# School segregation in California

School segregation in California was the segregation of students based on their ethnicity.

## History

In 1851, the first public K-12 school was established in San Francisco, California, and the school year lasted three months. By the end of that same year, six more schools were established, setting up the state's education system and department. Beginning in the 1850's, "colored" children were not allowed to attend schools with white children, so the first "colored" school was established in May 22, 1854 in San Francisco. Notable people who helped establish the "colored" school system in the state include abolitionist John Brown's daughter, Sara Brown, Jeremiah Burke Sanderson, and Biddy Mason. To disburse funding to public schools, the California legislature established an education code in 1855 that gave funding to schools based on the number of white children that attended the school. According to J. Moulder, the State School Superintendent at the time, that legislation was meant to exclude children of Chinese, African, and other descents. Such segregation and exclusion in schools continued with the 1864 California education amendment, which explicitly banned "Negroes, Mongolian, and Indian" children from public schools. In an effort to challenge segregation in public K-12 schools, the state's first education segregation legal case was filed with the California Supreme Court on September 22, 1872, Ward v. Flood. The plaintiff, Harriet Ward, had tried to enroll her daughter, Mary Frances in an all-white school but was denied. The California Supreme Court ruled against Ward, and established the precedent in California that Black children only had the right to attend school, not the right to attend school with white children. Following that ruling, the state legislature passed section 1669 of the 1874 education code that allowed Black and Indian children to attend schools with white children, only if there were no separate "colored" schools for them to attend.
By 1877, attendance was mandatory for all children aged eight through fourteen, though school districts could still offer "separate, but equal" schools for "colored" and white children. The California legislature also passes section 1662 of the 1880 education code, which required all schools must be open for all children, except those with "filthy or vicious habits" or "suffering from contagious or infectious diseases." However, due to the ambiguity of the education code, "Mongolian" children were still banned from public K-12 schools until 1885. In 1890, the California Supreme Court ruled in Wysinger v. Crookshank that Black children cannot be denied attendance from a regular public school. This allowed Black children to attend mixed schools with American Indian and Asian American children, though the state's education code only required a mixed school in a school district if at least ten colored parents requested it, and were approved. As segregation in California schools continued into the 1900s, those with disabilities were able to take the first classes for the deaf, offered by the California School for the Deaf in 1903.
During the 20th century, two significant test cases for school segregation were filed in California. The first being Piper v. Big Pine School District of Inyo County, petitioned in 1923. Alice Piper, and many other children of the Paiute tribe, tried to enroll in the local all-white public high school. When they were denied by the school district because they were American Indians who were assumed to be non-citizens. The judge ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, on the basis that Piper's parents were tax paying citizens of the United States. This allowed American Indian children to attend schools with white children. In 1945, Mendez v. Westminster was filed in the California Supreme and Ninth District Court. The plaintiffs were Mexican and Latino fathers, who claimed that their children, like Sylvia Mendez, were being unconstitutionally discriminated against when they were forced to join segregated Mexican schools in several California school districts. On February 18th, 1946, Judge Paul J McCrormick ruled in favor of the families, allowing children of Mexican or Latino descent from joining schools with white children. Following the ruling, Governor Earl Warren signed a law to repeal segregation in schools on June 14, 1947.