Mendez vs. Westminster: A Civil Rights Legacy

Hi everyone, I'm Sandra Robey, the writer-producer of the Emmy-winning documentary, Mendez vs. Westminster, for all the children. And I am so happy to bring to you now the opportunity to see Mendez vs. Westminster for free. It's been my goal to see that Mendez is taught across the country and 2022 will be the 75-year anniversary of Mendez vs. Westminster. We can make this party happen, so let's do it. And make no mistake, I am a total Mendez maniac. But hear this, Black Lives Matter. Make America gay again. I am all about social justice and respect and inclusion for everyone. So as you're watching the documentary, please try to notice the groups, people of different colors all across the country who are coming together to fight an injustice that didn't just change four small school districts in Orange County, but ended up impacting our nation. and the world. So finally, 70 years after Brown versus Board of Education desegregated our schools, Mendez versus Westminster can help to desegregate the way we talk about American civil rights history, because we are all connected. So when you watch the film, please collect your questions and your thoughts and contact me on my website, sandrarobie.com. That's sandrarobie.com. And I would love to hear your thoughts. And please sign up for Mendez Million. It's a community group that I'm starting to help to share ideas and ways that we can send the Mendez message across the country in time for the 2022 anniversary. We're going to be having Mendez Monday Zoom meetings and all kinds of other fun things. So check it out. And also when you're on the website, check out some new stuff that I'm working on. I have developed a one-woman show called Sandra Roby's Lady Parts. That's right, Sandra Roby's Lady Parts. And it incorporates humor. and lots of insights that I've gleaned from working on Mendez. And it's all about the box, the box that we put ourselves and others in every day. And we all know we are more than the box. There are more parts to me than just Mendez. And I want to lovingly and laughingly share those ideas with you. So check that out. So you're about ready to watch the film? Keep this in mind. This is a very humble half-hour film. And what you're going to see at the front, is a short two-minute excerpt that was not part of the original. It is an interview with a gentleman named Robert L. Carter, who worked with Thurgood Marshall, and he's going to explain the direct connection between Mendez v. Westminster and Brown v. Board of Education, which I feel is so powerful. And also, remember, very humble film, so there's no car chases, no dinosaurs, no fancy computer graphics, no explosions, except for what I'm hoping will be going off in here. As you learn of a story that is unlike anything taught in our history books right now, and you can see the connections, because this is one of the other important lessons I have learned from Mendez, is the stories we tell, tell us who we are and who we can be. So I'm hoping that in learning about Mendez, you can see a story that shows people of all colors working together to affirm the worthiness and the value And the freedoms of everyone. And that's the American dream I'm working toward. So thank you so much. I'm Sandra Roby. Check out sandraroby.com. And go Mendes. Peace out. When we talk about the landmark school desegregation case, Brown v. Board of Education, the names that come to mind most frequently are Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren and NAACP Attorney Thurgood Marshall. The name of the man who actually wrote the argument for Brown v. Board of Education is not so readily known. His name is Robert L. Carter, and he, like Thurgood Marshall and Earl Warren, was also involved in the Mendez case. He is now a judge in New York City, and his chambers have a sweeping view of the city below. He spoke with me in June 2003 about the historic link between Mendez v. Westminster and Brown v. Board of Education. Before I went into the Army, no, after I came out of the Army, I guess, I came in contact with it in this case, Westminster v. School Bullets, which is a case in California. It's called Westminster. And which these... Spanish-speaking children, as I recall, were the... school board was segregating them, keeping them together on the theory that they would learn English better that way or some such thing. But it ended up with them being like blacks in the South with the facilities being unequal and so forth. And when I learned about that, I was... I think it was the time Thurgood was sick. Thurgood Marshall, my boss, was sick and not in the office. And what I did was to get the documentation and try to write a brief. And the brief being segregation per se was unconstitutional. And to utilize that, as a matter of fact, as the model for the brief eventually in Brown versus the Board of Education, so that's the link between my Westminster and Brown. Music It was never mentioned at home. I actually didn't find out about it until I went away to college, UC Riverside. I went to UC Riverside, I took a Chicano Studies class, and although we didn't study that part of the book, I just happened to be going through the back and saw Mendez. And I looked at the story, and my parents' names are rather unique, Gonzalo and Felicitas. So I figured it can't be a coincidence. And, of course, it had my brother, Gonzalo, and Silvia's name, so I knew. So I called home, and I said, I found this story. And by that time, my father had passed away. He died when I was 13. So my mother just said, oh, yeah. I said, oh, yeah? That's it? She said, Oh, yeah, we did that. That happened before you were born. It was no big deal to my parents at that time. My father always wanted to be a farmer, and he wanted to be the boss, knowing that he had always been the grape picker and the orange picker. So during the war, something horrible happened. The Japanese were put in internment camps. And his banker told my father, Gonzalo, Gonzalo, you always wanted to be the boss, so why don't you lease? The land from the Minamitzos. They're in an interming camp, but they want to lease the land so they won't lose it. So he went and he arranged with the Minamitzos. I remember we went to the camp, and they signed papers, and we got the ranch. He sold the cafe, and he rented out the houses in Santa Ana. We moved back to Westminster where he had grown up. My sister and I were sick before they went to the camp because we had chicken pox. So we were put in the hospital, my sister and