The Breakfast Club - IDKMYDE: The First Desegregation Case Wasn’t Brown

Episode Date: February 4, 2026

Before Brown v. Board of Education, a forgotten court case cracked segregation'sfoundation. This episode restores a missing chapter of the civil rights timeline.YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@BreakfastClubPower1051FMSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Open your free IHeart Radio app. Did we mention it's free? Search Two Guys Five Rings. And listen now. What if mind control is real? If you could control the behavior of anybody around you, what kind of life would you have? Can you hypnotically persuade someone to buy a car? When you look at your car, you're going to become overwhelmed with such good feelings.

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The first desegregation case wasn't Brown versus the Board of Education. Welcome back, No-It-alls to another episode of the most anticipated podcast on the Black Effect Podcast Network, especially in February. entitled, I didn't know. Maybe you didn't either. I'm your host, BDOT. I'm Carlos Husband and Isaiah and Ryan's father. And true to form, we will kick off today's episode

with three of the most useless facts you'll never need not a day in life. Up first, the legal strategy that won Brown v. The Board of Education was tested seven years earlier by a Mexican-American family in Orange County, California. Your second useless fact, Third Good Marshall, the man who argued Brown

and later became the first black Supreme Court justice, he wrote a legal brief for that earlier case and used that as his model. And your third useless fact, the lead plaintiff's daughter received a presidential medal of freedom

from Barack Obama in 2011. For a case, most Americans have never heard of, I know I hadn't. Okay, first order of business is Let's clear something up. Brown versus the Board of Education didn't start desegregation. No, it finished a legal fight that honestly started with a nine-year-old Mexican-American girl in Orange County.

Her name is Sylvia Mendez. In 1944, Sylvia's family moved to Westminster, California to work a farm. But here's the thing. The farm wasn't theirs. It belonged to the Munamitsu family, a Japanese-American family who had been forcibly removed to an internment camp. So the Mendez family, Mexican-American citizens, were only there because another minority family had been stolen from their land. That's the backdrop.

Now, when Sylvia's aunt tried to register her and her brothers at the local school, the clerk said, well, the Mendez children have to go to the Mexican school. The school superintendent, James Kent, he later said in court that Mexican Americans were intellectually, culturally, and morally inferior to European Americans. Those were his words on the record. Sylvia's parents didn't accept that they hired Attorney David Marcus and they sued. Four other families joined, Mendez v. Westminster went to trial in 1946. Now here's what made it revolutionary.

Attorney Marcus didn't just argue that Mexican schools had worse resources. He argued that segregation itself caused psychological harm. He brought in social scientists to testify that separate children made them feel inferior? Sound familiar? Because that's the same argument that Third Good Marshall would use eight years later in Brown. Judge Paul McCormick ruled in favor of the Mendez family. The school district, of course, appealed, and that's when the NAACP got involved.

Thurgood Marshall and Robert Carter wrote a brief supporting the Mendez family, and Robert Carter later said that the NACP's briefs were the model for the briefs in Brown versus the Board of Education. So on April 14th, 1947, the Ninth Circuit upheld the ruling. Two months later, the governor of California, Earl Warren, the same man who would later become Chief Justice and alter the Brown decision, signed a billed ending school segregation in California. California became the first state to officially desegregate its public schools.

Did you know that? That was seven years before Brown. But here's what they don't teach you. The Japanese American Citizens League, also filed a brief. The American Jewish Congress also filed a brief. Multiple communities came together because they understood that they can segregate one of us. Yeah, they can segregate all of us. In 2011, President Barack Obama awarded Sylvia Mendez the Presidential Medal of Freedom. She was 75 years old. Her father, Gonzalo, had died in 1964,

10 years after Brown. At the age of 51, he never saw the full impact of what his family started. Brown versus Board, that gets the chapter in the textbook, but Mendez versus Westminster has got a footnote, because without Mendez, there is no Brown. The first desegregation case wasn't decided in 1954. It was decided in 1947 by a Mexican-American family, farming land that belonged to a Japanese-American family locked in an internment camp. And Thurgood Marshall took the note. And I didn't know. Maybe you didn't either. There's no championship league for small business owners,

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Seems like just yesterday. that the Two Guys Five Rings podcast was in Paris for the Olympics. And now we're heading to Milan for the 26 Milan Cortina Olympic Winter Games. I'm Bowen-Yang. And I'm Matt Rogers and we'll join athletes from 93 countries as Two Guys Five Rings hits the Italian Alps for the 26 Milan-Cortina Olympic Winter Games. Open your free IHeart Radio app. Do we mention it's free? Search Two Guys Five Rings and listen now.

What if mind control is real? If you could control the behavior of anybody around you, what kind of life would you have? Can you hypnotically persuade someone to buy a car? When you look at your car, you're going to become overwhelmed with such good feelings. Can you hypnotize someone into sleeping with you? I gave her some suggestions to be sexually aroused. Can you get someone to join your cult? NLP was used on me to access my subconscious.

Mind Games, a new podcast exploring NLP, aka neurolinguistic programming. Is it a self-help miracle, a shady hypnosis scam, or both? Listen to Mind Games on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 1969, Malcolm and Martin are gone. America is in crisis. At a Morehouse college, the students make their move. These students, including a young Samuel L. Jackson, locked up the members of the Board of Trustees, including Martin Luther King's Senior.

It's the true story of protests and rebellion in Black America. in history that you'll never forget. I'm Hans Charles. I'm Minelick Lamumba. Listen to the A building on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed human.