American Experience (1988–…): Season 21, Episode 4 - A Class Apart - full transcript
In 1951 in the town of Edna, Texas, a field hand named Pedro Hernandez murdered his employer after exchanging words at a gritty cantina. From this seemingly unremarkable small-town murder emerged a landmark civil rights case that would forever change the lives and legal standing of tens of millions of Americans. A team of unknown Mexican American lawyers took the case, Hernandez v. Texas, all the way to the Supreme Court, where they successfully challenged Jim Crow-style discrimination against Mexican Americans.In his law office in San Antonio, a well-known attorney named Gus Garcia listened to the desperate pleas of Pedro Hernandezs mother, who traveled more than one-hundred-and-fifty miles to ask him to defend her son. Garcia quickly realized that there was more to this case than murder; the real concern was not Hernandezs guilt, but whether he could receive a fair trial with an all-Anglo jury deciding his fate. Garcia assembled a team of courageous attorneys who argued on behalf of Hernandez from his first trial at the Jackson County Courthouse in Texas all the way to Washington, DC. It would be the first time a Mexican American appeared before the Supreme Court. The Hernandez lawyers decided on a daring but risky legal strategy, arguing that Mexican Americans were a class apart and did not neatly fit into a legal structure that recognized only black and white Americans. As legal skirmishes unfolded, the lawyers emerged as brilliant, dedicated, humorous, and at times, terribly flawed men.
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On January 28, 1954,
the Spanish-speaking community
of San Antonio, Texas,
listened to some unusual news
from Gustavo Gus García,
a prominent local lawyer.
The Hernández case
involved an issue
that García and his listeners
knew all too well.
Discrimination
against Mexican Americans
in the Southwest.
It was the first time
that the issue
of Mexican-American civil rights
had ever reached
the United States Supreme Court.
And García was a key member
of the legal team.
García and his colleagues
had tried to convince
the nine justices
that long-standing patterns
of exclusion and ill-treatment
were unconstitutional.
If they succeeded,
the community could no longer
be pushed to the margins
with impunity.
If they failed,
the best hope for change
in a generation would be lost.
The decision
would not come for months.
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Life in the 1950s was very
difficult for Hispanics.
We were considered second-rate.
We were not considered
intelligent.
We were considered invisible.
It was overt discrimination.
And not just, "You can't belong
to my country club" type,
you know, but, uh,
the real rough type.
In theaters, in swimming pools,
even in some public parks,
we were segregated, something,
something awful, really.
It got to the point where
the Texas Restaurant Association
put out a sign
that said "No Mexicans,
Niggers or Dogs Allowed."
Discrimination had become
a harsh fact
of Mexican-American life
over the 100 years since
the end of the Mexican War.
In 1848, the victorious
United States
acquired huge swaths
of Mexican territory.
And along with it,
tens of thousands of residents
who were offered
American citizenship
as part of the treaty
ending the war.
Legal citizenship for
Mexican Americans was one thing.
Equal treatment turned out
to be quite another.
Many would lose their land
to unfamiliar American laws,
or to swindlers.
With the loss of land
came the loss of status.
Over two, three generations,
the people who had owned
vast ranches
were suddenly farmworkers.
After the Civil War,
ever-larger numbers
of Southern whites
came into South Texas.
All of a sudden, you start
seeing allegations that are
cloned from the attitudes that
they had in the Deep South
about black people,
and see these values
being applied to Mexicans,
to Mexican Americans.
"They're shiftless.
They're lazy.
They're dumb.
They don't like to work."
And, you know, "They're trying
to get your daughter."
Of mixed Spanish
and Indian ancestry,
Mexican Americans
did not fit neatly
into America's ironclad
racial categories:
black or white.
By the early 20th century,
they were considered
white by law,
largely owing
to the treaty's grant
of American citizenship.
But in everyday life,
their status as citizens
meant little.
A lot of Mexicans were killed
for no reason at all.
A lot of them were lynched, and
a lot of them were just shot.
Anybody with a cowboy hat then
could be a ranger
or a vigilante or a regulator.
Segregation was widespread,
enforced not by written laws...
As was the case for
African Americans...
But by a rigid social code.
It was very clear
that the social isolation
was a perfectly
symmetrical system,
one that hermetically sealed
Mexicans and blacks
away from whites in all
the daily aspects of life.
When we moved in, the neighbors
started getting upset.
The kids would come
on their bicycles
and call us "dirty Mexicans,
you eat toilets."
One time I said something
really nasty to one of them,
and the father of this kid
came up and asked me
to step off the sidewalk
so he could hit me.
Discrimination followed
to the grave.
Cemeteries were segregated.
Many funeral parlors
even refused
to prepare Mexican-American
bodies for burial.
So for the most part if you
died, and if you were Hispanic,
you had to be buried
pretty quickly after you died
so that you wouldn't
create a smell.
In education,
as in many other spheres,
separate and unequal
treatment was commonplace.
Our school were old schools.
They were dilapidated.
We had no toilet
facilities inside.
We had an outhouse.
The Anglo children had
a nice school,
a modern school with indoor
plumbing and heating,
so there was quite a difference.
Quite a difference.
Second-class treatment
exacted a heavy toll.
They were always referring to us
as "dirty Mexicans."
They called us "pepper belly."
They called us "greasers."
They called us "wetback."
They made us feel ashamed
to be a Mexican American.
And as long as Mexican Americans
believed
that they couldn't do anything
about that,
then they in a sense reinforce
the system,
the social stratification
that occurred in their lives.
Then came World War II.
300,000 Mexican Americans
served their country.
They suffered casualties
and earned honors
disproportionate
to their numbers.
They returned home
with dramatically
raised expectations,
believing they had
earned the right
to first class citizenship.
We went to fight
to give people liberty
and to give them
their civil rights,
and then we come back home
and we find that it is
the same way as we left it.
A great many people came home,
expecting that they had won
their full citizenship rights.
When they come home and
they're decorated war heroes
and they're turned away
from restaurants
or told to go to the balconies
of theaters,
it created a building
resentment.
When their kids were not allowed
to go to the good schools,
it created a great
deal of resentment.
The treatment of
Private Felix Longoria,
a war hero killed
in the Philippines,
became a flashpoint.
When his body was returned
to his hometown
of Three Rivers, Texas,
in early 1949,
the town's only funeral parlor
refused to hold
a memorial service,
because, they told
Longoria's widow,
"The whites wouldn't like it."
This guy gave his life so that
we could have the same rights
and privileges that are
available to everybody,
and he couldn't be buried with
the whites because he was brown?
What the hell?
And it, it really hits a nerve
in the nation in particular
with many veteran groups
who say,
"How can they not allow him
to be buried?"
For Mexican Americans,
the Longoria incident came
at a crucial time.
Since the '20s, civic
organizations such as LULAC,
the League of United Latin
American Citizens.
Had begun pushing for civil
rights with some success.
Now emboldened
by their war experience
and growing political clout,
Mexican-American activists
pressed demands
for broader change.
After an intense
public campaign,
Felix Longoria was buried
in Arlington National Cemetery.
And it's this generation
who fought in World War II
who begin to demand civil rights
for Mexican Americans.
They form important
social organizations
like the G.I. Forum.
These organizations
are committed
to fighting for equality
for Mexican Americans
as well as to fighting for pride
in Mexican origins.
