KOCE won both an Emmy and a Golden Mike Award for
Mendez vs. Westminster:
Para Todos Los Ninos/For All the Children, which tells the story of segregation and discrimination in Orange County schools. Mendez vs. Westminster offers a living history of one of the most important stories in the American Civil Rights Movement. In May 2004, America celebrated the 50th anniversary of the historic Brown v. Board of Education decision that ended legalized segregation.

Sylvia Mendez was a third-grader in 1943, a time not so long ago, when students from different races were required to enroll at separate campuses.  When she and her siblings were banned from attending the segregated all-white campus near their Orange County home, the Mendez family fought back. Their 1946 victory desegregated public schools in Orange County and became a precedent for broader decisions. 

One year later, upon the victory of the appeal in the Ninth Circuit Court, then Governor Earl Warren stopped segregation in all California public schools

Later, as a chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court in 1954, Warren wrote the opinion in Brown vs. Board of Education that declared segregation in all public schools unconstitutional.

Today, 58 years after the Mendez vs. Westminster School District case, and 50 years after the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed the “separate but equal” doctrine in Brown vs. Board of Education, California’s schools are known for being among the country’s most ethnically and racially diverse.

Sandra Robbie, was a Latina working as an intern at KOCE-TV when she got the idea to produce a documentary exploring this local case and it’s far-reaching implications, Mendez vs. Westminster: For All the Children / Para Todos los Ninos.  She produced the piece with KOCE-TV while still an intern, and less than 2 years later, the documentary was completed and it had earned an Emmy and a Golden Mike. 

Robbie calls Mendez vs. Westminster a milestone in the Hispanic civil rights movement, and wishes to educate the nation about Orange County’s role in creating such widespread change.  “Many people don’t realize that the civil rights movement wasn’t limited to the deep South or that it represented more than a struggle between black and white – it was about people of many colors and it was a fight that resonated throughout the country,” she says.  “What happened here in our own backyard more than 60 years ago truly changed our nation.”

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