We Always Tell Our Children They Are Americans
Mendez v. Westminster

Article by Vicki L. Ruiz.

Mendez v. Westminster and the California Road to Brown v. Board of Education

In Westminster, California, Gonzalo Mendez, a relatively prosperous tenant farmer, tried to enroll his children in the Main Street School which he had attended as a child. However, times had changed. Boundary lines drawn around Mexican neighborhoods ensured de facto segregation. Turned away, the Mendez children were assigned instead to Hoover, the Mexican elementary school. Consequently in March 1945, Gonzalo Mendez, William Guzman, Frank Palomino, Thomas Estrada and Lorenzo Ramirez, with the help of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), sued four local school districts, including Westminster and Santa Ana, for segregating their children.

The ensuing case of Mendez v. Westminster School District (1946) would foreshadow Brown v. Board of Education in several areas, including judicious use of social science research, the application of the Fourteenth Amendment, and the involvement of Thurgood Marshall. Although Mendez v. Westminster was relatively unknown nationally, it placed the struggles for civil rights across regional, racial and ethnic lines. The case is important for other reasons. It illuminates how race, class and citizenship marked 20th-century Mexican history, and it was one of the growing efforts by Mexican Americans to cast off a mantle of systematic prejudice.

Challenge to Injustice

With shabby facilities and inadequate supplies, Mexican schools did not seem conducive for learning, because Spanish-speaking children had to sink or swim in an English-only environment. Tales of getting struck by a ruler for speaking Spanish or mispronouncing English phrases resonate in the memories of Mexican Americans who came of age during the interwar period and into the 1960s.

"They degraded us horribly," El Paso native Rosa Guerro remembered. Education, in some instances, did raise expectations that hard work would bring material rewards and social acceptance, the fulfillment of the American promise.

"We felt that if we worked hard, proved ourselves, we would become professional people," said a Los Angeles resident.

Segregation did not only apply to schooling. In Santa Ana, Mexicans could sit only in the balcony of a local movie theatre. Orange County residents of the interwar generation, like their compatriots elsewhere in the Southwest, remember signs in stores and restaurants that stated, "No dogs or Mexicans allowed." Responding to economic exploitation and social injustice, Latinos joined labor unions, mutualistas and local grassroots organizations.

In 1931, in Lemon Grove, just east of San Diego, a group of Mexican neighbors banded together to challenge successfully in court the segregation of their children into a separate school, a hastily constructed structure that resembled a barn. The case, Alvarez v. Lemon Grove School District, represented one of the first successful court actions in favor of school desegregation.

David Marcus Enters the Fray

Efforts at school desegregation cut across class and generational divisions within the Mexican American communities. Founded in 1929, LULAC struck a chord among middle-class Mexican Americans. Envisioning themselves as patriotic "white" Americans pursuing their rights, LULAC members restricted membership to English-speaking U.S. citizens. LULAC would prove vital in underwriting the legal costs associated with Mendez v. Westminster. Furthermore, on LULAC's advice the Mendezes hired civil rights attorney David Marcus.

Before Gonzalo and Felicitas Mendez sought legal redress for their three children, Sylvia, Gonzolo, Jr., and Geronimo, they organized other parents and "persuaded the school board to propose a bond issue for construction of a new, integrated school." When the measure failed, the school board refused to take further action.

In January 1945, the Westminster superintendent reported to the board that he had met with Mendez and Marcus. The minutes reveal that the "problem of the complaint from the Mexican-speaking peoples was discussed at length." Board members deferred making any decision. Ironically, during this meeting they voted in favor of the resolution to allow Japanese American children to attend the Main Street School. Given the recalcitrance of local boards, the Mendez and four other families filed suit against Westminster, Garden Grove, Santa Ana, and El Modena school districts on behalf of their children and 5,000 others in March of 1945.

During the trial, superintendents echoed the stereotypical image of Mexicans. The Garden Grove superintendent declared, "Mexicans are inferior in personal hygiene, ability, and in their economic outlook. Youngsters need separate schools because of their lack of English proficiency." He recited a laundry list of hygienic deficiencies peculiar to Mexican children that warranted, in part, their segregation. The deficiencies included, "lice, impetigo, tuberculosis, generally dirty hands, face, neck and ears."

When David Marcus asked if all children were dirty, the superintendent answered; "No, sir." Marcus pushed the issue; "Do you keep a record of dirty hands and face?" "No" was the response.

Marcus devised a twofold strategy. He questioned the constitutionality of educational segregation and called in expert witnesses, social scientists who challenged these assumptions about Mexican American children and the supposed need for separate schools. Fourteen-year-old Carol Torres took the stand to counter claims that Mexican children did not speak English. The testimony of Felicitas Mendez summed up her family's beliefs simply: "We always tell our children they are Americans."

Taking almost a year to make a decision, Judge Paul McCormick ruled that segregation of Mexican youngsters found no justification in the laws of California, and furthermore was a clear denial of the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The school district appealed the decision, partly on states' rights strategy, arguing the federal court had no jurisdiction in the matter.

Mendez v. Westminster assumes national significance through its tangible connections to Brown v. Board of Education in four related areas beyond NAACP counsel Thurgood Marshall's amicus curiae brief. First, the Mendez case influenced a shift in the NAACP legal strategy to include social science arguments. Second, Judge McCormick relied not just on legal precedent but on social science and education research. Third, it was the first time a federal court had concluded "that the segregation of Mexican Americans in public schools was a violation of the state law" and unconstitutional under the Fourteenth Amendment because of denial of due process and equal protection. Last, as the direct result of the Mendez case, the California legislature passed the Anderson Bill (1947), a measure that repealed all California school codes mandating segregation and was signed into law by Earl Warren, who was then governor of California.

Mendez v. Westminster was certainly a crucial case in the multiple struggles for school desegregation, in that it forecast the rationale of the Warren Court in Brown v. Board of Education. The courage of individual parents, like the Mendezes, and the collective strength of civil rights organizations, like LULAC, are part of a continuing national story in claiming educational equity for all of our nation's children.