By DAVID BARRON, Houston Chronicle

February is Black History Month, and it seems each February offers a supplement to the vast record of civil rights documentaries that reached its peak with Eyes on the Prize, the landmark 14-hour film that traced the movement from the Montgomery bus boycott into the mid-1980s.

By comparison, films about Mexican-Americans and other Latinos who struggled and prevailed against segregation and discrimination are few and far between. That scarcity emphasizes the significance of documentaries such as A Class Apart, which premieres at 8 p.m. Monday on KUHT (Channel as part of PBS’ American Experience series.

Produced by New York filmmakers Carlos Sandoval and Peter Miller, A Class Apart concerns the landmark 1954 Supreme Court case Hernandez v. Texas, which established Mexican-Americans as a protected class under the 14th Amendment.

It’s only one hour in a saga that deserves a multi-part vehicle to rival Eyes on the Prize in scope. But, especially for Texans, it is a critical starting point.

“Eyes on the Prize was a huge landmark achievement, the product of a generation of dedicated filmmakers and activists,” Miller said. “We’re fortunate now to be at a moment where PBS is showing more programs about the Latino civil rights struggle. This is one story among many, and it would be nice if someday down the line there could be a series devoted to these stories.”

Hernandez v. Texas stemmed from the case of Pete Hernandez, a farmworker accused of killing a man in a bar fight in the Jackson County town of Edna in 1951. His case drew the attention of a group of San Antonio and Houston attorneys, who saw the case as a vehicle to break down the Jim Crow-style laws and customs that oppressed Mexican-Americans in the same fashion as African-Americans.

The attorneys argued that Hernandez could not receive a fair trial because Jackson County had systematically eliminated Mexican-Americans from juries. The state countered that Mexican-Americans were lumped in with Anglos under the law and thus were not entitled to special treatment under the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause.

The case, the first to be argued by Mexican-American lawyers before the Supreme Court, was heard during the same term as the Brown v. Board of Education case seeking to outlaw segregation in public schools. In a decision that was overshadowed nationwide by the Brown decision a week later, the court ruled that Mexican-Americans were a distinct group entitled to the same constitutional protection as other minority groups.

As was the case with NAACP attorney and future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall in the Brown case, Hernandez v. Texas is a story about attorneys — in this case, Gustavo C. “Gus” Garcia and Carlos Cadena of San Antonio and Houston attorneys John J. Herrera and James DeAnda.

Sandoval, whose previous film Farmingville concerned the attempted murders of two Latino day laborers in Long Island, read about the Hernandez case in 2004, the 50th anniversary of the decision, while riding the subway in New York.

“I went to law school and practiced as a lawyer, but I had never heard of the case,” he said. “(The lawyers) took a big chance in that they put the identity of Mexican-Americans on trial. Were they black? Were they white? Were they in between? The fact that the Supreme Court was dealing with these issues in 1954 was fascinating to me.”

His interest in the case paralleled that of Michael Olivas, a professor at the University of Houston law school. Olivas, too, was unfamiliar with the Hernandez case until the late 1980s, a few years after he met and become friends with DeAnda, who was appointed to the federal bench in 1979 and served as chief judge of the Southern District of Texas from 1988 through 2002.

“The Hernandez case, while it has never been accorded the significance it should have, was in many respects a more efficacious decision than Brown,” Olivas said. “The Brown case, with the phrase ‘all deliberate speed,’ was sabotaged and never fully implemented. Hernandez was fully implemented.”

After the Supreme Court ruled in his favor, Hernandez was retried for murder and convicted by a jury that included two Mexican-American women. Some observers believe the case has never received its just due because it lacked the personal drama of the young students associated with Brown v. Board of Education.

“People who ask that question miss the point,” Olivas said. “The point was full participation for Mexican-Americans during the Jim Crow, or what I call the Jaime Crow, era.

“It may have lacked the glare of the Brown case, but it stands on its own legs as equally eloquent because it involved an issue that in many ways is more profound. You can argue that a murder trial is more central to jurisprudence than school attendance.”

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