Calculate Rh using the combination between the equations 1 and 2 b.docx

Calculate Rh using the combination between the equations 1 and
2 based on
1/ λ = (Rh) (1/n2in – 1/n2out) and calculate the average of the
values and the %error
Equation 1: Ephoton = |ΔE|= Eout – Ein = B( 1/nin2 – 1/nout2)
Equation 2: λ= hc/Ephoton
Given:
colour
Wavelength obtained (nm)
N (out)
N (in)
Rh calculated m-1
red
644.1
3
2
turquoise
518.8
4
2
violet
438.0
5
2
Violet (faint)
385.1
6
2

Average Rydberg constant, m-1 = ?
Show all steps
Frontiers, Inc.
Grassroots Leadership Reconceptualized: Chicana Oral
Histories and the 1968 East Los Angeles
School Blowouts
Author(s): Dolores Delgado Bernal
Source: Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, Vol. 19, No. 2,
Varieties of Women's Oral
History (1998), pp. 113-142
Published by: University of Nebraska Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3347162 .
Accessed: 22/10/2013 11:13
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the
Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars,
researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information
technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new
forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please
contact [email protected]
.
University of Nebraska Press and Frontiers, Inc. are

collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend
access to Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies.
http://www.jstor.org
This content downloaded from 128.97.27.21 on Tue, 22 Oct
2013 11:13:01 AM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=unp
http://www.jstor.org/stable/3347162?origin=JSTOR-pdf
Dolores Delgado Bernal
Grassroots Leadership Reconceptualized:
Chicana Oral Histories and the 1968
East Los Angeles School Blowouts
The 1960s was an era of social unrest in American history.
Student movements
that helped shape larger struggles for social and political
equality emerged from
street politics and mass protests. A myriad of literature
discusses the social and
political forces of the 1960s, particularly the liberal and radical
student move-
ments. Yet, as Carlos Mufioz, Jr., argues, there is a paucity of
material on 1960s
nonwhite student radicalism and protest.' He outlines various
explanations that
have been provided by white scholars for their failure to
incorporate nonwhite

student radicalism into their work: that the black student
movement was not
radical enough and that Mexican students were simply not
involved in the struggles
of the sixties. However, though Mufioz points to the omission
of working-class
people of color in the literature on 1960s student movements, he
neglects to
include a serious analysis of gender in his own examination of
the Chicano Move-
ment and the politics of identity.
In 1968 people witnessed student demonstrations in countries
such as France,
Italy, Mexico, and the United States. In March of that year well
over ten thou-
sand students walked out of the mostly Chicano schools in East
Los Angeles to
protest the inferior quality of their education. This event, which
came to be
known as the East Los Angeles School Blowouts, has been
viewed through a
variety of analytical historical perspectives including those of
protest politics,
internal colonialism, spontaneous mass demonstrations, the
Chicano student
movement, and as a political and social development of the
wider Chicano Move-
ment. None of these historical accounts, however, include a
gender analysis.2
Indeed, even contemporary depictions, such as the important
documentary se-
ries Chicano: A History of the Mexican American Civil Rights

Movement, continue
to marginalize women's activism; part three of the series,
"Taking Back the Schools,"
Copyright ? 1998 by Frontiers Editorial Collective
113
2013 11:13:01 AM
Delores Delgado Bernal
fails to tell the stories of young Chicanas and the roles they
filled in the East Los
Angeles Blowouts.3
As an educational researcher and a Chicana, I am interested in
the women's
voices that have been omitted from the diverse historical
accounts of the Blow-
outs-particularly those women who were key participants.4 The
Blowouts pro-
vide an opportunity to rediscover a history that has been
unrecognized and un-
appreciated. In addition, a historical analysis that focuses on the
Blowout participation
of women allows us to explore how women offered leadership
and how that

leadership, while different in form and substance from
traditional interpreta-
tions, was indeed meaningful and essential.5
Hence, my purpose is twofold. Through the oral history data of
eight women,
I provide an alternative perspective to the historical narratives
of the 1968 Blow-
outs that have thus far only been told by males with a focus on
males. At the same
time, I will use the oral history data to examine the concept of
leadership in
community activism. I propose that a paradigmatic shift in the
way we view
grassroots leadership not only provides an alternative history to
the Blowouts,
but it also acknowledges Chicanas as important leaders in past
and present grassroots
movements.
Methodology
The relationship between a researcher's methodology and his or
her theoretical
and epistemological orientation is not always explicit, but these
elements are
inevitably closely connected. To reclaim a history of Chicana
activism and lead-
ership, I utilize a theoretical and epistemological perspective
grounded in critical
feminisms that are strongly influenced by women of color.
Critical feminist theories

challenge the dominant notion of knowledge and provide
legitimacy as well as a
logical rationale for the study of working-class women of color.
Chandra Talpade
Mohanty points to the importance of traditionally excluded
groups, such as
Chicanas, breaking through dominant ways of thinking and
reclaiming history.
She discusses the development of alternative histories:
This issue of subjectivity represents a realization of the fact that
who we are,
how we act, what we think, and what stories we tell become
more intelligible
within an epistemological framework that begins by recognizing
existing he-
gemonic histories. ... [Thus,] uncovering and reclaiming of
subjugated
knowledges is one way to lay claim to alternative histories.6
The struggle to reclaim history is a contention over power,
meaning, and
knowledge. Critical feminisms provide a space within the
academy for histori-
cally silenced peoples to identify unequal power relations and to
take the first
114
2013 11:13:01 AM

steps in constructing alternative histories. In short, my
epistemological orienta-
tion, which is grounded in critical feminisms, allows for the
identification of
unequal power relations, the development of alternative
histories, and the valida-
tion of a methodology based on the lived experiences of
Chicanas.
Kenneth Kann writes that there are three types of history: "the
kind you
live, the kind you hear about, and the kind you read about."'7
The second, when
documented as oral history, transforms the first into the third:
Lived history
becomes written history. In my own attempt to transform lived
experiences into
written history, my primary method of data collection is the oral
history inter-
views of eight women who as high school or college students
participated in the
1968 Blowouts. Oral histories provide a special opportunity to
learn the unique
perceptions and interpretations of individuals, particularly those
from groups
whose history has been traditionally excluded or distorted. Oral
sources are thus
a necessity when studying working-class women of color,
though they may be

less important when studying topics involving white men of the
dominant class
who have typically had control over written history and
collective memory.8 Oral
histories, grounded in critical feminisms, provide a means of
breaking through
dominant ways of knowing and reclaiming an alternative history
of grassroots
activism in the 1968 Blowouts.
The interviews I conducted took place between June 1995 and
January 1996
in a place that was most convenient for each woman, usually in
her home. Fol-
lowing a network sampling procedure, I interviewed eight
women who were
identified by other female participants or resource individuals
as key participants
or leaders in the Blowouts.9 I followed an interview protocol
with open-ended
questions in order to elicit multiple levels of data. Though the
interview protocol
was used as a guide, I realized that as the women spoke of very
personal experi-
ences, a less structured approach allowed their voices and ways
of knowing to
come forth. Although I took interview notes, each interview was
also recorded
and transcribed, and the full transcription of each interview tape
has helped me
create a more complete database.
In addition to conducting an oral history interview with each
participant, I
also conducted a focus group interview that included seven of

the eight women
together for one interview. The videotaped interview took place
at Self-Help
Graphics, a community art gallery and studio in East Los
Angeles, during Febru-
ary 1996. Focus group interviews incorporate the explicit use of
group interac-
tion to produce data and insights that would be less accessible
without the inter-
action.10 Therefore, my interest in conducting a focus group
interview was less
on reconstructing the "Truth" of what happened than it was on
recording the
115
2013 11:13:01 AM
new information, differing viewpoints, and recurring issues that
the group com-
munication generated.
To work within critical feminist scholarship, I provided each
woman with a
transcription of her individual interview so that she had a
chance to reflect and

comment on her responses to questions. The women were given
these transcrip-
tions prior to the focus group interview, allowing them the
opportunity to reflect
and bring up concerns at the group interview. During the group
interview, I also
shared my preliminary analysis with the women and asked for
their reaction and
input to four themes I had identified from their oral history
interviews. Their
comments have helped me to better understand the roles they
played in the Blowouts
and the ways in which we might look at grassroots leadership
differently.
The Women
All eight of the women are similar insofar as they are second-
or third-generation
Chicanas, first-generation college students, and grew up in
working-class neigh-
borhoods on the eastside of Los Angeles. However, these
women are not a homo-
geneous group, nor does their composite lend itself to a "typical
Chicana" leader
or activist. Two of the women grew up in single-parent
households with only two
children, while the other six come from two-parent families
with four or more
children. Four of the women come from families that had been
involved in union
organizing or leftist political movements since the 1940s. Three
women state
that they come from strong Catholic families, while three other

