A Class Apart (review)

A Class Apart, a documentary film co-directed by Carlos Sandoval and Peter Miller for PBS' venerable signature series American Experience, deftly chronicles the complicated history of Hernandez v. Texas, a relatively unknown, but nevertheless landmark 1954 Supreme Court decision. This case would determine whether Mexican-Americans, despite their legal status as members of the white race, deserved the protection of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. Presented through the recollections of Mexican-American historians, legal scholars, and actual participants, A Class Apart stitches together a troubling mosaic of a court victory inspired as much by the plaintiffs' fear over being treated as blacks were in the segregated South, as it was about their own exclusion from the jury system that spurred the filing of the appeal.

In 1848, at the end of the Mexican-American War, Mexico's peace treaty with the United States included a declaration that all Mexicans—who were still living in that part of their former country now annexed to the United States—were to be admitted as citizens and granted the privilege of being considered "white by law." This provision was included primarily because only whites could be considered for American citizenship at that time. A century later Mexican-Americans in Texas found themselves petitioning the Supreme Court due to the failure of the Jackson County, Texas courts to recognize their legally white status.

From the very beginning of the film, the influence of Ken Burns' cinematic aesthetic on PBS documentaries is in ample evidence. Burns' stylistic trademarks are evident as A Class Apart's co-directors Peter Morris and Carlos Sandoval employ the three techniques audiences have come to expect from a PBS project: ample black and white still photography, an authoritative narrator (in this case the great Edward James Olmos), and on-camera interviews with experts on the subject matter. In fact, unsurprisingly, Morris and Burns had collaborated on Burns' Frank Lloyd Wright (1998) and, most recently, seven PBS episodes of 2007's The War.

In A Class Apart, historians, legal scholars familiar with the case, and observers share their opinions and recollections about how a small, poor, and seemingly powerless Mexican-American minority community of citizens, led by defense attorney Gustavo "Gus" Garcia, a brilliant (but chronically alcoholic) legal genius, triumphed, against all odds, over a biased legal system that was representative of the South's locally rigged lily-white male juror selection process. That the guilt or innocence of defendant Pedro Hernandez, a farm worker who was convicted in less than four hours by an all-white jury of murdering Joe Espinosa, was never in doubt—the crime was committed in public and in full view of several witnesses—only further serves to underscore A Class Apart's Cinderella nature.

The Hernandez appeal was based upon evidence that the county's Mexican-American citizenry had not been summoned to jury duty, much less served, in over 25 years. Garcia and his legal team claimed discrimination based on a claim that Hernandez had not been tried before a jury of his peers, a violation of his Constitutional rights to due process. Thus, Garcia had to prove that "white by law" was a Catch-22, an insidious method for white Texans to have their cake and eat it, too. Despite their legal status as whites, Garcia wrote in his appeal, Mexican-Americans were, in the words of one historian interviewed for the film, "a class apart," i.e. legally white but not treated as such.

The film offers several poignant moments to drive home Garcia's argument. In the most telling example, a recounting is offered of how the defense team, denied access to the "white" bathrooms, was forced to use a toilet in the basement of the courthouse reserved for "colored" men. This particular set of circumstances, a degradation placed upon Mexican-Americans that made them feel they shared social status with blacks, makes clear an ugly truth that becomes the film's backstory—Mexican Americans at that time...