MLK Symposium 2008: Home

What 16-year-old led a student strike in Farmville in 1951?

Paula Crisostomo is Director of Community and Government Relations at Occidental College in Los Angeles, CA. She provides leadership and direction for the college's community outreach strategies, including neighborhood relations, local and federally sponsored services programs in education and local and state government relations. 

Paula Crisostomo will speak on Walk Out: The Story of the Struggle for Educational Rights in the Chicano Community, Los Angeles, 1968 at the 2007 MLK Symposium on January 24, 2008. Crisostomo was a student herself when she led a group of fellow students who walked out of their East Los Angeles high school in 1968 to protest injustices against Mexican Americans in the public school setting. Over 22,000 students eventually walked out of their classes in the Los Angeles County area. It was the first major mass protest by Mexican Americans against racism and was a watershed in the Chicano struggle for civil rights. The story was made into an HBO movie, Walk Out, in 2006 with Alexa Vega as Cristostomo.