Edmonia Lewis was the first professional African American and Native American sculptor. She became an internationally acclaimed artist in the 1860′s and 1870′s. Lewis was notable for incorporating themes relating to the Black experience and Native American culture.
Smithsonian Institution

People in the United States observe Native American Heritage Month each year in November. During this period, many Native tribes celebrate their cultures, histories, and traditions. It is also a time to raise awareness of the challenges Indigenous people have faced in the past and today, along with their contributions to the United States as its first inhabitants.

Edmonia Lewis was the first professional Black American and Native American sculptor. She became an internationally acclaimed artist in the years after the American Civil War (1861-1865) and Reconstruction (1865-1877). Lewis worked in a Neoclassical style. Neoclassicists often use subjects from ancient history to make observations about contemporary events. She was notable for incorporating themes relating to the Black experience and Native American culture.

Mary Edmonia Lewis was probably born around July 4, 1844, in Greenbush (now Rensselaer), near Albany, New York, to a free Black American father and a mother who was Black American and at least part Chippewa. Mary Edmonia was orphaned when she was a child. She and her older half-brother Samuel were adopted by her mother’s sisters and raised in a nomadic Native American community on the New York-Canadian border. Mary Edmonia was given the Chippewa name Wildfire.

Samuel became a gold miner in California and financed his sister’s early schooling. In 1859, he also helped her to attend Oberlin College in Ohio. While there, she asked to be called Edmonia Lewis. At Oberlin, Lewis boarded at a minister‘s home with white female students. In 1862, she was accused of poisoning two of her housemates. Days later, she was beaten by a white mob. Although the charges against her were dropped for lack of evidence, Lewis was subjected to a highly publicized hearing. She was later accused of stealing art supplies at the college. That case was also dismissed. However, Oberlin would not allow Lewis to finish her final term and graduate.

In 1863, with Samuel’s help, Lewis traveled to Boston, Massachusetts, where she became acquainted with the abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison. She also met the sculptor Edward A. Brackett, who gave her some lessons in sculpture. Soon, she set up her own small studio. In 1864, Lewis created busts of Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, a Civil War hero who had died leading the all-Black 54th Massachusetts Regiment, and the abolitionist John Brown. With the money she earned from sales of the Shaw and Brown busts and some clay and plaster medallions she created, Lewis traveled to London, England; Paris, France; and Florence, Italy; before settling in Rome, Italy, where she continued her work as a sculptor.

One of Lewis’s most acclaimed works is Forever Free (1867). Commemorating the 1865 abolition of slavery in the United States, the sculpture depicts a Black man and woman emerging from the bonds of slavery. Lewis embraced her Native American heritage with works inspired by the American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and his epic poem The Song of Hiawatha (1855), about the great Native American leader Hiawatha. These included the sculpture Old Arrow Maker (modeled in 1866, carved in 1872) and the busts Hiawatha and Minnehaha (both 1868). Lewis created an acclaimed bust of Longfellow in 1871.

Lewis also carved busts of American presidents, including Ulysses S. Grant and Abraham Lincoln, as well as sculptures of mythic, Biblical, and historical scenes. In 1876, she created a sensation at the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, with The Death of Cleopatra (1876). Lewis’s 63-inch- (160-centimeter-) tall marble sculpture depicts the Egyptian queen in the throes of death.

Lewis continued to exhibit her work until the 1890′s. Little is known about her later years. Lewis is believed to have died in London on Sept. 17, 1907. A number of her sculptures are now part of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, in Washington, D.C.

Ben N. Campbell was a member of the United States Senate from 1993 to 2005. Campbell, a Republican, represented Colorado. Before becoming a senator, Campbell had served in the Colorado House of Representatives and the U.S. House of Representatives.
U.S. Senate

People in the United States observe Native American Heritage Month each year in November. During this period, many Native tribes celebrate their cultures, histories, and traditions. It is also a time to raise awareness of the challenges Indigenous people have faced in the past and today, along with their contributions to the United States as its first inhabitants.

Ben Nighthorse Campbell, a Northern Cheyenne chief, was a member of the United States Senate from 1993 to 2005. He represented Colorado. When he was elected, Campbell became the first Native American person since the late 1920′s to hold a U.S. Senate seat. Charles Curtis, whose mother was part Native American, served in the Senate from 1907 to 1913 and again from 1915 to 1929. Campbell was elected as a Democrat. In 1995, he switched to the Republican Party.

As a senator, Campbell focused on such issues as water conservation and environmental preservation. He worked to protect Colorado’s water resources.

