Felicitas Méndez

ABOUT FELICITAS MéNDEZ

Puerto Rican activist who gained acclaim for her work during the American civil rights movement of the 1950s and 60s. She and her husband led a battle for educational civil rights that helped set the precedent to end legal segregation in the 1946 case Mendez v. Westminster.

She moved to southern California at age 12 to work in fields with her family. Although Puerto Rican, she and her family were racially profiled as Mexican.

In the aftermath of the Mendez v. Westminster ruling, then-governor of California Earl Warren moved to de-segregate all public schools. As a result, her children were some of the first Hispanics to attend an all-White school in California.

She and her husband Gonzalo had three children.

Her case Mendez v. Westminster helped inform Thurgood Marshall 's argument before the Supreme Court during the landmark Brown vs. Board of Education hearing in 1954.