Alumni Commemorates 50th Year of Chicano Student Walkouts in Texas

(Photo : flickr.com)

It has been more than fifty years since the Chicano student walkouts in Texas. Some of those scholars, activists, students and alumni who participated in the walkouts gathered in a three-day National Chicano Student Walkouts Conference last week to preserve the crucial, but often forgotten part of civil rights history.

Manuel Diaz Garza, 68, who was one of the Mexican-American students who walked out of their high school, recalled the events which led to significant reforms in the Texan educational system.

Diaz Garza was in his junior year at Edgewood High School in San Antonio when the student council began to demand supplies to improve the school facilities such as electric typewriters, building repairs, a revamp in the curriculum to include Mexican American culture and history, and many other reforms.

The students' negotiations with school officials took three meetings but eventually failed. This prompted them to stage a massive walkout in the morning of May 16, 1968, with about 3,000 students leaving classes and hundreds marching to the school district's offices. This move provoked of a series of student walkouts that year. Along with San Antonio, students in other Texas cities and towns also mobilized such as the 1968 student walkouts in East Los Angeles, also called The Blowouts.

Diaz Garza said the students were unstoppable despite all the efforts of teachers in keeping student leaders and other students from walking out. He added, some were even singing "Amen", a gospel song popularized by the 1963 film "Lillies of the Field" starring Sydney Portier, during their exit.

After the walkout, the district superintendent was replaced by the city's first Latino superintendent José Angel Cardenas. The community also elected new officials of the school board, Diaz Garza said.

Sixteen years later, with the help of Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, parents of the Edgewood school district filed a landmark lawsuit to challenge Texas' inequitable public-school finance system which led the Texas Supreme Court to declare it unconstitutional.

For Diaz Garza, the walkout was a success as it served its purpose and beyond because it has, for instance, created a movement to register people to vote.

However, according to Severita Lara, 67, who was one of the leaders of the December 9, 1969 walkout at Crystal City High school involving 1,700 students, despite the wins, the walkouts took a toll on some families. Some students' parents were treated unfairly by their employers, some lost their jobs, while others were threatened.

Even today, schools continue to turn a blind eye to some of the issues raised by the Chicano students. For instance, Mexican American Studies was only recently included as an elective in the Texas school curriculum. Meanwhile some groups continue to protest the finance system of the state's school.

Aside from remembering the Chicano school walkouts, the National Chicano Student Walkouts Conference also aimed to motivate the younger generation to act against educational injustices, as well as climate change, gun violence and immigration reforms.

Alyssa Guzman, 17, a student from in John Jay High School who participated in the conference found herself relating to, and appreciating the student walkouts.

Guzman said she wouldn't be where she is now if it weren't for those walkouts and those high school students who risked their education fighting for a better system. She added, she would share all her learning from the conference with other young Latinos through the after-school club she belongs to called SomosMAS.