Existing comment:
[sketch] The artist who made this sketch, Stanley Hayami, was a high school student in Los Angeles when he was forced to leave his home for the Heart Mountain Relocation Center in Wyoming. In 1944, he joined the US Army. He was killed in combat in northern Italy in 1945.
1944 GI Bill of Rights:
This bill creates a program providing federal aid to US war veterans who want to purchase homes and businesses and attend college. This economic boost will be key in creating the country's post-World War II white middle class. Although racial minorities are not formally excluded from the program, practices maintaining segregated neighborhoods and schools, and systematic discrimination in many state policies, will make it very hard for them to take advantage of it.
1946 Mendez v Westminster:
In 1944, Gonzalo Mendez tries to enroll his children at a Westminster, California, elementary school, but he is refused and told they must attend a nearby "Mexican" school. Mendez, with other Mexican-American families and the NAACP, sues several boards of education in California on behalf of 5,000 Mexican-American children attended segregated schools. The US District Court rules in Mendez's favor. This decision will lead to the repeal of all California school segregation laws and pave the way for the 1954 Brown v Board of Education decision, which will make school segregation unconstitutional in all of the US.
1950 McLaurin v Oklahoma State Regents:
George McLaurin, a black student, is allowed to attend the University of Oklahoma after proving that a "separate but equal" school is not available to him. However, he must sit at a separate desk in the library, a separate table in the cafeteria and in his own row in classrooms. The US Supreme Court invalidates this arrangement, ruling it interferes with his "ability to study, to engage in discussions, and exchange views with other students, and, in general, to learn his profession." |