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- 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." The day before the walkouts began, FBI 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 U.S. 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." Since the school walkouts, Los Angeles schools have since increased in Mexican American school teachers and administrators, they've also seen higher graduation and college attendant rates as well as incorporating both Latino and Bilingual studies and programs. Even though all of the demands of the protesters still have not been met, they've since then opened pathways for future education activists for many years to come. (en)
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