HISPANIC HERITAGE MONTH
From Someone Who Was There: A Discussion with Sylvia Mendez You can learn about a historical event through a written account or well-made movie, but the best way to know what really happened is to hear it from someone who was there. Sylvia Mendez was there. Ms. Mendez was a guest of Holland & Knight for a Sept. 30 firmwide webinar as part of Hispanic Heritage Month. She shared the story of how her family name became part of one of the most important civil rights cases in U.S. history, Mendez v. Westminster, and how she, as an 8-year-old Mexican-American, was at the forefront of the fight for school integration in California 75 years ago. The case was a precurser to another landmark ruling, Brown v. Board of Education, less than a decade later. Before introducing Ms. Mendez, Partner Eddie Jauregui (LAX) recounted how in the 1940s, it was legal to segregate Asian-Americans and Native Americans. Although Mexicans weren’t specifically mentioned in state law, they, too, were heavily discriminated against, especially as their population swelled in Southern California. This is where Ms. Mendez’s story begins. “It all started when my father asked my aunt to take us to school. When we arrived, she was informed that we would have to go to the Mexican school,” Ms. Mendez said. This was despite the fact that her family lived next to the school, which was designated for whites only, and the Mexican school was not even in the district. The next day, her father, Gonzalo, took up the matter with the principal and, soon after, the Orange County School Board, which told him that five cities in the county decided to segregate schools. Inspired in part by a 1944 court case that desegregated public parks in San Bernardino, Gonzalo and his wife, Felicitas, decided to fight and sought out the victorious attorney in that case, David Marcus of Los Angeles.
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“On March 2, 1945, my parents and four other families filed a lawsuit in the federal district court of Los Angeles seeking an immediate injunction against segregation,” said Ms. Mendez, who did not take the stand but helped Marcus practice framing his questions to the other plaintiffs. “On Feb. 18, 1946, the Sylvia Mendez in the 1940s court found in favor of the five plaintiffs, but the school board decided to appeal. On April 14, 1947, the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously upheld the [district court] ruling and I, along with thousands of other minority students throughout Orange County, began attending integrated schools.” Ms. Mendez, now a nationally known civil rights leader and 2011 recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, also shared other aspects of her life and travels and what she has witnessed in the fight for equality. But her court victory is never far from her mind. “Mendez v. Westminster is a case that was won by David Marcus, a lawyer just like all of you,” she said. “I remember my mother saying that nobody knows about how five families fought against segregation here in California and that it was for all the children. It was that day I promised her I would go around the country and talk about it. My goal is to have Top, Eddie Jauregui (LAX) and Isabel Diaz it taught in all schools (MIA), Hispanic Affinity Group co-chair the same way Brown Bottom, Sylvia Mendez and Jorge v. Board of Education Hernandez-Toraño (MIA), is taught today.” Hispanic Affinity Group co-chair
