Sal Castro recalled as a giant in Chicano history
More than 1,000 people attend the funeral for the activist, who urged a 1968 student walkout demanding better education for Latinos...
By Dalina Castellanos dalina.castellanos@latimes.com, L.A. TimesApril 25, 2013, 10:39 p.m.
Sal Castro was praised as a tireless, inspiring leader and activist by university professors, doctors and a former California Supreme Court justice at his funeral Thursday at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels.
But he simply wanted to be remembered as a teacher.
More than 1,000 of Castro's family, friends and admirers gathered to celebrate his life, which included the student walkouts at five predominantly Mexican American schools, mostly on the Eastside. The weeklong walkouts to protest inequalities in education for Latinos in the Los Angeles Unified School District came to be seen as a milestone in community activism. Castro, a teacher at Lincoln High in 1968, helped organize those protests.
"Very few of us have the opportunity to make history that affects other's lives," said Mario T. Garcia, who collaborated with Castro on "Blowout!" a book about the event. "He's a giant in Chicano history and should be recognized as a giant in American history."
Castro died in his sleep after a seven-month bout with cancer April 15 at the age of 79. He leaves a wife, two sons and two grandsons.
His widow, Charlotte Lerchenmuller, reminisced about the couple's 45 years together and how excited she was to be his "date" as a chaperon at the Lincoln High School prom in 1968. "But he stood me up," she said.
He was arrested that day and charged with 30 counts of disturbing the peace and conspiracy to disturb the peace after the walkouts, which involved students from Lincoln, Garfield, Belmont, Wilson and Roosevelt high schools.
Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, filmmaker Moctesuma Esparza and Chicano artist Harry Gamboa Jr. were a few of those students.
"We had rights to be educated. He spoke on behalf of our people and maintained our integrity," Gamboa said. Now, as an artist and teacher, Gamboa said, he hopes to "carry forth some of Sal's influence."
Still, for years after the walkouts, some said many things had not changed at the schools. When Castro's student Robin Avelar-LaSalle was assigned the subject for a project nearly a decade later, she thought the "walkout" was a dance and didn't know that her instructor was a key figure.
She and others were inspired by his story and planned to have another walkout in 1978, but they were met by school administrators and police officers and retreated to class.
Castro was still proud.
"He told us, you don't have to fight from the fringe, you can fight from the inside," said Avelar-LaSalle, a 1978 Lincoln High graduate who received her doctorate in education from Stanford.
Castro's influence was so deep and profound that many of his students became teachers, and one — Carlos Moreno — went on to become a state Supreme Court justice.
"He made education relevant for us and made school worth going to," said Richard Verches, an international human rights lawyer and lecturer at UCLA. "We continue to give back to the community because of him."
Hearing these stories was a source of immense pride for Castro, Lerchenmuller said.
"He was proudest when former students would tell him, 'Castro, I did what you told us to do. I went to college and became a teacher.' "
Some at the funeral wore shirts or jackets representing the Chicano Youth Leadership Conference, a nonprofit organization Castro founded in 1963 that trained future leaders at annual workshops held until it lost its funding in 2009.
Collections from a donation box for the recently formed Sal Castro Foundation will be used toward reinstating the workshops.
"Sal was a teacher, but he taught more than United States history and government," Lerchenmuller said. "He taught pride, fairness, dignity and motivation."
"It is all our collective responsibilities to keep his legacy alive and moving forward."
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Sal Castro dies at 79; L.A. teacher played role in 1968 protests
Sal Castro was a teacher at Lincoln High when he helped instigate 'blowouts' that became a seminal event in the Chicano movement.
By Elaine Woo elaine.woo@latimes.com, Los Angeles Times, April 15, 2013
Sal Castro, a veteran Los Angeles Unified School District teacher who played a central role in the 1968 "blowouts," when more than 1,000 students in predominantly Latino high schools walked out of their classrooms to protest inequalities in education, died in his sleep Monday after a long bout with cancer. He was 79.
Castro died at his home in the Silver Lake district, seven months after he was found to have stage 4 thyroid cancer, said his wife, Charlotte Lerchenmuller.
