"Colored Men" and "Hombres Aqui": Hernandez V. Texas and the Emergence of Mexican-american Lawyering

by Olivas, Michael A.

• ISBN13: 9781558854765
• ISBN10: 1558854762
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2006-10-31
• Publisher: Arte Publico Pr

Summary

This collection of ten essays commemorates the 50th anniversary of an important but almost forgotten U.S. Supreme court case, Hernandez v. Texas, 347 US 475 (1954), the major case involving Mexican Americans and jury selection, published just before Brown v. Board of Education in the 1954 Supreme Court reporter. This landmark case, the first to be tried by Mexican American lawyers before the U.S. Supreme Court, held that Mexican Americans were a discrete group for purposes of applying Equal Protection. Although the case was about discriminatory state jury selection and trial practices, it has been cited for many other civil rights precedents in the intervening 50 years. Even so, it has not been given the prominence it deserves, in part because it lives in the shadow of the more compelling Brown v. Board case. There had been earlier efforts to diversify juries, reaching back at least to the trial of Gregorio Cortez in 1901 and continuing with efforts by the legendary Oscar Zeta Acosta in Los Angeles in the 1960s. Even as recently as 2005 there has been clear evidence that Latino participation in the Texas jury system is still substantially unrepresentative of the growing population. But in a brief and shining moment in 1954, Mexican-American lawyers prevailed in a system that accorded their community no legal status and no respect. Through sheer tenacity, brilliance, and some luck, they showed that it is possible to tilt against windmills and slay the dragon. Edited and with an introduction by University of Houston law scholar Michael A. Olivas, Colored Men and Hombres Aqui is the first full-length book on this case. This volume contains the papers presented at the Hernandez at 50conference which took place in 2004 at the University of Houston Law Center and also contains source materials, trial briefs, and a chronology of the case.

Table of Contents

MARK TUSHNET
Foreword	ix
Acknowledgements	xiii
Chronology in Hernandez v. Texas	xv
MICHAEL A. OLIVAS
Introduction: Commemorating the 50th Anniversary of Hernandez v. Texas	xvii
LAURA E. GÓMEZ
Off-White in an Age of White Supremacy: Mexican Elites and the Rights of Indians and Blacks in Nineteenth-Century New Mexico	1	(40)
IAN HANEY LÓPEZ
Race and Colorblindness after Hernandez and Brown	41	(12)
KEVIN R. JOHNSON
Hernandez v. Texas: Legacies of Justice and Injustice	53	(38)
JUAN FRANCISCO PEREA
Mi Profundo Azul: Why Latinos Have a Right to Sing the Blues	91	(20)
NEIL FOLEY
Over the Rainbow: Hernandez v. Texas, Brown v. Board of Education, and Black v. Brown	111	(12)
STEVEN HARMON WILSON
Some Are Born White, Some Achieve Whiteness, and Some Have Whiteness Thrust Upon Them: Mexican Americans and the Politics of Racial Classification in the Federal Judicial Bureaucracy, Twenty-Five Years after Hernandez v. Texas	123	(20)
CLARE SHERIDAN
Peremptory Challenges: Lessons from Hernandez v. Texas	143	(18)
SANDRA GUERRA THOMPSON
The Non-Discrimination Ideal of Hernandez v. Texas Confronts a "Culture" of Discrimination: The Amazing Story of Miller-El v. Texas	161	(38)
JAMES DE ANDA
Hernandez at Fifty, A Personal History	199	(10)
MICHAEL A. OLIVAS
Hernandez v. Texas: A Litigation History	209	(16)
APPENDICES
I Aniceto Sanchez v. Texas	225	(2)
II Aniceto Sanchez Briefs	227	(14)
IIIHernandez v. Texas (state)	241	(6)
IV Hernandez v. Texas (U.S. Supreme Court)	247	(4)
V Transcript of record, U.S. Supreme Court	251	(74)
VI Brief of Petitioner filed in Hernandez, U.S. Supreme Court	325	(22)
VII Brief in Opposition filed in Hernandez, U.S. Supreme Court	347	(9)
VIII A Cotton Picker Finds Justice!: The saga of the Hernandez case, compiled by Ruben Munguia	356	(17)
IX Gregorio Cortez's Trial	373