The Blowouts:
The Student Walkouts That Fueled the Chicano Rights Movement
Courtesy of the Los Angeles Public Library
While often overlooked and undervalued by decision makers, students and young people have long since been at the forefront of social justice movements across the world. That is equally true of the mid-20th century Chicano/Latino Rights Movement in the United States.
In 1968, 75% of the students enrolled East Lost Angeles public schools were Latino. They faced severe discrimination from their mostly white teachers and school administrations. Schools were severely understaffed, underfunded, and unmaintained, with classroom sizes averaging 40 students and individual school counselors being assigned to manage 4000 students each.
On top of the funding disparities, Latino students were also met with open and systemic prejudice from both their educators and within the curriculum. Latino students were often tracked as being “not college material” and actively discouraged from higher education. Spanish was prohibited in school, with some students reporting being disciplined or even beaten for speaking Spanish. Teachers spoke down to them, reportedly using slurs against students. And their textbooks reflected these same anti-Latino biases with no mention of the histories and contribution of Latino communities in the United States.
Under these conditions, it is no surprise that East LA schools had some of the highest dropout rates in the country, with Garfield High School having a dropout rate of 58%.
The growing frustration of students came to a head on March 1, 1968, when more than 200 students walked out of Wilson High School in East LA. The walkout was motivated by the principal of Wilson canceling a play students wrote about social issues Chicano youth were facing.
This spontaneous act ignited students across East LA to organize similar, though more structured, protests that would come to be known as the Chicano Blowouts.
A few days later, 2000 students walked out of class at Garfield High School. By the end of the week more than 15,000 students walked out of schools across East Los Angeles.
Student and adult organizers came together to create a list of 39 demands to present to the LA Board of Education to address pressing issues facing Latino youth including dual-language education, inclusive curriculum, Spanish-fluent and Latino educators, and reduced class-sizes.
More than 1200 community members attended the March 28th School Board meeting, showing up to support the student organizers. The board rejected the proposal and had 13 organizers (including high school and college students) arrested for conspiring to organize the walkouts.
12 of the 13 organizers were released after, but educator Sal Castro was detained for 3 months until being released on bail, despite thousands of protesters outside of the county jail. Still, Castro was fired from his teaching position, leading to months of sit-ins in the Board of Education office until he was reinstated.
The Blowouts remain one of the largest K-12 protest movements in US history. Many of these student organizers went on to be lifelong activists fighting for civil rights for Latinos in the United States.
Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
While the demands of the students were not met at that moment, their activism ignited their communities and peers into demanding change in their education system, as well as other areas where Latinos faced marginalization. It is on the shoulders of this student movement that we have seen the increased number of districts offering dual language education, and the increased inclusion of Latino history in schools.