I, by ourselves, and my parents all went to the internment camp. So we were left behind. We were in the hospital for about two weeks or three weeks, and they were happy to see us go because we would run up and down the hospital and ask for food all the time. That's just little kids. You know, we were little kids. And so when we got well, a nurse took us all the way to Arizona. And I remember when we... Got into Arizona near the camp, I saw my mother on the platform, she was crying. Poston, that was in Arizona. I remember that Mr. Monroe, the banker man, I remember that he was the goal between the families, and he got the Mendez family and my father and my brother, I guess, together, and they leased the land to them, and that's how we came to know each other. Yeah. And he was a very honest man. He was a hard worker, and I think that he had a very personable appearance about him. You know, he was a very personable person. Yeah. Because my sister and I would sit there and go, gee, he's nice looking. Little. You know how little kids are. When we came back to Westminster, it was like 1943, and he decided that he would ask my Aunt Sally to take us and enroll us in Westminster School. We were living on Edward Street, so we weren't living where he had been raised. He had been raised in the Mexican district there on Olive Street, where all the Mexicans lived. Now, we lived all the way on the other side of Westminster, where the- farm was. And so he told my Aunt Sally, Sally, take her to school and enroll the kids and enroll them there on 17th Street, because that's where we belong. That's the district we belong. So when we, she gathered us all up, it was Gonzalo and Jerome and her two children. It was Alice and Virginia. So when we got to the school, they told her, Ms. Vidari, you can leave your kids here, but Your brother's kids, Gonzalo's kids, will have to go to the Mexican school. The Mexicans are segregated here in Westminster. They have to go to the Mexican school. But my Aunt Sally said, well, why am I going to leave mine here? She says, well, yours don't have to go there. You know, my Aunt Sally's last name was Vidari. She had married a Mexican that was part French, and his last name was Vidari. And the kids were very light-skinned, Alice and Virginia. So she said, well. I'm not leaving my kids here. If you won't take my brother's kids, my kids will not stay. So she gathered us all up and she took us home. And when she got home, she told my dad, Gonzalo, they will not allow your kids there. And my father said, Oh, Sally. He used to call her Soledad. Don't worry about it. I'll go and speak to the principal tomorrow. Mexican children were... segregated throughout the Southwest. This begins in Orange County around 1913 when Mexican children were separated from Anglo-American children on integrated schools and by 1919 the school district of Santa Ana decided to segregate Mexican children into their own schools. So in 1919 the first segregated school was established in Orange County and after that children were routinely segregated so that by 1930 there were 15 Mexican schools distributed throughout the county. Orange County was not any different from other areas of the Southwest. Los Angeles routinely segregated Mexican children into what were called neighborhood schools. One study found that somewhere between 80 and 90 percent of all school districts segregated Mexican children in the Southwest. Pretty much everything was segregated. The housing was segregated. There were what were called racially restrictive covenants. And these covenants forbid anybody who was not Anglo or of European descent from owning property. And oftentimes what they would say is that if you're Mexican, you're Indian, and therefore you cannot own this property, or it would specifically just exclude Mexicans. One of the other really common forms of segregation in Southern California were the public pools during the summer. And one particular An example is the plunge in Orange, which would allow Mexicans in only on Mondays. It was known as Mexican Day. And that was the day the pool was drained, and the next day it was cleaned and refilled so that Anglos could swim in it the day after the Mexicans had been there. Also, the theaters in Santa Ana and most of the large cities were segregated. Mexicans sat in the balcony and Anglos sat down below. So the next day he came and he went to the school and he said, We'd like to enroll the kids here. We live in this district. When we were in Santa Ana, we lived in the Mexican district, and the kids were going to a Freeman school, which was all Mexican, but now we live in the whites district. Why aren't you allowing our kids to go here? And they said, Well, in Westminster, the kids are segregated. The Mexicans have to go to Mexican schools. But why? He says, well, in certain areas in Orange County, we are allowed to segregate. And it was Garden Grove, it was Westminster, it was El Modena, Saniana that were allowed to segregate the Mexicans from the whites. He said to the principal, well, you'll hear from me. So the next day he decided he'd go to the school board here in Westminster, and they told him the same thing. I'm sorry, Mr. Mendez, but there's nothing we can do. So he decided to go to the school board. The Orange County School Board told me, well, Mr. Mendez, they said the same thing. Well, my father thought it was such an injustice because the school in Westminster, the Hoover School, was made out of, it was a terrible little shack. I don't even remember having any. monkey bars or any swings or anything like that to play with. In fact, when we had to eat lunch, we would go outside and eat lunch in the tables that were right next to the cow pasture, so we'd get all the flies there from the cow pasture. There was wire around the cow pasture to keep the cows out, but it was electrocuted. There was a little bit of electricity. At that time, it was allowed to have a little bit of electricity on the wires to keep the cows from getting too close to the fence. So my father thought that was so horrible. So then he was talking to this man that used to come to the farm and bring the produce from, to take the produce back to Los Angeles, to Alameda. And he said, Mr. Mendez, I know about a lawyer, Mr. Marcus, that will help you. He will fight. He has fought where the Mexicans aren't allowed to go to the parks in Los Angeles, and they're not allowed to go to the swimming pools until Sunday when the water's very dirty. Then they're allowed to, but they can't go during the week. He