Emma Tenayuca brought people together to fight for changes in their lives. A Mexican American, a labor organizer and civil rights activist, Emma’s passionate speeches inspired thousands. Her actions empowered her community. They called her, “La Pasionaria” (“The Passionate One”)
Birth & Early Life
The oldest of Sam Tenayuca and Benita Hernandez Zepeda’s eleven children, Emma Beatrice Tenayuca, was born on December 21, 1919 in San Antonio. Her large Catholic family traced their roots to paternal Native American in maternal Spanish ancestors in Texas and Mexico.
Struggling financially, her parents sent to live with her maternal grandparents in San Antonio’s impoverished, mostly Mexican American west side barrio. The neighborhood was a slum. The city government paid no attention and sent no city funds to improve the poor housing, sanitation, or infrastructure conditions there.
Her grandfather, Francisco Zepeda, took her to the Plaza Del Zacate (now called Milam Park) every Sunday. There, soapbox speakers discussed religion, labor, rights, and politics, including the latest news of the Mexican revolution.
Black Thursday
On October 24, 1929, the Stock Market crashed and crashed again.
“Black Tuesday” hit Wall Street on October 29th.
Poor to begin with, the Great Depression brought poverty, hunger, and desperation to the people of her community. It hit the Tenayuca family hard. Not quite ten years old, Emma saw how deeply the Great Depression affected her family and the low-class families of San Antonio.
High School
In 1930, Emma started attending Brackenridge High School. She was a scholar, a star player in both baseball and basketball, and took part in an after-school reading club. The reading club introduced her to the works of Thomas Paine, Charles A. Beard, Karl Marx, and the Industrial Workers of the World. She enthusiastically read those and more. She joined the Ladies Auxiliary of the League of United Latin American Citizens(LULAC) in her freshman year.
The Banking Panics
The stock market crash and depression led to the Banking Panics. Across the nation, from October 1930 to December 1931, nearly 9,000 banks failed, taking with them $7 billion in depositors’ assets. Emma’s grandfather confessed to her he lost everything in one bank closure. When asked later in her life, Emma guessed his age then was between 65-70.
The people of the barrio suffered.
Disillusioned
By 1933, Emma understood the racial divides in the country existed everywhere—even within her own family. That the LULAC had the same divides she witnessed at home frustrated her. The group promoted assimilation with mainstream white American society. Emma strongly disagreed. It also denied admission to foreign-born Mexicans and did not yet allow women to be full members. She realized the league was eager to have her as a member because she was a light-skinned Latina with Spanish colonial ancestry. She knew there had to be another way.
In 1933, Emma was a high school junior. The all-women workers of San Antonio’s Finck Cigar Company went on strike to protest their low wages. Their demand for justice inspired Emma to join the picket line. Police moved in to break up the strike. They beat up some women on the picket line and arrested many, including Emma. She was sixteen.
The abuse of the workers and her arrest deeply affected her. And what she felt was a lack of support for the strike from the Catholic Church deeply affected her faith.
The New Deal
Also in 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt enacted a series of programs, public works projects, financial reforms and regulations to rescue the U.S. from the Great Depression. Unfortunately, the distribution of these things left out many of the lower class, especially the non-white members of the lower class.
Life after Graduation
Emma graduated from Brackenridge High School in 1934. She got a job as an elevator operator at the Gunter hotel.
She didn’t want to be an activist or leader, but she knew she had to fight the social injustices she saw. She began working with Mrs. W. H. Ernst, the leader of the Finck Cigar strike, and played a prominent role in the formation of two locals for the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union (ILGWU).
She grew more and more frustrated with the ILGWU leadership, especially her union representative, Rebecca Taylor, who did not understand the needs of the Mexican American community.
Emma began working with the Unemployed Council, which later merged with other leftist organizations to form the Workers Alliance of America.
The Communist Party
In the mid-1930s, the Communist Party attempted to build alliances with liberals and New Deal supporters to fend off the wave of opinions vehemently against the party. It welcomed people of all races and supported Franklin Roosevelt’s presidency. The party’s leaders argued that the New Deal provided necessary regulations and protections for hard-working Americans.
In 1935, Emma joined the Young Communist League. The next year, she joined the Communist Party.
To her, the Party offered San Antonio’s under-represented underemployed, underpaid, Mexican American workers, the best opportunities for justice and equity.
Passionately for the Workers
By 1936, her community was hungry. Emma lobbied San Antonio’s mayor, Charles K. Quin, to improve the distribution of food and relief efforts for unemployed workers.
She studied at the Workers’ University of Mexico in Mexico City briefly.
