By – LATimes.com – Photo: H.O. McCarthy/Herald-Examiner Collection.

Photo: John Ortiz, a Mexican American student leader at James A. Garfield High School, addresses assembled students during the walkouts in 1968. On Thursday he spoke to current Garfield students.

Garfield High School, where the walkouts began March 5, 1968, commemorated that movement Thursday by ceding the stage to its current students. One group performed a musical history of the so-called blowouts: “We’ve got to walk out, walk out for justice. We’ve got to walk out, walk out for brown rights.”

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