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TAGS: OPRC KPAO OIIP
SUBJECT: DOCUMENTARY VIDEO:  AMERICAN EXPERIENCE: A CLASS 
APART 
 
¶1. Last week President Obama nominated the first ever Hispanic 
American to the Supreme Court - Judge Sonia Sotomayor. The 
path leading to Judge Sotomayor's nomination was made 
possible, in part, because of a landmark Supreme Court ruling 
made in 1954. In that year, the same year in which Sotomayor 
was born, a band of underdog Mexican-American lawyers took 
their case, Hernandez v. Texas, all the way to the Supreme 
Court to challenge Jim Crow-style discrimination against the 
Hispanic American community. The PBS documentary THE AMERICAN 
EXPERIENCE: A CLASS APART provides posts with an opportunity 
to put Sotomayor's remarkable life and nomination in 
historical context by recounting the story of those courageous 
Mexican-American lawyers who, just 55 years ago, risked 
everything to tear down the social walls that had put the 
Hispanic American community in "a class apart." 
 
¶2.  AMERICAN EXPERIENCE: A CLASS APART, 60 minutes, produced 
2009 by WGBH Boston. 
 
Although the Treaty of Guadelupe Hidalgo ended the Mexican 
American war in 1848 and conferred American citizenship to the 
native Hispanic population of Texas, New Mexico and parts of 
California, for more than 100 years it was not borne out in 
reality. Mexican-Americans where treated as a separate and 
invisible class. More often then not they were openly barred 
from restaurants or schools. 
 
By the end of World War II there was beginning to be a 
movement in the Mexican American community to push for their 
rights.   Although it was very unusual for Hispanics to attend 
professional law school, those that did get the opportunity 
began to champion the cause of Mexican American civil rights. 
A CLASS APART tells the story of a team of Texas Mexican 
American lawyers demanding that Mexican Americans who stood 
trial had a right to be judged by their peers. 
 
In the tiny town of Edna, Texas, in 1951, field hand Pete 
Hernandez murdered his boss, tenant farmer Joe Espinosa after 
exchanging heated words. 
 
In his law office in San Antonio, Texas, a well-known attorney 
named Gus Garca listened to the desperate pleas of Pedro 
Hernndez's mother, who traveled more than one hundred and 
fifty miles to ask him to defend her son. Garca quickly 
realized that there was more to this case than murder. The 
real concern was not Hernndez's guilt, but whether he could 
receive a fair trial with an all-White jury deciding his fate. 
Garca assembled a team of courageous attorneys who argued on 
behalf of Hernndez from his first trial at the Jackson County 
Courthouse in Texas all the way to Washington, DC.   From this 
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. 
 
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. 
 
"They took a gamble," says University of California-Berkeley 
professor of law Ian Haney-Lpez. "They knew, on the up side, 
that they could win national recognition for the equality of 
Mexican Americans, but they knew, on the down side, that if 
they lost, they would establish at a national level the 
proposition that Mexican Americans could be treated as second 
class citizens." 
 
On January 11, 1954, Garca and Cadena faced the nine justices 
of the U.S. Supreme Court. Cadena opened the argument. "Can 
Mexican Americans speak English?" one justice asked. "Are they 
citizens?" asked another. The lack of knowledge stunned Gus 
Garca, who stood up and delivered the argument of his life. 
On May 3, 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court announced its ruling in 
the case of Hernandez v. Texas. Pedro Hernndez would receive 
a new trial ? and would be judged by a true jury of his peers. 
The court's legal reasoning: Mexican Americans, as a group, 
were protected under the 14th Amendment, in keeping with the 
theory that they were indeed "a class apart." 
 
¶3. See USAGE REPORT requirement in para. 8.  Ordering 
information using our website ordering system is in para. 9. 
Your order is needed by June 12. 
 
¶4. Language: English only. 
 
¶5. Rights: We have public performance and educational rights 
for this video.  It can be shown in almost every venue, but no 
entry fee can be charged. Posts interested in subtitling the 
program should contact the Video Acquisitions office. 
 
¶6. AFTER ACTION REPORTING - ORDERING REQUIREMENT. To receive a 
copy of this DVD your post must have a video usage report on 
file that is no older than 6 months.  If you do not have one, 
please submit one before requesting a copy of this video. We 
will turn back any orders from posts who have not reported 
within the last 6 months. 
 
¶7. Ordering Procedure:  If you have a recent video usage 
report on file (within the last 6 months), you may place your 
order using the electronic ordering form on our Video 
Acquisitions website.  This website can be accessed through 
INFOCENTRAL. 
 
To access the site from OpenNet go to 
http://intranet.state.gov 
and click on the INFOCENTRAL link located in the center 
under Quick Links. From INFOCENTRAL, click on Video 
Acquisitions under the Outreach Tools tab/dropdown menu 
at the top of the page. 
 
You can also go to INFOCENTRAL directly and select Video 
Acquisitions under the Outreach Tools tab/dropdown menu. 
Registering with the site is required if you are not on 
OpenNet. 
 
¶8. If you have questions about our site, accessing our 
catalog, ordering dvds, etc., you can e-mail the Video 
Acquisitions office at PAVideoAcquisitions@state.gov. 
 
¶9. Minimize considered. 
 
 
CLINTON