by

Yvette Ramirez, Elvia Rodriguez, Erendira Gracida, Lisa Warren, and David Rowe

This year is the 50th anniversary of the landmark Brown vs. The Board of Education. This case took place in Topeka, Kansas in 1954. It stated that the “separate but equal” doctrine was unconstitutional and the Supreme Court ordered schools to desegregate. This was a major victory for the African American community because it allowed minority students to attend schools in their neighborhoods, which were previously segregated. Before the Brown decision, African American students were forced to attend segregated schools. This segregation was an outcome of the Plessy vs. Furgesson decision that said, “Separate facilities for whites and blacks were constitutional as long as they were equal.” People of color wanted desegregation in the public school system and current segregation was not equal. It violated their freedoms and rights as citizens of the United States of America.

During the summer seminar at UCLA, 30 students from seven different high schools were given the opportunity to research education in Los Angeles through different time periods. Students from Locke, Fairfax, Garfield, Lynwood, Santa Monica, South Gate and Jordan separated into 5 groups to focus on the progression of education after Brown vs. The Board of Education. Our group specifically focused on the years of 1974-1983. During this time, some of our parents were in school. Their education was shaped by factors like white flight, busing, self-defeating resistance, and legal cases, such as, Crawford vs. the State of California.

During this time the white population started moving out of Los Angeles public schools and more students of color enrolled. The departure of white students later became known as “white flight.” Busing was introduced as a solution for segregation in the hopes of integrating Los Angeles schools. Students of color were also showing self-defeating resistance in response to not having access to culturally-relevant course work and decent schooling.

We studied this decade to understand how students perceived education from 1974-1983. We were interested in finding how the system, including institutions like schools and district offices, influenced students’ lives. We also wanted to see how 1974-1983 compares to education today. Throughout this project, we considered many questions that helped guide us while doing our research. Has educational progress been made? Has segregation changed in schools in Los Angeles? How do people perceive that education has changed over the years?

For our research paper, each member of our group took responsibility for the different parts. In the methods section, we analyzed the quantitative and qualitative data that we collected for our time period. One of the ways that we displayed our quantitative data was through GIS maps. We specifically wanted to show how white flight influenced school integration efforts. For our qualitative data, we analyzed our interviews and pulled together themes from those personal experiences. Finally, we looked at how the struggles from 1974-1983 still go on today in California’s schools and court rooms.

Methods

The kinds of tools and methods that we used in conducting our research have varied in different ways in accordance with the location and atmosphere where we were at a particular time. We were provided with a video camera, videotapes, and a tape recorder in order to have an audio and visual record of what the people we interviewed had to say. The methods we used in our interviewing changed throughout the weeks. We first traveled to a Lynwood Community Center. In conducting our first interviews, we found that our approach to certain questions did not work effectively with what we were trying to show in our research. Many people were not as enthusiastic in participating in our research because we did not approach them with the right strategy. We introduced ourselves as a high school group from UCLA and that kind of scared off some people. So we began to plan out different ways to begin an effective interview. We found that just asking simple questions like, "Did you go to school in the Los Angeles area?" seemed to open up a friendlier door for such questions as, "Do you feel you received a quality education? Why or why not?" We began to accumulate what methods work and what methods did not work.

When we visited the Fairfax area, we decided to go to The Grove and Farmers Market. We chose this location because we felt that it is a public place where many people would be. We ran into two obstacles in doing so. We first found that the few interviews we tried to accomplish were shut down by a mass population of people who went to high school out of state or out of the country. Most of the shoppers at The Grove were tourists who either barely spoke English or seemed too old for our time period. The second obstacle we ran into was the fact that we were kicked out of The Grove shortly after we arrived there. Security personnel approached us, referred to us as solicitors, and told us that we were not welcome in the shopping center. After numerous attempts to get the security officer to understand that our purpose for being there was not to sell or force our beliefs on anyone, but for educational use, the man told us to go to the Farmers Market. We did so, and were almost turned down there but the security lady was a bit more compassionate. That day we also went to the shops across from The Grove. We felt that maybe we would have better luck over there, which we did. Since Fairfax High School was down the street, we all decided to head that way. We interviewed a teacher and a janitor at that location.

