1968: East Los Angeles Walkouts

Discrepancies in the education of Anglo and Mexican-American students surfaced in Los Angeles during the 1950s and 1960s. Mexican-American students experienced a 60% dropout rate from high school, and those who did graduate averaged the reading level of an 8th grade Anglo student. In some schools, teachers prohibited students from speaking Spanish, and in others, school staff recommended Mexican-American students educational curriculum meant to help students with mental disabilities. These schools funneled many Mexican American students into vocational programs and discouraged from post-secondary studies. In response, students, teachers, parents, and activists began to organize.

The East Los Angeles Walkouts, also known as Blowouts, reflected a mass response to these discrepancies. From March 1-8, around 15,000 students walked out of their classroom in protest thanks to the organization of collective groups, who together formed the Educational Issues Coordinating Committee (EICC). This committee continued to voice student concerns even after the walkouts concluded, ultimately presenting a list of demands to the Los Angeles Board of Education, including recommendations for curriculum changes, bilingual education, and hiring of Mexican-American administrators.

The Board said they could not fulfill the demands due to a lack of funding. Shortly after EICC made their demands, police arrested 13 of the organizers on felony conspiracy charges. However, Sal Castro remained imprisoned even after police released 12 other organizers. This shifted the EICC goals from policy to legal representation, which eventually led to the group’s dissolution. Nonetheless, organizers continued to demonstrate in support of Castro, who police eventually released. The school later reinstated him.

The East Los Angeles Walkouts represented a call to action for civil rights and access to education for Latino youth in the city. Even with the rejection from the Board of Education, the event remains one of the largest student protests in United States history. In bringing together so many organizing groups, the demonstrations also highlighted an ability to mobilize across age and class lines. The walkouts also represented a strong group commitment to the Chicano identity, which continued to develop afterwards.

Timeline

March 1 - 8, 1968	Over 15,000 high school students walk out of seven different schools in East Los Angeles.
March 11, 1968	Educational Issues Coordinating Committee (EICC) forms to present the concerns to the LA Board of Education.
March 28, 1968	Community meeting occurs with the LA Board of Education and the EICC presents their 39 demands.
March 31, 1968	Thirteen walkout organizers are arrested, with twelve released soon after demonstrations outside of the Hall of Justice in Downtown Los Angeles but schoolteacher Sal Castro is kept longer.
June 2, 1968	Castro is released on bail, but is fired from his teaching position, with continued demonstrations demanding his job be reinstated.
October 2, 1968	After months of sit-ins at the office of the LA Board of Education, 35 demonstrators are arrested, and Castro's job is reinstated.

Resources

Student Activism: 1968 Los Angeles Walkouts to Gen Z Justice
Listen to this podcast in which Huntington Fellows Herman Luis Chavez and Maria Guadalupe Partida speak with youth activist Daphne Frias and scholar Dr. Manuel Haro to discuss Latino student activism. The episode focuses on the 1968 East Los Angeles school walkouts, one of the largest student-led marches in American history, alongside the contemporary justice pursued by Gen Z students at the intersection of disability, educational, and civic activism. Library materials include photograph collections and periodicals. A Latinx Resource Guide: Civil Rights Cases and Events is an online resource guide of civil rights figures, cases, and events impacting the Latinx community in the United States.

Staff in the Hispanic Reading Room can provide access to these books at the Library of Congress. If you cannot visit the Library in person, please contact us using Ask a Librarian for assistance. In many cases, you can also find these materials at your local library.

The following titles link to fuller bibliographic information in the Library of Congress Online Catalog. Links to additional online content are included when available.

