What exactly does one expect when attending an appearance by a nationally known Civil Rights Activist? One who has been awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest honor possible for a civilian, in our country? An average woman thrust into the spotlight at the age of eight, by her mother and father spending years of their lives and countless dollars to insure her, an equal education in an unequal land. Fire and brimstone, podium pounding radicalism or maybe just a little of that old fashion, country preacher, grab you, kind of truth. After all it takes a strong person to make changes in the world, doesn’t it?
None of this from Sylvia, it was a pleasant surprise. Sylvia Mendez exemplifies the strength needed to mold the world into a thing to be proud of. More importantly she is a shining example of what peace can do for all of us. Throughout the night at her appearance in the U.G.A. Chapel, she displayed the love and kindness needed to affect the kind of changes Martin Luther King and Gandhi created. If there were ever a person who projects love and kindness more effectively with such a wonderful air, smile and sprit, I’ve never met them. Her appearance at UGA was as part of UGA’s recognition and celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month (nationally recognized September 15 – October 15 each year). Paul Duncan LACSI
“I do this because my Mother asked me to make sure all the effort they, my parents, put into this, didn’t go to waste. I do this because I believe everybody is equal in the eyes of the Lord. I have never been an activist, merely branded so, by the media; I am an advocate for education.” Sylvia Mendez September 20, 2011.
Sylvia went on to implore all students present to attain their education at all costs, doing so while radiating a simple, joyful, loving spirit.
During the landmark case Mendez v Westminster, 1943 – 1946, the school superintendant was the main opponent to Mexican Americans attending school with white Americans. During the trail his thesis from college was introduced as evidence. In it he described Mexicans as filthy, disease ridden, bug infested and ignorant, incapable of learning on the same level as white Americans. These, his own words destroyed Westminster’s case. These words of ignorance are being used once again and have shoved bill, HB 87 into existence. This bill is not prejudice and equally treats people from all nations unequally. The prevalence and persistence of ignorance forced this unassuming nurse and her family to become Heroes in the American civil rights movement, during the forties. The insistence of ignorance, because it is insistent and relentless, took the nation to the brink of destruction and caused us to live through one of the toughest times in our history, the Civil Rights Movement of the sixties.
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” George Santayana. Have we learned nothing? Are we to endure the onslaught of ignorance once again in this century? There are two ways to test the depth of a person’s ignorance, one is to point out how ignorant they are and the other is to elect them. www.kennesawtaylor.com