Uh, I

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didn't attend church on any kind of regular basis until. I attended Ottawa University in 1948 and then for about 10 or 12 years I was very active in the church in the what what specific church uh Ottawa University is a a Baptist, uh, university and uh

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there was quite a bit of uh. Emphasis on religious life there and so this is one reason why I became at least a nominal Baptist. Well, what I had reference to in the in your early years was somewhat the church life but also and I was

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thinking too of of community things or um. Or things like scouting, were you ever in that or were you ever even able to, to afford such luxuries that we kind of organized groups like that we didn't have that opportunity to participate in Boy Scouts or in

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any, uh, activities sponsored by the church. Uh, we were pretty much isolated and the only, uh, life that we had outside the home was school life and that was during the regular school day with very, very few activities in the evening, not more than 2 or

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3 per year. So you went on and then finished school, high school without interruptions. You went right on through, is that I was very fortunate. I went to school at a time when, uh, it was, uh, economically possible for me to do it. This was during

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the war years and there was a lot of employment and so I was able to work and to support myself and have those things that I needed to get through high school. So you finished high school about what year? I finished high school in 19477. And

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then did you go directly to. I worked for about 6 months on the railroad and then in the spring of 1948 I attended Ottawa University mostly because I had been, uh, an, uh, an athlete in track. I used to run the mile in high school. I

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received a scholarship at Ottawa University and, uh, where I lettered, by the way, for 4 years in varsity track, but I was out one year as a dropout and I graduated from Ottawa University in 1953. All right then, about this, uh, this time, what, uh, what

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did you do upon graduation? Did you seek empowerment or did you continue? I knew at the time that I graduated that there wouldn't be very many opportunities for. Uh, person with a Spanish surname and especially one that's as visible as I am, and this was during

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Korea. In 1953 and so I just waited until I was drafted and I figured that a couple of years in the service would give me some time to think a little bit about what I might be doing. I spent two years in Japan and I had

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a very good job there and it gave me an idea of the responsibility that I could accept. All right, um, then upon your return to civilian life, uh, what did you do immediately? Well, returned to civilian life was in 1955 and it was a trauma because,

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uh, although I had a bachelor's degree and although I was bilingual and although I had a teacher certificate, I couldn't get a job and I was out of my, out of the area for which I had prepared for a year and I worked in Kansas City,

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Missouri parking cars for a year. And then in the fall of 1956 I got my first teaching job in a little town in Kansas, Humboldt, Kansas, where I met my wife, and I taught there two years and then after that I came to the big time

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in Kansas City, Missouri, where I stayed the longest that I've stayed anywhere and that was from 1958 to 1964. I taught in four different schools in the Kansas City, Missouri public schools and on the secondary level, at the secondary level, yes, and your, um, major, um.

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Oh, your, um, main, uh, training had been as a teacher in, in the foreign languages, right? Yes, I, I had a double major. I had a major in English and I had a major in Spanish, and I taught both English and Spanish for about the 1st

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4 years of my career. And then when I came to Kansas City, I completed my master's degree and I had an assignment at East High School teaching Spanish and then in 1964 I decided that I wanted to try college teaching and. I moved the family to

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Chicago where I taught at what was then one of the teacher training institutions on the north side known as the Chicago Teachers College North. Mhm. All right, and you said by this time you were already married and you had married while you were in Humboldt, right?

