Representative Henry B. González of Texas

On this date, Enrique Barbosa González—widely known as “Henry B.”—was born in San Antonio, Texas. The first Mexican American from his home state to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives, González spent nearly four decades in Congress where he championed civil rights and housing access while seeking to make government institutions more accountable to the people they served. González established himself in local politics after World War II, backed by a coalition of Black Americans, Mexican Americans, labor activists, and other Texas Democrats intent on challenging racism and inequality. As a San Antonio city council member, he worked to desegregate public parks and facilities, and opposed utility rate hikes. Later, as a Texas state senator, he crusaded against segregationist state lawmakers who sought to resist the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education ruling. In 1961, González won an open seat in the U.S. House representing San Antonio and surrounding Bexar County; he held the seat for the next 36 years. During his first decade in Washington, he was a stalwart supporter of President John F. Kennedy’s New Frontier and Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society programs. More so than many lawmakers at the time, González considered civil rights enforcement and aid to the underprivileged to be urgent federal responsibilities. González blazed a trail for Mexican-American politicians in part by emphasizing his people’s shared interests with other Americans. González, who opposed attempts by Mexican Americans to organize themselves as an independent ethnic bloc in the late 1960s, later helped found the Congressional Hispanic Caucus in 1976 but limited his involvement and eventually left the group. González brought this fiercely independent persona and his commitment to leveling the playing field for average Americans to the Banking Committee, which he chaired in the late 1980s. During the savings and loan crisis, González led hearings into the cozy relationship between federal regulators and thrift executives. After exposing widespread malfeasance, he passed legislation to reform the industry, and helped enact policies to aid first-time homebuyers, renters, and public housing residents. He also worked for several years to force the Federal Reserve, which had long used its ostensible independence to shield it from congressional oversight, to disclose more of its workings to public scrutiny. González retired from the House in 1997. He was succeeded by his son, Charles A. González.