Texas Bar Journal • September 2024

Hernandez v. Texas at 70

Honoring The Legal Team Behind The Landmark Case.

Written by Dori Contreras, Gina M. Benavides, David M. Medina, And Christopher D. Pineda

Seventy years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its Hernandez v. Texas decision. The case arose from a bar fight in 1951 in Edna, when Pete Hernandez shot and killed Joe Espinosa. While Hernandez’s guilt was never in question, the case involved a long-standing, widespread problem: “the systematic exclusion of persons of Mexican origin from all types of jury duty in at least seventy counties in Texas.”¹ It was the opportune time for such a challenge: a cadre of Mexican American attorneys, returning from service in World War II, would no longer tolerate treatment as second- class citizens in Texas—and they had begun using the law to break down barriers.

A team of pro bono lawyers—Gus Garcia, Carlos Cadena, John Herrera, and James De Anda—assembled to represent Hernandez in Jackson County. Their strategy was to create a trial record showing that discrimination against Hispanics was commonplace, in violation of the Constitution. In fact, no Spanish-surnamed person had ever served on a jury in the last 25 years in Jackson County, despite Hispanics comprising over 10% of the population. In contrast, the state of Texas argued that the 14th Amendment only protected Black citizens, not Mexican Americans, who were legally “white.” Following a guilty verdict and unsuccessful state appeal, the legal team presented oral argument before the U.S. Supreme Court, the first time that Mexican American lawyers had done so. On May 3, 1954, Chief Justice Earl Warren issued a unanimous decision, finding that Mexican Americans were a separate class and entitled to equal protection. Today, we remember the Hernandez legal team.

GUS GARCIA
Gustavo “Gus” C. Garcia (1915-1964) was born in Laredo. His parents were Alfredo Alonso Garcia and Teresa Arguindegui Garcia. His family had been prominent in the Laredo area for generations: a well-known history of the Southwest described Garcia’s grandfather and other family members as large landowners, stock raisers, and the city’s foremost merchants. The family could also trace its roots to some of the earliest Spanish and Mexican colonists in this area of Texas.

Garcia’s family may have experienced financial setbacks during the Great Depression. He would later, in a jocular vein, describe his “stuffy, society-conscious relatives as bankrupt Mexican blue bloods.” By 1930, Garcia’s family was living in San Antonio. Garcia’s school yearbooks demonstrate his budding intellect, leadership, and debate skills. When he graduated from high school as valedictorian in 1932, Garcia was recognized as “Most Intellectual Boy.”

Garcia attended the University of Texas at Austin for college and law school, where he continued to stand out, often as the only Hispanic student. He served as captain of the debate team and as a member of the Texas Law Review, Daily Texan, and Latin American Club, among other activities. In his senior year, he was recognized as a “go-getter who gets what he goes after.” Garcia’s club activities at UT are notable for another reason: He met other Hispanic students who would go on to make history, including Hector P. Garcia, Carlos Cadena, and Reynaldo Garza, among others.

After his law school graduation in 1938, Garcia worked as an assistant district attorney. When World War II broke, Garcia served in the Pacific, earning the rank of first lieutenant in the U.S. Army and eventually serving in the Judge Advocate General’s Corps.

When he returned to civilian life, Garcia began his distinguished career in civil rights and public service. He served as legal adviser to the League of United Latin American Citizens and the American G.I. Forum in their efforts to combat discrimination, and he served a stint as a San Antonio school board member. In 1947, Garcia worked with families in Cuero to close a segregated “Mexican school” that Hispanic children were forced to attend under the guise that they lacked English fluency. Garcia also represented the family of Felix Longoria, who died in combat during World War II, after his hometown of Three Rivers refused to bury him because of his Mexican heritage. In 1948, Garcia was involved in the Delgadov. Bastrop litigation that successfully ended the segregation of Mexican American children in Texas schools.

