Sylvia Mendez
Sylvia Mendez's name is synonymous with the most consequential civil rights case in the United States between Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896 and Brown v. Board of Education in 1954. On April 14, 1947, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals found in favor of Sylvia, her family, and other families in Orange County, California. The court charged the county with illegally segregating Mexican-American students from Anglo students in its public schools. (California laws permitting the segregation of Asian-American and Native-American students were struck down seven years later in the Brown decision.) Sylvia Mendez was no less a student hero in the civil rights movement than Linda Brown, Ruby Bridges, James Meredith, the Little Rock Nine, the Greensboro lunch counter sitters, the student Freedom Riders, and thousands of others whose names may never be commonly known. In 2011, President Obama awarded Sylvia the Presidential Medal of Freedom.