The Longoria affair: Soldier&#;s burial was a flashpoint for Mexican American civil rights movement
From the Voces Oral History Center:
Before World War II, Felix Longoria sometimes worked in oil fields, other times helping with his father’s fencing business in Three Rivers, about an hour northwest of Corpus Christi. He was a husband and the father of a small daughter.
Longoria enlisted in the Army in the fall of when he was 26 years old. He was shipped to the Philippines. In June, , Longoria was killed in action. As was the custom at the time, he was buried in the Philippines. Later, Beatrice Longoria, the soldier’s widow, asked for her husband’s remains to be exhumed and returned to his hometown.
“His widow approached the funeral home to get a viewing of the body, to get a wake,” said historian Julie Pycior, who has researched the Felix Longoria story. “The funeral home director refused to let this veteran be in this funeral home … because the whites wouldn’t like it.”
It was a time of racial segregation throughout the country. In Three Rivers, Mexican Americans stayed on one side of town, Anglos on the other.
He
Felix Longoria's wake : bereavement, racism, and the rise of Mexican American activism
1 online resource (xviii, pages) :
"Carroll provides abundant evidence of the importance of the Longoria incident for Mexican Americans, for a rising Lyndon Johnson, for Texas politics, and, indirectly, for U.S. society. His insights have the potential of appealing to both historians and general readers, particularly those interested in Mexican American and/or Texas history."--Julie Leininger Pycior, author of Lyndon Johnson and Mexican Americans: The Paradox of Power Private First Class Felix Longoria earned a Bronze Service Star, a Purple Heart, a Good Conduct Medal, and a Combat Infantryman's badge for service in the Philippines during World War II. Yet the only funeral parlor in his hometown of Three Rivers, Texas, refused to hold a wake for the slain soldier because "the whites would not like it." Almost overnight, this act of discrimination became a defining moment in the rise of Mexican American activism. It launched Dr. Hector P. García and his newly formed American G.I. Forum into the vanguard of the Mexican civil rights movement, while simultaneously endangering and advancing th
The Longoria Affair: A Soldier’s Burial That Became a Symbol of Mexican-American Rights
“The whites wouldn’t like it,” was the response the director of a funeral home gave Private Felix Z. Longoria’s widow after the soldier died serving the U.S. while fighting against the Japanese during World War II.
Longoria was a native of Three Rivers, Texas, and his remains were returned from the island of Luzon in the Philippines in , around four years after he was killed on a volunteer mission during the last days of the war.
His body was sent to the small Texas city for burial at the Three Rivers Cemetery, where Beatriz, Longoria’s wife, was denied the use of the funeral chapel and was told that her husband’s body would be laid to rest in the “Mexican section” of the cemetery, which was separated by a barbed wire. The Longorias were, of course, a Mexican-American family.
In a short matter of time, the case became known as the Longoria Affair.
The Longoria family spoke to Dr. Hector García, an activist and founder of the American G.I. Forum, on January 10, , who also called the funeral home director just to be turned down.
After the denial of the soldier’s proper burial, Garcí
The Longoria Affair
About the Documentary
Sixty years ago in Three Rivers, Texas, the only funeral home in town refused to hold a wake for Felix Longoria, a decorated Mexican American soldier killed in battle during World War II. Longoria’s widow was told, simply, “The whites wouldn’t like it.” Those words became front-page news across the country, sparking outrage and setting off a series of events that would come to be known as the Longoria Affair. The incident fueled the rise of a national civil rights movement led by Mexican American veterans, and bitterly divided Three Rivers for generations to come. Two stubborn and savvy leaders, newly elected Senator Lyndon Johnson and activist Dr. Hector Garcia, formed an alliance over the incident. Over the next 15 years, their complex, sometimes contentious relationship would help Latinos become a national force for the first time in American history, carry John F. Kennedy to the White House, and ultimately lead to Johnson’s signature on the most important civil rights legislation of the 20th century. Today the town of Three Rivers still struggles with its past. Local musician and activist Santiago Hernandez wants to hon
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