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 Editorials | Issues | October 2007 
Stamp is First-Class Lesson in Civil Rights
 David Montgomery - Washington Post
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Washington - Of all the little pictures for sale at the postage stamp counter - American flags, Purple Hearts, Dumbo the Elephant, the Incredible Hulk - one of the newest ones is not so familiar.
Two young people study an open book, facing an orange sun. "Mendez v. Westminster 1947," says the stamp. First class, 41 cents. The U.S. Postal Service printed 40 million.
But what does it mean? How many layers of irony and history, coincidence and dreams can be rescued from oblivion and packed onto a stamp?
Here's a clue, printed on the image: "Toward equality in our schools." Then there's the year: 1947. This was seven years before the Brown v. Board of Education desegregation case, right? Ten years before Little Rock ...
"I had never heard of the Mendez case, like many people hadn't," says Rafael Lopez, the Mexican-born San Diego artist who designed the stamp.
Gonzalo and Felicitas Mendez wanted to send their children to a "white school" in Westminster, Calif. They are dead now, but here in Washington one bright fall day is their daughter Sylvia Mendez, the 10-year-old who integrated the California schools. She's a 71-year-old retired nurse who lives near Westminster. When the Mendezes moved to Westminster, Sylvia, then 8, and two younger brothers were turned away by the white elementary school and directed to the "Mexican school."
The Mexican school was a "terrible little shack," Sylvia remembers.
Gonzalo Mendez hired a Los Angeles lawyer named David Marcus. They recruited four other families and sued four Orange County school districts with 5,000 Latino children.
In federal court, witnesses for the school boards claimed Mexican American children were "inferior" in hygiene, ability and language skills. Marcus built part of his case on social science research to argue the deleterious effects of segregation. The families won. The court declared, "A paramount requisite in the American system of public education is social equality." It was the first time a federal court ruled that separate schools were not equal, said Judge Frederick Aguirre of the Superior Court of California, who has written a study of the case.
Integration of Latino and Anglo children in Orange County came to pass with relative peace.
Mendez "ultimately made Brown an easier case," said Charles Ogletree, a Harvard Law School professor and expert on the historic Brown desegregation case. "Mendez to me is essential to Brown's ultimate success." |
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