Local Community Advocacy: Brown Berets and Black Berets in San José

Title

Local Community Advocacy: Brown Berets and Black Berets in San José

Description

In 1967, David Sanchez dissolved Young Citizens for Community Action to form the Brown Berets (BB), a self-defense group based in East Los Angeles. The BB was known as a militant youth group that protested educational neglect and police brutality, and had strong links to the community and to East LA high school. Together, BB members and students began a series of pickets in front of sheriffs’ offices and police stations.

San José’s Brown Berets were organized in the same year and based on the East LA group and Oakland’s Black Panther Party. The Panthers were a Marxist–Leninist and black power political group founded by college students Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton in October 1966. San José’s Brown Berets described their mission as protecting the Chicano community from police brutality, promoting equal employment, housing, education, and voting rights, as well as protecting the right to bear arms, and as advocates for bilingual education. They often provided security for protest marches and community events, buffering these groups from potential police harassment.

Other organizations took up a black beret and called themselves the Black Berets, in honor of Che Guevara. Their perspective was anti-colonial, anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist, and internationalist. They created and assisted in many community programs such as food distribution, community patrols, and other activities. While most active in other areas of the Southwest, the Black Berets in San José also made alliances with other groups, and provided security for the Roosevelt Junior High School walkout in 1967.

Additional Online Information

"To Protect and To Serve: Effects of the Relationship Between the Brown" by Paul Flores

Brown Berets Hail 'La Raza' and Scorn the Establishment June 16, 1969

FACEism: Footage shows clash between police, East LA protesters who changed the Chicano movement

Carlos Montes oral history interview conducted by David P. Cline in Alhambra, California, 2016 June 27 | Library of Congress

Identifier

B4SV Exhibit Topic Six: Slide 016