Campbell was born on April 13, 1933, in Auburn, California. His father was Northern Cheyenne, and his mother was of Portuguese descent. Campbell served in the U.S. Air Force from 1951 to 1953. He earned a bachelor’s degree from San José State University in 1957. He also attended Meiji University in Tokyo. Campbell became a judo expert and was a member of the U.S. judo team in the 1964 Olympic Games in Tokyo. During the late 1960′s and the 1970′s, he built a successful business as a jewelry designer and jewelry maker and became a resident of Colorado.

Campbell was elected to the Colorado House of Representatives in 1982. He served from 1983 until 1986, when he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. He won reelection to the U.S. House in 1988 and 1990. In 1992, he was elected to the U.S. Senate, and he took office in 1993. He was reelected in 1998.

In 2004, Campbell announced that because of concerns about his health he would not seek reelection that year to the Senate. His final term as senator ended in January 2005.

American aviation pioneer Wally Funk
© Blue Origin

After training for 60 years, Wally Funk finally arrived in space this summer. Once a trainee of the First Lady Astronaut Trainees (FLAT’s) program run by a National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) physician back in 1961, Funk passed all the tests and training before the program ended. Although these women, later known as the Mercury 13, were not permitted to become astronauts, Funk never forgot her dream of going to space. She had a distinguished career as a pilot, logging thousands of miles or kilometers in the air and teaching thousands of other pilots, not staying on the ground for too long.

On July 20, 2021, Funk flew on the New Shepard rocket built by the company Blue Origin, founded by American businessman Jeff Bezos. She rode with Jeff Bezos, Bezos’s brother Mark, and 18-year-old physics student Oliver Daemen. The rocket rose more than 100 miles (61 kilometers) straight into the air to the boundary of space. The booster separated from the capsule and landed using its engines. The capsule floated back down to the ground on parachutes. The whole flight lasted about 10 minutes.

The American businessman Jeff Bezos poses with the other passengers on the first crewed flight into space of Blue Origin’s craft New Shepard: (left to right) Mark Bezos, American executive; Jeff Bezos, founder of Blue Origin; Oliver Daemen, Dutch student; and Wally Funk, American aviation pioneer.
© Blue Origin

At age 82, Funk was at that time the oldest person to travel to space. She surpassed the American astronaut and senator John Glenn, who returned to space in 1998 at the age of 77 aboard the space shuttle. Wally Funk held the record for 85 days. Since then, Candian-born actor William Shatner, 90, traveled to space on Blue Origin’s second suborbital flight on October 13, 2021, claiming the record.

Mary Wallace Funk was born Feb. 1, 1939, in Las Vegas, New Mexico, near Santa Fe. She began her first flying lessons at the age of nine. Funk graduated first in her flying class at Stephens College in Columbia, Missouri, and earned her pilot’s license in 1958. Funk earned her Bachelor of Science degree in secondary education from Oklahoma State University. There, she joined the school aviation team, the Flying Aggies. In 1960, at the age of 21, she was named a flight instructor at Fort Sill in Oklahoma, becoming the first woman flight instructor at a U.S. military base.

After the FLAT’s program ended, Funk continued her career as a pilot and flight instructor. She became the first woman inspector with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in 1971. In 1974, she became the first woman air safety investigator for the National Transportation Safety Board, investigating plane crashes. NASA began accepting women as astronauts in 1978, and Funk applied four times to the agency for astronaut training. She was denied, despite her experience, because she did not have an engineering degree. Undeterred, Funk pursued opportunities for private space travel, purchasing a ticket for a future suborbital flight with space tourism company Virgin Galactic. Earlier this year, Bezos surprised Funk with a seat on Blue Origin’s inaugural crewed flight, fulfilling Funk’s lifelong dream.

Joseph Medicine Crow was the last surviving war chief of the Crow people. He was a tribal historian and anthropologist, teaching the culture and history of the Crow and other Plains peoples. He is pictured here receiving the 2009 Presidential Medal of Freedom, America’s highest civilian honor.
© EPA/Alamy Images

People in the United States observe Native American Heritage Month each year in November. During this period, many Native tribes celebrate their cultures, histories, and traditions. It is also a time to raise awareness of the challenges Indigenous people have faced in the past and today, along with their contributions to the United States as its first inhabitants.

Joseph Medicine Crow was an activist, author, historian, and leader of the Crow people. He served as tribal historian and anthropologist, teaching others the culture and history of the Crow and other Plains peoples. He was the last surviving war chief of the Crow people.

