Over 16,000 historical markers dot the Texas landscape. Jackson County will soon add one to that number, dedicating a new marker outside the county courthouse in Edna on Saturday.
The marker will memorialize the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court case Hernandez v. Texas. The dedication is at 1 p.m. at the Jackson County Courthouse, 115 W. Main St.
Several dignitaries and scholars, as well as a few descendants of two of the civil rights lawyers who argued the case, will be at the dedication.
The Supreme Court ruled in Hernandez v. Texas that equal rights granted by the 14th Amendment justly apply to Hispanic people. The case began in Edna years earlier.
The 14th Amendment, adopted after the Civil War, guaranteed equal protection under the law to African Americans.
The court ruled in the case that the amendment applied not just to African Americans, but also to all other groups existing in a community, according to the Oyez Project.
“This is the most important historical marker for the Hispanic community because this case opened the door to equality, especially in terms of jury duty,” dedication organizer Judy Rodriguez, of Ganado, said on Tuesday.
Hernandez v. Texas
In 1951, Pete Hernandez, a young Mexican-American cotton picker, was accused of killing Joe Espinoza and sentenced to life imprisonment “by an all Anglo-Saxon jury in Edna, Texas,” Library of Congress data said. “Mexican American civil rights lawyers Gus Garcia and Carlos Cadena from San Antonio and James de Anda from Houston, Texas took the Hernandez case to the United States Supreme Court.”
A Hispanic person had not served on a jury in Jackson County in 25 years, Oyez said, and lawyers for Hernandez argued it should therefore be determined that Hernandez’s rights of equal protection under the law — one of which is to be tried by a jury of his peers — were violated.
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals upheld the conviction, saying that “Mexicans are members of and within the classification of the white race as distinguished from (African Americans).”
If Mexican Americans are a part of the white race, then the “Anglo-Saxon” jurors were indeed Hernandez’s peers, the argument claimed.
The question then before the Supreme Court, wrote Oyez, was, “Is it a denial of the 14th Amendment equal protection clause to try a defendant of a particular race or ethnicity before a jury where all persons of his race or ancestry have, because of that race or ethnicity, been excluded by the state?”
The Supreme Court unanimously ruled that it was a denial of Hernandez’s rights.
“The Court held that the 14th Amendment protects those beyond the two classes of white and Negro,” Oyez said, disputing the assertion that those of Mexican descent are treated as a part of the white race.
“This was established by the fact that the distinction between whites and Mexican ancestry individuals was made clear at the Jackson County Courthouse itself where ‘there were two men’s toilets, one unmarked, and the other marked Colored Men and Hombres Aqui…,’” wrote Oyez.
It then became a requirement by federal law that Hispanic people serve on juries and be granted the other equal protections guaranteed in the 14th Amendment.
Saturday’s dedication
“When I went to school, if I spoke Spanish, they would draw a circle on the chalkboard and, as punishment, I would have to stand with my nose in the circle,” Rodriguez said. “A lot of the people coming to the dedication are the people who remember the case and what it meant for us. We want to encourage the younger people to come, as well.”
Rodriguez sees civic service as a duty, and has served on both petit juries and a grand jury, she said. It was the Hernandez case that made her service possible, she said.
“I am involved. And it is in serving that I get informed,” Rodriquez said. “I then pass that knowledge along.”
About 25 people are expected to attend, including several officers of both the League of United Latin American Citizens and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund.
Becky Galvan, daughter of Cadena, will also attend, as well as James Perez of the Wharton Hispanic Chamber and Dora Olivo, former state representative from Rosenberg, among others.
A reception in the courthouse will follow the dedication, and author Millie Diaz will sell and sign copies of her book “Feet of Clay.”
Her book tells the history of the case and of Garcia, the main lawyer and hard-luck hero of the story.
Diaz wrote about Garcia, “On the day he learns his failed marriage has rendered him homeless, Gus hastily takes on a new client, a man accused of shooting and killing a man outside a bar in Edna.”
The rest, as the saying goes, is history — and will soon have a marker.
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