LOS ANGELES _ Teachers at Garfield High School were winding down classes for the approaching lunch break when they heard the startling sound of people _ they were not sure who _ running through the halls, pounding on classroom doors. "Walkout!" they were shouting. "Walkout!"
They looked on in disbelief as hundreds of students streamed out of classrooms and assembled before the school entrance, their clenched fists held high. "Viva la revolucion!" they called out. "Education, not eradication!" Soon, sheriff's deputies were rumbling in.
It was just past noon on a sunny Tuesday, March 5, 1968 _ the day a Mexican-American revolution began. Soon came walkouts at two more Eastside high schools, Roosevelt and Lincoln, in protest of run-down campuses, lack of college prep courses, and teachers who were poorly trained, indifferent or racist.
By the time the "blowouts" peaked about a week later, 22,000 students had stormed out of class, delivered impassioned speeches and clashed with police. Scenes of rebellion filled newspapers and television screens. School trustees held emergency meetings to try to quell the crisis; Mayor Sam Yorty suggested students had fallen under the influence of "communist agitators."
In the midst of the disruptions, Julian Nava, the only Mexican-American on the Los Angeles Board of Education, turned to Superintendent of Schools Jack Crowther. "Jack," he said. "This is BC and AD. The schools will not be the same hereafter."
"Yes," Crowther said. "I know."
The East L.A. walkouts 50 years ago were the uniquely California embodiment of the fury and hope that marked much of 1968. The first act of mass militancy by Mexican-Americans in modern California history set the tone for activism across the Southwest as America drifted into a year of social turmoil, assassinations, war and disillusionment.
The walkouts focused national attention on a new force on the American political scene, the Chicano movement. Once a pejorative term, "Chicano" was adopted by a new generation of urbanized Mexican-Americans as an emblem of ethnic pride, cultural awareness and a commitment to community.
"We caught the entire nation by surprise," said David Sanchez, founder of the militant Brown Berets, which had its seeds in the movement for educational reform and then took on farmworker rights, police brutality and the issue that managed to mobilize just about everyone who was protesting in 1968: the Vietnam War. "Before the walkouts, no one cared that substandard schools made it all but impossible for Chicano youths to find strength and pride in their culture, language and history _ or to make the most of their lives," Sanchez said.
"After the walkouts," he added, "no one could deny that we were ready to go to prison if necessary for what we believed, which was this: With better education, the Chicano community could control its own destiny."
Pete Martinez, a former teacher at Lincoln, said students that year ignited a movement that would transform generations of Latinos in America. "In 1968, the kids kicked the doors open," he said.
