Dr. Hector P. García

The García family reached Mercedes in 1918 and began with manual labor before the father joined his brothers in the dry goods business. Hector finished as valedictorian of his Mercedes High School class in 1932, which the Handbook of Texas calls a segregated school, and his father cashed in his life insurance to pay for Edinburg Junior College. The city library took his name in 2010. The Felix Longoria case that made him known nationally unfolded at Three Rivers in 1949, far from here. Texas observes the third Wednesday of September as Dr. Hector P. García Day.

What the plaque says

Dr. Hector P. García Hector Perez Garcia (1914-1996) was a courageous leader in the Civil Rights movement. He achieved profound change in the treatment of fellow Mexican-Americans through peaceful protest and legal recourse. Garcia was born in Mexico; in 1917, when the Mexican Revolution endangered his family, they fled to the United States, legally taking up residence in Mercedes. In 1932, Garcia was valedictorian of his Mercedes High School class. He graduated with honors from the Univ. of Texas (1936), earned a medical degree from the Univ. of Texas Medical School at Galveston (1940), then completed a two-year residency in Nebraska. In 1942, Dr. Garcia volunteered for the U.S. Army and served as an officer and medical corps surgeon. When discharged as a major in 1945, he had earned a bronze star with six battle stars for service in north Africa and Italy. In 1946, Garcia moved his young family to Corpus Christi, where he opened a private practice with his brother. Dr. Garcia found himself drawn to addressing concerns of Mexican-American veterans. In March 1948, he and others formed the American G.I. Forum. Through the incident later named the Longoria Affair, Dr. Garcia and the Forum gathered national attention. The publicity brought an expansion to forum activities including education reform, desegregation, farm labor, and poll tax repeal. In 1966, President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed Garcia as Alternate Ambassador to the United Nations, with a directive to improve relations with Latin America and Spain. Dr. Garcia's activities foreshadowed much of the struggle for Mexican-Americans after World War II. A figure of national and international prominence, his life has impacted society from the poorest barrios to the highest echelons of government. Years of Texas Independence - 1836-2011

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge — 15 mi
  About 2,000 acres of river forest on the Rio Grande's north bank, the surviving part of Benigno Leal's 1834 land grant, kept as a refuge since 1943 where two bird migration routes meet.
• Museum of South Texas History — 19 mi
  Edinburg's regional museum, begun in 1967 in the 1910 Hidalgo County jail and now telling the Rio Grande's story from fossils and native peoples through steamboats to the 20th century.
• La Lomita Chapel — 26 mi
  A small sandstone chapel on the Rio Grande levee, built by Oblate missionaries in 1865 and rebuilt at this site in 1899, the landmark that gave the city of Mission its name.
• Palo Alto Battlefield National Historical Park — 28 mi
  A flat coastal prairie north of Brownsville where Taylor's army and Arista's Army of the North fought the first major battle of the Mexican War on May 8, 1846, now interpreted from both sides.

More markers nearby

• The Hidalgo County Bank and Trust Company — steps away
• Mercedes Enterprise — steps away
• The American Rio Grande Land and Irrigation System — 0.2 mi
• Temple Beth Israel — 0.4 mi