During the citrus harvest, school would run from 7:30 a.m. They’d arrive at school with their palms dyed black from the work. The Mexican schools started two weeks late every fall so that children could join their parents in the walnut harvest. “It was very much in the economic interest of the agricultural elite and the Anglo community at large to keep these people in a second-class position,” says Philippa Strum, a Global Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars, who wrote a book on the Mexican American anti-segregation movement in California. Most of the school board members were wealthy citrus farmers whose livelihoods depended on Mexican American labor. And instead of receiving specialized instruction to improve their language and academic skills, Mexican American students were trained to become field workers and house cleaners. But just as in the segregated South, the “Mexican” schools in California were in terrible condition compared to the “American” schools. The school boards argued that students of Mexican heritage would “Americanize” faster if taught separately.Īt the time, segregated schools were supposed to abide by the “separate but equal” clause established in 1896 by Plessy v. tests to argue that Mexican American students needed specialized instruction in English and other subjects. (Legal segregation in California schools did exist for two other groups: Asian Americans and Native Americans.)Ĭalifornia school boards claimed that they put Mexican Americans in their own schools in order to help them. By 1940, more than 80 percent of Mexican American students in California went to so-called “Mexican” schools, even though no California law mandated such a separation. The same de facto segregation existed in California public schools. Public swimming pools had “Mexican Mondays” after which the pool was drained and cleaned before Anglo residents would step foot in it again. Restaurants posted signs in their doors reading, “No dogs or Mexicans." At movie theaters, Mexican Americans had to sit in the balcony, not the lower level.
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