1. Photograph of the Cisneros Family

Between 1930 and 1950, the population of Corpus Christi grew from about 28,000 people to over 100,000—and then doubled to about 200,000 people by 1970. During those growth years, the city’s Anglo/white planners, politicians, and business leaders built and maintained neighborhoods and public schools that segregated Mexican American and African American residents from the city’s Anglo/white residents.

In 1954, the US Supreme Court issued its Brown v. Board of Education verdict, ruling that de jure (legally required) segregation of Black and white students violated the “equal protection” guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment of the US Constitution. The same month, the court also issued its Hernandez v. Texas decision (explored in the LULAC collection on this site), which extended Fourteenth Amendment rights to Mexican Americans.

School officials throughout the Southwest US, from California to Texas, argued that the Brown v. Board ruling did not apply to the segregation of Hispanic and non-Hispanic white students, as “Hispanic” was as an ethnic—not racial—category.

In 1968, Corpus Christi parent and steelworker Jose Cisneros (pictured below with his family), with the backing of the steelworkers’ union, took the Corpus Christi Independent School District (CCISD) to court.

Attorneys for Cisneros (the plaintiff) set out to prove that Mexican Americans in Corpus Christi (like those in Edna, Texas in the Hernandez v. Texas case) were discriminated against and segregated in housing and in public education--and thus that CCISD was violating Mexican American students’ and parents’ Constitutional rights.