“I put together the Black Farmer Conference. That was my doing, that was my first big assignment that Hightower gave me…. Hightower says “I want the title to be Improving the Future of Texas Black Farmers.” He said we don’t want to rehash the past, we want to talk about how we have helped Black farmers to maintain land, and […]
Pete McRae (D)
“In 1985 is when the entire ag industry, business leaders decided to come after Hightower and attempt to defund the agency in various components. Those guys hated (John) Vlcek and hated the marketing program. They just thought we were nuts and that Hightower was nuts by focusing on small farmers, which of course was exactly what Farmers Union wanted. Vlcek […]
Ed “Big Mac” McGowan (D)
Mac McGowan started with the Federation of Southern Coops and was quickly recruited to join the direct marketing team at TDA. He helped organize the Hempstead Watermelon Coop. He was the instigator behind the Fort Bend Vegetable Growers conference, which continues today. This conference is 50 percent minority farmer attendance still thirty-five years later. An award in honor of Mac […]
Mack Martinez
“I think Hightower has pushed and has made some headway, it’s an ‘us’ issue. Until we’ve all crossed that line, until we’re all equal, ain’t none of us equal. I think that came across, and that’s why he was respected by African American leaders and by Hispanic leaders. It wasn’t an accident that John Vlcek also happened to be gay. […]
Jim Marston
“Hiring an openly gay guy to do important work and interact with folks – it’s kind of a statement that the Department of Agriculture hadn’t had before. Our state government was generally very white, male, straight but the Ag Department was really that way. We started hiring people who didn’t go to Texas A&M. That was a shock to many, […]
Robert Maggiani
“(T)hat’s another legacy relationship that we have, industry has, with HEB, because Hightower and the staff really put a lot of energy into making it happen. We did a lot of behind the scenes work that nobody saw but it did make it happen. HEB did a lot of promotions, still do a lot of promotion. They have a big […]
Thressa Lockridge-Ali
“The story of the Department is really a big story. Before (Jim) Hightower took over, that agency was pretty white. There weren’t very many minorities in that agency and that’s one of the things that was a real concern to Hightower…I feel like, if you have a more diverse department, then you have a better department, because you have a […]
Paul Lewis
“When I got there, everybody but Jerry Avaya was white. It wasn’t like we said we want people of color. We said we want people with experience, and language ability, and cultural experience from these areas that we’re trying to do exports to. That’s what drove it. It wasn’t like we had a quota or anything.“ Paul Lewis, as Director […]
Barbara Lange
“If you remember one thing, it’s the educational part (of the Black Farmer Conferences). We talked about taxes. We talked about tax credit. We talked about funding, we talked about developing….That’s where Gus (Townes of the Texas Department of Agriculture) and the rest of the high-tech people came in. They knew where to go find specialists. There’s so many different […]
Keith Jones
“I had been a part of the mid ‘80s farm crisis; had moved to Dallas and had gone to work for a bank in Dallas and was really needing to get back into agriculture some way…. I came on board (at TDA) in ‘88 and Hightower had this conference on organic and sustainable agriculture in March of 1989. He was […]