Before Brown v. Board of Education
Feb. 18, 2005 -- -- When Sylvia Mendez was 9 years old in Orange County, Calif., she went to Hoover Elementary School. She wanted to go to the Westminster School 10 blocks away, but she wasn't allowed for one reason -- she is Hispanic.
Under California's segregated system, Mendez, the daughter of Mexican and Puerto Rican immigrants, could not go to Westminster or any others that Sylvia and her friends referred to as "Anglo" schools.
On Feb. 18, 1946 -- 60 years ago today -- the decision of Mendez v. Westminster School District of Orange County changed that.
Sylvia's father, Gonzalo Mendez, and other Latino parents filed a class-action suit against the school districts of Westminster, Garden Grove and El Modeno on behalf of their children.
The court ordered an injunction that stopped the schools from requiring Mexican- and Latin-American students to attend separate schools from white children.
The district's policy before that ruling was to segregate on the basis of whether children spoke English or not. However, the court found that when the policy was enforced depended largely, if not entirely, on race.
The tests administered were "hasty, superficial, and not reliable," the court said, and in some cases "separate classification was determined ... by the ... name of the child."
Mendez herself is a living example of that point. She has spoken perfect English all her life but was still barred from going to white schools.
The Mendez ruling found that even though the schools might be equal in their given quality of resources and facilities, segregation itself was unacceptable.
The mere fact that public school students of Mexican and Latin heritage were required to attend one specified school while other children were permitted to attend two other schools in the district "clearly establishes an unfair and arbitrary class distinction in the system of public education."
Latin-American leaders point out parallels between the Mendez case and Brown v. Board of Education, which ended legalized school segregation for African-Americans.
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