In March 1968, Castro was a social studies teacher at Lincoln High School near downtown when he helped instigate the protests that became a seminal event in the development of the Chicano movement. Students at five high schools — Belmont, Lincoln, Wilson, Roosevelt and Garfield — abandoned their campuses in a dramatic bid to remedy overcrowded and run-down schools, soaring dropout rates, poorly trained teachers, and counselors who steered Latino students into auto shop instead of college-prep classes.
The conditions were so poor, he told The Times 20 years later, it was "like American education forgot the Latino kid."
The protests, which lasted several days and spread to 15 schools, resulted in the arrests of 13 people on conspiracy charges. Castro was among the 13 who were jailed but eventually exonerated.
Fired after the walkouts, he fought successfully to be reinstated to his teaching position but was transferred several times to schools that had largely non-Latino enrollments.
Broad public recognition of his contributions to the struggle for education equality came decades after the protests, when his story was told in films, including "Walkout," the 2006 HBO movie directed by Edward James Olmos.
"For Latinos in Los Angeles," Supervisor Gloria Molina said in a statement Monday, "Sal Castro was as influential and inspirational as United Farm Workers co-founder Cesar Chavez was nationally — an example of the power of organizing who personified the possibility of overcoming seemingly insurmountable odds."
The son of Mexican immigrants, Castro was born in Boyle Heights on Oct. 25, 1933, and spent some of his early childhood in Mexico, where he learned to read in Spanish.
When he returned to Los Angeles for second grade, his teacher made him sit in a corner because he was the only student who could not speak English. Instead of accepting the stigma, "I started thinking, these teachers … should be able to understand me," he said in a 1988 interview with The Times. "I didn't think I was dumb — I thought they were dumb."
He graduated from Cathedral High School in 1952, was drafted into the Army and served in the Korean War. After completing his service, he attended Los Angeles City College and majored in business at Cal State L.A., graduating in 1961.
That year, he also earned a credential to teach secondary school and taught junior high in Pasadena before landing a position at Belmont High. He soon began pressing for change. He urged Mexican American students to run for student government offices, causing a ruckus when he encouraged them to give campaign speeches in Spanish.
In 1963, he founded the Chicano Youth Leadership Conference, a nonprofit organization that trained future leaders at annual workshops held until 2009, when it lost its funding.
Transferred to Lincoln High after the incident at Belmont, he worked with students and recent graduates to present a list of demands to the school board aimed at improving academic opportunities and fixing dilapidated classrooms.
Tensions came to a head on March 5, 1968, after administrators at Wilson High abruptly canceled a student production of "Barefoot in the Park" that they said was too risque. Word of the action spread quickly, and soon Latino students were leaving classrooms across the district, joined by Castro and others outside the schools, including college students and members of the militant Brown Beret.
Among the participants were some future politicians and activists, including Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who walked out from Cathedral High, and filmmaker Moctesuma Esparza, who was indicted for his leadership role in the walkouts and decades later was executive producer of the HBO film on the protests.
Castro was jailed for five days after the walkouts and lost his job, but he was rehired after weeks of protests by Eastside parents. Months after the protests, 40 teachers at Lincoln High asked to be transferred if the district allowed Castro to return.
After a long period of "freeway therapy," when he was bounced around to different schools and made a substitute teacher, he landed back at Belmont, where he taught and counseled hundreds of students from 1973 until his retirement in 2004.
Many of his students became educators, including several who are principals, Lerchenmuller said.
In 2010, district officials honored the outspoken educator by dedicating a school to him, Salvador B. Castro Middle School, which shares Belmont's campus.
Although Castro continued to lament high dropout rates and other problems, he discouraged students who wanted to launch new walkouts, arguing that staying in school was more important.
"Here's the protest: any kid with a book," he said, gesturing at the youthful crowd attending a 2008 symposium on Chicano activism at Cal State San Bernardino. "That's the only way we can move forward, through education."
In addition to his wife, Castro is survived by two sons, Gilbert and Jimi; and two grandsons. Services will be announced.
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Sal Castro, teacher who led '68 Chicano student walkouts, dies at 79
Salvador Castro, a social studies teacher who played a leading role in the historic 1968 Chicano student walkouts protesting rampant bias and inequalities in the Los Angeles Unified School District, died Monday, the district announced. He was 79.
