Justice for Lau

Lau V. Nichols

Adolfo Velazquez, Kendall Reyes, Alan Andrade, Camila Bautista, and Martin Macias
Words (488)
Senior Division
Group Website

Process Paper
After a week or two, we decided that our best choice would be to do our project on Mother
Jones; that is until our AP Government teacher gave us her input. Even though we had already spent
hours researching Mother Jones, the group decided that the court case Lau V. Nichols would be a better
topic because we could all relate to it. Being that we come from a rural area and the majority of our
schools population is Hispanic, with many coming from migrant families we knew it would be a success.
We became clichs and all stuck our heads into books for three straight weeks. Due to lack of
selection in our school library, one of our biggest sources became the internet. It was very difficult to
find non-bias sites. We did find several key sources of not only the case, but also of certain situations
that took place around the same time. Some included the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Although this took
place ten years prior to the case itself, it did have significance to the ruling. Also, we learned that this
case ruling impacted later cases such as Plyler V. Doe in 1982. They were both helping defend the
immigrant students, but in different ways. Two very helpful sources were the sites
http://www.k12.wa.us/migrantbilingual and http://www.ncsl.org. They provided information for the
actual case, but also for cases and situations that branched off this case and its ruling.
Other than the internet, the next biggest source we had was our AP U.S. Government teacher.
She was actually the first one to introduce us to the topic and guided us to certain sources that covered
court case. Although she was not a primary source, her information turned out to be just as useful, if not
more. Her knowledge of the case was not of the small details, but it was substantial enough to get us
interested.
We did run into many problems while carrying out the project. One major issue was the lack of
transportation and sources. Because our school district gave the students three weeks of winter break
instead of the usual two, our group was stuck trying to communicate solely through social media. We
also found ourselves ride less to the local libraries and stuck using nothing but online sources. Although
we hit a few speed bumps, our group pulled through and managed to accomplish what we said we
would.
At the end of this project we realized that this topic was fit for this years National History Days
theme in all ways. While many people will read the theme and suddenly think that it needs to be done
on one sole person, we decided to think outside of the box. We realized that this court case and the
participants defending Lau were all leaders and their legacy will carry on for as long as immigrants dare
to move to this country.