March 29, 1971: 53 years ago, March 29 1971, Chicano students at Martin Luther King Junior [...]

53 years ago, March 29 1971, Chicano students at Martin Luther King Junior High School in Berkeley (now MLK Middle School) led a two-day walkout over the school’s mishandling of the beating of four Chicano girls

They marched, joined by large numbers of Black and white students and parents, to the administration building, demanding the hiring of Chicano counselors and the creation of an experimental Chicano school, to be called Casa de la Raza. The school district met both demands

Casa de la Raza was established in the Fall of 1971, but was compelled to close (along with Black House, a similar experimental school for Black students founded in 1970) by the Office of Civil Rights in 1973 on anti-discrimination grounds