By Anusha Lalani
As the son of migrant farm workers, Eleazar Lugo might not have seemed a likely leader of a six-week school walkout in Uvalde, Texas. But in April of 1970, only a few weeks before his high school graduation and with a great deal at risk, Lugo accepted a key role in the walkout, which would have a lasting effect on him and on the school system.
By the Voces Staff
When the Uvalde High School walkout began in April 1970, Olga Muñoz Rodriquez was a young mother working for the telephone company. While her son was not yet in school, she knew from experience the discrimination that Mexican-American students faced, so she joined the protest.
The walkout fueled her commitment to civil rights, which would lead to her becoming a community leader, radio commentator and newspaper publisher in Uvalde, which is about 80 miles southwest of San Antonio, Texas.
By the Voces staff
Elvia Pérez’s senior year in high school was turned upside down when she joined a student walkout to protest the firing of a popular Hispanic teacher.
Pérez, then 17, had been a top student. She had won a community citizenship award and had heard she might be chosen as valedictorian of her class of 1970 at Uvalde High School. But once she joined the walkout, she became a radical agitator in the eyes of the school board in the town about 85 miles southwest of San Antonio, Texas.
By Taylor Gantt
In 1970, George Garza was a popular middle school teacher in Uvalde, Texas. But when the school board repeatedly declined to renew his contract, he became a central figure in a six-week school walkout that changed the small town for generations.
These days, Garza downplays his own part in the walkout.
By Brigit Benestante
Growing up in the 1950s and 1960s, Alfredo Santos was ashamed of his ethnicity.
“I didn’t like being a Mexican,” he said. “I was embarrassed, I guess, to be a Mexican.”
By Chris Touma
Two years before Sergio Porras received his draft notice to serve in the Vietnam War, he was marching in the streets of Uvalde, Texas, with hundreds of other Mexican-American high school students.
It wasn’t war or the draft they were protesting. The students of Uvalde High were fed up with discrimination in the town’s public school system.
Uvalde, 86 miles southwest of San Antonio, was divided by railroad tracks. Whites lived in the northern section of town; the Hispanics, south of the tracks.
By Voces Staff
In the spring of 1970, Olga Charles was a senior at Uvalde High School in South Texas. With just a few weeks before graduation, she was preparing to follow her mother’s career advice: Go to business school and become a bookkeeper, like her Aunt Julia.
By Brigit Benestante
As a high school student in South Texas, José Aguilera participated in a six-week walkout that was ultimately unsuccessful and resulted in him leaving school. Yet he has no regrets: The experience defined him as someone who would stand up to the discrimination he had witnessed and felt.
“[The walkout] defined me as a person. I am really proud of that,” he wrote to the Voces Oral History Project.
By Jared Hill
Manuel Perez was one of the hundreds of thousands of Latino citizens forced by way of selective service to join the military after the United States joined World War II following the bombing of Pearl Harbor. And just like many other Americans, Perez had to put his own life on hold to serve his country, even though he never stepped foot on the battlefield.
