Love & Walkouts

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I'm Maria Inojosa nose Bayan. Hey you know USA listener, Gomostas, here's a show, the Los Archivos. The year was nineteen sixty seven. The setting Abraham Lincoln High School on the East Side of Los Angeles. That's where two students, Bobby and Joli, began to fall in love.

I always liked Jioli. I always liked her a lot. Neither one of us had a boyfriend or a girlfriend at that time, but we hung out together with the group, you know, the rest of the kids.

He was always a joker. He was making everybody laugh. We were close. We had the same kind of circle of friends. But I really liked his friend. His friend Louis.

My best friend. Actually, we would all go out together, the three of us, many times, you know, and I knew they liked.

Each other, but I liked her too.

Bobby Verdugo and Joli Rios were both seniors at Lincoln High.

Well, it was at that one particular Christmas party in sixty seven.

We were celebrating, and.

You know, we shouldn't be drinking ray for kids, but there was liquor there, you know, so we started drinking some movie that loosened the anxiety a little bit.

I think Louis had a little bit too much to drink that night.

So I saw my chance, you know, she was standing there, and I asked.

To do dance.

Bobby actually sang to me, are you angry with me, Darling, you know a Midnight Or's song, And I said, oh my god, this guy sings.

Are you rengry with me? Darling?

With me?

Darling with me? Darling.

We were slow dancing, you know, I said, oh man, this guy is very romantic.

I love it, you know.

Loved you level.

As the two slow danced into the CRISP December night, a fifty year love story began, and soon something else began.

Too, a movement that was going to set the course for the rest of their lives together.

Ram Fudro Media and BrX It's Latino USA. I'm Maria Jojosa today. A love story but also a story of student activism. It's almost Valentine's Day and we couldn't help ourselves. So we're bringing you a love story but also a story about student activism. We were taking you back to the late nineteen sixties when thousands of Los Angeles students participated in protests that were part of the Grown Chicano movement.

Bobby Anyoli grew up on the East side of Los Angeles and one of the city's oldest neighborhoods, Lincoln Heights. It was the nineteen fifties and the community was majority of Mexican and tight knit. Here's Jolie.

Our circles are very small when you grew up in the city, in the vadios, you know, we don't get out much.

Bobby and Joli lived about eight blocks apart. They didn't know each other as kids, but they lived almost parallel lives, both from working class families and both the oldest. Other siblings Bobby werememberus his early years when the neighborhood was one big family.

In those days.

I mean, I remember many of the mothers who were not mine, you know, pulling me by the year and taking me home if they saw me doing or getting involved in some things that I shouldn't have been doing as a little boy.

But I had a real good childhood, you know.

I didn't feel some of the things that I would realize later about being oppressed and being treated as a second class citizen, you know, those kind of things I didn't realize until much later.

In nineteen sixty five, Bobby and Yoli met at Lincoln High School. At first they were just friends, but.

Was beautiful bad I tell you, I immediately was drawn to her.

Julie had dark, shiny hair that just brushed her shoulders, and her presence was warm and nurturing. Friends at school would call her Mamma Yoli. Bobby was a football player, and he looked like one. He had broad shoulders.

I thought he was handsome. He had a lot of facial hair. I said, Oh, man, that's a man as a real man.

Before Yoli officially started at Lincoln High School, her uncle gave her one piece of advice.

When you go to high school, you are going to demand to be a math major. When you go see that concert.

He was referring to the public schools tracking systems. You could take college prep classes or be placed on a vocational track, and Mexican American students were generally put in the vocal courses to prepare them for things like factory or secretary work. But Yoli had the grades for college. So Yoli demanded to be placed in math classes.

And I could tell it was different because my friends who didn't insist, we're taking typing and a little bit of bookkeeping, and we're all in the home economics, you know, And I was I would never see them, I'd never see my girlfriends.

In the fall of nineteen sixty seven, Bobby and Yoli began their last year at Lincoln High and that's when they slow danced on that December night.

That night, you know, we hung out to the rest of the evening, you know, And then weeks after that we started getting closer and closer and kind of like unsaid words, but it was kind of exclusively seeing and talking to each other.

They started talking more and more over the phone. They had a few classes together, and Yoli would call Bobby at seven in the morning to wake them up for school.

Bobby, you know, he was in my class and I don't think there was a day class where he didn't crack a joke. And they would march him up to the front of the room and just bend over, grab your knees and boom, get paddled.

Bobby Jeseus front and center. What you're hearing is a scene from the two thousand and six HBO film Walkout.

What I Do You spoke Spanish?

You Know the.

Rules, which is based on the events and the East Side schools in nineteen sixty eight. Bobby's character gets into trouble with the teacher first, and just like Yolie said, he swatted in front of the class with Jolie's character watching as.

