The Lyndon Johnson who called in his staff now was a Lyndon Johnson in the grip of his emotions. “You all get on the phone,” he said, and his staff ran to obey, and within a few minutes after he had first read the telegram—“immediately, really,” Connally was to recall—“not only I but Walter was on the phone arranging things.” “His immediate reaction was he [Longoria] was eligible to be buried in Arlington,” Connally says. “This was an instinctive thing—his instinctive sense of fairness and his basic feelings…. It had to do with outrage. Here was a veteran who died for his country and he can’t be buried in his hometown.” And no one could have translated that outrage into action more effectively. The decision to have the burial in Arlington was so right, so perfectly suited to correct an injustice. A veteran’s hometown had refused to bury him with the ordinary honors that any dead soldier who died for his country deserved; so Lyndon Johnson had arranged that the veteran would be buried with full honors, in a place of deep symbolic significance. And his telegram back to Dr. Garcia, sent that afternoon after several calls to check to make sure that Garcia’s account was accurate, was so right. “I DEEPLY REGRET TO LEARN THAT THE PREJUDICE OF SOME INDIVIDUALS EXTENDS EVEN BEYOND THIS LIFE,” Lyndon Johnson’s telegram said. “I HAVE NO AUTHORITY OVER CIVILIAN FUNERAL HOMES, NOR DOES THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT,” he explained. However, he said, that did not mean that he, or Beatrice Longoria, was without recourse—glorious recourse. “I HAVE TODAY MADE ARRANGEMENTS TO HAVE FELIX LONGORIA REBURIED WITH FULL MILITARY HONORS IN ARLINGTON NATIONAL CEMETERY HERE AT WASHINGTON WHERE THE HONORED DEAD OF OUR NATION’S WARS REST.” Or, he told Garcia, should the widow desire to have her husband’s body buried nearer his home, “HE CAN BE REBURIED AT FORT SAM HOUSTON NATIONAL MILITARY CEMETERY AT SAN ANTONIO.” Just tell him what was desired, Lyndon Johnson telegraphed. It would be done. “IF HIS WIDOW DESIRES TO HAVE HIM REBURIED IN EITHER CEMETERY, SHE SHOULD SEND ME A TELEGRAM.” And Lyndon Johnson knew, because he knew the Mexican immigrants of South Texas, that the widow might be very poor. She should send her telegram collect, he said. And, he added, whichever cemetery she selects, she should not worry about the cost. “THERE WILL BE NO COST.”
And there were still other sentences in Lyndon Johnson’s telegram. “THIS INJUSTICE AND PREJUDICE IS DEPLORABLE,” he said. “I AM HAPPY TO HAVE A PART IN SEEING THAT THIS TEXAS HERO IS LAID TO REST WITH THE HONOR AND DIGNITY HIS SERVICE DESERVES.” After reading the telegram over one last time to make sure it accurately expressed his sentiments, he told Connally to send it out—at once.
Dr. Garcia had called an emergency rally of the G.I. Forum in a Corpus Christi elementary school for that evening, and when he walked out on the stage, before an audience of more than a thousand people, he was holding Johnson’s telegram, and he read it to the audience, and as he did, men and women began to stand up and cheer, some of them with their fists in the air, and the whole audience cheered when Garcia announced that Beatrice Longoria had selected Arlington as her husband’s resting place. She herself replied to Johnson by a telegram. It was addressed to “Senator Lyndon B. Johnson, House of the Senate, Washington, D.C.” “HUMBLY GRATEFUL FOR YOUR KINDNESS IN MY HOUR OF HUMILIATION AND SUFFERING,” the telegram said. “FOREVER GRATEFUL FOR YOUR KINDNESS,” it said. And when, the next day, Walter Jenkins drafted a reply—“IN VIEW OF YOUR DESIRE … HAVE COMPLETED NECESSARY ARRANGEMENTS …”—Johnson was dissatisfied with the formality of its tone, which extended even to its closing sentence, a typical sentence from his form letter to constituents, which said that he was pleased to help. He sat there staring at Jenkins’ draft for a long minute, and then crossed out that sentence and wrote in his own hand another sentence, which hinted at the depth to which his heart had been enlisted in the widow’s cause. Instead of saying merely that he was pleased to help, the telegram now said that he was proud to help, “I AM PROUD TO BE OF ASSISTANCE,” Lyndon Johnson wrote.
