Eight years before the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional, a legal battle began in Orange County that helped set the stage for the Brown v. Board case.
In Mendez, et al v. Westminster School District, et al, five Mexican American families in 1946 challenged school segregation, claiming their children were forced to attend separate schools in the Westminster, Garden Grove, Santa Ana and El Modeno (today Orange Unified) school districts.
They won, ending school segregation in the area.
“All of the families involved in the case did something fantastic,” said Sammy Rodriguez, a retired Santiago Canyon College adjunct professor of ethnic studies.
Their courageous action continues to pay off today.
“As of last fall, 51% of the Santiago Canyon College student body is composed of Latinx or Hispanic students,” said Aaron Voelcker, SCC’s Dean of Institutional Effectiveness, Library & Learning Support Services. “As a designated Hispanic Serving Institution, the college is eligible for a number of grant opportunities. We couldn’t get where we are today had this court case not happened.”
Lorenzo Ramirez, one of the plaintiffs in the 1946 case, lived with his family in El Modeno (today called “El Modena”), a historic barrio in Orange. In July 2014, Santiago Canyon College named the campus library after Ramirez, and in February 2016, the college installed a sculpture in his likeness. In addition, the library is home to a display case showcasing archival items related to Ramirez and the lawsuit.
Why, then, do some people want SCC to do more?
Led by Rodriguez, a community group based in El Modena – just a few miles from the SCC campus – maintains that the simplified Mendez v. Westminster reference to the lawsuit doesn’t paint an accurate historical picture. They seek to widen the recognition of the other families that also sued to end Latino school segregation.
“The families were individually fighting the school districts from the different cities,” Rodriguez said. “And when their (class action) attorney got on board, he said, ‘We need just one name.’ And he arbitrarily chose Mendez.”
The efforts of the community group, informally called the Ramirez Committee, came to a head in 2018, when they objected to a talk on the SCC campus given by Sandra Robbie, a filmmaker who, they claim, focused her documentary about the landmark case entirely on the Mendez family. They maintained that the other families had been forgotten by history.
Despite the protest, SCC leaders and faculty decided to let Robbie speak on April 11, 2018. “When Robbie goes out and talks about her documentary, she says ‘Mendez v. Westminster’ only,” said Rodriguez. “Would it kill Robbie if she instead said ‘Mendez, et al v. Westminster, et al’? … So, the day she spoke, a group of us from the El Modena barrio entered the building and protested.”
Ivonne Gonzalez-Franco, then a student in Rodriguez’s Chicano Studies class, attended the protest. “I first heard about the discrimination case in 2016,” she said. “That’s when I first found out about Orange County’s dark past. It really hit home, since I’ve experienced discrimination myself.”
Rodriguez believes that SCC faculty at the time made a public relations blunder. “They said, ‘We have the right to bring in any speaker we want.’” Today the Ramirez Committee believes that the college needs to do more.
Nearly seven years after Robbie’s talk, SCC President Jeannie Kim sent a letter to the Ramirez family, stressing the college’s goal to rebuild the family’s trust. Rodriguez later met with her.
“I was impressed with President Kim. She was just great, really gracious,” Rodriguez said. “She wasn’t even at SCC when Robbie spoke, but she still wanted the opinion of faculty members (who, years later, maintained their position about choosing campus speakers). So, give her kudos for standing up and for sending a letter of apology, not only to the Ramirez family, but to me representing the (El Modena) barrio.”
Voelcker acknowledged the efforts of Rodriguez, the Ramirez Committee and the Ramirez family. “They’ve campaigned hard to get the recognition the family deserved,” he said.
Moving forward, what can SCC do?
“Shine the light more on the Ramirez family on campus,” Rodriguez said. “Today there’s little mention of Lorenzo Ramirez at Santiago Canyon College or, for that matter, nothing in the history books of the Orange Unified School District.”
Gonzalez-Franco concurs. “Nobody has acknowledged what happened,” she said. “People don’t know why the library is named after Lorenzo Ramirez. And I’d like the voice of the Latino-Chicano community at the school to be louder.”
“We in the barrio at El Modena are the protectors of the Lorenzo Ramirez legacy,” Rodriguez said.