In other instances, we thought that visiting and getting actual footage from schools like LA, Jordan High School and Locke High School would give us a better feel for the environment in order to compare the physical aspects of schools in inner-city Los Angeles. In our observations, we found that Jordan High School was located next door to housing projects and an abandoned pipe factory. Locke High School is located in one of the roughest parts of South Central in a low-income neighborhood. Both schools have a high population of African Americans and Latinos. Methodically, our group gathered this information through census data and the interviews we engaged in. In interviewing Mrs. Foster, a counselor at Jordan High School, we learned the racial make-up and the academic quality of the school.

We thought that going to an actual community college would bring about interesting information from people who worked and attended there, so we went to Santa Monica Community College. We used our critical research approach in getting a janitor who worked there to talk to us about his educational experience. In doing that, he related to us that he attended Santa Monica High School but did not graduate. We then tried to dig deeper in our research to find out why he didn’t graduate and what he thought about the educational system. We felt that it was important to get all sides of the story so we can develop an accurate perception of educational history, especially from those who did not have a successful high school experience because those are the stories that are rarely told.

Our data and data analysis are very different from traditional historical research in such that we gather every and all aspects of our subject. Traditional historical research is more biased and only shows one perspective of a subject that could be projected in so many ways. We are critical researchers who don’t just look at the surface. Our job is to get the facts and stories that are not told, or would not be told if left to a traditional historical researcher. The kinds of things that you read in traditional history books don’t analyze the untold stories. That is why critical research is so necessary and much needed. We are supposed to research educational quality during our decade, and what better way to do that then to get the first hand accounts from the people who actually lived and went to school during that time. But not only those people, but lawyers who fought for equal opportunity in schools during that time along with teachers, counselors, and parents. These things give us a well-rounded idea of how and why education was the way it was back then, and more so why conditions are the way they are now and how we can begin to change it.

Through our group’s interpretation of what critical public history is, we defined it as history told by those who were actually involved, told in an informative manner in every possible aspect, and, as critical researchers, it is our job to ask the hard questions in order to produce critical public history. In some ways a dilemma comes up as to whether critical historians have a bias point of view. In doing research we already have a set purpose and direction, so is this a factor in what our product looks like? It could be, if we are objective to certain points of view before we even move forward in gathering other points of views. One of the tensions of critical public history is the struggle of documenting and listening to the thoughts of the people, but at the same time bringing an understanding of how power and inequality shape school experiences. We overcame that tension by recollecting our purpose in this project: to portray the truth in any way, shape, or form. But how do we know the truth? By being open to a variety of sources of evidence such as newspaper articles, law documents, census data, maps, documentaries, and interviews. Critical public history is written by people like us who take all of these different sources into account to research effectively and inform truth.

Quantitative Data

White flight was a major roadblock in the plans to integrate Los Angeles public schools. As whites moved out of the city into the suburbs, plans for integration had to focus on busing as a way to transport different races to different schools.

We decided that the best way to represent our decade through maps was to show the movement of different races in Los Angeles. In an article called “Minority Enrollment Hits 83% in Lynwood Schools” from 1976, we read that whites were leaving Lynwood schools as minority student enrollment soared. The article states, “A survey of the racial and ethnic make-up of the school district shows that the percentage increase is due not only to the addition of more than 1,000 minority students, but also to the departure of 467 whites.” In a small school district like Lynwood, which only has one high school, these numbers were very significant. We used the term “white flight” to describe the movement of white people out of areas where minorities were moving in. Although schools could have become integrated with the influx of minority students, white flight kept minorities isolated in schools like Lynwood. As a result, schools that had a substantial white population in the past were becoming more and more segregated.

Through Census data and newspaper articles, we found numbers that showed white flight in school enrollment during our time period. Lynwood Unified School District showed the most drastic change. In 1976, about 45% of the student population in the district was white and 55% was African America and Latino. Four years later, in 1981, the white enrollment in Lynwood dropped to 5%, while minority enrollment went up to 95%. Fairfax High School also had significant change in enrollment of white students. White enrollment at Fairfax dropped 10% from 60% in 1974 to 50% in 1981. Garfield and Locke High School, which both had less than 5% white enrollment to begin with in 1974, had less than 1% in 1981. White enrollment at predominantly white Santa Monica High also fell slightly, from 80% in 1977 to 75% in 1981. We made several Excel spreadsheets and charts to depict this school data.

