The walkouts started the entire Mexican-American cicvil rights movement. Segregation, Jim Crow laws, and the scars of slavery had all had their violent and discriminatory effects on the African American/Black population, especially in the South.Unfortunately, the history of the powerful movement that was comprised of millions of Mexican and Mexican American individuals in the U.S. Southwest that happened concurrently to the African American/Black civil rights movement has been somewhat neglected. Chicanas came out of this important era with an understanding of how both racism and sexism played a role in their own unique oppression that barred them from leadership positions during the 1960s through the 1980s. On March 1-2, 2018, Cal State LA will commemorate the 50th anniversary of the East L.A. Walkouts with a conference featuring panels, guest speakers, a historical photo exhibit and a walk-in to campus by hundreds of LAUSD high school students. The school had forcibly tracked most of the Mexican and Mexican American students into trade and vocational careers They did not allow them to even consider pursuing a degree four-year collegiate institution. This would only fuel the fire that was the movement and begin to confirm that the Anglo community had no intentions of listening or even considering what Chicano’s and their allies had to say. Using the Chicano idea of Aztlan and claiming basic human rights, the students of L.A. and the Southwest began to march and organization around those ideas. What we know about the African American/Black civil rights movements are the obvious events leading up to the political revolutions that ensued. Mexicans and Native Americans had always lived in the Southwest and only through Western Expansionism and multiple advances towards ridding the West of Native American ‘problems’ were Anglos able to successfully move their border across the communities that had been their for centuries. Today is the day that students walked out of East Los Angeles schools protesting their inferior education. The first walkout occurred on March 5, 1968. They felt they were receiving a substandard education because they were Mexicans and Mexican Americans. With influence from both the Chicano movement and the Feminist movement, Chicanas would begin to write their own literature and create their own art that was expressive of their identities. Because of this insertion of a new race and class based hierarchical power, Mexicans and Mexican Americans were considered second class citizens and the youth of the 1960s had seen what the history of the past couple of decades had done to their chances of gaining an equal education. The protesters and organizers of the walkouts thought that they were exercising their constitutional rights to freedom of speech and protest. Known as the East L.A. Chicano Student Walkouts or Blowouts, the protests voiced concerns over run-down campuses, overcrowding, corporal punishment, lack of college prep and culturally-relevant courses, and teachers who were poorly trained, indifferent or racist. The East L.A Walkouts in 1968 were a series of protest for academic prejudice and dire school conditions. Segregation, Jim Crow laws, and the scars of slavery had all had their violent and discriminatory effects on the African American/Black population, especially in the South. The East L.A. walkouts 50 years ago were the uniquely California embodiment of the fury and hope that marked much of 1968.
The East L.A. School Walkouts were an expression of the frustration over the treatment of the larger Chicano community by Anglos both in and out of the classroom. The Chicano movement, or El Moviemiento, was complex and came in to being after decades of discrimination, segregation, and other issues arising over decades of war and violence around the region we now know as the U.S./Mexican border. The 1968 East LA School Walkouts Students learn about education, identity, and activism through an exploration of the East Los Angeles school walkouts, when thousands of students protested unequal educational opportunities for Mexican American students. Sal Castro, a teacher who supported the students and spoke out against racist and discriminatory practices at Lincoln High in East L.A., would be included in the group of thirteen, which sparked uproar in the community in order to reinstate him as a teacher at Lincoln High. Chicano had previously been a derogatory word used by Mexican and Mexican Americans in the U.S. for individuals who were poor and recent immigrants to the U.S.The Chicano movement, or El Moviemiento, was complex and came in to being after decades of discrimination, segregation, and other issues arising over decades of war and violence around the region we now know as the U.S./Mexican border.
The 1960s and 1970s have been well documented and covered historically by scholars interested in the Black Liberation Movement, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, and Rosa Parks, amongst other popular African American civil rights activists.
These organization not only protested unfair conditions, but advanced Chicano rights through legal representation. In March 1968, the students decided to take a stand against the injustice and staged walkouts in schools across L.A. The students felt that the school system disregarded their culture and history and they called for more ethnic studies and more ethnically diverse faculty.The importance of the East L.A. walkouts lies in the growing dissatisfaction of the second and third generations of Mexican American and Chicano students in the high schools and colleges around the Southwest.
These pieces of literature and art inform today’s Chicano scholars and only improve the understanding of the Mexican American and Chicano culture. These walkouts also helped spur the creation the Chicana movement of Mexican and Mexican American women. Today is the day that students walked out of East Los Angeles schools protesting their inferior education. Here is DailyHistory.org article on this event.
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