Closing the Breach: The Campaign for Education Equality in the Post-Chicano Movement Era

Mexican Americans have a long tradition of civil rights activism, particularly educational activism.  Throughout the Southwest they fought educational segregation and other inequalities in public schools, pushed for bilingual-bicultural education, and challenged discrimintory policies and practices that posed significant barriers to equal educational opportunity and social equality.  This was particularly true in the post World War II era, as demonstrated by the numerous lawsuits they filed against school districts in the Southwest to promote educational reform and improve the quality of education for their children.  For the most part, the scholarship on Mexican American education portrays educational reform, especially the fight against segregation and push for bilingual-bicultural education as an organizational endeavor resulting from the efforts of Mexican American organizations and school districts.  This paper highlights the educational reform that resulted from the grassroots efforts of parents, especially mothers, teachers, community leaders, and other activists in Tucson, Arizona. 

While Mexican Americans in Tucson also participated in the struggle for educational equality in the 1950s and 1960s, their activism continued into the 1970s and 1980s when they file a desegregation lawsuit against Tucson School District No. 1 in 1974.  After the lawsuit was adjudicated in 1978, a group of Mexican American women mobilized other parents, educators, and community leaders in a campaign for educational reform to improve schools that served predominantly Mexican-origin students.  In asserting their rights as mothers, these women promoted meaningful reform from the bottom up based on the community’s definition of equal educational opportunity—one entered on a bicultural-biethnic consciousness that was closely tied to their Mexican heritage and culture, Spanish language, and American educational values.