White flight was a major roadblock in the plans to integrate Los Angeles public schools. As whites moved out of the city into the suburbs, plans for integration had to focus on busing as a way to transport different races to different schools. Busing was opposed by both whites and minorities and was eventually defeated in the courts, which ended the push for integration as we knew it. A Los Angeles Times editorial called “Going On Together,” written in 1974 by Frank Haven explained the nation-wide “residential pattern” of “blacks clustered in the central city, and whites dominating the suburbs.” He explains, “Because of the growing concentration of blacks in the cities, and resistance in many forms – overt and subtle – to integration, racial isolation still prevails for most black children in public schools, although the idea of integration is firmly embedded in the law and widely accepted in principle.”

For these maps, we chose to use blue for where the majority of the race was living and red for where less than 50% of the race was living. From our maps we could see that the African American population was centered around Downtown, the Central Corridor, and South LA. Over the three decades, the African American population remained concentrated in this area, with growth between 1960-1970 and stabilization between 1970-1980. The Latino population, on the other hand, grew dramatically out from its roots in East LA, expanding East, North, and South. When we look at the areas occupied by African Americans and Latinos, it is almost the exact opposite of the areas where whites are living.

Next, we decided to also create a second series of maps showing the specific movement of the three races into and out of areas of LA. To create the maps, we had to subtract the white population in 1980 from the white population in 1970. The first time we made these maps, we used raw data, but this did not account for general increases and decreases in the population of each race. As a result, we decided to use percentages instead of raw data. We also decided to create maps subtracting the white population in 1970 from the white population in 1960 so we could see how the movement in our decade compared to the past. We created these “movement maps” for each of the three races. We used blue to show where each race was moving in and red to show where each race was moving out. These maps show how Latinos and African Americans were moving into houses all over Los Angeles County, but especially in the center of the city and East LA. On the other hand, whites were moving out of Los Angeles County all over, but especially out of the center of the city and East LA. Whites were moving into farther suburbs in the West and North.

As we were creating our maps, we were confronted with a series of complications, starting with what colors to use or what scale would fit the best. We needed to find a perfect color scheme that would have enough contrast so that it would not blend together, and at the same time be self explanatory. We started by gathering a series of colors and then combining them to see if they would work. After many attempts, we chose the red to blue color scheme so that it would show our data. Instead of labeling all of the neighborhoods on the map, we put our five schools on the maps instead. We used yellow dots for the schools so that they would show up. We also chose to limit our color range to four blocks of color rather than ten to make the maps simpler to understand. For our scales, we decided to make them all consistent so that we could easily compare the different maps. For the first series of maps we made the scale 0 to 1 and for the second series of maps we made the scale -.3 to +.3. Both of these scales translate into percents; the first would be 0-100% and the second would be –30% to +30%.

Even with all of the information our maps show us, they are not capable of answering all of our questions. They do tell us the who, where, and when: who was moving, where they were moving to and from, and when they were moving. However, the maps leave out the how and the why. Why were African Americans and Latinos moving into these areas? Why were whites leaving? How did the Latinos became majority? How did the Latinos and African Americans come to know of these places where whites were moving out? How important was this “white flight”? How can such a situation arise?

Although we were able to collect a series of information of our decade, we weren’t able to find the answers to these questions. Maybe the answers to these questions weren’t meant to be found.

Qualitative Data

“The education that I went through was not what it is today...For the most part, we were still in an area high school where cowboys were still the good guys. We had not taken into account the suffrage of the Native Americans. They were still presented as people who were just in the way of progress.”

Over the last month, our group has visited such areas and sites as Lynwood Community Center and School District, Fairfax High School, Garfield High School, Griffith Middle School in East Los Angeles, Jordan High School in Watts, Locke High School in South Central, and the American Civil Liberties Union. At these sites, we interviewed parents, teachers, police officers, people who were students from 1974-1983, community activists, counselors, and college professors. We asked each individual a group of questions so that they could reflect on their own educational experiences from 1974-1983.

