UCSB professor Garcia helps write new book describing the Chicano urban movement in the 1960s

By NICK C. TONKIN

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In March of 1968, students in East Los Angeles brought the high schools to a halt. Ignited by the cancellation of a school play and driven by decades of antipathy by administrators and board members, nearly 20,000 students walked out of their classrooms. These walkouts came to be known as blowouts and, according to UCSB Chicana and Chicano Studies Professor Mario T. García, sparked the urban Chicano movement of the 1960s and 1970s.

The man who brought the student organizers together was a Lincoln High School teacher named Sal Castro. Forty-two years later, Castro teamed with García to write, “Blowout! Sal Castro and the Struggle for Educational Justice,” a new book that tells the story of the walkouts.

As a high school teacher, Castro grew alarmed at the high dropout rate among Chicano and Latino students, poor reading scores, and a school system that ignored language and cultural backgrounds and steered them towards vocational jobs instead of higher education.

Castro brought together current and former Lincoln High students as well as UCLA and Cal State LA students to organize the students and make school officials address their grievances.

“I have no doubt that the walkouts wouldn’t have happened without Sal Castro,” García said. “He inspired the students. When they saw that their teacher was willing to put his career on the line, that gave them a lot of courage.”

Wednesday, February 23rd, UCSB is hosting a presentation from García and Castro at 3:30 p.m. in the McCune Conference Room, 6020 Humanities and Social Sciences Building. Free and open to the public, the authors will discuss the book and the protests that launched the biggest civil rights protests by Mexican Americans in U.S. History.

“Sal’s story is a history of a dedicated and committed teacher,” said García. “Through the walkouts, the students—and the entire Chicano community—learned that they could bring about change.”

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UCSB Fulbright Scholars to Study in Spain and Germany

Two UC Santa Barbara faculty members have received Fulbright fellowships to study in Europe during the 2008-09 academic year. In addition, the Fulbright Scholar Program has awarded grants to nine university professors from around the world who will conduct research at UCSB during the same time period.

UCSB's recipients include Mario T. García, a professor of history and Chicana and Chicano studies; and Paul Russell Spickard, professor of history.

García will spend winter and spring quarters at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid where he will teach a graduate seminar on the Chicano/Latino historical experience. García's expertise includes mass immigration from Mexico, the development of immigrant communities, civil rights struggles, oral history, and, more recently, Chicano Catholic history.

A specialist in United States and world history, and race and immigration, Spickard will spend the entire year at the University of Muenster in Germany. He will lecture on race, immigration, and citizenship in United States history and in American popular culture. Also, he will conduct research on the ways that Germany and other European nations are coming to grips with the fact that their populations are beginning to include many different peoples.

Fulbright scholars from abroad who are studying at UCSB this year include Tine A.A.A. Breban of Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium; Inigo Novales Flamarique of Simon Fraser University in Canada; Robert Helan of Masaryk University in the Czech Republic; Phuong Thi Minh Huynh of the University of Dalat in Vietnam; Robert Mann of the University of Waterloo in Canada; Karolina Siskova of the Institute of Macromolecular Chemistry at the Academy of Sciences in the Czech Republic; Tolya Angelova Stoitsova of New Bulgarian University in Bulgaria; Dongfeng Wang of Sun- Yat-sen University in China; and Alejandra Silvia Vidal of the National University of Formosa in Argentina.

The Fulbright Scholar Program, sponsored by the U.S. State Department's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, is America's flagship international educational exchange program. Since its inception in 1946, the Fulbright Program has sponsored approximately 273,500 American and foreign scholars. Recipients are selected based on academic or professional achievement as well as demonstrated leadership potential in their fields.

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