 Gosh, it got so quiet all of a sudden. Y'all must be here for an event. Well, great, because you are in for a treat today. And I'd like to welcome you. My name is Patty Zients, and I am the president of the Conservation Society of San Antonio. And I welcome you to our symposium on integrating history, the role of Alamo Plaza and Bear County's civil rights legacy. But the first thing I have on my agenda, which is most delightful for me, is to introduce a very, very dear friend, a man that has served our community for more than 40 years, a man that has served San Antonio and now has served the county for 19 years as our county judge, who's a stalwart for preservation and stands firm for all the wonderful things in our community and that San Antonio stands for. So I would like to call forward our dear judge, Nelson Wolf. Judge, thank you for being with us today. Well, first of all, let me thank you to the Conservation Society, to Patty and to Mitch and the group that's worked so hard. This room that you're in, this was the original courtroom for Bear County. Over the years, they had to put a ceiling here, tour, and covered up all the beautiful things you see today, and the Conservation Society donated to help us bring this back, and my wife raised a lot of money. So what you're in today is something that you would have seen in about 1897. I think the work started about 1892, and we restored it to the best of our records that we can find to what this looked like so long ago. It's an imposing courtroom, but you can imagine if you lived in 1897 and you walked into a building like this, you would have really been overwhelmed with the beauty of what we see today. So I want to thank all of you so very much for what you've done for us. We do believe in Bear County and historical preservation. This courthouse, I think, over the 19 years that I've been here, we restored it. My wife, I think, has raised about 10 million. We've probably spent another 50, 60 million under the direction of Betty Bichet, who couldn't be with us this morning. She's feeling a little bad, but she's been really a real hero for us. And then we're proud of the fact that we have the Alamo Library collection from the Daughters of the Republic right across the way. If you ever get an opportunity, you may want to step in there and look at that collection along with the Bear County archives that are housed there together. And if you get a chance to go out to Hot Wells, we've restored those ruins and captured that piece of history that happened quite some time ago. Paul Ringenbach's with us today, and he and Betty just received a award from the Texas Historical Commission for the great work they've done over the time. But Paul was instrumental before we got the designation of the missions as World Heritage Site. Paul began working on that nine years before with the Bear County Historical Commission. And then we were able over those nine years of work by Bear County to receive that. It was a very exciting day to be in Bonn, Germany as we sat on the floor and watched some of the other ones get inscribed. Some of them delayed. Some of them turned down. And so when the missions were inscribed as a World Heritage Site, we got a great round of applause from around the representatives from around the world for what we've done with the mission. So that was a really important piece of what the county was about in trying to make sure that we preserved history as we are. And we all know things about the World War's building. But just a couple of reminders of what historic piece of that was. It was a, the building was listed as a contributing structure to the Alamo Plaza National Registered Historic in 1977. Then the city landmark designation in 1978. And then beginning in 2016 as an endangered landmark. So there's a long history of the preservation of the World War's building. And you may want to call the city of San Antonio and ask them why are they violating their 1978 landmark designation that they gave to it. Now we do know, we do know what happened at the launch counters. I grew up here. I was born on the south side of San Antonio. And as a young person going through various aspects of San Antonio, we knew and still saw the discrimination that occurred right here in San Antonio, Texas, going up through the 1950s. And when the lunch counter effort began, the city's began, it wasn't just this World War's building. It was World War's buildings and other sites around the United States. And when that began here, and I think it happened in 1960, when the set-ins occurred, March 1960, and it happened around the country. And there was a baseball player. Now I have a great affinity for baseball. And his name was Jackie Robinson. Jackie Robinson was right here in San Antonio, maybe off 1950, 1951. Went at Emission Stadium, which is another historic treasure that was torn down in 1964. But Jackie Robinson was right here in San Antonio and played baseball in the exhibit game right out at Emission Stadium. So later on in 1960, when he saw what happened at the World War's building and the strike in there, he made some great comments about how important that was to the civil rights movement. Now let me ask you this. How do we have a Martin Luther King parade one day and the next day tear down the World War's building that stood for doing away with discrimination? How do you put those two together? So it's not a question of can they do it. Keeps preserved the facade at least when the Bear County put up $100 and some odd million to build the Tobin Center for the Performing Arts. That had been burnt in the 1980s, I guess, so it wasn't historic. But we did preserve all of the facade of the municipal auditorium. Same thing happened at the Jasky business. So it's not a question, can you do it, is whether you will do it. And so they've got the very much ability to at least do that much and to preserve that piece of history. So Bruce Winders, who probably knows more about the whole Alamo situation than anybody in town, and we were fortunate when he left the Alamo effort to contract with him on a consulting basis. So he's been very, very valuable to us on advising us on a number of historic things. We're going to be doing some work with the Navarro House and we'll be talking to Bruce about that because we have some land that we hope to open up that will give it access down to the creek. So we have someone that's a great expert in this community and ability to start listening to him. So I would say to you, let's keep up our fight. You're fighting the state of Texas. You're fighting those people here that don't believe in what we believe in. We also believe, I think you all did too. I know you did, that you believed in that this plaza is the greatest meeting place of anywhere in San Antonio. And to block it off and not allow people to go through the plaza is another travesty of justice. We should be proud of what the history is, not only from 1836, but what happened after 1836 and how the plaza has been such a gathering place for people all over San Antonio. And the plans that the Conservation Society drew up allows that people to walk through there and not be barred from walking through there. So let's hang together, let's continue the fight. It's always fun to fight the big guys with the big bucks and so let's say we can't beat them. Bye. Thank you, Judge. I thank everyone in this room, wholeheartedly supports every word that you said and I personally wanna thank you for being an advocate for historic preservation and an advocate for what is right and fair in this city. Well, I can't add anything to what Judge Wolfe has said because he has said everything that we feel about the Woolworth Building and about our plans for downtown. So we're gonna move on with our program and we are very blessed today if you know the history of what we've been sharing about the Woolworth Building, then you've heard of Mary Lillian Andrews, the young woman, the student at our Lady of Lake University, the president of the youth group of the NAACP that wrote a letter to the lunch counter owners asking for them to receive her and her friends at the lunch counter and be served. So the Andrews family still resides in San Antonio and we are very blessed to have our Andrews family members here today and Mr. and Ms. Andrews, can I ask y'all and your family just to rise for a moment and be recognized as the... And the family history that you have shared with us and shared with us for our friend that we had in Hemisphere at Muertosfest last October have really shed a light on the courage of this young woman and so we are very blessed and pleased today to have her grand niece, Taylor Andrews with us and Taylor is going to read the letter that Mary Lillian had sent so courageously back in 1960. Taylor. The letter set forth by my grand aunt reads, "'Youth of all races in San Antonio, go to school, ride the buses, enjoy municipal recreational facilities together, but they cannot sit down and eat together in your store. Help the youth of San Antonio realize that the principle stated in the Holy Bible and the Constitution of the United States can be living reality in San Antonio by abolishing the discriminatory practice in your store. We feel that the citizens of San Antonio are intelligent enough to accept such change. Please inform us of your decision." The letter was signed by Mary Lillian Andrews, the president of the local NAACP Youth Council. Thank you. Okay, if I could get the slides keyed up.