This movement, which involved thousands of students in the Los Angeles area, was identified as "the first major mass protest against racism undertaken by Mexican-Americans in the history of the United States".
[1][2][3] The day before the walkouts began, Federal Bureau of Investigation director J. Edgar Hoover sent out a memo to local law enforcement to place top priority on "political intelligence work to prevent the development of nationalist movements in minority communities".
For his part in organizing the walkouts, Harry Gamboa Jr. was named "one of the hundred most dangerous and violent subversives in the United States" by the US Senate Committee on the Judiciary, shared by activists such as Angela Davis, Eldridge Cleaver, and Reies Tijerina, and his activities was deemed "anti-establishment, anti-white, and militant".
[4] In a radio interview, Moctesuma Esparza, one of the original walkout organizers, talked about his experiences as a high school student fighting for Chicano rights.
[4] Esparza graduated 12th grade in 1967, and enrolled at University of California, Los Angeles,[5] where he and fellow Chicano students continued organizing protests.
At the same time, he and 11 friends started a group called United Mexican American Students (UMAS), whose goal was to increase Chicano enrollment in colleges.
Esparza, Larry Villalvazo and a few other UMAS members, along with teacher Sal Castro, helped organize hundreds of students to walk out of classes in 1968 protests to highlight the conditions that they faced.
[12] Though organizers had been planning for some time to stage walk outs to demonstrate against unsatisfactory conditions, the first blowout at Wilson was unplanned, precipitated by the principal cancelling a student-produced play that was deemed too risqué for the students to perform.
The group worked giving support for the Chicano movement on issues such as educational reform, farm worker rights, police brutality, and the Vietnam War.
[2] In March 1968, after school districts in the East Los Angeles area were noted as being "run down campuses, with lack of college prep courses, and teachers who were poorly trained, indifferent, or racist.
[13][14] A) in-service education programs will be instituted immediately for all staff in order to teach them the Spanish language and increase their understanding of the history, traditions, and contributions of the Mexican culture.
B) All administrators in the elementary and secondary schools in these areas will become proficient in the Spanish language Participants are to be compensated during the training period at not less than $8.80 an hour and upon completion of the course will receive in addition to their salary not less than $100.00 a month.
[5] March 11, 1968: The Chicano community (students, faculty, parents, and activists) began to organize and create the Educational Issues Coordinating Committee (EICC).
[17] September–October 1968: Students and community members organized round-the-clock sit-ins at the LA Board office until Sal Castro could be reinstated for his teaching position.
Carlos Montes, a Brown Berets minister, was charged with arson at a hotel during the Chicano Moratorium protest against the Vietnam War; after fleeing the country he eventually faced trial and was acquitted.
[25] Carlos R. Moreno – who participated in the Camp Hess Kramer conference – went on to study law and eventually became a judge for the Supreme Court of California.
[26] Additionally, many films, documentaries, biographies, and more have been produced as result of the Walkouts; some of the projects contain a direct recounting of the Blowouts while others tell similar, loosely based stories.
Some of these media projects include Stand and Deliver, Freedom Writers, Precious Knowledge, Racism on Trial by Ian F. Haney López, and more.