September 15th to October 15th has been designated as National Hispanic Heritage Month when we celebrate the contribution of Hispanics to our country. A little known, but major contribution is “The Lemon Grove Incident” which was the first successful desegregation court case, 23 years before Brown v the Board of Education.

Lemon Grove is a small rural town near San Diego. On January 5, 1931 the Principal of Lemon Grove Elementary School, Jerome T. Greene, directed the 75 Mexican children to go to the new wooden building instead. The School Board had secretly established a separate school for students of Mexican ancestry in the hope of “Americanizing” them, which was commonly done in the South West at the time. Instead the 75 children all went home and their parents refused to send them to school.

Before long a student was chosen as the plaintiff in the case of Roberto Alvarez v the Lemon Grove School Board.  On March 30, 1931, a judge ruled against the Lemon Grove School Board. But his ruling was based on the premise that Mexicans were officially Caucasians. At that time under state law, Caucasian students could not legally be segregated from other Caucasians. But state law allowed segregation of Black, Asian, and Indian children.  Read more HERE

The case failed to get much attention after that, and segregation of Mexican-Americans continued outside Lemon Grove. Americanization schools operated throughout the Southwest until they were abolished by landmark court rulings.  One such case was Mendez v Westminster School District in Orange County.  On February 18, 1946, the Court’s decision was in favor of the plaintiffs and the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the decision in 1947.  Governor Earl Warren signed into law the repeal of remaining segregationist provisions in the California statutes.  Warren was later to preside over Brown v the Board of Education.  Read more HERE.