The school system those fields supported — funded by property taxes from those fields, serving the children of those who farmed them — was not open to the children of the families doing much of the farming. The asparagus that Gonzalo Mendez grew on the Munemitsu farm contributed to an economic base that funded 17th Street Elementary School. The children of the family that grew that asparagus were not admitted to 17th Street Elementary School.
This contradiction — between the economic contribution of Mexican American agricultural labor to Orange County communities and the exclusion of Mexican American children from the public institutions those communities funded — was not unique to Westminster. It was characteristic of the economic organization of California agriculture in the first half of the twentieth century. Mexican American workers and families contributed substantially to the agricultural economy of the region. Their children were assigned to separate, inferior schools. Their communities were organized into colonias at the margins of Anglo towns. Their political voice was limited by the dynamics of a society that valued their labor while excluding their participation in civic life.
What the Mendez case represented was a refusal to accept this arrangement as permanent or as legitimate. Gonzalo Mendez’s decision to hire a lawyer and file a federal lawsuit was an assertion that the economic contribution his family was making entitled them to the rights of full citizenship — including the right to send their children to the same schools as their neighbors. It was a claim that the contradiction was not just an inconvenience but a constitutional violation.