Joseph Medicine Crow (also known as High Bird) was born on Oct. 27, 1913, in southern Montana, near Lodge Grass. He was raised in the tradition of Crow warriors by his grandfather, named Yellowtail. Medicine Crow learned the history of the Crow from various elders. His great-uncle, named White Man Runs Him, had served as a scout for United States Army officer George Armstrong Custer just before the Battle of the Little Bighorn. White Man Runs Him told Medicine Crow about this experience. Medicine Crow later studied at Linfield College in McMinnville, Oregon, graduating in 1938. He earned a master’s degree in anthropology from the University of Southern California in Los Angeles in 1939, becoming the first Crow person to receive a graduate degree. Medicine Crow later worked as a teacher at a Native American school in Oregon.

Medicine Crow enlisted in the United States Army in 1943 and fought against Germany during World War II (1939-1945). Among Plains peoples, acts of bravery in battle are often considered more prestigious than killing. Such acts, sometimes called counting coup, can be recorded against any enemy. During his military service, Medicine Crow accomplished the four acts of bravery necessary to achieve the status of war chief. These acts are (1) successfully leading a war party against an enemy; (2) entering an enemy camp and stealing a horse; (3) disarming an enemy in battle; and (4) touching a living enemy. A Crow council of elders named Medicine Crow war chief in 1946 after learning of his exploits against German soldiers.

The council appointed Medicine Crow official tribal historian and anthropologist in 1948. Medicine Crow wrote and lectured widely on the Battle of the Little Bighorn and other topics of Plains history. His books include From the Heart of the Crow Country: The Crow Indians’ Own Stories (2000) and Counting Coup: Becoming a Crow Chief on the Reservation and Beyond (2006). In 2009, he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his contributions to the preservation of the culture and history of Native Americans. He died on April 3, 2016.

Louise Erdrich is an American author known for her fiction rooted in her Native American heritage. Erdrich’s mother was a Chippewa, and her father was German American. Many of her characters have mixed Native American and white backgrounds and deal with issues of cultural identity.
© ZUMA Press/Alamy Images

People in the United States observe Native American Heritage Month each year in November. During this period, many Native tribes celebrate their cultures, histories, and traditions. It is also a time to raise awareness of the challenges Indigenous people have faced in the past and today, along with their contributions to the United States as its first inhabitants.

Louise Erdrich is a Native American author. In June 2021, Erdrich won the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction for her novel “The Night Watchman” published in 2020. She based the novel on her grandfather who was a council-member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa. He fought the termination policy that went to Congress in 1953. The book weaves together a family story and the Chippewa efforts to preserve the tribe’s land and treaty rights in the mid 1900’s.

The Game of Silence tells the story of a young Ojibwa girl during the mid-1800′s who sees her people and their way of life threatened when white settlers come to their land.
The Game of Silence by Louise Erdrich. Text and illustration copyright © 2005 by Louise Erdrich. Reprinted by permission of Harper Collins Publishers.

Karen Louise Erdrich was born June 7, 1954, in Little Falls, Minnesota. She grew up in Wahpeton, North Dakota where her parents taught at Bureau of Indian Affairs schools. She is an enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa. Many of her books reflect on her German American and Chippewa heritage and deal with issues of cultural identity. Erdrich’s books also draw on Native American culture, mythology, and storytelling traditions.

Erdrich earned a bachelor’s degree from Dartmouth College in 1976 and a master’s degree from Johns Hopkins University in 1979. She has published 28 books and won the National Book Award in 2012 for her book “The Round House.” Erdrich owns Birchbark Books, an independent bookstore in Minneapolis, Minnesota, that focuses on Native American literature.

Native American politician Deb Haaland
© Romie Miller, Shutterstock

People in the United States observe Native American Heritage Month each year in November. During this period, many Native tribes celebrate their cultures, histories, and traditions. It is also a time to raise awareness of the challenges Indigenous people have faced in the past and today, along with their contributions to the United States as its first inhabitants. 

Deb Haaland is a Native American politician. In 2018, she was elected to the United States House of Representatives as a Democrat from New Mexico. In 2020, President-elect Joe Biden nominated Haaland as the first Native American secretary of the U.S. Department of the Interior.

Debra Anne Haaland was born Dec. 2, 1960, in Winslow, Arizona. She is of Pueblo ancestry and is an enrolled citizen of the Pueblo of Laguna. Her parents both served in the military, and the family moved frequently when she was growing up. In 1994, she graduated from the University of New Mexico with a bachelor’s degree in English. She then started a business making and canning salsa. She earned a J.D. degree from the university’s law school in 2006.

