[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 117 (Friday, August 2, 1996)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E1475]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      TRIBUTE TO DR. HECTOR GARCIA

                                 ______
                                 

                       HON. EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON

                                of texas

                    in the house of representatives

                         Friday, August 2, 1996

  Ms. EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I rise in 
remembrance of a great man of Texas. The passing of Mr. Hector P. 
Garcia of Corpus Christi was a significant loss to the State of Texas 
and to Mexican-Americans throughout the Southwest.
  Dr. Garcia was a caring physician and a leader in the postwar 
struggle for Hispanic civil rights. He was the first Mexican-American 
appointed to serve on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. In 1984, he 
was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
  In 1954, the American GI Forum, of which he was the founder, joined 
with the League of United Latin American Citizens to send a team of 
attorneys to successfully argue a case before the U.S. Supreme Court. 
The decision cleared the way for Hispanics to serve on trial juries.
  A veteran of World War II campaigns in North Africa and Italy, Dr. 
Garcia always held America to its promises. He first gained national 
prominence because of a civil rights case in Three Rivers, TX. A 
funeral home there denied the use of its chapel to the family of a 
Mexican-American soldier who had been killed in the Philippines 4 years 
earlier and whose remains had just been transported to Texas for 
burial. Through the efforts of Dr. Garcia and then Senator Lyndon 
Johnson, the young Mexican-American was buried with full honors in 
Arlington National Cemetery.
  With his passing, Texas has lost a great civil rights leader, and a 
great man.

                          ____________________