Corona began taking a full course of studies in commercial law while working nearly full-time at his "scholarship" job. An athletic scholarship meant that a student could work full-or part-time while playing university sports and studying. Corona found that his scholarship was really a recommendation to a company that was willing to hire him. In 1936 a full athletic scholarship was very different from the scholarships of later years. Corona was very young, so he played two years on El Paso community teams before accepting an athletic scholarship to the University of Southern California. There he played basketball on the varsity team, despite his young age-he had advanced through school so rapidly that he graduated high school at age sixteen. Athletic scholarshipĬorona returned to El Paso and attended El Paso High School. In his oral biography, Corona proudly remembers that "This was my first strike!" It would not be his last. It was successful in keeping the students from being expelled, forcing the physical education teacher to apologize, and putting a stop to spankings for just questioning a teacher. The students organized a strike, refusing to attend class until their demands were met. When the students protested, school administrators threatened to throw some of them out of school. For talking back to the teachers, some students were sent to the physical education teacher to be spanked. The Mexican students at Harvard often objected to the ideas of history presented by their Anglo teachers. One of Corona's early protest experiences occurred in the fifth grade. He attended Harvard Boys School for the fourth and fifth grades. Margarita objected to these actions so strongly that she took Bert out of the El Paso schools and sent him to a boarding school in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Were spanked and forced to wash their mouths with soap for speaking their own language, Spanish. Although he was spared because he already spoke English, other students It was in these schools that he first experienced racism. Early lifeĬorona attended primary schools in El Paso. Bert was the second child and first son, born May 29, 1918. They settled in El Paso, and their first two children were born there. The two married twice, in the Mexican city of Juárez and in El Paso, Texas. Also, they were Protestants in a mostly Catholic country.Īfter fighting in the Battle of Juárez, which resulted in Díaz's fleeing the country, Noe returned to woo Margarita. Ynez became one of the few female doctors in Mexico, and Margarita became director of a teacher's college. Both had decided to ignore the general feeling in Mexico that women should stay home, bear children, and restrict themselves to tending the household. Margarita and her mother, Ynez Salayandía y Escápite, were rebels in their own right.
There he met Margarita Escápite Salayandía. He joined the forces of Pancho Villa, one of the most powerful rebels.Ībout 1911 Noe Corona was assigned to seal off Chihuahua City, which threatened to send out federal troops against Villa's forces. At the age of thirteen, his father, Noe, began to fight in the Mexican Revolution to overthrow the long and corrupt rule of Porfirio Díaz. Bert Corona (born 1918), a union organizer who worked to provide Mexican Americans with better wages and living conditions.īert Corona was born into a revolutionary family.
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