Many kinds of stories have emerged from the personal narratives of those we interviewed. A teacher at Fairfax High School expressed her feelings on equal opportunity in schools by sharing her personal experiences. Between 1975 and 1978, Ms. Hall attended predominantly-white Beverly Hills High School as an African American student. “It would be very difficult for me to say that a student, for instance, at Fairfax would have had the same type of access to the tremendous resources that we had at Beverly Hills High School,” Ms. Hall said in reference to educational quality in Los Angeles. She felt that schools were not equal then or now. She experienced this when she attended a summer school session at University High School and noticed the lack of materials compared to Beverly High.

A janitor at Santa Monica College also reflected on the educational inequities he experienced as a student. He, for one, did not graduate from high school and felt it was his fault. “There were a few good teachers and a few who didn’t care… No, I wouldn’t blame it on the teachers,” he said. He then went on to explain, “Other students, you know, had more brains and my memory isn’t that good so it’s hard for me to learn.” His comments show that he felt rejected from the system. He put the accountability of his educational struggle on himself rather than the teachers, counselors, and school. Mr. Roman Zapata, a History teacher at Griffith Middle School, offered more criticism toward the school system. In the mid-80’s, he attended Lincoln High School, which he said was 70% Latino, 15% White, and 15% Asian/Pacific Islander. Despite the racial make-up of his school, he felt that the instruction was very Euro-centric. “The education that I went through was not what it is today. The info in the texts was more on the conservative side compared to the information I am presenting and that is being presented throughout the school system today. For the most part, we were still in an area high school where cowboys were still the good guys. We had not taken into account the suffrage of the Native Americans. They were still presented as people who were just in the way of progress.” He added that he only remembered there being a Latino American Studies course for one semester because students had pushed for it. “It was just for one semester. A few students actually took it and then it just died. Was it promoted? No.” In addition, he noted that there were no cultural clubs or activities. Mr. Zapata’s comments reflected a general theme we heard during our interviews: that no culturally-relevant curriculum was available for students of color.

He also explained how students joined gangs as a way of resisting their lack of inclusion in school. He blamed the teachers, parents, and the system for the failure of so many students in inner city, low-income schools, many of whom were joining gangs. Mr. Zapata remembered the following gangs during his middle school and high school years in East LA: Los Avenues, 43rd Clover, Frog Town, Dog Town, and Highland Park. He explained, “Fights were constantly occurring, violence was the norm, even inside the school. Every week on Wednesday in the quad we’d literally have a free for all, people gathering around to see who was going to start it. Friends would jump in and suddenly we had a large fight…” Zapata continued, “During that time there were very little measures taken by the schools or teachers to stop kids from joining gangs. If they saw trouble they’d call the cops in. Did they take the time to sit down with the students and talk? No. It was pretty much ‘we’re not experts nor do we want to get involved.’” In addition to joining gangs, many minorities were dropping out of school due to pregnancy. Zapata’s major critique of the system was that there were no preventive measures taken to help these students make better decisions.

A lady at Santa Monica College also blamed the system, not the students, for failed education. Although she attended Buckley, a private school in L.A., she recognized many faults in the school system as a whole. She shared her thoughts, “I think I had a terrible education even though I went to a private school… Yes, I would have been better off at a public school… The goal wasn’t to go to college, it was to get out of high school as soon as possible.” She added, “I was never taught study skills…I blame the teachers.” Her thoughts demonstrate that she is a conscious agent because she is critiquing the system.

However, some people were not aware of the inequalities in their schools. Take, for instance, a lady from Garfield who we interviewed. She stated, “Back then, I thought all schools were the same. It didn’t matter where you went.” Most students back then had no knowledge of what other schools were like since they only experienced education through their own school. They did not know that other schools could offer a better education.

In addition, many of the people we interviewed had very different definitions of integration and segregation. For example, many said that their school was “integrated” but when they explained the racial make-up they said it was almost all African Americans and Latinos. It seemed like they defined an integrated school as one that is not majority white, had more than one race, or was not segregated by law. Few schools in LAUSD were integrated due to de facto segregation, where certain racial groups live in a certain area and go to school in that same area, making the majority of the students in that school of that race.