After she returned to San Antonio, she and W. H. Ernst organized the Confederation of Mexican and Mexican American Workers, a local offshoot of the Confederación de Trabajadores de México (CTM). She coordinated and led marches, demonstrations, and sit-ins to protest the issues affecting the ethnic Mexican community. Those issues included the continued unequal distribution of Work Projects Administration (WPA) jobs, the discriminatory removal of Mexican American families from WPA relief roles, the abuse of ethnic Mexican workers by local law enforcement officials, and the illegal deportations of U.S. citizens by the United States Border Patrol.
She also petitioned WPA officials in Washington D.C. to investigate the discriminatory practices of the Texas Relief Commission and other local agencies.
Workers Alliance of America
By 1937, Emma became general secretary for ten Workers Alliance chapters. She attended the Workers Alliance national convention in Milwaukee. They elected to the national executive board.
She organized strikes, and letter-writing campaigns, and other protests.
On February 24, 1937, she organized protests against the beating of migrants by US Border Patrol agents.
Anticommunist in the United States targeted and criticized Emma, who was openly Communist. Employers, churches, and other authorities created a Red-baiting campaign to paint her as a radical.
On June 30, 1937, Emma police jailed for “disturbing the peace” during a nonviolent protest (a WPA sit-in).
Emma’s activities often landed her in jail. She also received regular threats from anti-labor activists.
Marriage
On October 18, 1937, Emma married Homer Bartchy, who used the alias “Homer Brooks.” He was the chair of the Communist Party of Texas who once ran for governor of Texas. They both believed in unity among the races, and their marriage (Homer was white) represented this. They also favored organized labor and supported FDR’s policies supporting workers.
They became a Communist power couple, appeared in public together and co-wrote essays. Through their combined efforts, both Emma and Homer rose in the party. Emma eventually took on the role of chairperson of the Texas State Committee of the Communist Party.
In 1939, The Communist published their essay, “The Mexican Question in the Southwest,” the party’s official declaration on the Mexican community as a segment of the working class and national minority.
The Pecan-Shellers’ Strike
The unemployed weren’t the only ones suffering during the Great Depression. In the 1930s, Texans shelled 40 percent of America’s pecans. Half of the pecan shelling companies were in and around San Antonio.
While organizing for the Workers Alliance, twenty-one-year-old Emma reached out to San Antonio’s pecan shelling workers. Most of the approximately 12,000 workers were Mexican women, faced some of the harshest exploitation in the city.
The companies crammed the shellers into severely over crowded workrooms with only one bathroom, and poor ventilation. They had high rates of tuberculosis. It is likely their work conditions contributed to their poor health. The companies paid seven cents per pound of shelled pecans, which amounted to less than three dollars per week.
The Southern Pecan Shelling Company
Then San Antonio’s Southern Pecan Shelling Company announced that it was going to cut wages to six cents per pound of cleaned pecan halves. That left families starving. Literally.
On January 31, 1938, their pecan-shellers walked off the job. The strikers met at a local park where they chanted, “Emma, Emma!” They elected her their official leader.
In The News
Over the next three months, Emma’s passionate speeches earned national attention for the strike.
The strike grew to include more than 10,000 workers. The strikers’ organization applied for a charter from the United Cannery, Agricultural, Packing and Allied Workers of America (UCAPAWA), a national union affiliated with the left-leaning Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO).
It was one of the largest strikes in the U.S. and lasted for three months.
The mayor sent police out with tear gas, and clubs to break up picket lines and arrest strikers. More than 1,000 strikers, including Emma, during the three months.
Local newspapers portrayed Emma as a dangerous radical focusing on her Communist ties instead of focusing on the strikers’ demands for living wages and social justice.
From Official to Unofficial
CIO and UCAPAWA leaders removed Tenayuca as strike leader for fear her political ties would damage public opinion. She continued as the popularly elected “unofficial” leader and continued to organize, distribute flyers, and coordinate soup kitchens.
Ultimately, the Texas Industrial Commission agreed to investigate the strikers’ grievances, and producers agreed to pay the minimum wage established by the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938.
Company owners mechanized their factory and eliminated 10,000 shelling jobs over the next two years.
The press, churches, businesses, and others continued to focus on Emma and her Communist ties.
Emma Becomes Chair
Emma replaced her husband, Homer, as chair of the Communist Party of Texas in 1939.
On April 27, 1939, Emma and other members of the Workers Alliance stage a nonviolent demonstration at City Hall to protest the city’s refusal to grant the organization a parade permit.
The negative press surrounding her increased.
The FBI kept a massive file on Emma and her associates. Undercover agents attended meetings where she was present, eavesdropped on her conversations, and interviewed former colleagues and friends. Emma appeared on lists of enemies to the federal government.
