Sylvia Mendez - Mendez V. Westminster

Mendez V. Westminster

Mendez's father Gonzalo and his wife Felicitas took on themselves the task of leading a community battle that changed California and set an important legal precedent for ending segregation in the United States. Felicitas attended the family's agricultural business, giving Gonzalo the much needed time to meet with community leaders to discuss the injustices of the segregated school system and to talk to other parents with the intention of recruiting families from the four Orange County communities to join in a lawsuit. Initially, Gonzalo received little support from the local Latino organizations, but finally, on March 2, 1945, he and four other Mexican-American fathers from the Gomez, Palomino, Estrada, and Ramirez families filed a lawsuit in federal court in Los Angeles against four Orange County school districts — Westminster, Santa Ana, Garden Grove, and El Modena (now eastern Orange) — on behalf of about 5,000 Hispanic-American schoolchildren.

During the trial, the Westminster school board insisted that there was a "language issue", however their claim fell apart when one of the children was asked to testify. The testimony proved that most of the children spoke English and showed that Hispanic-American students had the same capacity for learning as their white counterparts.

On February 18, 1946, Judge Paul J. McCormick ruled in favor of Mendez and his co-plaintiffs. However, the school district appealed. Several organizations joined the appellate case as amicus curiae, including the ACLU, American Jewish Congress, Japanese American Citizens League, and the NAACP which was represented by Thurgood Marshall. More than a year later, on April 14, 1947, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the district court's ruling in favor of the Mexican families. After the ruling was upheld on appeal, then-Governor Earl Warren moved to desegregate all public schools and other public spaces as well.