UC Irvine

ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION

Sol y Sombra: San Bernardino’s Mexican Community, 1880-1960

By

Mark Anthony Ocegueda

Doctor of Philosophy in History

University of California, Irvine, 2017

Professor Vicki L. Ruiz, Chair

This dissertation documents San Bernardino's Mexican American people and their

quest for civil rights in the day to day. Citrus and Santa Fe railroad workers, as well as

Mexican middle class business owners, utilized defense committees, newspapers,

baseball teams, mutualistas, and the local the Catholic Church, to counter discrimination,

especially segregationist ordinances. I argue that San Bernardino’s geographical

placement as a gateway into southern California solidified the city as an important

regional economic hub during the early twentieth century that ultimately nurtured the

development of a diverse and distinct Mexican American community. Sol y Sombra

explores how the city became an important space for the propagation of conceptions of

juvenile delinquency and their use to uphold the segregation of public parks and pools. I

reveal resistance to segregation through community grassroots mobilization. Led by the

Valles family, Puerto Rican newspaper editor Eugenio Nogueras, and Catholic cleric José

Nuñez these efforts culminated in Lopez v. Seccombe (1944), one of the first successful

judicial challenges to racial segregation. I connect how this little known case eventually

made waves throughout the region by influencing other important legal challenges,

including Mendez v. Westminster (1947).

This study also showcases the Mitla Café as a centerpiece of community life and

as a site that reveals the untold history of a prosperous Mexican American business

community along Route 66. Moreover, this dissertation explores how postwar urban

renewal projects, such as the development of the Inland Empire’s U.S. 395 freeway

contributed to the decline of this vital business district once renowned to travelers along

Route 66. Ultimately, this study posits the Inland Empire and the city of San Bernardino

as an important contested space for furthering our understanding of U.S. history.