The Right to Meet
In August 1939, Emma, her husband, and one other requested a permit from the mayor of San Antonio to hold a Communist Party meeting at the San Antonio Municipal Auditorium. The mayor said the who stated the Communist Party had the right to assemble in a public building and granted the permit.
Emma was against meeting in such a public place. Communist Russia recently had aligned with Nazi Germany, increasing anti-Communist attitudes in the United States. But Homer did not want to back down.
On August 25, 1939, Emma and Homer opened the meeting by inviting the crowd of 150 to sing the national anthem with them.
Death Threats
Outside of the building, a crowd of 5,000 protesters gathered, angered by the mayor’s statement that the Communists had the right to assemble there. When they heard the crowd inside singing “The Star-Spangled Banner,” they threw rocks to drive off the police and stormed the building.
The attendees, including Homer and Emma, escaped through a tunnel under the building.
The Anti-Communists destroyed the room and held an “Americanism” rally. They denounced all Communists and the mayor and burned the mayor in effigy.
Emma received many death threats. She was blacklisted and couldn’t get a job. Eventually, she left San Antonio.
Hitler invaded Poland on September 1, 1939 and launched the Second World War.
Life After San Antonio
Emma moved to Houston and worked various office jobs under the alias “Beatrice Giraud.” She occasionally took part in Communist Party activities on a smaller scale and attended night classes, pursuing a degree in education at the University of Houston.
In 1940, Emma was the Communist Party’s nominee for the U.S. House of Representatives in Texas’s 20th congressional district. She finished third to the Democratic and Republican candidates.
She divorced her husband in 1941. They had no children together.
December 7, 1941, Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor and the U.S. enters WWII
Disillusioned Again
In 1942, Emma applied to serve in the Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps. They denied her application. Although she never received a reason, her FBI file likely blacklisted her from government service.
She remained active in the party at the local level but became gradually disillusioned after learning about Joseph Stalin’s terror regime.
September 2 1945 World War II ended (for the U.S.)
That year, Emma moved to California.
She ended her membership in the Communist Party in 1946. Although she still believed in social justice and racial unity, she distanced herself from organized politics.
Education
Emma received her teacher’s certification from San Francisco State College in 1952.
That same year, she gave birth to a son, Francisco Tuka Adams. (My search did not yield the father’s name.)
She taught school and lived a quiet life for thirty years.
Home Again
Emma returned to San Antonio in 1968.
To my surprise,” she later told an interviewer, “I return and I find myself some sort of heroine.” Emma Tenayuca, Local Initiatives Support Corporation
Emma completed her undergraduate degree at San Francisco State University. In 1974, she received her master’s degree in education from Our Lady of the Lake University in San Antonio. After that, she taught bilingual education in the Harlandale Independent School District.
Although Emma was no longer a public figure, she remained politically involved. She mentored students who expressed an interest in activism and encouraged them to study American labor history.
Recognition
Emma’s life became a topic of intense study within the Chicano Movement in the 70s. Scholarly organizations (like the National Association for Chicano and Chicana Studies and Mujeres Activas en Letras y Cambio Social (“Women Active in Letters and Social Change”)) recognized her achievements as a pioneering female civil rights leader.
She retired from Harlandale School District in 1982.
In 1991, they inducted her into the San Antonio women’s Hall of Fame.
Death
Sadly, Emma developed Alzheimer’s disease. She died on July 23, 1999, at 82. They buried her at Mission Burial Park in San Antonio.
Legacy
That’s Not Fair! Emma Tenayuca’s Struggle for Justice, a bilingual children’s book, tells the story of Emma’s contributions to the pecan sheller strike.
Her community celebrated her life in public murals, portraits, documentaries, corridos (a ballad of eight-syllable, four-line stanzas sung to a simple tune originally in fast waltz time, now often in polka rhythm.), and biographical plays.
The South Texas Civil Rights Project gives an annual award, The Emma Tenayuca Award, to individuals working to protect civil rights.
Emma’s community saw how her passion for her cause rise again after each arrest and they nicknamed her “La Pasionaria de Texas” (Spanish for “The Passionate One”).
The Party of Communists USA named a chapter in her honor.
The Passionate One
I just have a feeling, a very strong feeling, that if ever this world is civilized, that it would be more the work of women.”
Emma Beatrice Tenayuca stood less than five feet tall. She was slim and vivacious, according to her biographies. Most famous for the Pecan-Sheller’s Strike of 1938, her passion for defending her people’s rights for a living wage, access to job opportunities, and relief efforts remained strong despite many arrests and the constant threat of brutal force.
Had you heard of Emma or the Pecan-Sheller’s Strike before reading this post?
Top Photo: The San Antonio Light Collection, UT Institute of Texan Cultures at San Antonio
Middle Photo: Tenayuca Family, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Final Photo: Darrylpearson, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons