4 NEWS
SANTA ANA COLLEGE el Don/eldonnews.org • MONDAY, APRIL 25, 2016
EXCLUSION / When researching the history of Mendez v. Westminster, Sandra Robbie (left) found deeds to homes in Orange County that weren’t allowed to be sold to Mexicans (top right), and
rules that only allowed Mexicans access to pool at Hart Park in Orange on Mondays (bottom right). / Liz Monroy / el Don
PRESERVING
HISTORY
Sandra Robbie made it her goal
to revive the story behind a
significant civil rights case
STORY BY LAURA GARCIA / el Don
Sandra Robbie already had her
own children by the time she
learned about a landmark education
court case that was omitted from
California’s history books.
“I was angry, I was embarrassed,
I was ashamed,” said Robbie. “And
then I was excited to learn that
somebody like my family and my
friends and people from diverse
communities came together to
make a difference that not just
changed their community but
changed our nation.”
Robbie found her life’s calling
in Mendez v. Westminster, a now
70-year-old Orange County court
ruling that ended school segregation in California. Eventually, the
Supreme Court would cite the case
as a precedent to vote in favor of
ending racial segregation in classrooms across the nation.
Never having directed, produced
nor written a documentary film,
Robbie set out to tell the nation
about a significant civil rights story
that was in danger of becoming
a footnote. And with the help of
Sylvia Mendez, the daughter of the
plaintiffs in the case, she’s doing just
that.
A Santa Ana College alumna, Robbie wrote, produced and directed
the Emmy Award-winning For All
the Children (Para Todos Los Ninos), a PBS documentary about the
case that started the end of racially
segregated classrooms. She’s tirelessly advocated for including the
story behind this case in California’s
history textbooks.
In 1945, 8-year-old Sylvia Mendez
and her two brothers were denied
enrollment in the Westminster
School District because of a “whites
only” policy. Sylvia’s lighter-skinned
cousins with a different surname got
in. Four other families would face
the same rejection.
With the help of civil rights attorney David Marcus, the Mendez,
Guzman, Estrada, Palomino and
Ramirez families’ sued the Westminster, Garden Grove, Santa Ana
and El Modena school districts,
claiming discrimination for their
children and 5,000 others.
The Garden Grove School District’s witnesses testified during
the trial that Mexican American
children were inferior and could
not speak English. The plaintiff ’s
attorneys on the Mendez side of
the case, led by Marcus, argued that
Spanish-speaking students were
hindered from learning English
because of segregation, and by the
requirement that they attend separate schools that in fact were poorly
staffed and lacking in resources.
In February 1946, Judge Paul J.
McCormick ruled in favor of the
families, desegregating all schools in
Orange County.
During that same time period, Native Americans, Japanese, Chinese
or Mongolian students were the
only groups that could by state law
be legally segregated from schools.
There had been no specific law regarding Mexican or African-American children, whose exclusion was
a matter of practice. One year after
the Mendez v. Westminster case,
See CHANGE, 5