In September 1951, Garcia agreed to represent Pete Hernandez in his criminal trial along with John Herrera and his associate James De Anda. For the later appeal, Carlos Cadena came on board. When the case reached the U.S. Supreme Court in January 1954, Garcia and Cadena presented oral argument. Based on contemporaneous and later accounts, Chief Justice Earl Warren allowed Garcia an unprecedented extra 16 minutes to finish his presentation, so impressed was he with Garcia’s eloquence. (Unfortunately, no transcript of the historic oral argument exists.) Garcia will always be associated with the great victory the legal team achieved with the Hernandez v. Texas decision in May 1954. He died in 1964 at age 48.

CARLOS CADENA
Carlos Cristian Cadena (1917-2001) was born in San Antonio. Cadena and his siblings were raised by a single mother, Dolores Espinosa Trippe, who supported her family as a housekeeper and laundry woman. She later naturalized as a U.S. citizen in 1941.

Cadena attended the University of Texas at Austin for college and law school, where he was recognized for his scholarly ability. He graduated summa cum laude with his law degree in 1940, finishing third out of 117 graduates. He was also selected for membership to UT Law’s Chancellors Honor Society and the Texas Law Review, where he may have been the first Hispanic student editor.

Cadena began his legal career as an assistant city attorney until 1943, when he was drafted into the U.S. Army Air Force. He served during World War II as a radio operator and gunner, including in the Pacific Theater. After the war, Cadena worked with his former classmate, Gus Garcia, on school desegregation cases on behalf of Hispanic children. In 1948, Cadena was involved with the Clifton v. Puente case, persuading the 4th Court of Appeals that the 50-year practice of race-based restrictive covenants in San Antonio, which prohibited the sale of land to Mexican Americans, was unenforceable. Cadena also began teaching at St. Mary’s University School of Law and may have been the first Hispanic law professor in the country, with his faculty appointment in 1952.

Cadena brought his formidable intellect and experience to bear when he later joined the Hernandez legal team in the early 1950s. Gus Garcia would later write that “[f ]ull credit for the work on appeal, both before the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals and the Supreme Court . . . should be given to Professor Carlos C. Cadena . . . Intellectually speaking, I can accurately describe Professor Cadena as the best brain of my generation.” Cadena would later serve as city attorney of San Antonio between 1954 and 1961. In 1965, Gov. John Connally appointed Cadena to the 4th Court of Civil Appeals. In 1969, Cadena married Gloria Villa Galvan, a war widow with eight children; together, they raised nine children. In 1977, Gov. Dolph Briscoe appointed Cadena as chief justice of the court, the first Mexican American to serve as an appellate chief in Texas. In 1990, after 25 years on the bench, Cadena retired. He died in 2001 in San Antonio.

JOHN J. HERRERA
John J. Herrera (1910-1986) was born in Cravens, Louisiana. In 1934, Herrera graduated from Sam Houston High School in Houston, where his speech teacher was Lyndon B. Johnson. While working as a laborer and taxi driver, he received an LL.B. at South Texas College of Law Houston in 1940 and passed the bar in 1943.

Public service was in Herrera’s blood. His father served as a policeman in San Antonio and then a sheriff in Louisiana. His great-great-grandfather was Jose Francisco Ruiz (1783- 1840), a military officer and public official who, along with his nephew Jose Antonio Navarro, signed the Texas Declaration of Independence in 1836. Herrera’s great-grandfather was Blas Herrera (1802-1878), courier, soldier, and scout, often called the “Paul Revere” of the Texas Revolution.

As a Latin American Club officer, Herrera successfully opposed discriminatory treatment of Hispanic municipal employees in Houston in the 1930s. He revived the dormant LULAC Council 60 in 1939. He filed the first complaint of discrimination in Texas (1943) with the President’s Employment Practice Commission, a move that resulted in the hiring of minorities for skilled Gulf Coast war-industries jobs. Herrera organized 53 new LULAC councils in Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona and served as national president in 1952-1953 as well as legal adviser from the 1960s through 1977.

Herrera’s efforts resulted in the practice of naming World War II Liberty ships for Latin American heroes. Herrera was the first Hispanic political candidate in Harris County (1947). He organized 12 unions.

