Eight years earlier, in 1946, a group of Mexican American families in California won the very first federal court case ruling that segregation of public schools was unconstitutional. The history of the U.S. Census reveals the fluidity of the racial classifications that have been assigned to Mexicans over the decades: In some periods, the census has defined them as White, and in other periods it has assigned them their own distinct racial category (Wilson, 2003) — by contrast, the government’s racial classification of Black Americans has never varied in precisely this way. As Eduardo Bonilla-Silva (2010) explains, many Whites see segregation as natural, reasoning that people from all racial backgrounds gravitate toward likeness, and “that’s the way it is” (p. 37). Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas. George Wallace shouting, in his 1963 Inauguration Address, that he wanted “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, and segregation forever.” These events and other struggles for and against desegregation during the 1950s and 1960s are memorialized in textbooks and taught in public schools and colleges. The opinion stated that housing and teaching elementary-age children of Spanish or Mexican descent in separate buildings was legal as long as there was no intent to discriminate based on race — and the court saw no such intent in this case. In this case, which was the first federal court case involving school segregation of Mexican Americans, the plaintiffs prevailed. Many Mexican Americans in Texas, for example, faced some segregation in public accommodations such as restaurants and theaters, in recreation facilities such as pools and parks, and in jobs, housing, and public schools–but no legislative action or constitutional provision categorically condemned every Mexican American in the state to use only separately … Mexican Americans have a long history in the struggle to end school segregation and achieve educational equality. Gomez, L.E. [37] In Stuart's view, long-term outcomes should be emphasized in order to appreciate the true social importance of integration. T2 - Mexican American school segregation in Arizona from 1900-1951. In 1782, African Americans in Boston, including Prince Hall, campaigned against inequality and discrimination in the city's public schools. 1820 N Fort Myer Dr., Suite 320, Arlington, VA 22209, The curricular role of the extracurriculum. [20] The study found that minority students became more isolated and less exposed to whites, but that all students became more evenly distributed across schools. Certain movements have left enduring impressions in the American imagination. Civ. Gonzalo Mendez talked to his fellow Mexican-American parents and convinced them to challenge the segregation of their children in Westminster and three other Orange County school districts. This article documents the efforts by Mexican Americans to challenge school segregation in Arizona in the first half of the twentieth century. Emphasis will be placed on the strategies and tactics utilized by LULAC and the G. I. However, the court found that the segregation of Mexican children “was determined largely by the Latinized or Mexican name of the child” and not according to language proficiency (Mendez v. Westminster School District, 1946, p. 550). School officials maintained that the segregation was not racially motivated and that it was done to serve English language learners. Although the decision prohibited segregation of Mexican-American students in public schools, however, the system did not change radically, and in fact subsequent challenges became necessary. Mexican-American resistance to school segregation. Though no state statutes explicitly authorized the segregation of Mexican-American students, these cases illustrate how local school officials made intentional decisions that had the same effect. Wilson, S.H. Philadelphia, PA: Balch Institute Press. Mendez hired Los Angeles civil rights lawyer David Marcus. Legitimizing segregation as pedagogical choice. In Salvatierra , a group of Mexican American parents sought to prevent the school district in Del Rio, Texas, from expanding the segregated West End school. In short, the Salvatierra decision legitimated the idea that Mexican-American children could be segregated for instructional purposes and that the courts would defer to the pedagogical expertise of school administrators, even if the policies resulted in racial segregation. Francisco Maestas et al. 4292). Quite simply, this remains an unfinished matter. However, the appellate court ultimately reversed the ruling of the trial judge on other grounds, finding that Texas law granted school boards the power to manage, regulate, and construct schools in locations of their choice and to grade, classify, and assign students to schools in a responsible manner. Kappan readers include new and veteran teachers, graduate students, school and district administrators, university faculty members (researchers and teacher educators), and policy makers. Brown v. Board of Education (1954) was a landmark decision that was the result of decades of efforts by grassroots activists and civil rights organizations to end legalized segregation. Forum, the challenge to education has been essentially a liberal one. As in Texas and California, although state law never formally mandated the segregation of Mexican American students, school districts in Arizona often established separate “Mexican Schools” for Mexican American students. Phi Delta Kappan, 100  (5), 39-42. In the 1931 Alvarez v. Lemon Grove case, argued one year after Salvatierra, Mexican Americans challenged the segregation they faced in Lemon Grove, Calif., a small community outside San Diego. Long-term outcomes may refer to educational attainment, occupational attainment, adults' intergroup relations, crime and violence, and civic engagement. When the parents … [25] The decision allowed schools to end previous desegregation efforts even in cases where a return to segregation was likely. [14] For instance, the NAACP initially challenged graduate and professional school segregation because they believed that desegregation at this level would result in the least backlash and opposition by whites.[15]. “I went to school in Texas and I don’t remember ever learning about segregated schools for Mexican American children in history class,” said Christopher Williams, a … [9], The constitutionality of Jim Crow laws was upheld in the Supreme Court's decision in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), which ruled that separate facilities for blacks and whites were permissible provided that the facilities were of equal quality. [3], The formal segregation of blacks and whites in the United States began long before the passage of Jim Crow laws following the end of the Reconstruction Era in 1877. The study concludes that "court-ordered desegregation plans are effective in reducing racial school segregation, but ... their effects fade over time in the absence of continued court oversight. The federal district court in the Cisneros case directly addressed this question, ruling that Brown did in fact apply to the segregation of Mexican students. "[29] These schools also tend to have less challenging curricula and fewer offerings of Advanced Placement courses. [22], A 2013 study corroborated these findings, showing that the relationship between residential and school segregation became stronger over the decade between 2000 and 2010. [21] Residential segregation is related to growing income inequality in the United States. "[25], In a pair of rulings in 2007 (Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. School Board of City of Norfolk) 1947 In a precursor to the Brown case, a federal appeals court strikes down segregated schooling for Mexican American and white students. Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School Dist. Donato, R., Guzman, G., & Hanson, J. In both cases, the Court struck down school assignment plans designed to ensure that the racial composition of schools roughly reflected the composition of the district as a whole, saying that the plans were not "narrowly tailored" to achieve the stated goal and that race-neutral alternatives had not been given adequate consideration. Public schools were also segregated. Because the two variables moved in opposite directions, changes in residential patterns are not responsible for changes in school segregation trends. Segregation had originated earlier, but it expanded greatly between 1890 and 1980. As compared to districts that had never been placed under court supervision, districts that had achieved unitary status and were released from court-ordered desegregation had a subsequent change in segregation patterns that was 10 times as great. 1, Education segregation in Mississippi Delta, Education segregation in Mississippi Red Clay region, Educational Inequality in the United States, Canadian Indian residential school system, "BROWN V. BOARD: Timeline of School Integration in the U.S", "60 Years AfterBrown: Trends and Consequences of School Segregation", "School Segregation and Racial Academic Achievement Gaps", "Racial Segregation in the American South: Jim Crow Laws. Unlike the separate schools for Black students, which were prescribed by Texas law, the schools for Mexican American children represented de facto segregation imposed by local whites. [10] The state of Arkansas would experience some of the first successful school integrations below the Mason-Dixon Line. 17 Los Angeles's Macy Street school was integrated in 1890, but became a Mexican school by 1920. Five Mexican-American fathers—Thomas Estrada, William Guzmán, Gonzalo Méndez, Frank Palomino, and Lorenzo Ramírez—set out to challenge the practice of school segregation in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California. Mexican Americans have a long history in the struggle to end school segregation and achieve educational equality. Rubén Donato and Jarrod Hanson trace that history through a series of court cases that show how their fight for desegregation both intersects with and differs from the more well-known struggle of Black Americans. If educators and school officials hope to address the growing isolation of Latinx students, they will have to be fully aware of these competing narratives about de facto and de jure segregation, and they will have to be willing to challenge the perspective that currently prevails in the courts. It was influenced by discrimination in the Northern United States, as well as the history of slavery in the southern states. [20] Schools with high proportions of minority enrollment are often characterized by "less experienced and less qualified teachers, high levels of teacher turnover, less successful peer groups and inadequate facilities and learning materials. Integrated schools also reduce the maintenance of stereotypes and prevent the formation of prejudices in both majority and minority students. In the 2007 case Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School Dist. The literature suggests that Mexican Americans experienced de facto segregation because it was local custom and never sanctioned at the state level in the American Southwest. Copyright 2021 Phi Delta Kappa International. ", "Integrating neighborhoods, segregating schools: The retreat from school desegregation in the South, 1990-2000", "The Segregation and Resegregation of American Public Education: The Court's Role. Since Brown was viewed as prohibiting only de jure segregation (where segregation is the direct result of laws or other state action), and since states did not have laws permitting or requiring the segregation of Mexican-American students (i.e., they experienced de facto segregation), many courts reasoned that Brown’s constitutional protections shouldn’t apply to them. It has been argued that the 1946 Mendez v. Westminster case was to Mexican Americans what the Brown v. Board of Education decision was for African Americans (Strum, 2010). Strum, P. (2010). segregation by Mexican-American parents (partly, Dr. Wollenberg explains, because racism had attached itself to Hitler and the Nazis). Given the linguistic needs of non-English-speaking Mexican-American students, they argued, those children had to be educated in a separate facility. [2] Segregation appears to have increased since 1990. [29], Access to resources is not the only factor determining education outcomes; the very racial composition of schools can have an effect independent of the level of other resources. Orfield, G., Frankenberg, E., Ee, J., & Kucsera, J. Luckily for the Mexican-American community they had the wherewithal to do so, and it turned into a class-action suit with amicus briefs from prominent civil rights organizations. Even as they argued that it was legally impossible for Mexican-American students to experience race-based segregation, the Alamosa school district officials asserted that it was appropriate to segregate them on the basis of language. I combine original research and research synthesis to explore the … Forum and the Mexican American School Segregation in Texas, 1948-1957. As Richard D. Kahlenberg writes, "Racial integration is a very important aim, but if one's goal is boosting academic achievement, what really matters is economic integration. The Impact of Student Composition on Academic Achievement in High School", "The 'Consequences' of School Desegregation: The Mismatch Between the Research and the Rationale", Residential segregation in the United States, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=School_segregation_in_the_United_States&oldid=1008112919, History of racial segregation in the United States, All Wikipedia articles written in American English, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, This page was last edited on 21 February 2021, at 17:04. In 1945, Mendez and the other parents filed a case against the school districts in federal court. Rubén Donato and Jarrod Hanson trace that history through a … No. As Gary Orfield and colleagues (2014) note, at “the time of Brown and for years afterwards, extremely little attention was given to Latino segregation” (p. 22). . According to the Court’s plurality opinion, school officials could only consider race in the assignment of students to schools if they have the compelling interest of “remedying past intentional discrimination.”. Los Angeles, CA: Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles. Researcher Kori Stroub found that the "racial/ethnic resegregation of public schools observed over the 1990s has given way to a period of modest reintegration," but that segregation between school districts has increased even though within-district segregation is low. Another 2013 study found that segregation measured as exposure increased over the previous 25 years due to changing demographics.
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