We found that most of the students, parents, and educators we talked to did not act as agents during this period. In our definition, some of the people we interviewed did resist education in a way. Sweet Alice, a community activist, talked about her school experiences. “There were about 28 of us, but we had 10 that played around. They would come sometimes, and sometimes not come. When they did come, they were playing and interrupting the classroom,” she said. This is one form of systematic resistance, but overall it was self-defeating. The students she talked about could have been refusing to go to class and interrupting the teacher because they found no relevance to what was being taught. Maybe they felt that the school system was not designed for them or maybe they did not think that the teacher was trying to help.

The students who acted out in class, joined gangs, and dropped out could be the ones who were subtly protesting poor school conditions. The school system failed them because it taught them that they had no place in history, that they were dumb, or that they could not learn. Without adequate counseling and school support, these students never felt welcomed in our capitalistic school system. Whether the students were fully conscious of their protest or not, we see their “failures” as resistance to an oppressive and exclusive system that was not set up for them to succeed.

Conclusion

Over the past five weeks, our group has studied the inequalities in Los Angeles public education between the years 1974-1983. By interviewing community members who went to school in Los Angeles during our period, we discovered that most of the inequalities that existed in the past still exist today. As a group, we have concluded that “education on equal terms” means providing equality in four main areas: 1) facilities, 2) distribution of credentialed teachers, 3) resources like computers and textbooks, 4) and curriculum. To us, an equal curriculum must be both college-oriented, as well as, culturally relevant.

We could not agree on whether integration was necessary for students to receive an equal education. Lisa Warren, a senior at Fairfax High, explained, “Racial diversity makes education better because it teaches you to relate to others better…It gives you a cultural purpose for being there. The world is diverse and if you go to a school that is only one race then you don’t get a real world experience.” On the other hand, Erin Gracida, a senior at Santa Monica High, argued, “If equal funding were to go to all schools, then integration wouldn’t matter. You wouldn’t need white people at your school to get a good education.”

Through our research, we found that resistance has taken many different forms throughout the past 50 years. Debate over integration in the schools came to a peak in the courts during the 1970’s. With the end of the 18-year Crawford Case, busing and integration plans were defeated and the focus turned to magnet schools and funding. Today, certain schools, like Santa Monica High, have devised outreach programs to attract a diverse student body to their campus. However, in LAUSD most schools remain segregated due to de facto segregation in housing.

In addition to integration, other issues from the 70’s are still debated today. Thirty years ago, many activists struggled for “bilingual bicultural” education, education that is relevant to Latinos and includes Spanish as part of the curricula. In a 1977 newsletter called “Un Nuevo Dia,” activists in the Chicano Education Project write, “In many states, bilingual bicultural education has become THE human rights issue for Chicanos and other Latinos. Bilingual bicultural education continues to offer a great hope for making the goal of equal education opportunity a reality.” Activists in the 1970’s found victory in the Chacon-Moscone Bilingual Bicultural Education Act, which established “transitional bilingual education programs to meet the needs of Limited English Proficient (LEP) students” (http://coe.sdsu.edu/people/jmora/Pages/ HistoryBE.htm).

In 1981, the state of California strengthened the Bilingual Education Act, spelling out in great detail the obligations of school districts to language minority students. However, five years later, Governor Deukmejian vetoed AB 2813 to extend the Bilingual Education Act into law. Despite the victories for bilingual education in the seventies and eighties, today most of those victories have been reversed. On June 3, 1998, the passage of Proposition 227 virtually banned all bilingual education except under special conditions and established a one year “sheltered immersion” program for all LEP students. According to John Rogers, Co-Director of UCLA’s Institute for Democracy and Equal Access, “Proposition 227 wasn't essentially about language use in schools, but the politics behind it.” He explained that the discussion played on people’s fears about Latinos, immigrants, and the economy. Some members of the Latino community supported the change in policy due to general dissatisfaction with the quality of education. Today, because of Proposition 227, many people feel defeated in their struggle for bilingual bicultural education.

