Mike Davis & Jon Wiener, “Set the night on fire: L.A. in the sixties”

 

“Revolts are often detonated by events that initially seem to be small, or even trivial: a tax on tea, rumors of aristocratic plots, maggots in sailors’ food, or refusal to sit in the back of a bus. In the case of the Chicano revolution it was a Neil Simon play. In the winter of 1968, Wilson theater students had poured heart and soul into a production of the hugely popular Barefoot in the Park. At the final dress rehearsal, the school’s much-disliked principal (“so conservative,” remembered Lincoln High School teacher Sal Castro, “that he wore suspenders and a belt to hold his pants up”), hearing a line that he considered “risqué,” raged at the students and forbade the play’s performance. The next day the cast and several hundred other kids, including twelve- and thirteen-year-olds whose junior high shared the same campus, walked out of their first-period classes. The principal immediately locked the gates and called the police; the supposed ringleaders were suspended.”