María Urquides

María Luisa Legarra Urquides (December 8, 1908 – June 16, 1994) was an American educator and proponent of bilingual education. She spent her life in the US state of Arizona, but influenced national educational policies. Urquides served in local and federal roles, and received numerous awards and recognitions for her educational leadership and community work. She has been referred to as the "Mother of Bilingual Education" in the United States. She was inducted into the Arizona Women's Hall of Fame in 2002.

Early life and education Urquides was born in the Barrio Libre district of Tucson, Arizona, United States. She was the youngest of five surviving children of her parents, Mariana Legara and Hilario Urquides. Three of her siblings died at an early age. Both of her parents came from Tucson families of Mexican descent. At one point, he ran a saloon and owned the Occidental Hotel (previously the Palace Hotel). He later co-founded the Club Demócrato Hispano-Americano (English: Hispanic American Democratic Club) and became involved in local politics. In the early 1900s, he filled multiple city roles, being named constable, deputy sheriff, and town jailer. In 1911, the Tucson mayor assigned Hilario to the last job he would hold, serving for almost three decades as the superintendent of city streets and parks. While she was at Tucson High School, she earned lead roles in theater productions and operettas. Because of her interests in theater and choir, which were traditionally viewed as Mexican American interests, some of her Mexican classmates labeled her as a "gringacita." During most of her school life she was not allowed to visit her white friends' homes, both because of domestic restrictions on Mexican girls and because she would not be welcomed by white families. While at college, Urquides experienced occupational discrimination, being given jobs cleaning the student residence bathrooms until she could secure work singing at a popular local restaurant, La Casa Vieja. Urquides credited a high school teacher, Mary Balch, for encouraging her to attend college and become a teacher.

Bilingual education leadership In 1955, Urquides was intentionally recruited to work at the newly established Pueblo High School, where she taught English and worked as a school counselor. At the high school, she was struck by the irony of teaching students Spanish as a foreign language, after years of punishing Mexican and Spanish-speaking students for using a language other than English. She became particularly interested in helping students who spoke Spanish fluently, but were unable to read or write in Spanish. In trying to enhance the use and improvement of both Spanish and English among her students, she worked with Adalberto Guerrero, Rosita Cota, and Henry Oyama to introduce new curriculum ideas including instruction about Mexican American people and culture, a Spanish for Spanish-speakers program, and honors level Spanish courses. In 1965, Pueblo High School was awarded the "Pacemaker Award" for their efforts by the National Education Association's in collaboration with Parade magazine. The committee officially visited fifty-eight schools across the southwest (Arizona, California, Colorado, New Mexico, and Texas) in order to study bilingual education curriculum models. In 1966, they published a widely influential report on bilingual education, The Invisible Minority – Pero No Vencibles. The study outlined the problems facing Spanish-speaking students, and highlighted successful programs in Laredo and El Paso (Texas), Albuquerque and Pecos (New Mexico), Merced, (California), Pueblo (Colorado), and Phoenix (Arizona), as well as their own model in Tucson. They also worked with Sweetland to hold an NEA symposium on bilingual education in Tucson. The symposium and The Invisible Minority report helped quickly push federal action, including the introduction and passage of the 1967 Bilingual Education Act. Language educational leaders Herschel T. Manuel and Theodore Anderson attended. Today, the Tucson model is frequently described as the "cradle" of bilingual education (in Arizona), and Urquides is referred to as the "Mother of Bilingual Education" in the United States.

Selected service and recognitions Several US presidents appointed Urquides to educational roles. In 1950, Harry S. Truman appointed Urquides to the White House Conference on Children and Youth, and a decade later Dwight D. Eisenhower reappointed Urquides. She was the first Mexican American woman to have a school named after her in the state of Arizona. The Mexican American Student Association at the University of Arizona provides annual scholarships in her name. That same story was reprinted in Arizona Memories, which shared memoirs from prominent Arizonans. Urquides appeared in a profile feature within the textbook The Story of the Mexican Americans, written by renowned Mexican American historian Rudy Acuña.

During her lifetime, Urquides served on vast number of community service and educational organizations, including: Distinguished Citizen Award (1972), University of Arizona Alumni Association Honorary law degree (1983), University of Arizona "Maria Urquides Center," chosen for the multi-purpose room at the La Frontera Center's Tucson Clinic Woman of the Year in Education (1965), Tucson Daily Star YWCA Lifetime Achievement (1989)