• Liz Cheney Urges Educators to Consider Seeking Office

• Journalist Jemele Hill Thanks Teachers for Impacting Her Life

• Actor/Comedian Praises Educators and Advocates for Hispanic Representation

SAN DIEGO— In 1945, at the age of 9, Sylvia Mendez found herself in court, standing beside her parents as they fought for -- she believed – a playground, one that belonged to a school with a manicured lawn and palm trees.

Her parents had tried to enroll Mendez and her two brothers in the school that was close to their house -- which had a playground -- but the school only accepted white students. Told that their children instead had to attend a school designated for Mexican students, Mendez’s parents and four other Mexican American families fought to end school segregation in four school districts in Orange County, Calif.

“All I was thinking is -- when we went to court -- that they were fighting for me to go to this beautiful school,” Mendez, 86, said at the Council of the Great City Schools’ 67^th Annual Fall Conference. She recounted her involvement in Mendez v. Westminster, the landmark legal case that successfully desegregated California schools and preceded the famous Brown v. Board of Education case, which outlawed race-based segregation in public schools nationally.

Mendez recalled her first day at the school after the ruling, when a white boy said to her, “You’re Mexican. What are you Mexicans doing here?” At home, she cried and told her mother that she didn’t want to attend the school because the white students didn’t want her there.

Mendez remembers her mother telling her, “Sylvia, don’t you know what we were fighting for? We wanted you to know that you are just as equal as that boy, for you not to feel humiliated, for you not to feel inferior, because under God you are just as good as he is.”

For her tremendous courage and the role she played in desegregating the nation’s public schools, the Council presented Mendez with an award at the Fall Conference.

After graduating from California’s Santa Ana Unified School District, Mendez earned nursing degrees and worked as an assistant nursing director. Since her retirement, she has traveled across the country speaking passionately about the case, appearing before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and giving speeches at schools on the importance of a good education. In 2011, Mendez was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama.