Héctor Pérez García: 1914-1996: Physician, civil rights advocate

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Héctor Pérez García led the fight for civil rights for Mexican Americans for nearly 50 years. As the founder of the GI Forum, García became an advocate for the medical rights of Hispanic veterans during the years following World War II. His focus soon broadened to encompass larger issues of discrimination, including housing, education, jobs, and health care. He was a legendary civil rights advocate, advisor to presidents, and a hero to many Hispanics, especially in South Texas.

Gained Education and Army Experience

García was born on January 17, 1914, in Llera, Mexico, a small town in the border state of Tamaulipas. His father, José García, was a professor, and his mother, Faustina Pérez, was a teacher. The Mexican Revolution began just months after García's birth, and in 1917 his parents fled with their seven children to the United States to escape the violence. The family settled in Mercedes, Texas, a small South Texas town in Hidalgo County in the Rio Grande Valley. Because his father's teaching credentials were not recognized in the United States, José García provided for his family by running a dry-goods business with his brothers. The children pitched in by picking cotton and scavenging for discarded fruits and vegetables among the local packing sheds.

Reared in a close-knit family that stressed education, García was motivated by his father to move beyond the limited expectations and opportunities afforded Mexican Americans at that time. García, who attended Mercedes public schools, responded to this motivation by graduating as the valedictorian of his high school class. With the Great Depression sorely straining the family's finances, his father sold his penny-a-week life insurance policy to allow García to enroll in Edinburgh Junior College. García continued his education at the University of Texas, from which he graduated with a bachelor's degree in zoology in 1936. Wishing to pursue his medical degree, García applied to and was accepted by the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, which only admitted one Mexican American student each year. After graduating from medical school in 1946, García was unable to find a medical internship program in Texas that would accept a Mexican American. He completed his two-year general and surgical internship at Creighton University's St. Joseph Hospital in Omaha, Nebraska.

The outbreak of World War II followed on the heels of García's internship, and he delayed his entrance into medical practice to enlist in the U.S. Army in 1942. His previous summertime service in Franklin D. Roosevelt's Civilian Military Training Corps allowed García to enter the U.S. army as an officer. He served first in the infantry before becoming an officer in the Corp of Engineers. He eventually served as a combat surgeon with the Medical Corps. Discharged in 1946 with the rank of major, García was awarded the Bronze Star with six battle stars for his service in North Africa and Italy. In late 1944, while serving in Italy, García met Wanda Fusillo, a graduate student at the University of Naples. They were married on June 23, 1945, just weeks after Fusillo completed her doctoral studies. The couple had three daughters: Wanda, Celia, and Susana. A son, Hector, died at the age of 13 after falling while running down the stairs of a mountain home.

At a Glance . . .

Born Hector Perez García on January 17, 1914, in Llera, Mexico; died on July 26, 1996, in Corpus Christi, TX; married Wanda Fusillo, June 23, 1945; children: Hector (deceased), Wanda, Cecilia, and Su-sana. Education: University of Texas, BA, zoology, 1936; University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, MD, 1946. Military Service: U.S. Army, 1942-46. Religion: Roman Catholic. Politics: Democrat.

Career: Physician, Corpus Christi, TX, 1946-96.

Memberships: GI Forum, founder and first chairman, 1948; Advisory Council of the Democratic National Committee, 1954; Political Association of Spanish Speaking Organizations, national president, 1960-64; National Advisory Council on Economic Opportunity in the United States, 1967; U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, 1968; U.S. Attorney General Benjamin Civiletti's Hispanic Advisory Committee on Civil Rights, 1979.

Awards: Medalla Al Merito, American GI Forum of Texas, 1952; Distinguished Service Award, National Office of Civil Rights, 1980; Presidential Medal of Freedom, 1984; The Hispanic Heritage Award, National Hispanic Leadership Conference, 1989; The Equestrian Order of Pope Gregory the Great, Pope John Paul II, 1990.

