A Texas law could stop schools from teaching how these children were forced to stay in first grade for 3 years

San Antonio, Texas CNN — Decades afterLupe Alemán was forced to repeat the first grade three times, her son is making it his life’s work to reverse racial inequity in schools. Enrique Alemán Jr., 50, has spent the past few years talking with numerous students in Texas and across the United States about how his mother and other Mexican American children in Driscoll, Texas, were treated in the 1950s by school officials who claimed they couldn’t speak or understand English. Alemán Jr. was about 10 years old when he picked up his mother’s high school yearbook and his mother shared two details of her life that, at the time, he didn’t comprehend. As a young girl in Driscoll, Lupe Alemán was part of a court case, and by the time she graduated high school, she was nearly 21 years old, Alemán Jr. says his mother told him. They went on with their lives, Alemán Jr. says, but “there’s still something in them that feels like they didn’t reach their full potential because of the way that they started out.” Enrique Alemán Jr., center, stands next to his parents Lupe and Enrique Alemán Sr. during his 1997 graduation from Columbia University in New York City.