The activists also took
their fight to the courts.
With the help of lawyers
like Gus García
and his colleague Carlos Cadena,
both veterans,
they began to attack the legal
foundations of discrimination
throughout the Southwest.
García led a team
that won a court order
curtailing the segregation
of Hispanic students
in Texas schools.
Cadena won a ruling that ended
restrictive covenants
barring Mexican Americans
from buying homes
in Anglo neighborhoods.
But those victories could only
take Mexican Americans so far.
Mexican-American lawyers had
achieved some successes
on the state level,
but the bottom line was
the local majorities
in these states were intent
on treating Mexican Americans
as second-class citizens.
If they were
to be fully protected,
if they were to be regarded
as equal with other Americans,
they would need to receive the
protection of the Constitution.
They would need to take their
cases to the US Supreme Court.
The lawyers faced
an uphill battle.
They knew that Mexican Americans
had been denied the protection
of the Constitution's 14th
Amendment, an essential weapon
for African Americans in their
fight against discrimination.
Some states had argued that
the amendment only barred
discrimination by whites
against blacks,
and by law, Mexican Americans
were considered white.
To end the discrimination
that stifled their community,
they would need to find
the right case,
one with the potential
to redefine the very meaning
of the United States
Constitution.
On August 4, 1951,
on the streets of Edna, Texas,
the locals were taking advantage
of a steamy day off.
A tenant farmer named
Caetano Espinosa,
known to everyone as Joe,
headed to Chencho Sánchez's café
on Menefee Street.
Pedro Hernández, a field worker
with a bad leg,
was already inside.
It was a Saturday, and I think
it was my father's birthday.
And as we passed Edna, he said,
"I'm gonna stop here
to talk to the cotton pickers."
I sat there at a table,
and I ordered a Coke.
And all of a sudden,
I heard an argument.
Joe Espinosa arguing with Pete,
with Pedro.
And when I heard the argument,
I heard something to the effect
that, "Pedro el chueco cabrón."
"No woman is going to look
at a cripple like you.
They're interested
in a real he-man like me."
And with that,
Pedro left the cantina.
And we saw Pete walking
towards his house.
It was like he was in a daze.
He didn't even turn around
and say, "Hi, boys" or anything.
He just kept going.
So about 20 minutes later,
here he comes with that rifle.
He came back, entered
the cantina
and shot Joe Espinosa
in the heart.
He lived maybe 30 minutes
after we got to the hospital.
And my mother told me,
"Caetano's dead."
It was just hard to believe.
It was just incredible.
In his law office in San
Antonio, Gus García listened
as Pete Hernández's mother
choked back sobs.
García realized that there was
more to this case
than a small-town murder.
Hernández was guilty as sin,
no question,
but they had been looking
for a significant case
which would bring about a ruling
from the higher courts
that segregation or
discrimination
against Mexican Americans would
be illegal.
The key issue for García was
not whether Pete Hernández shot
Joe Espinosa,
it was that like many Latino
defendants before him,
Hernández's fate would be
decided by an all-Anglo jury.
There were 70 or more counties
in Texas who had never had
a Hispanic on a jury just
because they didn't think that
we were capable of doing
anything worthwhile.
How do you get around the law
that you have to be judged
by a a jury of your peers?
García was convinced
that this was the case
that he and his activist
colleagues had been waiting for.
Gus García was not one
to think small.
You could write a book
about Gus.
Fine-looking fellow,
movie-star-looking type,
well-dressed guy, brilliant.
At 36, Gus García was
already a local legend.
The son of ranchers who could
trace their Texas roots back
to the Spanish crown,
García was a dashing figure
whose legal victories
and glamorous social life
had made headlines.
ELEANOR McCUSKER:
He was tall, he was slender,
he had coal-black hair
and those green penetrating eyes
that, uh, in my view,
made him very handsome.
Gus was a silver-tongued orator.
He had a deep resonant voice.
Anything he said,
he said with authority.
García had been
an outstanding student
at the University of Texas,
captain of the nationally ranked
debate team,
he had excelled at law school
as well.
Still, even for Latinos with
a stellar record like García's,
the doors to the state's
top law firms remained closed.
There was only so far
that you can go.
There was a certain space
provided them
in which they could then
fulfill some of their ambitions
and dreams.
So as good as they were,
they saw the ceiling quite low
outside of their community,
but within their community,
I think they could fulfill much
of their desires.
Pete Hernández's trial was set
for October 8, 1951,
in the Jackson County
Courthouse.
At the pretrial hearing, García
entered a plea of not guilty
on behalf of his client.
Then he raised an objection
to the entire proceeding.
He argued that Hernández
was being denied
a jury of his peers,
that the practice of excluding
Mexican-American jurors,
and the social hierarchy
it reflected
were fundamentally unfair.
If Mexican Americans had served
on juries that judged whites,
that would have upended
Texas's racial caste system.
That would have said that
Mexican Americans were the equal
of whites, were capable of
sitting in judgment on whites.
And that, I think is
ultimately what
the lawyers were fighting for.
García soon realized it was not
wise to wage legal war alone,
in Edna, Texas
without some reinforcements.
Texas had a phenomena called
"sundown towns."
This name came from the idea
that no minorities
should be caught in town
after the sun went down,
at the penalty of violence.
García called in John Herrera,
an experienced
Houston trial lawyer
with a well-earned reputation
for toughness.
Mr. Herrera was not afraid
to speak out against anybody.
He had big feet,
and he'd step on anybody.
He wasn't scared!
Herrera brought along a young
attorney, James DeAnda,
to handle
the statistical research.
DeANDA:
I did quite a bit of
investigation on the case.
And that county,
as it turned out,
there had never been a Hispanic
in modern times ever served
on either a grand jury, petit
jury or any other type of jury.
García and his team pressed
their case,
armed with statistics
proving the county's history
of systematic exclusion,
and their lead lawyer's
sharp tongue.
They walked into the courthouse,
and when they confronted
the judge, the judge asked them
if they needed an interpreter.
And in his own articulate way,
Gus García replied, "No, sir,
if you can't understand English
or Spanish,
perhaps one of my colleagues can
interpret for you."
When you bring
a civil rights case,
you're challenging
social convention
and tradition and custom.
And some people see it
as a threat
to, to, to a political
structure, a social structure,
a threat to a way of life.
McCUSKER:
It wasn't safe for them
to stay there
because some of the people were
very upset about the case,
and what these lawyers
were trying to do.
And they thought it best
not to stay there.
They may not wake up there.
The men who were arguing the
Hernández case had to drive home
to Houston every night
from Edna, Texas.
They didn't dare stay in town.
The first task the lawyers faced
was to show a pattern
of discrimination against
Mexican Americans as a group.
To do that, they called
Pauline Rosa,
an Edna resident, to the stand.
She testified
that she had tried to enroll
her U.S.-born,
English-speaking children
in Edna's all-Anglo school,
only to be told
they did not accept
any Latin Americans.
Pressed by the prosecutor,
she insisted,
"They discriminated against me
and my children."
For Pauline Rosa.
A Mexican-American woman
in Jackson County, Texas,
to challenge the Anglo
power structure was
something pretty,
pretty amazing.
She saw
that she could do something
to effect change
for her children.
