Please join the Historical Committee as we prepare to commemorate Los Abogados’ 50th Anniversary on July 11, 2026. Contact the Historical Committee at history@losabogados.org and help shape this momentous event.
This is a story that dates to 1976, when the nation celebrated its Bicentennial—two hundred years since the framers declared that “all men are created equal.” That year, a handful of Latino lawyers and students banded together to build upon a mission that began generations before. It was a mission to narrow the gap between the parchment ideals of equality and the lived experience of their communities.
For the first half of the 20th century, de facto segregation policies had relegated Mexican American schoolchildren to underfunded “Mexican schools.” As early as 1925, Mexican American parents in Arizona challenged segregation in court and obtained an order finding the substandard “Mexican school" unlawful even under the prevailing “separate but equal” standard. Romo v. Laird, No. 21617 (Maricopa Cnty. Super. Ct. Oct. 5, 1925). Yet segregation persisted. Decades later, parents in Tolleson again turned to the courts. A federal district court concluded that “the segregation complained of was not based upon the individual language deficiencies of the children, but rather upon their Mexican ancestry.” Gonzales v. Sheely, 96 F. Supp. 1004, 1008 (D. Ariz. 1951).
In 1954, Gus Garcia and Carlos Cadena, two Mexican American attorneys from Texas, argued before the Supreme Court that Texas counties had excluded Mexican Americans from jury service for decades. The Court observed that “no person of Mexican descent had served on a jury for twenty-five years.” Hernandez v. Texas, 347 U.S. 475, 480 (1954).
These cases unfolded alongside the Black civil rights movement, with overlapping legal strategies and shared constitutional claims. For example, the NAACP participated as amicus in Mendez v. Westminster, which preceded Brown v. Board of Education. In Mendez, the Ninth Circuit held that segregating Mexican American children violated the Equal Protection Clause because it “fosters antagonisms in the children and suggests inferiority among them where none exists.” Mendez v. Westminster Sch. Dist. of Orange Cnty., 161 F.2d 774, 779 (9th Cir. 1947).
By the 1960s, the Mexican American population in the Southwest exceeded 3.5 million. Still, Mexican American students were routinely routed into vocational tracks, denied college-preparatory courses, and disciplined for speaking Spanish. In 1968, thousands of students walked out of high schools in East Los Angeles in what became known as the “Chicano Blowouts.” That same year, at U.S. Commission on Civil Rights hearings in San Antonio, two Mexican American high school students testified that they were “suspended, hit, and slapped in the face for speaking Spanish,” and a third witness—a junior high school student—testified that he left school after being “repeatedly beaten for speaking Spanish.” U.S. Comm’n on Civ. Rts., Mexican American Education Study: Report III—The Excluded Student 6–7 (1972).
During this period, advocacy increasingly converged across institutions and communities. The League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) expanded litigation and voting-rights advocacy nationwide. Legal-defense organizations coordinated strategy across Mexican American and Puerto Rican communities, and Latino lawyers organized nationally through the Hispanic National Bar Association. At the local level, Mexican American candidates won office in Crystal City, Texas, and in 1970, activists formed the La Raza Unida Party. Labor campaigns developed concurrently: in Delano, César Chávez and Dolores Huerta organized farmworkers against wage theft and unsafe working conditions.
Still, in the 1970s, Latino law students were “few in number,” often “isolated,” and numbered in the hundreds nationwide. See, e.g., U.S. Comm’n on Civ. Rts., Mexican American Education Study: Report V—Mexican Americans and the Administration of Justice 3–5 (1974). Entire counties in the Southwest had “no Spanish-surnamed attorneys,” and access to the profession depended on “informal networks and mentorship” largely unavailable to Latinos. Id. at 7–9. Judicial selection followed the same channels; Latino representation on the bench remained “extremely limited” through the mid-1970s. Id. at 12. At the same time, government agencies and courts continued to operate in ways that left Spanish-speaking communities without “meaningful access” to legal remedies. Id. at 15.
Los Abogados was thus a defiant choice in name, and its mission was formed in direct response to these conditions. In the coming blog posts, we will share how the organization carried this mission forward over the decades.
At our Historical Night on July 11, 2026, we will highlight key moments from Los Abogados’ history—from its founding to the present—including the contributions of non-members, allied organizations, and collaborative bar associations whose efforts shaped access to the profession and the courts.
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