Marke Bieschke - Into the Streets: A Young Persons Visual History of Protest in the United States

Young people in Washington, DC, join nearly four million protesters around the world for the global climate strikes of September 2019.

M arch 5, 1968, started as a normal Tuesday at Garfield High School in East Los Angeles, California. Teachers were wrapping up classes for lunch. The sun shone down on the concrete playground.

Suddenly footsteps rang in the hall. Fists pounded on classroom doors. Faculty members looked up in surprise as hundreds of students rose from their desks and streamed outside, pumping their fists in the air, shouting, Viva la revolucin and Education, not eradication!

The students were mostly Mexican American. They were protesting against the way the school system treated them. Students were forbidden to speak Spanish at school, or they would be spanked. They couldnt use the restroom during lunch. Schools refused to teach Mexican American history and excluded Chicano students from advanced classes. Some teachers were openly racist.

We took it upon ourselves to try and do something, said Paula Crisostomo, a junior from a nearby school whose geometry teacher had told her she would never go to college because she would probably get pregnant.

Or as Margarita Cuarn, then a sophomore, recalled, I pick up a cone on the street. I jump on a car and start yelling, Walk out!

The protests continued throughout the week. Students from other schools joined in, until almost twenty-two thousand participated in the walkouts, known as blowouts. Although it seemed as though the blowouts were spontaneous, organizers had planned them for months, as part of the larger Chicano movement for civil rights. Students had surveyed other students to ask what concerned them most, and based on the responses, they listed their demands to the school board.

The police beat the students and panicked politicians called them a threat to the country, but their protests gained national news coverage. Eventually, the school board agreed to allow bilingual classes, a Chicano history curriculum, and funds to upgrade facilities. Young people had made a statement. Their protest transformed the education system.

In general, a protest is a statement or action that expresses disapproval or objection to something. This can mean voicing dissent (disagreeing with laws or commonly held attitudes), demanding that those in authority fix things, or acting directly to change a situationsuch as dumping tea into Boston Harbor to stop unfair taxation or refusing to give up your bus seat because the law says Black people have to move to the back.

Besides student walkouts, protests can be massive marches, colorful demonstrations, quiet sit-ins, or wild riots. Boycotts target companies that treat workers badly or fail to follow laws. Rallies encourage people to keep fighting for better working conditions or a cleaner environment. Candlelight vigils honor the victims of preventable tragedies and help communities heal. Hashtags such as #MeToo educate people about important issues and inspire them to share their stories.

Protests can be silent, such as the annual Day of Silence in many schools that protests the treatment of LGBTQ students. Or they can be deliberately loud, drowning out messages of hate or alerting neighbors to a threat. Some turn violent, as when armed police lash out against protesters or riots destroy city centers. And some are calm, as when a wave of Black students in the 1950s quietly sat down in segregated cafs throughout the South and refused to leave.