said he has fought those two cases and he has won. I'm sure he'll help you. Well, at that time, he was making a lot of money. It was during the war. They used to make like $1,000 a day. They had like 40 acres of asparagus, and they had leased some other acres from another man, and it was tomatoes. They were growing tomatoes and chilies. And so he had the money, so he decided he hired the lawyer and he started working on it. Well, at that time there was a group in Santa Ana that was fighting this case. And he went to them and he asked them, Can you help me because I'm going to fight this? And at that time they did not want to fight, help him. They refused to help him. And I remember because my mother told me that he came crying. He says, Can you believe this, Fela? They will not help me fight this case. And here they are supposed to be fighting for the Mexicans. My mother says, we can do it alone. We have the money right now. So they proceeded. What happened was through coordination of folks like Hector Durango in Santa Ana and Fred Ross, who was an Anglo, who helped a lot of the movements in the area, came in and they went around and they said, you have a cousin, Bob Torres, over in El Medina. You have a cousin in Garden Grove or Westminster or Santa Ana. Can we set this up? And they set up a test case in each district. And then they filed the lawsuit. During the time that they were fighting, my father was taking the lawyer all over to the different areas and they decided that he would be the one to accompany him. My mother ran the farm. At that time, she was running the 40 acres. She had workers. She had braceros from Mexico. They were working here legally at that time. The Mexicans were allowed to come here legally and work. And so she ran all the farm and my dad was out there with the lawyers and he was meeting with different people. He was meeting with the people from Santa Ana. He was meeting with the people from El Modena. And they finally went to court. And when they went to court, they won the first time in the Superior Court. They won and Judge McCormick said that it was totally illegal what they were doing. So he said, from now on we will not have segregation. Well, the... the Westminster School Board decided to appeal. Because anytime anybody wins the case, you always have the right to appeal, and they appealed the case. Judge McCormick's decision in the district court, which is the trial court, and actually a trial did take place over several weeks in several of the schools and districts, had testimony and he heard testimony from the kids and he heard testimony from experts. And the critical part of this case is the attorney, David Marcus, He put on evidence not only with the children, but he brought in experts, sociologists and education experts, who said that segregation was bad for the children and gave them a sense of inferiority. It was noted that they wouldn't learn English or be Americanized or learn our culture if they were segregated. They had to be integrated. And so he listened to that, and he was the first judge that I've ever read, and I've talked to several professors, and this case is now mentioned. A lot of law schools in California, this was the first time any judge ever wrote an opinion that said separate is never equal. And he said the separate facilities, even if they were equal, were not permissible under the 14th Amendment based on national origin. Now the parties agreed that everybody was Caucasian, but what they said was they're discriminated because they're of Mexican or Latin origin. And so that was a huge step in civil rights, and it drew the attention of the NAACP, the National Lawyers Guild, and a whole host of other national civil rights groups who filed what are called friend-of-the-court briefs for the appeal. I think one of the most important things is you and Dad both told us how at first nobody wanted to help, and they criticized him. For being involved and you know, why do you want to be involved? Why do you want to make trouble? They didn't they figure that they were going to be bothered and they they rather stay that way it was Then try to fix it. I think any people who Are in a vulnerable position are afraid to make themselves more vulnerable. They're afraid to to make waves and Afraid to upset the status quo, even if the status quo is not what it should be. So it takes people who are willing to take a chance to change things. My father was a member of the LULAC, and he had been trying to convince them to help. So eventually when they saw that there was some momentum, they did come in, and they were very instrumental from that point on. My mom kind of took care of the business so my father could be doing all, going to the meetings and going up to Sacramento. And I know there in the store and in our house is where a lot of the meetings were held. I hardly see my husband. He was always in meetings. Folks returning from the war really saw that they could be treated equally and should be. I was discharged from the service in May of 1946, and that school semester, October and September, you know, I was involved in it. Because my daughter Janice, you know, the smallest daughter, she... I was enrolled in the school at the Roosevelt School, which was a non-segregated school. And pretty soon here's 10 other children that went in, and their parents said, well, how come you enrolled a Perez family and you won't take our children? And we already had one daughter at that school there, Carol, the oldest. And so Hammerstein, the principal, the superintendent of the schools, he thought that the easiest way to solve the problem was to transfer my daughter to the Lincoln School, which was a segregated school. And there all heck broke loose right there. During the Ninth Circuit Court, there was appeals that were sent in, briefs, and it was from the American Jewish Congress, it was one from the Japanese Congress. Lawyers Guild and the NAACP. And Thurgood Marshall was also involved in the Mendez because he had some briefs in because he was a lawyer for the NAACP. The National Lawyers Guild, the NAACP, argued that America could not be like Nazi Germany and segregate the different races of Europe, for example. And they all fought, and finally they did win. A few months later, Governor Warren... He was a governor at that time here in California, and he decided that he would desegregate the whole California after this trial. June 1947. So California has always been number one. That was eight years before the Brown v. Board of Education when the whole nation