People have said, "She's
indicting the whole community,"
but she was reflecting a view
by Mexican Americans
that while people might not
individually say something
or do something to them
collectively, they were
happy with the system.
But I think all of them,
both Anglo and Mexicans,
understood very well
what she was talking about
in terms of
"They all discriminate
against me and my children."
During a pause
in the proceedings,
the Hernández lawyers
sought out a men's room.
They found one
on the courthouse grounds.
But it turned out
that there was a problem.
The sign said "Men,"
but a Mexican janitor whispered
to them in Spanish
that they couldn't use it.
And he told them in Spanish
that there was another one
"hazte pa'cá" out, out back.
And they went downstairs
and they find another men's
bathroom downstairs
with a bathroom sign that says,
"Colored Men, Hombres Aqui"...
"Men Here."
Think of the irony of this.
In the very courthouse
where the state of Texas
is arguing that Mexican
Americans are white
and, therefore, an all-white
jury can convict a Mexican
charged with murder,
they can't use the bathroom
reserved for whites.
They're not lawyers who are
operating above the fray,
who are somehow independent
of everything that's going on...
They, too, are subject
to this racial system.
In some real sense,
the lawyers in
Hernández v. Texas
were themselves the clients.
The judge overruled
the defense team's objection
to the all-white jury.
It took that jury less than
four hours to reach its verdict.
Pete Hernández was convicted
of murder
and sentenced to life in prison.
His lawyers
immediately appealed.
For them, the hard work
was just beginning.
In the spring of 1952, as they
mapped out their strategy,
García and Herrera realized
they needed help.
They turned to García's
longtime friend
and former law partner,
Carlos Cadena.
These two guys together
were probably
the most powerful intellectual
legal team
that you could ever field.
They made a kind
of legal odd couple:
García, charismatic
and outgoing;
and Cadena, scholarly
and reserved.
McCUSKER:
Carlos was the quiet one,
always doing the heavy research.
Gus was the one always talking
and making the changes,
and I think that's why
they got along so well.
After discussions with Latino
civil rights activists,
the Hernández lawyers decided on
a bold but risky legal strategy.
Arguing for
constitutional protection
for Mexican Americans,
they would emphasize their
ambiguous and vulnerable place
in America's racial hierarchy.
They would put their
very identity on trial.
Mexican Americans were fighting
to be treated
as if they were white.
But the irony here is
that the Texas courts
seized on their claim
to be white
not to treat them fairly,
but to continue to defend this
practice of unfair mistreatment.
The Texas courts responded
by saying,
"So you're white. That's fine.
"Look at the juries.
"There's nobody but
white persons on the jury.
You have no claim
of discrimination."
In turn, the Mexican-American
lawyers had to respond,
"We're white,
but we're a class apart.
"We're a distinct class
that, though white,
is being treated
as if we're not white."
And that's the basis
on which they went forward
with their litigation
in Hernández v. Texas.
The "class apart" theory
was as controversial
as it was innovative.
I think many Mexican Americans
were afraid,
"What would happen
if we weren't considered white?
"How do we know
we're not going to be
"forced or pushed to identify
with the black race,
"at a time when black people
are fundamentally denied
so many basic rights?"
But there's also
the element of racism,
of the belief among
some Mexican Americans
that blackness is inferior.
So there's an element of racism,
and there's an element of fear
of Jim Crow segregation.
Carlos Cadena took the lead in
drafting the Hernández appeal.
Writing a tightly
argued legal brief,
he elaborated on the novel
theory of "a class apart."
He also punctured
the state's legal position
that Mexican Americans
were white, and therefore
outside the protection
of the 14th Amendment,
with a few well-placed
rhetorical thrusts.
"About the only time," Cadena
wrote, "that so-called Mexicans,
"many of them Texans
for seven generations,
"are covered with
the Caucasian cloak,
"is when it serves the ends of
those who would shamelessly deny
"this large segment
of the Texas population
their fundamental rights."
Texas's high court
was not persuaded.
The appeal was denied.
The next step for the Hernández
lawyers, and a very risky one,
was to turn to the
United States Supreme Court.
It was an unusual ambition
to take a case beyond Texas
and to take it to
the U.S. Supreme Court.
Moreover, no Mexican Americans
had ever tried a case
in the U.S. Supreme Court.
They had no reason to believe
that they would win.
The lawyers in Hernández gambled
when they decided to take
this case to the Supreme Court.
They knew, on the up side,
that they could win
national recognition for the
equality of Mexican Americans,
but they knew, on the downside,
that if they lost,
they would establish at a
national level the proposition
that Mexican Americans
could be treated
as second-class citizens.
And not just that,
they knew that this was probably
their one shot in a generation.
An appeal to the Supreme Court
of the United States
is a costly matter.
You have to pay a filing fee,
you have to pay for the printing
of the briefs,
you have to pay to travel
to Washington, D.C.
to argue the case.
McCUSKER:
They didn't even have money
to get up there,
much less to really
fight the case.
And all that time away from home
and their practice all shot
because they were dedicating
so much time to the case.
Activists issued a national
appeal for funds.
The Mexican American community
was generally poor,
but the Hernández case
struck a chord.
The American GI Forum
takes it to the people.
Its founder and-and national
president, Hector García,
has a radio program.
He gets on the radio and he
starts pleading for donations.
LULAC does it through
its chapters across Texas
and the Midwest,
requesting money.
So what you find is people
sending letters
and saying, "this is
the Wharton LULAC Council,
and we're sending you $25."
There's a group in Chicago
that sends $25.
And then you had
these individuals
who are donating money.
There's a gentleman who says,
"I heard you on the radio,
"and I'm sending you this money.
"Please let me hear my name
as someone who stands up
for Mexican American rights."
At one time, Carlos Cadena
literally had tears in his eyes.
He said, "They would
come up to me
"and they would give you
crumpled-up dollar bills
and they'd give you coins."
These were people
who couldn't afford it,
but couldn't afford not to.
We all dug deep into our pockets
and through the dollar bill
and-and-and fund-raiser
and a dollar bill there,
and we made it
you know, we made it.
The Hernández team
had another problem...
One of their own.
According to the rules
of the Supreme Court,
the petition was due
on January 20, 1953,
and had to be
professionally printed.
The Hernández petition arrived
on January 21st,
a day late, typewritten.
Despite the Texas Attorney
General's repeated objections,
the Supreme Court decided
to accept the submission.
But it was a close call...
And a troubling indication
that something was
seriously wrong.
Gus García had a-a problem,
uh, with alcohol.
Quite young in his life,
most people perceived
that he was an alcoholic,
and-and some of the discussions
among reformers is:
Can Gus García handle
this opportunity?
The activists who had backed the
lawyers' efforts for so long
began to worry out loud.
Finally, they had the case
they wanted
before the United States
Supreme Court.
But perhaps, after going
all this distance,
Gus García would not be up
to the challenge.
I think in some ways,
Mexican Americans
were also intimidated
by the process
and said, you know,
"We've got to be up to it.
"We've really got
to look good there
"and we've got to seize
the opportunity
and is Gus ready to do that?"
The case of Hernández v. Texas
was scheduled for oral argument
before the Supreme Court
and its new Chief Justice,
Earl Warren,
on January 11, 1954.
Gus García arrived in Washington
early to prepare.
