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Speaker 1: The first desegregation case wasn't Brown versus the Board of Education.

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Speaker 1: I Welcome back to It alls to another episode of

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Speaker 1: the most anticipated podcast on the Black Effect Podcast Network,

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Speaker 1: especially in February, entitled I didn't know Maybe you didn't either.

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Speaker 1: I'm your host, be Dot, I'm Carlo's husband and Isaiah

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Speaker 1: and Ryan's father, and true to form, we will kick

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Speaker 1: off today's episode with three of the most useless facts

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Speaker 1: You'll never need not a day in life. Up first,

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Speaker 1: the legal strategy that won Brown versus the Board of

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Speaker 1: Education was tested seven years earlier by a Mexican American

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Speaker 1: family in Orange County, California. Your second useless fact. Third

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Speaker 1: Good Marshall, the man who argued Brown and later became

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Speaker 1: the first Black Supreme Court justice. He wrote a legal

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Speaker 1: breath for that earlier case and used that as his model.

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Speaker 1: And your third useless fact the lead Aina's daughter, received

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Speaker 1: the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Barack Obama in twenty

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Speaker 1: eleven for a case most Americans have never heard of.

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Speaker 1: I know, I hadn't I didn't know. I didn't know.

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Speaker 1: I didn't know. I didn't know. I didn't know. I

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Speaker 1: didn't know. I didn't know. I didn't know. I didn't know. Okay,

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Speaker 1: first order of business is let's clear something up. Brown

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Speaker 1: versus the Board of Education didn't start desegregation. No, it

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Speaker 1: finished a legal fight that honestly started with a nine

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Speaker 1: year old Mexican American girl in Orange County. Her name

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Speaker 1: is Sylvia Mendez. In nineteen forty four, Sylvia's family moved

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Speaker 1: to Westminster, California, to work a farm. But here's the thing.

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Speaker 1: The farm wasn't theirs. It belonged to the Muna Mitsu family,

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Speaker 1: a Japanese American family who had been forcibly removed to

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Speaker 1: an internment camp. So the Mendez family, Mexican American citizens,

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Speaker 1: were only there because another minority family had been stolen

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Speaker 1: from their land. That's the backdrop. Now. When Sylvia's aunt

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Speaker 1: tried to register her and her brothers at the local school,

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Speaker 1: the clerk said, well, the Mendez children have to go

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Speaker 1: to the Mexican school. The school superintendent, James Kent He

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Speaker 1: later said in court that Mexican Americans were intellectually, culturally,

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Speaker 1: and morally inferior to European Americans. Those were his words

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Speaker 1: on the record. Sylvia's parents didn't accept that. They hired

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Speaker 1: attorney David Marcus, and they sued. Four other families joined.

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Speaker 1: Mendez versus Westminster went to trial in nineteen forty six.

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Speaker 1: Now here's what made a revolutionary. Attorney Marcus didn't just

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Speaker 1: argue that Mexican schools had worse resources. He argued that

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Speaker 1: segregation itself called psychological harm. He brought in social sciences

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Speaker 1: to testify that separating children made them feel inferior. Sound

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Speaker 1: familiar because that's the same argument that Thirdgood Marshall would use.

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Speaker 1: Eight years later. In Brown, Judge Paul McCormick ruled in

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Speaker 1: favor of the Mendez family. The school district, of course, appealed,

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Speaker 1: and that's when the NAACP got involved. Thirdgood Marshall and

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Speaker 1: Robert Carter wrote a brief supporting the Mendez family, and

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Speaker 1: Robert Carter later said that the NAACP's briefs were the

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Speaker 1: model for the briefs in Brown versus the Board of Education.

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Speaker 1: So on April fourteenth, nineteen forty seven, the Ninth Circuit

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Speaker 1: upheld the ruling. Two months later, the Governor California, Earl Warren,

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Speaker 1: the same man who would later become Chief Justice and

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Speaker 1: alf of the Brown decision, signed a build ending school

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Speaker 1: segregation in California. California became the first state to officially

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Speaker 1: desegregate its public schools. Did you know that that was

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Speaker 1: seven years before Brown? But here's what they don't teach you.

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Speaker 1: The Japanese American Citizens League also fouled a brief. The

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Speaker 1: American Jewish Congress also fouled a brief. Multiple communities came

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Speaker 1: together because they understood, if they can segregate one of us, now,

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Speaker 1: they can segregate all of us. In twenty eleven, President

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Speaker 1: Barack Obama awarded Sylvia Mendez the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

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Speaker 1: She was seventy five years old. Her father, Gonzalo, had

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Speaker 1: died in nineteen sixty four, ten years after Brown, at

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Speaker 1: the age of fifty one. He never saw the full

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Speaker 1: impact of what his family started. Brown versus Board that

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Speaker 1: gets the chapter in the textbook, But Mendez versus Westminster

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Speaker 1: has got a footnote because without Mendez, there is no Brown.

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Speaker 1: The first desegregation case wasn't decided in nineteen fifty four.

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Speaker 1: It was decided in nineteen forty seven by a Mexican

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Speaker 1: American family farming land that belonged to a Japanese American

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Speaker 1: family locked in an internment camp. And third, good Marshall

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Speaker 1: took the note and I didn't know. Maybe you didn't either.

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Speaker 1: I