History at Cerritos College

06/21/2023

05/10/2019

The original people of Los Angeles, the Tongva, defined their world as Tovaangar.

04/14/2019

This critical ruling on school segregation came seven years before the better-known Brown v. Board case.

When Gonzalo and Felicitas Mendez, two California farmers, sent their children to a local school, their children were told that they would have to go to a separate facility reserved for Mexican American students.

09/16/2018

Dr. Tomás Summers Sandoval will be presenting, "Hidden Patriots: The Vietnam War in Mexican America," in Science 201 at 11 a.m. on October 23. Before then, you might want to check out his play based on the same oral history interviews.

05/10/2018

History majors: Do you still need to take History 103 Political and Social History of the United States, since 1877?

Good news: Several sections of History 103 in Summer sessions still have space for students.

The first Summer session starts Monday, May 21;
the second starts Monday, June 18; and
the third starts Monday, July 2.

There are sections at different times of day to suit your needs.

Go to MyCerritos today to sign up for a History 103 section that fits your schedule.

[Image: A group of children and adults march with American flags in the streets of Selma, Alabama in 1965.]

05/03/2018

Expanded library hours for finals...see the schedule in the image.

03/06/2018

In March 1968, thousands of students walked out of four Los Angeles high schools. Most were of Mexican descent; they marched for better teachers, better facilities and college prep courses. The walkouts spread to include 22,000 students across L.A. and ignited a generation of Chicano activism.

02/06/2018

Important anniversary coming up...

02/01/2018

A rare, 400-year-old codex made by the Nahua indigenous people shows a map of Mexico at the time of first contact with Spanish conquistadors.

01/30/2018

DID YOU KNOW? Today, January 30th, is Fred Korematsu Day. We shared this same post on this day last year, and we believe it can never be shared too many times.

In 1942 Fred Korematsu refused to follow orders to be incarcerated along with 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry living on the West coast of the United States. In 1944, his case reached the Supreme Court. Justice Roberts, in dissent of the opinion of the court, wrote:

"The indisputable facts exhibit a clear violation of constitutional rights... It is a case of convicting a citizen as punishment for not submitting to imprisonment in a concentration camp, based on his ancestry, and solely because of his ancestry, without evidence or inquiry concerning his loyalty and good disposition toward the United States."

In 1983, when U.S. District Court Judge Marilyn Hall Patel vacated Korematsu's conviction, she said the case is a "caution that in times of distress the shield of military necessity and national security must not be used to protect governmental actions from close scrutiny and accountability."

Fred Korematsu himself feared, "As long as my record stands in federal court, any American citizen can be held in prison or concentration camps without a trial or a hearing."

For more information, visit our partner website encyclopedia.densho.org/Fred_Korematsu/.