Time enough, it turned out,
to give his doubters
more cause for concern.
García knew that lawyers
for the NAACP,
led by Thurgood Marshall,
had recently appeared
before the Court,
arguing the landmark school
desegregation case,
Brown v. Board of Education.
Hoping to keep up
with the better funded
civil rights group, he retained
a publicist and a hotel suite
his team could ill afford.
Gus García was looking
at the issue
and he wanted the kind
of support
that African Americans
had gotten.
And the other reformers were
dealing with the realities.
That is, "We can come up
with maybe $3,000
and that barely covers
what we have to do."
Soon García was joined by
the rest of the legal team,
including John Herrera
and Carlos Cadena.
Carlos got to Washington and Gus
had taken a hotel room for him.
He had a bartender,
and he had a table set up
with drinks and everything.
Carlos was pretty furious
because they were
on a short budget,
and Gus thought nothing
of spending the budget
because it was partly his.
Cadena went out to the airport
to meet a man
who was bringing money
from San Antonio,
and the man said, "How'd you
like the money that we sent?"
And he said, "Well, there
isn't any of it left."
The man gave him
several hundred dollars more,
and they both agreed
that they would not tell Gus
about the money.
Cadena said, "Gus García was a
scoundrel, and he was a liar."
January 10, the final night
before the oral argument.
The next morning,
Gus García would argue
the case of a lifetime,
a case that would determine
not only his own reputation,
but the future of the community
that depended on him.
Sometime that night,
García managed to evade
the watchful eyes
of his nervous colleagues.
He went off on a toot,
and everybody knew,
but nobody knew where he was.
And, uh, Gus shows up sometime
rather late in the morning,
and he is very, very drunk.
They knew they were
about to face
the Supreme Court Justices
in a few hours,
and here's this man
putting the case at risk.
He was one
of the two main lawyers
who was going to speak
before Chief Justice Earl Warren
and the other justices.
They threw Gus in a cold shower,
clothes and all,
ordered room service,
a big pot of black coffee,
and went on to sober him up
and get him ready.
On January 11,
as the lawyers marched
up to the Supreme Court,
the wintry chill reminded them
that Texas was
very far away indeed.
The lawyers were about to face
a court that had never before
been addressed
by Mexican American attorneys,
or been asked
to consider the question
of Mexican American
civil rights.
If you can imagine
Carlos Cadena and Gus García
getting the opportunity
that no one else has ever had,
to be able to paint a picture
of a community
and where it stood in time,
and all of the practices,
the laws, the circumstances
that kept them where they were.
Carlos Cadena sitting
at the counsel table,
wearing a very dark,
serious suit.
Gus García sitting next to him.
The nine justices
sitting on a long bench
facing the two sets of parties.
The Texas attorney general
sitting at their own table
ready to defend
the state's decision
that Mexican Americans
were really whites.
The lawyers in Hernández
needed to argue
that the 14th Amendment
protected Mexican Americans
to a court that had barely ever
heard of Mexican Americans.
I opened the argument, and...
I said, "Your petitioner is a...
an American citizen
of Mexican descent,"
and one of the judges
asked me, "What is that?"
What the... you stupid guy!
Everybody knows what that is!
But anyway, I was explaining,
and Justice Frankfurter
interrupted and said,
"They call them greasers
down there, don't they?"
Gus García,
who seemed to be out of it
during most of the presentation
by Carlos Cadena,
was suddenly awoken
by several questions
that were asked by the judges.
"Can Mexican Americans
speak English?"
"Are they citizens?"
And I think this was
the key for Gus García,
because Gus García
tended to personalize that,
and he saw within himself
all the abilities and qualities
of the Mexican American
community.
Fueled by indignation,
García offered the justices
a brief, irony-laced
history lesson.
"My people," he told them,
"were in Texas
"a hundred years
before Sam Houston,
that wetback from Tennessee."
And he was just getting started.
Gus's delivery was so eloquent,
it was so beautiful
and so penetrating,
so down-to-earth in...
high-spun...
uh, legal argument.
There are some lights there
on the rostrum,
and when the red light comes on,
you stop,
and everybody knew that.
When the red light came on,
Gus stopped in mid-sentence.
And then Justice Earl Warren
leaned off the bench,
and he said,
"Continue, Mr. García."
Gus García was told to proceed,
so he stole 16 extra minutes.
So when we walked out
of the Supreme Court
of the United States,
he met with one of the attachés,
and the attaché was
an old black man.
He says,
"This is unprecedented."
He says, "I've never even
given extra time here
for Thurgood Marshall...
He was here last week."
After years of planning
and all the legal work,
it was finally over.
The case that the activists
and lawyers hafocused on
for so long was
now out of their hands.
The exhausted
Hernández legal team
headed home to await
the court's decision.
Soon after their return,
García and Herrera
went on the radio
to share their tale with the
public that had supported them
with their dollars
and their prayers.
Finally, on May 3, 1954,
the United States Supreme Court
announced its ruling
in the case
of Hernández v. Texas.
Thedecision of the Texas court
was reversed.
Pete Hernández would receive
a new trial,
before a true jury of his peers,
a trial that
would ultimately result
in his reconviction
for the killing of Joe Espinosa.
But far more important was
the court's legal reasoning...
A holding
that Mexican Americans,
as a group, were protected
under the Constitution's
14th Amendment,
in keeping with the theory that
they were indeed
"a class apart."
It was a victory
for the ordinary people
who had endured discrimination
without recourse
for generations,
and the activists who
had fought on their behalf.
For Carlos Cadena,
the meticulous legal theorist,
and for Gus García,
who had disproved the doubters
and triumphed
despite his inner demons.
Hailed as heroes,
the Hernández lawyers
were applauded
by Mexican Americans
across the Southwest.
In every place
they went and spoke,
it was about, look at what
Mexican Americans have done.
Look at how we presented
our case to the nation.
Look at how
we have finally made
the people
of the United States listen.
Now they know we're here.
The victory
in Hernández was huge
for the Mexican American
community.
They now had
the highest court in the land
saying it's unconstitutional,
indeed, symbolically,
it's un-American
to treat Mexicans
as if they're an inferior race.
With the decision and the power
of the United States
Constitution behind them,
Mexican Americans successfully
challenged employment
and housing discrimination.
They tore down barriers
to their right to vote
and run for office.
They ensured that their children
would no longer be forced
to attend segregated schools.
This case is
incredibly important,
because it guarantees that,
even being different,
that we are still protected
under the laws
of this great land.
I think Mexican Americans
in particular,
Latinos in general,
but America as a whole,
owes a great debt to the people
who pursued this case.
For Gus García,
the future would be
shadowed by tragedy.
Not long after
his legal triumph,
his personal life
spun out of control.
Alcoholism would be cruelly
compounded by mental illness,
taking García
in and out of institutions
for the next decade.
McCUSKER:
I didn't see him
those last few months
when they said he was just
beyond himself in San Antonio.
All the reports that I got back
were that his mind
was deteriorating,
that his behavior was changing.
And he died on a bench.
Isn't that tragic?
I mean, somebody with such
a brilliant mind, my God.
Gus García died of liver failure
in 1964 at age 48.
Less than a year later,
Carlos Cadena would be named
the first
Mexican American justice
of the Texas Court of Appeals,
and would go on
to become chief justice.