Fought for Civil Rights With GI Forum

After his discharge from the U.S. Army in 1946, García started his medical practice in the South Texas town of Corpus Christi. He located his office near the Veterans Administration (VA) building and contracted with the VA to provide services to Mexican-American veterans. The VA paid García three dollars per patient. It quickly became apparent to García that Mexican-American veterans were not being treated fairly or equally by the VA. He heard many stories from veterans who had been denied treatment at the Naval Air Station hospital; others had been denied financial assistance for medical expenses and job training as prescribed by the GI Bill of Rights. To treat men and women who had faithfully served their country during the war as second-class citizens was unacceptable to García. In response, on March 26, 1948, he organized a meeting at Lamar Elementary School to discuss veterans' concerns. More than 700 attended the meeting. On that night, the GI Forum was founded. Elected as the organization's chairman, García began his lifelong role as activist, organizer, and community caretaker.

In 1949 García became involved with the burial of Private Felix Longoria. Longoria, a Mexican-American soldier from Three Rivers, a town near Corpus Christi, had been killed near the end of the war and interred in the Philippines. Three years later, Longoria's wife was asked if she would like to reinter her husband in Texas. Although she had since moved to Corpus Christi, Longoria's wife decided to bury her husband in his hometown of Three Rivers. Her decision set off a series of events that brought García and the GI Forum into the national spotlight. When Longoria's family was denied access to the only funeral home in Three Rivers, García stepped in to help. After hearing from the funeral home director himself that the only reason the family could not use the facilities was because Longoria was a Mexican American, García contacted the local media and then sent off a series of telegrams to everyone he could think of, including the newly elected senator to the U.S. Congress from Texas, Lyndon B. Johnson. With Johnson's intervention Longoria's remains were interred two months later in Arlington National Cemetery with full military honors.

With the Longoria incident behind him, García began to broaden his focus beyond veterans' concerns to address the wider spectrum of social inequalities facing Mexican Americans in his Coastal Bend community, including segregated education, housing, health care, poll taxes, and employment. He traveled the country, organizing new GI Forums. In the years before the rising popularity of the Martin Luther King, García's GI Forum was the leading civil rights organization in the country. During the early 1950s, novelist Edna Ferber spent time with García, and she used him as a model for the character of the Mexican-American doctor in her 1952 novel Giant, as well as the 1956 movie version.

Joining forces with the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), an older civil rights organization also founded in Corpus Christi, García and the GI Forum took on several court battles to end discriminatory practices. In 1948 García was put in charge of raising funds to cover the legal expenses of Minerva Delgado and 20 other Mexican-American families in Bastrop, Texas, who filed a lawsuit to end segregated schooling and challenge the fictitious "separate but equal" policy. Although the decision ruled against segregation, the battle to implement integration had just begun. The LULAC and the GI Forum sued the Driscoll school district in 1957 for discriminating against Mexican Americans, winning once again. In another case, Hernandez v. State of Texas, LULAC and GI Forum lawyers took the case all the way to the Supreme Court in 1954 after Peter Hernandez had been found guilty by an all-white jury and given the death penalty. After Chief Justice Earl Warren discovered that not one single Mexican American had been called to jury duty in the county in 25 years, he ruled for Hernandez and reversed the conviction.

In the 1950s García became increasingly politically active. In 1954 he was on the Advisory Council of the Democratic National Committee, and in 1960 he was appointed chairman of the Mexican-Spanish section of the Nationalities Division of the Democratic National Committee. Following John F. Kennedy's nomination for the presidency, García served as national chairman of the "Viva Kennedy" clubs, intended to get Mexican Americans to the polls to vote the Kennedy-Johnson ticket. Following the election, Kennedy named García to the American delegation that signed a treaty between the United States and the Federation of the West Indies in 1961. García was also instrumental in establishing a nationwide Hispanic organization, which resulted in the formation of the Political Association of Spanish Speaking Organizations (PASSO). García served as PASSO's first president.

Generosity Mixed with Impatience

García was a benevolent man, who often did not collect for his medical services. Stories of García's generosity and kindness are plentiful. He never asked for payment from those who could not afford it, and when one of his advisors sent out collection letters requesting payment on the doctors' debts, García was horrified and immediately ended any attempt to be reimbursed, saying that sending a letter to people who did not have money would not give them money to pay. He simply expected that people would pay if they could. García also helped others when ever he could. Johnny De La Fuente, a recipient of García's generosity told the Corpus Christi Times, "He was the kind of person who helped the needy until the end."

