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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:
- Rosa M. Hernández grew up on Orchard Street in Chicago. Like many of the Puerto Rican women of that era, she grew up sheltered while boys were free to stay out late and roam the streets. Ms. Hernández was the neighborhood store errand girl, it was a way to be free and visit with her friends and neighbors. Down the street at Burling and Armitage, the Black Eagles, Paragons, Flaming Arrows, Imperial Aces, Continentals, Trojans and Young Lords would hang out daily until the early hours of the morning, drinking and talking. Ms. Hernández knew everyone of importance in the neighborhood from youth to adults. She recalls how everyone in the neighborhood watched out for each other and that even the alleged gangs were polite and courteous to their neighbors. Her oral history provides much insight into everyday life in Lincoln Park during that significant era in the early to mid-1960s for the Puerto Rican community.
- Date Created:
- 2012-03-28T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Grand Valley State University. University Libraries
- Notes:
- Hilda Frontany is a long-time community activist whose family first lived in the Water Hotel in Chicago’s La Clark neighborhood when they arrived in Chicago from Puerto Rico. In the late 1960s and 1970s she devoted her work to addressing the housing crisis that was displacing Latinos and the poor from Chicago’s Lakeview Neighborhood, a community located just north of Lincoln Park. As a member of the Lakeview Citizens Council, Ms. Frontany provided a public voice for Latinos and helped support homeowners.
- Date Created:
- 2012-03-30T00:00:00Z
- 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:
- Luis "Tony" Baez arrived in Chicago from Barrio Borinquén of Caguas, Puerto Rico in 1969 and soon became Minister of Education of the Young Lords. In Puerto Rico, Dr. Baez was also active with the Puerto Rican Independence Party (PIP), the electoral component of the broad movement in Puerto Rico, fighting for Puerto Ricans to regain back control of their nation. By 1970, Dr. Baez moved from Chicago to Milwaukee and set up a Young Lords chapter. They maintained a community office and distributed the Young Lords Newspaper (that Dr. Baez had also helped to publish while in Chicago), focusing primarily on neighborhood organizing, community-based programs, and bilingual education.
- Date Created:
- 2012-08-23T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Grand Valley State University. University Libraries
- Notes:
- William “Ninja” Ruiz is the brother of Mildred Ruiz-Sapp of Universes and they grew up in New York City on the Lower East Side. He earned his BA in Theatre at Bard College where he also studied poetry. Today he makes his home in Santurce, Puerto Rico and is a leading member of the Universes Theatre Ensemble. Universes is a New York-based theatre group that fuses poetry, jazz, hip hop, politics, blues and Spanish boleros to create its own productions which are performed on and off Broadway, nationally and internationally. One of their most recent productions is “Party People” (2012) which is primarily about the Black Panther Party and the Young Lords.
- Date Created:
- 2012-07-07T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Grand Valley State University. University Libraries
- Notes:
- David Mojica is a very important, unsung hero in the history of Puerto Ricans in Chicago. He has volunteered his services in Humboldt Park. Mr. Mojica has been the head of the Cocineros union for many years, helping to provide jobs and distributing Puerto Rican pride flags and shirts, and good tasting fast food to the entire community. Mr. Mojica was also one of the primary Puerto Rican community workers that helped to elect Harold Washington, during his first bid for mayor. He volunteered every day at the Fullerton Ave. near Western Ave. in the “Washington for Mayor” office. Mr. Mojica’s work included distributing flyers and posters, identifying registered voters, and phone canvassing. Mr. Mojica was also a Young Lord who helped to organize the first Hispano rally for Harold Washington at North West Hall in 1982, and the victory rally at Humboldt Park during the first official Mayor’s Neighborhood Festival where over 100,000 Puerto Ricans attended.
- Date Created:
- 2012-01-22T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Grand Valley State University. University Libraries
- Notes:
- Martha López grew up in Chicago’s Lincoln Park neighborhood and recalls the thriving Puerto Rican community there, especially the youth groups, Caballeros de San Juan, and the Young Lords. She also recalls being attacked “from the whites and the blacks” who lived in different parts of the segregated Old Town and Lincoln Park neighborhoods.
- Date Created:
- 2012-03-30T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Grand Valley State University. University Libraries