Haaland began her political career as a campaign volunteer for Democratic Party candidates, working to increase voter turnout among Native Americans. She worked as a tribal administrator for the San Felipe Pueblo people from 2013 to 2015. In 2014, she ran for lieutenant governor of New Mexico but was not elected. She served as chair of New Mexico’s Democratic Party from 2015 to 2017.

Isabel Allende, a Chilean author, became internationally famous for her novels set in modern Chile, for her historical fiction, and for her autobiographical writings.
© Tiziana Fabi, AFP/Getty Images

People in the United States observe National Hispanic Heritage Month each year from September 15 to October 15. During this period, many Latin American countries celebrate their independence. These countries include Cuba, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, and Nicaragua.

Isabel Allende is one of the leading novelists and journalists in Chile. Her novels and short stories, which were first published in the 1980′s, have won her international fame and several literary awards.

Allende was a journalist and television reporter in Chile in the 1960′s before joining the staff of the women’s magazine Paula in 1967. In 1970, her cousin and godfather, Salvador Allende Gossens, a socialist politician, was democratically elected president of Chile. In September 1973, Salvador Allende was overthrown and died during a right-wing military coup led by army general Augusto Pinochet Ugarte. The Allende family fled Chile, and Isabel moved to Venezuela, where she worked as a journalist. In 1983, she moved to the United States, where she held various university teaching posts while still pursuing her literary career.

Allende’s first novel, The House of Spirits (1982), is a direct reflection of her experiences in Chile during the time of the Pinochet coup and her later separation from her family. The novel arose out of a letter she wrote during 1981 to her dying grandfather, who had stayed in Chile. The letter recounted all the memories she had that would keep the old man alive for her. The House of Spirits became a best seller, and Allende won great critical acclaim. Her work was compared with that of the eminent Colombian novelist Gabriel García Márquez.

Latin American writers have composed many classics of modern world literature. They include the novels One Hundred Years of Solitude by the Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez, The House of the Spirits by the Chilean writer Isabel Allende, and the short story collection Ficciones by the Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges.
One Hundred Years of Solitude (Translated by Gregory Rabassa. English translation © 1970 by Harper & Row. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins); The House of the Spirits (Penguin Random House); Ficciones (Penguin Random House Grupo Editorial)

Allende’s other works, also steeped in Chile’s turbulent history, include two more novels, Of Love and Shadows (1984) and Eva Luna (1989); and the short story collections Tales of Eva Luna (1990) and The Infinite Plan (1992). Daughter of Fortune (2000) is a historical romance about a Chilean-born woman searching for her lover in California during the 1849 gold rush. Portrait in Sepia (2001) is a family chronicle set in Chile and California from 1862 to 1910. It draws on characters from The House of Spirits and Daughter of Fortune.

Allende’s historical novel Zorro (2005) portrays a dashing hero in California during the early 1800′s. Another historical novel, Inés of My Soul (2006), is set during the Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire in South America during the 1530′s. Her novel Island Beneath the Sea (2010) portrays a revolt of enslaved people in Haiti. In the novel Maya’s Notebook (2013), a young woman flees to a remote island off the coast of Chile to escape from pursuing assassins and law enforcement agents. Ripper (2014) is a mystery novel that features a child detective. The Japanese Lover (2015) is a love story about a Polish-born woman and her one-time Japanese gardener over a period of 70 years of modern history. In the Midst of Winter (2017) deals with three troubled characters with roots in Latin America whose lives intermingle starting with their unexpected meeting in Brooklyn, New York, in the United States. Long Petal of the Sea (2020) tells a story about refugees who flee to Chile to escape the Spanish civil war during the 1930’s.

Allende wrote Paula (1995) in the form of a letter to her daughter, Paula, who was dying of an inherited blood disease. She also wrote a children’s story, La Gorda de Porcelana (The Porcelain Fat Lady) (1984). For young adults, she wrote the trilogy of novels City of the Beasts (2002), Kingdom of the Golden Dragon (2004), and Forest of the Pygmies (2005). In 1997, Allende completed Afrodita: cuentos, recetas y otros afrodisíacos (translated as Aphrodite: A Memoir of the Senses), a nonfiction collection of writing about the history of love potions, which also included recipes. Allende wrote a memoir called My Invented Country: A Nostalgic Trip Through Chile (2003), as well as the related memoir The Sum of Our Days (2008). She received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, one of the highest civilian honors in the United States, in 2014.

