(Legal segregation in California schools did exist for two other groups: Asian Americans and Native Americans. The Ninth Circuit ruling in 1947 was another victory for Mendez and his fellow plaintiffs, but not nearly the slam dunk that the anti-segregation movement hoped it would be. The Ninth Circuit decision even left open the possibility that the California legislature could pass a segregation law expressly targeting Mexican Americans, just like the laws already on the books for Asian Americans and Native Americans. But just the opposite happened. In fact, the very first legal victory against segregation in America was in San Diego County in 1930, when Mexican American parents in the Lemon Grove School District organized a boycott and successfully sued the schools for integration. At movie theaters, Mexican Americans had to sitin the balcony, not the lower level. Eventually, Mexican American families in many California communities had enough. )California school boards claimed that they put Mexican Americans in their own schools in order to help them. Esther Poole October 22, 2016 at 8:44 pm. 1946), aff'd, 161 F.2d 774 (9th Cir. The Mendez family believed in helping out the entire Mexican community, instead of a handful of children. The Sweatt v. Painter case made clear that the separate but equal law established by Plessy v. In the 1940s, a small minority of school districts began to establish separate language-based "Mexican Schools", arguing that Mexican children had special needs because they were Gonzalo dedicated the next year to a lawsuit against the Westminster School District of Orange County. Many Mexicans are being mis-educated in regards to the Supreme Court case, Brown v. The Board of Ed.
Seven years later, Warren was Chief Justice on the Supreme Court when it heard U.S. President Barack Obama presenting the 2010 Medal of Freedom to Sylvia Mendez. Mendez and Brown were both state cases. By 1940, more than 80 percent of Mexican American students in California went to so-called “Mexican” schools, even though no California law mandated such a separation. Sylvia Mendez at the headquarters of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Los Angeles District to celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month, 2011.The Santa Ana school districts immediately appealed the decision, setting up a rematch in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco.
“It must be open to all children by unified school association regardless of lineage."' of Orange County, 64 F.Supp. In 2003, writer/producer Sandra Robbie received an Emmy Award for her documentary (Their in-laws, who were also of Mexican heritage but had lighter skin and the “European” surname Vidaurri, were accepted.) Gonzalo Mendez, represented by a civil rights attorney, took four Los Angeles-area school districts to court and won a class action law… The Mendez family, who previously went to white schools without problems, suddenly found their children forced into separate "Schools for Mexicans" when they came to Westminster - even though that was not the norm and it was not legally sanctioned by the state. Unlike the segregation of African Americans in the The same de facto segregation existed in California public schools. Gonzalo and Felicitas Mendez and their children moved to the small town of Westminster outside of Los Angeles in 1944. Five Mexican-American fathers (Thomas Estrada, William Guzman, Gonzalo Mendez, Frank Palomino, and Lorenzo Ramirez) challenged the practice of Mexican school segregation in the Mexican Americans, who were then considered to be white, were normally unaffected by legal segregation, and in general they always went to segregated white schools. But the Lemon Grove decision only applied in one school district. When the NAACP heard about Judge McCormick’s decision, which directly challenged the constitutionality of race-based school segregation, it saw a strong test case for challenging segregation nationwide. Sylvia Mendez, who received the Presidential Medal of Freedom (link is external) at a 2011 White House ceremony, was a child when she was turned away from a California public school for \"whites only.\" That rejection fueled her father's determined journey through school, civic, and legal channels. Cal. When the school board refused to change its policies, Gonzalo joined four other plaintiffs—William Guzman, Frank Palomino, Thomas Estrada and Lorenzo Ramirez—from nearby Santa Ana County school districts and filed a lawsuit in federal district court known as The case was heard in 1946 by Federal District Judge Paul McCormick, who delivered a landmark ruling that segregation of Mexican Americans was not only unenforceable under California law, but it violated the equal protection clause of the “A paramount requisite in the American system of public education is social equality,” wrote Judge McCormick. The Mexican and American schools were often side by side, separated only by a field or an electrified fence. The Mendez family covered most of the expenses for the various witnesses that would be present in the case.The plaintiffs were represented by established Jewish American civil rights attorney David Marcus.
The Mendez family tried to enroll their kids at the local 17th Street School but were turned away.