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- Notes:
- Román Rodríguez served in the U.S. army during World War II and moved to Chicago’s La Clark neighborhood in 1953. For many years, his wife, Clautilde Jiménez, taught in the Chicago public school system. They also lived in Lincoln Park and were both active members in the Damas de María and Caballeros de San Juan of Council Number Three. A powerful and eloquent orator, Mr. Rodríguez has been a frequent speaker at Caballeros de San Juan functions across a variety of parishes. He also became a deacon and participated in the mass at St. Silvesters in Humbolt Park/Logan Square, where he helped to solidify the growing community of Puerto Ricans who were being forced out of Lincoln Park. In his oral history, Mr. Rodríguez reflects on the changes he has seen over the years in Chicago and the displacement of Puerto Rican families from Lincoln Park. He expresses his inability to understand why Puerto Ricans were experiencing discrimination especially after they had served in the U.S. military and given their lives for United States. He describes in rich detail, a community of hard working and religious people, dedicated to their families and their faith. In Puerto Rico in the 1940s, Mr. Rodríguez would entertain his siblings by improvising jibaro music after working a hard day in the fields. Like other Puerto Rican pioneers in Chicago, he brought his love of music with him to the city and continued this tradition there.
- Date Created:
- 2012-05-12T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Grand Valley State University. University Libraries
- Notes:
- Pedro Mateo is from Salinas, Puerto Rico and now lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He first came to Grand Rapids in the 1950s, but quickly moved to Indiana Harbor to work in the steel mills alongside many other Puerto Rican immigrants of that era. Mr. Mateo describes the steel mill culture and the Puerto Rican community that developed in Indiana Harbor beginning in the 1940s. After a short time in Indiana Harbor, Mr. Mateo moved with his family to Van Buren Street near Ashland Avenue in Chicago, in the barrio area then known to Puerto Ricans as La Madison. In the 1960s, Mr. Mateo moved to Addison Ave. and Wilson Street, next to Wrigley Field. It was here that he first met the Young Lords. Mr. Mateo describes his daily travels by train to La Clark to work at “Las Gomas,” or a rubber factory, by New Orleans and Chicago Avenue. He ultimately returned to Grand Rapids, where his large, extended family plays a prominent role in the city’s Latino community.
- Date Created:
- 2012-03-08T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Grand Valley State University. University Libraries
- Notes:
- Carmen Tirado Reyes is married to Marcelo Jiménez, a proud Hacha Vieja, and uncle of José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez. In the 1940s they moved to Barrio Mula in Aguas Buenas, Puerto Rico, where “Tio Gabriel,” as he was called, had purchased a large farm, hired workers, and raised his many children. When work was slow, those children and workers came to Chicago, settling in La Clark in the late 1940s and early 1950s. One of Ms. Reyes’s sons became a leader of the Latin Kings. Ms. Reyes now lives in Puerto Rico.
- Date Created:
- 2012-05-12T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Grand Valley State University. University Libraries
- Notes:
- Although Estervina Jiménez has never lived in Chicago herself, her life has been deeply connected to the city. Born and raised in Barrio San Salvador of Caguas, Puerto Rico, Ms. Jiménez’s husband, Cordero, traveled back and forth to Chicago’s La Clark for work in the early 1950s. Many of her other family members did the same, starting and sustaining the social clubs, congregations, businesses, and other organizations that were at the core of Chicago’s Puerto Rican community. Ms. Jiménez also had several uncles migrate to Detroit during that same period in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Through her memories, it is clear that social clubs like the Hachas Viejas and other were a fundamental source of support for separated families in a strange land. These organizations also provided a way to cope with language and cultural challenges, segregated streets, and housing discrimination. Today, Ms. Jiménez volunteers in her church in San Salvador, the Catholic capilla. She delivers communion to the sick and visits and prays with them. She spends much time sitting on her porch with her husband, who is now in poor health, talking with the travelers who walk down the small path in front of her home. When someone dies in San Salvador, she makes herself available to assist in the traditional novena and helps to lead and to pray the rosary for the nine days. If there is an event or program she also helps out. In fact, she helps the priest whenever called upon and volunteers to daily to clean the church. Ms. Jiménez is a resource for the residents of San Salvador, especially in the Morena and Lao Frío sections of Caguas. Ask anyone from San Salvador and they will also tell you that she is like the unofficial mayor.
