Across the Tracks

Light-skinned Alex Bernal was born in California 32 years ago of Mexican parents. Until 1937 he lived in the jampacked slum hovels (shared by Negroes and Mexicans), just beyond the Santa Fe tracks in Fullerton, Calif, (pop. 10,680). Last March, after six years of farming elsewhere, Alex Bernal came home to Fullerton to manage a truck garden, found trouble as well as work.

He paid $750 down and installed his attractive, Mexican-born wife and two small daughters in a $4,250 white-stucco house. The house is in Fullerton's restricted Sunnyside section of moderate-priced homes, one street removed from the slums where Alex Bernal was raised. The Bernals were quiet, clean, good neighbors. But they were also "non-Caucasian."

Three outraged Sunnyside residents (an oil-well driller, a salvage-store manager, a garage owner) dug up a 1923 deed restriction, brought suit to have the Bernals evicted. The charge: the Bernals "are both Mexicans, or persons other than of the Caucasian race. . . ."

The four-day trial was attended by many a U.S. soldier of Mexican ancestry. A long line of plaintiffs' witnesses testified that Mexicans are: 1) dirty, 2) noisy, 3) lawless.

Superior Judge Albert F. Ross finally ruled: "We are a country formed of people that come from other countries. ... If it is decided . . . that because a person is a Mexican ... he can be restricted from occupancy, the same rule will have to apply to the English, French, or anyone else that any residence district might see fit to exclude.

"That might seem desirable, if we wanted to depart from democratic principles. . . . Mr. Bernal is not a Mexican according to our law. ... It would not take Mrs. Bernal long to become an American. . . . The Republic of Mexico is ... a friendly neighbor. . . . Because I feel that the [deed] restriction is contrary to public policy and . . . decidedly unconstitutional ... I will order judgment for defendants."

Alex Bernal had moved across the tracks to stay.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.