Blowout! by Mario T. García; Sal Castro; Mario T. García
ISBN: 9781469618982
Published/Created: 2014-08-01
In March 1968, thousands of Chicano students walked out of their East Los Angeles high schools and middle schools to protest decades of inferior and discriminatory education in the so-called "Mexican Schools." During these historic walkouts, or "blowouts," the students were led by Sal Castro, a courageous and charismatic Mexican American teacher who encouraged the students to make their grievances public after school administrators and school board members failed to listen to them. The resulting blowouts sparked the beginning of the urban Chicano Movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s, the largest and most widespread civil rights protests by Mexican Americans in U.S. history. This fascinating testimonio, or oral history, transcribed and presented in Castro's voice by historian Mario T. Garcia, is a compelling, highly readable narrative of a young boy growing up in Los Angeles who made history by his leadership in the blowouts and in his career as a dedicated and committed teacher. Blowout! fills a major void in the history of the civil rights and Chicano movements of the 1960s, particularly the struggle for educational justice.
Mi Raza Primero, My People First by Ernesto Chávez; Ernesto Chávez
ISBN: 9780520230187
Published/Created: 2002-10-24
¡Mi Raza Primero! is the first book to examine the Chicano movement's development in one locale--in this case Los Angeles, home of the largest population of people of Mexican descent outside of Mexico City. Ernesto Chávez focuses on four organizations that constituted the heart of the movement: The Brown Berets, the Chicano Moratorium Committee, La Raza Unida Party, and the Centro de Acción Social Autónomo, commonly known as CASA. Chávez examines and chronicles the ideas and tactics of the insurgency's leaders and their followers who, while differing in their goals and tactics, nonetheless came together as Chicanos and reformers. Deftly combining personal recollection and interviews of movement participants with an array of archival, newspaper, and secondary sources, Chávez provides an absorbing account of the events that constituted the Los Angeles-based Chicano movement. At the same time he offers insights into the emergence and the fate of the movement elsewhere. He presents a critical analysis of the concept of Chicano nationalism, an idea shared by all leaders of the insurgency, and places it within a larger global and comparative framework. Examining such variables as gender, class, age, and power relationships, this book offers a sophisticated consideration of how ethnic nationalism and identity functioned in the United States during the 1960s and 1970s.
Racism on Trial by Ian F. Haney López
ISBN: 9780674016293
Published/Created: 2004-09-01
In 1968, ten thousand students marched in protest over the terrible conditions prevalent in the high schools of East Los Angeles, the largest Mexican community in the United States. Chanting "Chicano Power," the young insurgents not only demanded change but heralded a new racial politics. Frustrated with the previous generation's efforts to win equal treatment by portraying themselves as racially white, the Chicano protesters demanded justice as proud members of a brown race. The legacy of this fundamental shift continues to this day. Ian Haney López tells the compelling story of the Chicano movement in Los Angeles by following two criminal trials, including one arising from the student walkouts. He demonstrates how racial prejudice led to police brutality and judicial discrimination that in turn spurred Chicano militancy. He also shows that legal violence helped to convince Chicano activists that they were nonwhite, thereby encouraging their use of racial ideas to redefine their aspirations, culture, and selves. In a groundbreaking advance that further connects legal racism and racial politics, Haney López describes how race functions as "common sense," a set of ideas that we take for granted in our daily lives. This racial common sense, Haney López argues, largely explains why racism and racial affiliation persist today. By tracing the fluid position of Mexican Americans on the divide between white and nonwhite, describing the role of legal violence in producing racial identities, and detailing the commonsense nature of race, Haney López offers a much needed, potentially liberating way to rethink race in the United States.
Youth, Identity, Power by Carlos Munoz; Carlos Munoz
ISBN: 9781844671427
Published/Created: 2007-08-17
Youth, Identity, Power is the classic study of the origins of the 1960s Chicano civil rights movement. Written by a leader of the Chicano student movement who also played a key role in the creation of the wider Chicano Movement, this is the first full-length work to appear on the subject. It fills an important gap in the history of political and social protest in the United States. Carlos Muñoz places the Chicano Movement in the context of the political and intellectual development of people of Mexican descent in the USA, tracing the emergence of student activists and intellectuals in the 1930s and their initial challenge to the dominant white racial and class ideologies. He then documents the rise and fall of the Chicano Movement of the 1960s, situating it within the 1960s civil rights and radical movements and assessing the Chicano Movement's contribution to the development of the Mexican American population and the Latino population as a whole. In an afterword to this new edition, Muñoz charts the burgeoning growth of US Latino communities, assesses the nativist backlash against them, and argues that Latinos must play a central role in a new movement for multiracial democracy.

The following external websites can be useful for expanding your research on the East Los Angeles Walkouts.

East L.A. Blowouts: Walking Out for Justice in the Classrooms External
See this article on the East LA Walkouts and video of La Raza Newspaper by the Public Media Group of Southern California feature on the Blowouts.
Nonviolent Action: LA Blowouts External
Global Nonviolent Action Database of Swarthmore College with resources on the Los Angeles Blowouts.
The Walkouts of 1968 and the Los Angeles Media External
Read this article by Gabriel Lerner on the impact of the media during the school walkouts.

A Latinx Resource Guide: Civil Rights Cases and Events in the United States

Caribbean, Iberian & Latin American Studies: Ask a Librarian

1968: East Los Angeles Walkouts

Timeline

Resources