Teachers' Domain; Civil Rights; <i>Mendez v. Westminster</i>: Desegregating California's Schools

So when we got to the school they told her. Misfit Dari. You can leave your kids here but your brother's kids going kids will have to go to the Mexican school limits going so. Segregated here with Mr they have to go to the Mexican school but me and so he said well why am I going to leave my here. She says well you just don't have to go there. You know my Aunt Sally's last name with Bea Dari she had married to a Mexican that was part French and his last name with the diary and she was and the kids were a light skinned so she said Well. I'm not leaving my kids here if. You won't take my brother's kids my kids when I say so she gathered this all up and she took us home and when she got home she told my. Dad to. Go inside. They would not allow your kids there and my father said Oh Sally he's the color so live that. Don't worry about it. Speak to the principal tomorrow. Mexican children were segregated throughout the Southwest. This begins in Orange County around one thousand

thirteen Mexican children worse separated from Anglo American children on integrated schools and by 1919 the school district of Santa Ana decided to segregate Mexican children into their own schools. So in 1900 the first segregated school was established in Orange County and after that children were routinely segregated so that by 1930 there were 15 Mexican schools distributed throughout the county. Orange County was not any different from. Other areas of the South West Los Angeles routinely segregated Mexican children into were called Neighborhood schools. One study found that somewhere between 80 and 90 percent of all school districts segregated Mexican children in the southwest. Pretty much everything was segregated. The housing was segregated there were what were called racially restrictive covenants and these covenants forbid anybody who was not English were of European descent. From owning a property and oftentimes we

see that if you're mexican you're Indian. And therefore you cannot own this property or it would specifically just exclude Mexicans. One of the other really common. Forms of segregation in Southern California where the public pools during the summer and one particular example is the plunge in orange which. Would allow Mexicans in only on Mondays it was known as Mexican day and that was the day the pool was drained and the next day it was cleaned and refilled so that anglers could swim in it. The day after Mexicans had been there. So the next day came and he went to the school when he saw it. We like to move the kids here we live in this district. A man who lived in the MITs going district when the kids were going to a freeman school was all Mexican but now we live in the. In the whites district. Why aren't you allowing our kids to go here and they said well in with Mister the kids are segregated. The Mitt's going to have to go to MIT and schools. So he decided to go to the school board the Orange County School Board and they thought Oh well Mr. Mann that these said the

same thing that it was such an injustice because the school in which Mr. the home where school was made out of it was a terrible little shack. In fact what we had to eat lunch we would go outside and eat lunch in the tables that were right next to the Coll. pastures. We get all the flights there from the co-pastor. At that time it was a group in Santa Ana. That was fighting. This case and he went to him and he sent me and he asked him Can you help me. Some want to fight this and Tommy did not want to. Help him. They refused to help him. And I remember because my mother told me that he came crying he says can you believe this family will not help. Fight this case and here we are supposed to be fighting and that since we're Since we can do it alone we have the money right now. So they proceeded What happened was a lot with through coordination of folks like Hector drongo and Sammy and I and Fred Ross who was an Anglo

who helped a lot of the movements in the area came in and they went around they said you have a cousin Bob tour is over in El Medina you have a cousin in Garden Grove or Westminster or Santa Ana can we set this up and they set up a test case to each district and then they filed the lawsuit. We finally went to court and when they went to court. They won the first time in the Superior Court Judge McCormack said that it was totally illegal what they were doing. So he said from now I will not have sex again. Well the school board decided to appeal. Judge McCormick's decision in the district court which is the trial court and actually a trial did take place over several weeks and several of the schools districts had testimony heard testimony from the kids and heard testimony from experts and the critical part of this case is the attorney David Markus. He put on evidence not only of the

with the children but he brought in experts sociologists and education experts who said that segregation was bad for the children to give them a sense of inferiority. It was noted that they would learn English or be Americanized or learn our culture if they were segregated they had to be integrated. And so. He listened to that and he was the first judge that I've ever read and I've talked to several professors and it's this case is now mentioned in a lot of law schools in California. This was the first time any judge ever wrote an opinion and since separate was never equal. He said the separate facilities even if they were equal were not permissible under the 14th Amendment based on national origin. And the parties agreed that everybody was Caucasian. But what they said was they're discriminated because they're of banks again or Latin origin. And so that was a huge step in civil rights and it drew the attention of the Indo Bill ECP the National Lawyers Guild and a whole host of other national civil rights groups who filed

friend of the court briefs for the appeal and they all fought and finally they did win a few months later Governor Warner. He was a governor at that time here in California and he decided that he would desegregate the whole California after this trial June 1947. So California has always been number one. That was eight years before the Brown versus Board of Education when the whole nation was decided gave it one of the reasons we haven't heard about the case is that we have a mindset that states generally civil rights issues and some white issues. In reality it's much more diffuse and much more complex than just. Black white and shoot. The Mendis case it is is Brown vs. the Board of Education for Mexican-Americans. This case de segregated schools throughout California. Because this was the norm. It was the practice and it's the way Mexican children were

treated. Mendez vs. Westminster also had the effect of dismantling the other did your segregation that was in effect at that time such as segregated housing restaurants swimming pools. One year after Mendez was decided California repealed two statutes one statute that segregated Asian-American students in two separate schools and another statute that segregated Native Americans. It. Was.