women state
they were raised in families in which their parent(s) had
abandoned the Catholic
Church. Though six of the eight women are bilingual in Spanish
and English
today, only one of the women grew up in a predominantly
Spanish-speaking
home. Three of the women come from mixed marriages and are
half white, Jew-
ish, or Filipina. Finally, during high school, six of the women
maintained an
exceptional academic and extracurricular record as college-
tracked students.
Despite the similarities, the notable differences in the women's
family and
personal histories reflect the complexity and diversity of
Chicanas' experiences in
1968 and today (see table 1). Indeed, there are also similarities
and differences in
the type of participation and leadership each woman contributed
to the East
L.A. Blowouts. While this article is an interpretation based on
the personal per-
ceptions and experiences of these women, knowing the
historical circumstances
of the time provides a clearer picture of the 1968 East L.A.
School Blowouts.
The 1968 East Los Angeles School Blowouts
Chicanos' struggle for quality education and the right to include
their culture,
history, and language in the curriculum is not a phenomenon of

the 1960s but
116
2013 11:13:01 AM
Table 1: Family and Personal History
Family Named
History of Named Influential
Strong Community Mother As Others
Two-Parent Catholic or Labor Influential Besides
Name Home Family Involvement Other Parent
Celeste Baca x x x
Vickie Castro x x x x
Paula Crisostomo x x x x
Mita Cuaron x x x*
Tanya Luna Mount x x x*
Rosalinda M. Gonzblez x x x x
Rachael Ochoa Cervera x x x
Cassandra Zacarias x x
*Indicates that a focus was placed on both her mother and
father.
instead predates the 1968 Blowouts by a number of decades. In
fact, many of the

concerns and issues that were voiced by participants and
supporters of the 1968
Blowouts-implementation of bilingual and bicultural training
for teachers, elimi-
nation of tracking based on standardized tests, improvement and
replacement of
inferior school facilities, removal of racist teachers and
administrators, and inclu-
sion of Mexican history and culture into the curriculum-were
very similar to
those voiced in Mexican communities in the United States since
before the turn
of the century.1"
For years, East Los Angeles community members made
unsuccessful at-
tempts to create change and improve the education system
through the "proper"
channels. In the 1950s the Education Committee of the Council
of Mexican-
American Affairs, comprised of educated Mexican
professionals, addressed the
failure of schools to educate Mexican students through
mainstream channels.
They met with legislators, school officials, and community
members and at-
tended hearings, press conferences, and symposia to no avail.12
In June 1967
Irene Tovar, Commissioner of Compensatory Education for the
Los Angeles dis-
trict, explained to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights that a
long list of recom-

mendations to improve the inferior schooling conditions was
presented to the
Los Angeles Board of Education in 1963 but that "few of those
recommenda-
tions were accepted and even fewer reached the community."13
In the years im-
mediately preceding the Blowouts, students and parents
participating in one East
L.A. high school's PTA specifically addressed the poor quality
of education and
requested reforms similar to those demanded by the Blowouts
two years later.14
Nonetheless, formal requests through official channels went
unanswered.
117
2013 11:13:01 AM
In 1963, the Los Angeles County Commission on Human
Relations began
sponsoring an annual Mexican-American Youth Leadership
Conference at Camp
Hess Kramer for high school students. These conferences were
important to the
development of the 1968 Blowouts because a number of

students who partici-
pated in the conference later became organizers in the Blowouts
as well as in
other progressive movements. Given these outcomes, it is ironic
that the camp
held an assimilationist perspective, stating that the official goal
of the camp was
to improve self-image and intergroup relations so that Mexican
American stu-
dents "may be free to develop themselves into the mainstream
of Anglo-Ameri-
can life."" Students were encouraged to be traditional school
leaders, run for
school offices, and go on to college. The student participants
were selected by
either a school, a community person, or an organization based
on their ability to
contribute to the group as well as on their ability to return and
create progress in
their own communities.
The weekend camps were held at Camp Hess Kramer in Malibu,
Califor-
nia. The student participants were assigned to cabins, and
college students served
as camp counselors and workshop leaders. Four of the women in
my study par-
ticipated in at least one of the leadership conferences prior to
their involvement
in the 1968 Blowouts. They remember the camp as a beautiful
place where they
were given a better framework to understand inequities and
where they devel-
oped a sense of community and family responsibility. As one
woman put it,

"These youth conferences were the first time that we began to
develop a con-
sciousness." Rachael Ochoa Cervera discusses her memories of
the camp:
First of all, it was a nice experience because you'd get away for
a whole week-
end and the environment, the atmosphere was quite beautiful,
very aesthetic.
Being by the ocean, yet you felt you were in the mountains ....
It was very
affirmative. That's where you began to have an identity. You
weren't with your
schoolmates, you could be more open. You could say what you
wanted to.16
While the camp fostered civic responsibility and school
leadership, many stu-
dents left motivated to organize around more radical and
progressive issues.
Rosalinda Mendez Gonzailez describes how the conferences
motivated students
to organize:
Well, when we started going to these youth conferences, there
were older
Mexican Americans. Now we were high school kids, so older
was probably
twenties and early thirties. They would talk to us, and explain a
lot of things
about what was happening, and I remember they were opening
up our eyes.
After those youth conferences, then we went back and started
organizing to
raise support for the farmworkers, and things like that.17

118
2013 11:13:01 AM
As a direct result of youth participating at Camp Hess Kramer,
the Young
Citizens for Community Action (YCCA) was formed. The
YCCA (which later
became Young Chicanos for Community Action and then
evolved into the Brown
Berets) surveyed high school students' needs, met with
education officials to dis-
cuss problems, and endorsed potential candidates for the board
of education.
YCCA members, still following official channels to bring about
improved educa-
tional conditions, supported and helped elect the first Chicano
school board
member, Julian Nava.18
Also influential in the development of the Blowouts was the
fact that by
1967 a relatively larger number of Chicano students began
entering college-
though still a small representation of the Chicano population. In
that year, one
of the first Chicano college student organizations in the Los
Angeles area, the

Mexican American Student Association (MASA), was formed at
East Los Angeles
Community College. 9 Student organizations rapidly formed
throughout college
campuses in California, including United Mexican-American
Students (UMAS)
at the University of California, Los Angles; California State
University, Los An-
geles; Occidental College; and Loyola University. The primary
issue of these or-
ganizations was the lack of Chicano access to quality education.
Historians have also noted the importance of the community
activist news-
papers Inside Eastside and La Raza to the rise of the
Blowouts.20 Inside Eastside
had an emphasis on social, cultural, and political activities
relevant to students
and for the most part was written and edited by high school
students. In fact, two
women in this study wrote articles for Inside Eastside and La
Raza. La Raza,
aimed at the Chicano community as a whole, was concerned
with a spectrum of
political activities focusing on the schools, police, and electoral
politics. The news-
papers provided a forum in which students and community
members were able
to articulate their discontent with the schools, and frequent
themes were the
poor quality of East Los Angeles schools and the cultural

insensitivity of teachers.
The newspapers, the increased number of Chicano college
students, and events
such as the Camp Hess Kramer conferences were all influential
in bringing atten-
tion to the poor educational conditions of East Los Angeles
schools.
During the 1960s, East Los Angeles high schools had an
especially deplor-
able record of educating Chicano students, who had a
dropout/pushout rate of
well over 50 percent as well as the lowest reading scores in the
district. In con-
trast, according to a survey undertaken by the Los Angeles City
School System,
two westside schools, Palisades and Monroe, had dropout rates
of 3.1 percent
and 2.6 percent respectively in 1965-1966.21 According to the
State Department
of Education's racial survey, Mexican American students were
also heavily repre-
sented in special education classes, including classes for the
mentally retarded
119
2013 11:13:01 AM

and the emotionally disturbed.22 The classrooms were
overcrowded, and most
teachers lacked sensitivity to or understanding of the Mexican
working-class com-
munities in which they taught. Rosalinda Mendez Gonzgilez
recalls:
There were teachers who would say, "You dirty Mexicans, why
don't you go
back to where you came from?" So there was a lot of racism we
encountered in
the school. We had severely overcrowded classrooms. We didn't
have suffi-
cient books. We had buildings that were barrack-type buildings
that had been
built as emergency, temporary buildings during World War II,
and this was in
the late 1960s, and we were still going to school in those
buildings.23
As a result of the poor educational conditions and the fact that
numerous
attempts to voice community concerns and school reforms were
ignored, school
strikes took place during the first week of March 1968. Though
the Blowouts
were centered at five predominately Chicano high schools
located in the general
eastside of Los Angeles, other schools in the district also
participated, including
Jefferson High School, which was predominately African
American.24
The school boycott began on different days during the first
week of March

and lasted a week and a half, with over ten thousand students
protesting the
inferior quality of their education. Though there had been weeks
of discussions
and planning, the first impromptu walkout was prompted by the
cancellation of
the school play Barefoot in the Park by the administration at
Wilson High School.
Paula Crisostomo, a student organizer at Lincoln High School,
comments on the
atmosphere at her school preceding the walkout:
I know tension had heightened, activity had heightened
districtwide, a lot of
schools were talking about it, everyone knew it was going to
happen, everyone
was waiting for the sign. But I remember the atmosphere was
absolutely tense,
I mean it was just electric in school. This had been building for
so long, and
everyone knew it was going to happen and everyone was just
waiting and
waiting.25
Though there was coordination between the schools, the
planning and actual
implementation of each school walkout took on a distinct
character. High school
students, college students, Brown Beret members, teachers, and
the general com-
munity took on different roles and provided different kinds of
support.
Vickie Castro, a Roosevelt graduate, was a college student who

played a
crucial role in organizing and supporting the Blowouts. Vickie
recalls that while
she was at Roosevelt trying to help organize students, she was
recognized by a
teacher and escorted to the gate. The teacher told her, "If I see
you on campus
again, I'll have you arrested." Vickie later used her old Mazda
to pull down the
120
2013 11:13:01 AM
chain-link fence that had been locked to prevent high school
students from leav-
ing: "I remember having to back my car and put chains on and
pull the gates
off." In contrast, her key role at Lincoln was to set up a meeting
with the princi-
pal and detain him while other college students came on campus
to encourage
high school students to participate in the walkouts. Vickie
recalls the strategy she
used at Lincoln, pretending to be a job applicant to get an
appointment with the
principal:

