Ramona School and the Undereducation of Children in La Colonia

This chapter explores the evolution of the White architects' four strategies of segregation from 1939, when they sought voter approval to construct a school east of the railroad tracks, through 1954, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that racially segregated schools were inherently unequal and therefore unconstitutional. During this time, the school trustees constructed new schools that maximized the race, class, and east–west geographic divisions in the city and sought to normalize the undereducation of Mexican American children. By 1954—the same year the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the landmark Brown v. Board of Education desegregation case—the trustees had strategically positioned nine of the district's eleven schools west of Oxnard Boulevard and the railroad tracks in neighborhoods kept predominately White through racial covenants.

A Common Cause Emerges for Mexican American and Black Organizers

This chapter analyzes the increasing demographic presence of Mexican Americans and Blacks in the decades after World War II and the collective actions taken by these communities to challenge disparate material conditions and treatment in the growing city. It discusses the formation of two groups, the Oxnard–Ventura County Branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the Ventura County Chapter of the Community Service Organization, and follows the convergence of their efforts in 1963, when they mobilized a common cause for school desegregation. In parallel and shared efforts, these neighbors contested unfair labor practices, inferior housing conditions, mistreatment by police, and unequal, racially segregated schools.

“Obsessed” with Segregating Mexican Students

This chapter presents a close examination of the publicly documented blueprints for school segregation from 1934 to 1939, as Oxnard school officials formalized a school-within-a-school model of separating Mexican children from Whites. Considering the school board meeting minutes during this six-year period, this chapter follows the trustees' incessant tinkering with classroom racial composition and social interaction practices within schools. It shows how they adjusted residential enrollment boundaries between schools and swiftly accommodated White parents' demands for segregation. These board actions facilitated racially disproportionate attrition rates for Mexican students before high school. Thus, though they attempted to portray themselves as dutiful administrators without any particular agenda, their documented segregation plans during this six-year time period reveal the racism of their actions.

Pernicious Deeds

This chapter investigates the White architects' public and private actions to link residential and school segregation. Specifically, the chapter exposes the racial covenants burdening the west-side properties of the very school and city officials who designed the blueprints for school segregation, and argues that they colluded to discriminate against Mexicans in perpetuity. Considering the link between school and residential segregation across four decades, from the 1920s through the 1950s, this chapter explores the subtle and stunning spatial mechanisms of mundane racism in Oxnard. It also analyzes various oral accounts of Mexican women and men who recalled navigating racially segregated spaces in Oxnard from the 1930s to the 1960s.

The White Architects of Mexican American Education

This chapter identifies the strategies of segregation employed by White architects early in Oxnard's history, focusing on the city's first mayor and school superintendent, Richard B. Haydock. It considers Haydock's public remarks about race and Mexicans alongside his foundational contributions in designing substandard living conditions for Mexican laborers and a segregated school system for their children. Haydock, along with the other city trustees, actually contributed to the very conditions of “filth” they claimed occurred because of Mexican “ignorance.” In doing so, this chapter argues that the racial hierarchy Haydock and the other White architects established in schools functioned to relegate Mexicans, with very few exceptions, to the bottom as a seemingly normal practice enforced well beyond the classroom.

Introduction

This introductory chapter establishes the setting of the study at Oxnard, California, whose educational past lends itself to original analysis of schooling discrimination and contributes to national discussions of racism, segregation, civil rights, community resistance, and educational policy. It reveals four strategies of segregation that complicate previous narratives: establishing a racial hierarchy, building a permanent link between residential and school segregation, utilizing a school-within-a-school model of racial separation, and omitting a rationale for segregation. Furthermore, the chapter links Oxnard's narrative with that of prevailing scholarly literature on labor and housing and draws parallels between Mexican American and African American struggles in both the housing and educational sectors.

Epilogue

This concluding chapter considers what Oxnard's narrative tells us about the historical imperatives and experiences of our segregated past, and reflects on how these insights can bring more complexity to national discussions about race, schools, and equality. It considers what would have been different if the Soria case had more centrally accounted for Oxnard's history, and if this would have helped to expose the board members' use of racially restrictive covenants as part of “a systematic scheme of racial segregation.” Furthermore, the chapter reflects on what would have happened if the attorneys, for the plaintiffs or the defendants, had sought out experts on educational history, and what insights they might have received.

Challenging “a Systematic Scheme of Racial Segregation”

This chapter examines the remarkable aspects of the Soria v. Oxnard School Board of Trustees case, from the 1970 filing on behalf of Mexican American and Black plaintiffs attending Colonia schools, through the 1974 ruling by Judge Harry Pregerson. Following the case chronologically, the chapter analyzes how this collective effort to end de facto segregation in Oxnard was shaped by and contributed to struggles for desegregation at a national level. It calls attention to the use of historical evidence showing discrimination with intent (de jure) and in effect (de facto), which exposed and disrupted the district's long-denied, persistent dual school system.