Irma Rangel

American politician and educator

• Born: May 15, 1931
• Birthplace: Kingsville, Texas
• Died: March 17, 2003
• Place of death: Kingsville, Texas

The first Latina to be elected to the Texas House of Representatives, Rangel remained in office for almost three decades, working tirelessly for equal rights and opportunities for Latinos, women, and the poor and for the improvement of education in the state of Texas.

Early Life

Irma Lerma Rangel (rahn-HEHL) was born in Kingsville, near the famous King Ranch in south Texas, to Presciliano and Herminia Lerma Rangel in 1931. One of three daughters, Rangel grew up working alongside her sisters and parents in family-owned businesses, including a clothing shop and a furniture store. The Rangel family was the first Latino family to move into a prosperous middle-class neighborhood near the local college, Texas College of Arts and Industries (now part of the Texas A&M system), which Rangel later attended, earning a degree in education in 1952. She taught in schools in small towns in south Texas, Alice and Robstown, before deciding, along with her elder sister Olga, to teach in Venezuela, where she eventually became principal of a school in Caracas. After more than a decade in South America, Rangel returned to the United States to teach in Menlo Park, California.

In 1966, in her mid-thirties, Rangel moved to San Antonio, Texas, and attended St. Mary’s University School of Law, graduating with a law degree in 1969. She clerked for Chief Justice Adrian Spears in the U.S. District Court in West Texas before moving to Corpus Christi to become an assistant district attorney. In 1973, she returned to her hometown of Kingsville and practiced law, first as a partner with a local friend, Hector Garcia, and then in private practice. During the 1970’s, she grew increasingly interested in politics and became active in the Democratic Party in her county, Kleberg, eventually becoming chairperson in 1974.

Life’s Work

In the bicentennial year of 1976, Rangel ran for the office of state representative for the Forty-ninth Legislative District, which encompassed not only her home county of Kleberg but also those of the neighboring counties of Hidalgo, Willacy, and Kenedy. She won and held the position for the next twenty-six years.

As the first Latina ever elected to the Texas State House of Representatives, Rangel quickly established her political priorities, which clearly reflected her background, her concern for the plight of Hispanics, the poor, and women, and her earlier career in education. Her first act as a legislator was to devise and secure the passage of Texas House Bill 1755, which sought to secure opportunities for education and jobs for single and working-class mothers.

Although Rangel worked tirelessly for her state and region throughout the late 1970’s and 1980’s, her greatest triumphs came in the 1990’s and the first decade of the twenty-first century. In the early 1990’s, she helped to ensure the passage of what was labeled the South Texas Border Initiative, a proposal that resulted in almost five hundred million dollars going to colleges and universities in the southern part of the state. Her work in regard to this initiative resulted in her being named a few years later chairperson of the Higher Education Committee of State House of Representatives, a leadership role that she maintained until 2005. She also was instrumental in the creation of the Texas Grant I and Grant II programs, which offered millions in scholarships to young people from working-class families throughout Texas. Rangel helped write the original proposals for these grants and was their primary sponsor in the legislature.

Perhaps her most controversial endeavor involved affirmative-action programs in the state of Texas. In 1996, a student filed a suit questioning the fairness and legality of affirmative-action programs of the law school at the University of Texas. When the state’s Fifth Circuit Court ruled in favor of the student, Attorney General Dan Morales declared that the decision indicated that all considerations of race and ethnicity should be eliminated during the admission process to colleges and universities across the state. In order to circumvent what amounted to a ban on affirmative action, Rangel worked with a friend and colleague, state senator Gonzalo Barrientes. The two wrote House Bill 588, which set up what later came to be known as the Top 10 Percent Program, insuring automatic acceptance to any institution of higher learning for all applicants who were in the top 10 percent of their graduating class in high school. This ensured that many Latino students from predominantly Hispanic communities could attend college. It also helped students from rural areas and small towns, regardless of their ethnicity, get into the schools of their choice.

One of her greatest accomplishments on a personal level came in 2001, when she wrote House Bill 1601, which set up and provided funding for a school of pharmacy at Texas A&M, Kingsville, near which she had lived as a child and from which she had graduated in the 1950’s. Upon her death from cancer two years later, the school was named in her honor: the Irma Rangel School of Pharmacy.

Significance

By becoming the first Latina state representative in Texas, Rangel earned a place in the history of Latinas in the United States. However, by focusing on the concerns of her first career, education, in pursuing her second career as a politician, Rangel established a legacy for herself as a champion of higher education not only for the more than nine million Latinos in Texas but also for women and low-income students throughout the state, regardless of ethnicity.

Bibliography

Arreola, Daniel D. Tejano South Texas. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002. Good, thorough description and analysis of Rangel’s home region.

Briseno, Veronica. “In Recognition of Representative Irma L. Rangel: Legislator and Role Model.” Texas Hispanic Journal of Law and Policy 4, no. 1 (1998): 3-5. Concise review of Rangel’s life, career, and significance.

Guinier, Lani. “An Equal Chance.” The New York Times, April 23, 1998. Commentary on affirmative action references the groundbreaking work of Rangel.