I remember we had a whole strategy planned for Lincoln, how
we were going
to do it. And who was going to be in the halls to yell "walkouts"
at the various
buildings. And my role was to make an appointment with the
principal to
meet him, to talk to him about either employment or something.
I'm in his
office and my job is trying to delay him. He kept saying, "I'll be
right with
you, I'll be right with you." So I was to just keep him distracted
a little bit.
Then when the walkouts came, of course, he said, "I have to
leave." And then
somehow, I don't even recall, I got out of the building too.26
Just as the planning and actual implementation of each school
walkout took
on a distinct character, so did the response by each school
administration and by
the police. While the student walkouts on other campuses could
be characterized
as ranging from peaceful to controlled with mild incidents of
violence, the stu-
dents on Roosevelt's campus experienced a great deal of police
violence. Police,
county sheriffs, and riot squads were called. With a number of
students and
community members injured and arrested, the student protest
turned into a near
riot situation. Tanya Luna Mount, a student organizer, points
out that even though
the students were following the legal requirements of a public
demonstration,

the situation with the police escalated to the point of senseless
beatings with
school administrators trying to stop the police:
They [the LAPD] were treating it like we were rioting and
tearing everything
up, which we weren't. We weren't breaking, destroying
anything. Nobody was
hanging on school property and tearing it apart. Nothing,
nothing like that
happened. And we were told to disperse, we had three minutes.
Everybody
kept yelling that we had a right to be there. . . . All of a sudden
they [the riot
squad] started coming down this way. They start whacking
people. Now they're
beating people up, badly, badly beating people up. Now people,
administra-
tors are inside yelling, "Stop, my God. What are you doing?"
Once you call
LAPD, the school no longer has any jurisdiction. They couldn't
even open the
gate and tell the kids to run inside because the police were
telling them, "Re-
move yourself from the fence and go back, mind your own
business." That's
when all of a sudden they [the administrators] realized, "My
God.'"27
121

2013 11:13:01 AM
The student strikers, including those at Roosevelt who were
subjected to
police violence, were not just idly walking out of school. They
proposed that
their schools be brought up to the same standards as those of
other Los Angeles
high schools. The students generated a list of grievances and
pushed for the board
of education to hold a special meeting in which they could
present their griev-
ances. The official list of student grievances to be presented to
the board of edu-
cation consisted of thirty-six demands, including smaller class
size, bilingual edu-
cation, more emphasis on Chicano history, and community
control of schools.28
Many of the grievances were educational reforms previously
proposed by con-
cerned parents, educators, and community members, and all of
the demands
were supported by the premise that East Los Angeles schools
were not properly
educating Chicano students.
The Blowouts generated the formation of the Educational Issues
Coordi-

nating Committee (EICC) by parents, various community
members, high school
students, and UMAS members. With pressure from the EICC
and the student
strikers, the Blowouts also generated at least two special board
of education meetings
in which students, the EICC, and supporters were allowed to
voice their con-
cerns. By Friday, March 9, the school strikes had not ended, and
the board of
education scheduled a special meeting to hear the students'
proposals. At this
meeting it was decided that another meeting would be held at
Lincoln High
School and that the board would grant amnesty to the thousands
of students
who had boycotted classes.29
Approximately twelve hundred people attended a four-hour
board meeting
that was held at Lincoln High School, yet the board of
education made no com-
mitments. Students walked out of the meeting in response to the
board's inac-
tion. The sentiments of the board were captured by an article in
the Los Angeles
Times stating that "school officials deny any prejudice in
allocation of building
funds and say that they agree with 99% of the students'
demands-but that the
district does not have the money to finance the kind of massive
changes pro-
posed."30 At this meeting, the board went on record opposing
the discipline of
students and teachers who had participated in the boycott. Yet

in the late evening
of June 2, 1968, thirteen individuals involved in the Blowouts
were arrested and
imprisoned on conspiracy charges. Though female students were
involved in or-
ganizing the Blowouts, the "L.A. 13" were all men, including
Sal Castro, a teacher
from Lincoln High School. With a focus on males, especially
those who looked
the militant type, females avoided arrest. Though the charges
were later dropped
and found unconstitutional, Sal Castro was suspended from his
teaching posi-
tion at Lincoln High School. For many months students,
community, and EICC
122
2013 11:13:01 AM
members rallied in support of the L.A. 13 and then focused
organizing efforts on
the reinstatement of Sal Castro.
A Reconceptualization of Leadership
In exploring how and when women participated in the Blowouts,
it is important

to outline a reconceptualization of leadership that places women
at the center of
analysis and does not separate the task of organizing from
leading. The
reconceptualization I put forth comes out of a women's studies
tradition that in
the last twenty years has produced an impressive body of new
knowledge and has
contributed to the development of new paradigms on leadership.
Rather than
using traditional paradigms that view leaders as those who
occupy a high posi-
tion in an organization, feminist scholars have developed
alternative paradigms
that more accurately consider gender in the analysis of
leadership.31
In the area of science, Thomas Kuhn's influential work The
Structure ofSci-
entific Revolutions presents a model for a fundamental change
in theories and
scientific paradigms, arguing that without major paradigm shifts
we may never
understand certain scientific phenomena. He gives the example
of how Joseph
Priestley, one of the scientists said to have discovered the gas
that was later found
to be oxygen, was unable to see what other scientists were able
to see as a result of
a paradigm revision.32 Similarly, a paradigm shift in the way
that we understand
and study leadership allows us to see how women-specifically
the women in my
study- emerge as leaders. Perhaps there is something faulty in
the previous lead-
ership paradigms that have not allowed us to understand and

explain the lived
experiences of Chicanas.
Karen Brodkin Sacks indicates that the traditional paradigm of
leadership
implicitly equates public speakers and negotiators with leaders
and also identifies
organizing and leading as two different tasks.33 She challenges
this notion of
leadership by placing working-class women at the center of
analysis. Leadership
in this perspective is a collective process that includes the
mutually important
and reinforcing dynamic between both women's and men's roles.
Leadership as a
process allows us to acknowledge and study a cooperative
leadership in "which
members of a group are empowered to work together
synergistically toward a
common goal or vision that will create change, transform
institutions, and thus
improve the quality of life."34 This paradigm of cooperative
leadership along with
the inclusion of women's voices allows an alternative view of
the Blowouts and of
different dimensions of grassroots leadership to emerge.
123
2013 11:13:01 AM

Dimensions of Grassroots Leadership
In previous work, I have identified five different types of
activities that can be
considered dimensions of grassroots leadership in the 1968
Blowouts: network-
ing, organizing, developing consciousness, holding an elected
or appointed of-
fice, and acting as an official or unofficial spokesperson.35 The
distinction be-
tween these activities is not meant to be a rigid and
impermeable one, nor are
these activities inclusive of all dimensions of grassroots
leadership. Not every
leader need participate in every dimension of leadership, and I
argue that there is
no hierarchical order assigned to the different dimensions. The
activities can be
viewed as locations on a moving carousel, each location being
of equal impor-
tance. There are many entry points at which one can get on and
off, and once on
the carousel one is free to move about in different locations (see
figure 1).
Developing Consciousness
Helping others gain an awareness of school and
social inequities through discussions and
print media.
Holding Office
Serving an elected or appointed

position in a community or
student organization that
was directly or indirectly V-
related to the blowouts
Dimensions Of
Grassroots organizing
Attending meetings and
Leadership planning or implementing
events/activities that were
directly or indirectly related
to the blowouts.
Networking
Building a base of support and
linking diverse groups that could Acting as Spokesperson
offer legitimacy to the blowouts. Speaking to the media or
before large
groups of people as an official or
unofficial representative
Figure 1: Dimensions of Grassroots Leadership
Writing about black women involved in the civil rights
movement of the
same period, Charlotte Bunch points that "while black male
leaders were the
ones whom the press called on to be the spokesmen, it was often