was desegregated. We say that in the Mendez case, the two very important people, Thurgood Marshall that helped the Mendez and later became the lawyer for the Brown v. Board of Education. And Governor Warren, who was our governor here in desegregated California, later was a Supreme Court justice that desegregated the whole nation. The two people that were involved in the Mendez case later desegregated the whole nation. When the plan was first developed to fully integrate Hoover School by busing children from various parts of the district, there would be... Angler children from various parts of the district to the Hoover School. There was obviously some concern on the part of the parents who were not familiar with the situation and didn't want their children to be bused. And Mr. Peters helped to forestall that criticism by busing his own daughter to the Hoover School rather than sending her to the school which was in his immediate neighborhood. When we won the case, we were living in Santa Ana at night. Remember I had to go to an all-white school and when I went it was very difficult at first because they didn't have any Mexicans in the school and they didn't want any and it was very difficult at first. I was always in trouble but what was really amazing is that kids forget quick. And it wasn't long before I was getting along with all the kids and being invited to go places with them and even to their homes. Which was very unusual because I remember the first time I was invited to go spend the night, my mother was against it. She couldn't believe that I'd go spend the night at a white people's house. And so, and me being young, not knowing the difference, I... I did the same thing. I invited him over to the house. And my mother really had a fit. You can't do that. You can't bring a white boy over here to this neighborhood. But it worked out fine. If they're integrated and they grow up from a young age, they don't have that prejudice that existed back then so badly because they grow up together. They might call each other names, but... Usually, like most kids, in a few minutes it's gone. And it doesn't matter if you... A Latino or black, oriental, because they're growing up together, all together in the same school. So they're like, well, what the country says, united. They're all united, that's what they are. And they make one country. And I think that's probably the greatest part of it. I really didn't realize that that much prejudice was there at that time. I'm really surprised. Because the three of us would play together while they were fighting this issue. And so I really didn't realize it was to that degree, but I'm glad that they did because everyone, you know, deserves a good education. That's what United States is about, I think. And I'm glad that they did that. I'm very proud of that Mendez family, yeah. From my father's perspective, you know, he was doing a good thing by leasing. It's another family while they were in camp, but as I look at it the bigger picture, it's really interesting how the prejudice sent our family to camp during those years. But it was interesting too that how the story now shows that the lack of prejudice, how we leased the land to a Mexican family who we really trusted and they cared for the land really well, but it really benefited and blessed our family in the long run that they could come home, back to their land, back to their home. And I think it's just a really great story about how, you know, prejudice really hurts the opportunity for all kinds of people. I think I blocked most of it out. I probably didn't realize there was prejudice in this world until I was probably 15, 13, 14, 15. Before that, it was just playing and having fun. We never spoke of things like that. They fought the case, we won, we went to school, and they forgot about it. One of the reasons we haven't heard about the case is that we have a mindset in the United States that generally civil rights issues is a black-white issue. And in reality it's much more diffuse, much more complex than just a black-white issue. Why is the Mendez case important is like saying why is Brown versus the Board of Education important to African Americans? And for that matter, all Americans. The Mendez case is Brown v. the Board of Education for Mexican Americans. This case desegregated schools throughout California because this was the norm, it was the practice, and it's the way Mexican children were treated. Mendez v. Westminster-San Ana Unified School District, Talmadina Unified School District, and Garden Grove School District was very significant. in that it had a ripple effect across the Southwest and was the precursor to Brown versus Board of Education, the Topeka, Kansas case that came down in 1954, which dismantled segregated schools for black children. But it also had the effect of dismantling the other de jure segregation that was in effect at that time, such as segregated housing, restaurants, swimming pools. One year after Mendez was decided, California repealed two statutes. One statute that segregated Asian American students into separate schools and another statute that segregated Native Americans. My father died in 1964, but he never knew about the school. My mother got to know that the school was going to be built after her. But she never did see the school. She died before the school was built. But she was very proud that the school was going to be named after her. My mom was a person of faith, and she wanted us to make sure, she wanted everybody to treat everybody with respect. The golden rule, you know, treat people as you expect them to treat you. And that's what she taught us. My daughter, my youngest daughter, went to Riverside. University and she was reading this book North of Mexico and then she read she says she started reading about her father and her brothers and her sisters this is my family and she didn't know nothing about it because I never even told us after we fought and we got everything won and everything we thought everything was gonna go all right so so we just kept the case dormant you know We never mentioned it, the children could go. We used to make a point. We used to take them, we live on one side of Santa Ana. We take them across the street to another school just to show them that they could go to any school they wanted, you know. Well, I'm proud. I'm proud that at least we had the courage to do it, you know, to fight for not... for our children but for the other children, their children and their children, you know, and for all the communities.