Although García was well known for his generosity with the poor, even his friends admitted that García was likely to preach democracy but function more as an authoritarian at times. He had little patience for the decision-making process that involved motions, votes, and approvals. He felt he did not have time, and the slowness inherit in the democratic process frustrated him. "There's no question that Dr. García was impatient," Judge James Deanda, former legal council for the GI Forum, told Justice for My People. Deanda recalled the frustrated comments of a labor leader, who said of García, "the trouble with Hector is that he's teaching everybody the democratic system and how to participate in it, but after he teaches you, he will not let you participate."

During the Vietnam War the GI Forum supported the Mexican Americans with family members involved in the war, including helping with the burial of the dead. García personally attended nearly 200 funerals of local Hispanic servicemen, often speaking at the service. Yet his patriotic stance during the Vietnam War put García into conflict with more radical Hispanic groups who opposed the war and held no love for Johnson. García, on the other hand, was a proud veteran who expected all Mexican Americans to be honored to serve their country, and he held Johnson as a long-time personal friend since the days of the Longoria incident. His role as a moderator who worked from within the system was viewed by more radical groups as selling out to the Anglo culture. Yet no one denied García's impact on the Hispanic community. During the 1950s Texas movie theaters, restaurants, and hotels were desegregated. In the 1960s, barber shops and beauty parlors were opened to Mexican Americans, and in the 1970s swimming pools and cemeteries were desegregated.

Remembered as a Leader Among Leaders

In 1967 Johnson appointed García as an alternate ambassador to the United Nations, where he gave the first speech by an American before the United Nations in a language other than English. He also served on the National Advisory Council on Economic Opportunity. In 1968 he was the first Hispanic appointed to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. In 1972 he became a member of the Texas Advisory Committee on Civil Rights. After entering office in 1977, Jimmy Carter asked García to serve as a member of the U.S. Circuit Judge Nominating Commission for the Western Fifth Circuit Panel. The following year Carter invited García to participate in a high level briefing on the President's Tax and Economic Program. García traveled to Washington again in 1980 on Carter's request to attend high level briefings on Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. In 1984 García was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest honor a civilian can receive in the United States. García was especially proud to receive the honor from Ronald Reagan, a Republican, proving that García's lifelong efforts crossed racial and political boundaries.

García continued his work to provide "first-class" rights for the Hispanic population. In 1987 he fought against an effort to declare English the official language of the United States. The following year he traveled to the colonias, inhabited by poverty-stricken workers along the U.S. and Mexican borders, to lobby for improved medical and sanitary services. Although he never received the national recognition awarded to Martin Luther King, García holds legendary status in South Texas.

By the 1990s García's health was fading. He had suffered a heart attack in 1980. He underwent open heart surgery shortly after the attack and again in 1985. During the late 1980s doctors discovered cancer and removed half of his stomach. In his later days, he spent a lot of time among his friends playing dominos, his favorite game at which he considered himself unmatched. He died at Memorial Medical Center in Corpus Christi on July 26, 1996, of pneumonia and congestive heart failure. The Corpus Christi Caller Times eulogized him, stating, "What this community owes Dr. Hector goes beyond his years of service as a physician or his role as a civil rights leader. He, perhaps more than any one single person, helped this community travel through a difficult period in its history, a time when ethnic and racial feelings were at a flashpoint. He did this by his appeal to higher ideals and his allegiance to the bedrock ideals of this country: fairness, equity, and patriotism. His was a remarkable life."

Sources

Books

Lamar, Howard R., ed. The New Encyclopedia of the American West. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998.

Meier, Matt. Notable Latino Americans. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1997.

Periodicals

Corpus Christi Caller Times, August 11, 1996; January 22, 2002.

New York Times, July 29, 1996.

On-line

Handbook of Texas Online, www.tsha.utexas. edu/handbook/online (June 10, 2003).

"Hector P. García: A Texas Legend," University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston, http://www.sga.utmb.edu/ulams/drGarcía (June 10, 2003).

Justice for My People, www.justiceformypeople.org (June 10, 2003).

Other

Additional information for this profile was obtained from transcripts of Justice for My People: The Dr. Hector P. García Story, a documentary produced by Jeff Felts of KET-TV, Public Television, in Corpus Christi, Texas.

—Kari Bethel