IDKMYDE: The First Desegregation Case Wasn’t Brown

Before Brown v. Board of Education, a forgotten court case cracked segregation's
foundation. This episode restores a missing chapter of the civil rights timeline.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The first desegregation case wasn't Brown versus the Board of Education.
I Welcome back to It alls to another episode of
the most anticipated podcast on the Black Effect Podcast Network,
especially in February, entitled I didn't know Maybe you didn't either.

(00:20):
I'm your host, be Dot, I'm Carlo's husband and Isaiah
and Ryan's father, and true to form, we will kick
off today's episode with three of the most useless facts
You'll never need not a day in life. Up first,
the legal strategy that won Brown versus the Board of
Education was tested seven years earlier by a Mexican American

(00:41):
family in Orange County, California. Your second useless fact. Third
Good Marshall, the man who argued Brown and later became
the first Black Supreme Court justice. He wrote a legal
breath for that earlier case and used that as his model.
And your third useless fact the lead Aina's daughter, received

(01:01):
the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Barack Obama in twenty
eleven for a case most Americans have never heard of.
I know, I hadn't I didn't know. I didn't know.
I didn't know. I didn't know. I didn't know. I
didn't know. I didn't know. I didn't know. I didn't know. Okay,

(01:23):
first order of business is let's clear something up. Brown
versus the Board of Education didn't start desegregation. No, it
finished a legal fight that honestly started with a nine
year old Mexican American girl in Orange County. Her name
is Sylvia Mendez. In nineteen forty four, Sylvia's family moved
to Westminster, California, to work a farm. But here's the thing.

(01:46):
The farm wasn't theirs. It belonged to the Muna Mitsu family,
a Japanese American family who had been forcibly removed to
an internment camp. So the Mendez family, Mexican American citizens,
were only there because another minority family had been stolen
from their land. That's the backdrop. Now. When Sylvia's aunt
tried to register her and her brothers at the local school,

(02:07):
the clerk said, well, the Mendez children have to go
to the Mexican school. The school superintendent, James Kent He
later said in court that Mexican Americans were intellectually, culturally,
and morally inferior to European Americans. Those were his words
on the record. Sylvia's parents didn't accept that. They hired

(02:28):
attorney David Marcus, and they sued. Four other families joined.
Mendez versus Westminster went to trial in nineteen forty six.
Now here's what made a revolutionary. Attorney Marcus didn't just
argue that Mexican schools had worse resources. He argued that
segregation itself called psychological harm. He brought in social sciences

(02:51):
to testify that separating children made them feel inferior. Sound
familiar because that's the same argument that Thirdgood Marshall would use.
Eight years later. In Brown, Judge Paul McCormick ruled in
favor of the Mendez family. The school district, of course, appealed,
and that's when the NAACP got involved. Thirdgood Marshall and

(03:12):
Robert Carter wrote a brief supporting the Mendez family, and
Robert Carter later said that the NAACP's briefs were the
model for the briefs in Brown versus the Board of Education.
So on April fourteenth, nineteen forty seven, the Ninth Circuit
upheld the ruling. Two months later, the Governor California, Earl Warren,
the same man who would later become Chief Justice and

(03:34):
alf of the Brown decision, signed a build ending school
segregation in California. California became the first state to officially
desegregate its public schools. Did you know that that was
seven years before Brown? But here's what they don't teach you.
The Japanese American Citizens League also fouled a brief. The
American Jewish Congress also fouled a brief. Multiple communities came

(03:58):
together because they understood, if they can segregate one of us, now,
they can segregate all of us. In twenty eleven, President
Barack Obama awarded Sylvia Mendez the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
She was seventy five years old. Her father, Gonzalo, had
died in nineteen sixty four, ten years after Brown, at
the age of fifty one. He never saw the full

(04:19):
impact of what his family started. Brown versus Board that
gets the chapter in the textbook, But Mendez versus Westminster
has got a footnote because without Mendez, there is no Brown.
The first desegregation case wasn't decided in nineteen fifty four.
It was decided in nineteen forty seven by a Mexican
American family farming land that belonged to a Japanese American

(04:41):
family locked in an internment camp. And third, good Marshall
took the note and I didn't know. Maybe you didn't either.
I