Hispanic Heritage Month: Hispanic/Latino veterans’ long fight for access to the American Dream

Mexican-Americans faced horrifying discrimination in this country. In her book "All For One & One For All," author Amy Waters Yarsinske wrote that more Mexicans were lynched in the Southwest between 1865 and 1920 than Blacks in other parts of the South in the same time frame. It was Mexican-American veterans who launched a lasting struggle to attain civil rights for all Hispanic and Latino Americans.

LULAC

The League of United Latin American Citizens was founded by World War I veterans in 1929 in Corpus Christi, Texas by Mexican-Americans struggling against discrimination. It merged with Sons of America, which had been launched in San Antonio shortly after the war, in 1921.

In addition to battling oppression and terror, LULAC's early activists wanted to retain their Latino heritage in a country they felt rejected them and their culture. From its inception, LULAC members have been required to take an oath swearing their loyalty to the government of the United States and their support of its Constitution and laws. LULAC was then and still is primarily a civil rights organization.

A LULAC council was founded in San Bernardino, California, in the early 1930s.

By the late 1930s, LULAC had established other councils in California and New Mexico.

The American GI Forum

At the beginning of World War II, LULAC almost ceased to exist because so many of its members volunteered or were drafted into the armed forces. After taking part in the preservation of freedom in World War II, soldiers of Mexican descent returned home eager to be part of the American dream. Many were awarded congressional medals of honor, distinguished service crosses, and silver and bronze stars for their courage and valor. In his book "The American GI Forum," author Henry A.J. Ramos wrote that not a single Spanish surnamed soldier deserted or was charged with cowardice or treason.

After clearly establishing their patriotism, Mexican-Americans returning home were filled with intense optimism. But they were greeted with degrading restaurant and restroom signs declaring "No Dogs or Mexicans Allowed" and "No Mexicans served here." They were refused service in barber shops and entrance into movie theaters. They could not own property in designated areas. They were not permitted to serve as jurors and their children's education was dismal. Many employers refused to hire Hispanic persons. One veteran, John J. Herrera, lamented, "we were serving in the foxholes of the South Pacific, so why couldn't we at least grow up as other Americans?"

According to Ramos, compensation checks for Mexican-American veterans from what we now know as the Department of Veterans Affairs, but was then known as the Veterans Administration, were reduced or totally eliminated without due process of law. They were denied health and education benefits they earned under the GI Bill, which benefits were afforded their Anglo counterparts. When they were treated in VA hospitals, they were placed in segregated wards.

Traditional veterans' organizations such as the American Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars lacked awareness of the concerns of Mexican-Americans. In March 1948, representatives of LULAC and a group of more than 700 Mexican-American veterans met in Corpus Christie to form the American GI Forum. They elected Hector P. Garcia, a medical doctor who rose to the level of major in the Army Medical Corps, as its leader.

The objectives of the GI Forum included aiding needy and disabled veterans, securing and protecting all veterans and their families, preserving and protecting the basic principles of democracy, and defending the United States of America.

The need for assistance to veterans kept growing as thousands of Mexican-American soldiers returned from serving in the Korean War. By the mid-1950s, there were GI Forum chapters in 13 states with sizeable Mexican-American populations. By the mid-1960s, the GI Forum had spread to many other states. Its membership exceeded 100,000.

Whereas early on, the GI Forum focused on securing VA benefits for veterans, before long it joined in LULAC's broader civil rights efforts. Beginning in the late 1950s the two organizations created a series of landmark programs for the Latino community for the advancement of all Hispanics.

The GI Forum's rapid expansion might be attributed, at least in part, to an issue that drew national attention shortly after the organization was formed.

Felix Longoria

Four years after her husband was killed in action in the Philippines, a Mexican-American soldier's widow was informed the body of Felix Longoria would be returned to his home town of Three Rivers, Texas. The widow was told by the town's only funeral home that it would arrange for the burial, but only in the town's segregated "Mexican cemetery." The family was also told it could not hold a wake to honor Private Longoria in the funeral home's chapel because "whites would not like it."

A friend of the widow contacted the GI Forum, and Dr. Garcia explained to the funeral home to no avail that the family wanted to hold the wake for a man who died defending America. The owner of the funeral home told a local newspaper reporter: "We never made a practice of letting Mexicans use the chapel and we don't want to start now."

Dr. Garcia telegrammed many politicians seeking their assistance. The GI Forum staged a peaceful protest, attended by 1,000 persons. National attention grew.

