by Marvin J. Ramírez
STAMP SYMBOL OF DESEGREGATION Two U.S. Postal Service employees hold the stamp that commemorates the desegragation of the schools in the U.S. (photo by Marvin J. Ramírez)
Many probably do know that once upon a time schools were segregated in the United States and people went to certain schools or not accepted in some, based on their color of their skin.
To those familiar with school desegregation in the U.S., they might have heard, that a court case called, Brown vs. Board of Education, was credited for legally ending school segregation.
When the United Supreme Court ruled in favor of the plaintiff, desegregation was outlawed in the country and most people looked at Brown vs. Board of Education case as the sole champion of desegregation. But just how and why this historical case was successful, is what many people might not know.
It was Mendez vs. Westminster the case that really desegregated the schools, as Brown vs. Board of Education used it as the test case to win.
In a ceremony at the Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts, The United States Postal Service Service commemorated on Sept. 14, the landmark case, which desegregated the school, with the creation of a postal stamp.
The story began two years earlier when on March 2, 1945, five Mexican-American fathers (Gonzalo Méndez, Thomas Estrada, William Guzmán, Frank Palomino, and Lorenzo Ramírez) challenged the practice of school segregation in the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles. They claimed that their children, along with 5,000 other children of “Mexican and Latin descent,” were victims of unconstitutional discrimination by being forced to attend separate “Mexican” schools in the Westminster, Garden Grove, Santa Ana and El Modena school districts of Orange County.
On Feb. 18, 1946, Judge Paul J. McCormick ruled in favor of Méndez and his co-plaintiffs. However, the district appealed. Several organizations joined the appellate case as amicus curiae or friends of the court, including the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), represented by Thurgood Marshall. More than a year later, on April 14, 1947, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the district court’s ruling.
The Mendez decision set an important if indirect legal precedent for cases in other states and at the national level. On June 14, 1947, a statute allowing segregated schools for Asians and Indians was repealed (effective Sept. 19) by California governor Earl Warren, who later was appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court. In 1954, Warren was chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court when it issued its ruling in Brown v. Board of Education, declaring segregation illegal nationwide.
