Bert Corona
Humberto Noé Corona was a Mexican-American labor and civil rights leader. Throughout his long career, he worked with nearly every major Mexican-American organization, founding or co-founding several. He organized workers for the Congress of Industrial Organizations and fought on the behalf of immigrants. By the time of the Chicano Movement of the 1960s and 1970s, he was known as El Viejo, and was well-known and respected as a veteran activist.
Family background
Corona's father Noé Corona was a commander in Francisco Villa's División del Norte during the Mexican Revolution, which he joined after members of his family were killed in a massacre at Tomochic, Chihuahua. Noé Corona was an anarcho-syndicalist and member of Partido Liberal Mexicano.His mother, Margarita Escápite Salayandía, was a Chihuahua schoolteacher educated at Protestant missionary schools. His maternal grandmother was a physician. The family emigrated to El Paso, Texas in 1914 or 1915, marrying at about the same time. His parents married in the Juarez customs house under Villa's sponsorship. They settled into a home in the predominantly Mexican Segundo Barrio neighborhood where their four children Aurora, Humberto, Orlando, and Horacio were born.
In El Paso, his father worked in the logging and rock cutting industries, while simultaneously continuing clandestine revolutionary activities. He longed to return to Mexico, however, and in 1922, when the Obregón government granted the family's petition for amnesty, they returned to Chihuahua. After several months, Noé Corona secured a position with the federal government as a forest ranger in Texcoco. There he and several other Villistas were murdered while attempting to extinguish a forest fire. According to Corona, "We believed the assassins were agents of President Obregón, who feared that the villistas were planning to reorganize and overthrow the government." After his father's death, the Corona family returned to El Paso, where young Humberto grew up surrounded by tales of the Revolution and the Protestant social networks of his mother and grandmother. "Religion, specifically Protestantism, was also very significant in my socialization and in influencing my own later political activity."
Education
Corona began his education at Mexican Protestant kindergartens, but enrolled in public school in the first grade. There his command of English, which his mother had taught him, caused him to excel. He remained in the Texas public system until the fourth grade, when his mother, disgusted with the mistreatment of Mexican-American and Mexican immigrant students, sent him to Harwood Boys School in Albuquerque, New Mexico. There, he learned a sense of discipline, but also experienced racism. In protest of the threatened expulsion of students who spoke out against physical abuse from a coach charged with disciplining students, in addition to negative portrayals of the Mexican War, the Mexican Revolution, and Pancho Villa, the students struck, refusing to attend classes. The administration rescinded the expulsions and forced the coach to apologize.He returned to El Paso for high school, attending the "Mexican" Bowie High School, and later, El Paso High School, a "White" school that had recently begun to integrate some middle- and upper-class Mexican students. Humberto, whose name had by this point been Americanized to Bert, played on the varsity basketball team for three years. As a young student, he was particularly struck by the impact of the Great Depression on the Mexican repatriados and Dust Bowl migrants, many of whom were treated by his grandmother.
During high school he became politicized through reading the work of muckrakers and engaging in an anarchosyndicalist discussion group. He and other Mexican students strategized to elect a Mexican student body president, the first ever at El Paso High.
After graduating in 1934, Corona worked in a drug store and played in a local basketball league. In 1936 he accepted an athletic scholarship from the University of Southern California. He moved in with an aunt and uncle in Boyle Heights, then a predominantly Jewish area of East Los Angeles. He quickly became acquainted with the barrios, however, through volunteer work with El Salvador Church. In collaboration with Reverend Kendrick Watson, he organized for better housing conditions.
During his time in Los Angeles, Corona was exposed to Communist-influenced International Workers Order and Workers Alliance of America, who agitated for government relief. He also listened to Magonista anarchosyndicalist speakers at La Placita Olvera.
At USC, Corona undertook a five-year law program. He hurt his ankle early in his freshman year, and subsequently sat out the rest of the season. As a result, he dedicated his energy to his studies and to the "Non-Org Association", a coalition of lower-class students who soon came to dominate school politics.
By 1937, Corona was involved with the CIO, and shortly afterward he decided he preferred labor organizing to basketball. He remained in school, however, and became active in the Mexican American Movement of Los Angeles-area college students. MAM focused attention on the unequal educational opportunities of Mexican American students, as well as police brutality. MAM disbanded with the entry of the United States into World War II, when many of its members volunteered for military service.
Union activities
During his studies at USC, Corona worked for Brunswig Drug Company as a checker. He and his colleagues were approached by the striking International Longshore and Warehouse Union, which they agreed to support. The longshoremen won their demands, and the drugstore workers, who felt they were receiving unfair treatment, were inspired to form a union of their own. They organized as a local of the ILWU, electing Marion Phelps president and Corona recording secretary. He served on various committees in the union and learned organizing skills from Lloyd Seeliger. In 1940 Corona was named head of the Local 26's strike committee and in 1941, in the wake of Phelps's resignation, was unanimously elected local president. Shortly after his election, a rival contender for the presidency organized an unauthorized slowdown for which Corona was blamed and fired. Harry Bridges, chief of the ILWU and a major figure within the CIO, offered Corona a position as a CIO organizer.With the CIO, Corona worked to unionize Molokan and Mexican workers in the waste material industries. He also reached out to the children of the Mexican workers, the Pachucos, who aided the union. As the CIO unionized workers in the various industries throughout the city, Corona and other organizers secured employment for the disenfranchised youth in those same fields, solidifying the bond between the two groups.
