San José Local Groups Fight Discrimination in College Education

Title

San José Local Groups Fight Discrimination in College Education

Description

After WWII and during the 1950s, ethnic Mexican civil rights organizations focused on providing scholarships, reducing high school dropout rates, and promoting college recruitment to help Mexican Americans professionalize, with the aim that educated workers would then give back to their communities. Returning veterans attended college on the GI Bill, and some applied their degrees to education and social services. During the 1960s and 1970s, Mexican American students pursued a new direction, calling themselves “Chicanos” and creating new ethnic Mexican civil rights organizations emphasizing cultural nationalism.

Most ethnic Mexicans chose to attend the more affordable community colleges before transferring into four year colleges or universities. San José City College (SJCC) served as such a launching ground. In 1965, Los Amigos, a student organization at San José City College, was founded primarily by young returning veterans to improve educational programs and to keep students in school, working with middle and high school students. Los Amigos programs also dealt with at-risk youth in Juvenile Hall. In 1966, the GI Bill was expanded to include Vietnam War veterans, and many of these older students attended community colleges. At San José City College, students organized tutoring programs and cultural activities and advocated for better educational opportunities. When these students moved on to four-year colleges and universities, they continued their activism.

In the 1950s, San José State University (SJSU) was considered a conservative university in its views on race and class. This changed rapidly when ethnic Mexican students of color transferred from the more affordable San José City College to SJSU in the 1960s. The transfer students brought a host of student-led initiatives and activism with them, enabling and leading student demonstrations, walkouts, and picketing. These activities led to the establishment of a counseling center and services for Chicano students prior to the creation of the Equal Opportunity Program (EOP) at SJSU.

In 1966, SJSU student Armando Valdez organized Student Initiative (SI), the first Chicano student organization at San José State. SI was dedicated to developing Mexican American student leadership and working with the campus Equal Opportunity Program (EOP). SI began working with local community groups and recruiting high school students to attend recruitment and orientation events at SJSU. Networking with other Chicano student groups statewide, SI transformed into the Mexican American Student Confederation (MASC), advocating for changes in the SJSU curriculum and textbooks, and for the creation of a Mexican American studies program at SJSU. Bilingual education was also a major focus, with Ernesto Galarza serving as a non-faculty advocate. In 1968 SI organized the Chicano Commencement walkout, protesting the low Chicano student enrollment and low numbers of Chicano faculty. This walkout was the first protest by Mexican American students on a college campus in California.

In 1968, equity in education was still a major priority for the ethnic Mexican community, and many different student organizations had been started in high schools and colleges to support these students. Often, parents and teachers were deeply involved in these groups. The Mexican American Student Confederation (MASC) at SJSU created summer cultural programs to teach junior high school students Mexican visual art, music, dances, and cooking. They created the Mexican American Culture Center, which was established in 1999 at Mexican Heritage Plaza. MASC transformed into the Students for the Advancement of Mexican Americans (SAMA).

This same year, a student strike at San Francisco State College was organized by the Third World Liberation Front (TWLF), demanding the creation of a Department of Raza Studies under the School of Ethnic Studies as well as open admission to all students of color. This event, which had led to violent confrontations between students and police, prompted Mexican Americans and other third world student activists to form a rainbow coalition in which many San José State University (SJSU) and Santa Clara University Chicano students participated.

These protests led to the establishment of the Chicano Studies Program at SJSU, the oldest Graduate Program in Chicana/o Studies in the country, and catalyzed a push for a separate Chicano Commencement. Among the groups pressing for change at SJSU were the Chicano Vietnam War veterans who were activated by the anti-Vietnam War Movement and returning to school on the GI Bill. Students like Victor Garza, now Dean at Evergreen Valley College, and Ramon Martinez, retired teacher, principal, and administrator in San José Unified School District, reached out to local high schools to encourage students to attend college, and to come to SJSU.

In the 1960s, Chicano student activists organized on college campuses throughout Santa Clara County, California, and across the nation. SJSU students Luís Váldez, a scholarship recipient in math and physics, and Roberto Rubalcava j oined the Marxist Progressive Labor Party (PLP) and traveled to Cuba in 1964 as part of a PLP delegation. While many of their contemporaries embraced the more conservative political approach of accommodation and assimilation in American society held by the previous generation, Váldez and Rubalcava took a more radicalized approach to politics.

Together they produced the first Mexican American radical manifesto, “Venceremos!: Mexican American Statement on Travel to Cuba,” diverging from older Mexican American middle class civil rights organizations’ assimilationist policies. Váldez changed his major to Theater and joined the anti-establishment radical theater group the San Francisco Mime Troupe upon graduation, where he would continue his critique of assimilation tactics.

In 1965, Váldez participated in César Chávez’s farm worker organizing efforts in Delano, and wrote the Plan de Delano, which promoted the principle of organizing for social justice. That same year, Váldez founded the Teatro Campesino, recruiting its members from among Chicano student activists in northern California.

Dr. Carlos Muñoz, founding chair of the first Chicano Studies Department in the nation in 1968 at the California State University at Los Angeles and founding chair of the National Association of Chicana & Chicano Studies (NACCS), credits Luís Váldez and the cultural work of the Teatro Campesino for many of the concepts of Chicano identity and the emergence of the Generación Chicana.

Additional Online Information

50th Chicano Reunion San Jose State: Original '68 Walkout Students, In Memorium Part 3/3 11/4/2023

SJSU to Host Revisiting the 1968 Chicano Commencement Symposium Oct. 11

SJSU forum focuses on 50th anniversary of Chicano activists' walkout

1960s-Era Chicano Student Activists Celebrate Historic SJSU Graduation Protest - CBS San Francisco

San Jose recalls Chicano protest | SJSU News

San José State University Chicano Oral History Collection

SJSU Chicano Student History 1970s: Ramon J. Martinez Ph.D. SJSU '71, San Jose, CA 3/1/2005

The Chicano Student Movement By Arturo Villarreal

Luis Valdez | CSU

Identifier

B4SV Exhibit Topic Six: Slide 013