By Teresa Watanabe, L.A. Times, April 15, 2013,
Castro, known as “Sal,” was a Lincoln High School teacher who guided student walkouts at five predominantly Mexican American schools on the Eastside in what came to be seen as a milestone in community activism. The students demanded bilingual education, ethnic studies and other changes at a time when the curriculum largely ignored Mexican American history and educators forbid Chicano students to speak Spanish and often steered them toward menial jobs rather than college despite strong academic abilities, according to the district.
Castro was arrested and charged with conspiracy to disrupt public schools and disturb the peace for his alleged role in guiding the “blowouts.” But the charges were eventually dropped and he came to be hailed as a courageous civil rights leader. Salvador B. Castro Middle School was named after him several years ago.
“He will be remembered as a teacher, counselor, leader and courageous adult who stood with students in the 1968 walkouts and ever since dedicated his life to learning and leadership,” board President Monica Garcia said in a statement. “Sal Castro’s courage and dedication will continue to be inspirational to future generation of students and educators.”
L.A. Supt. John Deasy called his work “heroic” and said Castro would continue to inspire district efforts to insure that all students graduate prepared for college and careers.
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Teacher Sal Castro fights to honor the Eastside 'blowouts'
Student walkouts in 1968 jump-started the Chicano rights movement, Sal Castro says, and it's time they got recognition — from the White House.
By Gale Holland, Los Angeles Times, October 9, 2012
Sal Castro sat in his book-lined den, reduced to writing on a whiteboard to fight what could be his last political battle.
Hours earlier, the "usually glib and gregarious" teacher and activist, as he describes himself, had been released from St. Vincent Medical Center with a serious illness that made it difficult for him to speak. But Castro insisted on meeting with me to express his frustration with President Obama.
Since 2009, Castro has been trying to get the president, first lady or Vice President Joe Biden to come to Boyle Heights to honor the students of the Eastside walkouts of 1968. At the height of the civil rights movement, Castro, then a young teacher at Lincoln High, walked out with his students to protest schools that set up Mexican Americans to fail. The walkouts, or "blowouts" as they came to be known, spread to five Eastside high schools, then throughout the Southwest.
Castro, now 78, believes the blowouts should be seen as the equivalent of black civil rights touchstones like the Selma march or the lunch-counter sit-ins. To him, they jump-started the whole Chicano rights movement. The White House imprimatur, he believes, would elevate the walkouts to their proper place in history.
"This is about civil rights," Castro wrote on his board. "That's why we want him here."
As we spoke, I wondered if Castro wasn't being presumptuous, or at least naive. On Monday, Obama's two-day swing through Southern California took him to Keene in Kern County, where he dedicated the Cesar E. Chavez National Monument, the first such site to honor a contemporary Mexican American. Castro had asked him to squeeze in a second ceremony to dedicate a plaque for the Eastside students at Hazard Park near County-USC Medical Center, where they had gathered during the blowouts.
If it took so long for the first Mexican American to receive that presidential recognition, what were the chances of a second commemoration? Obama has the California Latino vote in the bag; the Chavez dedication is a national play. The president can't be everywhere, especially during a tough reelection campaign.
Castro, though, has mixed feelings about Chavez's legacy. He's happy he's being honored but also feels the labor leader's monolithic stature has overshadowed the struggles of city Latinos who derived no benefit from the farmworker fight.
"Cesar Chavez unionized 16,000 farmworkers," Castro wrote on his little board. By contrast, 48,000 students marched in the blowouts. "Farmworkers are no threat," he wrote.
After the walkouts, Castro was arrested and held for five days. He was slapped with several felony conspiracies, his teaching credential was threatened and he was jerked around by the L.A. Unified school district. But eventually, he landed back in the classroom at Belmont High, where he continued to press for student rights until his retirement in 2004.
Castro is keenly aware that the school district still struggles to educate kids from Spanish-speaking families. Latinos continue to lead the nation in high school drop-out rates and teen pregnancies, and bright students are tracked away from college prep courses.
He showed me a letter he wrote Obama in 2009 protesting the lack of progress and questioning the administration's educational reforms
"I don't think merit pay for teachers and charter schools will help very much. Do you?" he wrote.
