[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 13 (Thursday, January 22, 2009)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E128-E129]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   THE ADVANCING ONE COMMUNITY AWARD

                                 ______
                                 

                         HON. JOHN CONYERS, JR.

                              of michigan

                    in the house of representatives

                       Thursday, January 22, 2009

  Mr. CONYERS. Madam Speaker, today, Iowa State University will host 
its celebration of the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. 
The Advancing One Community Award given in his name will recognize the 
laureates' commitment to an inclusive multicultural community and 
efforts to reduce injustice and inequity. Receiving this award will be 
Mary de Baca, who has never shied from that struggle.
  Mary de Baca coordinates diversity programs for the world-renowned 
College of Agriculture at Iowa State University. She is the program and 
financial advisor to the George Washington Carver Internship Program. 
She is the faculty advisor to the Iowa State University chapter of 
Minorities in Agriculture, Natural Resources, and Related Sciences 
(MANRRS). She has built that club into a national powerhouse: it has 
been National MANRRS Chapter of the Year three of the last four years. 
She has established linkages between Iowa State and historically Black 
land grant colleges, Hispanic serving institutions, and tribal colleges 
so that they can share faculty, laboratory equipment, and resources, 
and bring talented minority students into the academic pipeline. As a 
result, Iowa State is a leader in training minority graduate students 
and professors, although Iowa is not often thought of as the most 
diverse state in the Union.
  Mary de Baca's commitment to diversity is in the long tradition of 
the University. This is, after all, the school which admitted George 
Washington Carver when no other school would allow him to study at all, 
much less achieve a PhD. This is the school whose football stadium is 
named after the man who integrated its sports teams in 1923, Jack 
Trice. Trice followed in Dr. Carver's footsteps. He came to Iowa to 
study agriculture so he could go South and help the community. But he

[[Page E129]]

never got the chance; he was tragically killed on the football field by 
the opposing team.
  Iowa State also took a chance on one of the few Latinos to receive a 
Doctorate in the 1950s, her late husband, Robert C. de Baca, who Mary 
de Baca met when he was a young professor of animal science. She joined 
him in postings abroad, where she did some of the first home economics 
studies on the lives of rural Latin American women. With him, she built 
up a renowned herd of Black Angus cattle on the farm where she still 
lives. In her own family life, Mary de Baca has done her part to 
increase the number of minority professionals: she is the proud mother 
of three children, doctor Monica, businesswoman Suzanna, and civil 
rights lawyer Luis, who is a valued member of our Judiciary Committee 
team.
  Between college and graduate school, Mary de Baca returned home to 
Southern Indiana teach high school home economics. As a young teacher, 
she stubbornly overrode the protests of white parents to ensure that 
African-Americans could participate in cheerleading, the homecoming 
court, and other extra-curricular activities. Vernon Jordan described 
the State at the time in this way: ``Although Indiana is above the 
Mason-Dixon line, it has a tough history regarding race. For a time it 
had the largest and most active chapters of the Ku Klux Klan in the 
country. It was a mess in the 1920s and 1930s. When I was there in the 
1950s, it wasn't exactly a racial utopia.'' But one can imagine the 
young Mary de Baca mentoring those students and helping them reach 
their potential without fanfare or drama, just as she does today.
  As an educator for over 50 years, Mary de Baca has helped to move us 
toward the more inclusive and equal world for which Dr. King fought. I 
congratulate her on receiving this honor in his name from her students, 
her colleagues, and her University.

                          ____________________