Written and Illustrated by Duncan Tonatiuh
Abrams Books for Young Readers, 2014
Sylvia Mendez
(b. 1936)
Sylvia had on her black shoes.
Young Sylvia Mendez has a rough time on her first day in her new school. She tells her mother that people were rude to her and her mother tells her to remember how hard they fought to attend that school. Three years before, the Mendez family had moved to Westminster when her father leased a farm of his own, after working as a field-worker on other people’s farms. But when they went to register the Mendez children into school, they were told that they had to attend the ‘Mexican school.’ Mr. Mendez protested, but was told that that was how it was and he was given no solid reason. The Hoover Elementary school (the ‘Mexican school’) was a clapboard shack, next to a cow pasture surrounded by an electric fence. The Mendez family tried to rally others to sign a petition to integrate schools, but many parents feared reprisals. They hired an attorney who talked to other families and filed a lawsuit. At the hearing, the school superintendent admitted that he thought the Mexican children were inferior to white children in intelligence, cleanliness and social skills. The judge took almost a year to decide, but he sided with the Mendez family and called for the integration of schools. The school board appealed and the case moved to the state court, where many citizen groups lent their support and wrote letters. The Court of Appeals upheld the decision and the governor signed it into law. Remembering this, Sylvia goes back to school with a new confidence and makes lots of new friends.
The important thing to remember about this story is that it takes place seven years before the Brown vs. Board of Education decision and was one of the first blows struck in the fight against segregation. They were joined in their fight by the ACLU, American Jewish Congress, Japanese American Citizens League, and the NAACP, represented by Thurgood Marshall who would go on to be lead attorney for Brown vs. Board of Education case and a Supreme Court Justice after that. Sylvia continued her parents’ fight when she grew up by traveling and lecturing about their experiences and the impact of the decision on the future of desegregation efforts in America. An Emmy-winning documentary (Mendez v. Westminster: For all the Children / Para Todos los Ninos) aired on PBS during Hispanic Heritage Month in 2002 and Sylvia was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Barack Obama in 2011.
Who could think any children deserved this?
I love that the book opens with Sylvia being treated poorly at school and closes, after their full story is told in flashback, with her determination to succeed at her new school. This was something she felt very strongly about and it makes her a very inspiring role model, as well. Author Duncan Tonatiuh includes actual transcripts from the trial in his text and it’s heart-wrenching stuff. (The fact that the Westminster school was willing to enroll her lighter-skinned cousins with the American-sounding last name is disgraceful.) His illustrations were hand-drawn, collaged and then digitally colored. Although I’m not a big fan of the way he draws faces (always in profile, with large ears and pursed lips), I really do like the rest of his artwork here. By focusing on the people in the story and drawing them all very similar, he reiterates the fact that we all have so much in common, regardless of skin color.
And what did we learn from her? What she teaches me is that when others fight to give you an opportunity, you owe it to them (and to yourself) to make the most of it.
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