Over the course of our seminar, "Race and American Law: 1850-Present", we sought to examine the contradictions between the rights and freedoms that our nation was founded upon and the treatment of our black citizens. Through the reading of Michael Klarman's book, From Jim Crow to Civil Rights: The Supreme Court and the Struggle for Racial Equality, we were exposed not only to court decisions, but a wealth of social and historical context built around landmark cases so that our understanding went much deeper than the court decisions themselves. Our seminar discussions and close readings of court cases, supported by the insights of our professor, allowed us to gain a solid understanding of the arguments made for racial segregation and the arguments made that went against racial segregation. By analyzing particular cases in this way, it allowed for fellows to branch out into their own readings and search for these same predominant arguments. Though Lum v Rice and Mendez v Westminster were not cases that we analyzed as a seminar group, I was given the tools needed to dissect these decisions in order to form an understanding of the issues sufficient enough to deliver these cases in a meaningful way to my students.
In both the Lum and Mendez cases, the issue at hand is educational segregation. In order to limit the scope of the Jim Crow era and make the topic more accessible for students, educational injustice will be the guiding topic of our class discussions and debates. This will allow students to grapple with the extremely difficult issue of racial segregation while analyzing a topic (education) that they can clearly relate to. For students at this age level, the ability to "put themselves in someone else's shoes" can often be difficult, particularly if the personal similarities between individuals are minimal. By looking at cases that deal with students' rights to equal education, they will be able to apply their everyday experiences to their analysis of these court cases.
Any discussion of the Jim Crow era, particularly for students who have little to no background knowledge of what Jim Crow was, must begin with Plessy v Ferguson. Though it argues the constitutionality of segregation of public transportation
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and not education (as do the other cases students will study), it provides the rationale and the backdrop for all of the other discussions that will take place regarding segregation Enforcing the "separate but equal" mandate that emanated from the Plessy decision is the foundation for the school segregation that students will be learning about. If students are to grasp anything of the Jim Crow era, particularly why it was deemed legal for districts to establish white schools and black schools, then they must ground their learning in a solid understanding of Plessy.
The other benefit of beginning with Plessy v Ferguson is that it provides an opportunity for students to plainly see what separate but equal might truly look like. By opening the lesson on Plessy with a visual activity showing two different identical rail cars, they will be able to more easily form an understanding of the rationale that the Supreme Court used to make their decisions during this time period: if things were separate but equal, then constitutionality was upheld.
Lum v Rice is the 1927 Supreme Court case regarding the education of 9-year-old Martha Lum of Bolivar County, Mississippi. Born in the United States, but of Chinese descent, Martha Lum was denied entry into the all white Rosedale Consolidated High School, solely because of her Chinese background. A lower court granted Lum's request and forced the Board of Trustees of Rosedale High School to admit his daughter. Lum's argument was not based on the fact that racial discrimination was illegal, but that his daughter Martha should not have been identified as "colored" because of her Chinese descent. The case then went to the State Supreme Court of Mississippi, which ruled against Lum and overturned the lower court's decision, again barring Martha Lum from attending the high school for white children. Lum's father appealed to the United States Supreme Court, which unanimously upheld the state Supreme Court's ruling. Drawing heavily from the precedent set by Plessy v. Ferguson, the court maintained the constitutionality of segregation in public education, and also determined that the county did not violate Lum's rights under the Fourteenth Amendment due to the fact that the county did provide her with a segregated school that was readily accessible.
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As Klarman states, this is not technically a challenge to school segregation. "The appellant's principal argument was that Mississippi denied equal privileges to Chinese by combining them with blacks, while whites enjoyed separate schools."
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Despite this fact, Justice Taft treated this case as a challenge to school segregation, which at this point in time, had little chance of being overturned. National sentiment at this time was firmly pro-school segregation. In the South, school segregation was almost universal, while in the North, the Great Migration inflamed feelings of racial prejudice, which created an environment where segregation became more commonplace following World War I.
Within this context, there was the growing voice among black Americans, most prominently that of W.E.B. Du Bois, which advocated for school segregation. In the minds of many African-Americans, school segregation provided a safe haven for black youths from insults and harassment that they would face from their peers and educators in integrated schools. In addition, school segregation provided jobs for black educators who otherwise would not have been able to find work in integrated schools. Klarman, explaining the position of Du Bois, stated that "He argued that blacks were 'crucified' in integrated schools and that it was 'suicidal' for blacks to concede the inferiority of their own schools by demanding integration."
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The concerns of Du Bois speak to the supremacy struggle that was occurring during the Jim Crow era. In addition to the emotional effects of segregation, the psychological struggle for racial superiority was at the core of the implementation of Jim Crow practices. White supremacy over all other racial groups in the United States (Hispanic-Americans, Asian-Americans, and African-Americans, and Native-Americans) was the goal of Jim Crow. This was not a struggle for power that existed only in the South. With shifting demographics in Northern cities as a result of the Great Migration, the federal government enacted housing policies that solidified the supremacy of white property holders and the inferiority of minority owned properties.