Johnson called in William S. White, and on January 13, the story was on the front page of the New York Times, under the headline, “GI, OF MEXICAN ORIGIN, DENIED RITES IN TEXAS, TO BE BURIED IN ARLINGTON,” and with a quote from Johnson as perfect as the lines in his telegram; “I am sorry about the funeral home at Three Rivers,” he had told White. “But there is, after all, a fine national funeral home, though of a rather different sort, out at Arlington.” He telephoned Walter Winchell in New York. “The State of Texas, which looms so large on the map, certainly looks small tonight,” Winchell told his national radio audience that evening. Newspapers across Latin America and the United States picked up the story—“U.S. TO BURY MEXICAN G.I., SPURNED BY TEXAS HOME,” the headlines said; “G.I. DENIED REBURIAL IN TEXAS TO GET FULL ARLINGTON HONORS”—even newspapers in Texas, not in South Texas perhaps but in the rest of the state. “A ringing blow for Latin-American relations, downright Democracy and plain ordinary humanity was struck by Texas’ junior Senator,” the Sherman Democrat editorialized. “Felix Longoria will be buried at Arlington National Cemetery, that haven where America pays its highest respect for its outstanding battle heroes.” “A WRONG IS RIGHTED” was the headline in the Denison Press. From New York City came a wire from a Veterans of Foreign Wars post saying that its members would consider it an honor and a privilege if the post’s chaplain could officiate at Private Longoria’s reburial. And if a note of pure grace were needed to this explosion of feeling, it was provided by a letter that Lyndon Johnson wrote to Beatrice Longoria on January 13, because he felt that, as he wrote her, “It was impossible for me to express to you in my telegram yesterday the deep sympathy I feel for you in this hour. I am honored to have some small share in making possible your husband’s reburial in Arlington National Cemetery, where many of our most honored heroes lie buried. I know your heart would be warmed if you could read and hear the many, many kind and thoughtful expressions of unselfish sympathy which have come to my office today…. We want to be helpful to you in every way possible…. My only desire is to be helpful, whenever and however you call upon me. Your wishes will guide me in all that I do, and I will be glad to do all that I possibly can.” Describing Johnson’s feelings during the first days of the Longoria incident, John Connally was to say years later that “His reaction was outrage, it was outrage over injustice, it was instinctive, it was real—it was from his heart.”
AND THEN, as John Connally was to recall, “We began to backtrack.”
Although Connally and Jenkins felt that Johnson’s initial reaction to Hector Garcia’s telegram—the reaction that governed his responses completely for the first three days of the Longoria drama—was not calculation but outrage, the two aides were not blind to political advantages that would accrue from his decision to help Beatrice Longoria, since the returning Mexican-American veterans were becoming politically active in South Texas and Johnson’s decision placed him firmly on their side. In that sense, Jenkins was to say, his decision “helped him immeasurably. I think they [the Mexican-Americans] felt like they had a friend maybe for the first time that would champion at least a small cause.” In fact, Mexican-American leaders like Dr. Garcia felt that they might have for the first time a champion for causes that were not small. A United States senator had taken their part against the Anglos, had stood up for them against discrimination; might not that senator right other wrongs, help them pass the laws they needed so badly? A champion gave them someone to rally behind, and they rallied behind him. Members of the American G.I. Forum “were inspired, energized,” Dr. Pycior recounts. “For the first time a Texas senator had treated them as full-fledged constituents, had responded to their call. Messages, money, and letters of support poured into the Forum headquarters…. From all over Texas Mexican-Americans were inundating their new senator with thanks and advice.” In the Senator’s office, recalls John Connally, “The phones were ringing off the wall.”
The first significant sign of trouble came—on the morning of Wednesday, January 14, the fourth day of the drama—in one of the telephone calls, from United Press reporter Warr
en Duffee. He asked Horace Busby, who took the call, if Senator Johnson would care to comment on a statement just released by undertaker Kennedy and S. F. Ramsey, president of the First State Bank of Three Rivers and of the town’s Chamber of Commerce, that denied that racial factors had been involved in the matter of Longoria’s burial. Kennedy’s statement said, “I did not at any time refuse to bury him or allow the use of the chapel,” but that “I did discourage it”—not “because he was Latin American” but solely because “of friction that I heard existed between members of the [Longoria] family.” He said, “I thought I was avoiding any trouble at the funeral home by asking Mrs. Longoria to use her house.” He said he had written Mrs. Longoria to say that “If there was a misunderstanding on my part, my apologies are extended. If you still want use of our funeral chapel and want us to conduct services, we will be only too glad to be of service.” Ramsey accused Johnson of having exploited the “misunderstanding” for political reasons. “It is our feeling that Johnson capitalized on this situation to further his own standing with the Latin-American population in Texas.” Three Rivers, Ramsey said, was a town notably free of racial discrimination. “You’ll find no town in South Texas that has enjoyed better relations between Latin-Americans and whites.” (That was probably true.) “Our town is ashamed of the publicity we have received,” he said. “We didn’t deserve it.”
