School segregation in California

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School segregation in California was the segregation of students based on their ethnicity.

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History

In 1851, the first public K-12 school was established in San Francisco, California, and the school year lasted three months. [1] By the end of that same year, six more schools were established, setting up the state's education system and department. Beginning in the 1850's, "colored" children were not allowed to attend schools with white children, so the first "colored" school was established in May 22, 1854 in San Francisco. [2] Notable people who helped establish the "colored" school system in the state include abolitionist John Brown's daughter, Sara Brown, Jeremiah Burke Sanderson, and Biddy Mason. [2] [3] To disburse funding to public schools, the California legislature established an education code in 1855 that gave funding to schools based on the number of white children that attended the school. [4] According to J. Moulder, the State School Superintendent at the time, that legislation was meant to exclude children of Chinese, African, and other descents. [4] Such segregation and exclusion in schools continued with the 1864 California education amendment, which explicitly banned "Negroes, Mongolian, and Indian" children from public schools. [4] [5] In an effort to challenge segregation in public K-12 schools, the state's first education segregation legal case was filed with the California Supreme Court on September 22, 1872, Ward v. Flood. [2] The plaintiff, Harriet Ward, had tried to enroll her daughter, Mary Frances in an all-white school but was denied. The California Supreme Court ruled against Ward, and established the precedent in California that Black children only had the right to attend school, not the right to attend school with white children. [2] Following that ruling, the state legislature passed section 1669 of the 1874 education code that allowed Black and Indian children to attend schools with white children, only if there were no separate "colored" schools for them to attend. [2]

By 1877, attendance was mandatory for all children aged eight through fourteen, though school districts could still offer "separate, but equal" schools for "colored" and white children. [1] The California legislature also passes section 1662 of the 1880 education code, which required all schools must be open for all children, except those with "filthy or vicious habits" or "suffering from contagious or infectious diseases. [4] " However, due to the ambiguity of the education code, "Mongolian" children were still banned from public K-12 schools until 1885. [4] In 1890, the California Supreme Court ruled in Wysinger v. Crookshank that Black children cannot be denied attendance from a regular public school. [2] This allowed Black children to attend mixed schools with American Indian and Asian American children, though the state's education code only required a mixed school in a school district if at least ten colored parents requested it, and were approved. [4] As segregation in California schools continued into the 1900s, those with disabilities were able to take the first classes for the deaf, offered by the California School for the Deaf in 1903. [1]

During the 20th century, two significant test cases for school segregation were filed in California. The first being Piper v. Big Pine School District of Inyo County, petitioned in 1923. [6] Alice Piper, and many other children of the Paiute tribe, tried to enroll in the local all-white public high school. When they were denied by the school district because they were American Indians who were assumed to be non-citizens. The judge ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, on the basis that Piper's parents were tax paying citizens of the United States. This allowed American Indian children to attend schools with white children. [6] In 1945, Mendez v. Westminster was filed in the California Supreme and Ninth District Court. [4] The plaintiffs were Mexican and Latino fathers, who claimed that their children, like Sylvia Mendez, were being unconstitutionally discriminated against when they were forced to join segregated Mexican schools in several California school districts. On February 18th, 1946, Judge Paul J McCrormick ruled in favor of the families, allowing children of Mexican or Latino descent from joining schools with white children. [4] Following the ruling, Governor Earl Warren signed a law to repeal segregation in schools on June 14, 1947. [5]

See also

Related Research Articles

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Separate but equal was a legal doctrine in United States constitutional law, according to which racial segregation did not necessarily violate the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which nominally guaranteed "equal protection" under the law to all people. Under the doctrine, as long as the facilities provided to each race were equal, state and local governments could require that services, facilities, public accommodations, housing, medical care, education, employment, and transportation be segregated by race, which was already the case throughout the states of the former Confederacy. The phrase was derived from a Louisiana law of 1890, although the law actually used the phrase "equal but separate".