And make no mistake, I am a total Mendez maniac. But hear this, Black Lives Matter. Make America gay again. I am all about social justice and respect and inclusion for everyone.

So as you're watching the documentary, please try to notice the groups, people of different colors all across the country who are coming together to fight an injustice that didn't just change four small school districts in Orange County, but ended up impacting our nation. and the world. So finally, 70 years after Brown versus Board of Education desegregated our schools, Mendez versus Westminster can help to desegregate the way we talk about American civil rights history, because we are all connected.

So when you watch the film, please collect your questions and your thoughts and contact me on my website, sandrarobie.com. That's sandrarobie.com. And I would love to hear your thoughts. And please sign up for Mendez Million. It's a community group that I'm starting to help to share ideas and ways that we can send the Mendez message across the country in time for the 2022 anniversary.

We're going to be having Mendez Monday Zoom meetings and all kinds of other fun things. So check it out. And also when you're on the website, check out some new stuff that I'm working on. I have developed a one-woman show called Sandra Roby's Lady Parts. That's right, Sandra Roby's Lady Parts.

And it incorporates humor. and lots of insights that I've gleaned from working on Mendez. And it's all about the box, the box that we put ourselves and others in every day.

And we all know we are more than the box. There are more parts to me than just Mendez. And I want to lovingly and laughingly share those ideas with you. So check that out.

So you're about ready to watch the film? Keep this in mind. This is a very humble half-hour film.

And what you're going to see at the front, is a short two-minute excerpt that was not part of the original. It is an interview with a gentleman named Robert L. Carter, who worked with Thurgood Marshall, and he's going to explain the direct connection between Mendez v. Westminster and Brown v. Board of Education, which I feel is so powerful. And also, remember, very humble film, so there's no car chases, no dinosaurs, no fancy computer graphics, no explosions, except for what I'm hoping will be going off in here.

As you learn of a story that is unlike anything taught in our history books right now, and you can see the connections, because this is one of the other important lessons I have learned from Mendez, is the stories we tell, tell us who we are and who we can be. So I'm hoping that in learning about Mendez, you can see a story that shows people of all colors working together to affirm the worthiness and the value And the freedoms of everyone. And that's the American dream I'm working toward. So thank you so much.

I'm Sandra Roby. Check out sandraroby.com. And go Mendes.

Peace out. When we talk about the landmark school desegregation case, Brown v. Board of Education, the names that come to mind most frequently are Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren and NAACP Attorney Thurgood Marshall. The name of the man who actually wrote the argument for Brown v. Board of Education is not so readily known.

His name is Robert L. Carter, and he, like Thurgood Marshall and Earl Warren, was also involved in the Mendez case. He is now a judge in New York City, and his chambers have a sweeping view of the city below. He spoke with me in June 2003 about the historic link between Mendez v. Westminster and Brown v. Board of Education. Before I went into the Army, no, after I came out of the Army, I guess, I came in contact with it in this case, Westminster v. School Bullets, which is a case in California. It's called Westminster.

And which these... Spanish-speaking children, as I recall, were the... school board was segregating them, keeping them together on the theory that they would learn English better that way or some such thing. But it ended up with them being like blacks in the South with the facilities being unequal and so forth. And when I learned about that, I was...

I think it was the time Thurgood was sick. Thurgood Marshall, my boss, was sick and not in the office. And what I did was to get the documentation and try to write a brief. And the brief being segregation per se was unconstitutional. And to utilize that, as a matter of fact, as the model for the brief eventually in Brown versus the Board of Education, so that's the link between my Westminster and Brown.

Music It was never mentioned at home. I actually didn't find out about it until I went away to college, UC Riverside. I went to UC Riverside, I took a Chicano Studies class, and although we didn't study that part of the book, I just happened to be going through the back and saw Mendez. And I looked at the story, and my parents' names are rather unique, Gonzalo and Felicitas. So I figured it can't be a coincidence.

And, of course, it had my brother, Gonzalo, and Silvia's name, so I knew. So I called home, and I said, I found this story. And by that time, my father had passed away. He died when I was 13. So my mother just said, oh, yeah.

I said, oh, yeah? That's it? She said, Oh, yeah, we did that.

That happened before you were born. It was no big deal to my parents at that time. My father always wanted to be a farmer, and he wanted to be the boss, knowing that he had always been the grape picker and the orange picker. So during the war, something horrible happened. The Japanese were put in internment camps.

And his banker told my father, Gonzalo, Gonzalo, you always wanted to be the boss, so why don't you lease? The land from the Minamitzos. They're in an interming camp, but they want to lease the land so they won't lose it. So he went and he arranged with the Minamitzos. I remember we went to the camp, and they signed papers, and we got the ranch.

He sold the cafe, and he rented out the houses in Santa Ana. We moved back to Westminster where he had grown up. My sister and I were sick before they went to the camp because we had chicken pox.

So we were put in the hospital, my sister and I, by ourselves, and my parents all went to the internment camp. So we were left behind. We were in the hospital for about two weeks or three weeks, and they were happy to see us go because we would run up and down the hospital and ask for food all the time. That's just little kids.