the black women
who made things happen, especially in terms of organizing
people at the com-
munity level."36 Likewise, when I initially described my
research proposal to a
male Chicano colleague of the Movement generation, he
sincerely encouraged
me to pursue the topic, but unassumingly warned that there were
no female
124
2013 11:13:01 AM
leaders in the Blowouts and that few women were involved.
Perhaps because he
views the Blowouts from a traditional leadership paradigm, he
overlooked Chicanas
as leaders and failed to recognize their important contributions
to the Blowouts.
Yet in distinct ways and to varying degrees, the women I
interviewed participated
in these different dimensions of leadership. Their participation
was vital to the
Blowouts, yet because a traditional leadership paradigm does
not acknowledge
the importance of those who participate in organizing,
developing conscious-

ness, and networking, their leadership remains unrecognized
and unappreciated
by most historians.
In the following sections, I will discuss each of the five
identified, interre-
lated dimensions of leadership, exploring the ways in which the
oral histories of
the women in this study further our understanding of the
Blowouts and of women's
activist leadership.
Participation and Implementation ofMeetings, Events,
andActivities: Organizing
Organizing includes attending meetings and planning or
implementing events
and activities that were directly or indirectly related to the
Blowouts. There were
numerous meetings, events, and activities that took place prior
to and after the
Blowouts in which students, teachers, parents, and community
members raised
concerns about the quality of education in the East L.A. high
schools. All eight of
the women discuss attending and actively participating in PTA
meetings, school
board meetings, Blowout committee meetings, or community
planning meet-
ings that were held in such places as the Cleveland House, the
Plaza Community
Center, and the home of Tanya Luna Mount's parents.37
In an attempt to address and remedy school inequities, activists
in these

organizations implemented a number of strategies before
resorting to a school
boycott. For example, Vickie Castro, Paula Crisostomo, and
Rachael Ochoa Cervera
were intimately involved in YCCA, a community youth group
formed by former
Camp Hess Kramer participants that took up issues of
education. Members of
this group met regularly, talked to other youth at government-
sponsored Teen
Posts, and conducted a needs assessment survey to find out what
was going on in
the schools. Vickie discusses her and others' organizing efforts
in the years prior
to the Blowouts:
And we even had like a questionnaire that we had made. I wish
we had kept all
these things. We wanted to compile complaints and I guess we
were trying to
develop, even in our simple perspective, like a needs
assessment. We would
talk to kids, What do you think about your school? Do they help
you? Do
125
2013 11:13:01 AM

they push you out? Are you going to college? ... I know that we
compiled
quite a bit of complaints and that's where during the walkouts
when you hear
about the demands, a lot of that was based on these complaints.
So we had a
process in mind.38
After the surveys were returned and tallied up, Vickie, Paula,
Rachael, and other
YCCA members decided to actively support and work on Julian
Nava's school
board campaign. Paula remembers how their organizing efforts
progressed:
So it was interesting when we got it [the surveys] back and we
tallied it up and
again it strengthened our belief of how inadequate we saw the
schools to be.
Well, of course, the next question was, "Okay, now what do we
do?" We got
involved in a campaign, my first political campaign that I
worked in, for Julian
Nava, the first Latino to run for school board. It was an at-large
position
before the board was broken up into districts or regions, and he
courted us.
We worked with him, we worked for him, thinking that this was
the way, this
was an answer.39

When Tanya Luna Mount speaks of her organizing efforts, they
range from
the antiwar movement she helped organize at Roosevelt just
prior to the Blow-
outs to the work she did against police brutality in her
community. In addition,
Tanya remembers participating in the planning of what would
be presented in
discussions with the board of education: "I was on the
committee that would
decide what would be said at the board of education meetings.
And we'd elect
who would do it." She also speaks of the many Blowout
organizational meetings
that were held at her home and how "we were open all night ...
[and] people
would come over our house during the walkouts." She
remembers that her home
even made the news when George Putnam, a conservative news
commentator,
said that there was a house at "126 South Soto Street in East
Los Angeles, in
Boyle Heights that is notorious for being commies, rebel
rousers, and anti-gov-
ernment."
In fact, an important component of organizing the Blowouts was
the active
participation in meetings that helped to develop or support the
demonstrations.
Mita Cuaron remembers actively participating in many
community meetings
prior to and during the Blowouts in which "we set up a list of

demands on vari-
ous topics and issues that we felt we were being deprived of,"
and community
members decided that these concerns had to be brought before
the board of
education.40 Rosalinda Mendez Gonzailez describes the school
board meetings in
which she and others protested the suspension of teacher Sal
Castro and de-
manded that the board return him to his teaching position at
Lincoln High School.
126
2013 11:13:01 AM
Though the police employed various intimidation techniques,
she and others
continued to organize and actively participate in these meetings:
I mean there would be so many hundreds of us that would show
up, students,
elderly people, some professionals, all kinds of people that
would show up to
these meetings that we couldn't even fit inside the board room. I
mean people
were out in the courtyard and they had to have the P.A. system
.... But I
remember also at these meeting all of the intimidation. The

police were going
around literally, aisle by aisle, snapping, snapping, snapping,
snapping pic-
tures of everybody who was there. I mean it was pure
intimidation. If you're
here to testify and you're here to demonstrate, we're going to
have you on
file.41
Without the organizing efforts and persistence of these and
other young
Chicanas the Blowouts probably would not have taken place,
and the attention
needed to expose poor educational conditions may not have
been garnered. By
organizing community people, the women in this study
demonstrate the dy-
namic process and complex set of relationships that comprised
the leadership of
the 1968 Blowouts. Indeed, this reconceptualization of
leadership allows us to
consider organizers as leaders in various grassroots movements,
including the
Chicano Civil Rights Movement.
From Behind the Scenes: Developing Consciousness
A second dimension of leadership is developing consciousness,
the process of
helping others gain awareness of school and social inequities
through discussions
or print media. Developing the consciousness of individuals is
crucial to generat-
ing and maintaining the momentum needed for any social
movement. Yet just as

organizing is separated from the task of leading, consciousness
shaping is often
overlooked as part of the dynamic process.
Each of the women I talked with participated in raising
consciousness through
informal dialogues with her peers, family members, or
community members. As
young women they challenged others to think about and
consider the inequities
that they confronted on a daily basis. One woman put it bluntly,
"You raised
consciousness in any way that you could do it, subtly or
outright."42 Often one of
the most difficult and least rewarding tasks of leading,
developing consciousness
requires one to help others see and understand things like they
never have before.
Cassandra Zacarlas reflects on the difficulty of the task:
I was talking to students and trying to explain to them, and I
remember that
was really hard for me because I was a really shy person at the
time. I was a real
introverted person and this was really difficult to have people
actually say,
127
2013 11:13:01 AM

"Oh you're nuts. What the hell is wrong with you?" And I
remember feeling
sometimes, what have I gotten myself into.43
In addition to holding informal discussions about school
conditions or so-
cial inequities, these women used print media to raise
consciousness. Both Tanya
Luna Mount and Mita Cuaron's families had mimeograph
machines that they
used for mass duplication of informational leaflets and flyers
that were then dis-
tributed throughout the communities and schools. Furthermore,
all the women
I interviewed were somehow connected to the community
activist newspapers
Inside Eastside and La Raza. Celeste Baca worked in the La
Raza office as a volun-
teer, Tanya Luna Mount and Paula Crisostomo wrote for and
distributed news-
papers, and the other women all read and encouraged others to
read these news-
papers. As high school students, Tanya Luna Mount and Paula
Crisostomo
contributed to building consciousness by writing articles
specifically addressing
the poor educational conditions in East Los Angeles schools.
Paula recounts her
involvement with the community activist newspapers:

I typed and did layouts, and wrote ghost articles about the
schools. I would
also go to the [Whittier] Boulevard to sell Chicano Student
Movement or Inside
Eastside. ... I would bring a whole stack to school and I would
give a few to
people, and they would pass them out to their friends. And then
the school
said we couldn't do it anymore, so I'd get to school early and I'd
leave them
around the campus. I would go into the bathroom and I would
put them in
the bathroom, the cafeteria, where I knew kids hung out, and I
would tell
people where they could find them. People would find them, but
I wasn't
actually distributing.44
Developing consciousness, whether through verbal or written
communica-
tion, is less public than tasks normally associated with
traditional interpretations
of leadership. Like organizing and networking, it is work that is
done from be-
hind the scenes, often unrecognized and unappreciated. By
placing working-
class females at the center of analysis, we are able to see this
behind-the-scenes
work and appreciate its importance in the leadership of the 1968
East L.A. Blow-
outs.
A Need For A Wide Base Of Support. Networking
A third dimension of leadership, networking, refers to activities

that link diverse
groups in building a base of support. During the time of the
Blowouts it was
important to have support from community members as well as
from those out-
side of the community who could lend some legitimacy to the
students' efforts.
Thus, networking involved both transforming community and
familial ties into
128
2013 11:13:01 AM
a political force and building a supportive political front by
reaching those out-
side of a comfortable social network. As Brodkin Sacks found
in her study of
workplace networks at Duke Medical Center, the networks
formed during the
Blowouts functioned as a sort of "telegraph system, carrying a
collective message
of protest against unfairness."45
Students who were involved in the walkouts were continuously
accused of