The young Chicano want to be tough, so you don't want to complain too much, thinking, well, you know what, I's right, and I could take this. You know, go ahead hit me if you're gonna break me or anything. But it hurts the spirit, you know, little by little they were breaking me.

It was humiliating. It angered you. I felt really powerless.

Corporal punishment was common at Lincoln High, but there were other more subtle ways that Bobby and Joli felt mistreated. In her trigonometry class, Yoli noticed a complete lack of interest from her teacher.

One day rang out this little green carpet and it had a little putting thing at the end, and then it brings out some golf clubs and he's at the front of the class and he starts putting, and I said, Wow, this guy is going to go golfing. You know this teacher, this Anglo teacher, was teaching in Mexican school, So why Amon put forth the effort.

Like Yoli, Bobby was a bright kid and he was active on campus. But as he got older, he started noticing a change.

My performance level kind of tapered off. I wasn't getting the straight a's in the seventh and eighth grade that I used to. They turned to c's, d's. In my junior year, I realized I was in trouble.

Bobby said he was repeatedly told by teachers, many of them might that he wasn't worth their time, and it stuck.

So I started to believe it and I started to perform.

Likewise, so by the time I got to eleventh and going into my senior year, I started realizing.

I'm not going to make it.

I'm not going to graduate, and I realized I had to take responsibility for my actions or inactions. But there was a lot more to it than just me being a failure. I was being failed by the schools that my parents entrusted them to teach me.

They weren't doing their job.

What was happening to Bobby was a common story at Lincoln High in nineteen sixty eight. Lincoln had a huge dropout rate, almost forty percent, and the kids affected well over ninety percent of the student body was Latino, mainly of Mexican heritage, and that segregation wasn't just by chance. Families had been pushed into Eastside neighborhoods like Lincoln Heights, Foil Heights, and East la displaced by freeway construction and

Heritage, and we are going to take that negative terminology and make it revolutionary, making it to it We're standing up against discrimination, against racism, against second class citizenship. For me, I accepted that that we were going to be a part of a movement of change.

And the discrimination you only mentioned. Shared stories from friends about police profiling young Mexican Americans in the neighborhood.

We knew when we would cruise down Wadier Boulevard we were being stopped and searched and seized.

Underground newspapers were being passed around in the schools, newspapers like Larissa magazine with articles informing the students about civil rights. Even the cartoons made a statement. One depicted corporal punishment with the saying, teach the best, spank the rest. As they grew closer, Bobby and Julie were also gaining a new understanding of social injustice in their community.

They can't do that. They're violating your civil rights. So all of these things peaked up. What are our rights? It was a quick joke in our minds and in our consciousness.

Not all the teachers were bad, though, and not all the teachers hit, and not all the teachers would say things that would try to dehumanize you.

I had some very good teachers. Selcastro, of course one of them.

Sel Castro was Bobby's social cities teacher at Lincoln High. He was young, in his early thirties. Here he is being interviewed in archived newstape from the PBS series Chicano.

Most teachers approach to Mexicans with a negative attitude and that you have nothing to give to me. I am going to make you an angle, come hell or high water, and whatever you have to say about it.

Makes no difference, he related to his students. He grew up on the East Side, and he was Mexican American like many of his students.

For years, the schools have wrapped or blamed the Mexican home for not doing a good job and educating the kid. In other words, if the kid doesn't go to school, it's a Mexican parents fault or the Mexican homes fault. That has never been the fault of the Mexican home.

Sel Castro, who died in twenty thirteen, became more than a teacher to Bobby. He became a mentor.

It's okay to be angry, but what do you do about it? And I think that's really what I learned from Sal.

Sal began to help Bobby Yoli and the other students at Lincoln High organize it was time to demand more from the schools. Students from several Eastside high schools began getting together with the help of seal Castro. Some of their parents and others helped too.

A lot of college students were the ones who were actually hosting, letting us into their homes to discuss these things.

And these college students, many of them, had gone to high school on the East Side and experienced the same problems. Even though Bobby had little chance at this point of going to college, he became one of the group's leaders.

And My involvement was a very personal one. Even though I didn't think I was going to graduate. I said to myself, I need to be involved in this. I need to be involved in making change. It may be too late for me at this point.

I'm a senior.

I got a zero point one five great point average at this point, and whatever it was, I'm not going to make it.

But I still need to fight to make some change.

As the students started to organize, they weren't sure of what actions they should take, but they knew it needed to be big. One of the first steps was smaller though. They handed out surveys asking how the students felt about the schools.

We were taking our cues as the information we'd come back again. Our job was to communicate to our classmates.

