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xi f o r e w o r d Forty years ago, during the month of March 1968, Mexican American high school students shocked the city of Los Angeles and the nation when thousands of them walked out of the segregated public schools located in the eastside barrios of the city. I was one of the college student activists who marched with them through the streets of East Los Angeles to peacefully protest the racism and educational inequality we faced in the schools. The walkouts lasted for a week and a half and disrupted the nation’s largest public-school system and captured front-page headlines and national attention. More than ten thousand students participated, including students from the predominantly African American Thomas Jefferson High School in South Central Los Angeles who walked out in solidarity with us. Three months after the walkouts, I was one of thirteen walkout organizers who were indicted for conspiracy to disrupt the Los Angeles city school system, the largest in the nation. At the time, I was a first-year graduate student and the president of my campus chapter of the United Mexican American Students. I was arrested in the early-morning hours while hard at work on a term paper due for one of my graduate seminars. The trauma my family and I were forced to endure during my arrest and subsequent imprisonment was a life-changing experience for me. The thirteen of us who were indicted faced sixty-six years in prison if convicted of the conspiracy charges. It took two years for our case to be decided by the California State Appellate Court. The court finally ruled that we were innocent of the conspiracy charges by virtue of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution granting freedom of speech. The walkouts were the first major mass dramatic protest against racism and educational inequality ever staged by Mexican Americans in the history of the United States. It was carried out in the nonviolent protest tradition of the Civil Rights movement. Its historical significance was similar to the 1960 black student sit-ins in Greensboro, North Carolina. As the Greensboro student protest fueled the flames of the civil rights struggle in the South, the East Los Angeles walkouts ignited the emergence of the Mexican xii f o r e w o r d American civil rights movement—which came to be known as the Chicano movement—throughout the southwestern United States. The Chicana/o movement opened doors for equal opportunity in higher education to young people who had been systematically excluded and led to the creation of Chicana/o studies departments and programs throughout the nation. It also contributed to equal opportunity in employment for Mexican Americans and other Latinas/os. It produced thousands of professionals that included writers, poets, artists, filmmakers, lawyers, teachers, medical doctors, health workers, and social workers as well as hundreds of community and labor organizers and political leaders at the local, state, and national levels of government. The movement also resulted in a generation of scholar activists deeply committed to playing a role in the struggle for civil and human rights and social justice in our society. The scholars and activists represented in this volume are outstanding examples of those who continue to follow the path charted by the 1960s generation. The work they have produced for this volume places the 1968 walkouts and the Chicana/o civil rights movement in historical context. Their exemplary work provides a critical understanding of, and insight into, the continuing struggle being waged by Latina/os for educational equality in the United States. I am pleased the editors of this volume decided to commemorate those historic walkouts with this outstanding collection of essays. Carlos Muñoz Jr. Professor Emeritus, University of California, Berkeley ...

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