being communist, being organized by outside agitators, or just
wanting to skip
school. Networking within the community was a way to develop
an awareness of
the school inequities and develop a political force. Cassandra
Zacarias remem-
bers having to defend her own and other students' actions while
trying to gain
support from teachers, peers, and some family members:
The issue would come up, well, it's all outside agitators, it's all
communists
coming in and riling up the little Mexicans and these little
teenagers and we'd
say, "No it's not. It's within our community." ... I remember
feeling like most
of the kids didn't really like us and they'd say, "Oh, you know
you guys are
communists and you're crazy.". .. I'd tell my family, "No, I'm
not a commu-
nist," and then start to tell them that there's all these inequities
in the sys-
tem.46
Similarly, Vickie Castro, a college student at the time,
comments on how impor-
tant it was that high school students not cause a disturbance or
skip school with-
out understanding the issues:
I remember something that was very important to all of us is
that we just
didn't want disturbance for disturbance sake. And we were

really talking to
kids saying, "We want you to know why you're walking out.". ..
There was a
purpose so that we did meet with groups in the park, in the
schools, on the
corners and we tried to say, "This is why we're doing this and
we need your
support.~47
Cassandra and Vickie's statements exemplify how networking-
transforming
community ties into a political force-is closely interrelated with
raising con-
sciousness-helping others gain awareness of school and social
inequities.
During my interview with Sal Castro, he discussed networking
strategies
that involved the students connecting with individuals outside
of the communal
or familial social networks. He knew that an endorsement from
the church, Cesar
Chavez, or politicians would lend legitimacy to the students'
cause: "I constantly
wanted people of the cloth to support the kids. I was never able
to get any sup-
port from the Catholic Church. We had to steal a banner of the
Our Lady of
Guadalupe because we couldn't get any priest."48 Finally, after
a number of phone
129

2013 11:13:01 AM
calls and some pleading, "a major coup" was set in place: Bobby
Kennedy agreed
to talk to the students and make a statement of support.
Kennedy was on his way
back to Washington, D.C., from a visit with Cesar Chavez in
Delano, California.
He had to make a stop at the Los Angeles airport, where he
agreed to meet with
a group of students that included Paula Crisostomo and
Cassandra Zacarias. A
picture of Kennedy with the students appeared in local East Los
Angeles papers,
and Kennedy's endorsement proved to be a helpful networking
strategy that in-
creased support for the Blowouts.
During the actual week and a half of the Blowouts, Paula
Crisostomo was
involved with other students who were building a base of
support throughout
the city with groups such as the Jewish organization B'nai B'rith
and Hamilton
High School on the westside. Through speaking engagements,
students voiced
their concerns and discussed school inequities with others who

could offer sup-
port and advocate on the students' behalf. Crisostomo recalls:
We were also doing speaking engagements. I remember we
spoke to the B'nai
B'rith in West L.A. And we went to Hamilton and they had a
rally for us in a
park. During that week we were hot items, and a lot of groups
were asking us
to come and speak, and we were getting more support, so the
board had to
[listen] .49
In light of the widespread communist and outside agitator
accusations, it was
especially crucial to develop a network formation of individuals
and organiza-
tions who could sanction and endorse the students' actions and
demands.
Less Focus on More Visibility: Holding Office
Holding an elected or appointed office is a fourth dimension of
leadership. Four
of the women I talked with held an elected or appointed office
in direct or indi-
rect relationship to the Blowouts. Vickie Castro was the first
president of YCCA,
the youth organization that focused on education and was a
precursor to the
Blowouts. Shortly after the school walkouts, Mita Cuaron and
Cassandra Zacarias
were elected student body officers. Their Freedom Candidate
slate was made up

of Garfield Blowout Committee members and was based on the
ideal of "insti-
tuting an educational system in our school which is based on
equality, justice and
first-rate education for all."50 Months after the Blowouts,
Rosalinda Mendez
Gonz~ilez was one of the youths appointed to the Mexican
American Education
Commission, which was originally an advisory board to the
school board.
Though these positions probably accorded these women slightly
more vis-
ibility than other young female participants, the positions
seemed to be second-
ary to their other leadership activities. For the most part,
women casually mentioned
130
2013 11:13:01 AM
these positions during their interviews. They spent much more
time recalling
and talking about the more private tasks that I have included
under the dimen-

sions of networking, organizing, and developing consciousness.
In other words,
they seem to identify their role in the Blowouts more in relation
to these dimen-
sions of leadership than in the elected or appointed positions
that they held. Yet,
though these women gave less focus to the more visible and
public roles, docu-
menting this dimension of leadership is important in that it
demonstrates that
young Chicanas also contributed to the Blowouts (and in other
social move-
ments) within the more prevalent notion of leadership that
equates elected offic-
ers and public speakers with leaders.
A More Public Space: Acting As Spokesperson
The fifth dimension of leadership is acting as an official or
unofficial spokesper-
son. During the Blowouts male participants usually took on this
role and were
found in front of the camera, quoted in the Los Angeles Times,
or speaking before
crowds. However, there were occasions in which a female
student who was active
in other dimensions of leadership also took on the role of
spokesperson. Rosalinda
Mendez Gonzailez and Paula Crisostomo were both asked to act
as official spokes-
persons by providing testimony about Mexican Americans in
education based on

their experiences as students. Each of them testified before the
United States
Commission on Civil Rights at hearings held in Los Angeles. As
a recent gradu-
ate of Lincoln High School, Rosalinda felt that the school
curriculum was prima-
rily responsible for the failure of many Chicano students. The
following is an
excerpt of Rosalinda's comments before the United States
Commission on Civil
Rights in June of 1967:
From the time we first begin attending school, we hear about
how great and
wonderful our United States is, about our democratic American
heritage, but
little about our splendid and magnificent Mexican heritage and
culture. What
little we do learn about Mexicans is how they mercilessly
slaughtered the brave
Texans at the Alamo, but we never hear about the child heroes
of Mexico who
courageously threw themselves from the heights of Chapultepec
rather than
allow themselves and their flag to be captured by the attacking
Americans. ...
We look for others like ourselves in these history books, for
something to be
proud of for being a Mexican, and all we see in books and
magazines, films,
and T.V. shows are stereotypes of a dark, dirty, smelly man
with a tequila
bottle in one hand, a dripping taco in the other, a serape

wrapped around
him, and a big sombrero. But we are not the dirty, stinking wino
that the
Anglo world would like to point out as a Mexican.51
131
2013 11:13:01 AM
In an effort to return Sal Castro to the classroom, Rosalinda
also testified before
the Los Angeles School Board, as did Vickie Castro and other
young Chicanas.
Though most young women involved in the Blowouts did not
fill the
role of official spokesperson, several of the women I
interviewed described in-
stances in which they spontaneously addressed a group of
students or the media
in relation to the Blowouts. Mita Cuaron reconstructs a situation
in which she
was an unofficial spokesperson:
It was just so spontaneous. And I remember picking up an
orange cone from
the street, and began talking about, we are protesting and this is
what's hap-

pening. And I don't remember exactly what I said, but I
remember physically
standing on a car and talking out loud. And for two minutes
there was quite a
group of students not going back into school and then the police
were called
and they began to chase us.52
Thus, although acting as a spokesperson is a dimension of
leadership that
was more often filled by males, these examples show that some
women did par-
ticipate in this dimension of leadership while also participating
in other dimen-
sions.
The Multidimensional Influence of Gender
How is it that these eight women came to participate in the 1968
Blowouts in
the ways that they did? What influenced and shaped their
participation? This
study provides evidence suggesting that the dimensions of
leadership are not
necessarily gender specific, and the same individual may engage
in several di-
mensions.53 While young women were more likely to be found
participating in
the first three dimensions of leadership-networking, organizing,
and develop-
ing consciousness-it is important to look at the factors that
shaped their par-
ticipation rather than assume that these are gender-specific
dimensions of leader-
ship that are only filled by females. In a study of traditional and
nontraditional

patterns of Chicana and Mexicana activism, Margaret Rose
concedes that per-
sonalities have shaped female participation in the United Farm
Workers ofAmerica
(UFW).54 However, she argues that the pattern of participation
is more greatly
influenced by complex factors such as class, cultural values,
social expectations,
and the sexual division of labor. Indeed, the eight women I
interviewed discuss
similar factors that appear to have shaped their participation in
the school boy-
cotts. In this final section, I will present the oral history data
that speaks to the
multidimensional influence of gender.
The influence of gender was perceived in a somewhat nebulous
way by the
women in this study. Women made statements ranging from,
"Nobody ever said
132
2013 11:13:01 AM
that you couldn't do this because you were a girl," to "I know
that the females
were not the leaders," and from, "Being a female was not an

