|
 |
|
The future rests in the hands of children, according to a poem read by Tovar Quintana, Daniel Onuoha and Sarah Ibanga at Del Roble Elementary. |
Brown v. Board of Education was not the first lawsuit to result in a ban on segregation. Two California rulings against segregated schools for Latino students paved the way for the Brown decision.
On Jan. 5, 1931, the principal of the Lemon Grove Grammar School in a San Diego suburb refused to allow 75 children of Mexican descent to enter his school. Under the pretense that it was best to segregate the students because of the language barrier and unsanitary conditions from overcrowding, they were sent to an inferior school in a horse barn.
Outraged parents boycotted the plan even though they faced possible deportation or unemployment. The lawsuit they eventually won against the Lemon Grove School Board was appealed to the California Supreme Court, which ruled that it was unconstitutional to establish separate schools for Mexican-Americans.
It was the first successful challenge to school segregation, and later led to the 1947 legislation that repealed the last school segregation laws in California.
The Anderson Bill was signed by then-Gov. Earl Warren, who later as U.S. Supreme Court chief justice presided over the Brown case.
Eight years before the Brown v. Board of Education ruling, the Mendez v. Westminster case took up a similar cause. Its ripple effect on California affected the course of history nationwide.
At the end of World War II, many Latino veterans returned home to find that their children were not allowed to attend the same public schools as white children. Felicitas and Gonzalo Mendez, farmers in Orange County, were determined to provide their children with a quality education. In 1945, Gonzalo Mendez joined with other Latino veterans in filing a class action suit on behalf of 5,000 Latino children in several Orange County school districts. The U.S. District Court ruled in favor of the Latino children and found that the county schools unlawfully discriminated against students of Mexican ancestry and denied them equal protection under the law.
"I was not even aware of these cases until I joined the Brown v. Board of Education Commemoration Committee for CTA," says Sergio Martinez, president of the Hacienda-La Puente Teachers Association. "Many Latinos don't know about these cases because they are not often discussed.
"I hope that the anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education will make people aware of these very significant events that affected not only Latino history, but the entire Civil Rights Movement. Perhaps, one day, these events will even be in the history books."
