We must never forget that the Hispanic National Bar Association developed out of the compulsion, inspiration, and resolve of a few young Latino lawyers seeking to stand and safeguard the worth and interests of the Latino community.  They understood, “Where there is no vision, the people perish. . .”  They saw the struggles of the Hispanic people, through the lens of foresight and imagination.

Honorable Francisco Cota,
HNBA Historian

50 YEARS OF HNBA ACHIEVEMENTS

The Formation of the HNBA

Like most noteworthy organizations and group efforts, the Hispanic National Bar Association was founded in times of adversity. It was a conscientious response to the increasing struggles and questionable burdens facing the Hispanic community in the United States. The year was 1971, and the landmark decision, Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954), was still leading civil rights litigation across the United States. The civil rights of Hispanic students had been implacably violated long before. In a small town outside of Los Angeles, California, ten years before Brown, Silvia Mendez the daughter of Mauricio Mendez, a Mexican immigrant and a Puerto Rican mother, and other children of Mexican descent were banned from the predominantly white schools of Westminster School District in Orange County, California. The Mendez family together with the Palomino, Estrada, Guzman and Ramirez families, filed a class action lawsuit in 1945 on behalf of 5,000 Mexican-American children in Orange County calling for the integration of the schools. The plaintiffs in Mendez v. Westminster argued that student segregation into separate schools in Orange County was based solely on their national origin. The 9th Circuit acknowledged that the segregation of Mexican and Mexican American students into “Mexican Schools” was unconstitutional. Mendez v. Westminster School District, 64 F.Supp 544 (C.D. Cal 1946), aff’d, 161 F. 2d 744 (9th Cir. 1947.) Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, 402, U.S. 1 (1971) was decided by the United State Supreme Court, dealing with student busing to promote integration in the racially imbalanced public schools.

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