The authors in this article argue that the "Francisco Maestas et al. vs. George H. Shone et al." (1914) case is one of the earliest Mexican American challenges to school segregation in the United States. Unidentified for over a century, the lawsuit took place in southern Colorado, a region of the nation where Mexican Americans have deep…

The history of Mexican American school segregation is complex, often misunderstood, and currently unresolved. The literature suggests that Mexican Americans experienced de facto segregation because it was local custom and never sanctioned at the state level in the American Southwest. However, the same literature suggests that Mexican Americans…

Although both Mexican-American and "Okie" migrants to California and the Pacific Northwest suffered discrimination, the assimilation and mobility of later generations of Okies contrasts with the racism, school segregation, and perpetuation of class divisions in the experience of Mexican Americans. (SK)

What was unique about the Mexican American experience in Fort Collins (Colorado) was the extent to which the Great Western Sugar Company colonized Mexican workers. They lived in Mexican colonies, separate neighborhoods, or remote locations on sugar beet farms. In public schools, Mexican Americans were perceived as intellectually inferior and were…

Challenging conventional wisdom that Mexican Americans were passive victims of their educational fates, this book examines the Mexican American struggle for equal education during the 1960s and 1970s in a California community "Brownfield." It looks at responses of a predominantly White school system and community to the growing number of…