Federal Courthouse Becomes First to Be Named After a Latina

California is often seen as a hub of progressivism but in truth, it wasn’t always that way. For decades, the education system participated in school segregation, forcing families and children of color to attend underfunded schools. Then in 1947, Felicitas and Gonzalo Mendez, who were Mexican and Puerto Rican, filed a lawsuit on behalf of their daughter Sylvia Mendez and 5,000 other students, who weren’t allowed to enroll in a school in their neighborhood because it was only for white children. After winning their case, they officially ended school segregation in California, paving the way for the historic Brown v. Board of Education ruling in 1954 that ended school segregation across the country. This month, President Biden signed a bill, initially started as a bipartisan bill sponsored by Congressman Rep. Jimmy Gomez, D-Calif., that renamed the U.S. Courthouse in Los Angeles as the Felicitas and Gonzalo Mendez U.S. Courthouse after the Mendez parents. Located at 350 W. First Street in downtown Los Angeles just a few blocks away from where the Mendez case took place, it will be the first courthouse in U.S. history named after a Latina, Axios reported.

“I could have never imagined that one day there would be a law honoring my parents and the four other brave families’ fight for equality,” Sylvia Mendez said in a statement.

Both Felicitas and Gonzalo Mendez faced many struggles for equality throughout their lives. Gonzalo went to a “Mexican” school and was so successful that he transferred to a “white” school, but was forced to drop out to help support his family in the fields. Felicitas also came from a farmworker family and was active in the fight for workers’ rights and faced huge discrimination for her skin color. After marrying and settling on a farm in Westminster, California, they sent their children Sylvia, Gonzalo Jr., and Jerome to enroll in a white public school in their neighborhood but were turned away because of their dark skin and Mexican surnames. After trying many times to resolve the situation with the school, the school board, and the school district, the family decided to file a federal class action lawsuit in federal court against four different school districts in Orange County in collaboration with five other families. Black and Latinx educators and lawyers were brought on to assist with the case including education scholar George I. Sanchez and future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall on behalf of the NAACP.

Ultimately, Mendez et al. v. Westminster, et al., became a historic case that ended school segregation in California – the first state in the nation to do so – and would later be used as the foundation for Brown v. Board of Education. They even won the case again in 1947 after the district appealed the decision in the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Yet for years, the case was forgotten in the shadow of the historic Brown vs. Board of Education. Bills and actions like this ensure that the family’s legacy is never forgotten by history or its people.

The family has been honored numerous times throughout the years including a commemorative post stamp, a walking trail and monument, and having various schools named in their honor throughout the U.S. Sylvia Mendez has been a prominent civil rights activist in her own right, receiving an honorary degree from Brooklyn College in 2009 and Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2011. 

This is a huge win for the Latinx community and the work we’ve contributed to the fight for civil rights.