Emma Tenayuca

Tenayuca's education in protest began young. Sent to live with her grandparents on the west side, she absorbed politics from her grandfather, the carpenter Francisco Zepeda. At Brackenridge High School she starred in debate, baseball and basketball, and in 1933 she left a League of United Latin American Citizens auxiliary because it excluded Mexican-born members and did not admit women as equals. That year she joined women striking the Finck Cigar Company and was arrested. After graduating she ran an elevator at the Gunter Hotel and helped form two garment workers' union locals.

What the plaque says

Emma Tenayuca (December 21, 1916 - July 23, 1999) During the 1930s, San Antonio native Emma Tenayuca was a prominent leader of a movement that fought deplorable working conditions, discrimination and unfair wages on behalf of the city's working poor. As a child, Tenayuca had often visited the Plaza Del Zacate (now Milam Park), where residents gathered to discuss politics and civil issues in the days before Spanish radio programming. These visits awakened in her awareness of injustice, and she converted her concern into action. Tenayuca joined the Workers Alliance of America and other activist political organizations because of their philosophy in favor of workers' rights. As a gifted and compassionate orator, she organized and participated in many demonstrations in support of San Antonio workers. In 1938, Tenayuca led thousands of pecan shellers, most of whom were Hispanic women, to walk off the job in protest of proposed pay cuts. San Antonio served as the center of the U.S. shelling industry, and typical salaries ranged from only two to three dollars per week. The strike was one of the first successful actions in the Mexican-American struggle for political and social justice. Unable to find work in Texas in part because of her political activities, Tenayuca relocated to California in 1945, where she earned an undergraduate degree. She returned quietly to San Antonio in the late 1960s, and earned a master's degree and worked as a reading teacher at Harlandale I.S.D. in South Bexar County until her retirement in 1982. Tenayuca died in 1999, leaving behind a legacy of courage and compassion. (2009)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Spanish Governor's Palace — 0.2 mi
  The last visible piece of the Presidio San Antonio de Béxar: a presidio captain's house with a 1749 keystone, a century as shops and saloons, and a romantic 1930 restoration.
• Casa Navarro State Historic Site — 0.2 mi
  The adobe and caliche-block home of José Antonio Navarro, a native-born signer of the 1836 declaration, and the last remnant of the Tejano neighborhood called Laredito.
• San Fernando Cathedral — 0.3 mi
  The Canary Islanders' parish church on Main Plaza, where Bowie married and Santa Anna raised a red flag, rebuilt in Gothic Revival around the walls of the 1750s church.
• San Antonio River Walk — 0.7 mi
  A Depression-era park one level below downtown, built because San Antonio refused to pave its river after the 1921 flood, and designed by an architect the project later fired.

More markers nearby

• Benjamin Rush Milam — steps away
• Moses Austin — 0.2 mi
• Bexar County under Nine Governments — 0.2 mi
• Barbed Wire — 0.3 mi