Héctor Pérez García (1914-1996) was a courageous leader in the civil rights movement who achieved profound change in the treatment of Mexican-Americans through peaceful protest and legal recourse. Born in Mexico, he fled with his family to the United States in 1917 when the Mexican Revolution endangered them, and they legally settled in Mercedes. In 1932, he was valedictorian of his Mercedes High School class. He graduated with honors from the University of Texas in 1936, earned a medical degree from the University of Texas Medical School at Galveston in 1940, and then completed a two-year residency in Nebraska. In 1942, García volunteered for the U.S. Army and served as an officer and Medical Corps surgeon. 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, he moved his young family to Corpus Christi, where he opened a private practice with his brother. Drawn to addressing the concerns of Mexican-American veterans, he and others formed the American G.I. Forum in March 1948. Through the incident later named the Longoria Affair, García and the Forum gained national attention, and the publicity broadened Forum activities to include education reform, desegregation, farm labor, and poll tax repeal. In 1966, President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed García as alternate Ambassador to the United Nations with a directive to improve relations with Latin America and Spain. His activities foreshadowed much of the struggle for Mexican-Americans after World War Two, and his life affected society from the poorest barrios to the highest echelons of government.