Castro said the rapidly growing Hispanic population was "the new face of the American Dream" and he called on his peers to build on the hard-fought achievements of their parents.
JULIAN CASTRO: There's no question that my generation has been blessed with tremendous opportunity. In my mother's generation --- it was more challenging, socially, with higher drop-out rates. And that's why this Convencion is so important, because we want these young people to realize the opportunities that they have in the year 2013.
Castro is the youngest mayor of a top-50 city and his twin brother Joaquin was recently elected to the U.S. House. They were raised by a Chicano political activist mother who scrimped to put her children through Stanford and Harvard.
When he was told that his family's story was remarkably similar to that of Cleveland's Carl and Louis Stokes, Castro smiled and said, "Now, I have a reading assignment. I'll have to go look that up."