He waved another letter he had written, taking Obama to task for an education speech arguing that children need a parent at home to turn off the TV and help with the homework. To Castro, the remarks ignored the economic reality for Latino parents, many of whom must work long hours away from their kids.
"There you go again Mr. President," Castro wrote. "I know you didn't mention our community by name but whites thought they knew who you were talking about."
Yet Castro supports the president and had a fat Obama-Biden button pinned to his T-shirt during our exchange. He also wore a "Yellow Dog Democrat" button, which I was told means he would vote for a yellow dog before a Republican.
The president doesn't have to come to the dedication himself, but Castro is adamant that it be someone of national stature. To that end, he has written inviting the president twice, Michelle Obama twice, Biden once, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton once and former President Clintononce.
Michelle Obama wrote back once declining his invitation. He has never heard from the president. It's not as if Sal Castro has no political juice. Bill Clinton had him to the White House in 1996; and in 2010, Salvador B. Castro Middle School was dedicated on the Belmont campus.
The walkouts produced a new generation of Latino professionals and politicians who are aware of the debt they owe Castro and the blowout students. Politicians like L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who attended Castro's Latino youth leadership program. "I helped Tony when he was 15 get into UCLA," Castro said. Villaraigosa said Monday he backed federal recognition for the memorial.
The plaque honoring the students is ready, a rock at Hazard Park has been prepared to receive it and local politicians are ready at a moment's notice, Castro said.
Castro refused to have his name on the plaque. This one is for the students, he said.
Chicano activist and educator Sal Castro wows the crowd with his past -- and presence
L.A. Times, April 30, 2011
Activist and educator Sal Castro knows how to make an entrance. The panel discussion "History, Identity & Purpose: California Chicanos & Beyond" on Saturday at the Festival of Books began without Castro, one of the key organizers of the East Los Angeles walkouts in 1968.
Author Mario T. Garcia, who wrote "Blowout!: Sal Castro & the Chicano Struggle for Educational Justice," was midway through a description of the impact Castro's actions have had on society, when in walked Castro. He was 15 minutes late, but that didn't seem to matter to the crowd who gave him an ovation as he walked to the front of the room. Moderator Hector Tobar jokingly acknowledged that Castro showed up late just to get the warm greeting.
Garcia, who had spent the last 10 years working on the book, would have been a sufficient replacement to cover the life and times of Castro if Castro hadn't shown. But some young ones in the crowd would have been disappointed, a testament to his staying power as an icon of Chicano rights and youth leadership.
Case in point: A group of 10-year-old Latino boys and girls were giddy just to see Castro’s name placard on the table. Expecting to hear that they were fans of the movie "Walkout" directed by Edward James Olmos and starring actors Efren Ramirez and Michael Pena, I was surprised as they started discussing his educational effect on Latinos. Before they settled into their seats one said, "I’ve been waiting 10 years to see him."
Finally Castro got an opportunity to speak -- and he didn’t disappoint.
He stood straight up, held up a movie poster of "Walkout" and said that when producers approached him about doing a movie on his life, he said someone good-looking had to play him. He was happy with the choice of Pena. Castro kept it light, even though much of his life involved serious events such as being jailed for fighting for improved educational rights.
Aside from Castro's larger-than-life appearance, other authors added to the discussion on Chicano history and identity. Former L.A. Times writer Daniel Hernandez talked about growing up in San Diego and Tijuana, the overarching theme in his book "Down and Delirious in Mexico City." And former Times Assistant Managing Editor Miriam Pawel talked about the profound contributions made by Cesar Chavez, the subject of her book "The Union of Their Dreams."
Photo: Sal Castro at the L.A. Times Festival of books. Credit: Joshua Sandoval
L.A. school honors a living revolutionary
In 1968, teacher Sal Castro was arrested after he joined a walkout of Mexican American students. He was hailed as a hero. On Saturday, he'll attend the opening of Salvador B. Castro Middle School…
<hector.tobar@latimes.com>, L.A. Times, June 4, 2010
Sal Castro went from classroom to jail cell.
The Eastside social studies teacher was branded a dangerous agitator in the press — held responsible for inciting thousands of teenagers to march out of school.
The district attorney slapped a bunch of conspiracy charges on him. The Board of Education voted him out of his job.