Newly elected Sen. Lyndon B. Johnson received one of Dr. Garcia's telegrams. Johnson wrote to the family that he deeply regretted the prejudice they faced. He explained he had no authority over civilian funeral homes, and neither did the federal government. Johnson did, however, arrange for burial at Arlington National Cemetery with full military honors. And that's where Felix Longoria was interred.

Dangers Faced By Both the American GI Forum and LULAC

Ramos's book describes the physical dangers GI Forum leaders faced as they tried to spread word to veterans across Texas. When they visited towns in South Texas, they were met with "welcoming committees" who threatened and humiliated them. Menacing phone calls, some to Dr. Garcia's home, promised violence. This was the McCarthy era, so some called the GI Forum a Communist-inspired subversive organization. Dr. Garcia was called an agitator, a red and a threat to American society.

Yarsinske describes similar resistance to LULAC's efforts at helping Mexican-American communities. When members were interacting with Mexican-American workers in Orange County, California in 1947, several LULAC members were rounded up by police and taken to the district attorney's office. Representatives of Associated Farmers, an anti-labor organization, apparently afraid of LULAC's efforts, watched and listened when LULAC members were detained. One of the LULAC members, who had two years of college, asked to speak with his lawyer. Apparently hearing someone request a lawyer, the district attorney emerged from an inner office and told the men from Associated Farmers, "You don't have a case." At that point, the police ordered LULAC organizers to stay out of Orange County. A publication of the Old Courthouse Museum Society says James Davis was the Orange County district attorney in 1947.

LULAC member Hector Godinez said the incident shook him up. He recalled that in the mid to late 1930s, his father took part in a strike in an orange orchard, and many of the strikers were unceremoniously driven south and taken across the border.

Legal Actions

In 1930, LULAC filed an action involving a school district's segregating children of Mexican descent into separate schools, arguing segregation was illegal. The trial judge issued an injunction prohibiting segregation based on Mexican ancestry. In Del Rio Independent School District v. Salvatierra, 33 S.W.2d 790, the Texas Court of Civil Appeals vacated the injunction and held the school district could segregate so long as its reason was not race or color. That holding left room for all sorts of mischief, such as contentions that children of Mexican descent had poor English skills, even when they spoke English, or contending that Mexican children working in the fields during part of the school year disrupted classes when they returned to school. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to take the case. 52 S. Ct. 28.

Members of the Santa Ana LULAC Council Number 147 helped organize a class action in California. Mendez v. Westminster School District, 161 F.2d 774 (9th Cir. 1947), was decided in 1947. A federal appeals court held that segregating Mexican-American children in public schools violated California law.

Likely inspired by the success in California, LULAC tried to challenge segregated schools in Texas again, the first time since 1930. In Delgado v. Bastrop Independent School District, Civil No. 388 (W.D. Tex., June 15, 1948), a federal district court declared the school district could segregate, but only after an individual student's English proficiency was tested.

LULAC and the GI Forum achieved a huge victory in 1954 before the U.S. Supreme Court in Hernandez v. Texas, 347 U.S. 475. The two organizations hired San Antonio lawyers Luis Cadena and Gustavo Garcia to defend Pete Hernandez, who had been sentenced to life in prison for murder. The attorneys contended Hernandez had been denied due process and equal protection under the 14th Amendment because all persons of Mexican descent were excluded from jury service by the state of Texas. The state's lawyers argued that persons of Mexican descent were White and that Whites were not excluded from jury service.

In the high court's analysis, it quoted a sign on a restroom door in the courthouse where Hernandez was convicted. There were two men's rooms. Other than indicating it was a restroom for men, one had no sign. The other men's restroom read: "Colored Men and Hombres Aqui." In a unanimous opinion authored by Chief Justice Earl Warren, the high court concluded petitioner "succeeded in his proof ... that persons of Mexican descent constitute a separate class in Jackson County, distinct from 'whites.'"

It is of interest that the decision in Hernandez came down on May 3, 1954. The decision in Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483, the school desegregation case, also a unanimous opinion authored by the chief justice and based on a violation of equal protection, came down on May 14, 1954.

In 1968, LULAC created the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund to provide legal services to the Hispanic community. For many decades, MALDEF has served as the legal arm of the Hispanic community in America.

