“We Are Asking for Equal Education”: Mexican Americans and the Quest for Educational Equity in Arizona

This article addresses why Mexican Americans in Arizona filed a desegregation lawsuit in 1974 alleging de jure segregation of Mexican American students in Tucson public schools twenty years after the Supreme Court abolished legal segregation in Brown v. Board of Education. Through an examination of legal proceedings, court records, newspaper coverage, letters, and reports, combined with oral narratives and testimony, this article analyzes the circumstances that compelled Mexican Americans to file the lawsuit Mendoza v. Tucson School District No. 1 to demand equal educational opportunities for their children and to push for school reforms to meet the community’s needs. It also seeks to expand the history of Mexican American educational activism in the Southwest and provide a historical backdrop for current educational issues and debates in Arizona.