October 11, 1972: El Nacimiento Del Centro De La Raza

Seattle's autumn of 1972 was reportedly one of the coldest in recent memory, which made the week's featured direct action all the more memorable. On this date, more than 50 Latino/Latina (or, in the representational parlance of the time, Chicano/Chicana) activists, led by 33-year-old Roberto Maestas, occupied the recently-closed Beacon Hill Elementary School in an attempt to convince the City of Seattle to convert the site into a community and social services center for Greater Seattle's Chicano/Chicana community, at the time still unjustly invisible on the city's civic radar.

Most of this action's participants were faculty, staff and students of a South Seattle Community College English and adult basic education program for Chicano/Chicanas which had recently been de- funded as one economic consequence among many of Seattle's early-1970s post-Boeing-Bust economy. The occupation would last into early 1973 as negotiations took place between the activists, the Seattle City Council, and the Seattle School District, all while the activists made due without heat, running water or electricity.

Ultimately, the city conceded and agreed to lease the property, initially for five years for $1 a year. For the resulting institution, the activists chose the name El Centro de la Raza--"The Center of the People." Despite episodes of internal and financial strife over the years, El Centro still thrives today as one of the largest community-based organizations in the nation, with Maestas as its current Executive Director.

--Jeff Stevens. Sources: Seattle Times and Seattle Post- Intelligencer archives; Seattle Civil Rights and Labor History Project (www.civilrights.washington.edu ).