JOLIET – Sylvia Mendez shared Friday a story she promised her mother she would tell everyone: her family’s fight to make sure she and her siblings could attend an all-white school.

When Mendez was turned away in the 1940s from a Los Angeles-area school because of her Mexican heritage, her parents filed a lawsuit in 1946 – known as Mendez v. Westminster – that ended segregation of Mexican children in California schools.

The case paved the way for the landmark Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka ruling eight years later.

A fight for everyone

Mendez said when she retired from nursing to take care of her mother, her mother told her the case wasn’t just fought for her, but for everyone.

“It was that day that I promised my mother, ‘Mother, I will make sure that everybody knows about Mendez v. Westminster,’ ” she said to a crowd of high school students Friday. “It’s been a long, hard struggle and I still go everywhere and a lot of people don’t know because if it’s not in your schoolbooks, you’re not going to learn about it.”

Mendez came to Joliet Junior College on Friday to talk to high school students about the struggle of Latino families in California to have integrated schools for their children.

About 200 students from high schools throughout Will County attended as part of JJC’s fourth annual Latin@ Student Empowerment Conference.

The conference is designed to inform students about their educational options after high school and to inspire them to attend college.

Having Mendez come to JJC was a way to connect students to history, JJC Latino student support specialist Martha Villegas Miranda said.

“They see someone who looks like them and comes from the same background fighting to get the right to an education,” she said.

When Mendez and her siblings were in elementary school, they were told they could not attend a Los Angeles-area public school because of their ethnicity. They were told to enroll at a “Mexican school.”

That school was next to a cow pasture, Mendez recalled, and had an electric fence that proved dangerous for one girl playing outside with a ball.

Mexican children were separated from white children in schools in the early 1910s. Eighty-nine percent of all school districts in the Southwest region were segregated, according to a 2003 documentary shown to students called “Mendez vs. Westminster: For All the Children/Para Todos Los Ninos.”

Her father, Gonzalo Mendez, represented by a civil rights attorney, took to court four Los Angeles-area school districts who rejected his daughter, according to the United States Courts.

The case resulted in a federal judge ordering school districts to cease discriminatory practices against students of Mexican descent.

California’s governor at the time also signed a bill ending school segregation throughout the state, making California the first state to officially desegregate its public schools.

Miranda said Mendez’s story is not just about education, but working together. She had the high school students take pictures with Mendez and she hoped they would share her story.

“I hope I have 200 ambassadors here to tell the Mendez story of justice, of equality and of unity,” she said. “We need you to go back and tell your schools, your teachers, your parents.”

JJC Student Trustee Brian Herrera said growing up, he learned about many civil rights heroes, such as Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X and Rosa Parks.

“We don’t learn about Hispanic figures. … This is part of our history, this is our story,” he said.

Heidy Rodriguez, a Romeoville High School student, said Mendez’s story was powerful and inspiring.

She said she didn’t know about it until coming to the conference.

“Most people would know about Brown v. Board. If I didn’t come here, I wouldn’t have known about this,” she said.