Isabel Allende was born on Aug. 2, 1942, in Lima, Peru, where her father was a diplomat. Following the divorce of her parents, her mother took her back to live in Chile, where she lived from the age of 3 until their exile to Venezuela in 1973.

The American automobile racing driver Bubba Wallace poses next to his car, number 43, before a race at Martinsville Speedway in Virginia in 2020. Wallace, who is a Black American racer, sported a Black Lives Matter theme on his car in the wake of the George Floyd killing.
© Jared C. Tilton, Getty Images

On Monday, Oct. 4, 2021, Bubba Wallace became the second Black driver to win a NASCAR Cup Series race. NASCAR driver Wendell Scott was the first Black person to win a Cup race in 1963. Wallace won the race at the Talladega Superspeedway in Lincoln, Alabama.

Wallace is an American automobile racing driver. Wallace competes in the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series, supervised by NASCAR. NASCAR is the organization that governs the most popular form of stock car automobile racing in the United States. The full name of the organization is the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing.

The Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series race is considered the premier championship series of stock car racing. In the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series, a 26-race regular season championship series leads to a 10-race playoff. At the end of the playoff, the four leading drivers race for the total season championship at Homestead-Miami Speedway in Florida.

Wallace joined the series as a replacement for an injured driver in 2017. Wallace became the first Black American to race in NASCAR’s top series since Bill Lester in 2006. In 2018, Wallace joined the series full-time. He finished second at the Daytona 500 race in 2018 and third at the Brickyard 400 in 2019.

American automobile racing driver Bubba Wallace
© Grindstone Media Group/Shutterstock

Darrell Wallace, Jr., was born Oct. 8, 1993, in Mobile, Alabama. He grew up in Concord, North Carolina. He began racing at the age of 9. Wallace is a graduate of NASCAR’s Drive for Diversity program, designed to help women and nonwhite drivers gain entry to the sport.

Wallace joined the regional K & N Pro East Series in 2010. He was named the series Rookie of the Year, becoming the first Black American to win the honor in a NASCAR series. In 2012, he joined NASCAR’s second-tier Xfinity Series, finishing seventh in the series in 2015. He joined NASCAR’s Camping World Truck Series in 2013. That year, he won the Kroger 200 race in Martinsville, Virginia. He became the first Black American driver to win a national touring series race since Wendell Scott in 1963.

In 2020, in the wake of the George Floyd killing, Wallace called on NASCAR to ban displays of the Confederate battle flag at its events, noting that the flag is seen by many as a racist symbol. NASCAR, which had been asking fans not to display the flag since 2015, quickly enacted a ban.

Frida Kahlo’s painting Self Portrait with Monkeys hangs at an exhibition.
© Dieter Nagl, AFPGetty Images

People in the United States observe National Hispanic Heritage Month each year from September 15 to October 15. During this period, many Latin American countries celebrate their independence. These countries include Cuba, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, and Nicaragua.

Frida Kahlo remains an influential painter and feminist icon. Kahlo was an important Mexican painter known for her harsh, revealing self-portraits. Despite living in the 1900′s, she refused to conform to strict gender stereotypes. She boxed, challenged men, dressed in masculine clothing, and smoked. Kahlo was also known for her fashion, wearing traditional-style, colorful dresses, and adorning her hair with flowers and braided styles. Always known for living honestly, Kahlo was openly bisexual.

At the age of 18, she was severely injured in an accident while riding on a bus in Mexico City. Kahlo lived in constant pain and was crippled for the rest of her life. She underwent about 35 operations, including the amputation of one leg. Unable to pursue her dream of becoming a doctor, Kahlo taught herself to paint. In 1929, she married the famous Mexican artist Diego Rivera. Their stormy relationship involved separations, divorce, and remarriage.

Frida Kahlo was an important Mexican painter known for her self-portraits that reflected her physical and emotional suffering. Many of her other paintings include symbolic images and elements from Mexican history.
© Hulton Archive/Getty Images

Kahlo’s paintings are mostly self-portraits that reflect her physical and emotional suffering. She painted with jarring colors and odd spatial relationships. Many of her pictures include startling symbolic images and elements from Mexican history. She often portrayed herself wearing colorful Mexican Indigenous dress and ornaments. Kahlo was born on July 6, 1907, in Coyoacán, in southwest Mexico City. She died on July 13, 1954.

