The Felix Longoria Incident to the Great Society

Dr. Hector Garcia's efforts impacted this country on a national level more than once. The American GI Forum first became well known in one Texas case that reached the front page of the "New York Times" and the national radio broadcast of Walter Winchell-the Felix Longoria incident in 1949.

When the wife of a Mexican American World War II hero was refused the use of a funeral home to wake her deceased husband in Three Rivers, Texas (told by the funeral home director "the whites won't like it"), the teamwork of Dr. Garcia and Senator Lyndon B. Johnson laid Longoria to rest in Arlington National Cemetery. The incident also forged a personal and political relationship between Garcia and Johnson that was especially advantageous for Mexican Americans during LBJ's presidential years.

In the hands of Pulitzer-prize winning author Edna Ferber, Dr. Garcia and the American GI Forum served as raw material for both the 1952 book GIANT and the 1956 movie "GIANT" starring Rock Hudson, Elizabeth Taylor, James Dean, and Dennis Hopper. Two Dr. Garcia inspired-incidents appeared in the book GIANT: the Felix Longoria case and an incident when Dr. Garcia's wife and daughter were refused service in a small Texas cafe because they were accompanied by Mexican American friends.

The blatant injustices of this "place and time" fueled Dr. Hector Garcia's determination to eliminate them. During the 1950s when Texas public places commonly warned "No Dogs or Mexicans Allowed" and school children were whipped for speaking Spanish, the American GI Forum and LULAC fought for Hispanic civil rights on both grass roots and national levels. It was a battle that paralleled the struggle of Martin Luther King and the NAACP, yet received far less public acknowledgment or support.

School districts were desegregated thanks to lawsuits supported by LULAC lawyers and American GI Forum funds-forerunners of today's Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF). Former Federal Judge and American GI Forum attorney James De Anda recalls winning the Driscoll ISD case by presenting student Linda Perez as a witness. The child was kept in a segregated Mexican only school for years, despite the fact that she spoke no Spanish, proof positive of discrimination.

An American GI Forum legal victory of national importance was the Hernandez v. State of Texas case. When an all-Anglo jury condemned laborer Pete Hernandez for murder, LULAC and American GI Forum lawyer Gus Garcia took the case all the way from a small Texas town to the Supreme Court. His trip was financed by the nickel-and-dime donations of grassroots GI Forumeers.

Chief Justice for barely six months, Earl Warren ruled that "it taxes our credulity to say that mere chance resulted in there being no members of [Mexican American] class among the over 6,000 jurors called in the past 25 years [in that Texas county]. The result bespeaks discrimination...the judgment of conviction must be reversed." The Hernandez decision was the first to strike down discrimination not directed at blacks.

American GI Forum works through the 1950s helped to eliminate a Mexico-United States labor agreement called the "bracero program." This practice, notorious for its exploitation of migrant laborers, also displaced thousands of Mexican Americans. A recognized expert in Mexican labor, Dr. Hector Garcia testified repeatedly before the National Advisory Committee on Farm Labor, working with such politicians as Hubert Humphrey, Arthur Goldberg and George McGovern.

Dr. Garcia said, "The children of migrant parents are born into a world completely of their own: an anemic mother, and a tubercular father-a world where he may possibly die within a year, either from diarrhea, tuberculosis, or malnutrition. Home would be a one-room shack, with no inside running water and no flushing toilet. If he lives to be of school age, he will never average more than three years of schooling in his lifetime. His parents may be completely illiterate. If he lives to be an adult, he may average as high as $60 a month. He will live, if he is lucky, in a substandard home and die an early death from tuberculosis. The only piece of property he owns in this world, however, will be his grave. I feel it is our moral obligation to recognize that the migrant's world is really part of our own world. To me, it is more than that since these people are my brothers and sisters. The migrant problem is not only a national emergency, it has become a national shame on the American conscience."

Those who worked with Dr. Hector P. Garcia knew him as "a man who in the space of one week delivers 20 babies, 20 speeches, and 20 thousand votes. He understands delivery systems in this country." Gradually, his efforts paid off. The end of the 1950s saw Texas movies, restaurants and hotels desegregated. By the 1960s, barbershops and beauty parlors were also open to Mexican Americans. However, he did not slacken his pace, for it was not until the 1970s that cemeteries and swimming pools were also desegregated.

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