You know, we were little kids. And so when we got well, a nurse took us all the way to Arizona. And I remember when we... Got into Arizona near the camp, I saw my mother on the platform, she was crying. Poston, that was in Arizona.

I remember that Mr. Monroe, the banker man, I remember that he was the goal between the families, and he got the Mendez family and my father and my brother, I guess, together, and they leased the land to them, and that's how we came to know each other. Yeah. And he was a very honest man. He was a hard worker, and I think that he had a very personable appearance about him.

You know, he was a very personable person. Yeah. Because my sister and I would sit there and go, gee, he's nice looking. Little.

You know how little kids are. When we came back to Westminster, it was like 1943, and he decided that he would ask my Aunt Sally to take us and enroll us in Westminster School. We were living on Edward Street, so we weren't living where he had been raised.

He had been raised in the Mexican district there on Olive Street, where all the Mexicans lived. Now, we lived all the way on the other side of Westminster, where the- farm was. And so he told my Aunt Sally, Sally, take her to school and enroll the kids and enroll them there on 17th Street, because that's where we belong. That's the district we belong.

So when we, she gathered us all up, it was Gonzalo and Jerome and her two children. It was Alice and Virginia. So when we got to the school, they told her, Ms. Vidari, you can leave your kids here, but Your brother's kids, Gonzalo's kids, will have to go to the Mexican school. The Mexicans are segregated here in Westminster.

They have to go to the Mexican school. But my Aunt Sally said, well, why am I going to leave mine here? She says, well, yours don't have to go there. You know, my Aunt Sally's last name was Vidari.

She had married a Mexican that was part French, and his last name was Vidari. And the kids were very light-skinned, Alice and Virginia. So she said, well.

I'm not leaving my kids here. If you won't take my brother's kids, my kids will not stay. So she gathered us all up and she took us home.

And when she got home, she told my dad, Gonzalo, they will not allow your kids there. And my father said, Oh, Sally. He used to call her Soledad.

Don't worry about it. I'll go and speak to the principal tomorrow. Mexican children were...

segregated throughout the Southwest. This begins in Orange County around 1913 when Mexican children were separated from Anglo-American children on integrated schools and by 1919 the school district of Santa Ana decided to segregate Mexican children into their own schools. So in 1919 the first segregated school was established in Orange County and after that children were routinely segregated so that by 1930 there were 15 Mexican schools distributed throughout the county. Orange County was not any different from other areas of the Southwest.

Los Angeles routinely segregated Mexican children into what were called neighborhood schools. One study found that somewhere between 80 and 90 percent of all school districts segregated Mexican children in the Southwest. Pretty much everything was segregated.

The housing was segregated. There were what were called racially restrictive covenants. And these covenants forbid anybody who was not Anglo or of European descent from owning property. And oftentimes what they would say is that if you're Mexican, you're Indian, and therefore you cannot own this property, or it would specifically just exclude Mexicans.

One of the other really common forms of segregation in Southern California were the public pools during the summer. And one particular An example is the plunge in Orange, which would allow Mexicans in only on Mondays. It was known as Mexican Day.

And that was the day the pool was drained, and the next day it was cleaned and refilled so that Anglos could swim in it the day after the Mexicans had been there. Also, the theaters in Santa Ana and most of the large cities were segregated. Mexicans sat in the balcony and Anglos sat down below. So the next day he came and he went to the school and he said, We'd like to enroll the kids here.

We live in this district. When we were in Santa Ana, we lived in the Mexican district, and the kids were going to a Freeman school, which was all Mexican, but now we live in the whites district. Why aren't you allowing our kids to go here? And they said, Well, in Westminster, the kids are segregated.

The Mexicans have to go to Mexican schools. But why? He says, well, in certain areas in Orange County, we are allowed to segregate.

And it was Garden Grove, it was Westminster, it was El Modena, Saniana that were allowed to segregate the Mexicans from the whites. He said to the principal, well, you'll hear from me. So the next day he decided he'd go to the school board here in Westminster, and they told him the same thing. I'm sorry, Mr. Mendez, but there's nothing we can do.

So he decided to go to the school board. The Orange County School Board told me, well, Mr. Mendez, they said the same thing. Well, my father thought it was such an injustice because the school in Westminster, the Hoover School, was made out of, it was a terrible little shack.

I don't even remember having any. monkey bars or any swings or anything like that to play with. In fact, when we had to eat lunch, we would go outside and eat lunch in the tables that were right next to the cow pasture, so we'd get all the flies there from the cow pasture. There was wire around the cow pasture to keep the cows out, but it was electrocuted.

There was a little bit of electricity. At that time, it was allowed to have a little bit of electricity on the wires to keep the cows from getting too close to the fence. So my father thought that was so horrible. So then he was talking to this man that used to come to the farm and bring the produce from, to take the produce back to Los Angeles, to Alameda. And he said, Mr. Mendez, I know about a lawyer, Mr. Marcus, that will help you.

