Mendez v Westminster

http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=8464528661773237273&hl=en&as_sdt=2&as_vis=1&oi=scholarr

Mendez v. Westminster School District was a federal court case decided in 1946 dealing with racial segregation in Orange County, California. Filed on the behalf of Mexican-American families, it challenged existing laws that placed Mexican students into separate Mexican schools, which were inferior to the schools attended by white children. The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit decided in favor of Mendez that separate schools for Mexican children were unconstitutional.

Although many legal scholars have argued that Mendez paved the way for the Brown v. Board of Education decision, this case was unique since both sides of the litigation agreed that Mexican Americans were “white.” Although it was clear that the school districts viewed Mexican American children as somehow being inferior, by conveniently classifying them as white they were able to avoid the race issue and instead made it about language abilities, arguing that Mexican children could not keep up with curriculum being taught in English instead of Spanish. It is interesting how race labels can shift and be applied to various groups at different times depending on the whims of the ruling majority.

I studied this court case in my “From Civil Rights to Black Power” class last semester which emphasized looking at the civil rights movement through a wide lens and focusing on parts of the movement that are not part of the conventional narrative. Mendez demonstrates how as early as 1946 there was casework on the books challenging de jure segregation in public schools.