Rites set for local Hispanic leader John Herrera Part: 1 of 2

                                
Rites set for local Hispanic leader John Herrera
Services for John J. Herrera, a
longtime
leader in the
Hispanic com-
munity, will
be held at
10:30 a.m.
Wednesday in
Annunciation
Catholic
Church, 1618
Texas.
Herrera, 76,
who died Sun-
day, didn't
graduate from high school until he
Herrera
was 23 but 20 years later he was
admitted to practice law before the
Supreme Court of the United States.
He was encouraged to get his di-
ploma by a Sam Houston High School
teacher, a young Lyndon Baines
Johnson, and went on to South Texas
School of Law, working nights as a
cab driver to support his wife and
the first three of his six children.
During his law career, he was in-
volved in a number of landmark de-
cisions for Mexican-American civil
rights. One of those was a lawsuit
against the Bastrop Independent
School District in 1948, which led to a
ruling that segregated schools for
Mexican-American children are ille-
gal.
A few years later, Herrera was in-
volved in a suit against the state of
Texas that ended when the U.S. Su-
preme Court declared unconstitu-
tional the systematic exclusion of
Mexican-Americans from juries.
Surviving are his wife, Carmen;
three sons, Richard, J.M. and Doug-
las; and three daughters, Joyce
Harper, Felice Kish and Cathy Her-
rera.
Burial will be in Forest Park
Lawndale Cemetery.
10 -ify'r flk