Sanchez, Frank I., 1950-

Frank Ismael Sanchez built a career as one of New Mexico's most active grassroots community organizers through his work with a wide range of local, regional, and national organizations. Born in Roswell, N.M., in 1950, he has resided in that city all his life, making Southeastern N.M. and the Southwestern U.S. the focus of his organizational activities.

U.S. Supreme Court holding in King v. Sanchez, 1981 (Box 25, Folder 37)

Frank Ismael Sanchez built a career as one of New Mexico's most active grassroots community organizers through his work with a wide range of local, regional, and national organizations. Born in Roswell, New Mexico, on July 16, 1950, he has resided in that city all his life, making Southeastern New Mexico and the Southwestern U.S. the focus of his organizational activities. It was in Roswell, through his father's labor organizing activities as a construction worker, that Sanchez learned the importance and impact of grassroots organizing. These experiences influenced his goals to work against the various racist and discriminatory practices affecting Mexican-Americans in this region. He obtained a bachelor's degree from the Colegio Tlatelolco in Colorado where he majored in Political Science and Education. He also attended Eastern New Mexico University (ENMU) in Portales, where he was a co-founder of the Association to Help Raza Advance (AHORA), a Chicano student organization whose agenda supported the development and incorporation of a culturally relevant Mexican-American curriculum along with the recruitment of minority students at ENMU. AHORA's goals, along with those of Sanchez', expanded out of this academic context to incorporate educational reforms at the community level.

Community based activities led Sanchez to organize and become a co-founder of the Chicano Youth Association, circa 1969. This organization was successful in confronting discriminatory educational practices in the Portales, New Mexico school district. The accomplishments of the Chicano Youth Association are exemplified by the landmark case, Serna v. Portales Schools, which set a national precedent for the institutionalization of bilingual education.

From these local beginnings Sanchez' work expanded to incorporate numerous issues affecting the Mexican-American populations of the Southwest. For a period of four years during the 1970s, he began his involvement in community organizing, welfare rights initiatives, community centers, and Chicano theater as Southeastern New Mexico's Regional Supervisor for Volunteers In Service To America (VISTA). Following VISTA, Sanchez was the Educational Coordinator for the Home Education Livelihood Program (HELP) in Southeastern New Mexico. Through HELP Sanchez continued to pursue his interests in educational issues by supporting curriculum development programs for migrant and bilingual children. During this period he co-founded El Centro de la Familia (1973) a multi-issue community organization and center. Subsequent work incorporated labor, health, and political issues affecting Mexican-Americans, including a year of community rights organizing for the Valle del Sol Housing Corporation, and four years directing the activities of five rural community centers established by the Concilio Campesino del Sureste (Southeastern New Mexico Farmworker Council). This work involved him directly with issues and organizations affecting migrant workers, including the United Farm Workers. Sanchez also worked for the Roswell Job Corp and the Joy Senior Citizens Center during this period.

During the 1980s, Frank Sanchez became active in organizing around issues concerning the representation and participation of Mexican-Americans in politics. As co-founder of Southern New Mexico Legal Services in 1976, he was the only non-lawyer board chairperson of a legal services organization in the country during this period. In this capacity, he began to work against the state's system of gerrymandering, bringing suit against the state of New Mexico (1982) challenging the legislative redistricting law in coalition with the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF), the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), and the Southwest Voter Registration and Education Project (SVREP). This lawsuit, Sanchez v. King, marked the first time that the 1982 Voting Rights Act was used in this manner in New Mexico. The effort involved a diverse coalition of local constituencies contending the political disenfranchisement of Mexican-Americans in the southern and Native Americans in the northern regions of the state. Sanchez went on to spearhead a series of voting rights lawsuits throughout the 1980s and 1990s which successfully challenged legislative, school board, city council, county commission, judicial, and other voting districts in New Mexico. Many of Southeastern New Mexico's first Mexican-American elected officials were voted into office at high levels of local government after this, including State Legislator Barbara Perea Casey, Mario Torres, and Vicente Gallegos.

Simultaneous to these political efforts, Sanchez furthered his community organizing interests through national foundations. Beginning with his work for the Youth Project (founded by the Center for Community Change and later known as Partnership for Democracy during the 1990s) his ten year tenure with this foundation covered the six states of the southwest providing grants and technical assistance to a wide range of community organizations. Later on, Frank Sanchez became the Field Representative for the Southwest Voter Registration and Education Project (SVREP) for two years, followed by a position as the Program Director of The Rural Initiative for the New Mexico Community Foundation, 1995-1997. In 1997 he began his current position as the Roswell based Program Officer for the Needmor Fund, a family foundation based in Boulder, Colorado. Sanchez has also been active in numerous boards and committees for organizations such as: the Multicultural Alliance, the Chaves County Primary Health Care Center, the New Mexico Environmental Law Center, the Inter-Hemispheric Education Resource Center, and the New Mexico Community Development Loan Fund. He has served as a consultant for a number of organizations and foundations including the New Mexico Conference of Churches, the Nathan Cummings Foundation, as well as the Woods Fund of Chicago.

Frank Sanchez' extensive and prolific career earned him numerous recognitions and awards. His redistricting achievements culminated in a Lifetime Achievement Award from New Mexico's de Colores Hispanic Culture Festival. Other awards include: Don for 1995 from the Roswell Hispano Chamber of Commerce; the New Mexico Solidarity Award from Re-Visioning New Mexico; and the Farewell Award from the Shalan Foundation for social and economic justice.