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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. 0000003177 00000 n 0000040799 00000 n %%EOF He is a retired master carpenter who lives in Orange County, California. In the 1940s, there were only two schools in Westminster: Hoover Elementary and 17th Street Elementary.
In 2007, a U.S. postage stamp was issued honoring Mendez v. Westminster. 0000008462 00000 n 107 0 obj 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. His children, followed by several students of … 0000085328 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. Orange County schools were segregated and the Westminster school district was no exception. 0000001801 00000 n <>stream 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 … 0000009891 00000 n Also in Kansas City is Ms. Sandra Robbie, who works at Chapman University. 0000006847 00000 n xref 0000001570 00000 n trailer The first panelist, Mr. Gonzalo Mendez, is in Kansas City this morning. 0000000016 00000 n 0000009211 00000 n 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. 0000007706 00000 n 0000006085 00000 n 0000002349 00000 n 132 0 obj 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. 0000001183 00000 n <]/Prev 595780>> 0 0000004540 00000 n 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. 0000000816 00000 n He was seven years old when his family became plaintiffs in the Mendez case. 0000001681 00000 n
17th Street Elementary, which was a "Whites 0000005290 00000 n 107 26 0000084473 00000 n Background. 0000001337 00000 n 6f��#��H� - l�ቦcn�'�+qKJ. %PDF-1.6 %���� His perseverance and determination allowed him to accomplish something not only in his community but throughout California and eventually across America. startxref She learned about the Mendez case about fifteen years ago, and she wrote and produced an Emmy award-winning … In 1998, a new school in Orange County was named the Gonzalo and Felicitas Mendez Elementary School. 0000003726 00000 n endobj 0000084557 00000 n <>
h�b```�-��2� ��ea�X�� ?m��xc����v,���9�X�>k�%�p������N��9L��L��phP����r�� 0000003099 00000 n 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. 0000003458 00000 n The district mandated separate campuses for Hispanics and Whites.