Salvador Roldan vs Los Angeles County
Salvador Roldan vs Los Angeles County
Painting
The painting is titled “Salvador Roldan vs Los Angeles County”. It is in honor of my uncle and aunt. In 1931, they were denied a marriage license because in CA interracial marriages were prohibited between Caucasians and “negroes, mulattoes and those of Mongolian descent”. They sued LA county and won based on the legal argument that Filipinos were of Malayan descent, not Mongolian, using Joseph Frederich Blumenbach’s classification of five separate races.
They got married but 5 months later CA passed legislation that prohibited Malayan descendants from marrying Caucasians.
In the painting, the flowers represent the national flowers of England (my aunt immigrated from England) and the Philippines. The skulls are Mongolian & Malayan illustrations from Blumenbach’s documentation. The “Positively No Filipinos Allowed” is taken from a 1930 photo from Stockton, CA.