Chapter 1: “No Mexicans Allowed”

September 1954

Bowie High School’s coaches had looked forward to this game. At the same time, they had dreaded going back to Snyder; the trip there two years ago had been a nightmare. But this year, Coach Buryl Baty had prepared his players for some trademark small-town bigotry.

At seven thirty on Thursday morning, the players climbed up into the bus. They were carrying sack lunches and many also carried a second paper sack holding a change of clothes. They were full of energy as the bus accelerated eastward from the barrio and into the sunrise, but their banter and animation waned as the long drive grew hot and tiresome. When the Greyhound stopped to fill up four hours later in Roswell, the boys found a shady spot to eat their sandwiches. The late afternoon sun was dropping in the sky behind them by the time the bus finally slowed into Snyder’s central square. Curious boys now sat up to take in the sights of the town they had heard so much about.

As they drove through the square, Big Ernie Perea, the freshman defensive tackle, spotted a sign in a drugstore window.

Welcome to Snyder. No dogs or Mexicans allowed.

“Hey, guys!” he cried. “There’s one of those signs!”

An older teammate laughed. “One? You ain’t seen nothing, man.” Several upperclassmen had been to Snyder before, and the whole team, of course, had heard about the town. But the younger varsity players flew from window to window to gawk at the reappearance of the same sign in different storefronts.

The bus eventually eased into the mostly empty parking lot of the motel that had been reserved for the night.

Coach Baty strode into the lobby to check in. The manager, seeing two, then three boys trailing behind him, swiveled his head around to look out the lobby window at the parking lot, where the rest of the team was already milling.

“There’s been a mistake. All my rooms are rented,” he said coolly. Then, perhaps taken aback by the scowl on the coach’s face, he added, “There’s a place outside the city limits. It may have vacancies.”

“Then dial them,” Baty said, jabbing his finger at the phone. Having confirmed that the rooms could be had, he turned on his heel and left, the uncomfortable boys still in tow.

En route to the second motel outside of town, the coaches stopped to buy sandwiches and snacks for the boys, and the next morning, saving the team’s energies for the game, they brought breakfast in from a nearby grocery store. Reservations for lunch, however, had been confirmed at a café, where the players should be able to eat a healthy pregame meal. Until then they waited in their rooms. Some listened to the radio, over which they heard a local disc jockey say, “Don’t miss tonight’s game between your Snyder Tigers and the Mexicans from El Paso Bowie High School!”

Early that afternoon, the team’s bus rolled past the stately red-bricked courthouse toward a café on the square, and, brakes squealing, pulled to a stop. Players were allowed to get out and stretch their legs, but were told to stay near the bus. Coach Baty walked into the café, then stepped back out and waited by the front door. A huge man wearing a white, food-splattered apron soon followed him and after a short, hushed conversation, burst out with, “Coach, them Meskins are not going inside my place of bui’ness!”

The coach had anticipated just such a reaction. He leaned toward the massive, sweaty café proprietor and glared. “Yes, they are. I made reservations here, and we are gonna eat here. If you don’t feed my boys, we are gonna get back in that bus and head back to El Paso. And if we do, there’ll be no football game tonight.”

The declaration, and the intensity behind it, took the restaurant owner by surprise. Could this coach be serious? The owner winced as he considered the possible repercussions of a canceled ballgame. If he were held responsible, he could well be boycotted by Snyder football fans. While most of his fellow citizens shared his social views, nothing else was as important to them as Friday night football.

Little did he suspect, however, that the only person in town who stood to suffer more than he did over a cancelled football game was standing in front of him.