-If we had to take to the streets and claim our rights to equality in our schools,
then so be it.
-I went to Garfield High School.
My first semester was 1967.
The schools on the East Side
were known as the "Mexican schools."
If we spoke Spanish, there was
corporal punishment.
And the lesson there was:
We want you to assimilate.
-The teachers didn't really understand who we were.
You know, they would make fun of our
names when they would do roll call.
Most of us were just kind of going through like a herd, and if we
dropped out, they didn't care.
-Mexican Americans had one of the highest dropout rates, uh, in the city
of Los Angeles.
We were not considered to be, uh, intelligent
enough to be able to go to college.
-The education that we all got was aimed at turning us into workers,
manual labor, tradesmen.
-Girls were told, oh, you know – we don’t want to waste our time on you.
You know, you’re just going to get pregnant.
A group of high school students, recent graduates and activists
came together to advocate for better schools.
They were encouraged by Sal Castro, one of
the few teachers who was critical of how schools treated
Mexican American students.
-Most teachers approach the Mexican with a negative attitude
you have nothing to give to me, I am going to make you Anglo
come hell or high water.
-Sal Castro was a teacher at Lincoln High School and he wanted
his students to know that it was great to be a Mexican,
that our culture and history was important, and that we had
huge contributions that we had made.
And so I got that from him.
-We deserve a good education.
We deserve something that is positive
because we are citizens of this country.
The civil rights struggle was all Black and white, you know,
and we were left out of the picture.
And so we had to establish our identity, and we did it by calling
ourselves Chicanos.
-Being Chicana was a self-identity that meant we were here for change,
and we want it.
-We drew up a list of our demands and our grievances to take them to
the board of education.
We left it with them, and waited and waited,
and nothing was done.
-And then Sal just told it like it was.
He convinced us nothing's going to happen until it hits the press.
-We needed to become activists, take it to a different level.
We want to be heard.
We want our voice to be heard.
-What was going on in the world in terms of protest against the
Vietnam War and the African American civil rights struggle –
all of these things were surrounding us.
And so it was a very simple step to say: We need to strike.
And as high school kids, it sounded a lot cooler
to say to blow out.
So, we need to blow out.
We need to walk out.
-We parked the car and ran right up the main gate into Lincoln High School,
the main building, and started yelling, walkout 10 o'clock.
Yelling, walkout, walkout, walkout, and banging on the lockers.
-Ten seconds, 20 seconds, 30 seconds,
and nothing was happening.
It seemed like an eternity, and we didn't know
if anything was going to happen.
But then the door started opening
and hundreds, and ultimately over 1,000 kids
streamed out of Lincoln High School.
Around the same time, other schools began to walk out.
-I ran across the street, saw a street cone, jumped on top of the car and
started yelling
Walkout! Walkout!
through the cone.
-It was exhilarating.
It was an extraordinary, empowering moment
to see our community stand up.
As the protests spread,
at some schools, students were met by the police.
-There’s a famous photograph of their backs
as they were approaching.
I was on the other side.
-The police, with batons, rushed in and bloodied kids, beat them up.
Kids trying to climb fences to escape
and being pulled down and then bludgeoned.
The next week, Mita Cuarón says she was arrested and dragged out
of the school principal’s office.
-What little airway that I had because they had the baton,
I said, as they dragged us,
look at what they’re doing to us,
look at what they’re doing to us – over and over again.
-Quickly spread throughout the community that this was going on,
that the police were brutalizing us.
And the next day, the clergy was there, and the union leaders were there,
and our parents were there, and they joined us.
-The parents were the ones who should have been at the helm.
Not us.
-Why isn’t he there sitting down with us?
He’s our principal from our school
and he’s not even there sitting down.
-As a 15-year-old, was I prepared for that? No.
But we’re not getting an education, we’re not getting justice.
The walkouts lasted for more than a week, growing to about 15,000 students.
-We’re tired of talking.
I mean, talking is not getting us anywhere.
We want some action sir, I mean really.
And we’re going to be united, we’re going to fight for what we
are going to get.
The students were persuaded to go back to school, and eventually the
board agreed to a few of their demands, including more bilingual
teachers and administrators.
But nearly three months later…
-There’s a knock on the door.
Bang, bang, bang.
So I went to the front door, I opened the front door, and
all these cops ran, they rush into my apartment,
threw me on the ground.
-And they told me that I was under arrest.
I asked, for what?
They wouldn't tell me.
The next thing I knew, I was in handcuffs
being thrown into the back of a car.
Thirteen of the walkout organizers, including Sal Castro, were charged
with conspiracy to disrupt the schools,
and faced decades in prison.
-I remember when they were indicted, and being in shock.
We never had the concept that we were
breaking the law.
Asking for better schools, asking to have college
counselors that promoted us, asking for less corporal punishment –
How is that breaking the law?
-What happened is that the L.A.P.D.
sent undercover police to infiltrate and spy on organizations
– the Black Liberation Movement, the Chicano Movement.
While they were awaiting trial, Castro was removed from his
teaching job,
leading to more protests at the school board.
-We decided to occupy the school board, and we were there for weeks.
-Eventually there was a motion to reinstate Sal Castro.
I was there and Sal was there.
Everybody spoke in favor of reinstating him.
-We have come once again to ask you to do what is the just thing to do:
to bring Sal Castro back to his classroom.
-And I still remember this glorious moment where the school board
votes to reinstate him, and the Brown Berets picked him up on
their shoulders and carried him out of the school board.
It's an amazing image that I have in my memory.
-I just hope that now we can get down to the real issue.
-And what are those issues?
-The real issue is the education of the Mexican kids.
Castro returned to teaching.
And the most serious charges against
the L.A. 13 were later dismissed as a violation of the First Amendment.
It was one of the first important moments
in a new movement for Chicano rights
-This is the first time that young Chicanos took to the streets to
demand equality and justice,
and we made history.
There were walkouts in Denver, Colorado, Albuquerque and Texas.
So the walkouts helped to
generate growing national Chicano power movement
that included the struggle for the land, the struggle against the war,
the struggle against police brutality,
the struggle for political power.
In the years since the walkouts, Mexican Americans have made
broad gains in political representation,
school dropout rates are down,
and more Chicano students are going to college.
-There are now senators, movie stars, billionaires,
entrepreneurs, engineers, doctors.
Vickie Castro became elected to the school board and became chairperson.
-My whole K through 12, I never saw anyone in authority
that looked like my parents or myself.
That is completely changed.
But many of the walkout organizers say the inequality and stereotypes
they confronted are still relevant 55 years later.
-The school board started reforms that are still continuing to this day.
They're not done.
There's still a disparity
in education for Mexican American students
and other students of color.
There is still a huge underrepresentation in college.
There's still a lot of inequality.
But there is also a tremendous change,
and that started when those students
stood up and walked out of school in 1968.