Felicitas Gómez Martínez de Méndez (February 5, 1916 – April 12, 1998) was a Puerto Rican activist in the American civil rights movement.

In 1946, Méndez and her husband, Gonzalo, led an educational civil rights battle that changed California and set an important legal precedent for ending de jure segregation in the United States.

[4] They had three children and moved from Santa Ana to Westminster, where they leased a 40-acre asparagus farm from the Munemitsus, a Japanese-American family that had been sent to an internment camp during World War II.

[7] Realizing that the 17th Street Elementary school provided better books and educational benefits, Méndez and her husband, Gonzalo, decided that they would like to have their children and nephews enrolled there.

Thus, in 1943, when she was only eight years old, their daughter Sylvia Méndez accompanied her aunt Sally Vidaurri, her brothers and cousins to enroll at the 17th Street Elementary School.

Her aunt was told by school officials that her children, who had light skin, would be permitted to enroll – but that neither Sylvia Méndez nor her brothers would be allowed because they were dark-skinned and had a Hispanic surname.

[8] Méndez and her husband, Gonzalo, took upon themselves the task of leading a community battle that would change the California public education system and set an important legal precedent for ending segregation in the United States.

Méndez tended the family's agricultural business, giving her husband the much-needed time to meet with community leaders to discuss the injustices of the segregated school system.

Initially, Gonzalo received little support from the local Latino organizations – but, finally, on March 2, 1945, he and four other Mexican-American fathers from the Gómez, Palomino, Estrada, and Ramírez families filed a lawsuit in federal court in Los Angeles against four Orange County school districts – Westminster, Santa Ana, Garden Grove, and El Modena (now eastern Orange) – on behalf of about 5,000 Hispanic-American schoolchildren.

She is survived by four sons: Victor, Gonzalo, Jerome and Phillip; two daughters, Sylvia Méndez and Sandra Durán; 21 grandchildren and 13 great-grandchildren.

Sandra Robbie wrote and produced the documentary Mendez v. Westminster: For all the Children / Para Todos los Niños, which debuted on KOCE-TV in Orange County on September 24, 2002 as part of their Hispanic Heritage Month celebration.

[16][17] The unveiling took place during an event at Chapman University School of Education, Orange County, California commemorating the 60th anniversary of the landmark case.

The "Felicitas and Gonzalo Mendez Learning Center" is a dual school campus commemorating the efforts of the Méndez and other families from the Westminster case.