Dallas County Democrats
In Memory:
Pancho Medrano

Visitation will be from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday and 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Sunday at Gonz�les Funeral Home, 3050 N. Stemmons Freeway. A rosary will be held at the Hall of State in Fair Park at 7 p.m., followed by a video of his life. Services will be at 2 p.m. Monday at Cathedral Santuario de Guadalupe, 2215 Ross Ave. He will be buried in Calvary Hill Cemetery.

From the Dallas Morning News April 4, 2002:

Dallas activist 'Pancho' Medrano dies

By Joe Simnacher

Francisco F. "Pancho" Medrano Sr., the patriarch of what was once Dallas' most powerful political family, voted one last time this week.

Too weakened by cancer go inside the polling place, he cast his ballot at a voting machine brought to his car on Monday.

On Thursday, he died at his Dallas home at age 81.

"He practiced what he preached," said his daughter, Pauline Medrano of Dallas. "I don't think he ever missed an election."

As Mr. Medrano said in 1976: "In America, everything is politics, from the day you are born to the day you die. ... If it's church, a jail or whatever, you are in politics."

The son of a Mexican laborer, he was a pivotal force for bringing Hispanics into the city's mainstream and quashing discrimination. And although he never ran for public office, Mr. Medrano inspired and mentored a generation of Dallas political leaders.

"Pancho Medrano was an icon in our community," said Adelfa Callejo, a community leader and Dallas lawyer. "He, more than any other person, raised our community awareness of the importance of political representation. ... he broke union membership barriers for Hispanics."

His power base centered in Little Mexico, an enclave immediately north of downtown Dallas. In this neighborhood where he was banned from swimming in the public pool as a child, he raised a family whose name became synonymous with civic life. One son was a Dallas school board member. Another won a term on the Dallas City Council. Two other sons had unsuccessful campaigns for the city council and county's community college district board. His daughter was a Democratic Party precinct chairwoman.

Most recently, the family patriarch served on the Dallas Park and Recreation Board from 1997 to 2001.

But as news of Mr. Medrano's death spread Thursday, many reflected on his contributions that largely began with the civil rights movement of the 1960s.

"Pancho Medrano was a great man and a great Democrat that this city, state, and nation all owe more to than they will ever realize," Dallas County Democratic Party chairman Bill Howell said. "Our hearts are aching."

Mr. Medrano's efforts on so many different fronts make him difficult to pigeonhole, said Ken Molberg, a Dallas lawyer and member of the state Democratic Executive Committee.

"If I had to single out one front where he was recognized the most, it was his constant fight for economic justice," Mr. Molberg said. "He was an icon of Democratic politics, not only locally, but nationally."

Outside Dallas, Mr. Medrano is known for his five decades of union and civil rights work with the United Automobile Workers. He began organizing a union for the North American Aviation plant in Dallas prior to World War II. In a 1997 interview, Mr. Medrano said he was drawn by the union's pledge not discriminate against anybody because of race, color or national origin.

"The more I did it, the more I liked it," he said.

During his half century with the union, he integrated lunch counters in Dallas, took part in civil rights marches in the Deep South and organized farm workers in the Texas valley with the late civil rights leader and union organizer C�sar Ch�vez. Along the way he was a successful heavy-weight prize fighter and an aircraft jig builder.

Mr. Medrano became the title plaintiff in a lawsuit that led to the overturning of Texas laws barring mass demonstrations.

In May 1967, Texas Rangers broke up a protest by Mr. Medrano and five women, who were attempting to picket a train carrying melons picked by non-union workers. The protest in Mission, Texas, was part of a year-long effort by farm workers, who were subjected to persistent harassment and violence by law enforcement officers for their union-organizing protests.

Mr. Medrano had an "innate ability of figuring out a strategy of how to go after things successfully and make change," said Yolette Garcia, news director at KERA-FM (90.1) and KERA-TV (Channel 13) in Dallas.

In this instance, Mr. Medrano sued Ranger Capt. Y.A. Allee for illegally stopping the train protest. The case, Medrano vs. Allee, went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, where it was upheld in 1974.

"The remarkable thing about Pancho - we know how hard his struggle was to rise above in order to make it in life - but I think what people forget is he is very politically skilled," Ms. Garcia said.

Carl Tillery worked with Mr. Medrano for about 20 years in the UAW. He remembered his friend's seemingly tireless efforts.

