George I. Sanchez

13th president - elected at the 1941 convention. Served one term.

George was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico on October 4, 1906. Stan Steiner, an author, described George as a "salty-tongued, aging and indestructible advocate of La Raza." George was a teacher for half a century, the chairman of the Department of History and Philosophy of Education at the University of Texas, and the director of the Center for International Education. He was the pioneer Mexican American educator, upon whose shoulders fell the task of defending his people against the racist claim that Mexicans were congenitally inferior intellectually to whites.

"See these gray hairs, these scars," George told Steiner. "They come from calling a spade a spade." He was a man who liked to "put it on the line," to ask others but mostly himself to deliver. For that, he is a model of teaching excellence and intellectual candor to which a new generation aspires.