- Date Created:
- 2012-06-23T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Grand Valley State University. University Libraries
- Notes:
- Ana Encarnación is from the San Juan metropolitan area of Puerto Rico and describes growing up there in the late 1930s and 1940s. She arrived in Chicago in the 1950s, settling in Old Town, along the border dividing Old Town from neighboring Lincoln Park. She lived on the south side of North Avenue, at the corner of Sedgewick. When the Young Lords decided in 1968 to start to defend the Puerto Ricans and the poor from being displaced, it was her dream come true to join the Young Lords Movement. She saw it as a way to help her people. Ms. Encarnación was in nursing and so she began to work in the Young Lords’ Emeterio Betances Free Health Clinic. Ms. Encarnación describes how the volunteer staff, including herself, not only provided many long hours of free services to the Puerto Ricans and poor of Lincoln Park but when money was low, they also donated from their own personal savings to keep the clinic afloat.
- Date Created:
- 2012-07-10T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Grand Valley State University. University Libraries
- Notes:
- Francisca Medina lived for many years in Chicago’s Lincoln Park neighborhood. She describes visiting with other Latinas on the streets of Lincoln Park, at laundromats, and in the large variety of Puerto Rican owned shops in the 1950s, a time when the community was thriving and safe. Ms. Medina recalls her involvement in Council Number 9 at St. Teresa’s, as well as her work with the congregations at St. Vincent De Paul and St. Sebastian. Ms. Medina raised her family in Lincoln Park, moving several times within the neighborhood including homes on Sheffield, Bissell and Fremont Streets.
- Date Created:
- 2012-03-02T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Grand Valley State University. University Libraries
- Notes:
- Juan Jiménez is the younger brother of Antonio “Maloco” Jiménez and currently lives in Barrio San Salvador of Caguas, Puerto Rico, in the secluded road behind the tienda, or store, of the Trinidads. His home is newly built and sits on cement blocks like stilts, carved right into the hill but sitting halfway on air. It is difficult to turn your car around the dead end road as there are more hills to the other side. And he has a beautiful view of the center of San Salvador’s Monte Peluche, a tall, rocky mountain covered with vegetation. It is his section of paradise and what Mr. Jiménez worked for all his life when he lived in Chicago’s Lincoln Park neighborhood, on La Armitage. Mr. Jiménez is content, still raising his college-aged daughter. His son is a proud Illinois State trooper. Mr. Jiménez was part of Council Number 9 of the Caballeros de San Juan and Damas de María at St. Teresa’s Church on Kenmore and Armitage. He played well and was a proud member of their softball team. It instilled character in the players, kept the community stable, and kept the youth away from hard drugs and off the streets. Each team had their own chanting cheerleaders, coaches, and managers. It was also good for small entrepreneurs who sold pasteles and pastelillos, rice and bean dinners, and T- shirts and flags and banners. The Catholic softball leagues provided the Puerto Rican version of the college town football game for the entire Puerto Rican family. It kept them united and parents knew at all times where they could find their children. It was a cost effective, after school fun that today would have eliminated the few existing after school programs. And it was a true community program that did not have to be funded by the federal government or by city hall. But the leagues and the Caballeros and the Damas were being weakened and destroyed by discriminatory plans to “cleanse for profit” the lakefront and near downtown areas of Puerto Ricans, other minorities and the poor. And along with their displacement and destruction of neighborhood networks and the disenfranchisement of Puerto Rican and poor voters, breeding grounds for today’s super gangs were created.
- Date Created:
- 2012-06-25T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Grand Valley State University. University Libraries
- Notes:
- Oral history of Carmen Garcia, interviewed by Jose 'Cha-Cha' Jimenez, on 11/16/2012 about the Young Lords in Lincoln Park.
- Date Created:
- 2012-11-16T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Grand Valley State University. University Libraries
- Notes:
- Juan Rodríguez was a member and leader of the Jovenes Nobles social club in San Salvador, Puerto Rico, where he was born and raised. Mr. Rodríguez later followed other family members to Aurora, Illinois where he worked for many years at the Caterpillar Plant on Montgomery Road. Later, Mr. Rodríguez heard about the organizing work of the Young Lords in Chicago’s Lincoln Park. By that time his relatives from the Jiménez family had also come to Aurora, moving from Lincoln Park and Wicker Park. Mr. Rodríguez and his brother Ramón would visit their home regularly, and assisted with organizing the parades.
