Sandra Mendez Duran was studying at UC Riverside when she noticed two names in a book: Gonzalo and Felicitas Mendez.
Duran was familiar with the names — they were her parents’ — but not the story that went along with them, the story of a young couple who fought back when they were told their children weren’t allowed to attend a “White” school, a couple who without many resources won their case, leading to the desegregation of California’s schools.
She called her mother and asked, “Could this be us?”
Felicitas Mendez’s response was incredulous. “It’s in a book?”
Duran told that story while advocating in Sacramento on Wednesday, March 20, for legislation that would incorporate the Mendez v. Westminster case into history and social science curriculum standards for California’s public schools.
Related: Legislators want Mendez desegregation case taught in California schools
After their children were denied admittance into the Seventeenth Street School in Westminster, the Mendez parents, along with four other families, filed a class-action lawsuit against four Orange County school districts in 1945. The families were successful, and the decision led to the repeal of segregation laws in California in 1947.
The federal case is considered to have set the stage for the landmark U.S. Supreme Court Brown v. Board of Education case seven years later that said segregation in public schools is unconstitutional.
Sylvia Mendez, now 87 years old, says she still remembers that day when she tried to go to school, alongside her brothers and cousins. Her cousins had lighter skin and hair and were told they could pass as Belgian and be admitted into Seventeenth Street School, she said, but the Mendez kids were turned away.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Mendez, but we’re not allowing Latinos in the school,” the principal told her father when he inquired why his children were barred from the school.
The school board didn’t help — certain cities in…
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