Bolling v. Sharpe, 347 U.S. 497 (1954), is a landmark United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that the Constitution prohibits segregated public schools in the District of Columbia. Originally argued on December 10–11, 1952, a year before Brown v. Board of Education, Bolling was reargued on December 8–9, 1953, and was unanimously decided on May 17, 1954, the same day as Brown. The Bolling decision was supplemented in 1955 with the second Brown opinion, which ordered desegregation "with all deliberate speed". In Bolling, the Court did not address school desegregation in the context of the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause, which applies only to the states, but rather held that school segregation was unconstitutional under the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The Court observed that the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution lacked an Equal Protection Clause, as in the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. However, the Court held that the concepts of equal protection and due process are not mutually exclusive, establishing the reverse incorporation doctrine.

Cumming v. Richmond County Board of Education, 175 U.S. 528 (1899), ("Richmond") was a class action suit decided by the Supreme Court of the United States. It is a landmark case, in that it sanctioned de jure segregation of races in American schools. The decision was overruled by Brown v. Board of Education (1954).

Briggs v. Elliott, 342 U.S. 350 (1952), on appeal from the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of South Carolina, challenged school segregation in Summerton, South Carolina. It was the first of the five cases combined into Brown v. Board of Education (1954), the famous case in which the U.S. Supreme Court declared racial segregation in public schools to be unconstitutional by violating the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause. Following the Brown decision, the district court issued a decree that struck down the school segregation law in South Carolina as unconstitutional and required the state's schools to integrate. Harry and Eliza Briggs, Reverend Joseph A. DeLaine, and Levi Pearson were awarded Congressional Gold Medals posthumously in 2003.

<i>Gebhart v. Belton</i> United States Supreme Court case

Gebhart v. Belton, 33 Del. Ch. 144, 87 A.2d 862, aff'd, 91 A.2d 137, was a case decided by the Delaware Court of Chancery in 1952 and affirmed by the Delaware Supreme Court in the same year. Gebhart was one of the five cases combined into Brown v. Board of Education, the 1954 decision of the United States Supreme Court which found unconstitutional racial segregation in United States public schools.

<i>Tape v. Hurley</i> 1885 California Supreme Court case

Tape v. Hurley, 66 Cal. 473, (1885) was a landmark court case in the California Supreme Court in which the Court found the exclusion of a Chinese American student from public school based on her ancestry unlawful. The case effectively ruled that minority children were entitled to attend public school in California. After the Court's decision, San Francisco Superintendent of Schools, Andrew J. Moulder, urged the California state assembly to pass new state legislation which enabled the establishment of segregated schools under the separate but equal doctrine, like the later Plessy v. Ferguson (1896). The establishment of the new school marked the continued segregation in the education system in California.

Lum v. Rice, 275 U.S. 78 (1927), is a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that the exclusion on account of race of a child of Chinese ancestry from a public school did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The decision effectively approved the exclusion of any minority children from schools reserved for whites.

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<i>Mendez v. Westminster</i> 1947 US appeals court case

Mendez, et al v. Westminister [sic] School District of Orange County, et al, 64 F.Supp. 544, aff'd, 161 F.2d 774, was a 1947 federal court case that challenged Mexican remedial schools in four districts in Orange County, California. In its ruling, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in an en banc decision, held that the forced segregation of Mexican American students into separate "Mexican schools" was unconstitutional because as US District Court Judge Paul J. McCormick stated, "The evidence clearly shows that Spanish-speaking children are retarded in learning English by lack of exposure to its use because of segregation, and that commingling of the entire student body instills and develops a common cultural attitude among the school children which is imperative for the perpetuation of American institutions and ideals."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sylvia Mendez</span> American civil rights activist

Sylvia Mendez is an American civil rights activist and retired nurse. At age eight, she played an instrumental role in the Mendez v. Westminster case, the landmark desegregation case of 1946. The case successfully ended de jure segregation in California and paved the way for integration and the American civil rights movement.