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Yes, uh. My wife is also Mexican American like I am and. She, uh, is Baptist, uh, perhaps more so than I am, so it was a very natural thing for us to have a lot of common interests, and we married in 1958 and, uh, have are

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still married. She just celebrated 20 years of marriage, and we have three children at the present time, couple of teenagers in high school and a 4 year old. All right, now just going back just a little bit, I want to uh ask you about some major

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events. I know you already made reference to having been in the war in the Korean War, but a little before that um say um. Well, World War Two, of course, you said what effect it had had on you. At least the employment gave you a chance

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for your father to be employed and for you to go on and finish your schooling. But what about another event, say the flood of 1951? Do you recall how that might have affected you or your family or relatives or neighbors? That was the year that, uh,

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I was working. At the railways Ice Company in Kansas City, Kansas, and I remember the flood very well because, uh, we were flooded out and I was assigned, uh, watchman duty and, uh, it was the first time that I had seen a, uh, a catastrophe of

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this magnitude and I recall that they had martial law there for a while and that we was, we were watching houses, complete houses going down the Car River and places like Armordale were flooded. It was uh. It was a thing that made one think quite a

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bit. I remember that as a great event. It was quite an experience. The, uh, there was quite a bit of loss of property and so forth. Where do you recall anybody actually drowning or hearing about anybody? Was there any great loss of I don't think there

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was great loss of life. It was more a loss of property, especially to the people that lived in the low lying areas where there was inexpensive housing to start with. Many of these people lost their homes and they found it very difficult to locate afterwards. All

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right, um, You said you, uh, a little bit later on when you had gone to Chicago, how long did, uh. You remained there in Chicago in '64 Chicago was the first big challenge that I had because I left, uh, probably the only security that I had

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enjoyed up to that time. I had some type of permanent job in the Kansas City, Missouri public schools and I was quite happy teaching at East High School. I had an all Spanish assignment and that was very good. I enjoyed it, but I knew that, uh,

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that the 60s were times of great uh civil rights activity and. Uh, with the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964, I felt that that the doors would open, and I decided to go into the big time and, uh, at that time there weren't very

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many Latinos teaching in institutions of higher education, so I decided to go to Chicago and I taught for two years. This is when I got into teacher training and, and, um, more serious type of, uh, of education as far as an institution of higher education is

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concerned. After a couple of years there in 1966 I saw that I wasn't gonna go anywhere unless I had a doctorate and that was a major decision because I was 37 years old at the time and so. Uh, I decided to go to Ohio State and

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I spent the years from 1966 to 1969, uh, reading and studying and working on my doctorate and I made up my mind that that neither my wife or myself would leave the campus, uh, without the degrees and when we left in the spring of in the

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summer of 1969, I had my doctorate and she had her master's degree. Right, and you have, you had your doctorate in, uh, education, right? I got the doctorate in foreign language education which was very popular at that time. Mhm. And then your wife got her master's

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there too, right. All right. And where did you go from there then? Well, uh, I knew that. That the type of assignment that I. Would have next would probably be a very important one and this also proved to be a major decision. I accepted a position

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at the University of Maryland in College Park, Maryland, which is just about 8 miles from Washington DC. And this proved to be, uh, one of the best decisions that I ever made because, uh, there were not very many Latinos in Washington at the time and I

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recall that there were 4, Chicano PhDs in the area and I was one of them and so I was very much in demand as a consultant. It was a very lucky for you. It was a very lucky move and it, uh, got me into a lot

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of offices in the in the US Office of Education. And even to this day, uh, 67 years, 6 years since I've left Washington DC, I still have many connections there which have been very helpful in getting funds and then getting travel money and in getting consultantships.

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Many, many contacts that have. Have done well. Yes. OK, um, Did you want to add anything about your family here now about your further about your wife or your children or I think that our children are. We won't have to. Our children will not be, uh,

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they'll, they'll be discriminated against some because this country's that way. Uh, but they will not, uh, have the degree of discrimination that I did. Uh one thing that's that I've told them is that I do not want them to go into religious work. I don't want

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them to go into social work and I don't want them to go into education. However, if they decide to do that, that's fine, but they do not have excuses anymore because the doors, uh, uh, on educational opportunities are wide open making choices for them, but you're

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suggesting that there are other, other fields that they can follow that perhaps, and I hope that they go into something like law or engineering, uh, or a business. Uh, something that will offer perhaps, uh, more economic rewards than I've had. All right, so then from, uh,

