"All That Changed After the Blowouts"

"A year after the walkouts, UCLA's enrollment of Mexican Americans soared from 100 to 1,900. Over the decades, college enrollment increased from 2% to 25% nationwide. Chicano studies programs were founded at colleges and universities across the nation. More Mexican Americans also entered the ranks of vice principals and principals in the Los Angeles Unified School District.
"But perhaps the walkouts' greatest accomplishment was fostering in the Mexican American community a sense of possibility—the realization that a just cause sometimes requires speaking up.
"'Until that day, it never crossed my mind that Garfield High was run-down, overcrowded and lagging behind public schools in wealthier white neighborhoods,' said Rodriguez, who later became a prize-winning columnist at the San Jose Mercury News."

Louis Sahagun at the Los Angeles Times talks to veterans of the 1968 East L.A. high-school protests.