Busby advised Johnson not to comment, saying “Any answer might cause the public to question just what your motives really were, and it would be less than dignified to enter a quarrel now,” and for the moment that was the stance that Johnson adopted, but that afternoon, at the monthly meeting of the steering committee of the “Texas Exes,” the Washington chapter of the University of Texas alumni association, in Dale Miller’s suite at the Mayflower Hotel, a heated argument broke out over the Longoria incident, and during it Miller said, “It’s too bad that one man down in Three Rivers could bring on an international incident. It’s even worse, though, that some of the men in Congress would try to capitalize on it for their own political position.” Connally put a typed report of the argument on Johnson’s desk, with the diplomatically worded notation, “Senator, this is interesting.” Johnson understood at once the seriousness of the report. Dale Miller, son of Roy, had succeeded not only to his father’s sprawling Mayflower suite but also to his mantle as Texas’ preeminent lobbyist, Washington representative of the Texas Gulf Sulphur Corporation, of an impressive array of oil and natural gas companies, and of business associations, including the Dallas Chamber of Commerce. Influential and popular, host for eighteen years of Sam Rayburn’s annual birthday party, Miller was the very heart of the conservative Texas establishment. He had, moreover, consistently been among Johnson’s staunchest supporters, persuading other conservatives to support him even when they were reluctant to do so, telling them that if they knew Lyndon as well as he did, they would be convinced of what he and his father had been convinced: that Johnson was “no wild-eyed liberal,” that he in fact “gave the impression of being much, much more liberal than he actually was,” and at least part of Miller’s conviction was based on the belief that Lyndon was as “practical” on racial matters as he and his father, racists to the core. Dale Miller’s reaction to Johnson’s involvement in the Longoria affair was an indication of what the response of the Texas conservative establishment was likely to be.
The political factors in Lyndon Johnson’s calculations began to change. As Posh Oltorf, who was shortly to become a major participant in the unfolding drama, puts it, Johnson now “realized” that “if he pursued” his original course in the Longoria affair, at the end “he would have gained a lot of new friends but would have lost a lot of old ones”—old friends whom he could ill afford to lose.
These old friends were the Anglo rulers of South Texas—of the impoverished, largely illiterate Mexican-American counties of the Rio Grande Valley that formed the border between Texas and Mexico, and of the counties that stretched north from the valley to San Antonio. While tens of thousands of Johnson’s votes in both his 1941 and 1948 Senate campaigns had come, in margins as high as 100 to 1—some reported well after Election Day—from those counties, the explanation for those huge pluralities had little to do with the preferences of the Mexican-Americans. The overwhelming majority of their votes had been cast at the orders of the Anglo-Saxon border dictators called patróns or jefes, orders often enforced by armed pistoleros who herded Mexican-Americans to the polls, told them how to vote, and then accompanied them into the voting cubbyholes to make sure the instructions were followed—if indeed the votes had been actually “cast” at all; in some of the Mexican-American areas, the local border dictators, in Texas political parlance, didn’t “vote ’em,” but rather just “counted ’em.” In those areas, most of the voters didn’t even go to the polls: the jefes’ men would, as one observer put it, simply “go around to the Mexicans’ homes. Get the numbers of their poll tax receipts. Tell them not to go to the polls. Just write in hundreds of numbers, and cast the hundred votes yourself,” or, after the polls closed, would simply take the tally sheets and add to the recorded total whatever number was needed to give their favored candidate the margin he desired. “You get down on the border, and it didn’t matter how people [the Mexican-Americans] felt,” Ed Clark would explain. “The leaders did it all. They could vote ’em or count ’em, either one.” It was not the Mexican-Americans of South Texas, then, but rather their Anglo patróns who had given Johnson the votes he needed to get to the Senate, and whose votes would again be needed in his re-election campaign. As for the “new friends” he might make—the returning Mexican-American veterans—their movement was still in its infancy, and confined to cities like Corpus Christi; there were no chapters of the G.I. Forum in 100–1 Duval or the other border counties. And since the returning veterans would not use the patróns patróns’ methods, they would never be able to deliver a bloc vote of such huge dimensions. It was the South Texas Anglo leaders whose support would still be crucial to Johnson. And subsequent developments made clear the extent to which his actions in the Longoria case had antagonized those leaders.
