A Kennedy Connection, A New Cheech Film & More

WASHINGTON: That Caroline Kennedy surfaced as a top candidate for the Senate seat soon to be vacated by Hillary Rodham Clinton once her confirmation as the president-elect’s choice for Secretary of State, was not surprising.  She is, after all, a member of the influential Kennedy family whose political achievements have been well documented.

An attorney, author and mother of three, Kennedy has made her own mark, albeit quietly and without the fanfare usually associated with the Kennedy clan.  And although the daughter of the late President John F. Kennedy may turn out to be New York Governor David Paterson’s choice to fill the New York Senate seat, is her Kennedy connection sufficient enough to qualify her for the seat, which incidentally was once held by her uncle Robert Kennedy.

Ironically, Kennedy has set her sights on the Senate seat occupied by Hillary Rodham Clinton who ran against Barak Obama for the Democratic presidential nomination and whom she did not endorse. A dedicated member of the Obama campaign, Kennedy later served as co-chair of his Vice Presidential Search Committee.

Although Kennedy seems like a clear choice for the soon to be vacant Senate seat, the governor is said to still be looking. If a Kennedy connection is an essential requirement, then perhaps State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo who was once married to a Kennedy cousin might have a chance in the running. In all fairness to the American public, it would be nice to know who all the candidates are, or if there are any. In the meantime, we’re in a wait and see mode with the governor holding the power in his hands.

HOLLYWOOD: Actor, director, and performer Cheech Marin is back on the small screen, this time as a priest in Expecting a Miracle, a Hallmark Channel original movie which premieres Saturday, Jan. 10 at 9 pm/8 pm CT. The movie also stars Teri Polo and Jason Priestley.

Although best known as one half of the hilarious duo Cheech and Chong, Marin has appeared in more than 20 films, including Spy Kids, Tin Cup and Once Upon a Time in Mexico.  His television credits include the co-starring role opposite Don Johnson in the popular CBS drama, Nash Bridges, a recurring role on the hit series Lost and a guest appearance on Grey’s Anatomy.  His latest films include Beverly Hills Chihuahua (Walt Disney Pictures) and the Miracle of Dommatina (Hallmark Channel).  An owner of one of the greatest collections of Chicano art in the country, Marin has also made his mark as director of the Broadway production of Latinologues, a collection of Rick Najera’s comedic and poignant monologues revealing the Latino experience in America.

Expecting a Miracle revolves around a busy professional couple whose negative fertility tests affect their once-strong marriage. When they end up in tiny village in Mexico, they meet a kind priest (Marin), who plays an important role in their life changing experience. Don’t miss it.

BOSTON: Television’s most-watched and award-winning history series, American Experience is presenting A Class Apart from the award-winning producers Carlos Sandoval (Farmingville) and Peter Miller (Sacco and Vanzetti, The Internationale). The one-hour film, which premieres Monday, February 23 at 9 p.m., dramatically interweaves the story of its central characters – activists and lawyers, returning veterans and ordinary citizens, murderer and victim – within the broader story of a civil rights movement that is still very much alive today.

The film is a production of WGBH Boston, produced by Sharon Grimberg and executive produced by Mark Samels.

In 1951 in the town of Edna, Texas, a field hand named Pedro Hernandez murdered his employer after exchanging words at a gritty cantina. From this seemingly unremarkable small-town murder emerged a landmark civil rights case undertaken by a team of unknown Mexican American lawyers who took the case, Hernandez v. Texas, all the way to the Supreme Court, where they successfully challenged Jim Crow-style discrimination against Mexican Americans.

The film begins with the little known history of Mexican Americans in the United States. In 1848, The Mexican-American War came to an end. For the United States, the victory meant ownership of large swaths of Mexican territory. The tens of thousands of residents living on the newly annexed land were offered American citizenship as part of the treaty to end the war. But as time evolved it soon became apparent that legal citizenship for Mexican Americans was one thing, equal treatment would be quite another.

In the first 100 years after gaining US citizenship, many Mexican Americans in Texas lost their land to unfamiliar American laws, or to swindlers. With the loss of their land came a loss of status, and within just two generations, many wealthy ranch owners had become farm workers. After the Civil War, increasing numbers of Southern whites moved to south Texas, bringing with them the rigid, racial social code of the Deep South, which they began to apply not just to Blacks, but to Mexican Americans as well.

Widespread discrimination followed Latinos from schoolhouses and restaurants to courthouses and even to funeral parlors, many of which refused to prepare Mexican American bodies for burial. During World War II, more than 300,000 Mexican Americans served their country expecting to return home with the full citizenship rights they deserved. Instead, the returning veterans, many of them decorated war heroes, came back to face the same injustices they had experienced all their lives.

 Latino lawyers and activists were making progress at state levels, but they knew that real change could only be achieved if Mexican Americans were recognized by the 14th amendment of the US Constitution — something that could only be accomplished by bringing a case to the Supreme Court.
  In his law office in San Antonio, a well-known attorney named Gus García listened to the desperate pleas of Pedro Hernández’s mother, who traveled more than 150 miles to ask him to defend her son. García quickly realized that there was more to this case than murder; the real concern was not Hernández’s guilt, but whether he could receive a fair trial with an all-Anglo jury deciding his fate.

 García assembled a team of courageous attorneys who argued on behalf of Hernández from his first trial at the Jackson County Courthouse in Texas all the way to Washington, DC. It would be the first time a Mexican American appeared before the Supreme Court.

The Hernández lawyers decided on a daring but risky legal strategy, arguing that Mexican Americans were “a class apart” and did not neatly fit into a legal structure that recognized only black and white Americans. As legal skirmishes unfolded, the lawyers emerged as brilliant, dedicated, humorous, and at times, terribly flawed men.

The Hernández case struck a chord with Latinos across the country. When funds to try the case ran out, the Mexican American community donated to the cause in any way they could, despite limited resources.

On January 11, 1954, García and Cadena faced the nine justices of the US Supreme Court. Cadena opened the argument. “Can Mexican Americans speak English?” one justice asked. “Are they citizens?” asked another. The lack of knowledge stunned Gus García, who stood up and delivered the argument of his life. Chief Justice Earl Warren allowed him to continue a full sixteen minutes past the allotted time, a concession a witness to the argument noted that had not been afforded to any other civil rights lawyer before Garcia, including the renowned NAACP attorney Thurgood Marshall.

On May 3, 1954, the US Supreme Court announced its ruling in the case of Hernández v. Texas. Pedro Hernández would receive a new trial – and would be judged by a true jury of his peers. The court’s legal reasoning: Mexican Americans, as a group, were protected under the 14th Amendment, in keeping with the theory that they were indeed “a class apart.”

“The Hernández v. Texas story is a powerful reminder of one of many unknown yet hard-fought moments in the Civil Rights Movement,” says American Experience executive producer Mark Samels. “It’s easy to forget how far the country has come in just fifty years, reshaping our democracy to include all Americans.”
NEXT POST:  Sometime soon. Stay tuned.