NEWS 5
SANTA ANA COLLEGE el Don/eldonnews.org • MONDAY, APRIL 25, 2016
CHANGE: 70 YEAR ANNIVERSARY OF THE LANDMARK CASE
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 4
California Gov. Earl Warren, (who would later become
a U.S. Supreme Court Justice), also ended segregation
for American-Indian and Asian children, making California the first state to be completely integrated.
Whether the law called for it or not, Robbie saw
something in the past to unify the American experience of living as a person of color.
“We talk about black history. We talk about Latino
history. We talk about Asian history. We talk about it
as if our lives don’t connect with each other and in
Mendez, it just blows everything apart to show that we
are absolutely connected,” Robbie said.
Like Robbie, Sylvia Mendez says the fight is not over.
“When we went to court they were saying the reason
they didn’t want us in a white school was because we
were dirty, immoral. And now we have someone who’s
running for president who’s saying the same thing,”
Mendez said.
Sylvia, 79, remembers conversations she had with her
parents, Gonzalo and Felicitas Mendez. They would tell
her of how restaurants refused to serve them, of having
to sit in the balconies of movie theatres and of avoiding
public parks where they weren’t welcome.
Her parents protected young Sylvia from facing discrimination for as long as they could.
“What happened was that I didn’t realize what they
were fighting for,” Mendez said.
It wasn’t until after the court decision, when she was
10, that she first felt discriminated against when she
was verbally abused by a boy after her father moved
her to an all-white school. She remembers going home
crying because the boy told her that Mexicans didn’t
belong at a school with whites.
“Don’t you realize that’s what we were fighting all
those years?” her mother asked.
Sylvia introduced legislation in Sacramento to
include the case into California’s school textbooks but
it was vetoed by then Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. As
a result, Sylvia continues to visit schools in different
states at least three times a week educating students
about the history of the Mendez case.
For her efforts, President Barack Obama awarded Sylvia Mendez the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2010.
“It was just ordinary farmers that had not even
finished high school that stood up against the establishment and were able to win. If you see an injustice, there
is no reason why we can’t fight it. We just join together
and fight it,” said Mendez.
Mendez has lived long enough to witness her parents’
legacy and that of four other families over the last 70
years since a lawsuit gave children of color access to the
same education as white students.
Last month, a sculpture of Lorenzo A. Ramirez was
installed at Santiago Canyon College. Lorenzo and his
wife Josefina joined the suit after their three sons were
denied at Roosevelt, a white school in El Modena. “We
live in a country where everyone is equal,” Ramirez told
the court at the time.
In 2000, Santa Ana Unified School District opened
Mendez Fundamental Intermediate School, on Bristol
and 17th streets, in honor of Gonzalo and Felicitas
Mendez.
Robbie recently began the OC PeaceRide, a tour
around Old Towne Orange that revisits Orange County’s segregated history. Riding in a former Disneyland
trolley, passengers travel past an old movie theatre
where Mexicans sat in the balcony while whites sat
below, and a public pool where the only day they were
allowed to swim was Monday and the pool was cleaned
before whites went in. The tour also takes place in several other locations, including a cemetery, the former
packing house, and a spot at the nearby Chapman
University campus where Martin Luther King Jr. once
gave a speech.
“When I learned about Mendez, so many of life’s
truths became apparent to me, and one of the things
was, the truth is that history takes time,” Robbie said.
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Pub Date: 4/25, 5/23