400 Words

To try to deal with the language issue in schools, and wage a claim that students were being segregated on the basis of ethnicity rather than language, in the late 1950s, the GI Forum assisted LULAC in developing the Little Schools of the 400 program. Its objective was to teach pre-school children the 400 most commonly used English words. The program was very successful, and Yarsinske says it was the model used for the Headstart program the federal government launched in 1965.

The Little Schools of the 400 program was the idea of Houston Judge Alfred Hernandez. He had met a psychology professor years earlier at the University of Houston. They discussed the inability of many Mexican-American children to test well on examinations designed for mainstream America. The professor had a theory that with 400 basic words, a Latino first grader could get along in English.

In the summer of 1957, LULAC arranged for a high school sophomore to test a program with 45 students. Isabel Verver taught the students five new words a day. Eventually the program spread throughout Texas, but only after LULAC and the GI Forum were able to convince the state it saved money when children didn't have to repeat the first grade.

Today, LULAC's National Education Service Centers has a nationwide network of education centers. LNESC provides tutoring, mentoring, educational advice and millions of dollars in scholarship funds.

SER Jobs for Progress

In 1964, LULAC and the GI Forum collaborated in creating the SER Jobs for Progress program. SER is the acronym for service, employment and redevelopment, and means "to be" in Spanish. The name was selected to inspire Hispanics to be their best.

SER was run by volunteers at first, and later sought funding from the U.S. Department of Labor. Its placement centers were designed specifically to address Latinos' employment needs. The program was modeled after the Navy's Equal Opportunity Program.

By 1968, there were placement centers in San Jose, Santa Clara, Santa Ana and San Diego, California. The program quickly drew advisors from Fortune 500 companies. In 1970, SER included its Veterans Outreach Program, VOP, to assist Hispanic Vietnam veterans in finding jobs. By the 1990s, SER was a national private nonprofit organization operating 43 centers throughout the nation.

Voting Rights

Each year, both LULAC and the GI Forum made significant efforts to register Mexican-American voters. Critics said their efforts were "Communist inspired." Texas Gov. Allan Shivers, who was elected to the office in 1950, called for an investigation of the GI Forum, alleging misuse of public funds. The state attorney general cleared the Forum of any wrongdoing.

Author Edna Ferber contacted the GI Forum as part of her research for her book "Giant," published in 1952 and later made into a motion picture about Texas. Dr. Garcia spent three weeks with Ferber, providing accounts of what life was like for Mexican-Americans in Texas. The film portrays a scene where a woman from the north is shocked to learn that the gates of ranches are locked shut on election days to prevent Mexican-American workers from voting.

The GI Forum was denounced by other veterans groups for its drive to get out the vote in 1955-56. Chapters of the American Legion, Veterans of Foreign Wars and National Guardsmen refused to march with the GI Forum on Veterans Day. One Forum member published an op-ed, stating: "Members of the GI Forum paid for the right to participate in poll tax drives with the blood, the guts and the lives of their comrades left overseas."

In 1959, while running for president, Sen. John F. Kennedy became a member of the American GI Forum. He called it "a splendid organization of Spanish-speaking ex-servicemen." In the 1980s, the GI Forum was the principal advisor to President Ronald W. Reagan on Latino civil rights issues.

The GI Forum's efforts to get out the vote in Texas spread to California. In 1960, the Mexican American Political Association, MAPA, was formed and based in California. Its goal was to incorporate Spanish speaking people into American politics and society in general.

Conclusion

Among other readings to prepare for this article were four books, one of them specifically about the American GI Forum and another specifically about LULAC. Each attributes many of the same endeavors to its subject organization. I infer that veterans in each worked so closely at times that the two groups were inextricable.

As the years went by, and the leaders of the American GI Forum aged, that organization's impact was reduced. But in its heyday, it was quite influential. Its founder, Dr. Hector Garcia was appointed by President Johnson as alternate ambassador to the United Nations. The founder of the Forum's New Mexico chapter, Vicente Ximheenes, was both a commissioner on the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission and chair of the Inter-Agency Cabinet Committee on Mexican American Affairs. In 1983, President Reagan presented Dr. Garcia the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest honor the president can bestow upon a civilian.

LULAC, however, has continued to flourish. Its mission today is to advance the economic condition, educational attainment, political influence, housing, health and civil rights of the Hispanic population of the United States and Puerto Rico. Its website says it's the largest and most active membership organization serving the Latino community.

All of these developments occurred because returning veterans of Mexican descent wanted all Hispanics and Latinos to have access to the American Dream.