After the Hernández case,
Mexican Americans
across the country
would no longer be considered
second-class citizens
under the law.
The struggle was hardly over,
but the lives
of millions of Americans
had been changed forever.
Hernández v. Texas
belongs in the pantheon
of great civil rights cases,
indeed of great American cases.
But even more important,
it belongs in the pantheon
of great moments
in American history.
This is a moment when a people
long regarded as inferior
organize and demand
equal treatment
and succeed in that demand.
This is an inspirational moment
in American history,
a moment in which equality
is demanded and achieved.
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Someone needs to stop Clearway Law.
Public shouldn't leave reviews for lawyers.
♪ ♪
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for American Experience
is provided by:
Major funding by:
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and:
On January 28, 1954,
the Spanish-speaking community
of San Antonio, Texas,
listened to some unusual news
from Gustavo Gus García,
a prominent local lawyer.
The Hernández case
involved an issue
that García and his listeners
knew all too well.
Discrimination
against Mexican Americans
in the Southwest.
It was the first time
that the issue
of Mexican-American civil rights
had ever reached
the United States Supreme Court.
And García was a key member
of the legal team.
García and his colleagues
had tried to convince
the nine justices
that long-standing patterns
of exclusion and ill-treatment
were unconstitutional.
If they succeeded,
the community could no longer
be pushed to the margins
with impunity.
If they failed,
the best hope for change
in a generation would be lost.
The decision
would not come for months.
♪ ♪
Life in the 1950s was very
difficult for Hispanics.
We were considered second-rate.
We were not considered
intelligent.
We were considered invisible.
It was overt discrimination.
And not just, "You can't belong
to my country club" type,
you know, but, uh,
the real rough type.
In theaters, in swimming pools,
even in some public parks,
we were segregated, something,
something awful, really.
It got to the point where
the Texas Restaurant Association
put out a sign
that said "No Mexicans,
Niggers or Dogs Allowed."
Discrimination had become
a harsh fact
of Mexican-American life
over the 100 years since
the end of the Mexican War.
In 1848, the victorious
United States
acquired huge swaths
of Mexican territory.
And along with it,
tens of thousands of residents
who were offered
American citizenship
as part of the treaty
ending the war.
Legal citizenship for
Mexican Americans was one thing.
Equal treatment turned out
to be quite another.
Many would lose their land
to unfamiliar American laws,
or to swindlers.
With the loss of land
came the loss of status.
Over two, three generations,
the people who had owned
vast ranches
were suddenly farmworkers.
After the Civil War,
ever-larger numbers
of Southern whites
came into South Texas.
All of a sudden, you start
seeing allegations that are
cloned from the attitudes that
they had in the Deep South
about black people,
and see these values
being applied to Mexicans,
to Mexican Americans.
"They're shiftless.
They're lazy.
They're dumb.
They don't like to work."
And, you know, "They're trying
to get your daughter."
Of mixed Spanish
and Indian ancestry,
Mexican Americans
did not fit neatly
into America's ironclad
racial categories:
black or white.
By the early 20th century,
they were considered
white by law,
largely owing
to the treaty's grant
of American citizenship.
But in everyday life,
their status as citizens
meant little.
A lot of Mexicans were killed
for no reason at all.
A lot of them were lynched, and
a lot of them were just shot.
Anybody with a cowboy hat then
could be a ranger
or a vigilante or a regulator.
Segregation was widespread,
enforced not by written laws...
As was the case for
African Americans...
But by a rigid social code.
It was very clear
that the social isolation
was a perfectly
symmetrical system,
one that hermetically sealed
Mexicans and blacks
away from whites in all
the daily aspects of life.
When we moved in, the neighbors
started getting upset.
The kids would come
on their bicycles
and call us "dirty Mexicans,
you eat toilets."
One time I said something
really nasty to one of them,
and the father of this kid
came up and asked me
to step off the sidewalk
so he could hit me.
Discrimination followed
to the grave.
Cemeteries were segregated.
Many funeral parlors
even refused
to prepare Mexican-American
bodies for burial.
So for the most part if you
died, and if you were Hispanic,
you had to be buried
pretty quickly after you died
so that you wouldn't
create a smell.
In education,
as in many other spheres,
separate and unequal
treatment was commonplace.
Our school were old schools.
They were dilapidated.
We had no toilet
facilities inside.
We had an outhouse.
The Anglo children had
a nice school,
a modern school with indoor
plumbing and heating,
so there was quite a difference.
Quite a difference.
Second-class treatment
exacted a heavy toll.
They were always referring to us
as "dirty Mexicans."
They called us "pepper belly."
They called us "greasers."
They called us "wetback."
They made us feel ashamed
to be a Mexican American.
And as long as Mexican Americans
believed
that they couldn't do anything
about that,
then they in a sense reinforce
the system,
the social stratification
that occurred in their lives.
Then came World War II.
300,000 Mexican Americans
served their country.
They suffered casualties
and earned honors
disproportionate
to their numbers.
They returned home
with dramatically
raised expectations,
believing they had
earned the right
to first class citizenship.
We went to fight
to give people liberty
and to give them
their civil rights,
and then we come back home
and we find that it is
the same way as we left it.
A great many people came home,
expecting that they had won
their full citizenship rights.
When they come home and
they're decorated war heroes
and they're turned away
from restaurants
or told to go to the balconies
of theaters,
it created a building
resentment.
When their kids were not allowed
to go to the good schools,
it created a great
deal of resentment.
The treatment of
Private Felix Longoria,
a war hero killed
in the Philippines,
became a flashpoint.
When his body was returned
to his hometown
of Three Rivers, Texas,
in early 1949,
the town's only funeral parlor
refused to hold
a memorial service,
because, they told
Longoria's widow,
"The whites wouldn't like it."
This guy gave his life so that
we could have the same rights
and privileges that are
available to everybody,
and he couldn't be buried with
the whites because he was brown?
What the hell?
And it, it really hits a nerve
in the nation in particular
with many veteran groups
who say,
"How can they not allow him
to be buried?"
For Mexican Americans,
the Longoria incident came
at a crucial time.
Since the '20s, civic
organizations such as LULAC,
the League of United Latin
American Citizens.
Had begun pushing for civil
rights with some success.
Now emboldened
by their war experience
and growing political clout,
Mexican-American activists
pressed demands
for broader change.
After an intense
public campaign,
Felix Longoria was buried
in Arlington National Cemetery.
And it's this generation
who fought in World War II
who begin to demand civil rights
for Mexican Americans.
They form important
social organizations
like the G.I. Forum.
These organizations
are committed
to fighting for equality
for Mexican Americans
as well as to fighting for pride
in Mexican origins.
The activists also took
their fight to the courts.
With the help of lawyers
like Gus García
and his colleague Carlos Cadena,
both veterans,
they began to attack the legal
foundations of discrimination
throughout the Southwest.
García led a team
that won a court order
curtailing the segregation
of Hispanic students
in Texas schools.
Cadena won a ruling that ended
restrictive covenants
barring Mexican Americans
from buying homes
in Anglo neighborhoods.
But those victories could only
take Mexican Americans so far.
Mexican-American lawyers had
achieved some successes
on the state level,
but the bottom line was
the local majorities
in these states were intent
on treating Mexican Americans
as second-class citizens.