He will fight. He has fought where the Mexicans aren't allowed to go to the parks in Los Angeles, and they're not allowed to go to the swimming pools until Sunday when the water's very dirty. Then they're allowed to, but they can't go during the week.

He said he has fought those two cases and he has won. I'm sure he'll help you. Well, at that time, he was making a lot of money.

It was during the war. They used to make like $1,000 a day. They had like 40 acres of asparagus, and they had leased some other acres from another man, and it was tomatoes. They were growing tomatoes and chilies. And so he had the money, so he decided he hired the lawyer and he started working on it.

Well, at that time there was a group in Santa Ana that was fighting this case. And he went to them and he asked them, Can you help me because I'm going to fight this? And at that time they did not want to fight, help him. They refused to help him.

And I remember because my mother told me that he came crying. He says, Can you believe this, Fela? They will not help me fight this case.

And here they are supposed to be fighting for the Mexicans. My mother says, we can do it alone. We have the money right now. So they proceeded. What happened was through coordination of folks like Hector Durango in Santa Ana and Fred Ross, who was an Anglo, who helped a lot of the movements in the area, came in and they went around and they said, you have a cousin, Bob Torres, over in El Medina.

You have a cousin in Garden Grove or Westminster or Santa Ana. Can we set this up? And they set up a test case in each district. And then they filed the lawsuit. During the time that they were fighting, my father was taking the lawyer all over to the different areas and they decided that he would be the one to accompany him.

My mother ran the farm. At that time, she was running the 40 acres. She had workers.

She had braceros from Mexico. They were working here legally at that time. The Mexicans were allowed to come here legally and work. And so she ran all the farm and my dad was out there with the lawyers and he was meeting with different people.

He was meeting with the people from Santa Ana. He was meeting with the people from El Modena. And they finally went to court. And when they went to court, they won the first time in the Superior Court.

They won and Judge McCormick said that it was totally illegal what they were doing. So he said, from now on we will not have segregation. Well, the... the Westminster School Board decided to appeal. Because anytime anybody wins the case, you always have the right to appeal, and they appealed the case.

Judge McCormick's decision in the district court, which is the trial court, and actually a trial did take place over several weeks in several of the schools and districts, had testimony and he heard testimony from the kids and he heard testimony from experts. And the critical part of this case is the attorney, David Marcus, He put on evidence not only with the children, but he brought in experts, sociologists and education experts, who said that segregation was bad for the children and gave them a sense of inferiority. It was noted that they wouldn't learn English or be Americanized or learn our culture if they were segregated.

They had to be integrated. And so he listened to that, and he was the first judge that I've ever read, and I've talked to several professors, and this case is now mentioned. A lot of law schools in California, this was the first time any judge ever wrote an opinion that said separate is never equal.

And he said the separate facilities, even if they were equal, were not permissible under the 14th Amendment based on national origin. Now the parties agreed that everybody was Caucasian, but what they said was they're discriminated because they're of Mexican or Latin origin. And so that was a huge step in civil rights, and it drew the attention of the NAACP, the National Lawyers Guild, and a whole host of other national civil rights groups who filed what are called friend-of-the-court briefs for the appeal. I think one of the most important things is you and Dad both told us how at first nobody wanted to help, and they criticized him. For being involved and you know, why do you want to be involved?

Why do you want to make trouble? They didn't they figure that they were going to be bothered and they they rather stay that way it was Then try to fix it. I think any people who Are in a vulnerable position are afraid to make themselves more vulnerable.

They're afraid to to make waves and Afraid to upset the status quo, even if the status quo is not what it should be. So it takes people who are willing to take a chance to change things. My father was a member of the LULAC, and he had been trying to convince them to help. So eventually when they saw that there was some momentum, they did come in, and they were very instrumental from that point on. My mom kind of took care of the business so my father could be doing all, going to the meetings and going up to Sacramento.

And I know there in the store and in our house is where a lot of the meetings were held. I hardly see my husband. He was always in meetings.

Folks returning from the war really saw that they could be treated equally and should be. I was discharged from the service in May of 1946, and that school semester, October and September, you know, I was involved in it. Because my daughter Janice, you know, the smallest daughter, she...

I was enrolled in the school at the Roosevelt School, which was a non-segregated school. And pretty soon here's 10 other children that went in, and their parents said, well, how come you enrolled a Perez family and you won't take our children? And we already had one daughter at that school there, Carol, the oldest.

And so Hammerstein, the principal, the superintendent of the schools, he thought that the easiest way to solve the problem was to transfer my daughter to the Lincoln School, which was a segregated school. And there all heck broke loose right there. During the Ninth Circuit Court, there was appeals that were sent in, briefs, and it was from the American Jewish Congress, it was one from the Japanese Congress. Lawyers Guild and the NAACP.

And Thurgood Marshall was also involved in the Mendez because he had some briefs in because he was a lawyer for the NAACP. The National Lawyers Guild, the NAACP, argued that America could not be like Nazi Germany and segregate the different races of Europe, for example. And they all fought, and finally they did win. A few months later, Governor Warren... He was a governor at that time here in California, and he decided that he would desegregate the whole California after this trial.

