Asamblea Mexicana

In 1924 two businessmen, Fernando Salas and Frank Gibler, a former United States consul whose wife was Mexican, formed the Asamblea Mexicana in Houston. The organization aided Mexican immigrants unjustly incarcerated. Legal abuses experienced by Houston’s growing Mexican immigrant population prompted the group’s formation.

During the 1920s, Asamblea Mexicana succeeded in achieving several victories for Mexican immigrants in Houston. The group worked with the Mexican consul in Houston to ensure that the legal rights of Mexican immigrants were protected. The more notable outcomes included the group’s success in 1928 in pressuring the city to suspend a police sergeant for jailing a Mexican who was injured in an auto accident and not given medical attention. The organization also facilitated the early release of Mexicans from the Houston jail. Other actions included protesting the mistreatment of Mexicans in the Texas prison system to Governor Dan Moody.

Though active in the Houston area during the late 1920s, Asamblea Mexicana apparently diminished in the 1930s as other civil rights groups rose to prominence.