Founding member of MALDEF dies at 81

AUSTIN — Civil rights attorney James DeAnda, a co-founder of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, has died. He was 81.

DeAnda died of prostate cancer last Thursday at his summer home in Traverse City, Michigan, the University of Texas School of Law announced Sunday.

The son of Mexican immigrants, DeAnda became the nation’s second Mexican American federal judge in 1979 after being appointed by President Jimmy Carter.

“Judge DeAnda was a treasure of immense proportion to Texas, Mexican Americans everywhere and to the United States. In dangerous and difficult times, he and the few other Mexican American lawyers worked tirelessly to defend our communities’ interests before an indifferent judiciary and hostile legislatures,” said MALDEF interim president John Trasvina. “We are all in his debt, and his co-founding of MALDEF planted the seeds that we still cultivate today.”

The Houston native served with the Marines in the Pacific during World War II. He attended Texas A&M University and graduated from UT Law School in 1950 at a time when only a handful of Hispanic students were enrolled.

As an attorney, DeAnda fought for the civil rights of Hispanics through his work in the landmark cases of Hernandez v. State of Texas, Hernandez v. Driscoll ISD and Cisneros v. Corpus Christi ISD.

He was the youngest member of a legal team that brought Hernandez v. State of Texas before the U.S. Supreme Court. The 1954 decision overturned the murder conviction of Pete Hernandez by an all-white jury and held that Latinos had to be allowed to serve as jurors.

The Hernandez v. Driscoll ISD case focused on school desegregation and Cisneros v. Corpus Christi ISD extended the protections of Brown v. Board of Education to Mexican Americans.

DeAnda helped found MALDEF in 1968 and created Texas Rural Legal Aid in 1970, an organization that later became Texas Rio Grande Legal Aid.

“Judge DeAnda’s life was marked by personal sacrifices and by his courageous advocacy for his indigent and minority clients,” said Norma V. Cantu, UT professor of law and education.

He retired from the bench in the 1990s and worked in private practice until 2005.

“You will find law to be a most satisfying career because of the service you can give your fellow man,” DeAnda told a group of law students. “I know of no other endeavor in which you can bring about healthy change and make a decent living. You can live well and do good.”

DeAnda is survived by his wife Joyce, and four children.

Funeral services were scheduled to be held yesterday in Houston.

A fund in DeAnda’s memory has been established at MALDEF to support the litigation programs he championed.

(Associated Press)