Who was Thurgood Marshall, and what is his connection to the Méndez story?
Marshall was a young African American attorney at the time. He and two of his colleagues from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People [NAACP] submitted an amicus curiae brief when the school district appealed the Méndez case. Seven years later, Marshall argued the landmark Brown v. Board of Education case before the U.S. Supreme Court. The decision in that case ended legal segregation of students on the basis of race in American schools in 1954. • Fighting segregation in the Westminster schools was a family effort for the Méndezes and their neighbors. Has your family ever “rallied” around a cause or a problem that you wanted to solve? For what issue would you be willing to make the kind of sacrifices the Méndezes made? Answers will vary. Writing Assignments • Explore your family’s memories of segregation days. Do your parents or grandparents, aunts or uncles recall a time when public facilities were segregated by race or ethnicity? Interview them and use your fin
