Unequal Pieces of a Shrinking Pie: The Struggle between African Americans and Latinos over Education, Employment, and Empowerment in Compton, California

Abstract

Just days after the start of the 1994-1995 school year, almost a quarter of the student body at McKinley Elementary School in Compton, California did not show up for class. Latino organizers had asked parents to keep their children out of school to protest what they perceived as school administrators' inadequate response to Latino educational needs. Parents of approximately one hundred of the school's 431 students heeded the call. Although one out of four was only slighdy above the daily absentee rate for a normal school day, the nature of these absences forced district administrators to take notice. The rhetoric that Latino activists used when describing the management of Compton's public schools served as the most disquieting aspect of the walkout. “The Compton Unified School District is like Mississippi,” asserted John Ortega, the lead counsel for the Union of Parents and Students of Compton United, the association that organized the attendance strikes. “In Mississippi, they didn't want to educate blacks in the ‘50s, and in the ‘90s, Compton doesn't want to educate Latinos.”