BILL ANALYSIS Ó
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Date of Hearing: March 29, 2016
ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON JUDICIARY
Mark Stone, Chair
ACR 146
(Weber) - As Introduced February 29, 2016
PROPOSED CONSENT
SUBJECT: Civil rights: Roberto Alvarez v. Board of Trustees of
the Lemon Grove School District
KEY ISSUE: Should California recognize and commemorate March
30, 2016, as the 85th Anniversary of the historic California
desegregation ruling in Roberto Alvarez v. Lemon Grove School
District?
SYNOPSIS
This resolution commemorates the 85th anniversary of the court
ruling in Alvarez v. Lemon Grove School District (1931).
Twenty-three years before the United States Supreme Court found
school segregation unconstitutional in Brown v. Board of
Education (1954), Judge Claude Chambers of the San Diego County
Superior Court issued a writ of mandate ordering the Lemon Grove
School District to cease its effort to force Mexican-American
students to attend a separate and, by all accounts, inferior
school. Judge Chambers' order was apparently the first
successful legal challenge to racial segregation in the United
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States. Because this decision was never appealed, the case was
not precedent setting and was largely omitted from the state's
historical narrative until Robert Alvarez, Jr., professor
emeritus of Ethnic Studies at the University of California, San
Diego, and the son of the named plaintiff, recovered the story.
Not only does the case illustrate California's leadership in
promoting equal access to education, it also illustrates the
power of community organization and collective resistance to
social injustice. There is no opposition to this timely
reminder about the dangers of bigotry and the power of people to
challenge it.
SUMMARY: Commemorates the 1931 San Diego County Superior Court
ruling that invalidated an attempt by the Lemon Grove School
District to segregate students of Mexican-American descent.
Specifically, this measure:
1)Makes findings and declarations detailing the historical
background to, and historical significance of, the decision in
the case of Roberto Alvarez v. Board of Trustees of the Lemon
Grove School District (Case No. 66625, San Diego County
Superior Court, March 30, 1951).
2)Resolves that the Legislature of the State of California
recognizes and commemorates March 30, 2016, as the 85th
anniversary of the historic ruling in the case of Roberto
Alvarez v. the Board of Trustees of the Lemon Grove School
District, which invalidated a school district's attempt to
restrict its pupils of Mexican heritage to an inferior,
segregated educational experience.
3)Resolves that schools and community organizations throughout
the state are encouraged to acknowledge this historic
anniversary with appropriate activities.
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4)Resolves that the Chief Clerk of the Assembly transmit copies
of this resolution to the author for appropriate distribution.
EXISTINGN LAW provides that no person shall be deprived of life,
liberty, or property without due process of law or denied equal
protection of the laws. (California Constitution Article I,
Section 7.)
FISCAL EFFECT: As currently in print this resolution is keyed
non-fiscal.
COMMENTS: It seems safe to say that when most people think of
successful legal challenges to racial segregation in the United
States, the first case that comes to mind is Brown v. the Board
of Education, the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court ruling finding that
racial segregation in public education violated the equal
protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S.
Constitution. Brown did not emerge in a vacuum, but rather it
reflected a decades-long litigation strategy by the NAACP and
others to challenge the infamous "separate but equal" doctrine
set forth in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896). Finding that separate
schools were "inherently unequal," in part because they imposed
a badge of inferiority on students forcefully segregated by the
political majority, a unanimous Court overturned nearly 60 years
of precedent by holding that the doctrine of "separate but
equal" had no place in the field of public education.
The Brown decision grew from the struggles of African-Americans
and their allies to challenge racial segregation in the Jim Crow
South, and it justifiably holds a privileged position in the
history of the Civil Rights movement in the United States. This
resolution, however, turns our attention to a lesser-known
history of school desegregation efforts in California and the
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Southwest during the 1930s. Specifically, on March 30, 1931,
Judge Claude Chambers of the San Diego County Superior Court
issued a writ of mandate ordering the Lemon Grove School
District to cease its effort to force Mexican-American students
to attend a separate and, by all accounts, inferior school.
Judge Chambers' order was, according to a history of the Lemon
Grove case, "the first successful school desegregation decision
in the history of the United States." (Robert Alvarez, Jr.,
"The Lemon Grove Incident: The Nation's First Successful School
Desegregation Court Case," Journal of San Diego History Vol. 32
(Spring 1986).)
