Orange County in this period was predominantly agricultural. The citrus industry, which had made Southern California famous, was still central to the regional economy. Strawberries, asparagus, and other crops required substantial agricultural labor, and that labor was provided disproportionately by Mexican American workers — many of them settled in the colonias that had grown up adjacent to the farming communities. Westminster itself was a small town organized around agriculture, with a relatively clear economic and social hierarchy that placed Anglo landowners and businessmen at the top and Mexican American agricultural workers toward the bottom.
The wartime economy had complicated this hierarchy somewhat. The departure of many Anglo men for military service created labor shortages that increased the value of agricultural workers who remained. Gonzalo Mendez’s ability to lease the Munemitsu farm and operate it productively during the war years was partly a function of these wartime conditions. The farm labor market was tight, and someone with agricultural experience and the capital to organize a farming operation was in a position to benefit.
But the wartime conditions that created economic opportunity for the Mendez family also intensified some of the social anxieties that produced segregation. The presence of large numbers of Mexican American workers and families in Orange County communities had always been accompanied by Anglo concerns about mixing, about neighborhood character, about the maintenance of racial hierarchy even as the economic hierarchy shifted.
School segregation was one of the mechanisms through which this social hierarchy was maintained and reproduced. By keeping Mexican American children in separate schools, the districts ensured that the social relationships of childhood would not develop across racial lines — that Anglo children would grow up without the daily experience of Mexican American children as peers, neighbors, and classmates. The long-term effects of this on community formation and social integration were profound, extending well beyond the immediate question of educational quality.