June 1947. So California has always been number one. That was eight years before the Brown v. Board of Education when the whole nation was desegregated. We say that in the Mendez case, the two very important people, Thurgood Marshall that helped the Mendez and later became the lawyer for the Brown v. Board of Education.

And Governor Warren, who was our governor here in desegregated California, later was a Supreme Court justice that desegregated the whole nation. The two people that were involved in the Mendez case later desegregated the whole nation. When the plan was first developed to fully integrate Hoover School by busing children from various parts of the district, there would be... Angler children from various parts of the district to the Hoover School.

There was obviously some concern on the part of the parents who were not familiar with the situation and didn't want their children to be bused. And Mr. Peters helped to forestall that criticism by busing his own daughter to the Hoover School rather than sending her to the school which was in his immediate neighborhood. When we won the case, we were living in Santa Ana at night. Remember I had to go to an all-white school and when I went it was very difficult at first because they didn't have any Mexicans in the school and they didn't want any and it was very difficult at first. I was always in trouble but what was really amazing is that kids forget quick.

And it wasn't long before I was getting along with all the kids and being invited to go places with them and even to their homes. Which was very unusual because I remember the first time I was invited to go spend the night, my mother was against it. She couldn't believe that I'd go spend the night at a white people's house.

And so, and me being young, not knowing the difference, I... I did the same thing. I invited him over to the house.

And my mother really had a fit. You can't do that. You can't bring a white boy over here to this neighborhood.

But it worked out fine. If they're integrated and they grow up from a young age, they don't have that prejudice that existed back then so badly because they grow up together. They might call each other names, but... Usually, like most kids, in a few minutes it's gone. And it doesn't matter if you...

A Latino or black, oriental, because they're growing up together, all together in the same school. So they're like, well, what the country says, united. They're all united, that's what they are.

And they make one country. And I think that's probably the greatest part of it. I really didn't realize that that much prejudice was there at that time.

I'm really surprised. Because the three of us would play together while they were fighting this issue. And so I really didn't realize it was to that degree, but I'm glad that they did because everyone, you know, deserves a good education. That's what United States is about, I think. And I'm glad that they did that.

I'm very proud of that Mendez family, yeah. From my father's perspective, you know, he was doing a good thing by leasing. It's another family while they were in camp, but as I look at it the bigger picture, it's really interesting how the prejudice sent our family to camp during those years. But it was interesting too that how the story now shows that the lack of prejudice, how we leased the land to a Mexican family who we really trusted and they cared for the land really well, but it really benefited and blessed our family in the long run that they could come home, back to their land, back to their home. And I think it's just a really great story about how, you know, prejudice really hurts the opportunity for all kinds of people.

I think I blocked most of it out. I probably didn't realize there was prejudice in this world until I was probably 15, 13, 14, 15. Before that, it was just playing and having fun. We never spoke of things like that. They fought the case, we won, we went to school, and they forgot about it. One of the reasons we haven't heard about the case is that we have a mindset in the United States that generally civil rights issues is a black-white issue.

And in reality it's much more diffuse, much more complex than just a black-white issue. Why is the Mendez case important is like saying why is Brown versus the Board of Education important to African Americans? And for that matter, all Americans. The Mendez case is Brown v. the Board of Education for Mexican Americans.

This case desegregated schools throughout California because this was the norm, it was the practice, and it's the way Mexican children were treated. Mendez v. Westminster-San Ana Unified School District, Talmadina Unified School District, and Garden Grove School District was very significant. in that it had a ripple effect across the Southwest and was the precursor to Brown versus Board of Education, the Topeka, Kansas case that came down in 1954, which dismantled segregated schools for black children.

But it also had the effect of dismantling the other de jure segregation that was in effect at that time, such as segregated housing, restaurants, swimming pools. One year after Mendez was decided, California repealed two statutes. One statute that segregated Asian American students into separate schools and another statute that segregated Native Americans. My father died in 1964, but he never knew about the school.

My mother got to know that the school was going to be built after her. But she never did see the school. She died before the school was built.

But she was very proud that the school was going to be named after her. My mom was a person of faith, and she wanted us to make sure, she wanted everybody to treat everybody with respect. The golden rule, you know, treat people as you expect them to treat you.

And that's what she taught us. My daughter, my youngest daughter, went to Riverside. University and she was reading this book North of Mexico and then she read she says she started reading about her father and her brothers and her sisters this is my family and she didn't know nothing about it because I never even told us after we fought and we got everything won and everything we thought everything was gonna go all right so so we just kept the case dormant you know We never mentioned it, the children could go. We used to make a point. We used to take them, we live on one side of Santa Ana.

We take them across the street to another school just to show them that they could go to any school they wanted, you know. Well, I'm proud. I'm proud that at least we had the courage to do it, you know, to fight for not... for our children but for the other children, their children and their children, you know, and for all the communities.

Transcript for:Mendez vs. Westminster: A Civil Rights Legacy

Transcript for:
Mendez vs. Westminster: A Civil Rights Legacy