Google doodle honours Puerto Rican civil rights pioneer Felicitas Mendez

Tech giant Google on Tuesday commemorated the first day of National Hispanic Heritage Month with a new Doodle to honour Puerto Rican civil rights pioneer Felicitas Mendez.

In 1944, Mendez and her husband Gonzalo took on California school segregation laws after their three children were denied entry at a local elementary school because of their skin color.

Their lawsuit got the first federal court ruling against public segregation in 1946 and paved the way for the US Supreme Court’s landmark Brown v Board of Education.

National Hispanic Heritage Month is celebrated from September 15 to October 15 and it honours the contributions that Hispanic and Latino Americans have made to US art, culture, and society.

Mendez was born Felicita Gómez Martínez on February 5, 1916 in Puerto Rico. She moved with her parents to the American Southwest as a preteen, and the family eventually joined the Latino community of agricultural workers in California’s Orange County. In 1935, she married Gonzalo Mendez, a Mexican immigrant who worked with her father in the fields. 

In 2011, Mendez’s daughter Sylvia was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom—the United States’ highest civilian honor—in recognition of her and her parents’ role in the Westminster v. Mendez case and her lifelong dedication to civil rights and education that followed.