I don’t want to forget to thank Ankhesen, Michele, and Steven for their recent comments on my posts.
And speaking of forgetting, let’s take a second to reacquaint ourselves with an overlooked part of Latino history – indeed, an ignored part of American history.
Most of us remember learning about Brown vs. Board of Education, the case that ended racial segregation in public schools. It is justifiably remembered as a mighty blow against legal discrimination.
Like many Americans, I thought that Brown was the alpha and omega of school desegregation in America. You can imagine my surprise, then, when I only recently found out about Mendez v. Westminster School District. Why this case doesn’t even merit a passing mention in history classes is beyond me.
Because I assume most of you are as in the dark as I was, let me recap Mendez for you. Basically, in 1945, a few uppity Chicanos sued a California school district because their children were forced to attend separate “schools for Mexicans,” rather than the nice schools where white kids went.
To the shock of establishment types everywhere, the parents won. The school board appealed, and the parents won again. The disturbing aspect, however, is that the appeal relied on a technicality, which was that Latino kids weren’t specifically mentioned in the segregation laws of the time. Instead, the laws pinpointed “children of Chinese, Japanese or Mongolian parentage” (yikes!).
But a win is a win, and the case seemed destined for the Supreme Court. However, California saw how this was going, got wise, and abolished the law, thus ending the practice of legal segregation in the state.
It wasn’t until seven years later that the rest of the country caught up, in the Brown decision. I will leave it to a lawyer to assess how important the Mendez precedent was to the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown. However, I think we can all agree that it certainly didn’t hurt.
In any case, the girl at the center of the Mendez case tells her story here. She may have been an unwilling pioneer, but future generations of Latinos can still thank her and her parents for standing up for civil rights.
And I would add that her place in history is secure, but unfortunately, that’s not the case.
June 1st, 2010 on 9:35 pm
Although the Mendez v. Westminster School District decision was upheld on appeal in 1946, desegregation in California schools was not immediate, at least in another Orange County community. In nearby Placentia, the Placentia Unified School District ignored repeated requests by a group of Mexican-American World War II veterans and other residents who demanded integration of their schools. It wasn’t until September 1949 that integration finally took place in Placentia schools and only after the group hired an attorney who threatened the foot-dragging board with a lawsuit. My dad and uncles, all U.S. Army veterans, were part of this group that organized to achieve integration in their hometown.