Early in nineteen sixty eight, rumors began to swirl that a massive student walkout was in the works. The students were beginning to drop the long list of demands to present to the school board. They wanted bilingual education, more Latino teachers, and an end to corporal punishment. Bobby and Joli and their friends continued organizing, and then on Friday, March first, something happened at another Eastside high school, almost two hundred students walked out. The blowouts had officially.

Begun, coming up on Latino USA the walkouts.

Truthfully, I didn't even know if I was going to walk up, you know, I wanted to, but there was fear.

There was real fear.

Stay with us, get out when.

Through much more do Latino Music and Miss Angri and m Andre which are at the Pronto.

Hey, we're back. And when we left off, it was March of nineteen sixty eight and the East Side walkouts had officially begun. Producer Jennie Yamogun tells us what happened next.

Bobby Vardugo, Joli Rios and their classmates left into action that day when they heard that the students at another high school Wilson, had walked out of class.

There was a message that when now people were calling each other on the phone or seeing each other at school or going over to each other's how we got to meet because Wilson walked out?

What are we going to do?

And we didn't anticipate that was going to happen so soon, But there was a lot of agreement and there were those who were really anxious.

So the organizers at Lincoln High School, including Bobby, started planning their own walkout. They had to do it soon if they wanted to continue the momentum.

There was a sense of urgency about what we're going to do, and we needed to talk about what our goals were, but also to realize what the consequences may be.

The students and organizers knew that the police could get involved and it could get violent. On Tuesday, March fifth, students from another Eastside high school, Garfield, walked out. The Chicana newspapers that were passed around in schools reported that over two thousand students left their classrooms. The next day, it was Lincoln High School's turn. The organizer spread the word to other students walk out at ten am.

Truthfully, March sixth, that Wednesday, I didn't even know if I was going to walk up.

I really didn't, you know.

I wanted to, and I had been preparing for that moment, but there was fear.

There was real fear.

As I was headed out to school, I went over to my mom to remind her. Mom, get we're walking out today, and she was. She turned around. I guess she had forgotten, so she goes okay, Well, just be careful, you know, she just said, be careful.

My mom knew I was gonna walk out before I did.

You know.

She was already waiting outside to make sure that I wouldn't get hurt, as were a lot of parents. My attendance record was never all that great, but I remember really wanting to be at school that day to walk out.

The timing ten am was strategic. It was meant to hit the school where it hurt it's funding, because that funding was partly based on attendance, and since the teachers took attendance around ten am, they'd have to report all the absences and the school would lose money. This is another scene from the HBO film Walkout, which shows the

We were just kind of like waiting to hear the call. You know, we weren't exactly sure who was somebody was going to knock on the door, or how it was going to go. But then we heard Bobby, you know, the different students coming by.

I remember being in the hallways yelling walk out, and I've been confronted by the vice principal telling me to go back to my class.

One thing that was going through my head as we were walking out is I could see there was two teachers and I can't remember their names, but they look so sad because I had never seen that expression, you know, and I said, good, I interpret that expression that good. Feel bad because you have been discriminating against us. We have been abused, we have been treated badly, poorly as second class citizens.

We walked out and we were in the courtyard, all the students, fifteen hundred plus students in the courtyard, and we didn't know what we're going to do. You know, there was like no plan of action, and I wanted to stay you by you only side and my brother seemed to make sure that they nothing would happen to them.

While the student leaders were trying to figure out their next steps, one of their fellow organizers gone on top of a water fountain in the courtyard.

And started yelling Chicano power and this and started getting everybody all excited and being like the voice.

You know, he got up and just not saying Chicano power, he was saying we have the highest dropout rate. You know, it was a period of education for all the students to hear. These are the grievances we are going to demand. There should be no corporate punishment.

And I think it was either he or someone made the decision, Let's go outside. What are we doing in here? Nobody can see us in gire? What kind of statement is this?

They eventually spilled out from the courtyard into the streets and continued chanting Chicano power and walk out. Over ninety percent of the student body from Lincoln walked out of their classrooms that morning. The students walked to a local park called Hazard Park, about a thirty minute walk from Lincoln. The school board had an area office there. They swarmed the building, but there was only one superintendent there and

So it didn't last all day. The walkout itself.

We went back into school, which was interesting to see, Like you really said, some of the teachers look sad, some of them looked excited. Someone that came up to us and without any words you know, either hugged us or said I'm glad.

You know, you guys are okay.

Bobby said he heard that some of the teachers just ignored the protest.

You know, let's just move on. You know, this is you had your moment.

You know.

They didn't realize it was going to happen through the rest of the week.

So Thursday, more walkouts at Roosevelt High School, students were arrested, and at other schools gates were closed so students couldn't leave, but that didn't stop them. On that Friday, March eighth, thousands of students from all the East Side high schools walked out. They peacefully marched to Hazard Park.