The Lemon Grove Case, commonly known as the Lemon Grove Incident, was the United States' first successful school desegregation case. The incident occurred in 1930 and 1931 in Lemon Grove, California, where the local school board attempted to build a separate school for children of Mexican origin. On March 30, 1931, the Superior Court of San Diego County ruled that the local school board's attempt to segregate 75 Mexican and Mexican American elementary school children was a violation of California state laws because ethnic Mexicans were considered White under the state's Education Code. Although often overlooked in the history of school desegregation, the Lemon Grove Case is increasingly heralded as the first victory over segregative educational practices and as a testimony to the Mexican immigrant parents who effectively utilized the U.S. legal system to protect their children's rights.

<i>Mendez vs. Westminster: For All the Children</i> 2003 film by Sandra Robbie

Mendez vs. Westminster: For All the Children/Para Todos los Niños is a 2003 American documentary film written, directed, and produced by Sandra Robbie. The film features Sylvia Mendez, Robert L. Carter, and others.

The Westminster School District (WSD) is an elementary school district in Orange County, California, established in 1872 and headquartered in Westminster. It operates schools in Westminster, Garden Grove, Huntington Beach, and Midway City.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Felicitas Méndez</span> Puerto Rican activist

Felicitas Gómez Martínez de Méndez was a Puerto Rican activist in the American civil rights movement. In 1946, Méndez and her husband, Gonzalo, led an educational civil rights battle that changed California and set an important legal precedent for ending de jure segregation in the United States. Their landmark desegregation case, known as Mendez v. Westminster, paved the way for meaningful integration and public-school reform.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alice Piper</span>

Alice Piper was a Paiute (Nüümü) woman, who as a girl residing in Big Pine, California petitioned to attend the newly built Big Pine High School in 1923 and was denied entry due to her race. At that time, California educational law prohibited Native American children from attending a public school if a separate government run Indian school was established within three miles of the public school.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gordon J. Lau Elementary School</span> School in San Francisco, United States, California

Gordon J. Lau Elementary School, founded as The Chinese School and was once named Oriental Public School, was a public school located in Chinatown, San Francisco, California. It was initially set up in 1859 as a segregated school for schoolchildren of Chinese descent, part of the growing anti-Chinese sentiment in the United States that arose in the late 1800s. The school has been renamed a number of times, most recently in 1998 to its current name in honor of the city's first Chinese-American supervisor.

Hedgepeth and Williams v. Board of Education, Trenton, NJ, 131 N.J.L. 153, 35 A.2d 622 (1944), also known as the Hedgepeth–Williams case, was a landmark New Jersey Supreme Court decision decided in 1944. The Court ruled that since racial segregation was outlawed by the New Jersey State Constitution, it was unlawful for schools to segregate or refuse admission to students on the basis of race. The case led to the formal desegregation of New Jersey public schools and was a precursor to Brown v. Board of Education.

Ward v. Flood 48 Cal. 49–52 (1874) was the first school segregation case before the California Supreme Court, which established the principle of "separate but equal" schools in California law, 22 years before the United States Supreme Court decided Plessy v. Ferguson. Following Ward v. Flood, litigation over racial segregation in schools in California continued for over a century.

References

  1. 1 2 3 "AAV History of Public Education in California - Historical Documents (CA Dept of Education)". www.cde.ca.gov. Retrieved 2024-07-27.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Wollenberg, Charles (2023-04-28). All Deliberate Speed: Segregation and Exclusion in California Schools, 1855-1975 (1 ed.). University of California Press. doi:10.2307/jj.2430743. ISBN   978-0-520-31704-8.
  3. ↑ "Bridget "Biddy" Mason (U.S. National Park Service)". www.nps.gov. Retrieved 2024-07-27.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Wollenberg, Charles (1974-12-01). "Mendez v. Westminster: Race, Nationality and Segregation in California Schools". California Historical Quarterly. 53 (4): 317–332. doi:10.2307/25157525. ISSN   0097-6059.
  5. 1 2 Macías, Francisco (2014-05-16). "Before Brown v. Board of Education There Was Méndez v. Westminster | In Custodia Legis". The Library of Congress. Retrieved 2024-07-27.
  6. 1 2 "Alice Piper (U.S. National Park Service)". www.nps.gov. Retrieved 2024-07-27.
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