“We Took ’Em On”

Abstract

Like African Americans, Latinos struggled to navigate Boston’s segregated, inequitable school system during the 1960s and 1970s. Latino children confronted many obstacles including language barriers, inadequate teaching and counseling, dilapidated buildings and overcrowded classrooms, limited curriculums, and severe shortages of materials. They also endured hostility and violence from their peers, dropped out at alarmingly high rates, and were systematically excluded from school for a host of reasons. Despite a rich history of Latino organizing around these issues, Boston’s historical narrative and “busing crisis” framework furthers a black–white binary that renders Latinos invisible. I disrupt this by recovering the role of Latinos in mobilizations for reform in Boston Public Schools. This essay examines the emergence of the Latino educational movement during the 1960s and 1970s, centered on ideas of community control and the right to bilingual education. I draw attention to the experiences of Latino children with ambiguous racial identities, shedding light on complexities that are often overlooked in dominant black–white desegregation narratives. I highlight the agency of ordinary Latino parent activists who worked strategically in and outside the school system, using numerous tactics in the pursuit of educational justice. I focus particularly on the leading role of working-class Latina mothers, who developed their own educational programs outside of school, petitioned the school system for reform, staged public protests, and sought legal appeals. Though interethnic conflicts and divisions emerged, they did not alter the movement’s primary aims, which remained sharply focused on the protection and expansion of bilingual education.