Renaming ceremony at Santa Ana elementary school honors legacy of parents who fought segregation

More than 80 years after they challenged school segregation in California through a landmark federal court case, the Santa Ana Unified School District honored two Mexican-American parents, Virginia and William Guzman, at a dedication ceremony renaming an elementary school in their honor.

The recent ceremony is part of local efforts to shed light on the families involved in the history of Mendez v. Westminster, a 1947 class-action lawsuit that challenged school segregation by suing multiple districts, including Westminster, Santa Ana and Garden Grove. The Guzmans were one of five Mexican-American families involved in the case, which helped lay the groundwork for the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education.

“SAUSD proudly dedicated the newly renamed and modernized Virginia and William Guzman Elementary School,” district officials said in a statement, “inspired by students who learned about the Guzman family’s courage through ethnic studies and helped bring this honor to life.”

Formerly Fremont Elementary, the school was renamed following a unanimous vote by the SAUSD board last year, with the change taking effect in June.

At the time of the Mendez court decision, segregation was widespread in California’s public schools, with children who had Mexican surnames routinely placed on separate campuses that received fewer resources than those serving White students. One of those schools was Fremont Elementary, which Virginia Guzman attended as a child and where she later recalled witnessing Mexican students face punishment for speaking Spanish.

When her 8-year-old son, Billy, was set to attend Fremont, Guzman asked school officials to transfer him to Franklin Elementary, a predominantly White, better-resourced school. After her request was denied, the Guzmans became the first family to pursue legal action against the district in an effort to challenge school segregation.

Although those early efforts were unsuccessful, they paved the way for Mendez v. Westminster in 1945. Which, after a two-year court battle, resulted in a U.S. District Court judge ruling in favor of the Mendez, Guzman, Ramírez, Palomino and Estrada families and declaring the segregation of Mexican-American students unconstitutional.

In 2024, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed AB 1805 into law, requiring public schools to include the Mendez v. Westminster case as part of the state’s history and social science curriculum.