"He's worked all over this country and everywhere they [UAW leaders] put him. He went in over and above his job," Mr. Tillery said. "On his own time, he'd go out and organize the community [to vote]."

Mr. Medrano's UAW work included civil rights campaigns in Mississippi, Arkansas and Texas and the famous 1965 march on Selma, Ala.

"When [the legendary UAW leader] Walter Reuther said we should help repeal the poll tax, I went," Mr. Medrano said in 1990 of the special fee charged to all voters in Texas before 1964. "I could understand the struggle of black people because my people were experiencing the same sort of thing."

Mr. Medrano kept an enormous collection of photos that recalled his work with other civil rights and union leaders. The historic moments include Robert Kennedy on the day he was assassinated in Los Angeles; James Farmer of Congress of Racial Equality, or CORE; and then-Sen. Lyndon B. Johnson and Lady Bird Johnson when they were heckled in Dallas by protesters. Mr. Medrano also is pictured with presidents Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy, Johnson and Carter.

The political stalwart worked his adult life to overcome the injustices he faced as a young man.

"What I wanted for my sons was for them not to grow up in a world like mine - the hunger, discrimination and all the other things," Mr. Medrano said in 1986.

He was born in Dallas to parents who had walked here - an 18-month journey - from Jarel de Progresso, between Mexico City and Guadalajara. His father was a ditch digger for the Dallas electric utility.For several years - from spring through late October - his family made annual trips to Michigan to pick fruit in migratory labor camps. He recalled his family using blankets and a kerosene lamp at night to trap birds, which his mother used to make soup.

He never forgot how the city of Dallas banned Mexican-American children from swimming in the public pool or watching evening movies in Pike Park in the heart of Little Mexico.

Although many of the neighborhood's residents were U.S. citizens, they had no representation on the City Council or on the park board. In 1931, after a two-year battle, the Mexican Consulate in Dallas intervened. The children got access to the park pool each morning before it opened, but they were forced to wash with strong soap before swimming.

Mr. Medrano attended St. Ann's Catholic School and the Dallas public schools through eighth grade. The Crozier Tech High School principal then implied that the 16-year-old - dressed in tattered clothes and scuffed shoes his mother had just purchased at the Salvation Army - couldn't attend classes because he was too poor.

"He told me to go to a rock quarry to work on my first day of school, which I did," Mr. Medrano said.

At the quarry near the current site of Bachman Lake, Mr. Medrano labored for 25 cents an hour. He later enrolled in a Works Progress Administration training school and became a riveter at North American Aviation Co., which later became Vought Corp.

One of the few people of color doing skilled work at the plant, he found few people willing to work with him. He had to devise ways of doing two-person jobs by himself. He even jogged to the aircraft plant from Little Mexico to avoid the discrimination in public transportation. His abilities soon landed him a job as a jig builder.

But the discrimination continued. When the plant's recreation director got a boxing ring, co-workers urged the young Mexican-American to try his hand. Mr. Medrano said he sensed he was being set up for a sound beating. The man he was supposed to box had fight scars around his eyes. But recalling the boxing instructions from a priest at St. Ann's, Mr. Medrano agreed to fight.

About 500 employees showed up to watch the spectacle. To everyone's surprise, Mr. Medrano knocked the man down with a sharp right during the second round.Mr. Medrano was soon the headliner for boxing exhibitions for North American's three lunch shifts. The company even sent him to plants in California and Florida to entertain workers.

He later used his boxing skills for social change, demanding that blacks be admitted to events at the Sportatorium in Dallas, said Rick Leal, a KERA-TV producer, who studied Mr. Medrano as part of a 1997 documentary. Blacks were admitted into the matches but had to sit in a separate section.

In 1969, Mr. Medrano became a member of a group dubbed the "Dirty Dozen." They sat on boards and commissions that traditionally had been dominated by whites.

U.S. Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson, D-Dallas, said, "Mr. Medrano's work to end discrimination and prejudice has had a profound and lasting effect on me and on the lives of millions of Americans. We must all work to carry on his remarkable legacy."

In addition to his daughter, he is survived by three sons, Robert Medrano, Ricardo Medrano, and Rolando Medrano, all of Dallas; a sister, Guadalupe Hernandez of Dallas; two brothers, Paul Centeno and Joe Medrano, both of Dallas; 12 grandchildren; and 15 great-grandchildren.