Challenging a History of Educational Inequity: The Case of Soria v. Oxnard School Board of Trustees

• In Event: Chicana/o Challenges to School Segregation in California and Texas: Using Critical Race Theory in Education as a Tool for Historical Recovery

Abstract

In 1970, a labor organizer named Juan Soria, filed a lawsuit in federal court on behalf of his nieces and other Chicana/o and Black children who attended segregated schools in the rurban town of Oxnard, California (mix of city and country, McWilliams, 1946). In the Soria, et al. v Oxnard School Board of Trustees case, Judge Harry Pregerson identified “de jure overtones” in the racial imbalance of schools and ordered the district to present him a plan to desegregate schools within 20 days. While implementing integration plans, the district appealed the case to the 9th Circuit arguing that de facto segregation existed through no fault of their own, but rather as a result of pre-existing housing patterns. On remand, plaintiff’s attorneys discovered previously “lost” school board minutes from the 1930s. These minutes demonstrated the Trustees’ deliberate, meticulous planning of segregation between and within schools, interconnected with residential segregation. The 1930s plans enabled administrators in the following decades to adopt a “do nothing” policy that effectively maintained racially separate and unequal schooling conditions. Our presentation examines the Soria case with a specific emphasis on the sociopolitical contexts of the time of its filing, at the beginning of what became known as the Chicana/o Movement.

In addition to assessing the court filings and decisions, we go beyond the official archives, to document the mundane racism evident in Oxnard schools. Here, we draw on oral history interviews we conducted with Oxnard residents who endured a dual schooling system that marginalized Mexicans in order to privilege Whites throughout the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. We discuss interviews conducted with community organizers who struggled against the continued marginalization of Chicana/o and Black communities in the city and its schools in 1960s, leading up to the case. We also examine the biography of the main mobilizing force behind the case, Juan Soria, and his efforts to build a cross racial coalition that garnered strength from national and local organizations, including the United Farm Workers, the Community Service Organization, the NAACP, and the Black Action Group. Very little research on educational history has addressed such cross-racial organizing (Donato & Lazerson, 2000). We analyze these data in the contexts of the urgency of the times (1960s and 1970s), with White resistance to desegregation exemplified by the Oxnard Press Courier’s tendency to position the Soria case next to stories of violence and conflict from integration efforts across the United States. As we consider the legal rationale and evidence used in Soria in relation to other desegregation cases during this era, we also affirm the value of educational research and policy that recovers “lost” histories of racism and resistance.

Authors

• David Gumaro Garcia, University of California - Los Angeles

• Tara J. Yosso, University of California - Santa Barbara