Felix longoria mexican american war

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They would resonate with this.”

A local newspaper carried a story about the incident and soon it made national headlines. He was buried in the area until 1949 when his remains were shipped back to his family in Three Rivers, Texas.

When Longoria's family contacted the local funeral home to set up a wake, the owners wouldn't allow a viewing to take place in the building itself because Longoria was Mexican, and according to one owner, "the whites would not like it." The refusal exploded into a national scandal with people around the country questioning how a funeral home could disrespect a soldier who died in combat.

And although LBJ lost some supporters, he won over a generation of Mexican American voters.

The Felix Longoria affair became the subject of books, dissertations and a documentary. Many Mexican-Americans were injured in the riots, and the press called the event the "Zoot Suit Riots" despite the fact that white soldiers, not Mexican teens, were the ones doing the rioting.

Garcia was appointed to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and as a special representative and ambassador to the United Nations, tasked with improving Latin American relations.

Meanwhile, Johnson’s landmark achievements in civil rights and voting rights in the mid 1960s seemed to center more on African Americans, and the carnage of the Vietnam War flashing on American TV screens siphoned away his attention.

Beatrice Longoria didn’t like talking about what had happened. Beatrice Longoria reached out to Garcia and he got the same response from the funeral home: Mexican Americans were not allowed to hold wakes there because it would upset the Anglo community.

“A local civil rights leader in Texas recognized that of all the discrimination that Mexican Americans were facing, this was the one issue that the average American across the country would resonate with,” Pycior said.

Checks, cash and coins were mailed to Hector P. Garcia from individuals throughout the country to cover costs for the Longoria family to fly to Washington for the funeral.

Johnson’s intervention was lauded by some, but he also was blasted.

“Civil rights was controversial back then… the state Legislature had hearings, investigating and challenging what Dr.

Hector Garcia and Sen. Johnson were saying,” Pycior said.

The funeral home director and Three Rivers city leaders denied that racism was to blame for what had happened – that it was a misunderstanding. As a result of the scandal, Mexican-Americans began organizing into groups, sharing new bonds of community, and planning to demand more respect and rights from their society.

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Longoria died overseas while fighting for the United States during World War II, and he was especially unlucky, dying just over a week after he deployed there.

Public domain photo

The war had given new energy to the Mexican American civil rights movement. Garcia was a physician and veteran. The problem is so mammoth. Mexican Americans’ struggles to end terrible living conditions and segregation, and to join farmworkers’ fight for better wages and working conditions, was taking a back burner in Washington.

Mexican American Activism Evolves

When war and continued civil unrest led Johnson to announce in March 1968 that he would not run for reelection, south Texas folks knew they were losing a friend at the White House.

The junior senator from Texas at the time was Lyndon B. Johnson. After vocal protests by Garcia and his group, Johnson appointed another Forum member to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. With Johnson gone, the American G.I. Forum kept up its activism in the 1970s; today, they still advocate for veterans and do job outreach.

In recognition of this pioneering postwar Mexican American civil rights movement, President Ronald Reagan awarded Garcia the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1984, the nation’s highest civilian honor.

“Either singlehandedly or with help, he was going to end discrimination against Hispanics,” said Garcia’s brother Xicotencatl P.

Garcia. To resolve the issue, Texas Senator (and future American President) Lyndon Johnson arranged for Longoria to be buried in Arlington National Cemetery outside Washington, D.C.

The Longoria Affair resonated with Mexican-Americans across the country and received coverage in Mexico, too. Newer, younger and increasingly visible—and vocal—Chicano civil rights groups emerged, decrying the war and advocating Chicano (Mexican American) nationalism.

Some goals were the same, but theirs was a starkly different message from the previous generation’s activists’ demand for their rights as patriots and postwar Americans.

But discrimination was widespread in the region, even when violence wasn't attracting attention.

The event that brought this discrimination to national attention was the Longoria Affair, a 1949 incident in Texas involving the burial of an American soldier.

Felix Longoria in his military uniform.

In 1944, a 24 year-old Mexican-American named Felix Longoriaenlisted in the Army, and in April 1945, just a few months before the war was over, he finally left the United States for combat in the Philippines.

In nearby Corpus Christi, Hector P. Garcia had launched a new civil rights organization for Mexican American veterans called the American GI Forum. But Felix Longoria ended up at Arlington National Cemetery.

The Felix Longoria affair, or incident, galvanized Mexican Americans to demand equal treatment. It launched Dr. Héctor P. García and his newly formed American G.I.

Forum into the vanguard of the Mexican civil rights movement, while simultaneously endangering and advancing the career of Senator Lyndon B. Johnson, who arranged for Longoria's burial with full military honors in Arlington National Cemetery.

In this book, Patrick Carroll provides the first fully researched account of the Longoria controversy and its far-reaching consequences.

Just a year earlier, Dr. Hector Garcia had founded the American GI Forum to deal with discrimination against Latino veterans of World War II, and the Longoria Affair became the group's rallying cry. In Three Rivers, Mexican Americans stayed on one side of town, Anglos on the other.

Hector P.

Garcia founded the American GI Forum to advocate for Mexican American veterans.