All that was 42 years ago.
Fast forward to Saturday, when Sal Castro will stand with Los Angeles Unified School District dignitaries and cut the ribbon at a brand-new campus: Salvador B. Castro Middle School.
"I thought they'd wait until I was dead," joked Castro, 76. "Maybe they're trying to send me a message. Or maybe they're just running out of names."
Sal Castro did a heroic thing in 1968 when he helped launch a student rebellion on the Eastside. By naming a new Westlake district campus in Castro's honor, the school district is officially acknowledging that fact. "Back then, the school board wanted to march him to the guillotine," said fellow educator Carlos Haro, a longtime friend. "Now they're putting up a monument in his honor."
Once, Castro's message seemed radical, that the public schools were set up for Mexican Americans and other minority students to fail. He still believes many L.A. schools are failing working families. The difference is that these days a lot of district administrators agree with him.
"Honoring Sal's contributions acknowledges our history and offers inspiration to our students," said Monica Garcia, an L.A. Unified school board member. Castro Middle School, she points out, will serve a community where fewer than half the students complete high school.
Naming a school for Castro is a necessary jolt to our collective memory. It reminds us how hard we've struggled, how far L.A. has come and how much farther we have to go in the battle for equal opportunity.
In the late 1960s Castro was teaching at Lincoln High, a school with an overwhelmingly Mexican American student body but few Mexican American teachers. Castro worked to encourage students at Eastside high schools to protest crowded classrooms and the tracking that funneled many bright minds away from college-prep courses.
The students prepared a list of demands to present to the school board. But events quickly spun out of their control. On March 5, 1968, the day after officials canceled a school production of "Barefoot in the Park" as too risque, thousands of teenagers at five high schools walked out of classes.
"Before that, we would talk about doing a walkout, but really it was just a bluff," Castro said. Castro left his classroom and joined the students, who were later pummeled by riot police. The walkouts, or "blowouts" as they came to be known, soon spread throughout the city.
The movement reached predominantly black campuses too, but is remembered today as a seminal event in Chicano activism. And it made Castro — though he paid a high price for it — a hero to the city's Mexican American minority.
He was arrested and held for five days. Eastside parents staged weeks of protests, pressuring the school board to rehire him after the criminal charges were dropped.
In the years that followed, the school district got a measure of revenge with repeated job transfers. "They were kicking me … as many times as they could," Castro said.
A lot has changed in L.A. since the 1960s. The term Chicano has lost ground to the more sweeping Latino. And students of Latin American descent now make up 75% of the school district.
"They used to call us the invisible minority," he said. "Now we're the invisible majority."
His people — despite their numbers — are still getting a raw deal. They have among the highest high-school dropout rates. And that makes Castro, who retired from teaching in 2003, very angry.
"They're happy with us the way we are because we're low-cost labor," he told me.
Castro was born in Boyle Heights in 1933, the son of Mexican immigrants. He went to college, became a teacher and in the early 1960s planted the seeds of a later movement in a county program designed to train young Chicano leaders.
"That movement redefined who we are," said Haro, then a UCLA student and one of several undergraduates who worked alongside Castro. "It created a new awareness that pulled us forward."
More college counselors were hired at Eastside schools and the number of Mexican American students soared at UCLA and other campuses. The walkout generation produced professors, jurists and politicians.
And yet today, the district is still grappling with the challenge of educating students from Spanish-speaking families.
Often, Castro runs into students who tell him it's time for another round of walkouts. No, he says. "The real fight is with a book under your arm." But he gets their frustration. And he sees in them the potential to push for the many necessary changes people used to call a "revolution."
"A lot of people tell me, 'the movement's dead,' " Castro told me. "It ain't dead. It's alive, right there in the eyes of those kids."
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Teacher Sal Castro fights to honor the Eastside 'blowouts'
Student walkouts in 1968 jump-started the Chicano rights movement, Sal Castro says, and it's time they got recognition — from the White House.
 Lincoln High School teacher Sal Castro joins a Latino student walkout in 1968. (Los Angeles Times / November 29, 2005) |
By Gale Holland, Los Angeles Times, October 9, 2012
Sal Castro sat in his book-lined den, reduced to writing on a whiteboard to fight what could be his last political battle.