The next day—Thursday, January 15—the Three Rivers Chamber of Commerce intensified its attack, in two telegrams to Johnson, “WE DEPLORE YOUR ITCHY TRIGGER FINGER DECISION AND ACTION WITHOUT FIRST INVESTIGATING THE LONGORIA CASE,” the first said. The second deplored “YOUR ACTION WITHOUT FIRST INVESTIGATING TRUE FACTS FROM RELIABLE SOURCES.”
The “facts” to which the telegram referred were actually rumors, the rumors of “friction” within the Longoria family, and in their attempt to lend them credence, the Anglo leaders of Three Rivers revealed the depths to which they would sink. According to the rumors, sometime after Felix Longoria had been killed, Beatrice had dated another man, and Felix’s family had been infuriated by this. Now Ramsey, together with Three Rivers Mayor J. K. Montgomery and City Secretary Bryan Boyd, came to the home of Felix’s father, Guadalupe Longoria, a sixty-six-year-old man seriously ill with heart disease who did not speak English well, brought him down to Ramsey’s bank (which they may have considered a persuasive venue because there was still an outstanding balance on a small loan the bank had made to Guadalupe), and began firing questions at him in English, some of which he had a hard time understanding. Then they put in front of him a typed statement which they asked him to sign. The statement said that “Felix’s wife would not speak to me because I objected to the association she was having with another man,” that she “did not want us [the rest of the family] to know when the body would arrive,” and that he and the rest of the family did not want Felix buried in Arlington but rather in Three Rivers. “My family and I hope that our Three Rivers friends will help in getting his body brought here for burial.” At the bottom of the statement was a blank line for Guadalupe Longoria’s signature. A notary public was sitting outside Ramsey’s office, waiting to witness it.
The line remained blank, however; Guadalupe Longoria refused, although the intervi
ew went on a long time, to sign; an article was to say that “his grief was not less than his daughter-in-law’s, but neither was his honor, and he would have no part of this thing.” That evening, the same three men came to Guadalupe’s home, bringing with them the statement, which they again urged him to sign. He still wouldn’t sign it. Guadalupe would later dictate—and sign, along with Felix’s two brothers and three sisters—a slightly different statement: “I wish to state, contrary to reports published in some newspapers, my son’s widow, Beatrice Longoria, and I have never had any personal differences. She, members of her family, and all members of my family including myself have always been on the best of terms…. To this day, my son’s widow visits my home frequently and we still consider her, as we always will, as our own daughter.” Beatrice and he had agreed together to accept “Senator Johnson’s offer … to bury my son’s body in Arlington,” Longoria’s statement said. And even if he had disagreed with her, Guadalupe Longoria said, he would have bowed to her wishes; “the widow … after all, has the final say in all these matters, and properly so.”
“If any embarrassment has been caused by this case to anyone, I am sorry,” Guadalupe Longoria added. “But after all I did not create a feeling of prejudice which seems to exist in many places in Texas…. I think that we would only be fooling ourselves to try to leave the impression that people of Mexican descent are treated the same as anyone else [in] Texas.”
Guadalupe Longoria’s refusal to sign their statement did not deter Three Rivers’ leaders, however. They gave it to the newspapers as if he had signed it; “Lupe Longoria, Sr. still wants” his son buried in Three Rivers, according to Mayor J. K. Montgomery, the Corpus Christi Caller-Times reported. “‘If it were in my power, I would still have my son buried in Three Rivers,’ Longoria told the Mayor”—the Mayor said. Undertaker Kennedy repeated the rumors for publication; in the January 20 issue of the Three Rivers News, he said: “There were reasons why I ‘discouraged’ the use of the funeral chapel. There is considerable evidence to the effect that there has been trouble between the wife of Felix Longoria and the rest of the family, including his parents…. I did not want trouble in the funeral chapel….” His desire to avoid “family trouble,” Kennedy repeated, was the sole reason he had “discouraged” Dr. Garcia, although, Kennedy said, “In the heat of the argument [I] undoubtedly made other statements which could possibly be misconstrued.” (Some of them possibly could. Garcia had taken the precaution of having his secretary, Gladys Blucher, listen on an extension phone, and take shorthand notes, when he telephoned Kennedy, and the notes, later attested to in an affidavit, showed that Kennedy had indeed said “Latin people get drunk and lay around all the time. The last time we let them use the chapel, they all got drunk and we just can’t control them.”)
Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson Page 118