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From this position in uh in Maryland then you went uh you stayed there. How long did you stay I stayed there 3 years and then after that I, I decided that I had had enough of what many uh people in the university system call PhDitis. I

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got over the, the, uh, the. Well, I got over this thing about having a doctorate and wanting to teach in a major university, which the University of Maryland is, and I wanted to do something that was more down to earth, so I accepted a job at

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a very small college in Chicago known as Chicago State University, and that was, and I stayed there from 1972 to 1976. This is where I learned how to be a community of activists. I learned, uh, the legislation in education that pertains to funding. This is where

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I picked up my skills in, in getting money from the government and from the state and to do the type of projects that would help the Spanish speaking community. And this is also an opportunity for me to be an administrator. I spent 3 years there as

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chairman of the department of modern languages, and I think that if I had stayed there I would've probably. I've been given an opportunity to be a dean, but. I, after 4 years there, I decided that I wanted to do something different, another change, yes. And about

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this time then where, where did you move next to this? Well, there are two things that that I always wanted to do and one was that I wanted to work with the community very closely and I wanted to work with the Latino community and I also

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wanted to be involved in some language related. Activity about this time bilingual education had come to the fore as an educational strategy and uh the country was supporting this with uh state laws and with favorable uh local school board decisions and with monies and so I

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decided that. If I were to move, I would like to move to a situation where there would be some permanency and where I could work in these areas. So when the University of Wisconsin in the summer of 1976 offered me an associate professorship with tenure. And

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an opportunity to work in community education and to work in non-traditional programs, uh, including bilingual education I decided this was an opportunity that I want to take and I did. So then you're a professor there but you're also uh active in this uh non-traditional studies and

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do you head this um center or what uh no, I, after the three years of administrative, uh, leadership there at Chicago State, I decided I wanna be a professor for a while and so now I'm just teaching one course per week in the department of community

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education. Uh, which offers, uh, majors in community change and and daycare. And also I'm assigned to work with the General Assistance Center National Origin, and this is a desegregation center and we provide technical assistance to school districts that have sizable populations of uh. Of language minority

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children, children that whose dominant language is a language other than English and whose English proficiency, uh, keeps them from participating fully in the regular programs of the school district. So in other words, you, you act as consultant or. Something to that effect with, with, uh, I

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mean you can be called upon from any part of the country. I mean in other words you could go and give. Information, advice or whatever we work primarily in 10 states, the Great Lakes state, uh, Region 5, and the Plains states, Kansas, Nebraska, Missouri, and Iowa

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Region 7, and we work with about 30 school districts and we're on call to go out and assist these districts in identifying students and. And uh helping them assess their level of English proficiency and helping set up programs to assure that these students are taking advantage

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of the maximum educational opportunities in the system. All right. Along the way, I'm sure that, uh, You have achieved some sort of at least recognition or achievements for some of your work. There are there some of these that you would like to mention? Well, yes, I

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think everybody that that's been in education 25 years or so is bound to have achieved some things. Uh, I've always wanted to teach in a major institution of higher education, and I taught at Ohio State and I taught at the University of Maryland. Both of those

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institutions have over 40,000 students. I always wanted to have doctoral candidates and I had that satisfaction at the University of Maryland and and have had people to finish a program under my uh supervision and I've always wanted to. Uh, write a book and I've had that

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fulfilled too. I wanted to be a. Involved deeply in community work and I've had that satisfaction I've always wanted to have a a program in Mexico to provide our students here regardless of ethnicity with an opportunity to understand uh the people of Mexico and their culture,

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their language and I've also had that satisfaction but the one thing that that I'm very proud of and something that. People overlook and that is that uh in these days at least it's an accomplishment. uh I've had a a marriage that lasted over 20 years and

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have 3 lovely children and it appears that uh this is probably the best thing that I have going for myself. Alright, and just to go back a little bit, uh, you mentioned something about a book. Now specifically what is the title of your book? OK, I

