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Fifty years ago this month, amid the tumult of the 1960s, thousands of Chicano students from Los Angeles high schools walked out of class to protest racism and failing schools.

“I was pretty beat down,” recalled Bobby Verdugo, who was one of the student organizers. “I didn’t think I would amount to much. That’s what teachers were telling me.”

As Mr. Verdugo, 67, and other veterans of the Chicano walkouts made the rounds of events at schools here recently, to mark the anniversary, students told them about their own intentions to walk out of class next week, in solidarity with student activists across the country who have called for protests for gun control in the aftermath of the shooting in Parkland, Fla.

“I couldn’t help but reflect back,” he said. “Before us, high school kids had never done that en masse.”