During the 1940s the CIO forged an alliance with Luisa Moreno's Spanish-Speaking People's Congress to advocate on behalf of the Spanish-speaking peoples of the United States. The Congreso marked a change from previous efforts:
The Congreso worked closely with the CIO on the issues of labor rights, police brutality, inequality in schools, and access to public facilities. One of the major campaigns of the time was the defense of the Mexican American youth accused of the Sleepy Lagoon murder. Corona served on the defense committee alongside journalist Carey McWilliams and actor Anthony Quinn.
Corona also became involved in the struggle against racial discrimination in the criminal justice system when he joined the defense committee of Fetus Coleman, an African American man wrongfully accused of rape. As a result of the defense committee's efforts, Coleman was freed.
Marriage
On August 2, 1941, Corona and Blanche Taff, a Jewish-American labor organizer he met during the a United Auto Workers drive to organize Los Angeles aviation workers, eloped to Yuma, Arizona. According to Corona, their cultural differences were an issue, but their union was a natural one given the circumstances:The couple moved into a house in the Silver Lake neighborhood of Los Angeles. When, during World War II, their neighbors supported the Japanese American internment, the Coronas moved to an apartment in the Mid-Wilshire district. They again found trouble when their new landlord complained about their inviting African American union members for visits, accusing them of attempting to integrate the neighborhood. He encouraged the other tenants to petition to have the Coronas evicted, but the Coronas held a party for all of their neighbors, inviting the Black friends and their congressperson, Will Rogers Jr. While the representative was unable to attend, his wife, Martha Fall Rogers, who had been a classmate of Corona's at El Paso High School, did. She helped convince the neighbors to drop the petition, and the Coronas lived there until Corona enlisted in the army and Blanche moved back in with her parents.
Corona remarried Angelina Casillas in 1994. Corona is survived by his daughter Margo De Lay, Frank Corona, and Ernesto Corona.
World War II
Several months after the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor, Corona volunteered in the Army Air Corps and resigned from his position with the union. He underwent basic training at Buckley Field in Colorado. During this training, he witnessed discriminatory treatment of Mexican-American and Jewish enlistees. He underwent officer training in Cedar City, Utah, where he and the other cadets were not welcomed by the mostly-Mormon local population. The locals resented the displacement of the students of Southern Utah State College, the campus of which was taken over by the military. But they were even more concerned that the soldiers would "corrupt" their daughters. These fears were allayed after a town meeting, and led to warmer relations between the townspeople and the soldiers.After a year of training in Cedar City, Corona was sent to the Army Air Base in Santa Ana, California for flight training. Corona was promoted to wing adjutant and had numerous clerical responsibilities. At the time, he worked a sixteen-hour day, half of which was spent in training, the other half in the office. In Santa Ana, he underwent a psychiatric evaluation designed to identify homosexuals and political "deviants." He was labeled "probably patriotic," which was "most often applied to individuals from groups whose patriotism was considered questionable because of past grievances against the United States."
Shortly after the evaluation, Corona was questioned by a group of officers about his political ideology and union activities. He was asked his opinion about the books Mission to Moscow by Joseph E. Davies and One World by Wendell Willkie. Shortly thereafter, he was subject to another round of interrogation, this one lasting even longer. While he was never informed of the results of these rounds of questioning, he received an order removing him from his squadron and the Air Corps.
Following his dismissal from the Air Corps, Corona was sent to Torney Army General Hospital in Palm Springs, California, where he was assigned mailroom duty. He was transferred to the surgical unit where he served as a surgical assistant. While in Palm Springs, he helped to organize soldiers' fora, which were held every Friday night at the home of the movie producer Joseph Schenck. The fora discussed issues of racism, religious discrimination, and red-baiting.
Corona transferred to the Rainbow Division and received combat training in Oklahoma. The Rainbow Division, however, did not enjoy a good reputation at the time, and Corona transferred to Fort Benning for paratrooper training. He was also trained as a demolition specialist.
Just prior to his unit's being deployed overseas, Corona requested a pass to go to Atlanta for the weekend. According to Corona, "a trick was pulled on me to ensure that I would either get kicked out of the paratroopers or miss the opportunity to go with my division to see combat." Disembarking, he was approached by two military police officers, who requested to see his pass. Finding that it only allowed him to go to Columbus, they locked him in the federal prison in Atlanta's Fort McDonald. He was not permitted to contact his commanding officer, and was held incommunicado for over a month. He became friendly with a guard who had been a union member in Chicago who plotted to provide him access to a telephone. His unit having shipped out, he was unable to reach his commanding officer. While a prisoner, he got to know other soldiers who had been jailed for being conscientious objectors who were able to smuggle letters out for him upon being discharged. The letters, which were addressed to his wife and Harry Bridges, resulted in his release. Corona was able to have the AWOL removed from his record, but never received payment for the forty-five days he was incarcerated.
Just when it seemed unlikely that Corona would be able to serve overseas, his colonel received a request for people for the Signal Corps. He was sent to Camp Crowder in Neosho, Missouri for training, and was set to see duty in the Pacific. However, while in Neoshe, he ran into Jaime Del Amo, who had served Francoist Spain as Spanish consul in Los Angeles. Del Amo identified Corona as a "subversive" who had participated in the Spanish-speaking People's Congress, and Corona was sent to the processing center at Camp McClellan in Northern California, where he remained until the end of the war. According to Corona, "I entered the service as a buck private, and I left as one. I paid the price of having been involved in progressive causes and was one of those stigmatized and red-baited because of my involvement."