It’s part of a little-known Bruin mythology, but the story of Reginaldo Francisco del Valle deserves to be told. And as UCLA nears its 100th anniversary, our school should credit this forefather of higher education in Los Angeles.
Ages ago, when Southern California was not much more than a collection of enormous ranches and 90 percent of the state’s population was centered around gold-happy Northern California, del Valle fought to bring the first public institution of higher education to El Pueblo de Los Angeles.
The Los Angeles State Normal School, founded in 1881, was established during a hard-fought legislative session where del Valle, an assemblyman at the time, ensured that the little town of Los Angeles would be prioritized in its development over other cities such as Redding, Santa Rosa and Fresno.
The Normal School would eventually become the UC Southern Branch, which would in turn rename itself as an independent campus: the University of California Los Angeles.
“In short, without the tender of the Normal School, there would be no state university here in Los Angeles,” wrote Ernest Carroll Moore, UCLA’s first director, in his memoir “I Helped Make a University.”
And without del Valle’s advocacy, there would have been no Normal School in Los Angeles.
Los Angeles is now one of the largest metropolitan centers in the world. It is hard to imagine that, a mere 130 years ago, building a school in this part of the state needed a lot of justification.
Dr. David Hayes-Bautista, professor of medicine and director of the Center for the Study of Latino Health and Culture at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, was the lead author of an article making the case for recognizing del Valle’s contributions to the formation of UCLA.
“This is part of the Latino legacy for California,” Hayes-Bautista said when giving a presentation about del Valle during a welcoming event for Chancellor Gene Block put together by the Latino Staff and Faculty Association last March. “California will never fully achieve its future until it completely embraces its past, and we have a huge gap in our memory right now.”
That memory gap is one that California as a whole needs to address. It enhances the importance of del Valle as a respectable Latino bilingual, bicultural, political figure. His heirs, as leaders of the Latino community in Los Angeles, have been much less successful in the scandal-happy times of Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and Speaker Fabian Nuñez.
Del Valle fought for public education at a state and national level in a scarcely populated Southland in order to bring people together during tumultuous times. Two years before the Los Angeles Normal School was created, California legislators had undone the bicultural founding of the state by erasing all the Spanish portions of the California constitution and starting the shift toward English-only policies. Three years later, Congress had passed the Chinese Exclusion Act and started a 60-year discriminatory immigration policy against a single ethnic group.
But del Valle had a vision of state unity that did not exclude him because of his ethnic background. His move to educate the populace of a mostly Latino area came 40 years before the massive deportation of 2 million Mexican American U.S. citizens and nearly 60 years before the pivotal Mendez v. Westminster case ended the practice of segregated “Mexican schools” in our state.
“In past celebrations, including the 1930 dedication of UCLA, del Valle was not recognized, and it is important that he is given his due,” said Hayes-Bautista.
Now, UCLA is moving closer to achieving the dream of making diversity a priority, regardless of how much Ward Connerly wants to throw a fit about it.
The La Opinión ad for the “UCLA Unabashed” campaign displays a university that is not afraid to recognize its location in a city where multiple languages are spoken.
That was also del Valle’s spirit, a man who took pride in representing what was then more commonly referred to as El Pueblo de Los Angeles. UCLA’s oversight of his contributions should become a thing of the past and we should embrace him as a founding father that deserves to be honored.
Defend scandal-happy politicians to Ramos at mramos@media.ucla.edu. Send general comments to viewpoint@media.ucla.edu.