- Date Created:
- 2012-06-21T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Grand Valley State University. University Libraries
- Notes:
- Antonio “Maloco” Jiménez Rodríguez has no qualms about admitting that he was the Vice-President of the notorious Hacha Viejas, or Old Hatchets, of the 1950s and 1960s in Chicago. He was a World War II veteran with a lot of heart.
- Date Created:
- 2012-06-25T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Grand Valley State University. University Libraries
- Notes:
- Eugenia Rodríguez is the mother of José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez. She is the youngest of 13 children and was born in San Lorenzo, Puerto Rico to Juan Rodríguez and Victoria Flores. They then moved to the Morena section of the barrio of San Salvador, Caguas, Puerto Rico. When she was just a child her mother became sick and so Ms. Rodríguez was sent to be raised by her older sister, Toribia. But Toribia also had her own family to raise, so her father decided to send her to live in a Catholic orphanage until she was 15-years-old. She never attended formal school but did learn how to read and write. When Ms. Rodríguez left the orphanage, she returned to live with Toribia. There she met Antonio Jiménez, the younger brother of Toribia’s husband, who would become her husband. In 1949, Ms. Rodríguez traveled to New York and then to Boston. In early 1951 the family moved to La Clark in Chicago.
- Date Created:
- 2012-05-10T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Grand Valley State University. University Libraries
- Notes:
- Roberto Jiménez is son of “Tio Funfa” Jiménez. Today he lives in the small mountain town of Aguas Buenas, Puerto Rico, but did live for some years in Detroit, Michigan, traveling back and forth in the 1950s, “when there were not that many Puerto Ricans living there.” It was cold in Detroit. And Mr. Jiménez recalls having to rely on family and friends for transportation and other things. He likes to raise rabbits for sale, and chickens. Mr. Jiménez also grows green bananas and other vegetables in his backyard behind the three houses where his brothers and sisters live in separate apartments. At least one of the houses is an inheritance and it is not bad to be able to live and to share supper with family. When friends arrive to visit, he has a habit of giving them some bananas or a chicken or a rabbit. If he has to do the work to prepare it, he will charge for his time. Mr. Jiménez considers himself to be just a humble worker and recalls going to the United States because farm labor was seasonal and there was no work. Sometimes construction was good. But it did not last long because there were many people trying to do it. Mr. Jiménez had heard about the Hacha Viejas, but they were his cousins, children of Tio Gabriel Jiménez, and workers who worked on his uncle’s farm, and not part of his immediate family. Today, Mr. Jiménez has no plans except to enjoy the tropical breeze from the same chair he sits on daily in their patio/garage entrance. Here he is calm and can think as he enjoys the car and truck traffic blaring as it passes the house.
- Date Created:
- 2012-07-09T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Grand Valley State University. University Libraries
- Notes:
- Eugenia Rodríguez is the mother of José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez. She is the youngest of 13 children and was born in San Lorenzo, Puerto Rico to Juan Rodríguez and Victoria Flores. They then moved to the Morena section of the barrio of San Salvador, Caguas, Puerto Rico. When she was just a child her mother became sick and so Ms. Rodríguez was sent to be raised by her older sister, Toribia. But Toribia also had her own family to raise, so Ms. Rodríguez’s father decided to send her to live in a Catholic orphanage until she was 15-years-old. She never attended formal school but did learn how to read and write. When Ms. Rodríguez left the orphanage, she returned to live with Toribia. There she met Antonio Jiménez, the younger brother of Toribia’s husband, who would become her husband. In 1949, Ms. Rodríguez traveled to New York and then to Boston. In early 1951 the family moved to La Clark in Chicago.
- Date Created:
- 2012-06-24T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Grand Valley State University. University Libraries
- Notes:
- Oral history of Diego Mercado, interviewed by Jose 'Cha-Cha' Jimenez, on 11/21/2012 about the Young Lords in Lincoln Park.
- Date Created:
- 2012-11-21T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Grand Valley State University. University Libraries
- Notes:
- Dimas Rodríguez Flores grew up since the 1930s in Barrio San Salvador of Caguas, Puerto Rico and continues to live there in the Lao Frío side of the barrio. He is a twin brother with Encarnación Rodríguez Flores. They have another eleven siblings, including their youngest sister, Eugenia Rodríguez Flores. Although Mr. Rodríguez has always lived in Puerto Rico, like many Puerto Ricans his life is connected to cities across the United States mainland through family; many of his children live in the United States. A veteran of World War II, Mr. Rodríguez is now retired. He enjoys his parakeets, cooking his vegetables, and eating the fruits of his land.
