Henry Barbosa González

American politician

• Born: May 3, 1916
• Birthplace: San Antonio, Texas
• Died: November 28, 2000
• Place of death: San Antonio, Texas

In a public career that spanned fifty years, including nearly forty years in the U.S. House of Representatives, González embodied the idealistic fighting spirit of New Society liberalism, confronting with uncompromising vigor institutionalized discrimination against minorities. He also served on a number of critical House committees, most notably as the longtime chair of the powerful House Committee on Banking, Finance, and Urban Affairs.

Early Life

Henry Barbosa González (HEHN-ree bahr-bahr-BOH-sah gohn-ZAH-lez) was born in San Antonio, Texas, in 1916. González’s father had been the mayor of Mapimí, a small town in the Mexican state of Durango. His parents had fled Durango in 1911 in the wake of the political oppression and economic uncertainties of the Mexican Revolution. Once safely across the border, González’s father joined San Antonio’s only Spanish-language daily newspaper, La Prensa, eventually becoming its managing editor. Although he faced routine schoolyard brutalities because of his Hispanic roots, young Henry understood that the key to success rested with education; he mastered his adopted language and excelled in school. He attended San Antonio Junior College before graduating from the University of Texas at Austin and going on to complete a law degree from St. Mary’s University in San Antonio, the oldest Catholic university in the Southwest. During World War II, González served in military intelligence as a radio and cable censor.

In 1943, he returned to San Antonio and joined the county’s probation office, and within three years he was the city’s chief juvenile probation officer. He resigned that same year, however, when he was told he could not hire an African American for his staff. Angered over conditions under which the city’s Latino population lived, he served as executive secretary of the Pan-American Progressive Association, a community action organization. Over the next several years, González expanded his citywide grassroots activism on behalf of Latinos.

Life’s Work

González understood that political power was the only way to combat bigotry and racism. In 1950, he ran unsuccessfully for the state legislature. Three years later, however, he won a seat on the San Antonio City Council, the first Mexican American to do so. His aggressive campaign agenda, targeting the city’s segregated public facilities, attracted a broad coalition of Mexican Americans, blacks, and liberal whites. In 1956, he was elected state senator, again the first Latino ever to serve in that body. He would remain in the senate for the next five years, making a name for himself with his vigorous defense of minority rights, while being dismissed by his political opponents as “that Mexican.” Despite González’s unsuccessful run for Texas governor in 1958, Democratic presidential nominee John F. Kennedy tabbed him as a national campaign cochair. González helped organize the Viva Kennedy Clubs, a groundbreaking initiative designed to mobilize the Latino vote. Kennedy’s strategy worked, and he received nearly 85 percent of the Latino vote nationwide.

In 1961, when President Kennedy named longtime U.S. Representative Paul J. Kilday from San Antonio’s heavily Democratic twentieth district to serve as a judge on the federal Court of Military Appeals, González ran for the vacancy in a special election. His victory in November, 1961, marked the beginning of what would become his thirty-seven years of service—the longest tenure of any Hispanic to serve in the House of Representatives. González routinely won reelection by large margins, often running unopposed, until his retirement in 1999.

Early on, González distinguished himself as a liberal firebrand. In only his second year in the House, at the height of Cold War paranoia, he voted against increased appropriations for the House Committee on Un-American Activities, citing its continuing violation of free speech and privacy, while weathering accusations of being a “pinko.” Although he served with distinction on the powerful House Committee on Banking, serving as its chair from 1971 to 1981, it was his uncompromising and passionate support of President’s Lyndon B. Johnson’s 1964 civil rights initiatives—the Civil Rights Act, Housing Act, and Equal Opportunities Act—that first gained González a national name.

His undaunted, outspoken spirit of a passionate crusader defined González. For example, in the late 1960’s, as House liaison on Latin American affairs, he exposed the woeful working conditions on Latin American farms. In 1978, amid growing public skepticism about government findings concerning the lone assassin theories in the shootings of both John Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr., González briefly chaired the twelve-member House Select Committee on Assassinations before resigning over a disagreement about the scope of power for the committee’s controversial chief counsel.

Even as the American electorate turned to the conservative right with the rise of Ronald Reagan, González continued his unapologetic advocacy of the liberal agenda. He would play key roles in shepherding controversial legislation protecting small businesses, minority rights, the environment, and low-income housing, often battling formidable opposition from right-wing politicians. He emerged as a vigorous critic of the Federal Reserve and the savings and loan industry during the protracted banking crisis in the 1980’s. Outraged over the Reagan administration’s Iran-Contra dealings, he introduced a bill of impeachment in March, 1987. In January, 1991, he introduced a similar bill against Reagan’s successor, George H. W. Bush, over his administration’s campaign to wage what González, in an eloquent address to the House, termed an unconstitutional and undeclared Persian Gulf war against Iraq after its invasion of Kuwait.

An early supporter of Bill Clinton, González opposed Republican efforts to investigate Clinton’s financial involvement in the Whitewater real estate project just months after Clinton had been sworn in as president. Although nearing eighty, González was a presence throughout the protracted House investigations into Clinton’s finances, staunchly defending the administration against what he dismissed as partisan politics at its most vindictive. In failing health by late 1997, González declined to run for a nineteenth full term. His son, Charles A. González, long seen as his protégé, won the seat by a comfortable margin in 1998. González died of a heart attack two years later.

Significance

Through close to fifty years of public service, even as his fervently held political ideology became the easy hobgoblin of the rising conservative political establishment,

González, a respected collegiate boxer, remained a fighter for old-school liberal ideology. His most deeply held causes were born of his own upbringing in the working -class neighborhoods of West Side San Antonio, where his immigrant status often marginalized him. González fought to protect the rights of the underclass—the undereducated and the underprivileged—and demanded that the rich and powerful conduct their business with complete transparency and accountability. González was a maverick, who often opposed the House Hispanic Caucus, which he founded in 1976, because of the caucus’s lukewarm endorsements for minority rights protection. He distinguished himself by his uncompromising honesty, and he was particularly lauded for his nearly decadelong investigation into the murky dealings that led to the collapse of the savings and loan industry in the 1980’s.

Bibliography

Auerbach, Robert D. Deception and Abuse at the Fed: Henry B. González Battles AlanGreenspan’s Bank. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2008. Probing and accessible look at González’s historic, and by this account heroic, challenge to the secretive workings of the powerful Federal Reserve and the subsequent revelations of mismanagement.

Bennett, W. Lance, and David L. Paletz, eds. Taken by Storm: The Media, Public Opinion, and U.S. Foreign Policy in the Gulf War. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994. Wide-ranging collection of essays that examines the lead-up to the Kuwait invasion, with particular emphasis on the first Bush administration’s careful manipulation of public opinion. Includes information on González’s quixotic opposition stand.

Haugen, Brenda. Henry B. González: Congressman of the People. Minneapolis, Minn.: Compass Point Books, 2005. Careful review of González’s public career, with particular emphasis on his liberal populism and his crusading spirit. Designed for young adults.

Rodriguez, Eugene, Jr. Henry B. González: A Political Profile. Manchester, N.H.: Ayer, 1976. Still considered the definitive account of González’s political rise and his passionate defense of Chicano rights.