The Dr. Hector P. Garcia Fellowship

The Archives and Special Collections at Bell Library is lucky enough to be the home of the Dr. Hector P. Garcia Papers. Coming in at almost 360 linear feet—the length of a football field—and spanning the doctor’s entire 50+ year career in public life, you can imagine the trove of information and insight this collection represents. In 2018, when the papers came back from a year and a half in Maryland being processed, arranged and described, Dean Cate Rudowsky decided the Library needed to do something to highlight this truly unique and remarkable collection.

The result was the Dr. Hector P. Garcia Fellowship. The Fellowship is a $1,000 award designed to allow the recipient to travel to Bell Library and do research with the Dr. Hector P. Garcia Papers. Not only does this bring a researcher to the papers, it brings Dr. Hector to the world. By encouraging research into his collection, the Fellowship helps ensure that Dr. Hector’s work for justice and equality is remembered.

Fellows

2019 Fellow

Rosana Vanessa Gomez Pachon

Master's Thesis

DR. HECTOR P. GARCIA: A STUDY IN CROSS-CULTURAL COMMUNICATION LEADERSHIP 

2020 Fellow

Dr. Antonio Vásquez

Lecturer with the Department of Mexican American and Latina/o Studies at the University of Texas at Austin

I think this is the most important thing that has happened to the Mexican-American people -that we now feel that we belong to this country. That this is truly our "country" and we may keep our pride and our dignity. That we are Mexican in origin and in blood, but we also now have the feeling that we are accepted as Americans also!

Below is a transcript of a 1969 interview with David G. McComb. This interview is part of the LBJ Library which is part of the National Archives and Records Administration

Transcript

INTERVIEWEE: HECTOR GARCIA
INTERVIEWER: DAVID G. MC COMB
July 9, 1969

MCCOMB: Let me identify the tape first of all. This is an interview with Dr. Hector Garcia. I'm in his office in Corpus Christi, Texas, at 1315 Bright Street. The date is July 9, 1969, and my name is David McComb.

Now you gave me this copy of the GI Forum program of the 21^st Annual Founders' Day Banquet which has a capsule biography of you here, which I will place into the record so that anybody using this tape will have the opportunity to use this. There are several points about this that I'd like to ask you about. In the first place it says you were born in Mexico, and I'd like to know when you came to the United States.

GARCIA:  Well, Mr. McComb, I came to the United States when I was only about three and a half to four years old. I was not quite four and I was a little bit over three, so I would say approximately four years old.