As the country celebrates Hispanic Heritage Month, Sylvia Mendez’s role in setting the stage for Brown v. Board of Education has been forgotten and overlooked.
President Barack Obama presents human rights activist Sylvia Mendez with the 2010 Medal of Freedom in the White House on Feb. 15, 2011. Gonzalo Mendez’s testimony in a California courtroom was brief, but within it were layers of American history — of segregation, incarceration and inequality.
Mendez had united with other Hispanic parents in Orange County whose children had been denied entry to public schools, hired the Jewish American civil rights attorney David Marcus and sued in federal district court, leading to the Los Angeles hearing that morning in 1945. solved – it was just that it was too expensive to build a newer, bigger school at the moment, wartime and all. Marcus questioned the superintendent until it became clear that there was no actual merger in the works.Next, the superintendent claimed the schools were separated based on English-language ability, which he determined by a brief conversation on the first day of school; there were neither written tests nor records kept on how the children’s English abilities were assessed.
In 1947, the 9th Circuit upheld the lower court’s decision, forcing the desegregation of White and Hispanic students in Orange County schools. In January 1948, Sylvia Mendez, now 11, and her siblings were finally allowed to enroll in the main school.Monumental as the decision was, it came with some big caveats. Because the school districts decided not to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, the ruling had no effect on other states.
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