Yet, activism persists in trying to secure an equal education for all students. Today’s students continue to speak out about issues that are important to them. The ACLU filed a class action lawsuit called Williams vs. the State of California on behalf of 1.5 million California students who experience substandard education in their schools. The original complaint was filed by hundreds of students from all over the state, citing specific problems in their schools.

Student complaints ranged from descriptions of inadequate facilities to lack of credentialed teachers and rigorous classes. David Rowe, a senior at Lynwood High commented, “The bathrooms at my school are unbearable and I never use them.” Hundreds of other California schools have poor maintenance, horrible classroom conditions, and ceilings falling apart. Yvette Ramirez, a senior at Locke High School explained, “Some teachers at my school have told me about rats running around their classrooms.” The plaintiffs in the case also point out filthy bathrooms, leaky roofs, and dysfunctional heating and cooling systems in their schools. We believe it is impossible for students to receive an equal education when their environment is not appropriate for learning.

Another argument posed by the Williams Case is that students cannot receive an equal education without proper resources like textbooks. Some schools have old textbooks that date back to the 1960’s. Mark Rosenbaum, an ACLU lawyer working on the Williams Case, stated, “There are students in California whose books have President George Bush Senior as the last president. A good education cannot be obtained in high schools where no books are available to take home or where the textbooks are old. Other California schools are seriously lacking access to computers and Internet stations. While resources are scarce in low-income schools, other schools have an abundance of resources to offer their students. Another discrepancy between schools is the number of AP and Honors courses offered to students. Some students are privileged with AP and Honors courses, while others hardly learn anything due to the lack of materials and qualified teachers at their schools.

Therefore, we have come to the resolution that credentialed teachers, college prep classes, and clean facilities must be offered to every student regardless of their race or socioeconomic status. According to the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, no state may “deprive any person of liberty, or property, without due process of law, nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction equal protection of the laws.” Therefore, it is unconstitutional for certain schools to provide a better education than others within the same state. This violates the idea of “equal protection of the laws” for all citizens.

Ward Connerly, a UC Regent appointed by Governor Pete Wilson, has introduced a California ballot measure he calls "The Racial Privacy Initiative." The initiative is a measure that would damage Californian’s ability to address racial and ethnic disparities in healthcare and disease patterns, educational resources, academic achievement, hate crime and discrimination. Students will no longer be given the option of providing their ethnic and racial background in California colleges and universities. In addition, “it handicaps community groups, local governments, and the state as they develop solutions to healthcare, education, and other disparities in our diverse state.”(http://www.informedcalifornia.org/facts.shtml) The UC Regents voted against this measure in May due to its detrimental effects on university research. This will also have detrimental effects in California because activists and organizations like ACLU will no longer have statistics about the racial make-up of colleges and universities, and educational inequalities may grow. This measure will greatly affect minority communities and low income communities.

But what can we do to secure an equal education for all students? One thing that we can do is support the Williams Case. Although the case was filed in August of 2000, its trial will not take place until the summer of 2004. You can find out more information on the case at a web site called Decentschools.com. The web page explains that the case is being fought because “far too many California students suffer from schools with untrained teachers, overcrowding, poor facilities, and inadequate resources.” If enough people in the state of California rally against the educational inequalities faced by students from low income communities, we will be able to secure an equal education for future generations of students. Many organizations were created to secure an equal education to all students, and others although created years ago have added to their political agenda the struggle for equal education. An organization that already exists in California is Californians for Justice (CEJ). For the last four years the organization has fought for the removal of standardized testing, arguing they were racially biased, and in March they won a major victory. The California State Board of Education ordered the California High School Exit Exam (CAHSEE) be postponed until 2006.

Supporting legislation that fights for equal education is one form of resistance that we can participate in today. In addition, students can organize themselves and create a movement to demand equality like the Civil Rights Movement, Chicano Movement, and the High School Blowouts in the late sixties. Students today can start at the school or local level and petition for new textbooks, qualified teachers, clean facilities, better classes, and more counselors and college advisors. We can also rally together and form walk outs and protests to make our voices heard.