Ms. Sylvia Mendez

Sylvia Mendez is an American civil rights activist of Mexican-Puerto Rican heritage. At age eight, she played an instrumental role in the Mendez v. Westminster case, the landmark desegregation case of 1946. The case successfully ended de jure segregation in California and set a precedent for the better-known Brown v. Board of Education seven years later and paved the way for integration and the American civil rights movement.