In addition to the Hernandez case, Herrera, together with Gus Garcia, also won Delgado v. Bastrop Independent School District (1948), which declared the school segregation of Hispanics illegal. Herrera died in Houston on October 12, 1986.

JAMES DE ANDA
Judge James De Anda (1925-2006), a first-generation American, was born in Houston. His parents, Javier De Anda Rodriguez and Maria Luisa Salinas Yablonsky, were immigrants from Mexico. De Anda graduated from high school in 1942 and began studying at Texas A&M University until World War II, when the U.S. Marine Corps called him to duty. After helping to preserve freedom and democracy, he returned to Texas A&M and graduated in 1948. De Anda then enrolled at the University of Texas at Austin and obtained his law degree in 1950.

He returned to Houston and began his law career with legendary attorney John J. Herrera. The partnership proved fortuitous for the advancement of Hispanic civil rights in Texas. In 1951, Herrera and De Anda represented Emilio Sanchez in the murder case Sanchez v. State. The two attorneys argued that Sanchez’s due process was violated because of the systemic exclusion of Mexican American jurors in Fort Bend County. Following Sanchez’s conviction, Herrera and De Anda prepared an “exhaustive brief ” and filed an appeal. However, the state court of criminal appeals rejected the due process argument, opining that Mexican Americans are “white people.” Because Sanchez decided to forgo further appeals, and due to insufficient funds, Herrera and De Anda could not pursue an additional appeal.

Nonetheless, the two attorneys were determined to challenge the status quo in this corner of Texas. In fact, this was the same region where World War II hero and Medal of Honor recipient Marcario Garcia was denied service in a restaurant and beaten with a baseball bat. When the Hernandez v. Texas case arose in 1951, in nearby Jackson County, it provided the ideal vehicle for Herrera and De Anda—along with Gus Garcia and Carlos Cadena—to raise the jury exclusion due process issue again and change history.

De Anda would go on to take a leading role in other historically significant civil rights cases and causes. In the late 1950s, he was part of the legal team (in Hernandez v. Driscoll ISD) that successfully ended the segregation of Hispanic children into “Mexican schools” in Driscoll. In the late 1960s, De Anda represented 32 families in a federal class action lawsuit (Cisneros v. Corpus Christi ISD) that ended the segregation of Mexican American children in Corpus Christi. In 1970, he helped create Texas Rural Legal Assistance, the predecessor of today’s Texas Rio Grande Legal Aid. De Anda was also involved with the founding of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund.

In 1979, De Anda was nominated to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas by U.S. President Jimmy Carter. After his confirmation, De Anda became only the third Mexican American to ever serve on the federal bench.² He served as a federal judge until his retirement in 1992, including as chief judge for his last four years. De Anda was well respected in the legal community as a brilliant scholar. Following his retirement, De Anda returned to private practice. De Anda died in 2006. His funeral was attended by lawyers, judges, and community leaders from throughout the country. He was buried with full military honors for a life worth remembering.

DORI CONTRERAS is the chief justice of the 13th Court of Appeals and was raised in Pharr. She graduated from the University of Texas with a BBA in accounting in 1980 and obtained her J.D. from the University of Houston Law Center in 1990, licensed that same year. Throughout her career, Contreras has been recognized for her contributions to many professional and community organizations.

GINA M. BENAVIDES was first elected to the 13th Court of Appeals of Texas in 2006 and most recently elected to her third six-year term in 2018. She received the Reynaldo Garza Lifetime Achievement Award from the State Bar of Texas Hispanic Issues Section in June 2023. Benavides currently serves on the board of the State Bar of Texas Appellate Section.

DAVID M. MEDINA is a partner in Nelson Mullins in Houston, where his practice focuses on commercial litigation, appellate law, environmental law, and tax controversy litigation. In 2004, he was appointed to the Supreme Court of Texas, and he was subsequently elected to a full term, serving on the court until 2012.

CHRISTOPHER D. PINEDA is an assistant U.S. Attorney at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of Texas. He represents the U.S. in federal court in various civil litigation matters. Pineda received his B.A. from the University of Texas at Austin, an M.P.P. from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, and his J.D. from the Boston University School of Law.