issue, it was just a
non-issue," to "I'm sure I knew that there was sexism involved.
.. but we prob-
ably didn't talk about it." This diversity of statements, both
within interviews
and between interviews, leads to a conclusion that these women
held no single
distinct and precise viewpoint on the influence of gender.
Rather, the women's
individual and collective thoughts on gender represent the
indeterminate and
complex influence of gender within a system of patriarchy-a
system of domina-
tion and unequal stratification based on gender. Though the way
that boys and
girls were socialized may have reinforced the gender
differences in how they exer-
cised leadership in the school Blowouts, the women's diverse
comments reflect
the complexity of gender's influence while also attributing their
participation in
various leadership roles to sexism, role-compatibility, choice,
and expectations.
The social, cultural, and temporal milieu all contributed to what
was ex-
pected of young women in 1968. And though most of these
women ventured
from these expectations, they were very aware of them. For
example, one woman
stated, "So I think that my home life, in one sense, brought me
up very tradi-
tional. And I definitely knew what the female role was suppose

to be. And that it
wasn't college, and it wasn't this and that.""55 Paula Crisostomo
also comments on
the way that gender expectations, "how it was then," and her
personal agency
shaped the ways in which she participated in the Blowouts:
Boys were more outspoken and I think that's just because of,
that's how it was
then. They were given the interviews more than the girls were.
When we
would talk about the division of who was going to speak to what
group, it was
the boys who were chosen and the girls who sort of stayed back.
And I think
that's just how it was .... And I was happy, as I still am today, to
be in the
background. I'll do what you want me to do, but I'll do it back
here. Don't
have me stand in front of a mike, or in front of a group of
people, I just don't
want to do that.56
Vickie Castro points out that patriarchy and her own agency
were complex
forces that interacted to shape her participation. Vickie believes
there was a "big
gender issue in the family." She grew up in a "traditional"
family with a very
strong and dominant father who expected her to get married and
have children.
Her father was an inspiration through his own strength and
leadership, yet he
often held traditional gender expectations and tried to place

limitations on Vickie.
On the other hand, her older brothers were always encouraging
and supportive,
and they urged Vickie to go on to college. Her family's
influence gave her the
133
2013 11:13:01 AM
strength to combat the sexism she and other young women
found in some of the
student organizations:
Maybe my male friends at the time, in the organization, would
try to put me
in female roles. Like be the secretary, make the sandwiches, do
that. But I
think that I had such a strong male influence in my household,
you know,
four brothers and my father, that among my brothers I was
equal. So I always
challenged. And when I would see that there were no women
involved, boom,
I made myself right there.57
Rosalinda Mendez Gonzailez also offers comments that
demonstrate how
the influence of gender interacted with various structures and

social systems to
offer a multidimensional influence. First, she acknowledges that
few people raised
the question or offered a critique of patriarchy in the early part
of the Chicano
Movement (a point with which most of the women concur), yet
Rosalinda expe-
rienced sexism in a personal relationship. Second, she points to
the fact that it
was older males involved in Camp Hess Kramer and other
organizations, rather
than females, that encouraged her and other young women to
become involved
in Blowout related activities:
I think that when we participated in things initially, there wasn't
a conscious-
ness of patriarchy. If you were a young man or young woman
and you saw
injustice, whether in regards to the farmworkers or in regards to
our college,
you spoke out and got involved. Now in my case, I very early
on began to
encounter some patriarchal hostilities from my own boyfriend,
who very much
criticized me for taking an active role and speaking out. But he
didn't con-
vince me nor did he succeed in holding me back. I was just very
hurt by it, but
I didn't accept his arguments or his reason. I encountered it at a
very personal
level. At the same time there were a lot of men, older men that
were encourag-
ing me to speak out and participate.58
Rosalinda explains that after the Blowouts, as the Movement

began to gain mo-
mentum, she encountered increasing evidence of sexism and
that women began
addressing patriarchy as a system of domination. In fact, she
argues that in many
cases it was the female students who were at the forefront of the
Movement and
that male students tried to hold young women back and move
into the more
visible leadership positions.
Though sexist gender expectations were prevalent within the
existing patri-
archal relations, Vickie Castro also points to how she and other
female and male
students were conscious of gender stereotypes and used them to
their advantage.
They would strategize the roles that students would take based
on individual
characteristics and resources. For her, that meant different
things at different
134
2013 11:13:01 AM
times. At one point it meant using her car and a set of chains to
pull open the

gates around Roosevelt High School; at other times it meant
using her "goody-
two-shoes image":
So we knew that if we needed someone who didn't look
threatening, that
looked like a nice person, I was to go in. I was the, you know,
I'm a little bit
more giiera. I didn't really dress, I didn't really look chola. If
we wanted some-
body to be aggressive and very vocal then that was David's
[Sanchez] role....
I always had the look to get out of it. I always looked real
straight laced. And
I knew that. And I used it. I never looked the militant type, the
chola type.59
In other words, she did not embody what some school officials
feared most in
Mexican American students. As a fair-complexioned female
who dressed "appro-
priately," she was not threatening to the white mainstream
community nor to
the older or more conservative Mexicans in her own community.
Vickie's physi-
cal appearance influenced the type of participation and
leadership she offered to
the Blowouts, and she used it to gain support for the Blowouts.
Gender interacted with sexism, patriarchal relations, personal
agency, and
the family to shape the participation and leadership of young
women in the
Blowouts. And while the women in this study acknowledge the
impact gender
expectations had on their participation, they link their

participation in the Blow-
outs to the discrimination and oppression of the community as a
whole rather
than to that of women. One woman stated, "I felt as a whole, in
terms of my
peers and I, we were being discriminated against, but,
personally, as a woman, I
didn't feel that there was a differentiation."60 This echoes the
findings of Mary
Pardo's study of the Mothers of East L.A. in which she points
out that working-
class women activists seldom opt to separate themselves from
men and their
families.6' As the women in my study reflect back, they too
view their participa-
tion in the school Blowouts as a struggle for their community
and quality educa-
tion.
Conclusion
The oral history data I present challenges the historical and
ideological represen-
tation of Chicanas by relocating them to a central position in
the historical nar-
rative. Through a cooperative leadership paradigm that
recognizes diverse di-
mensions of grassroots leadership, we are able to move beyond
the traditional
notion of leadership and identify ways in which women offered
leadership to the
Blowouts. Though their stories are often excluded in the writing
of history, I
confirm that Chicanas have been intimately involved with and
have offered lead-
ership to the ongoing struggle for educational justice. The
experiences of Celeste

135
2013 11:13:01 AM
Baca, Vickie Castro, Paula Crisostomo, Mita Cuaron, Tanya
Luna Mount,
Rosalinda Mendez Gonzailez, Rachael Ochoa Cervera, and
Cassandra Zacarfas
rebuke the popular stereotypes of Mexican women as docile,
passive, and apa-
thetic, and demonstrate that women's leadership in events like
the 1968 East Los
Angeles School Blowouts has often been unrecognized and
unappreciated.
Through the oral history data of these eight women, I illustrate
that looking
at grassroots leadership within a cooperative leadership
paradigm leads us to an
alternative history of the 1968 East Los Angeles School
Blowouts-a history that
makes the invisible visible. This alternative history of women's
participation and
leadership also pushes us to consider how we can redefine the
categories for studying
and participating in community activism. By redefining the

leadership paradigm,
we may be able to break through dominant ways of thinking and
doing and
reclaim histories that have been silenced in our communities, as
well as shape our
future histories to be more inclusive of traditionally silenced
voices. Indeed, there
is something faulty in previous leadership paradigms that have
not allowed us to
acknowledge Chicanas as leaders in the 1968 Blowouts, the
Chicano Movement,
and in other grassroots movements. A cooperative leadership
paradigm allows us
to address the erroneous absence of Chicanas as participants and
leaders in his-
tory and contemporary life.62
Notes
I would like to thank the many individuals who provided me
with supportive
criticism during the different stages of analyzing,
conceptualizing, and writing.
The completion of this article benefited from the feedback and
encouragement
of Ramona Maile Cutri, Claudia Ramirez Weideman, Anne
Powell, Amy Stuart
Wells, Freddy Heredia, Mary Pardo, Danny Solorzano, Octavio
Villalpando, and
the readers at Frontiers, including Vicki Ruiz. A special thanks
also to Sal Castro.
I am especially indebted to the eight women who allowed me to
transform their
lived history into a written history-muchisimas gracias.

1. Carlos Muiioz, Jr., Youth, Identity, Power: The Chicano
Movement (New York: Verso,
1989).
2. The following scholars have studied the Blowouts from
theoretical perspectives: Myron
Puckett, "Protest Politics in Education: A Case Study in the Los
Angeles Unified
School District" (Ph.D. diss., Claremont Graduate School,
1971); Carlos Muiioz,
Jr., "The Politics of Chicano Urban Protest: A Model of
Political Analysis" (Ph.D.
diss., Claremont Graduate School, 1972); Louis R. Negrete,
"Culture Clash: The
Utility of Mass Protest as a Political Response," The Journal
ofComparative Cultures
1:1 (1972): 25-36; Juan G6mez-Qui iones, Mexican Students
Por La Raza: The Chicano
Student Movement in Southern California, 1967-1977 (Santa
Barbara, Calif.: Editorial
136
2013 11:13:01 AM
La Causa, 1978); and Gerald Rosen, "The Development of the
Chicano Movement
in Los Angeles from 1967-1969," Atzlan 4:1 (1973): 155-83.

