Fernando Benitez, a sophomore at Pueblo High School walked off campus in protest. He and other Pueblo students, largely Latino, joined students from Tucson High School.
It was 1969.
Mexican-American students walked out in support of better educational opportunities and facilities, and in opposition to the Vietnam War.
But the protests were more than anti-war and pro-education.
They announced the emergence of young political activists, who called themselves Chicanos. The name gave them a political and cultural identity. They were the sons and daughters of immigrant parents.
From that movement emerged a new generation of political, cultural and social leaders in Tucson's Latino community.
The waves of activism 37 years ago are still felt today as a new generation of Latino students protest their issue — proposed punitive immigration legislation.
"I was filled with pride when my two grandchildren walked out of their school last week," said Benitez, a delivery truck driver for a local construction firm.
The 1969 protesters were inspired by the black civil-rights movement lead by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and the farmworker unionization efforts headed by César Chávez and Dolores Huerta.
"They were standing up for themselves. Why not us?" Benitez said.
The 1969 walkout reverberated in the years after the protests. Leaders of the walkout, participants, and even those who did not participate but were inspired nonetheless, became student activists at the University of Arizona and Tucson.
"Absolutely it was the first time I saw young Chicanos who came out in protest," said Lydia Grijalva, who was a senior at Sunnyside High School in 1969.
Although she and her classmates did not participate in the walkout, the action sparked her and others to become active at the UA.
"I think it politicized a whole new generation," said Grijalva, a nurse case manager for El Rio Community Health Center and sister of U.S. Rep. Raúl Grijalva.
Raúl Grijalva was a UA student when he and other activists, including Salomón Baldenegro and Lupe Castillo, inspired the high-school students in 1969. UA Chicano students would press for the formation of Mexican-American studies at the UA, and improved recruitment and retention of Latino students and faculty.
Last Sunday, at the large César Chávez rally on the South Side, the older activists looked on as a new generation of Latino students came of age.
Arnold Palacios was a senior at Pueblo in 1969 when he walked out to protest poor education and facilities at his South Side school.
He and others walked to the Tucson Unified School District offices at East 10th Street and North Park Avenue. They met students from nearby Tucson High.
Palacios said the 1969 protests have had long-term positive results.
It stoked cultural pride and engaged young people in the political process.
"It developed a new kind of leadership," said Palacios, who heads Pima County's work-force development program.
There are parallels to today's marches, he said.
"It was important to take the historical step then and it's important to take the historical step today," he said.
Like many of yesterday's protesters, many today will continue to be politically involved. They will vote, if they are citizens, or they will become citizens if they are legal residents.
If they are undocumented immigrants, they will continue to oppose legislation that threatens to make them felons and split their families. And if they have the opportunity to earn legalization, the marches will have opened the way to political involvement.
"They are on their way," Palacios said.
