The Impact of Brown on Mexican American Desegregation Litigation, 1950s to 1980s

The Brown v. Board of Education (1954, 1955) decision of the 1950s had no appreciable impact on ongoing Mexican American desegregation litigation during the 1st decade of its implementation. In the long run, however, it led to a shift in the community's litigation strategy for achieving equality of opportunity in the United States and for improving academic achievement in Latino schools. Because of Brown, Mexican American civil rights lawyers abandoned the "other White" legal strategy that had been used for decades in their struggle against discrimination. In turn, they embraced the equal protection strategy and gained legal protection as an "identifiable ethnic minority group." This introduced them to the national desegregation struggle as meaningful actors until they decided to abandon this strategy and focus on gaining equality under the banner of bilingual education.