Political & Civic Engagement

Juliet Garcia forged her own way into the all-male “club” of Texas community college presidents to become president of Brownsville’s Texas Southmost College in 1986.

Eventually, she would become the president of the University of Texas at Brownsville, a merged institution that grew out of a lawsuit by communities along the Texas-Mexico border and South Texas.

Garcia was born in 1949 in Brownsville, Texas. Her mother, Paulita Lozano Villareal, worked as a housekeeper and died when Garcia was only 9 years old.

Austin attorney Hector De Leon considers himself lucky to have been born in Austin and raised in East Austin.

“Without being born in Austin, Texas, I wouldn’t have been able to go to college,” he said.

He grew up not far from the University of Texas, where he would earn both a bachelor’s and a law degree. He also lived close to the state Capitol, where he first met one of his lifelong mentors, Henry B. Gonzalez, a state senator at the time. He keeps a photo of Henry B., as he is affectionately known, in his office.

By the time her husband began pushing the idea of greater participation by Mexican Americans in her small South Texas town, Maria Ramirez Garcia had developed a strong and broad network of contacts who could support the effort.

Garcia was born July 2, 1940, in Taft, Texas, 136 miles southeast of San Antonio. She and her sisters worked in a segregated movie theater while her mother, father and five older brothers were migrant workers in the cotton fields.

In high school in El Paso, TX, Mario Lewis was told to forget college, that he “could not compete with Anglos,” recalled Lewis, a Mexican American. But others saw promise in Lewis as he became active in the Junior League of United Latin American Citizens, which put him on a path to law school and a career of service to equal justice. Lewis was born Feb. 15, 1947, in El Paso, Texas. He graduated from the University of Texas at El Paso in 1970. Three years later, he graduated from the University of Southern California Law School.

By: Voces Staff

By: Voces Staff

By: Voces Staff

Diana Fernandez was born in 1950 in Corpus Christi, Texas. She grew up in a newly developed, integrated neighbored designed to serve people working at the Navy base. Pursuing higher education was not a continuous topic of discussion in Fernandez’s household but it was expected of her and her two sisters. Living in an integrated neighborhood allowed Fernandez to also experience that same integration in the classroom at Incarnate Word Academy. The all-girl school included students from nearby cities.

By: Voces Staff

Jaime Chahin is an advocate for educational equality in Texas. He was the lead witness in the LULAC v Richards case in 1987 that dealt with educational inequality in the South Texas/Border region. He is now a Dean at Texas State College; he has spent his life encouraging, inspiring and prompting minority men and women to live beyond their expectations and assisting them as they pursue higher educational opportunities. 

By: Voces Staff