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wrote two books. Uh, one of them was a book on, uh, community Spanish. This was, uh, with a contract with the Department of Justice, and this book was published in 1972. And then a number of years transpired, and in addition to articles that I've published. That

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I've had published in journals of education and language and so forth. Did my uh doctoral dissertation which was written in 1960 in 1969 and which was one of the first dissertations on bilingual education was, uh, published in its entirety by Arnold Press of New York in

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1968 in 1978 and it's available now for $17. So you did have yours published, OK. And you also mentioned the groups of students going to Mexico now for how many summers you started that summer of uh 72 or 73. I started in 1972 with the University

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of Maryland and then I had four years with the Chicago State University and, and I just completed the second summer with at the University of Wisconsin, but we all, we have a, we have several programs there. We have a program that's especially for. Mexican American. Uh,

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students, students and Puerto Rican students and other, uh, Latinos born in this country who can't speak Spanish very well, we also have a, a traditional program for other students. And roughly how many students have you taken, say, in this last groups that you've been in? Usually

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we've had as many as 33. But most of the time I limit the number to about 12 to 15 because it's very difficult to work with a group larger than that and give them personal attention. Oh yeah, uh, gets on the 4th. Yeah, he'll be here.

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OK, as, as you look back, would, would you credit, uh, one person or some persons for playing a major role or being a great influence in your life? Perhaps you would think of your parents naturally, but is there, if you wanna mention them, of course, but

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in addition to them, would you say there was anybody or more than one person? I think most of the people that made their mark on my life were. Uh, people that were involved with church work and people involved with with undergraduate work at Ottawa University in

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Ottawa, Kansas, and, uh, these people were people that were already sensitized to, uh, ethnicity and to working with minority groups so that, uh, yes, I could single out three people I think that definitely touched my life. One was my Spanish teacher there at Ottawa University. Uh,

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all of these, by the way, were white, and she was, uh, very helpful in getting me to speak Spanish better and to get interested in Mexico. Her name was very encouragement. Her name was Ms. Buchanan and then there was a gentleman there that, uh, was, uh.

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Professor of English who encouraged me to major in English. And who taught me how to write and how to read in English and to be able to handle that language a little better than average. His name was Doctor Charles Hawley. And the other individual was the

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one that uh talked me into a teaching career and that was Doctor Roy W. Browning, uh, who was the head of the Department of Education. There are all of these three people have since died but those were the three people that got me started. Do you,

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do you want it addressed? Do you want, Oh. Every Could you tell me a little something about what, uh, your plans for the future. Are they're very broad or very specific or just generally what? Well, I just turned 50, but 50 today is not like 50

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was 25 years ago. Uh, their laws to that guarantee a certain rights and, uh, people that are older now are not discriminated as they were in the past, not at least not so much, but yes, I, I have more ambitions. Uh, I would eventually like to

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move out of the area where I'm at and head to those large concentrations of. Of Latinos, especially Mexican Americans in Texas or maybe California or New Mexico and spend the last years of my career there working in some high level administrative position in the university or

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the other ambition that I've had is to go to Washington and and work in the uh. Uh, Department of Health Education and Welfare, but especially in education and the US Office of Education, uh, in some administrative capacity where I can, uh. Uh, be very involved in

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decision making policies that will affect the Hispanic children in this country in matters of education that would have a big impact on large groups, all right, um. Is there anything else that you would like to add at this point? Yes, I, I'd like people to know

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that. That uh the Latinos in this country. As a group have not become a viable force, but it's only a question of time now that we'll have the numbers and that we'll have our act together. The future of this country is very much tied with the

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future of Mexico, which is our neighbor to the south. Uh, there's no way to escape this. Uh, Mexican Americans, especially in this country will become a very strong force like the Jewish population has, and we will determine a lot of the future policy of the United

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States. All right Doctor Flores, I certainly want to thank you for this interview and this interview is concluded. I mean this part of it we can always have another interview at a future date.