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Showing posts with the label #Segregation

Westminster Breaks Ground On Park Commemorating Mendez Case That Ended School Segregation In California

#Segregation #OrangeCounty #ThecaseofMendezvsWestminster WESTMINSTER (CBSLA) — A new park in Westminster will commemorate Mendez vs. Westminster School District, a landmark court case that helped paved the way for desegregation in California’s public schools. The city of Westminster and the Orange County Department of Education held a virtual groundbreaking on the Mendez Tribute Monument Park, which will be at Westminster Boulevard and Olive Street. “The case of Mendez vs. Westminster impacted us all. Yet most residents have never heard about it,” Westminster City Councilman Sergio Contreras said in the virtual groundbreaking video. “This historic court decision paved the way for later rulings that would end school segregation once and for all in our nation. By building these statues and park, we hope to further solidify Westminster’s civil rights history in the minds of residents and visitors alike.” In 1946, 9-year-old Sylvia Mendez was turned away from a school that was “whites onl

Her father was called 'the most dangerous racist in America.' She wants a different legacy for her sons

#PeggyWallaceKennedy #JimCrow #GeorgeWallace #Segregation Peggy Wallace Kennedy was 8 years old when she got her first glimpse of the troubling future that awaited her. She was living in Clayton, Alabama, then a tiny segregated town in the Jim Crow South. Her father was George Wallace, the future Alabama governor and archvillain of the civil rights movement who stood in schoolhouse doors to block black students from enrolling and once declared, "segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever." That version of her father, though, didn't yet exist for Peggy Wallace in 1958. She knew her father as the charmer with the Brylcreemed hair who handed her M&M's, called her "sugah" and never talked politics at home. But her world shifted one day when her mother sent her to a black seamstress to get some clothes mended. As she climbed the steps to the seamstress's home, Peggy heard the woman's voice from inside the house