Hours earlier, the "usually glib and gregarious" teacher and activist, as he describes himself, had been released from St. Vincent Medical Center with a serious illness that made it difficult for him to speak. But Castro insisted on meeting with me to express his frustration with President Obama.
Since 2009, Castro has been trying to get the president, first lady or Vice PresidentJoe Biden to come to Boyle Heights to honor the students of the Eastside walkouts of 1968. At the height of the civil rights movement, Castro, then a young teacher at Lincoln High, walked out with his students to protest schools that set up Mexican Americans to fail. The walkouts, or "blowouts" as they came to be known, spread to five Eastside high schools, then throughout the Southwest.
Castro, now 78, believes the blowouts should be seen as the equivalent of black civil rights touchstones like the Selma march or the lunch-counter sit-ins. To him, they jump-started the whole Chicano rights movement. The White House imprimatur, he believes, would elevate the walkouts to their proper place in history.
"This is about civil rights," Castro wrote on his board. "That's why we want him here."
As we spoke, I wondered if Castro wasn't being presumptuous, or at least naive. On Monday, Obama's two-day swing through Southern California took him to Keene in Kern County, where he dedicated the Cesar E. Chavez National Monument, the first such site to honor a contemporary Mexican American. Castro had asked him to squeeze in a second ceremony to dedicate a plaque for the Eastside students at Hazard Park near County-USC Medical Center, where they had gathered during the blowouts.
If it took so long for the first Mexican American to receive that presidential recognition, what were the chances of a second commemoration? Obama has the California Latino vote in the bag; the Chavez dedication is a national play. The president can't be everywhere, especially during a tough reelection campaign.
Castro, though, has mixed feelings about Chavez's legacy. He's happy he's being honored but also feels the labor leader's monolithic stature has overshadowed the struggles of city Latinos who derived no benefit from the farmworker fight.
"Cesar Chavez unionized 16,000 farmworkers," Castro wrote on his little board. By contrast, 48,000 students marched in the blowouts. "Farmworkers are no threat," he wrote.
After the walkouts, Castro was arrested and held for five days. He was slapped with several felony conspiracies, his teaching credential was threatened and he was jerked around by the L.A. Unified school district. But eventually, he landed back in the classroom at Belmont High, where he continued to press for student rights until his retirement in 2004.
Castro is keenly aware that the school district still struggles to educate kids from Spanish-speaking families. Latinos continue to lead the nation in high school drop-out rates and teen pregnancies, and bright students are tracked away from college prep courses.
He showed me a letter he wrote Obama in 2009 protesting the lack of progress and questioning the administration's educational reforms
"I don't think merit pay for teachers and charter schools will help very much. Do you?" he wrote.
He waved another letter he had written, taking Obama to task for an education speech arguing that children need a parent at home to turn off the TV and help with the homework. To Castro, the remarks ignored the economic reality for Latino parents, many of whom must work long hours away from their kids.
"There you go again Mr. President," Castro wrote. "I know you didn't mention our community by name but whites thought they knew who you were talking about."
Yet Castro supports the president and had a fat Obama-Biden button pinned to his T-shirt during our exchange. He also wore a "Yellow Dog Democrat" button, which I was told means he would vote for a yellow dog before a Republican.
The president doesn't have to come to the dedication himself, but Castro is adamant that it be someone of national stature. To that end, he has written inviting the president twice, Michelle Obama twice, Biden once, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton once and former President Clinton once.
Michelle Obama wrote back once declining his invitation. He has never heard from the president.
It's not as if Sal Castro has no political juice. Bill Clinton had him to the White House in 1996; and in 2010, Salvador B. Castro Middle School was dedicated on the Belmont campus.
The walkouts produced a new generation of Latino professionals and politicians who are aware of the debt they owe Castro and the blowout students. Politicians like L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who attended Castro's Latino youth leadership program. "I helped Tony when he was 15 get into UCLA," Castro said. Villaraigosa said Monday he backed federal recognition for the memorial.
The plaque honoring the students is ready, a rock at Hazard Park has been prepared to receive it and local politicians are ready at a moment's notice, Castro said.
Castro refused to have his name on the plaque. This one is for the students, he said.
