2. Oral History Interview with Dr. Hector P. Garcia

The excerpt below is from a 1969 interview of Dr. Hector P. Garcia by historian David McComb. In it, Garcia recounts the founding of the American GI Forum and some of the group’s early projects, notably including the “Longoria Affair,” in which a funeral home in Three Rivers, Texas (between Corpus Christi and San Antonio) refused access to the family of Private Felix Longoria, who had been killed in action during World War II.

GARCIA: [In World War II] I volunteered as an infantry officer from Nebraska when I finished my surgical residency, because I had stayed two years. So, I volunteered to go into the military service as an infantry officer.

MCCOMB: And then you were in the Major Medical Corps?

GARCIA: That’s right, I served in the Medical Corps.

MCCOMB: Then after the war, you founded American GI Forum in 1948. Now I’d like to know what motivated you to do this. Why did you set up the GI Forum?...

GARCIA: Well, Mr. McComb, actually the way the American GI Forum started…When I came back from the service…I came back to Corpus Christi. I happened to have an office next to our present congressman of today, Congressman John Young, who was at that time getting out of the Navy, and I set up my office next to the Veterans Administration.

They needed doctors at that time, doctors were scarce to start with, and they put me on a contract basis or a “fee basis,” so I got to know the veterans from this area. In fact, I was the “veterans’ doctor” although I was not working under the Veterans Administration per se, I was merely a private doctor helping out with individual veterans’ cases, and getting paid on a piecemeal basis.

Well, it happened that at that time the returning sick veterans met some opposition in hospitalization here because the Navy hospital would say, “This is a naval hospital, not a veterans hospital.” So, more or less, although we had a certain amount of beds under contract, the Veterans Administration limited us. In fact, they practically limited us to emergencies.

So, one day in 1948, actually about February, we got together. All the veterans—not necessarily the Mexican Americans but all of us—to protest the actions of the naval hospital in Corpus Christi in limiting the number of veterans who could go to the hospital—and also practically requiring that they be emergencies, which means they would be dying. We thought it was an unfair deal, so we got together a group of veterans—all of us, blacks, Mexican Americans and Anglos—to protest this limitation.

Well, at that time we were starting, the veterans’ schools, which were more or less “basic educational courses.” No sooner had we achieved a certain success of victory in opening the Naval Hospital, because the number of beds were increased, that the veterans pointed out to me that the government was holding back the “subsistence checks” of many of these veterans who were taking basic academic classes.

Now, of course, at that time most of the veterans were Mexican Americans, and they averaged less than two years of school. So, they were going to quit because they needed the money, they had no other jobs, their families were pressuring them and wives were getting upset. So, they said, “Doctor, let’s get organized together and protest the Veterans Administration’s failure to send us the subsistence checks.”

So, then we got organized, not necessarily as a Mexican American organization, although then by necessity we were working on veterans’ education. And then I got to know the schools and the educational system of the basic educational courses, so that night we decided we’d go ahead and get organized and of course the name “American GI Forum” came up at that meeting here in Corpus Christi in March 26, 1948.

I was elected and the vice chairman was an Anglo and the secretary was an Anglo and the treasurer was a Mexican American, Mr. Montoya—Greg Montoya. So, then we decided that we had to help the veterans because of the bad conditions of other situations. So, we organized American GI Forum groups all over this south Texas area.

…By the end of the year 1948, we were in many cities in this area—in practically all the area from south of San Antonio to the Valley, and certainly from Laredo to Corpus Christi. So, we became a statewide organization known as the American GI Forum of Texas, the first meeting Being held in Corpus Christi to organize statewide.

MCCOMB: Did you run into a great deal of discrimination toward Mexican Americans?

GARCIA: Oh yes, definitely we did, because at this time no sooner had we gotten organized in this manner than one of my patients here, Mrs. Felix Longoria [Editor’s note: it was customary during this period to refer to a married women by her husband’s first and last name] came to see me about discrimination against her deceased husband…Mrs. Felix Longoria was a widow that had moved here to Corpus Christi with her daughter Adelita because her husband, Felix Longoria, had been killed in the Philippines in World War II.

…Felix was to be brought back for re-burial in Three Rivers. Mrs. Longoria, in respect to the tradition and culture of a Mexican American and the Catholic, gave the choice to Felix’s mother and father as to where they wanted Felix brought back and reburied. They chose their hometown, being of course, Three Rivers. They wanted him buried there.

Well, during the time that Mrs. Felix Longoria was making the arrangements in Three Rivers with the Rice Funeral Home, they refused her the use of the chapel. By this time, Felix Longoria was already on his way back. Originally being interred in Luzon, Philippines, was being brought back for reburial. So, Sara brought over Mrs. Longoria with her little daughter Adelita, who was just three or four years at that time, and she was also crying. I thought it was a horrible shame that a soldier who had died for his country would have been refused the use of the funeral home. They were the only funeral home, there [in Three Rivers].

To quote the funeral home director, “The whites wouldn’t like it.”

I thought it was an awful travesty of decency, justice and certainly Christianity that this war hero would be refused a decent, humanitarian burial. Well, we tried to deal with the director of the funeral home, the Rice Funeral Home. He wouldn’t move. He said, “No, we’re not going to let the Mexicans use the chapel of our funeral home.” Which actually meant not using the funeral home.

MCCOMB: Was this the only one in the city?

GARCIA: It was the only one in the city, and of course it made no difference even though we had a separate cemetery. They had separate cemeteries for Anglos and Mexicans. Yes, this was the only funeral home in the city.

MCCOMB: It was privately owned?

GARCIA:  Funeral homes are privately owned, although they get a state charter or permission or license from the state. So, we tried to convince everyone it was wrong but the funeral home didn’t change. In desperation somebody said, “Call Senator Lyndon Johnson.”

…I put in a call to Senator Lyndon Johnson in Washington and of course by that time I had been practicing medicine here in Corpus Christi for two years. We had run against a racist wall in Three Rivers, and this wall was a wall of racist attitude, discrimination and hate. I called Senator Johnson and he said, “Well, Dr. Garcia, let me assure you, tell Mrs. Longoria I’ll help!”

I was speaking for Mrs. Longoria, not necessarily for the GI Forum, and the Longoria family out of Three Rivers. We had been meeting every day and every night for about two weeks in desperation. Still, we wanted Texas to bury Felix Longoria. He was a Texan. So, finally we reached a point where nothing could be done.

Then I called Senator Johnson and this is what he told me. He said, “Dr. Garcia, I promise you this. You try to talk to the Governor and try to talk to everyone and see if Felix can be buried in Three Rivers. After all, this is where he should be buried, and if not, I promise you that we’ll bury him with full military honors at the National Cemetery in Arlington.”

SOURCE:

Oral history transcript, Hector Garcia, interview 1 (I), 7/9/1969, by David G. McComb, LBJ Library Oral Histories, LBJ Presidential Library, accessed June 21, 2024, https://www.discoverlbj.org/item/oh-garciah-19690709-1-74-277