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Institutionalized white supremacy became the norm during Jim Crow as the concerns of W.E.B Du Bois regarding concessions of inferiority were not heeded.
The other social aspects to consider with Lum v Rice were the distinct differences between Southern Chinese and Southern Blacks. During the early 1900s in the Mississippi Delta, there was a small community of people of Chinese descent. This community formed as replacement for black labor during the Reconstruction era. Within the Chinese community, most of them found employment running grocery stores, where they received little public animosity if they were "pure Chinese". These individuals did face more virulent discrimination when they were of mixed Chinese-black ancestry. Within local communities in this area, Chinese-American students were allowed to enter white schools, however it was under the State of Mississippi's jurisdiction that Gong Lum's daughter was denied entry into Rosedale. At this point, a challenge to school segregation was not something that prominent groups such as the NAACP would be wiling to pursue. The chances of success were very slim, and as Klarman puts it, "In this setting, Court invalidation of school segregation was inconceivable."
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In this case, students will be required to analyze the situation of education in terms of whites versus other minorities, not just African Americans. One of the enduring understandings of this curriculum unit is that there has been racial injustice perpetrated against every minority group during the Jim Crow era, not solely against African Americans. By providing students with an opportunity to see a prominent case involving Asian-Americans, the majority of students in the class will need to empathize with a racial group other than their own in order to see the injustice happening. This holds special value for upper elementary level students who struggle with thinking outside of their own personal situations. It also gives students the opportunity to see that there was not, in the eyes of the law during this era, a hierarchy of minority racial groups.
Mendez v Westminster is a 1946 federal court case from Orange County, California in which five Mexican-American fathers claimed that their children, by being denied entry into white schools and being forced to attend segregated "Mexican Schools", had their constitutional rights violated. The case was brought by a group of parents lead by Gonzalo Mendez, who as a child attended an integrated white and Mexican Westminster Main School. This was the very school that his children were denied entry into due to their Mexican heritage. They were instead told that they had to attend a school located in a different district that consisted of entirely Mexican or Mexican-American children called the Hoover School. The case originated in the US District Court, where the issue that the court considered was whether or not the segregation of Mexican-American students violated California law as well as the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. At the time, was no state law mandating segregation. It was merely a local practice. The judge, Paul McCormick, ruled in favor of Mendez and struck down school segregation in Orange County. The United States Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the District court's decision that the segregation of students into separate schools was unconstitutional. During the appeal to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, the lead counsel for Mendez was Thurgood Marshall, who 8 years later would be the NAACP's lead counsel for Brown v Board of Education of Topeka, which would overturn the "separate but equal" doctrine of Plessy v Ferguson.
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Student understanding of Mendez v Westminster is essential to understanding the dismantling of public school segregation. Though the case took place 8 years before Brown, the arguments used against school segregation for Mexican Americans would be the same arguments used 8 years later against school segregation in the Brown case. The main thrust of the argument against segregation presented by Mendez was the social, psychological, and pedagogical effects that school segregation had on the Mexican-American youths. It is imperative to understand the emotional impact that school segregation has on minority groups, specifically feelings of inferiority that result from exclusion from society. These feelings of inferiority experienced by minorities were a product of school segregation used as one part of a systematic assertion of white supremacy over American minorities. By subjecting minorities of all backgrounds to inferior schools, services, and economic opportunities, a culture of white supremacy in the United States was created and solidified for the coming generations. Power, control, and white supremacy were the aims of segregation, but this phenomenon was the vestige of American practices of slavery. Coates explains, since the founding of the United States, "American Law worked to reduce black people to a class of untouchables and raise all white men to the level of citizens."
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As Wollenberg states, "The case provides insight into the long history of school segregation in California and is an important chapter in the experience of Mexican and Mexican-American people in the United States."
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The case of Mendez v Westminster not only shows the precursors of the dismantling of school segregation, but it also shows a court ruling based on those feelings that result from school segregation. It is a pivotal moment in the issue of segregated public education, and it provides an opportunity for reflection on our current structures of public education. Though not mandated by law, many of our schools are segregated as a result of racially segregated neighborhoods, which lends to a discussion with students about their personal feelings about their schools.
Though there were a variety of topics covered in our seminar, from segregation in public conveyances to inter-racial marriage rights, the breadth of the discriminatory practices levied against African Americans and other minority groups is simply too much for a 5th grade student to absorb within a 4 week unit. In order to give students an entryway into this complex and deep topic, this unit is focused on racial discrimination within the public education system of the United States. While this is something that the students can relate to, it is also a topic that has been dramatized through various films and books, so the opportunities for using media supports for students to help them visualize the circumstances of these cases are many.