A proposal to rename Rosita Elementary School in Santa Ana in honor of Frank and Irene Palomino – civil rights pioneers – was discussed at Tuesday’s meeting of the Garden Grove Unified School District Board of Education.
The GGUSD held a public hearing on the idea. In 1947 the Palominos went to court to challenge the Westminster School District’s practice of sending Mexican school children to a school separate from the white pupils.
That challenge was successful in the courts and it not only led to an end to racial segregation in California public schools, but the case –Mendez v. Westminster School District – served as a precedent in the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision which banned segregation in public schools across the nation…