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, […]

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 […]

Nancy Epstein

“(W)we were the first state exchange with Israel. At the time that I left, there were 21 states that had their own memoranda of agreement with Israel. They weren’t all agriculture, some were commerce, some were technology. But we were the first that created a whole movement… There was funding from the Meadows Foundation to begin a demonstration farm in […]

Ben Delgado

“I was the mechanic, the admin guy who knew how to do contracts, knew who to call, figure out how to hire people how to bring people on board, how to schedule things out, how to organize meetings, all the understated and underappreciated, even to this day, admin stuff that has to happen in order to make an organization work…I […]

David Davis

“I always thought the state government was there to protect the people. Big business has their own protection, but nobody was protecting people. That’s why we looked at consumer services as one of the things that we should do. I don’t know what they’re doing now, because we would certify under consumer services that the scales in the store when […]

Jennifer Bailey

“No matter how the brand changed, Taste of Texas products still today, international, national, and local markets always sell. Opening markets for products, giving opportunities for small producers to market their product and gain visibility in the market so they can grow, and have a homegrown product that is recognizable in the market is the seed that was planted by […]