Sylvia Mendez
| Sylvia Mendez | |
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Sylvia Mendez waiting in the Green Room of the White House as recipients of the 2010 Presidential Medal of Freedom are introduced.
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| Born | 1936 Santa Ana, California |
| Nationality | American |
| Occupation | American civil rights activist of Mexican-Puerto Rican heritage. |
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Thurgood Marshall's amicus brief filed for Mendez on behalf of the NAACP contained the arguments he would later use in the Brown case.
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 You may view: Civil Rights- Mendez vs. Westminster By: Oscar Rosales on YouTube. |
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You may view: 2010 Presidential Medal of Freedom Recipient: Sylvia Mendez on YouTube. |
Sylvia Mendez (born 1936) is an American civil rights activist of Mexican-Puerto Rican heritage.
At age eight, she played an instrumental role in the Mendez v. Westminster case, the landmark desegregation case of 1946. The case successfully ended de jure segregation in California and paved the way for integration and the American civil rights movement.
Mendez grew up during a time when most southern and southwestern schools were segregated. In the case of California, Hispanics were not allowed to attend schools that were designated for "Whites" only and were sent to the so-called "Mexican schools." Mendez was denied enrollment to a "Whites" only school, an event which prompted her parents to take action and together organized various sectors of the Hispanic community who filed a lawsuit in the local federal court. The success of their action, of which Sylvia was the principal catalyst, would eventually bring to an end the era of segregated education. She was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the United States' highest civilian honor, on February 15, 2011.
Mendez was born in 1936 in Santa Ana, California. Her parents were Gonzalo Mendez, an immigrant from Mexico who had a successful agricultural business, and Felicitas Mendez, a native of Juncos, Puerto Rico. The family had just moved from Santa Ana to Westminster to tend a farm that they were renting from the Munemitsus, a Japanese-American family that had been sent to an internment camp during World War II. This took place during a period in history when racial discrimination against Hispanics, and minorities in general, was widespread throughout the United States.
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