ORANGE – Lorenzo Ramirez could not accept that his children had to attend racially segregated schools when he moved his family in the 1940s into the El Modena School District.
The district was among several across California that had separate schools for white and Latino students. Ramirez, a labor leader, saw the segregation as an injustice to all children and sued.
His case eventually was combined with suits brought by four other families in Orange County in the landmark case Mendez, et al v. Westminster. The 1947 suit, with plaintiffs from Santa Ana, Garden Grove, El Modena and Westminster, ended segregation in California – seven years before the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Brown v. Board of Education banned the practice nationally.
“Lorenzo Ramirez was a very strong-minded man,” said his daughter, Phyllis Ramirez Zepeda, who now lives in Whittier. “He knew an inequality when he saw it, and he refused to just stand by.”
The daughter and her siblings have spent much of the past decade working to promote their father’s involvement in the case. They succeeded two years ago in convincing school leaders to name the library at El Modena High School after their father, who died in 1966, and are lobbying Santiago Canyon College trustees to name that campus’ library after Lorenzo Ramirez.
“It’s important for people to know the importance of this case and our father’s involvement in it,” said Ramirez Zepeda, 71. “When people talk about the case, they often focus on the Mendez family since their name is attached to the suit. But there were four other families who were involved also.”
Ramirez, his wife, Josefina, and their children moved in 1944 from Whittier to the El Modena neighborhood, in what is now eastern Orange.
The father served as a ranch laborer who worked with local ranch owners to bring in Mexican laborers as part of the government-backed bracero program.
Ramirez was shocked when he went to enroll his three children – Ignacio, Silvino and Jose – in elementary school and was told that they had to go to the “Mexican school.” (The El Modena district later became part of the Orange Unified School District.)
Two schools served children of the community: Roosevelt was for white students and Lincoln was for Latinos. The schools were separated by the length of a football field.
Silvino “Jim” Ramirez, now 79, was enrolled at Lincoln as a fourth-grader.
“I remember that I didn’t fit in because I spoke English already after attending integrated schools in Whittier,” he said. “The boys always tried to beat me up. But I couldn’t go to the white school because they told me I didn’t belong there, either.”
None of the children knew about their father’s involvement in the lawsuit at the time. He never spoke about it, even when the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued the historic ruling.
Ramirez and his wife had 11 children in all. It wasn’t until their father’s death that details of his role in the case began trickling out.
“He wasn’t a boastful man,” Ramirez Zepeda said. “He didn’t think he needed to celebrate the ruling. He just went on with his business.”
Today, the Ramirez siblings live across Southern California.
Mike Ramirez, 59, said that working to preserve their father’s legacy has kept them connected. The siblings continue to comb through court documents, pictures and other materials to build a website dedicated to the case.
Their effort has led trustees at Santiago Canyon College to say they will consider naming the library after Lorenzo Ramirez.
“This won’t be just about my father,” Mike Ramirez said. “The goal is to have people better understand this case. We want them to learn about all five families that helped end segregation in California.”
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