Background to the Lemon Grove Case: In 1931, Lemon Grove was
just a small rural community in San Diego County. Like many
rural, agricultural communities in Southern California at this
time, it had a racially and ethnically diverse population of
persons of European, Mexican, and Japanese descent. According
to the petition for a writ of mandate that launched the case,
the community of Lemon Grove had a "commodious and modern"
five-room school building providing instruction to 169 students
from the first to eighth grades. Of these 169 students, 87 were
described in the petition as of "American or European
parentage," about 75 were described as being "of Mexican
parentage," and seven were of "Japanese parentage." About 95%
of the students were born in the United States and were
therefore citizens. However, sometime in the summer of 1930,
the Lemon Grove school board "conceived the idea of separating
and segregating the pupils of Mexican parentage and isolating
them in a distinct and separate school building, away from the
pupils of American, European and Japanese parentage." In order
to carry out the plan the district built a two-room school
building about seven or eight blocks away from the main school
for students of "Mexican parentage." On the morning of January
5, 1931, the school principal stood at the door of the five-room
school building, that had previously been attended by all of the
students, "and admitted all pupils except the pupils of Mexican
parentage," redirecting the Mexican-American students to the
two-room school building. ("Petition for Writ of Mandate,"
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Roberto Alvarez v. Board of Trustees of Lemon Grove School
District, Case No. 66625, Superior Court of San Diego County,
1931; see also Alvarez, supra.)
The parents of the Mexican-American students, however, refused
to accept the school board's plan without a fight. Organized as
the Comite de Vecinos de Lemon Grove (Lemon Grove Neighbors
Committee), the parents refused to send their students to the
separate school. They contacted the Mexican consul in San Diego
who, in turn, contacted two San Diego attorneys, Fred Noon and
A.C. Brinkley, to seek legal redress for the parents and their
children. The leading Spanish language newspaper in California,
La Opinion, took an interest in the case and published a letter
written by the Neighbor Committee which read: "We are not in
agreement, which is very natural, nor do we consider just, the
separation of our children, without any reason, to send them to
another establishment that distinguishes Mexican children from
other nationalities." The letter also included a request for
funds from the community, so that the Committee could "do the
work necessary to convince the school authorities that they
should not continue the segregation." Apparently this appeal
worked, as the Committee raised enough money to cover court
costs. (Alvarez, supra.)
Judge Chambers Writ of Mandate: Attorneys Noon and Brinkley
filed a petition for a writ of mandate on behalf of Roberto
Alvarez and all the other Mexican-American students to Judge
Claude Chambers of the San Diego Superior Court. The petition
for writ of mandate alleged that the exclusion of the children
was "clearly an attempt at racial segregation" and done without
legal authority. The petition pointed out that 95% of the
students of Mexican parentage were American-born citizens and
were, therefore "entitled to all rights and privileges common to
all citizens of the United States." The refusal to admit all of
the students on an equal basis deprived the students of their
right, under California law, "to attend the public schools on a
basis of equality with other American children." The petition
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asked that a writ of mandate be issued to the principal and
members of the school board, ordering them to admit Roberto
Alvarez and all other students of Mexican parentage to the
five-room school building and to receive instruction "on a basis
of equality" with all other students.
The school board's answer to the petition for the writ of
mandate admitted that the school had adopted a policy of
segregating the Mexican-American students. It claimed, however,
that this was not because of the students' race, but because the
students were "deficient in their knowledge of the English
language" and therefore required "special attention from the
instructors." The school's answer also claimed that the new
building was closer to the neighborhood where the
Mexican-American students lived and, as such, would protect the
children's safety by eliminating the need for them to cross a
major boulevard through Lemon Grove to the main school.
Although the answer denied any intent to denigrate the
Mexican-American students, as the petition for writ had claimed,
the language of the school's answer suggested otherwise,
describing the separate school as an "Americanization School"
for "backward and deficient children." ("Answer to Petition for
Writ of Mandate," Roberto Alvarez v. Board of Trustees of Lemon
Grove School District, Case No. 66625, Superior Court of San
Diego County, 1931.)
Judge Chambers rejected the school board's claims and ordered
the school to admit Roberto Alvarez, and all of the other
Mexican-American students, into the five-room school building
and to receive instruction "on a basis of equality with other
children of said school district, and without separation or
segregation in a separate school because of race or
nationality." ("Order for Alternative Writ of Mandate," Roberto
Alvarez v. Board of Trustees of Lemon Grove School District,
Case No. 66625, Superior Court of San Diego County, March 30,
1931.) Although Judge Chambers' terse order did not reveal his
reasoning, the scholar Robert Alvarez, Jr. - the son of the
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named petitioner and currently a professor emeritus of Ethnic
Studies at U.C. San Diego - examined the trial court
transcripts. These transcripts show that Chambers rejected the
school's claim that the separate school served the legitimate
goal of "Americanization." Judge Chambers opined in his
questioning of the school's attorney that Americanization and
the learning of English (if that in fact was needed) would be
better achieved if all students attended school together. The
Judge conceded that the school might have an interest in
offering separate instruction to students of differing academic
and language abilities, "but to separate all the Mexicans in one
group can only be done by infringing the laws of the State of
California. And I do not blame the Mexican children because a
few of them are behind in school work [as a justification for]
this segregation. On the contrary, this is a fact in their
favor. I believe that this separation denies the Mexican
children the presence of the American [sic] children, which is
so necessary to learn the English language." (Alvarez, supra.)