3. Luis Ruiz (executive producer) and Susan Racho (segment
producer), "Taking Back
the Schools," part 3 of Chicano: A History ofthe Mexican
American CivilRights Movement
(Los Angeles: National Latino Communications Center & Galin
Productions, Inc.,
1996).
4. In this paper "Chicana" is used when referring to female
persons of Mexican origin
living in the United States-irrespective of generational or
immigration status. "Chicano"
is used when referring to both male and female persons; I
specifically indicate when
the term refers only to males. Terms of identification vary
according to context and
it should be noted that during the period of interest in this
paper, 1968, these terms
were especially prominent within the student population as
conscious political iden-
tifiers. The term Chicano was not prominent prior to the 1960s
and is therefore
used interchangeably with "Mexican" when referring to pre-
1960s history.
5. In the last fifteen to twenty years there has been a relative
increase in the works that
look specifically at the grassroots leadership, community
activism, and historical
struggles of Chicanas. The following are but a few examples:
Adelaida R. Del Castillo,
ed., Between Borders: Essays on Mexicana/Chicana History
(Encino, Calif.: Floricanto

Press, 1990); Rosalinda Mendez Gonzilez, "Chicanas and
Mexican Immigrant Families,
1920-1940," in Decades ofDiscontent: The Women's Movement,
1920-1940, ed. Lois
Scharf and Joan M. Jensen (Wesport, Conn.: Greenwood Press,
1983), 59-83;
Magdalena Mora and Adelaida R. Del Castillo, eds., Mexican
Women in the United
States: Struggles Past and Present (Los Angeles: Chicano
Studies Research Center Pub-
lications, University of California, 1980); Vicki L. Ruiz,
Cannery Women, Cannery
Lives: Mexican Women, Unionization, and the California Food
Processing Industry,
1930-1950 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press,
1987); Adaljiza Sosa-
Riddell, "Chicanas and El Movimiento," Aztlan 5:2 (spring and
fall 1974): 155-65;
Adela de la Torre and Beatriz M. Pesquera, eds., Building With
Our Hands: New
Directions in Chicana Studies (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1993); Mary
Pardo, "Identity and Resistance: Mexican American Women and
Grassroots Activ-
ism in Two Los Angeles Communities" (Ph.D. diss., University
of California, Los
Angeles, 1990); and Patricia Zavella. "Reflections on Diversity
Among Chicanas,"
Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies 12:2 (1991): 73-85.
6. Chandra Talpade Mohanty, "On Race and Voice: Challenges
for Liberal Education
in the 1990's," in Between Borders: Pedagogy and the Politics

of Cultural Studies, ed.
Henry A. Giroux and Peter McLaren (New York: Routledge,
1994), 148.
7. Kenneth Kann, "Reconstructing the History of a Community,"
International Jour-
nal of Oral History 2:1 (1981): 4.
8. Alessandro Portelli, "The Peculiarities of Oral History,"
History Workshop Journal 12
(1981): 96-107.
9. Patricia Gindara defines a networking sampling procedure,
which is sometimes called
a "snowball" procedure, as one in which participants identify
other potential participants
137
2013 11:13:01 AM
based on an informal social or professional network (Over the
Ivy Walls: The Educa-
tionalMobility ofLow-Income Chicanos [Albany: State
University of New York Press,
1995]).

10. Richard A. Krueger, Focus groups: A Practical Guide for
Applied Research (Thousand
Oaks, Calif.: Sage Publications, 1988).
11. For different interpretations of the Blowout demands see
Puckett, "Protest Politics
in Education"; Rosen, "The Development of the Chicano
Movement"; Carlos Mufioz,
Jr., "The Politics of Protest and Chicano Liberation: A Case
Study of Repression and
Cooptation," Aztlan 5:1/2 (1974): 119-41; and Jack McCurdy,
"Frivolous to Fun-
damental: Demands Made by East Side High School Students
Listed," Los Angeles
Times, March 17, 1968, 1, 4-5. For an overview of educational
concerns and issues
of Mexicans during the first half of the century, see Gilbert G.
Gonzilez, Chicano
Education in the Era of Segregation (Philadelphia: Balch
Institute Press, 1990), and
"The System of Public Education and Its Function Within the
Chicano Communi-
ties, 1910-1950" (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Los
Angeles, 1974).
12. Kaye Briegel, "Chicano Student Militancy: The Los Angeles
High School Strike of
1968," in An Awakened Minority: The Mexican-Americans, ed.
Manuel P. Servin,
2nd ed. (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1974), 215-25.
13. California State Advisory Committee to the United States
Commission on Civil
Rights, "Education and the Mexican American Community in

Los Angeles County,"
CR 1.2: Ed 8/3 (April 1968), 16.
14. Rosalinda Mendez Gonzailez, personal interview, October 8,
1995.
15. "Conference Fact Sheet: Fifth Annual Mexican-American
Youth Leadership Confer-
ence, 1967."
16. Rachael Ochoa Cervera, personal interview, December 10,
1995.
17. Mindez Gonzailez, interview.
18. Rosen, "The Development of the Chicano Movement."
19. G6mez-Quiiiones, Mexican Students Por La Raza.
20. Briegel, "Chicano Student Militancy"; and Rosen, "The
Development of the Chicano
Movement."
21. California State Advisory Committee, "Education and the
Mexican American Com-
munity."
22. California State Advisory Committee, "Education and the
Mexican American Com-
munity."
23. Mendez Gonzailez, interview.
24. Based on the Los Angeles Unified School District's
"Historical Racial Ethnic Data
1966-1979," the percentage of "Hispanic" students in each of
the five schools in
1968 was as follows: Garfield, 96 percent; Roosevelt, 83
percent; Lincoln, 89 per-
cent; Wilson, 76 percent, and Belmont, 59 percent.

25. Paula Crisostomo, personal interview, November 16, 1995.
26. Victoria Castro, personal interview, June 8, 1995.
138
2013 11:13:01 AM
27. Tanya Luna Mount, personal interview, January 31, 1996.
For a historical analysis
of patterns of police brutality in East Los Angeles, see also
Armando Morales, Ando
Sangrado/ I Am Bleeding: A Study of Mexican American Police
Conflict (La Puente,
Calif.: Perspectiva Publications, 1972).
28. McCurdy, "Frivolous to Fundamental."
29. Jack McCurdy, "School Board Yields on Some Student
Points," Los Angeles Times,
March 12, 1968, 1, 3.
30. McCurdy, "Frivolous to Fundamental," 1.
31. Karen Brodkin Sacks, Caring By the Hour: Women, Work,
and Organizing at Duke
Medical Center (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988), and
"Gender and Grassroots
Leadership," in Women and the Politics of Empowerment, ed.

Ann Bookman and
Sandra Morgen (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1988),
77-94. These works
have greatly influenced my conceptual analysis of grassroots
leadership. See also
Helen S. Astin and Carole Leland, Women ofInfluence, Women
of Vision: A Cross-
Generational Study ofLeaders and Social Change (San
Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1991).
32. Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure ofScientific Revolutions,
2nd ed. (Chicago: Univer-
sity of Chicago Press, 1970).
33. Brodkin Sacks, Caring By the Hour, and "Gender and
Grassroots Leadership."
34. Astin and Leland, Women oflnfluence, Women of Vision, 8.
35. Dolores Delgado Bernal, "Chicana School Resistance and
Grassroots Leadership:
Providing an Alternative History of the 1968 East Los Angeles
Blowouts" (Ph.D.
diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 1997).
36. Charlotte Bunch, foreword, Astin and Leland, Women
oflnfluence, Women ofVision,
X111ii.
37. Tanya Luna Mount's parents had a long history of labor,
civil rights, and peace
activism. Her mother, Julia Luna Mount, was actively involved
in a labor resistance
movement at one of the largest food processing plants in Los
Angeles that included
a massive walkout and a twenty-four-hour picket line to end
deplorable working

conditions. See Ruiz, Cannery Women, Cannery Lives.
38. Castro, interview.
39. Crisostomo, interview.
40. Mita Cuaron, personal interview, January 23, 1996.
41. Mendez Gonzailez, interview.
42. Ochoa Cervera, interview.
43. Cassandra Zacarfas, personal interview, December 7, 1995.
45. Brodkin Sacks, "Gender and Grassroots Leadership," 81.
46. Zacarias, interview.
47. Castro, interview.
48. Sal Castro, personal interview, February 6, 1996.
50. Election campaign materials, Garfield Blowout Committee,
1968.
139
2013 11:13:01 AM
51. California State Advisory Committee to the United States
Commission on Civil
Rights.
52. Cuaron, interview.
53. See Brodkin Sacks, "Gender and Grassroots Leadership,"
who suggests that grassroots

