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Courtesy of Handbook of
Texas Online, s.v. "," http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/GG/fga51.html
GARCIA, GUSTAVO C. (1915-1964).
Gustavo (Gus) C. Garcia, Mexican-American civil-rights lawyer, was born on
July 27, 1915, in Laredo
to Alfredo and Maria Teresa (Arguindegui) Garcia. The family moved to San Antonio, where
Garcia attended Catholic and public schools and graduated as the first
valedictorian from Thomas Jefferson High in 1932. He received an academic
scholarship to the University
of Texas, where he
received a B.A. degree in 1936 and an LL.B. in 1938. He passed the bar exam
in the latter year.
Garcia was assistant to Bexar
County district attorney John Schook
in 1938 and to assistant city attorney Victor Keller in 1941, when he was
drafted for service in World War II.qv He became a first
lieutenant in the United States
infantry and was stationed in Japan
with the judge advocate corps. After the war he returned to San Antonio. When the United Nations was
founded in 1945 in San Francisco
he participated. On February 1, 1947, he joined the office of the Mexican
Consulate General in San Antonio.
In April 1947 he filed suit on school authorities in Cuero to force closure
of the Mexican school there. After the Mendez v. Westminster ISD case
ended de jure segregation of Mexican-descent children in California, Garcia filed a similar suit in Texas, aided by Robert C. Eckhardt of Austin and A. L. Wirin of the Los Angeles
Civil Liberties Union. Delgado v. Bastrop
ISDqv (1948) made illegal the segregation of children of
Mexican descent in Texas.
In 1939-40 Garcia served as legal advisor to the League
of United Latin American Citizens.qv He was elected to the
San Antonio Independent School District Board of Education in April 1948 and
resigned around December 1952. He helped revise the 1949 LULAC Constitution
to permit non-Mexican Americans to become members. That year he also served
as lawyer to the family of Felix Longoria (see FELIX LONGORIA AFFAIR)
and helped contract negotiations for the rights of workers in the United
States-Mexico Bracero Program. On May 8, 1950, Garcia and George I. Sanchezqv
appeared before the State Board of Education to seek desegregation
enforcement. Garcia was legal advisor to the American G.I. Forumqv
from 1951 to 1952. He worked to pass a general antidiscrimination bill in Texas, served on the
first board of directors of the American Council of Spanish Speaking Peopleqv
and the Texas Council on Human Relations,qv and helped the
School Improvement League (the Pro Schools Defence Leagueqv),
the League of Loyal Americans, the Mexican Chamber of Commerce, and the Pan
American Optimist Club. In 1952 the University of Texas Alba
Club named him "Latin of the Year."
Around 1952 Garcia was an attorney in the case of Hernandez
v. State of Texas. On January 19, 1953, he and attorney Carlos Cadena of San Antonio filed a writ
of certiorari with the United States Supreme Court to seek review of the
Hernandez case, since the trial was decided by an all-white jury in Edna.
When Garcia appeared before the Supreme Court on January 11, 1954, Chief
Justice Earl Warren gave him sixteen extra minutes to present his argument.
The Supreme Court voted unanimously in favor of Hernandez.
In 1955 Garcia had several hospital stays, probably
because of a struggle with alcohol. Invitations to LULAC and the G.I. Forum
meetings and conventions declined by 1956. That year Garcia and Homero M.
Lopez operated a law firm in Kingsville.
After Garcia passed several bad checks in December 1960 and January 1961,
James Tafolla, Jr., and seven other lawyers of San Antonio filed a complaint against him
seeking disbarment. His law license was suspended from August 1961 until
August 1963.
Garcia was married three times and had two children with
his second wife. He died of a seizure in an office in the Old Farmer's Market
on June 3, 1964, and was buried with full military honors at Fort Sam Houston National
Cemetery at San Antonio. LULAC arranged his services;
in July 1964 the league established the Gus C. Garcia Memorial Fund. A San Antonio Junior High School was named after
Garcia. In 1983 the Gus Garcia Memorial Foundation was established in San Antonio to sponsor
programs and other media events to recognize his contribution.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Carl Allsup, The American G.I. Forum:
Origins and Evolution (University of Texas Center for Mexican American
Studies Monograph 6, Austin, 1982). Guadalupe San Miguel, Jr., "Let
All of Them Take Heed": Mexican Americans and the Campaign for
Educational Equality in Texas
(Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987).
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