Equal Access to Education in California Legal History: While
the Lemon Grove case was the first to successfully challenge
segregation in public schools, it was not the first California
case to successfully use the judicial branch to challenge a
denial of access to public education on the basis of race. In
1885 the parents of a Chinese-American child in San Francisco,
Mamie Tape, filed a petition for a writ of mandate ordering the
principal of a public grammar school to admit their daughter,
notwithstanding a San Francisco ordinance prohibiting
Chinese-American students from attending the public schools.
The ordinance, that is, did not just provide for segregated
public schools; it excluded Chinese-American students from
attending any public schools at all. If Chinese-American
children received any schooling, it would have to be in private
mission schools. But the Tapes insisted on sending their
daughter, who was an American-born citizen, to the public
school. When the San Francisco Superior Court dismissed the
Tape's writ, however, they appealed to the California Supreme
Court (the California courts of appeal had not yet been
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established.)
On appeal, the California Supreme Court held that the San
Francisco ordinance barring Chinese-American students from
attending public schools violated both a state law and the equal
protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S.
Constitution. Specifically, the Court cited what was then
Political Code Section 1667, which stated that, "Every school .
. . must be open for the admission of all children between six
and twenty-one years of age residing in the district." The
state statute allowed a school board to "exclude children of
filthy or vicious habits, or children suffering from contagious
or infectious disease," but, the Court reasoned, that statute
did not allow a school to exclude on the basis of "race, color,
or nationality." (Tape v. Hurley (1885) 66 Cal. 473, 473-475.)
The Supreme Court in Tape v. Hurley did not go as far as Judge
Chambers had gone in the Lemon Grove case by prohibiting racial
segregation in schools; rather, it merely said that
Chinese-American students born and residing in California had a
right to a public school education. San Francisco responded by
creating a separate public school for Chinese-American students.
Mamie Tape still could not attend the public school near her
home, but would be forced to attend the separate school for
Chinese-American students. The Tapes then resisted with their
feet, moving across the San Francisco Bay to Berkeley, where
Chinese-American students attended integrated public schools.
(For a three-generation history of the Tape family see Mae Ngai,
The Lucky Ones: One Family and the Extraordinary Invention of
Chinese America (2010).)
Legacy of the Lemon Grove Case: Judge Chambers' order in the
Lemon Grove case was never appealed. As a result it never
produced a published opinion and did not provide any clear
precedent. It is unclear whether the other school districts in
California ceased segregation policy in the wake of the
decision. The Lemon Grove case was a mostly forgotten part of
the state's history until it was uncovered by Robert Alvarez,
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Jr., professor emeritus at the University of California, San
Diego, the son of the named plaintiff. In many ways, the Lemon
Grove case illustrates that the California courts have sometimes
been a progressive force in Civil Rights. Just as the order in
Lemon Grove came twenty-three years before Brown v. Board of
Education, the California Supreme Court struck down its
anti-miscegenation law in Perez v. Sharp in 1948, seventeen
years before the U.S. Supreme Court found such laws
unconstitutional in Loving v. Virginia (1967). And, more
recently, the California Supreme Court upheld marriage equality
before the U.S. Supreme Court eventually did the same. However,
the Lemon Grove incident is not just a case study of
California's leadership in promoting civil rights and equal
access to education; of equal if not greater importance, it
illustrates the power of ordinary people to collectively resist
social injustice.
ARGUMENTS IN SUPPORT: According to the author: "This resolution
seeks to raise awareness and commemorate an important court
decision in 1931. Roberto Alvarez v. Board of Trustees of the
Lemon Grove School District was the first successful school
desegregation court decision in the United States." The author
contends that this case "helped establish the idea of equality
in education within California" and that ACR 146 will
appropriately commemorate March 30, 2016, as the 85th
anniversary of that historic ruling. The author contends that
the court's ruling "stopped the school district's attempt to
segregate students of Mexican heritage and set a precedent for
equal access and the de-segregation of public education."
REGISTERED SUPPORT / OPPOSITION:
Support
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None on file
Opposition
None on file
Analysis Prepared by:Thomas Clark / JUD. / (916) 319-2334