- Date Created:
- 2012-06-21T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Grand Valley State University. University Libraries
- Notes:
- Eugenia Rodríguez is the mother of José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez. She is the youngest of 13 children and was born in San Lorenzo, Puerto Rico to Juan Rodríguez and Victoria Flores. They then moved to the Morena section of the barrio of San Salvador, Caguas, Puerto Rico. When she was just a child her mother became sick and so Ms. Rodríguez was sent to be raised by her older sister, Toribia. But Toribia also had her own family to raise, so Ms. Rodríguez’s father decided to send her to live in a Catholic orphanage until she was 15-years-old. She never attended formal school but did learn how to read and write. When Ms. Rodríguez left the orphanage, she returned to live with Toribia. There she met Antonio Jiménez, the younger brother of Toribia’s husband, who would become her husband. In 1949, Ms. Rodríguez traveled to New York and then to Boston. In early 1951 the family moved to La Clark in Chicago.
- Date Created:
- 2012-05-30T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Grand Valley State University. University Libraries
- Notes:
- Marcelo Jiménez, or “Chelo,” is one of the younger sons of Cristina (Tino) and Gregorio Jiménez. Mr. Jiménez grew up in San Salvador, Caguas, Puerto Rico and did work in that mountain barrio like the others, laboring on different farms or helping to construct neighbors’ homes, and migrating back and forth to the United States to work in fields, factories, and hotels. Mr. Jiménez also worked in a foundry on Armitage Avenue by the Chicago River branch in Lincoln Park for many years. Back in Puerto Rico he continued to help his father plow or turn the soil on the farm, using two bulls and a small plow. He also hung tobacco to dry in the tall rancho that they made from the bamboo that grew next to the creek. The creek served as the boundary of the farm in the 1940s through the 1980s when some of the plots were sold by some of the family. Mr. Jiménez would load the produce in his truck, or a cow when money was needed, and head to La Plaza Mercado in Caguas, near La Salida, or exit, to Aguas Buenas. When José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez lived in Puerto Rico in 1963-64, he became Mr. Jiménez’s assistant in his cow feed distribution business. Each morning they would fill up Mr. Jiménez truck with 100 lbs. bags of cow feed. They would then drink their coffee with cow’s milk from the can, a few soda crackers and butter and Tino and Don Goyo would wave them on. The two of them would leave in darkness and travel to nearly every town on the Island, delivering and selling the bags of feed, and would not return until late. When business was slow Mr. Jiménez and Cha-Cha would hang out with the Titeres de La Plaza, or the Huckleberry Finns clique, of San Salvador, sometimes even barefoot. The youth clique is centuries old. No one is excluded. It is like a life passage that exists today in a varied fashion. There was rarely any harm done. Everyone knew them, and then there was no police to bother them. But back In Chicago Mr. Jiménez would sometimes hang out with his cousins of the Hacha Viejas. Most of the time they did the same thing but in a rougher manner. In Chicago the neighborhood was unstable and transient. There was prejudice and hunger (poverty). The culture in Chicago was “everyone for themselves,” as Mr. Jiménez recalls. And then there was police intimidation and many times unnecessary arrests that served to served as bragging points and hardened the group. For Mr. Jiménez, he was lucky to join with other groups for support, like the Caballeros de San Juan. And most of the time he just worked long hours and enjoyed his children and family. His relatives were also part of the Caballeros and Damas de María. He became one of the first immigrants to Chicago during what some called the Great Migration of Puerto Ricans, between 1950 and 1960. This was the era when Puerto Ricans were going back and forth from Puerto Rico to Chicago. Mr. Jiménez built a mansion in San Salvador and today lives content in the town of Caguas.
- Date Created:
- 2012-05-12T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Grand Valley State University. University Libraries
- Notes:
- Benedicto Jiménez is the son of Toribia Rodríguez and Miguel Jiménez. For Mr. Benedicto Jiménez, the importance of family and neighborhood ties became especially clear once he was in Chicago. There, Puerto Ricans faced the same hardships and so sought each other out and were glad to know that they were related in some way. Instead of asking what one thought about the weather, the conversation would be about, “what town in Puerto Rico are you from and what are all your last names.” Mr. Jiménez moved closer to Aurora, Illinois because he was desperately looking for work and with the help of other relatives and friends worked at the honguera of West Chicago. The honguera produced mushrooms and other vegetables for the Campbell Soup Company. Mr. Jiménez worked there for many years and since he is well educated and fluent in English, he was asked to translate. His help never translated into more pay or a better job. In those days of the 1960s and 1970s jobs were not given by skill but by national origin and by race. He says that the honguera was 50/50, about 200 Mejicanos and 200 Puerto Ricans, who lived in the dormitories of the migrant camp, by signed contract. Mr. Jiménez describes long days and work weeks in an enclosed, unlit room because the mushrooms are grown in the dark. He was reintroduced to Don Teo Arroyo, whose wife Gina cooked at the camp for the men. They began organizing the community for Aurora’s first Puerto Rican Day parades.