Some of the schools had to come greater distances.

The estimates of the crowd, you know, whoever you talked to, but there were over ten thousand students from different schools meeting there.

It Hazard are rallying.

It's pretty remarkable if you think about it, because each school is a different neighborhood.

There's these little mounding hills. You know, Belmont's coming over the hill. They would make announcements. You know, Garfield's coming up on the plant. You know this street and it was. It was so good to see the unity and being able to have the district officials there to hear us out.

The students rallied and spoke about the poor conditions of their schools, and they share their demands with members of the Los Angeles School Board who were there to listen.

By that time, the sun had come out, and it was in many ways metaphorically and even you know, physically, it was like salhad mentioned.

Seal Castro, the teacher who inspired Bobby.

It was beautiful beat Chicano. That day.

After the walkouts, the Los Angeles School Board finally agreed to listen to the students on their own turf their schools. They organized a meeting that would take place at Lincoln High later in March. Meanwhile, Bobby and you only hit a new milestone in their budding relationship.

One day.

You know.

It was my girlfriends are saying, well, are you Bobby together? I said, I don't know.

Maybe so.

The term going around man going steady, you know, back in the sixties.

And on that one particular morning when she called.

Me, she said, Bobby, you know it's already ten minutes fifteen minutes to seven. You got to go to football practice. Okay, okay, and Bobby, by the way, I have a question. I go, are we going around?

Are we going around?

Because my friends it doesn't matter to me classical line, Eh, it doesn't.

Matter to me, but my friends are asking are you guys going around?

And then he said something to the effect. Well, he goes, you know, I like you, and I said, okay, let.

Me ask you. Do you want to go around with me?

She goes no, but Fater, She's just of course, yeah, but don't worry.

It's it's just something I wanted to know from me.

Well, yeah, when I get to school, everybody's standing at the front gate waiting for me to get there, and they say happy going.

Around day to you.

It's like, yeah, I'm sure, I'm sure, glad it was just two you and me here. So I gave her my ring and we officially. That was March twenty third, a couple of weeks after the blowouts, and that's where we became Bobby and Joi.

On March twenty sixth, the Los Angeles School Board met with students at Lincoln High School. The meeting lasted four hours and over a thousand people attended. The students were able to air thirty six demands. They were published in the Los Angeles Times. They wanted mandatory bilingual and by cultural education, to abolish corporal punishment, and for teachers and administrators to stop discriminating and be respectful of cultural traditions.

It was exciting to have these thoughts, to think we can do this. We weren't afraid of the challenge. We were ready to take it on.

Bobby didn't graduate that year from Lincoln High School. With Yoli, he sat in the bleachers and watched. He did ultimately get his ged and attend college, but he didn't finish his degree until he was in his forties. Joli did go to college immediately after high school on a scholarship, and eventually she became a union organizer and Bobby became

We may not be sixteen to seventeen year old students anymore, but we're going to continue this fight and be there where we can and try to make some change.

Even today, after five decades, Bobby and Joli still act like high school sweethearts. At least they did when I visited them. And I'm not the first person to ask them about their long relationship.

It seems to be a particular interest in the fact that, God, they were boyfriend girlfriend back then and they're still together, you know, And I'm sure there have been challenges and they have, But I think the work is a lot bigger than just us.

I asked them if the work, their activism is the secret to their long lasting relationship.

So, no matter what in our relationship, when we would get angry with each other, and it could be small things all he doesn't do is wash or he's always late or whatever, But when things are happening politically, you know, no matter what it was that you know upsets you, an issue comes up that has to be discussed. Boy that goes away quick.

I'm going to say thank you and I'm going to take that as a big forgiveness and a lot of things that I've done or not done in a good way all these years.

Just the fact that here we are fifty years later.

I mean, there were a lot of boyfriend girlfriends who walked out together holding hands, and I think a lot of it. To its credit, or maybe to our credit, our work has kept us together. That passion for wanting to do well, and we seem to be able to do it better together rather than apart, has kept us alive.

Fifty years have passed since Bobby and Yuli stood up together, walked out of their high school classrooms and made a mark in history. It's the type of history they would have loved to learn about in high school, and now, because of them and the rest of the East Side students, Latino kids can.

Today. Bobby Verdugo and Joli Rios are both retired and they've traveled around the country sharing their experience as student organizers and participants in the nineteen sixty eight walkouts. Sadly, Bobby Verdugo died at the age of sixty nine. The Chicano leader is remembered by Yoli and his two daughters and by the many students and young adults he mentored throughout his life. The legacy of the student walkouts continues

Ciao.

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Together in love and in struggle. Just made that up.