If they were
to be fully protected,
if they were to be regarded
as equal with other Americans,
they would need to receive the
protection of the Constitution.
They would need to take their
cases to the US Supreme Court.
The lawyers faced
an uphill battle.
They knew that Mexican Americans
had been denied the protection
of the Constitution's 14th
Amendment, an essential weapon
for African Americans in their
fight against discrimination.
Some states had argued that
the amendment only barred
discrimination by whites
against blacks,
and by law, Mexican Americans
were considered white.
To end the discrimination
that stifled their community,
they would need to find
the right case,
one with the potential
to redefine the very meaning
of the United States
Constitution.
On August 4, 1951,
on the streets of Edna, Texas,
the locals were taking advantage
of a steamy day off.
A tenant farmer named
Caetano Espinosa,
known to everyone as Joe,
headed to Chencho Sánchez's café
on Menefee Street.
Pedro Hernández, a field worker
with a bad leg,
was already inside.
It was a Saturday, and I think
it was my father's birthday.
And as we passed Edna, he said,
"I'm gonna stop here
to talk to the cotton pickers."
I sat there at a table,
and I ordered a Coke.
And all of a sudden,
I heard an argument.
Joe Espinosa arguing with Pete,
with Pedro.
And when I heard the argument,
I heard something to the effect
that, "Pedro el chueco cabrón."
"No woman is going to look
at a cripple like you.
They're interested
in a real he-man like me."
And with that,
Pedro left the cantina.
And we saw Pete walking
towards his house.
It was like he was in a daze.
He didn't even turn around
and say, "Hi, boys" or anything.
He just kept going.
So about 20 minutes later,
here he comes with that rifle.
He came back, entered
the cantina
and shot Joe Espinosa
in the heart.
He lived maybe 30 minutes
after we got to the hospital.
And my mother told me,
"Caetano's dead."
It was just hard to believe.
It was just incredible.
In his law office in San
Antonio, Gus García listened
as Pete Hernández's mother
choked back sobs.
García realized that there was
more to this case
than a small-town murder.
Hernández was guilty as sin,
no question,
but they had been looking
for a significant case
which would bring about a ruling
from the higher courts
that segregation or
discrimination
against Mexican Americans would
be illegal.
The key issue for García was
not whether Pete Hernández shot
Joe Espinosa,
it was that like many Latino
defendants before him,
Hernández's fate would be
decided by an all-Anglo jury.
There were 70 or more counties
in Texas who had never had
a Hispanic on a jury just
because they didn't think that
we were capable of doing
anything worthwhile.
How do you get around the law
that you have to be judged
by a a jury of your peers?
García was convinced
that this was the case
that he and his activist
colleagues had been waiting for.
Gus García was not one
to think small.
You could write a book
about Gus.
Fine-looking fellow,
movie-star-looking type,
well-dressed guy, brilliant.
At 36, Gus García was
already a local legend.
The son of ranchers who could
trace their Texas roots back
to the Spanish crown,
García was a dashing figure
whose legal victories
and glamorous social life
had made headlines.
ELEANOR McCUSKER:
He was tall, he was slender,
he had coal-black hair
and those green penetrating eyes
that, uh, in my view,
made him very handsome.
Gus was a silver-tongued orator.
He had a deep resonant voice.
Anything he said,
he said with authority.
García had been
an outstanding student
at the University of Texas,
captain of the nationally ranked
debate team,
he had excelled at law school
as well.
Still, even for Latinos with
a stellar record like García's,
the doors to the state's
top law firms remained closed.
There was only so far
that you can go.
There was a certain space
provided them
in which they could then
fulfill some of their ambitions
and dreams.
So as good as they were,
they saw the ceiling quite low
outside of their community,
but within their community,
I think they could fulfill much
of their desires.
Pete Hernández's trial was set
for October 8, 1951,
in the Jackson County
Courthouse.
At the pretrial hearing, García
entered a plea of not guilty
on behalf of his client.
Then he raised an objection
to the entire proceeding.
He argued that Hernández
was being denied
a jury of his peers,
that the practice of excluding
Mexican-American jurors,
and the social hierarchy
it reflected
were fundamentally unfair.
If Mexican Americans had served
on juries that judged whites,
that would have upended
Texas's racial caste system.
That would have said that
Mexican Americans were the equal
of whites, were capable of
sitting in judgment on whites.
And that, I think is
ultimately what
the lawyers were fighting for.
García soon realized it was not
wise to wage legal war alone,
in Edna, Texas
without some reinforcements.
Texas had a phenomena called
"sundown towns."
This name came from the idea
that no minorities
should be caught in town
after the sun went down,
at the penalty of violence.
García called in John Herrera,
an experienced
Houston trial lawyer
with a well-earned reputation
for toughness.
Mr. Herrera was not afraid
to speak out against anybody.
He had big feet,
and he'd step on anybody.
He wasn't scared!
Herrera brought along a young
attorney, James DeAnda,
to handle
the statistical research.
DeANDA:
I did quite a bit of
investigation on the case.
And that county,
as it turned out,
there had never been a Hispanic
in modern times ever served
on either a grand jury, petit
jury or any other type of jury.
García and his team pressed
their case,
armed with statistics
proving the county's history
of systematic exclusion,
and their lead lawyer's
sharp tongue.
They walked into the courthouse,
and when they confronted
the judge, the judge asked them
if they needed an interpreter.
And in his own articulate way,
Gus García replied, "No, sir,
if you can't understand English
or Spanish,
perhaps one of my colleagues can
interpret for you."
When you bring
a civil rights case,
you're challenging
social convention
and tradition and custom.
And some people see it
as a threat
to, to, to a political
structure, a social structure,
a threat to a way of life.
McCUSKER:
It wasn't safe for them
to stay there
because some of the people were
very upset about the case,
and what these lawyers
were trying to do.
And they thought it best
not to stay there.
They may not wake up there.
The men who were arguing the
Hernández case had to drive home
to Houston every night
from Edna, Texas.
They didn't dare stay in town.
The first task the lawyers faced
was to show a pattern
of discrimination against
Mexican Americans as a group.
To do that, they called
Pauline Rosa,
an Edna resident, to the stand.
She testified
that she had tried to enroll
her U.S.-born,
English-speaking children
in Edna's all-Anglo school,
only to be told
they did not accept
any Latin Americans.
Pressed by the prosecutor,
she insisted,
"They discriminated against me
and my children."
For Pauline Rosa.
A Mexican-American woman
in Jackson County, Texas,
to challenge the Anglo
power structure was
something pretty,
pretty amazing.
She saw
that she could do something
to effect change
for her children.
People have said, "She's
indicting the whole community,"
but she was reflecting a view
by Mexican Americans
that while people might not
individually say something
or do something to them
collectively, they were
happy with the system.
But I think all of them,
both Anglo and Mexicans,
understood very well
what she was talking about
in terms of
"They all discriminate
against me and my children."
During a pause
in the proceedings,
the Hernández lawyers
sought out a men's room.
They found one
on the courthouse grounds.
But it turned out
that there was a problem.
The sign said "Men,"
but a Mexican janitor whispered
to them in Spanish
that they couldn't use it.
And he told them in Spanish
that there was another one
"hazte pa'cá" out, out back.
