The San Antonio Light
'Lemon Grove': Rememberance of a sour past
September 5, 1986
by Steven G. Kellman
On Jan. 5, 1931, when the 75 children of Mexican descent enrolled at Lemon Grove Grammar
School showed up for the start of a new term, they were prevented from resuming their places beside the school's 95 Anglo pupils. Principle Jerome T. Green announced that they would now have their own school, in their own neighborhood. But their parents refused to allow them to attend classes in the ugly building they called La Caballeriza -- the barnyard. Insisting that their children had the same rights as any others, the Mexican-Americans of Lemon Grove, Calif., a rural cormmunity outside San Diego, brought suit against the school board. And they won; 23 years before the Supreme Court decision in Brown vs. Board of Education put an end to statutory segregation in the United States, one racist institution was forced to eat Jim Crow.
"The Lemon Grove Incident" dramatizes this forgotten episode of Chicano and U.S. history. Produced for San Diego's KPBS-TV and directed and edited by Frank Christopher, it will be screened this evening at 8, following a 7 p.m. reception for its producer-writer Paul Espinosa, and will also air at 9 pm. Sept.12 on KLRN-TV. The film blends documentary footage and theatrical reenactments with reminiscences by several of the former pupils. The result is a vivid evocation of a recent past In which apartheid was more fashionable than it is today.
"The Lemon Grove Incident" begins in July, 1930, with a meeting of the school board at the comfortable home of one of its members. None is Hispanic, and, in the capable performances by local San Diego actors, most are well-meaning dolts who sincerely believe that it will be best for all concerned if, for nebulous reasons of hygiene, morals and cultural deprivation, Mexican Students are required to attend a separate "Americanization" school. They ignore the fact that 90 percent of the children were born in the United States and that many of them do not even speak Spanish. They do feel awkward about pubilcizing the new regulation before the day it takes effect.
The Hispanic parents are, understandably, disturbed, and another important scene shows their gathering to determine how to respond to this provocation. Should they accede to the policies and not make unnecessary trouble for themselves with local leaders, or should they defy injustice? With the help of the Mexican consulate and a skillful Anglo attorney, they triumph in court. Sensitive to the adverse publicity the case has already brought to their town, the school board decides not to appeal the verdict. However, we are told that, in the California of 1931, it is likely they would have succeeded in having it overturned. Legal segregation of Mexican-Americans continued sporadically throughout the Southwest until 1947, and into the next decade for blacks, Asians and American Indians.
"The Lemon Grove Incident" lacks any bigot as flagrantly malevolent as Bull Connor, the white supremacist sheriff who sicked attack on dogs on Martin Luther King Jr.
The principal does stand blocking the schoolhouse door, but he is without an ax -- either to swing or to grind. He is as befuddled as any of the other Anglos, and the whole sour incident seems based more on a mild misunderstanding than on any active wickedness.
It is not that they lack the courage of their convictions, they merely lack convictions. and their resignation to the judge's ruling comes as no surprise. The film seems carefully researched, but historical accuracy undercuts the kind of heightened social drama Espinosa and Christopher appear intent on creating.
Period clothing and cars presented through soft focus, irises and wipes provide a veneer of the period, but I miss more complex textures. The movie's Chicanos are movie Chicanos -- uniformly attractive, self-aware and articulate, in at least one language. They are all grieved, but not embittered, by the patronizing way the Lemon Grove establishment treats them.
The hero of the piece is Robert Alvarez, in whose name the law suit is filed. As a 10-year-old and as portrayed by Marcos Ortiz, the child is quick-witted, forthright and brave - someone it must have been a privilege to claim as a classmate. The real, silver-haired Alvarez also appears on camera, but the retrospective testimony of this appealing and affluent 66-year-old lacks the passion or animosity that would make what happened in Southern California half a century ago more than just an incident. He and the other Chicanos bear no enduring grudge against the Anglos of Lemon Grove. I suppose that is very Christian of them, but it is undramatic.
For a more complete sense of the momentousness of the Lemon Grove school board's blunder, "The Lemon Grove Incident" might have benefited from on-camera interviews with Anglos who attended the school in 1931.
It is not entirely clear what consequences the case had for other relationships within the community, at the time and during the course of the past five decades. Its political fallout is alluded to in the fact that it halted the momentum for passage of the Bliss bill, which would have placed California's Chicanos in the same inferior legal category as blacks, Asians and Indians. Yet the film might have done more to establish its own significance.
As it stands, "The Lemon Grove Incident" casts necessary light on a part of our national experience that ought not to be ignored. But it remains a sidelight.