3. Oral History Interview with Guillermo “Willie” Serna
World War II veteran Willie Serna worked as a migrant farmer and became active in the American GI Forum in Seguin, Texas (about 30 miles Northeast of San Antonio), where he and other members pushed to desegregate a public park and public schools.
He also became an organizer for the AGIF and, later, LULAC (whose history is explored in another entry on this site), helping start chapters of each throughout Texas.
Dr. Hector Garcia, if you’ve heard of him, he started the American GI Forum, that’s after we came out from the war, in World War II.
And we were the fourth group that he organized, in Seguin, and from there we went on. I mean, it was something else…
After [the Longoria Affair], it was just organizing everywhere. The first thing we did in Seguin was, there was a park there, Max Starcke Park, and they didn’t allow Mexicanos to use the swimming pool or anything…
So I told Dr. Garcia…and he says, “Well, we’ll take care of that.” He went to Austin and found out that it was a public park, cleaned by the people in the city. Then he got on ‘em and we opened up, and then we could use the park. That’s the first thing that happened in Seguin…
Dr. Garcia was something else. He and I traveled many a mile.
The first [AGIF] convention was in Kingsville and that’s where I brought everything to him and he got it on the record. And from there on, we got together, we traveled all over the state organizing the American GI Forum…
In 1970, Tony Bonilla, I don’t know if you ever heard of him, from Corpus, came here, he says, “We wanna organize a group of LULAC”-- League of the United Latin American Citizens. So, he came and made me the district director, in 1970, for organizing…
I covered 24 counties in this area around here, organizing. First was, I believe, it was Ballinger. I went there and organized the LULAC organization there. From there I went to Winters, organized it there, then I went to Abilene, organized it there, then Snyder…Odessa and Midland. Oh God, it was, like I said, 26 counties in this area…
And we did some work. We did some good work.
We organized these people, and schools, we fixed schools. We got into it.
SOURCE:
Wisely, Karen; Zapata, Joel & Serna, Willie. Oral History Interview with Willie Serna, July 25, 2016, video, July 25, 2016; (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth982483/: accessed July 12, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting TCU Mary Couts Burnett Library.