And they went downstairs
and they find another men's
bathroom downstairs
with a bathroom sign that says,
"Colored Men, Hombres Aqui"...
"Men Here."
Think of the irony of this.
In the very courthouse
where the state of Texas
is arguing that Mexican
Americans are white
and, therefore, an all-white
jury can convict a Mexican
charged with murder,
they can't use the bathroom
reserved for whites.
They're not lawyers who are
operating above the fray,
who are somehow independent
of everything that's going on...
They, too, are subject
to this racial system.
In some real sense,
the lawyers in
Hernández v. Texas
were themselves the clients.
The judge overruled
the defense team's objection
to the all-white jury.
It took that jury less than
four hours to reach its verdict.
Pete Hernández was convicted
of murder
and sentenced to life in prison.
His lawyers
immediately appealed.
For them, the hard work
was just beginning.
In the spring of 1952, as they
mapped out their strategy,
García and Herrera realized
they needed help.
They turned to García's
longtime friend
and former law partner,
Carlos Cadena.
These two guys together
were probably
the most powerful intellectual
legal team
that you could ever field.
They made a kind
of legal odd couple:
García, charismatic
and outgoing;
and Cadena, scholarly
and reserved.
McCUSKER:
Carlos was the quiet one,
always doing the heavy research.
Gus was the one always talking
and making the changes,
and I think that's why
they got along so well.
After discussions with Latino
civil rights activists,
the Hernández lawyers decided on
a bold but risky legal strategy.
Arguing for
constitutional protection
for Mexican Americans,
they would emphasize their
ambiguous and vulnerable place
in America's racial hierarchy.
They would put their
very identity on trial.
Mexican Americans were fighting
to be treated
as if they were white.
But the irony here is
that the Texas courts
seized on their claim
to be white
not to treat them fairly,
but to continue to defend this
practice of unfair mistreatment.
The Texas courts responded
by saying,
"So you're white. That's fine.
"Look at the juries.
"There's nobody but
white persons on the jury.
You have no claim
of discrimination."
In turn, the Mexican-American
lawyers had to respond,
"We're white,
but we're a class apart.
"We're a distinct class
that, though white,
is being treated
as if we're not white."
And that's the basis
on which they went forward
with their litigation
in Hernández v. Texas.
The "class apart" theory
was as controversial
as it was innovative.
I think many Mexican Americans
were afraid,
"What would happen
if we weren't considered white?
"How do we know
we're not going to be
"forced or pushed to identify
with the black race,
"at a time when black people
are fundamentally denied
so many basic rights?"
But there's also
the element of racism,
of the belief among
some Mexican Americans
that blackness is inferior.
So there's an element of racism,
and there's an element of fear
of Jim Crow segregation.
Carlos Cadena took the lead in
drafting the Hernández appeal.
Writing a tightly
argued legal brief,
he elaborated on the novel
theory of "a class apart."
He also punctured
the state's legal position
that Mexican Americans
were white, and therefore
outside the protection
of the 14th Amendment,
with a few well-placed
rhetorical thrusts.
"About the only time," Cadena
wrote, "that so-called Mexicans,
"many of them Texans
for seven generations,
"are covered with
the Caucasian cloak,
"is when it serves the ends of
those who would shamelessly deny
"this large segment
of the Texas population
their fundamental rights."
Texas's high court
was not persuaded.
The appeal was denied.
The next step for the Hernández
lawyers, and a very risky one,
was to turn to the
United States Supreme Court.
It was an unusual ambition
to take a case beyond Texas
and to take it to
the U.S. Supreme Court.
Moreover, no Mexican Americans
had ever tried a case
in the U.S. Supreme Court.
They had no reason to believe
that they would win.
The lawyers in Hernández gambled
when they decided to take
this case to the Supreme Court.
They knew, on the up side,
that they could win
national recognition for the
equality of Mexican Americans,
but they knew, on the downside,
that if they lost,
they would establish at a
national level the proposition
that Mexican Americans
could be treated
as second-class citizens.
And not just that,
they knew that this was probably
their one shot in a generation.
An appeal to the Supreme Court
of the United States
is a costly matter.
You have to pay a filing fee,
you have to pay for the printing
of the briefs,
you have to pay to travel
to Washington, D.C.
to argue the case.
McCUSKER:
They didn't even have money
to get up there,
much less to really
fight the case.
And all that time away from home
and their practice all shot
because they were dedicating
so much time to the case.
Activists issued a national
appeal for funds.
The Mexican American community
was generally poor,
but the Hernández case
struck a chord.
The American GI Forum
takes it to the people.
Its founder and-and national
president, Hector García,
has a radio program.
He gets on the radio and he
starts pleading for donations.
LULAC does it through
its chapters across Texas
and the Midwest,
requesting money.
So what you find is people
sending letters
and saying, "this is
the Wharton LULAC Council,
and we're sending you $25."
There's a group in Chicago
that sends $25.
And then you had
these individuals
who are donating money.
There's a gentleman who says,
"I heard you on the radio,
"and I'm sending you this money.
"Please let me hear my name
as someone who stands up
for Mexican American rights."
At one time, Carlos Cadena
literally had tears in his eyes.
He said, "They would
come up to me
"and they would give you
crumpled-up dollar bills
and they'd give you coins."
These were people
who couldn't afford it,
but couldn't afford not to.
We all dug deep into our pockets
and through the dollar bill
and-and-and fund-raiser
and a dollar bill there,
and we made it
you know, we made it.
The Hernández team
had another problem...
One of their own.
According to the rules
of the Supreme Court,
the petition was due
on January 20, 1953,
and had to be
professionally printed.
The Hernández petition arrived
on January 21st,
a day late, typewritten.
Despite the Texas Attorney
General's repeated objections,
the Supreme Court decided
to accept the submission.
But it was a close call...
And a troubling indication
that something was
seriously wrong.
Gus García had a-a problem,
uh, with alcohol.
Quite young in his life,
most people perceived
that he was an alcoholic,
and-and some of the discussions
among reformers is:
Can Gus García handle
this opportunity?
The activists who had backed the
lawyers' efforts for so long
began to worry out loud.
Finally, they had the case
they wanted
before the United States
Supreme Court.
But perhaps, after going
all this distance,
Gus García would not be up
to the challenge.
I think in some ways,
Mexican Americans
were also intimidated
by the process
and said, you know,
"We've got to be up to it.
"We've really got
to look good there
"and we've got to seize
the opportunity
and is Gus ready to do that?"
The case of Hernández v. Texas
was scheduled for oral argument
before the Supreme Court
and its new Chief Justice,
Earl Warren,
on January 11, 1954.
Gus García arrived in Washington
early to prepare.
Time enough, it turned out,
to give his doubters
more cause for concern.
García knew that lawyers
for the NAACP,
led by Thurgood Marshall,
had recently appeared
before the Court,
arguing the landmark school
desegregation case,
Brown v. Board of Education.
Hoping to keep up
with the better funded
civil rights group, he retained
a publicist and a hotel suite
his team could ill afford.
Gus García was looking
at the issue
and he wanted the kind
of support
that African Americans
had gotten.
And the other reformers were
dealing with the realities.
That is, "We can come up
with maybe $3,000
and that barely covers
what we have to do."
Soon García was joined by
the rest of the legal team,
including John Herrera
and Carlos Cadena.
