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Medrano / Right to Work in Texas

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Interviewer-"So, I want to talk about the coalition group with other groups, umm, I read somewhere there were some fears or some people were a little bit nervous organizing with the FACIL, do you?.... Mr. Medrano-No, no, no, the people that never had experience socializing and networking with African Americans have never understood coalition, they never understood that they had the same discrimination that you have, my people had. Practicing housing, school, economics, everybody. So, that coalition, we believed in it, I believed in it and the [?] believed in it, but there's others that didn't believe in that. Next comes what you talking about the union. The union that experienced since it had always been a right to work state, that's the issue, your philosophy, thats the [?] that covers the whole state. So, under the right-to-work law, that's where unionism is not strong in Texas because of that law and thats what keeps you from organizing, I don't care Walmart, any place, any where because the Right-to-work. So, if unions come in they said, they would become union bosses and this and that, then they become strong-armed people and they knew it, because the teamsters were strong and strong-marrow tactics in Texas [?] and thats where the're independant truck drivers came in and said, "You cannot start going to companies and

Interview Interview with Robert Medrano
Subjects Work › Labor Unions
Work › Discrimination at Work › Discrimination at Work: Union Membership
Housing › Redlining
Housing › Neighborhoods › Residential Segregation
Race Relations › Black-Brown Race Relations
Discrimination or Segregation
White Resistance to Civil Rights › White Resistance and Economic Reprisals
Class and Status › Intra-racial/ethnic Cross-class Collaboration
Tags International Brotherhood of Teamsters
Right to Work
American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO)
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Interview date 2015-06-10
Interview source CRBB Summer 2015
Interviewees Medrano, Robert
Interviewers Acuña-Gurrola, Moisés
Locations Dallas, Texas
Duration 00:03:59
Citation "Right to Work in Texas," from Robert Medrano oral history interview with Moisés Acuña-Gurrola,  June 10, 2015, Dallas, TX, Civil Rights in Black and Brown Interview Database, https://crbb.tcu.edu/clips/877/right-to-work-in-texas, accessed October 31, 2025