Mendez Tribute Monument Park and Freedom Trail

In 1947, Gonzalo and Felicitas Mendez led an educational civil rights battle that changed California forever. Their daughter, Sylvia Mendez, was the catalyst for their efforts. Their landmark desegregation case set the legal precedent for the famous Brown v. Board of Education case, paved the way to meaningful integration and public school reform, and set the stage for the American civil rights movement.

The 0.2-acre site is small but bursts out of its boundaries. It features sculptures and art pieces created by local artist Ignacio Gomez, a park plaza with seating, and an interactive station with interpretive panels to share the Mendez story with visitors. The design incorporates recycled materials for the site furniture, drought-tolerant plantings, accent and security lighting, and water-saving irrigation technology, as well as a dry creek bed and depressed planting areas that capture stormwater on site.

The park is chock-a-block full of AR and other interactive technology. The essence of AR is that your device—phone or tablet—uses its camera to recognize objects in the real world and then renders computer graphics to the same 3D space, creating the illusion that virtual objects are in the same physical space with you. Throughout the park, visitors find AR targets, icons that instruct their phones to activate an AR experience.

A scavenger hunt sends kids through the park looking for educational items.  A “newspaper” from Feb 20, 1946 is suddenly right in front of you as a 3D image you can zoom in on and flip to read the Federal court ruling ending the segregation of Latino school children. A local wall mural depicting segregation in Westminster in 1947 becomes an interactive slide puzzle. Sylvia Mendez, herself, will talk to you—you can even have someone take your photo standing with Sylvia. And, Jasmine, a local high school student, becomes a “character” guide, providing 90-second educational bites about the constitutional significance of the court ruling. There are several other AR interactions such as a celebratory graduation cap with a confetti burst of color and an interactive spinning carousel playfully highlighting six American guiding principles.