Legal Challenges to Segregation

Title

Legal Challenges to Segregation

Description

School segregation was a major issue for Mexicans in California and Texas. Groups of parents filed numerous lawsuits to push local governments to integrate local schools. These struggles united parent groups and LULAC (The League of United Latin American Citizens), and together they fought landmark cases such as Del Rio ISD v. Salvatierra in Texas (1930) and Roberto Alvarez v. the Board of Trustees of the Lemon Grove School District, often referred to as “The Lemon Grove Incident,” in San Diego, California (1931).

LULAC, the first national Mexican American Civil Rights organization, was established in 1929 by American citizens of Mexican descent in Corpus Christi, Texas. Until WWII, LULAC undertook several school desegregation court cases in Texas and California using the argument that Mexicans were white. Accordingly, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848) gave American citizenship to Mexicans living in the U.S. territory at the end of the Mexican American War while the U.S.Constitution had stipulated that only white males were eligible for U.S. citizenship. This legal argument was not successful.

After WWII, LULAC worked with the Mexican consulate and the NAACP to strategize for Mendez v. Westminster (1947). This California Supreme Court case repealed all segregation in California schools, arguing that the 14th Amendment provided for “equal protection” under the law, and influenced the landmark 1954 U.S. Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education Topeka, Kansas. In 1954, lawyers from the American G.I. Forum and LULAC argued in the U.S. Supreme Court case of Hernandez v. Texas that the Mexican American defendant was denied “equal protection” under the 14th Amendment. The court granted that Mexican Americans were “a class apart,” not easily fitting into a legal structure that only recognized blacks and whites. Direct action on segregation, including strikes, walkouts, and boycotts, would come much later.

Additional Online Information

The League of United Latin-American Citizens: A Texas-Mexican Civic Organization

Del Rio ISD v. Salvatierra

Jan. 5, 1931: Lemon Grove Incident - Zinn Education Project

Background - Mendez v. Westminster Re-Enactment | United States Courts

April 14, 1947: Mendez v. Westminster Court Ruling - Zinn Education Project

Mendez v. Westminster School District | National Archives

American Latino Theme Study: Education (U.S. National Park Service)

Identifier

B4SV Exhibit Topic Five: Slide 008