A yellowed, faded, and crinkled telegram hangs behind glass on a wall at the National WWII Museum, in New Orleans. It is lasting evidence of a social and political revolution that raged in Texas in the years after World War II. Lyndon B. Johnson, then a U.S. senator, sent this message on January 11, 1949—75 years ago today—to Dr. Héctor P. García, a Mexican American civil rights activist in Corpus Christi. “I deeply regret to learn that the prejudice of some individuals extends even beyond this life,” Johnson wrote. He explained that he had arranged for the remains of Felix Zepeda Longoria, an Army private from the South Texas town of Three Rivers who had been killed in action three and a half years earlier,…
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