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A CLASS APART

Synopsis

A CLASS APART brings to life the heroic post - World War II struggle of the Mexican Americans to dismantle the Jim Crow-style discrimination targeted against them.
   
The story is built around the landmark 1954 legal case Hernandez vs. Texas in which an underdog band of Mexican Americans from Texas bring a case all the way to the Supreme Court - and win.
   
The film begins with a murder in a gritty cantina in the small town of Edna, Texas. From this unremarkable crime emerges a landmark civil rights case that would forever change the lives and legal standing of tens of millions of Americans.
   
The central drama is the legal journey of the Hernandez lawyers through the Texas courts and ultimately to the  United States Supreme Court. We see them forge a daring legal strategy that puts to question their own racial identities by arguing that Mexican Americans were "a class apart" who did not neatly fit into a legal structure that only recognizes blacks and whites.
   
As legal skirmishes unfold, the lawyers emerge as brilliant, dedicated, humorous and at times terribly flawed men. A grassroots national movement supports the legal efforts - paid for with tiny contributions sent by Latinos from around the country.
   
The film dramatically interweaves the story of its central characters - activists and lawyers, returning veterans and ordinary citizens, murderer and victim - within the broader history of Latinos in America during a time of extraordinary change.
   
In bringing to light this little known story, A CLASS APART will help inform a new civil rights movement re ignited by the challenge of today's burgeoning Latino population.

The Filmmakers

CARLOS SANDOVAL (PRODUCER/DIRECTOR) was co-producer/director of the documentary “Farmingville,” which won numerous awards and honors including a Special Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival and the Council on Foundations' Henry Hampton Award. A lawyer and writer, Sandoval’s work has appeared in The New York Times and other publications. Sandoval worked on immigration and refugee affairs as a member of the U.S. delegation to the United Nations, and as a program officer for The Century Foundation. Of Mexican-American and Puerto Rican descent, Sandoval grew up in Southern California and is a graduate of Harvard College and of the University of Chicago Law School.

PETER MILLER (PRODUCER/DIRECTOR) has worked as a producer on several of Ken Burns’s films including “The War,” “Jazz,” and the Peabody Award-winning “Frank Lloyd Wright.”  His own work includes the critically acclaimed documentary“Sacco and Vanzetti,” “The Internationale” (Oscar short-list), and “Passin’ It On” (shown on P.O.V., winner of over twenty film festival prizes).  Miller was a producer on Barbara Kopple’s Academy Award-winning “American Dream,” and has worked on dozens of other historical and social issue documentaries.

ALLEN MOORE (CINEMATOGRAPHER) has served as a director of photography for several of Ken Burns’s historical films including “The Civil War,” “Thomas Jefferson,” “Lewis and Clark: The Journey of the Corps of Discovery,” and “Mark Twain.”  Other DP credits include the award-winning films “Wild by Law,” “The Donner Party,” “The Way West,” “Divided Highways,” “The Harriman Expedition,” the “New York” series, and the Peabody Award-winning “Monkey Trial.”

AARON VEGA (EDITOR) has edited many documentaries for PBS, including “John Audubon: Drawn from Nature” for PBS’ American Masters, “Race to the Moon: The Apollo 8 Story” (American Experience), Ken Burns’s “Jazz” (episode 6), and “Ram Dass: Fierce Grace” (PBS).

Advisory Board

Adriana Bosch, Ph.D. (Independent Filmmaker)
Ignacio Garcia, Ph.D. (Professor of Latino/a History, Brigham Young University)
Laura Gomez, J.D., Ph.D., ( Professor, University of New Mexico Law School and American Studies Department)
Ian F. Haney Lopez, J.D., M.P.A. (University of California Berkeley School of Law, Boalt Hall, Professor of Law; Executive Committee Member, Center for Social Justice)
Thomas H. Kreneck, Ph.D. (Texas A&M University-Corp us Christi Associate Library Director for Special Collections & Archives; Graduate Lecturer in Public History)
Michael A. Olivas, J.D., Ph.D. (University of Houston Law Center William B. Bates Professor of Law, Director Institute for Higher Education Law and Governance)

Courtesy of Dr. Hector P. Garcia Papers/ Texas A&M University