American Experience

Dr Ramiro Casso: 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?

Ignacio García: 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.

Narrator: For Mexican Americans, the Longoria incident came at a crucial time. Since the twenties, 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.

Ian Haney-López: And it’s this generation who fought in World War Two 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.

Narrator: 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.

Ian Haney-López: 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.

Narrator: The lawyers faced an uphill battle.
They knew that Mexican Americans had been denied the protection of the Constitution’s Fourteenth 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.
p. 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.

Narrator: 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.

Oralia Espinosa: It was a Saturday and I think it was my father’s birthday. And as we passed Edna he said, “I’m going to stop here to talk to the cotton pickers.”

Victor Rodríguez: I sat there at a table, and I ordered a Coke. And, ah 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.

Juan Hernández: 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. And so about twenty minutes later, here he comes with that rifle.

Victor Rodríguez: He came back, entered the cantina, and shot Joe Espinosa, in the heart.

Oralia Espinosa: He lived maybe thirty 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.

Narrator: 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.

Bob Sánchez: 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.

Narrator: 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.

Dr Ramiro Casso: 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?

Narrator: 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.

Bob Sánchez: You could write a book about, Gus. Fine-looking fellow, movie star-looking type, well dressed guy, brilliant.

Narrator: 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 and he was slender, he had coal black hair and those green penetrating eyes that ah in my view made him very handsome.

Bob Sánchez: Gus was a silver-tongued orator. He had a deep resonant voice. Anything he said he said with authority.

Narrator: 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.

Ignacio García: 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.

Narrator: Pete Hernández’s trial was set for October 8, 1951, in the Jackson County Courthouse. At the pre-trial 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.

Ian Haney-López: If Mexican Americans had served on juries that judged whites, that would have up-ended 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.