The legal battle to desegregate California schools began in 1872, when 11-year-old African American student Mary Frances Ward was denied admission to her local San Francisco school because of her race. Ward and her mother sued the school board and lost. In 1874, the California Supreme Court ruled in Ward v. Flood that separate education for the races did not violate the new Fourteenth Amendment's equal protection clause, reinforcing mandatory segregation in education.

In 1896, the ruling in Ward v. Flood was cited as legal precedent for the landmark United States Supreme Court ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson, which established the "separate but equal" doctrine and legally sanctioned segregation on a national scale.

From the 1870s through the mid-1920s, African American and Native American plaintiffs lost their cases in California courts as the California Supreme Court upheld the segregation of the races in public school education. In 1924, the same court specified segregated schools for Native American, Chinese, Japanese, and even Mongolian students. In this case (Piper v. Big Pine School District), segregation was based not only on race, but also on national origin. Even though Native Americans were indigenous people, the court classified them as a separate race. The court's decision reflected a broader national sentiment; that same year, President Calvin Coolidge signed the Immigration Act of 1924 that restricted entry into the country, declaring that "America must be kept American."

These legal precedents remained law until 1946, when 5,000 Mexican Americans in California won a lawsuit to desegregate schools in Orange County. In Mendez v. Westminster, a federal court judge ruled that separate is not equal, challenging the United States Supreme Court's decision in Plessy and buoying desegregation efforts by other civil rights groups. In 1947, California governor Earl Warren signed legislation to eliminate the state's education codes that allowed segregation.

In 1953, Warren was appointed chief justice of the United States Supreme Court, and in 1954, he wrote the Court's unanimous (9-0) opinion in Brown v. Board of Education, declaring segregated schools unconstitutional and formally overturning the "separate but equal" doctrine. However, because the Court did not specify how schools would be desegregated, implementation by the states remained incomplete.

By 1963, the Los Angeles school district was one of the most segregated in the country, not because of de jure (by law) segregation more common in the South, but because of de facto (in fact) segregation caused by segregated housing patterns. A group of minority students sued to desegregate a few of the city's high schools. That case, Crawford v. Board of Education of the City of Los Angeles, which would later encompass the whole district, was among the longest, most contentious, and highest profile cases in California. For five years the plaintiffs tried to negotiate with the school board. When the case went to trial in 1968, Superior Court Judge Alfred Gitelson ruled in favor of the students and ordered the school board to adopt and implement a desegregation plan. Gitelson's unpopular decision came during an election year; he was not reappointed. Governor Ronald Reagan called Gitelson's ruling "utterly ridiculous."

Over the next 12 years, the school board and state and federal courts waged many battles over the power and responsibility to remedy segregation, particularly de facto segregation. A mandatory busing plan enacted in the late 1970s was met with fierce resistance and was eventually defeated by a state constitutional amendment in 1979. Proposition 1, which passed with 70 percent of the vote, banned mandatory busing. Ultimately the desegregation order in Crawford was defeated, but by 1980, half of all white families in Los Angeles had moved out of the city or enrolled their children in private schools, increasing segregation in that district.

In 1978, in the midst of these legal battles, the Sherman Oaks Center for Enriched Studies was established in the San Fernando Valley as a magnet school. Magnet schools were developed in the 1970s as a means for implementing school desegregation on a voluntary basis. Most magnet schools have a special focus that makes them attractive to students of all races, ethnicities, and communities. Sherman Oaks, with a student body that is 40 percent white and 60 percent minority, represented the Los Angeles school district's effort to desegregate willingly. Sherman Oaks students came by bus -- and continue to come -- from different racial and ethic communities all over Los Angeles, based on a lottery admission. It is currently one of the top-performing schools in southern California, with a waiting list of more than 3,000 white and minority students.

Print Background Essay