0000007706 00000 n 0000003177 00000 n 0000006847 00000 n The first panelist, Mr. Gonzalo Mendez, is in Kansas City this morning. 107 26 0000085328 00000 n The district mandated separate campuses for Hispanics and Whites. In 1998, a new school in Orange County was named the Gonzalo and Felicitas Mendez Elementary School. 0000001183 00000 n 0000006085 00000 n 0000001337 00000 n His children, followed by several students of …
His father Gonzalo Sr. had originally attended the 17th Street School as a child and wanted his children to attend it too, as it was located close their home in the Raitt/Townsend neighborhood of Santa Ana. 0000084473 00000 n Background.
%%EOF Felicitas came to the U.S. with her family in 1926, when the Arizona Cotton Growers Association recruited 1,500 Puerto Ricans to pick cotton. 0000003099 00000 n 0000001570 00000 n <> %PDF-1.6 %���� Five Mexican-American fathers (Thomas Estrada, William Guzman, Gonzalo Mendez, Frank Palomino, and Lorenzo Ramirez) challenged the practice of Mexican school segregation in the United States District Court for the Central District of California, in Los Angeles.They claimed that their children, along with 5000 other children of "Mexican" ancestry, were victims of unconstitutional discrimination … He was seven years old when his family became plaintiffs in the Mendez case. 0000003458 00000 n
0000085111 00000 n He is a retired master carpenter who lives in Orange County, California. His perseverance and determination allowed him to accomplish something not only in his community but throughout California and eventually across America. trailer 132 0 obj Gonzalo Mendez wanted his children to attend Roosevelt School in Westminster but they were not allowed in the school based on the color of their skin and race. Orange County schools were segregated and the Westminster school district was no exception. 17th Street Elementary, which was a "Whites Later known as the top orange picker in Orange County, Gonzalo was born in Chihuahua, Mexico; he moved to Orange County at age six and left school after the fifth grade. 0000003726 00000 n In the 1940s, there were only two schools in Westminster: Hoover Elementary and 17th Street Elementary. h�b```�-��2� ��ea�X�� ?m��xc����v,���9�X�>k�%�p������N��9L��L��phP����r�� 0000000816 00000 n 6f��#��H� - l�ቦcn�'�+qKJ. startxref xref 0000040799 00000 n
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0000009211 00000 n Mendez’s father, Gonzalo, was at the center of Mendez vs. Westminster, which desegregated California schools years before the Supreme Court’s landmark Brown vs. Board of Education. 0000001681 00000 n <]/Prev 595780>> <>stream 0000004540 00000 n 0000001801 00000 n endobj In 2007, a U.S. postage stamp was issued honoring Mendez v. Westminster. 0 Gonzalo Mendez noticed that it wasn't only his children whose rights were being violated but about 5,000 other students who were not receiving an equal opportunity to education in Southern California. 0000000016 00000 n 0000084557 00000 n 0000005290 00000 n Also in Kansas City is Ms. Sandra Robbie, who works at Chapman University. Mendez's three children, Sylvia, Gonzalo Jr. and Jerome Mendez, attended Hoover Elementary, a two-room wooden shack in the middle of the city's Mexican neighborhood, along with the other Hispanics. 0000001315 00000 n
She learned about the Mendez case about fifteen years ago, and she wrote and produced an Emmy award-winning … 0000008462 00000 n