Back in the not so good ‘good ol’ days’ for people of color, my San Felipe Barrio (in Del Rio, Texas) was already honoring ouar fellow brothers and sisters. In those days,we had a term of endearment for the barrio’s African Americans, negrita/os.

Just before the dawning of a new era, when they could join us in our segregated school districts, we mingled with our pals in several ways – sports, parties, church events and we even had negrita/o girl/boyfriends! We used to sarcastically say to those that questioned our peaceful co-existence, “ we didn’t know any better!”

Looking back at those days in the South, we realized how far ahead of our time we really were. My Dad, José, for instance, after I had read a national story about U.S. kids playing organized baseball complete with all the trimmings like unifoarms, small diamonds, etc., was instrumental in getting me and some pals into the town’s very segregated Little League teams. And we proved to be an asset when out of town competition time rolled around. But still our barrio had no organized teams. Then he took a bold step and marched into the League’s local headquarters and proposed to organize several teams, all in the barrio, to serve as farm teams for the official Little League teams who played on “el lado americano.”

He used me and my buds as proof of the untapped baseball talent our barrio possessed. When they reneged because of cost, he took a giant leap for the kids few spoke for and told them to keep the money, that all he wanted was their official blessing!

He got the chance he sought and immediately hit his fellow barrio merchant pals for funding. As the owner of a mom and pop store near the outskirts of our town, he was well known and respected for providing all sorts of support for the children. When his amigos responded with financial aid, he set out to recruit coaches for his teams. He found them in our barrio school system’s teachers and coaches (most of them his store customers too). He didn’t stop there and contacted an old radio amigo he had befriended once and soon the barrio games were being broadcast live over radio on Sundays.

On one of those teams would play Larvell Blanks, a negrito from the barrio who went on to be drafted by the Atlanta Braves. His uncle, Sid Blanks, and I were teammates on our high school’s football and baseball teams. He went on to trash the racial barrier at then Texas A&I then played for the Houston Oilers, where his rookie TD run yardage stood as a record NFL run for many years. On the other side of the San Felipe Creek, the “border” between El Barrio and El Pueblo Americano, was Al Best a starting quarterback who was a feature story in Ebony Magazine and created much chatter by being a black quarterback at a Texas high school that usually had a white kid as leader of the pack. The first non-white Miss Del Rio was a negrita and by then the small town with four school districts at one time, was instructed to settle down by the federal government and have one large consolidated district to serve all children.

Even after the Feds agreed on anti-segregation laws, Texas Governor Allan Shivers dispatched the Rangers to some schools to prevent integration. At the Mansfield, Texas Independent School District, for example, they bussed black students to another town, and by doing this the school district effectively ignored federal court orders for integration.

Other towns had “Mexican Schools” – where Spanish-speaking children were sent, even if English was their first language.

I bring this up to remind our nation, as it celebrates its African American citizenry during this month, how life really was back then. And even though we may stand tall in telling the world that we have our first Black president in Barack Obama, he’s actually the second leader of African heritage to be elected president of a North American country.

The very first Black president in this part of the world was Mexico’s second commander-in-chief, Vicente Guerrero who would go into the record books for abolishing slavery in 1829, a third of a century before the U.S. fought its bloody Civil War and added the 13th Amendment to our Constitution.

Perhaps that respect our ancestors had for all peoples, regardless of their skin color, was one of the beautiful traditions they brought with them into the land of the free. It was certainly manifested while I was growing up in my barrio.

Today those biracial friendships many of us forged have been forgotten. Not only in the old barrio, but across the Southwest, which ironically, was first traversed by a Spanish Invasion era negrito, Estevanico! Another hero of whom little, if anything is taught to our children.

It’s lamentable that many of us have severed such roots.