“In ‘79, Jim [Hightower] came in and hired us to do his advertising, all that stuff was for the Railroad Commission race in ‘80… (H)e ran against Jim Nugent, otherwise known as The Snake, on the Texas Railroad Commission. And Hightower got 49 percent, almost won, and it was probably the best thing that ever happened to him because he […]
Fred Lundgren
“Reagan Brown (incumbent Ag Commissioner) was planning a news conference to talk about fire ants. So, not to be outdone, we set up a competing news conference for State Rep Dan Kubiak to do the same thing. Dan was chairing the Select Committee on Fire Ants and running for Land Commissioner. From our point of view, talking about fire ants […]
Mike Moeller
“When Hightower comes around, and they’re starting to put emphasis on organics, that was an attraction. By the time I got there, I was already working on farm worker issues and it was obvious pesticide protection was going to be a major thing that we would have to fight for, all the way until Rick Perry came along. I definitely […]
Cather Woods
“Jim Hightower was one of the best things for Texas in my experience, in my lifetime, and I’m 78 years old. So, I started working with farmers during that era. He was really nice. He worked hard to make sure that he made it better for blacks. By making sure that you knew what was there, by reaching out to […]
Ellen Widess
“One of the provisions they (the Trump-era EPA) wanted to get rid of was the farmworkers’ right to have their doctors, or any other advocate, a lawyer, priest, worker center, anybody, union, get access to their pesticide safety sheets to know what they were exposed to, what the risks were and to be able to go after the company and […]
Andy Welch
“I think you could take that eight years, and set it over here and say, This is unlike anything else. I don’t know of anybody that talked about farm worker safety before that. I don’t know of anybody that talked about organizing farmer cooperatives like that. Yes, there were cooperatives, but they were for farmers to gin their cotton or […]
John Vlcek (D)
John Vlcek was recruited to run the direct marketing program. He and his staff successfully opened 125 new farmers markets, promoted farmer cooperatives such as the Hempstead Watermelon Coop, and connected small farmers upscale restaurants. John went on to become Assistant Commissioner of Agriculture and was instrumental in the adoption of statewide and then national organic standards.The promotion to Assistant […]
Jesse Oliver
“(O)ne of my first formal relationships with agriculture was at the Black Farmers Conferences and getting some history of what was going on with them and what had transpired…The few who held on, who actually worked the land and stayed there, were still facing difficult times, mistreatment by USDA, especially with respect to support farm loans, crop loans, crop insurance, […]
Barbara Meister
“It’s Hightower’s philosophy, go out and scour the countryside, find these folks who are doing these innovative things and bring them into the government structure.Give them a computer, give them a secretary, give them a travel budget, and say, keep doing what you’re doing. But do it in here, do it throughout the whole state. I remember that being a […]
Demetrius McDaniel
“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 […]