Crawford v. Los Angeles Board of Education: Exploring Chicana and Chicano Community Perspectives, 1963-1988

• 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

From 1963 to 1988 Los Angeles, California was home to one of the most contentious and hostile education desegregation cases in the nation (Crawford v. Los Angeles Board of Education, 458 U.S. 527, 1982). Crawford garnered a large amount of media attention from the time it was filed in Los Angeles superior court 1963 up until the U.S. Supreme Court decision in 1982, yet the case has received surprisingly little scholarly attention. The few publications, which do analyze the case tend to focus on what Juan Perea (1997) calls the “Black/White binary paradigm of race,” with consideration for desegregation as a predominately Black/White issue, even in districts with large numbers of Chicana/o, Latina/o students, (i.e. Los Angeles Unified School District (e.g. Caughey, 1973; Cooper, 1991; Egly, 2010). This study seeks to expand on discussions of Crawford to include the perspectives of the Chicana/o community (see Haro, 1977).

I will analyze the case using a Critical Race History in Education (CRHE), with specific emphasis on the extent to which the courts addressed and listened to concerns of the Chicana/o community. In previous collaborative work, I have defined CRHE as a developing framework calling for scholars to move beyond merely placing their research in historical context, and start writing history from a critical race perspective.

This historical study will rely primarily on qualitative methods such as archival research and individual interviews. Archival research is necessary in order to determine what steps, if any, were taken to address the concerns and issues of the Chicana/o community by key decision makers in Crawford. The primary archival sources for this study are the American Civil Liberties Union records, Judge Paul Egly’s papers, and Los Angeles school monitoring committee records. These archives are a rich source of court documents, legal briefs, school district data, maps, and personal communications that helps define the “official” record on Crawford. Interviews with individuals who organized or worked with Chicana/o community members around the Crawford can capture the perspectives of the Chicana/o community on Crawford left out of official accounts.

Very little has been written on the Chicana/o community perspective of the Crawford case. This study seeks to fill this gap in knowledge through individual interviews with Chicana/o community organizers. In order to better understand Crawford and its implications, we must know more about the Chicana/o community perspective. Then and now, the Chicana/o community represents a large number of the students and families in LAUSD. These demographics demonstrate particular urgency to listen to these often over looked voices, and to consider the historical reverberations of their stories.

Author

• Ryan Edward Santos, University of California - Los Angeles