This article discusses the role of education within communities and underscores the changing nature of minority groups in the United States. It specifically examines the struggle between African Americans and Latinos over education, employment, and empowerment in Compton, California. The story of Compton and its school district exposes little-studied tensions across racial lines that emerge when historically disenfranchised groups fight over the scraps of the civic pie. It illuminates how public schools become a venue for the negotiation of power, resources, and control among minority populations within a community. It forces historians, educators, and policymakers to consider schools as sites of economic, as well as educational, opportunity and ultimately examine in a new way the dynamics of power and poverty. (Contains 83 footnotes.)