Familial and Social Capital in "Mexican Town": Creating Community Beyond Barstow's Clark Street School, 1936–1950

• In Event: 18.022 - Dimensions of Community Cultural Wealth Across Time and Place: Chicana/o Efforts for Educational Equity

Abstract

In the absence of a federal mandate, the educational segregation of Chicana/o students was the result of powerful local district policies (San Miguel, 1986). One California school district that segregated youth of Mexican descent was the Barstow Union School District. The historical experiences of students who attended segregated Mexican schools in this desert community have yet to be captured by any literature – an omission which flies in the face of Barstow’s multicultural history. This paper documents the experiences of Mexican-descent students who attended the segregated Clark Street School as their families made Barstow home during the first half of the 20th century. It draws from US Census Population Schedules, articles published in the local print media, The Barstow Printer Review from 1936 through 1950, and the oral histories of Mexican-descent residents of Barstow who were students at Clark Street. It centers the lived experiences of Mexican students and families to illuminate the various ways that familial and social capital (Yosso, 2005; 2006) were nurtured in spite of the educational and residential segregation that pervaded this rural desert town throughout the first half of the 20th century.
The author begins with the social and economic context in which Mexican-descent students attended school. Mexican-descent adults in Barstow were largely relegated to low-wage, heavy labor jobs. The paper then identifies the majoritarian story that provided the rationale for the segregation of Mexican-descent students in Barstow, as articulated in school district literature and local newspapers. This historical narrative uses critical race theory (CRT) in education to challenge the aforementioned dominant ideology and centralize the experiential knowledge (Solórzano, 1997; 1998) of students and families who mitigated and resisted local deficit frameworks that reinforced their educational segregation. It explicitly centers the story of the Mares family, whose 8 siblings experienced the various iterations of segregated primary education in Barstow from 1936 through 1950 yet still managed to all graduate from high school. Drawing from oral history interviews with 4 of the surviving Mares siblings, the author creates space for them to tell their stories (Ruiz, 1998) and those of their Mexican immigrant parents who actively engaged in a variety of religious, recreational, and civic activities within their immediate neighborhood and the town at large. In these experiences, various examples of familial and social capital emerge as counterpoints to the majoritarian view of the neighborhood that was labeled “Mexican Town”. They ultimately contest race-neutral metanarratives that have obscured the raced experiences of Mexican-descent students in Southwest schools over time. Furthermore, this methodological approach that unites the tools of historical inquiry with CRT in education allows for those in the present day to “see” how family histories are (a) indeed a source of familial capital (Yosso, 2005), and (b) provide insight into the nurturing of various sources of community cultural wealth that have supported Chicana/o persistence through the educational pipeline over time.

Author

• Michaela J. López Mares-Tamayo, Pasadena City College