Tuesday, October 16, 2007
American Cultural Memory Delivered Courtesy of U.S. Postal Service
The 1947 federal court case Mendez v. Westminster School District determined that the segregation of Mexican and Mexican American students into separate "Mexican schools" was unconstitutional. Mendez v. Westminster set the groundwork for Brown v. Board of Education. Brown v. Board of Education is generally credited with desegregating schools across the nation in the landmark 1954 decision that ruled that segregation was unconstitutional under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. A new stamp memorializes the Mendez v. Westminster case sixty years after that momentous decision. Enhorabuena would be an exaggeration.