Esther Gonzalez-Arroyo Buckley (March 29, 1948 – February 11, 2013) was an educator in Laredo, Texas, USA, who from 1983 to 1992 was one of the eight members of the United States Commission on Civil Rights. She was appointed to the board by U.S. President Ronald W. Reagan.
Background
Of Hispanic descent, Buckley was born in Laredo in south Texas to Hector Gonzalez-Arroyo, Sr., and the former Amalia Margarita Ayala. A rapid learner as a child, she graduated in 1963, at the age of fifteen, as salutatorian of Martin High School in Laredo. She completed her studies three years ahead of the classmates with whom she had entered the first grade in the fall of 1954. At the time of her death at the age of sixty-four, she held her fifth school teaching assignment through the Laredo Independent School District. After graduation from Martin High School, she attended Laredo Community College and subsequently pursued an undergraduate degree from the University of Texas at Austin, with concentration in biology and mathematics. At the time of her death, she was working on a doctorate in multicultural education and information technology from Texas A&M University in College Station.
Buckley received much recognition during her forty-two years in professional education. She was a member of the Association of Texas Professional Educators and the secretary in the regional office for that group. The day after Buckley's death, the Texas Senate adjourned in her honor. Buckley's most recent assignment was as science instructor at the Dr. Dennis D. Cantu Health Science Center at her alma mater, Martin High School. In 1989, she was chosen as the "Top Texas High School Physics Teacher" at the centennial celebration of the American Physical Society. In 2010, Buckley was a finalist in the "Best in Texas Education" award from H-E-B Foods. She received the "One Class at a Time" award from the Laredo Federal Credit Union. From 2003 to 2006, she was local president of another professional organization for educators, Phi Delta Kappa.
Political activities
A former chairman of the Republican Party in her native Webb County, Buckley served on the Governor's Commission on Women and the Texas Hispanic Advisory Practices and Ethics Commission under appointment from Republican Governor Bill Clements. It was through the appointments from Clements that Buckley caught the notice of President Reagan. Buckley was considered a conservative member in general agreement with Reagan's social policies while she served on the commission, an advisory and investigatory board originally established through the Civil Rights Act of 1957. She had no direct experience in dealing with civil rights issues, opposed the defeated Equal Rights Amendment to the United States Constitution and objected to school busing, quotas, and affirmative action as proper methods to level the playing field for minorities in competition with whites in matters of education and employment.
Buckley served under three chairmen, all African Americans: the strongly conservative Clarence M. Pendleton, Jr., from San Diego, California, and after his death, William B. Allen, and, finally, Arthur Fletcher, a liberal Republican allied with President George Herbert Walker Bush. During Buckley's 9-year tenure, President Reagan had tried without success to remove Democratic commissioner Mary Frances Berry, an African American professor who challenged the president in court in a bid to maintain what she claimed to be the survival of the independence of the board from executive branch control. Berry not only survived Reagan's opposition but served as the commission chairman thereafter during the administration of President Bill Clinton.
Buckley was replaced on the commission in December 1992, when in his last days in office President Bush tapped another Republican woman, Constance Horner, a former chairman of the United States Civil Service Commission, to fill the position. The Commission on Civil Rights consists of four appointees of the President and two each from the United States House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate. Formerly, the president had appointed all eight members, who then required confirmation from the Senate.
In 1995, Laredo Mayor Saul N. Ramirez, Jr., a Democrat in a nonpartisan position, named Buckley as a charter member of the Laredo Commission for Women. Her service on the Webb County Commission on Higher Education led to the establishment of a four-year degree-granting public institution now known as Texas A&M International University, from which she received a Master of Science degree in 1975. She was a board member of her local Battered Women's Shelter.