Diego Rivera was a Mexican artist who was famous for painting murals that portrayed Mexican life and history. Rivera is shown here standing in front of one of his paintings.
© Ed Clark, Time Life Pictures/Getty Images

Diego Rivera became famous for murals that portrayed Mexican life and history. Rivera was a controversial figure because of his radical political beliefs and his attacks on the church and clergy.

Rivera was born on Dec. 8, 1886, in Guanajuato. In the 1920′s, he became involved in the new Mexican mural movement. With such Mexican artists as Jose Clemente Orozco and David Siqueiros, he began to experiment with fresco painting on large walls. Rivera soon developed his own style of large, simplified figures and bold colors. Many of his murals deal symbolically with Mexican society and thought after the country’s 1910 revolution. Some of Rivera’s best murals are in the National Palace in Mexico City and at the National Agricultural School in Chapingo, near Mexico City.

Diego Rivera was a Mexican artist famous for his murals. His Detroit Industry Murals are a series of frescoes consisting of 27 panels portraying industry in Detroit. Together they surround the Rivera Court in the Detroit Institute of Arts. A main panel on the north wall shows laborers working at the Ford Motor Company’s River Rouge plant. The artist painted the murals in 1932 and 1933.
Detail of a mural depicting Detroit Industry (1932-33), fresco by Diego Rivera; Detroit Institute of Arts/Gift of Edsel B. Ford (Bridgeman Images)

Rivera painted several significant works in the United States, which he visited in the early 1930′s and again in 1940. Perhaps his finest surviving United States work is a mural at the Detroit Institute of Arts. Rivera died on Nov. 25, 1957.

Sylvia Mendez.
Credit: Richard Rivera, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

People in the United States observe National Hispanic Heritage Month each year from September 15 to October 15. During this period, many Latin American countries celebrate their independence. These countries include Cuba, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, and Nicaragua.

Sylvia Mendez is an American civil rights activist of Mexican and Puerto Rican heritage. Mendez was 8 years old when her father became a plaintiff (person filing suit) in a lawsuit that challenged segregation (racial separation) in public schools. In Mendez v. Westminster, the plaintiffs challenged the legality of segregated schools for children of Latino descent in California. A ruling in favor of the plaintiffs was upheld in 1947, and soon after California outlawed explicitly segregated school systems. The case served as a basis for the case of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. In that case, the U.S. Supreme Court in 1954 declared racial segregation in public schools to be unconstitutional.

Sylvia Mendez was born on June 7, 1936, in Santa Ana, California. Mendez and her family moved to Westminster, California, in the mid-1940′s. There, they leased a farm from the Japanese American Munemitsu family, who had been forcibly moved to an internment camp (see Japanese American internment).

In 1943, Mendez’s aunt brought her own children, along with Sylvia and her brothers, to register for the 17th Street School, the school for the white students in the area. The school for Mexican children was run down and supplied with second-hand textbooks. The Mendez siblings were rejected from the 17th Street School. However, their cousins—who had fairer skin and lacked a common Latino surname—were allowed to register. Mendez’s aunt instead removed all the children from the school. Gonzalo Mendez, the father of the Mendez siblings, had attended the school as a child. He appealed to the principal, superintendent, and school board to allow his children and others of Latino descent to attend the school, but they denied his requests.

In the Mexican school, Sylvia Mendez recalls that the students were not taught to read or write. Instead, the girls were taught to knit and sew, and the boys were taught to do labor. Mendez’s mother, Felicitas, took over management of the farm while Gonzalo hired and worked with the civil rights attorney David Marcus. Along with several families in other Orange County school districts, they built a case, Mendez v. Westminster, representing about 5,000 Mexican American children denied equal access to education. Sylvia Mendez sat in court every day of the trial watching her father. The judge ruled in favor of the plaintiffs on Feb. 18, 1946. The ruling was upheld by the appellate court (court of appeals) on April 14, 1947.

Sylvia Mendez went on to earn an associate’s degree in nursing from Orange Coast Community College. She graduated from California State University at Los Angeles with a bachelor’s degree in nursing in 1976. Mendez worked as a pediatric (children’s) nurse for 33 years. After her retirement, she traveled across America to talk about her family’s efforts in favor of desegregation and education equality. In 2001, a new school in Santa Ana was named for Mendez’s parents. Mendez received the Presidential Medal of Freedom—the highest civilian honor awarded by the president—in 2011. Books based on Mendez’s story include Sylvia and Aki (2011) by Winifred Conkling and Separate is Never Equal (2014) by Duncan Tonatiuh. In 2018, a school in Berkeley, California, was renamed the Sylvia Mendez Elementary School.