American G.I. Forum

In the spring of 1948, after experiencing years of segregation and inequality as repayment for extensive honorable service in World War II, Mexican American veterans met in Corpus Christi, Texas, to found the American G.I. Forum (AGIF). Led by Dr. Hector P. Garcia, the AGIF challenged not only discrimination in military benefits but also in housing, education, health care, and politics. The AGIF has persisted over the past six decades by evolving to meet contemporary issues in the Mexican American community, working with other Chicano civil rights organizations, and serving as a model and training ground for Mexican American leaders. Women's, youth, and senior auxiliaries of the AGIF have made it a family organization bridging generations.

The 1944 Serviceman's Readjustment Act, popularly known as the G.I. Bill of Rights, was the product of the Bonus Army March during the Great Depression and fears of another possible economic crisis upon the return of so many men back into the domestic economy as the war neared its end. The G.I. Bill provided unemployment pay to help transitioning veterans; loan guarantees for homes, businesses or farms; and education and training. The inability of Mexican Americans to access these benefits, or use local American Legion clubs that were “whites only,” was unacceptable to returning veterans and their families. Leadership and negotiating the military bureaucracy were two things Mexican Americans learned from their service, and they applied that knowledge to the creation of the AGIF, which moved from the awarding of basic benefits to discrimination on draft boards and lagging health care. It fought for migrant workers, students, and voters.

The case of Private Felix Longoria of Three Rivers, Texas, provided a successful platform for the launching of AGIF issues to a larger audience. Private Longoria was killed in action in the Philippines, yet his family was denied use of Rice Funeral Home for services because the funeral director contended whites would not like it, and the cemetery was segregated. Longoria's widow and sister-in-law contacted Dr. Hector P. Garcia to see what might be done about the matter. Garcia brought national attention to the case of Felix Longoria, prompting then Texas Senator [Page 196]Lyndon Baines Johnson to have Longoria buried with honors in Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia, in 1949.

In 1954, the AGIF took up the case of Pete Hernández (Hernández v. Texas) in conjunction with the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC); the case went to the U.S. Supreme Court and expanded the understanding and application of the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. Hernández v. Texas recognized class bias in jury selection as equal to race, and that was more than just a black–white binary. It eventually led to Mexican Americans being recognized as an ethnic minority group in the state. The G.I. Forum also ensured enforcement of the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka decision in the Texas Supreme Court by challenging violations by local school districts.

The G.I. Forum expanded across the country in the late 1950s and engaged in electoral work on behalf of John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. Following the victory of Kennedy, forum members rose to a few positions of national leadership. In the late 1960s, forum charter member Vicente T. Ximenes was appointed the head of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), and Dr. Garcia was appointed by President Johnson as alternate ambassador to the United Nations. Dr. Garcia addressed the UN in Spanish, the first time the nation was represented in a language other than English. Garcia and other forum members marched with farm workers in Texas in 1968 and continued to expand their work beyond veterans’ affairs to address veterans’ communities and broad socioeconomic and political conditions.

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