Students learn from Mendez Tribute Monument Park as state legislation aims to elevate case in education
Mendez Tribute Monument Park opened in Westminster just over a year ago, and its visitors are already considering how its subject matter might be brought to future generations.
The park recognizes the importance of Mendez, et al vs. Westminster School District of Orange County, et al, a 1947 case in which five Mexican American families challenged school segregation.
Gonzalo Mendez served as a lead plaintiff in the case after his children were not allowed to attend the Seventeenth Street School in Westminster, instead having to enroll at Hoover Elementary, the Mexican school.
A statue of Gonzalo and his wife, Felicitas, created by artist Ignacio Gomez, now keeps watch over the park at 7371 Westminster Blvd. Another statue at the southern entrance to the memorial site depicts schoolchildren with books in hand.
Teaching-credential candidates at Vanguard University have been visiting the park each semester since it opened Dec. 1, 2022. The future educators received a special treat, as Sylvia Mendez, 87, was on hand to share her childhood story, including the long walk she and her brothers faced each day to attend school.
Westminster opened Mendez Tribute Monument Park to the public on Thursday. The space is dedicated to honoring the history of the Mendez v. Westminster case, which led to the desegregation of schools in California.
Addressing the students, Mendez encouraged them to go the extra mile to help their students. She shared that a teacher would visit her home and teach her to read, adding that parents often are unable to assist their children in learning due to reasons like a language barrier or because they were working outside the home.
“They send you home with the homework, and if you can’t read the homework, how can you do it?” Mendez said. “It was a teacher that helped me, so I know that here, you are going to be future teachers, and you’re the ones that are going to be helping the students. What does that do? It just helps to make our country greater, doesn’t it, to have educated students and to have happy people.”
State Sen. Tom Umberg presented a $1.5-million check to help further the construction of the 2-mile historical trail.
Mendez considers herself a storyteller and an activist for education. Her parents’ efforts to secure equal educational opportunities for their children have more recently come to the surface. Some are hoping that it will also be taught alongside Brown vs. Board of Education, the landmark 1954 Supreme Court decision that ruled separate but equal educational facilities were unconstitutional.
State legislation has been introduced in the form of Assembly Bill 1805 to bring Mendez vs. Westminster School District of Orange County into the curriculum for public schools.
“California has a framework for every subject area, like history [and] social studies, there’s a framework,” said Jeff Hittenberger, dean of the School of Education at Vanguard. “The case is already mentioned in the framework, but it’s kind of optional, and it’s not super highlighted, so this [bill] would put it more at the core of the framework and the standards, so that it would be required to be taught in all California schools.”
Luz Chavez, 25, a first-generation Mexican American in the teaching credential program at Vanguard, said she drew inspiration from Mendez’s perseverance. Learning about the case made her reflect on her own opportunities.
“I think [Mendez vs. Westminster School District of Orange County] should be taught in schools because I feel like Orange County and Southern California, there’s such a high Hispanic population in schools,” Chavez said. “I feel like this is part of their ethnicity, their culture that got impacted because the whole school system would have been different, I feel, had this case not gone forward at all. It put into perspective my whole life, all the opportunities that I had growing up. It would have been different.”
Asked about students getting the chance to learn from a primary source like Mendez, Hittenberger noted it’s not every day they get to meet a “civil rights legend.”
“You’re meeting [someone like civil rights activist] Rosa Parks, you’re meeting somebody who was part of a historic moment that will be remembered in the United States for 100 years,” Hittenberger said. “That’s part of the reason our candidates are so excited to meet her.”
After reading the informational panels at the park, the students set off on a tour, walking a portion of the path that the Mendez siblings took on their way to school. Westminster Assistant City Manager Adolfo Ozaeta joined the walk, sharing with the students how grant funding has helped bring the park to life.
A new project — Mendez Freedom Trail — is expected to break ground in the coming weeks. It will provide more educational material along the route that the Mendez children took to attend Hoover Elementary.
All the latest on Orange County from Orange County.
Get our free TimesOC newsletter.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Daily Pilot.
