East L.A. walkouts

East Los Angeles Walkouts
Part of the Chicano Movement
Students activists arrested during the walkouts
DateMarch 6, 1968
Location
Caused by
GoalsEducation reform
MethodsWalkout
Parties
Casualties
Arrested

The East Los Angeles Walkouts or Chicano Blowouts were a series of 1968 protests by Chicano students against unequal conditions in Los Angeles Unified School District high schools. The first walkout occurred on March 5, 1968. The students who organized and carried out the protests were primarily concerned with the quality of their education. 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 were deemed "anti-establishment, anti-white, and militant".[1]

  1. ^ a b Suderburg, Erika (2000). Space, Site, Intervention: Situating Installation Art. University of Minnesota Press. p. 191. ISBN 9780816631599.
  2. ^ "Student Disorders Erupt at 4 High Schools; Policeman Hurt". March 7, 1968 – via Los Angeles Times.
  3. ^ Torgerson, Dial (July 1992). ""Brown Power" Unity Seen Behind School Disorders"" – via Los Angeles Times.

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