Los Angeles Times column<\/a> about an old federal courthouse in downtown L.A. being rechristened after Gonzalo and Felicitas Mendez, the lead plaintiff family in the historic case.<\/p>\nMu\u00f1eton reached out to Andrew Palomino, who met with Supt. Gabriela Mafi soon after and shared his family\u2019s history in relation to the case.<\/p>\n
It started in 1941, when the Palominos moved to Santa Ana and sought to enroll their children in a good public school.<\/p>\n
Frank Palomino testified during the trial that a Garden Grove School District official told him that since his son and daughter were Mexican, they had to attend Hoover School, a so-called \u201cMexican\u201d school, and could not enroll in Lincoln School, where white students attended, until the sixth grade.<\/p>\n
\u201cBeing in this country, I want to raise them as [good Americans], if they give us a chance,\u201d he testified.<\/p>\n
The Palominos sent their son Arthur to John C. Fremont Elementary, a Mexican school in Santa Ana, while enrolling their daughter Sally at a private Catholic school, instead.<\/p>\n
Four years later, they took the school district to court as part of the class-action lawsuit that represented 5,000 Mexican American students and served as a precursor to the federal Brown v. Board of Education case.<\/p>\n
![\"Trustee](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/1781732709_254_.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
Trustee Walter Mu\u00f1eton, center, helped spearhead the renaming effort.<\/p>\n
(James Carbone)<\/p>\n
\u201cRenaming this school in honor of Frank and Irene Palomino is more than just changing the name on a building,\u201d Mu\u00f1eton said during Tuesday\u2019s school board meeting. \u201cThere\u2019s an opportunity to teach future generations about the power of courage, community and standing up for what is right.\u201d<\/p>\n
The school board\u2019s unanimous vote officially renames Rosita Elementary, a school site near where the Palominos had lived, as of July 1 with a ribbon-cutting ceremony planned. It follows in the footsteps of the Santa Ana Unified School District\u2019s decision last year to rename John C. Fremont Elementary in honor of William and Virginia Guzman, another plaintiff family.<\/p>\n
For David-James Gonzales, author of \u201cBreaking Down the Walls of Segregation: Mexican American Grassroots Politics and Civil Rights in Orange County, California,\u201d the renewed attention on the other families in the case is a welcomed development, especially as Garden Grove played a key role.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe testimony of Garden Grove School District Supt. James Kent is crucial to the case,\u201d he said. \u201cHe had used demeaning language. He referred to Mexicans as \u2018dirty\u2019 and claimed they were not culturally, socially and intellectually equal to white children. That helped sway the judge that segregation was really about racial discrimination.\u201d<\/p>\n
After Judge Paul J. McCormick sided with the plaintiffs in 1946, Garden Grove School District refused to integrate its schools while appealing the decision. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ultimately upheld the lower court\u2019s ruling that segregation violated state law.<\/p>\n
Almost 80 years later, the relatives of the Lorenzo Ramirez and Guzman families joined with the extended Palomino family \u2014 who all called themselves the \u201cet als\u201d \u2014 to celebrate the school renaming and the history behind it. They gathered for group photos with trustees after the vote.<\/p>\n
![\"Andrew](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/1781732709_905_.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
Andrew Palomino thanks trustees and district officials for honoring his grandparents\u2019 fight for civil rights.<\/p>\n
(James Carbone)<\/p>\n
It will be the first school renaming in the district in over 40 years.<\/p>\n
Mu\u00f1eton is also in conversation with Santa Ana Councilmember Thai Viet Phan about the possibility of the city renaming Rosita Park, which is next to the school.<\/p>\n
For Andrew Palomino, the forthcoming Frank and Irene Palomino Elementary school comes full-circle as three generations of Palomino children attended Rosita Elementary.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey never expected any type of recognition,\u201d he said of his grandparents. \u201cThey were doing what was right for their children and the community, and in fact they never even told us grandchildren about this case. Now people who walk into the school will learn the history of the families in this very community who helped change the course of American history and fought for civil rights.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Turning a page on its own history, the Garden Grove Unified School District Board of Education voted this…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":364779,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[163,165,164,1436,1431,50161,418,14552,148043,148042,611,148040,148044,148041,338,4265,72848,72],"class_list":["post-364778","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-anaheim","tag-anaheim","tag-anaheim-headlines","tag-anaheim-news","tag-case","tag-family","tag-frank","tag-history","tag-honor","tag-irene-palomino","tag-muneton","tag-orange-county","tag-palominos","tag-plaintiff-family","tag-rosita-elementary","tag-santa-ana","tag-school","tag-segregation","tag-year"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364778","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=364778"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364778\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/364779"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=364778"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=364778"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=364778"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}