Chicana/o students often endure struggles in the U.S. education system, which has been identified as a colonial institution exercising control over colonized students. Chicana/o communities have engaged in numerous forms of protest and direct action against the colonial education system, such as walkouts. On March 5, 1968, the Chicano Blowouts at East Los Angeles High School occurred as a response to the racist treatment of Chicana/o students, an unresponsive school board, and a high dropout rate. It became known as "the first major mass protest against racism undertaken by Mexican-Americans in the history of the United States." Sal Castro, a Chicano social science teacher at the school was arrested and fired for inspiring the walkouts, led by student activists such as Harry Gamboa Jr., who was named "one of the hundred most dangerous and violent subversives in the United States" for organizing the student walkouts. The day before the walkouts, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover sent out a memo to law enforcement to place top priority on "political intelligence work to prevent the development of nationalist movements in minority communities." Chicana activist Alicia Escalante protested Castro's dismissal: "We in the Movement will at least be able to hold our heads up and say that we haven't submitted to the gringo or to the pressures of the system. We are brown and we are proud. I am at least raising my children to be proud of their heritage, to demand their rights, and as they become parents they too will pass this on until justice is done."