FIFTY YEARS AGO, 35,000 CHICAGO STUDENTS WALKED OUT OF THEIR CLASSROOMS IN PROTEST. THEY CHANGED CPS FOREVER.
Among Their Demands: Black And Latino Teachers And Administrators, Ethnic Studies Classes And Clubs, And Bilingual Education
It’s 1968 and 18-year-old Pemon Rami, a recent graduate of Wendell Phillips Academy High School, stands in front of the Umoja Black Student Center in Bronzeville. He stares off into the distance, quiet, determined. Behind him, a poster with an illustration of Malcolm X preaches unstinting devotion to radical change, challenging viewers: “He was ready! Are you?”
It’s 2018, and 68-year-old Rami stands before a photo of his younger self. Plenty has changed in those intervening years. A half century has softened his features and grayed his short-cut hair, but his presence remains self-assured. Though his own revolutionary moment has long since passed, he still believes that revolution belongs in the hands of the young. It’s why, after a long career as a playwright and producer and as the director of educational services and public programs at the DuSable Museum of African American History, he now consults with groups such as Peace Warriors of North Lawndale College Prep High School and Fearless Leading by the Youth, hoping to pass along hard-earned lessons to those young people fighting today.
“You get to that point where you’re no longer capable of having the kind of battles that you had when you’re younger,” he explains. “I think it’s important that young people understand that it is their responsibility to be involved. It’s not something you can bargain with.”
But the bonds of solidarity that inspired Rami and his friends to launch a series of student walkouts to protest Chicago Public School’s racist policies—a protest movement that eventually included 35,000 students—live on in every student strike today.
The past five years have seen a wellspring of student activism in Chicago and beyond, actions that hearken back to the unrest that transformed society 50 years ago. In Chicago, it was Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s proposed closing of more than 200 schools in 2012—intended to save $43 million annually—that first sparked resistance among teachers, parents, and students, an energy that carried forward into the Chicago Teachers Union’s successful 2013 strike. In the end, 50 schools, not 200, were closed. (A 2018 study at the University of Chicago found that the closures had had no educational benefits, and CPS has not commented about whether the move did, indeed, save the district money.) In the last year, Englewood students have protested the proposed closure of four neighborhood high schools.
Everything changes, and everything stays the same. As Rami and others look back on their youthful accomplishments, organized actions that resulted in massive concessions from a school system that systematically denied Chicago’s black and Latino youth the resources they needed, they’re all too happy to help today’s youth see the connections that remain between past and present. They’ve been aided in their efforts by CPS educators. Together, they offer a potent reminder of what young people can accomplish.
The 1968 high school walkouts were an expression of growing dissent among the city’s black and Latino student population, and a reflection of a wider climate of protest that permeated society at large. Years of disinvestment by Chicago Public Schools in the education of nonwhite students had created significant barriers for these students: there were few bilingual teachers, and the curriculum didn’t represent their experiences. In 1968 they went on strike, pushing beyond the adult-led actions of previous years and defining their own Continue reading: Fifty Years Ago, 35,000 Chicago Students Walked Out Of Their Classrooms In Protest. They Changed CPS Forever. | PopularResistance.Org