- Date Created:
- 2012-06-02T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Grand Valley State University. University Libraries
- Notes:
- Eugenia Rodríguez is the mother of José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez. She is the youngest of 13 children and was born in San Lorenzo, Puerto Rico to Juan Rodríguez and Victoria Flores. They then moved to the Morena section of the barrio of San Salvador, Caguas, Puerto Rico. When she was just a child her mother became sick and so Ms. Rodríguez was sent to be raised by her older sister, Toribia. But Toribia also had her own family to raise, so Ms. Rodríguez’s father decided to send her to live in a Catholic orphanage until she was 15-years-old. She never attended formal school but did learn how to read and write. When Ms. Rodríguez left the orphanage, she returned to live with Toribia. There she met Antonio Jiménez, the younger brother of Toribia’s husband, who would become her husband. In 1949, Ms. Rodríguez traveled to New York and then to Boston. In early 1951 the family moved to La Clark in Chicago.
- Date Created:
- 2012-06-04T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Grand Valley State University. University Libraries
- Notes:
- Amparo Jiménez lives in Aguas Buenas, Puerto Rico where she is very active within the Catholic Church. Ms. Jiménez is daughter of “Tio Funfa Jiménez” whose children and their offspring left Puerto Rico and grew up primarily in Detroit and Pontiac, Michigan.
- Date Created:
- 2012-06-22T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Grand Valley State University. University Libraries
- Notes:
- Ramón Rodríguez is a semi-retired school teacher who lives in the Lao Frío section of San Salvador, overlooking the home of his father Dimas Rodríguez Flores. He first met his cousin, José “Cha- Cha” Jiménez in 1963 when Mr. Jiménez was forcibly deported to Puerto Rico. Mr. Jiménez, who was 14- years-old at that time, pleaded with his parents to send him to Sheraton, a juvenile prison where he would have remained until the age of 21, instead of being sent to Puerto Rico where he was born but had no understanding of life there. In Puerto Rico, Mr. Rodríguez and his older brother Juan became close to Mr. Jiménez. They also tried to dissuade Mr. Jiménez from forming a branch of the Young Lords in Puerto Rico because Mr. Rodríguez and his brothers were already leaders and did not want anything to do with a Chicago type gang in the barrio of San Salvador. Mr. Rodríguez recalls what San Salvador was like in those days. This was a stable area and family influence and networks were strong. Drugs did not start to enter -- not even in rural areas of Puerto Rico – until much later. The only thing that closely resembled a gang was the Titeres de La Plaza. These young men sat on the many boulders near the banana leaves, across from the store of Don Félix García, and got into petty mischief. Ultimately Mr. Rodríguez and others compromised and agree to call their group, Jovenes Nobles. Of course Mr. Jiménez remained a Titere because that bunch included many other cousins, and they were located in La Plaza, closer to where he was living with his grandparents, Tino and Don Goyo. The Jovenes Nobles set up a recreation clubhouse for their young members. They began fundraising and someone donated a baby pig to raffle. The members traveled from house-to-house and hilltop-to-hilltop in the tropical sun to sell the tickets. On the day of the raffle, Mr. Rodríguez’s mother won the ticket. The Jovenes Nobles had to endure the gossip, but they kept the money and they ate the pig.Mr. Rodríguez also describes his move from San Salvador to Aurora, Illinois. In this interview, he bravely talks about the brief substance abuse problem he battled and the ways he hopes young people today might learn from his experiences. Today he once again lives in San Salvador. He remains a strong family person and is a well-respected leader.
