Carlos Puente joined the Raza Unida Party in the early 1970s, helping to form the Tarrant County chapter of the political party representing Mexican-American issues. He rose in party ranks to become vice chair in Texas, the state with the largest membership. As a politico, Vietnam Marine veteran, community newspaper publisher, and devout Baptist, he developed the mental toughness and savvy to enter Fort Worth politics to become the first Latino to win a highly-contested school board seat in 1978.
The U.S. Justice Department and Black and Brown Fort Worth communities’ lawsuits motivated the Fort Worth ISD board to move from seven-member at-large voting to a nine-member district with seven single-member and two at-large seats in 1978. Reby Carey was the sole Black person to take a school board seat in 1974. Since 1925, most Fort Worth ISD school board members were white men who were reluctant to integrate schools and the board.
Concerned they would lose in a civil rights-minded court, school board members Green Trimble and Dr. Jack Turner quit their seats to allow for two Black-dominant districts (Districts three and four) and one Latino District (District 1). (Reby Carey resigned his seat in 1978 to run successfully for the state legislature). The U.S. Justice Department approved the school redistricting plan.
Puente ran for the District 1 school board seat, hoping to become the first Latino on the 53-year-old school board. Robert Starr, Charles Cox, Joe Avila, and the Rev. Alfred Sanford also announced their candidacies for the seat. Joe Avila, a well-known pharmacist on the North Side, met with Puente through the mediation of Robert Jara, and decided to drop out of the race. They agreed the Latino community would have a better chance of seating a representative if they didn’t split the vote. Robert Starr decided not to run and became Sanford’s campaign manager.
The Rev. Alfred Sanford, shown here in a newspaper image, lost a hotly contested Forth Worth ISD board to Carlos Puente in 1978.
Cox was a salesman with Cal-Western Life Insurance Co.; Sanford was a pastor at Thompson Chapel United Methodist Church; Puente was a health care planner with the Texas Area 5 Health Systems Agency. On March 19, 1978, the Star-Telegram editorial board wrote, “This endorsement is made on the basis of Puente’s long record of community involvement, his demonstrated ability to work with persons of all races and backgrounds, his extensive knowledge of intergovernmental relations and school affairs and his ability to grasp and articulate complicated issues clearly.”
On April 1, 1978, Maudrie Walton became the first Black woman elected to the school board in District 3. The Rev. Nehemiah Davis won District 4, becoming the third Black person in the history to sit on the school board. Dr. H. Richard O’Neal won the at-large vote for board president. Mollie Lasater, Martha Adams, and Carlos Puente were thrown into runoffs. On April 22, 1978, the trio won according to the initial count. But then votes were discovered in the Puente-Sanford runoff that threw the District 1 race into confusion and court.
A disputed Fort Worth school board election
Hillery Hardeman had worked as an election official since 1956. As election judge of the Precinct 50 at Washington Heights Elementary, he called the vote total to the election office at 10 p.m. on Saturday, April 22, 1978, as 339 votes for Sanford and 49 for Puente. The total count tallied 724 for Puente and 708 for Sanford. However, on Sunday morning, Hardeman said he found 22 ballots that had not been counted in the back seat of his car. He waited until Monday, April 24, 1978, to submit the ballots to the election administration. To add to the confusion, assistant election judge Mary Wallace said janitor Larry Erwin found a batch of ballots on a step leading to the counting room. The inclusion of 22 ballots, according to Hardeman, changed the Precinct 50 total to 358 for Sanford and 49 for Puente, tilting the election to Sanford by three votes.
Hillery Hardeman, shown here in a newspaper image, was an election judge in a precinct with disputed votes in the school board race between Carlos Puente and the Rev. Alfred Sanford.
O’Neal prepared to declare Sanford as the winner of District 1 on April 26, 1978, but stopped when Puente called for an official recount. O’Neal appointed a three-person committee to recount the ballots. Legal counsel advised the school board to forgo counting the questionable 22 ballots since they were not in the original steel box that was submitted. The recount showed Puente with 719 votes and Sanford with 714 votes. Based on these results, O’Neal swore in Puente on May 3, 1978, as the first Latino to sit on the FWISD school board.
Sanford retained attorney Clifford Davis, who had represented the NAACP in its 1974 lawsuit to integrate the Fort Worth ISD school board. Davis argued before Judge Joe Burnett that not counting the 22 ballots would disenfranchise those voters and violate their civil rights. Puente’s attorneys, Charles Dickens and Mike Paddock, argued it could not be verified that the ballots were cast. Judge Burnett ruled on May 19, 1978, that the 22 ballots would not be counted, upholding the election of Puente.
Puente served six years on the school board, advocating for Latino students, fighting to prevent Latino student dropouts, implementing professional programs in Latino-dominated schools, involving the community, and facilitating the hiring of Latino teachers, administrators and staff. Arturo Peña succeeded Puente, continuing a succession of Latinos and Latinas on the school board to the present.
On March 13, 1980, Puente held a fundraiser dinner at Pulido’s restaurant on Jacksboro Highway to pay off his $3,500 in legal fees from the contested runoff.
Author Richard J. Gonzales writes and speaks about Fort Worth, national and international Latino history.
