Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 (1954), was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that U.S. state laws establishing racial segregation in public schools are unconstitutional, even if the segregated schools are otherwise equal in quality. The decision partially overruled the Court's 1896 decision Plessy v. Ferguson, which had held that racial segregation laws did not violate the U.S. Constitution as long as the facilities for each race were equal in quality, a doctrine that had come to be known as "separate but equal". The Court's unanimous decision in Brown, and its related cases, paved the way for integration and was a major victory of the civil rights movement, and a model for many future impact litigation cases.
Westminster is a city in western Orange County, California, United States. Westminster was founded in 1870 by Rev. Lemuel Webber as a Presbyterian temperance colony and was incorporated in 1957.
Desegregation busing was a failed attempt to diversify the racial make-up of schools in the United States by sending students to school districts other than their own. While the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education declared racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional, many American schools continued to remain largely racially homogeneous. In an effort to address the ongoing de facto segregation in schools, the 1971 Supreme Court decision, Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, ruled that the federal courts could use busing as a further integration tool to achieve racial balance.
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."
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 San Diego County Superior Court 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.
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 League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) is the largest and oldest Hispanic and Latin-American civil rights organization in the United States. It was established on February 17, 1929, in Corpus Christi, Texas, largely by Hispanics returning from World War I who sought to end ethnic discrimination against Latinos in the United States. The goal of LULAC is to advance the economic condition, educational attainment, political influence, housing, health, and civil rights of Hispanic people in the United States. LULAC uses nationwide councils and group community organizations to achieve all these goals. LULAC has about 132,000 members in the United States.
Lincoln Johnson Ragsdale Sr. was an influential leader in the Phoenix-area Civil Rights Movement. Known for his outspokenness, Ragsdale was instrumental in various reform efforts in the Valley, including voting rights and the desegregation of schools, neighborhoods, and public accommodations.
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.
Felicitas and Gonzalo Mendez High School is a public high school in the Boyle Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, United States. It is also known as Felicitas and Gonzalo Mendez Learning Center.
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.
School segregation in the United States was the segregation of students based on their ethnicity. While not prohibited from having schools, various minorities were barred from most schools, schools for whites. Segregation was enforced by law in U.S. states primarily in the Southern United States, although elsewhere segregation could be informal or customary. Segregation laws were dismantled in 1954 by the U.S. Supreme Court because of the successes being attained during the Civil Rights Movement. Segregation continued longstanding exclusionary policies in much of the Southern United States after the Civil War. Jim Crow laws codified segregation. These laws were influenced by the history of slavery and discrimination in the US. Secondary schools for African Americans in the South were called training schools instead of high schools in order to appease racist whites and focused on vocational education. School integration in the United States took place at different times in different areas and often met resistance. After the ruling of Brown v. Board of Education, which banned segregated school laws, school segregation took de facto form. School segregation declined rapidly during the late 1960s and early 1970s as the government became strict on schools' plans to combat segregation more effectively as a result of Green v. County School Board of New Kent County. Voluntary segregation by income appears to have increased since 1990. Racial segregation has either increased or stayed constant since 1990, depending on which definition of segregation is used. In general, definitions based on the amount of interaction between black and white students show increased racial segregation, while definitions based on the proportion of black and white students in different schools show racial segregation remaining approximately constant.
In the United States, school integration is the process of ending race-based segregation within American public and private schools. Racial segregation in schools existed throughout most of American history and remains an issue in contemporary education. During the Civil Rights Movement school integration became a priority, but since then de facto segregation has again become prevalent.
This is a timeline of the civil rights movement in the United States, a nonviolent mid-20th century freedom movement to gain legal equality and the enforcement of constitutional rights for people of color. The goals of the movement included securing equal protection under the law, ending legally institutionalized racial discrimination, and gaining equal access to public facilities, education reform, fair housing, and the ability to vote.
The following is a timeline of Latino civil rights in the United States.
Hector G. Godinez was a civil rights leader and the first Mexican-American postmaster in the United States. He was appointed by President John F. Kennedy as postmaster of Santa Ana in 1961. He was subsequently promoted to Southern California district manager for the U.S. Postal Service, where he managed more than 44,000 employees and had an operating budget of $750 million.
Francisco Maestas et al. vs. George H. Shone et al. was a school desegregation case in Colorado involving Latino children in the early 20th Century. Filed in the Colorado district court, 12th district, in 1912 by Francisco Maestas against the Alamosa School District Superintendent and Board of Education in 1913, the case precedes Del Rio ISD v. Salvatierra by sixteen years, Alvarez v. Lemon Grove by seventeen years and Mendez v. Westminster by thirty-three years. The court ruled in favor of Maestas and the other Latino families.
The Lydia D. Killefer School in Orange, California, was constructed in 1931 and listed in 2015 on the National Register of Historic Places administered by the National Park Service. The National Park Service notes the school's significance under Criterion A "as an example of institutional development associated with the early twentieth century growth of the Cypress Street Barrio in Orange". Killefer School also is noted by the National Park Service as significant under Criterion C (Architecture) as a rare extant "example of a Spanish Colonial Revival schoolhouse in Southern California" which survived the 1933 Long Beach earthquake.
Delgado V. Bastrop Independent School District was a Federal Circuit court case based out of Bastrop county that ruled against the segregation of Mexican-Americans in the public schools of Texas. The court's decision was argued on the standpoint of the Mendez et al. v. Westminster et al. court case and lack of Texas law for segregation of those of Mexican descent, and also stated that Mexican-Americans were separate from African-Americans as had been ruled in Plessy v. Ferguson. This case stated that except for the instance of separating individuals based on severe language difficulties in first grade, the school districts could not segregate their schools between Anglos and Mexican-Americans; moreover, the local school leaders and districts needed to take active action against it or they would also be liable for the results of segregated education. Though this case helped establish a baseline in the law against Mexican-American segregation in public schools, it took many more years and future lawsuits for action to follow through with the actual rulings of the court.
School segregation in California was the segregation of students based on their ethnicity.