- Date Created:
- 2012-06-23T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Grand Valley State University. University Libraries
- Notes:
- Juan Jiménez is the younger brother of Antonio “Maloco” Jiménez and currently lives in Barrio San Salvador of Caguas, Puerto Rico, in the secluded road behind the tienda, or store, of the Trinidads. His home is newly built and sits on cement blocks like stilts, carved right into the hill but sitting halfway on air. It is difficult to turn your car around the dead end road as there are more hills to the other side. And he has a beautiful view of the center of San Salvador’s Monte Peluche, a tall, rocky mountain covered with vegetation. It is his section of paradise and what Mr. Jiménez worked for all his life when he lived in Chicago’s Lincoln Park neighborhood, on La Armitage. Mr. Jiménez is content, still raising his college-aged daughter. His son is a proud Illinois State trooper. Mr. Jiménez was part of Council Number 9 of the Caballeros de San Juan and Damas de María at St. Teresa’s Church on Kenmore and Armitage. He played well and was a proud member of their softball team. It instilled character in the players, kept the community stable, and kept the youth away from hard drugs and off the streets. Each team had their own chanting cheerleaders, coaches, and managers. It was also good for small entrepreneurs who sold pasteles and pastelillos, rice and bean dinners, and T- shirts and flags and banners. The Catholic softball leagues provided the Puerto Rican version of the college town football game for the entire Puerto Rican family. It kept them united and parents knew at all times where they could find their children. It was a cost effective, after school fun that today would have eliminated the few existing after school programs. And it was a true community program that did not have to be funded by the federal government or by city hall. But the leagues and the Caballeros and the Damas were being weakened and destroyed by discriminatory plans to “cleanse for profit” the lakefront and near downtown areas of Puerto Ricans, other minorities and the poor. And along with their displacement and destruction of neighborhood networks and the disenfranchisement of Puerto Rican and poor voters, breeding grounds for today’s super gangs were created.
- Date Created:
- 2012-06-25T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Grand Valley State University. University Libraries
- Notes:
- William Quiles is the brother-in-law of José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez and has been married to Juana “Jenny” Jiménez for over 40 years. They live in Camuy, Puerto Rico where they are surrounded by Mr. Quiles’s many brothers and sisters. Prior to moving to Camuy, Mr. Quiles and Ms. Jiménez met in Aurora, Illinois where they lived for many years, raising their four children, Margie, Joey, Danny, and Sandy. Mr. Quiles has long been active in local softball teams and bowling leagues and worked in the factories. He is well know and respected in both the Aurora and Camuy communities. In Puerto Rico, Mr. Quiles works in construction and built his own cement home. For many years he also worked on the cattle farm of a close friend. Several of his brothers have been active with the Puerto Rican Independence Party.
- Date Created:
- 2012-05-16T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Grand Valley State University. University Libraries
- Notes:
- Eldelmira Cruz is from San Lorenzo, Puerto Rico. She migrated to the Chicago Lincoln Park neighborhood in 1969 and lived right by the People’s Church. Her memories of her early days in Chicago include the work the Young Lords were doing as they grew into a human rights movement. Ms. Cruz recalls the fight in the courts for the Free Community Day Care Center, the Free Breakfast for Children Program, and the Ramón Emeterio Betances Free Health Care Clinic. She and her children also used these resources. Ms. Cruz describes a culture shock as she says she grew up all her life in the countryside in Puerto Rico. Ms. Cruz participated and volunteered in the Young Lords People’s Church.
- Date Created:
- 2012-06-27T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Grand Valley State University. University Libraries
- Notes:
- Ramonia “Monin” Jiménez Rodríguez came to live in the La Clark barrio of Chicago on La Salle near Division Street in the mid-1950s. Ms. Jiménez Rodríguez attended mass at Holy Name Cathedral and St. Joseph. She became involved early in the Council Number Three Damas de María at St. Michael’s Church. There she helped other Damas to cook the arroz con gandules dinners to raise money after mass. There was usually a live band playing and many neighborhood people dancing. She was also part of the movement to try to get mass held in Spanish. In later years, Ms. Jiménez Rodríguez moved back to Puerto Rico to retire which is where she now lives.
- Date Created:
- 2012-06-25T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Grand Valley State University. University Libraries
- Notes:
- Oral history of Rafael Cancel-Miranda, interviewed by Jose 'Cha-Cha' Jimenez, on 11/19/2013 about the Young Lords in Lincoln Park.
- Date Created:
- 2013-11-19T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Grand Valley State University. University Libraries
- Notes:
- Oral history of Diego Figuearoa, Sr., interviewed by Jose 'Cha-Cha' Jimenez, on 8/25/2012 about the Young Lords in Lincoln Park.
- Date Created:
- 2012-08-25T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Grand Valley State University. University Libraries