leadership roles need not be gender specific.
54. Margaret Rose, "Traditional and Nontraditional Patterns of
Female Activism in the
United Farm Workers of America, 1962 to 1980," Frontiers: A
Journal of Women
Studies 11:1 (1990): 26-32.
55. V. Castro, interview.
58. Mendez Gonzilez, interview.
60. Mita Cuaron, interview conducted by Susan Racho,
December 3, 1994.
61. Mary Pardo, "Mexican American Women Grassroots
Community Activists: 'Moth-
ers of East Los Angeles,"' Frontiers: A Journal of Women
Studies 11:1 (1990): 1-7.
62. The following provides the reader with a quick snapshot of
the where the eight
women are today:
Today, Celeste Baca lives in Sonoma County, California, with
her husband. She
holds a Master's in Education from the Claremont Graduate
School and a Master's
in Computer Technology in Education from California State
University, Los Ange-
les. She has taught elementary school for twenty-four years and
currently teaches in
a Spanish two-way immersion classroom in Roseland School
District. She has been
a member of the National Association of Bilingual Education

throughout most of
her teaching career. In addition, Celeste teaches computer
courses as a part-time
lecturer in the Mexican American Studies Department at
Sonoma State University.
Vickie Castro obtained her bachelor's degree from Cal-State,
Los Angeles, her teaching
credential from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and a
Master's of Science
in School Management and Administration from Pepperdine
University. She has
worked as an employee of the Los Angeles Unified School
District for twenty-eight
years. Throughout her career, Vickie has been very active in the
Association of Mexi-
can American Educators (AMAE), serving as the East Los
Angeles local chapter
president and then the state president in 1981. In 1993, Vickie
was elected to the
Los Angeles City Board of Education, the second largest school
district in the na-
tion. Vickie continues to volunteer as a sponsor or workshop
facilitator to various
Latino youth leadership conferences in the Los Angeles area. A
resident of the Echo
Park community, Vickie is mother to an adult daughter and
grandmother to a new
grandson.
Paula Crisostomo graduated from California State University,
Sonoma, with a ma-
jor in liberal studies. Today she lives with her husband and two
teenage children in

140
2013 11:13:01 AM
the Los Angeles area. For a number of years Paula was a fund
developer for the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
(NAACP) Legal De-
fense. For more than five years, she has been working in the
field of social market-
ing-selling public service ideas-and is currently working on
public housing and
economic development issues for Los Angeles County. Paula
continues to partici-
pate in various community-based activities and over the years
has remained very
active in the Mexican American Youth Leadership Conferences
at Camp Hess Kramer.
As a member of the nonprofit Educational Issues Coordinating
Committee and
acting director of the conferences, Paula has been involved in
fund-raising to main-
tain the conferences since 1988.
Mita Cuaron's social activism has often been displayed through
her work as a nurse

and an artist. Beginning in the late 1970s, she was a member of
the "Flying Samari-
tans," a group of medical professionals who made monthly trips
to Baja California,
Mexico, to administer free medical care. In the early 1980s, she
went to Nicaragua
to participate in the International World Health Tour. More
recently, Mita has also
served as a volunteer nurse for the Mexican American Youth
Leadership Confer-
ences at Camp Hess Kramer. She has exhibited her artwork at
various sites, includ-
ing Self-Help Graphics, Plaza de La Raza, and University of
California, Riverside.
She recently donated a piece of art to a silent auction benefiting
the Rigoberta Menchu
Fund. Today Mita continues to reside in the Los Angeles area
with her husband and
four-year-old son. She works at White Memorial Hospital in
East Los Angeles as a
registered nurse specializing in the area of psychiatry.
Throughout college and her career as a professor, Rosalinda
Mendez Gonzilez has
been active in movements against gender, class, and
ethnic/racial oppression. She
and another graduate student, Linda Apodaca, created and then
cotaught with a
third woman the first course in women studies at University of
California, Irvine,
"The History of Women's Oppression." She has conducted and
presented research
at various regional and national conferences such as the

National Association for
Chicana and Chicano Studies and the Latin American Studies
Association. She was
awarded the Woodrow Wilson Fellowship for Women's Studies
for her dissertation
research, and in 1980 she was invited to be a delegate to the
International Confer-
ence on Women in Copenhagen, Denmark. Today Rosalinda is a
mother of two
adult children and is a college professor at Southwestern
College in Chula Vista,
California. Most recently, she has been very involved in issues
of culture and the
empowerment that comes from reclaiming family roots and
community history; she
is currently working with two other historians on a book on the
history of Chicanos
in San Diego County.
Over the years Tanya Luna Mount has worked and volunteered
in various political
and social justice movements. In the 1970s she took
undergraduate courses at Cali-
fornia State University, Los Angeles, and worked as a teaching
assistant in the bilin-
gual/ESL program at a junior high in East L.A. She was active
in the anti-Vietnam
141
2013 11:13:01 AM

movement, La Raza Unida, and organizing against police
brutality. She worked with
the Barrio Defense Committee, which was a support and
advocacy organization
that brought attention to police brutality in East Los Angeles
communities. During
the 1980s Tanya remained active in developing a third political
party through the
Peace and Freedom Party. She also worked at the East Los
Angeles Health Task
Force, which is a multiservice social agency. Today Tanya has
an eighteen-year-old
daughter and a twenty-one-year-old son and continues to live in
the Los Angeles
area. She works at a junior high in East Los Angeles as a
cafeteria clerk for the
Federal Lunch Program. She actively supports the Los Angeles
Catholic Worker
Brittania House, which is a progressive Catholic social service
organization in East
Los Angeles.
After graduating from Cal-State, Los Angeles, Rachael Ochoa
Cervera attended the
Claremont Graduate School to earn her Master's in Education
and a Bilingual Spe-
cialist Teaching Credential. During her early teaching career
she was very involved
in the Association of Mexican American Educators (AMAE) and
served on its state
executive board. Rachael has been teaching elementary school
for twenty-four years.

She is a bilingual teacher in the Garvey School District and
teaches evening adult
education classes at the El Monte/Rosemead Adult School. She
is active in the Cali-
fornia Teachers Association (CTA) and was recently appointed
to be a Reading Re-
covery Specialist and a member of the Mentor-Teacher
Selection Committee by her
district. She continues to live in the Los Angeles area with her
husband and two
school-aged children, and over the years she has remained
actively involved in Roosevelt
High School's Class Reunion Committee.
Cassandra Zacarias attended the Claremont Graduate School
while working on her
teaching credential. However, after teaching for a short period,
she realized teaching
was not for her and left the program. She worked for a while
outside of the educa-
tional field and then returned by attending graduate school and
obtaining her Master's
in School Counseling and her Pupil Personnel Services
Credential from California
State University, Los Angeles. Early in her high school
counseling career, Cassandra
was involved with the Association of Mexican American
Educators (AMAE), at-
tending monthly meetings and participating in scholarship fund-
raisers for Latino
students. Today, Cassandra is a high school counselor in the
Whittier Union High

School District. She continues to live in the Los Angeles area
with her husband, who
is an elementary school administrator, and her elementary
school-aged daughter.
142
2013 11:13:01 AM
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jspArticle
Contentsp. 113p. 114p. 115p. 116p. 117p. 118p. 119p. 120p.
121p. 122p. 123p. 124p. 125p. 126p. 127p. 128p. 129p. 130p.
131p. 132p. 133p. 134p. 135p. 136p. 137p. 138p. 139p. 140p.
141p. 142Issue Table of ContentsFrontiers: A Journal of
Women Studies, Vol. 19, No. 2, Varieties of Women's Oral
History (1998), pp. i-vi+1-253Front Matter [pp. i-
vi]Introduction [pp. iii-v]Harvest Stories: Interviews with
Gladys Lillian Marke [pp. 1-15]A Chicana in Northern Aztlán:
An Oral History of Dora Sánchez Treviño [pp. 16-52]In Their
Own Voices: Oral Histories of Festival Artists [pp. 53-71]The
Helga Pictures [pp. 72-82]Petland: A Woman's Life [pp. 83-
88]Petland [pp. 89-93]Activist Stories: Culture and Continuity
in Black Women's Narratives of Grassroots Community Work
[pp. 94-112]Grassroots Leadership Reconceptualized: Chicana
Oral Histories and the 1968 East Los Angeles School Blowouts
[pp. 113-142]Domestic Violence and Poverty: The Narratives of
Homeless Women [pp. 143-165]Gender, Sexuality, and Class in
National Narrations: Palestinian Camp Women Tell Their Lives
[pp. 166-185]Treading the Traces of Discarded History: Oral
History Installations [pp. 186-198]Women of the British
Coalfields on Strike in 1926 and 1984: Documenting Lives
Using Oral History and Photography [pp. 199-230]A Penny for
Your Thoughts: Stories of Women, Copper, and Community [pp.
231-249]Back Matter [pp. 250-253]

Calculate Rh using the combination between the equations 1 and 2 b.docx

Calculate Rh using the combination between the equations 1 and 2 b.docx

More Related Content

More from humphrieskalyn (20)

Recently uploaded (20)

Calculate Rh using the combination between the equations 1 and 2 b.docx