Carlos got to Washington and Gus
had taken a hotel room for him.
He had a bartender,
and he had a table set up
with drinks and everything.
Carlos was pretty furious
because they were
on a short budget,
and Gus thought nothing
of spending the budget
because it was partly his.
Cadena went out to the airport
to meet a man
who was bringing money
from San Antonio,
and the man said, "How'd you
like the money that we sent?"
And he said, "Well, there
isn't any of it left."
The man gave him
several hundred dollars more,
and they both agreed
that they would not tell Gus
about the money.
Cadena said, "Gus García was a
scoundrel, and he was a liar."
January 10, the final night
before the oral argument.
The next morning,
Gus García would argue
the case of a lifetime,
a case that would determine
not only his own reputation,
but the future of the community
that depended on him.
Sometime that night,
García managed to evade
the watchful eyes
of his nervous colleagues.
He went off on a toot,
and everybody knew,
but nobody knew where he was.
And, uh, Gus shows up sometime
rather late in the morning,
and he is very, very drunk.
They knew they were
about to face
the Supreme Court Justices
in a few hours,
and here's this man
putting the case at risk.
He was one
of the two main lawyers
who was going to speak
before Chief Justice Earl Warren
and the other justices.
They threw Gus in a cold shower,
clothes and all,
ordered room service,
a big pot of black coffee,
and went on to sober him up
and get him ready.
On January 11,
as the lawyers marched
up to the Supreme Court,
the wintry chill reminded them
that Texas was
very far away indeed.
The lawyers were about to face
a court that had never before
been addressed
by Mexican American attorneys,
or been asked
to consider the question
of Mexican American
civil rights.
If you can imagine
Carlos Cadena and Gus García
getting the opportunity
that no one else has ever had,
to be able to paint a picture
of a community
and where it stood in time,
and all of the practices,
the laws, the circumstances
that kept them where they were.
Carlos Cadena sitting
at the counsel table,
wearing a very dark,
serious suit.
Gus García sitting next to him.
The nine justices
sitting on a long bench
facing the two sets of parties.
The Texas attorney general
sitting at their own table
ready to defend
the state's decision
that Mexican Americans
were really whites.
The lawyers in Hernández
needed to argue
that the 14th Amendment
protected Mexican Americans
to a court that had barely ever
heard of Mexican Americans.
I opened the argument, and...
I said, "Your petitioner is a...
an American citizen
of Mexican descent,"
and one of the judges
asked me, "What is that?"
What the... you stupid guy!
Everybody knows what that is!
But anyway, I was explaining,
and Justice Frankfurter
interrupted and said,
"They call them greasers
down there, don't they?"
Gus García,
who seemed to be out of it
during most of the presentation
by Carlos Cadena,
was suddenly awoken
by several questions
that were asked by the judges.
"Can Mexican Americans
speak English?"
"Are they citizens?"
And I think this was
the key for Gus García,
because Gus García
tended to personalize that,
and he saw within himself
all the abilities and qualities
of the Mexican American
community.
Fueled by indignation,
García offered the justices
a brief, irony-laced
history lesson.
"My people," he told them,
"were in Texas
"a hundred years
before Sam Houston,
that wetback from Tennessee."
And he was just getting started.
Gus's delivery was so eloquent,
it was so beautiful
and so penetrating,
so down-to-earth in...
high-spun...
uh, legal argument.
There are some lights there
on the rostrum,
and when the red light comes on,
you stop,
and everybody knew that.
When the red light came on,
Gus stopped in mid-sentence.
And then Justice Earl Warren
leaned off the bench,
and he said,
"Continue, Mr. García."
Gus García was told to proceed,
so he stole 16 extra minutes.
So when we walked out
of the Supreme Court
of the United States,
he met with one of the attachés,
and the attaché was
an old black man.
He says,
"This is unprecedented."
He says, "I've never even
given extra time here
for Thurgood Marshall...
He was here last week."
After years of planning
and all the legal work,
it was finally over.
The case that the activists
and lawyers hafocused on
for so long was
now out of their hands.
The exhausted
Hernández legal team
headed home to await
the court's decision.
Soon after their return,
García and Herrera
went on the radio
to share their tale with the
public that had supported them
with their dollars
and their prayers.
Finally, on May 3, 1954,
the United States Supreme Court
announced its ruling
in the case
of Hernández v. Texas.
Thedecision of the Texas court
was reversed.
Pete Hernández would receive
a new trial,
before a true jury of his peers,
a trial that
would ultimately result
in his reconviction
for the killing of Joe Espinosa.
But far more important was
the court's legal reasoning...
A holding
that Mexican Americans,
as a group, were protected
under the Constitution's
14th Amendment,
in keeping with the theory that
they were indeed
"a class apart."
It was a victory
for the ordinary people
who had endured discrimination
without recourse
for generations,
and the activists who
had fought on their behalf.
For Carlos Cadena,
the meticulous legal theorist,
and for Gus García,
who had disproved the doubters
and triumphed
despite his inner demons.
Hailed as heroes,
the Hernández lawyers
were applauded
by Mexican Americans
across the Southwest.
In every place
they went and spoke,
it was about, look at what
Mexican Americans have done.
Look at how we presented
our case to the nation.
Look at how
we have finally made
the people
of the United States listen.
Now they know we're here.
The victory
in Hernández was huge
for the Mexican American
community.
They now had
the highest court in the land
saying it's unconstitutional,
indeed, symbolically,
it's un-American
to treat Mexicans
as if they're an inferior race.
With the decision and the power
of the United States
Constitution behind them,
Mexican Americans successfully
challenged employment
and housing discrimination.
They tore down barriers
to their right to vote
and run for office.
They ensured that their children
would no longer be forced
to attend segregated schools.
This case is
incredibly important,
because it guarantees that,
even being different,
that we are still protected
under the laws
of this great land.
I think Mexican Americans
in particular,
Latinos in general,
but America as a whole,
owes a great debt to the people
who pursued this case.
For Gus García,
the future would be
shadowed by tragedy.
Not long after
his legal triumph,
his personal life
spun out of control.
Alcoholism would be cruelly
compounded by mental illness,
taking García
in and out of institutions
for the next decade.
McCUSKER:
I didn't see him
those last few months
when they said he was just
beyond himself in San Antonio.
All the reports that I got back
were that his mind
was deteriorating,
that his behavior was changing.
And he died on a bench.
Isn't that tragic?
I mean, somebody with such
a brilliant mind, my God.
Gus García died of liver failure
in 1964 at age 48.
Less than a year later,
Carlos Cadena would be named
the first
Mexican American justice
of the Texas Court of Appeals,
and would go on
to become chief justice.
After the Hernández case,
Mexican Americans
across the country
would no longer be considered
second-class citizens
under the law.
The struggle was hardly over,
but the lives
of millions of Americans
had been changed forever.
Hernández v. Texas
belongs in the pantheon
of great civil rights cases,
indeed of great American cases.
But even more important,
it belongs in the pantheon
of great moments
in American history.
This is a moment when a people
long regarded as inferior
organize and demand
equal treatment
and succeed in that demand.
This is an inspirational moment
in American history,
a moment in which equality
is demanded and achieved.
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Someone needs to stop Clearway Law.
Public shouldn't leave reviews for lawyers.