Moral Courage During the Holocaust and in a Post Holocaust World conference program
World War, 1939-1945
Courage
Heroes
Conference agenda for "Moral Courage During the Holocaust and in a Post Holocaust World," sponsored by the Jewish Foundation for Christian Rescuers and the Anti-Defamation League.
Jewish Foundation for Christian Rescuers
Adriana B. and Peter N. Termaat collection (RHC-144)
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives
In Copyright
Jillson, Tom (Interview transcript and video), 2008
Oral history
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
United States--History, Military
Michigan--History, Military
Veterans
Video recordings
United States. Air Force
World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
Tom Jillson was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan in 1947 and grew up in East Grand Rapids, Michigan. He joined the Air Force upon graduating high school and was initially trained as an electrical specialist, but was then transferred to accounting. He was stationed at Webb AFB in Texas for two years of his service and was then shipped to Vietnam for the remainder of his enlistment period. His job in Vietnam was a clerk, trading American money for Military bills. He remained in Da Nang for the greater part of his time in Vietnam.
Jillson, Tom
Veterans History Project collection, (RHC-27)
Kentwood Historic Preservation Commission (Kentwood, Mich.)
Amparo Jiménez video interview and biography
Young Lords (Organization)
Puerto Ricans--United States
Civil Rights--United States--History
Lincoln Park (Chicago, Ill.)
Puerto Ricans--Personal narratives
Spanish language--Personal narratives
Social justice
Community activists--Illinois--Chicago
Puerto Ricans--Social life and customs
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.
Jiménez, Amparo
Benedicto Jiménez video interview and biography
Puerto Ricans--Illinois--Chicago--Social conditions
Puerto Ricans--Illinois--Chicago--Social life and customs
Migrant agricultural laborers--Illinois--Chicago
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.
Jiménez, Benedicto
Daisy Jiménez video interview and transcript, interview 1
Religion
Daisy Jiménez, or “La Prieta” as she was called by her father, is one of José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez’s sisters. She was born on the seventh floor of what was the Water Hotel at Superior and La Salle Streets in Chicago, where her family was then living. She grew up in La Clark between Ohio and North Ave., and then in the Lincoln Park area where she helped her mother Eugenia go door to door recruiting Hispanos for Spanish mass and praying rosaries for the Caballeros de San Juan and Damas de María. After living on Claremont and North Ave. for several years the family moved to Aurora, Illinois. There they joined up with grassroots leader Teo Arroyo, who was also from Barrio San Salvador of Caguas, Puerto Rico and was organizing the first Puerto Rican Parade for that city. Daisy entered the contest for Puerto Rican Parade Queen and won. She has raised four children and today lives in Camuy, Puerto Rico with her husband, Israel Rodríguez.
Jiménez, Daisy
Daisy Jiménez video interview and transcript, interview 2
Fabiola Jimenez audio interview and transcript
Civil rights--Michigan--History
Women--Personal narratives
Fabiola Jimenez, a Colombian woman who has been living in East Michigan since 1994. She discusses how she feels as though she was never discriminated against because of her race.
Jimenez, Fabiola
Speaking Out: Western Michigan Civil Rights Oral History Project
Jose Jimenez audio interview and transcript
Jose Jimenez was born in Caguas, Puerto Rico and lived in Chicago. He discusses his experiences as the leader of the Young Lords and an activist for Latin Americans.
Jimenez, Jose
Jose Jimenez video interview and transcript, interview 1
Mexican Americans--Personal narratives
Mexican Americans--Illinois--Chicago--Social conditions
Race relations
Social conflict
Cultural identity
Black Panther Party. Illinois Chapter
Oral history of Jose 'Cha-Cha' Jimenez, interviewed on 3/15/2012 about the Young Lords in Lincoln Park.
Jose Jimenez video interview and transcript,interview 2
Oral history of Jose 'Cha-Cha' Jimenez, interviewed on 7/14/2012 about the Young Lords in Lincoln Park.
Young Lords (Organization) History
Puerto Rican Civil rights
Puerto Rican Social conditions
Chicago (Ill.)
Civil rights movements
Community activists
Spanish statement of candidacy for alderman of Ward 46, Chicago, Illinois.
Jiménez, José "Cha-Cha"
Young Lords in Lincoln Park collection (RHC-65)
English statement of candidacy for alderman of Ward 46, Chicago, Illinois.
New Day was a newsletter produced by José "Cha-Cha" Jiménez during his campaign for Alderman 46th Ward, Chicago. Issue number 1, in English.
Nuevo Dia was a newsletter produced by José "Cha-Cha" Jiménez during his campaign for Alderman 46th Ward, Chicago. Issue number 1, in Spanish.
New Day was a newsletter produced by José "Cha-Cha" Jiménez during his campaign for Alderman 46th Ward, Chicago. Issue number 2, in English.
Nuevo Dia was a newsletter produced by José "Cha-Cha" Jiménez during his campaign for Alderman 46th Ward, Chicago. Issue number 2, in Spanish.
Letter to Latino Voters about José Cha-Cha Jiménez's campaign for 46th Ward Alderman, in English.
Letter to Latino Voters about José Cha-Cha Jiménez's campaign for 46th Ward Alderman, in Spanish.
Juan Jiménez video interview and biography
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.
Jiménez, Juan
Juana “Jenny” Jiménez video interview and transcript
Juana “Jenny” Jiménez is one of José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez’s sisters. She was born while her father, Antonio, worked as a seasonal farm laborer, or tomatero, in the late 1940s for Andy Boy Farms at a migrant camp in Minot, Massachusetts near Concord. They picked vegetables primarily for the Campbell Soup Company. In 1951 the family moved to Chicago to be closer to other relatives who had been living in La Clark since the late 1940s. Jenny grew up in Lincoln Park and in Wicker Park. When she became pregnant, but was unmarried, she was placed temporarily in a juvenile home for girls run by Catholic nuns. It is there that Jenny developed her spirituality and she remains very active in her community to this day, including working on behalf of her husband’s baseball and bowling leagues and running a Boy Scout troop to support her own and other neighborhood children in Puerto Rico. She now lives in Camuy, Puerto Rico.
Jiménez, Juana
Marcelo Jiménez video interview and biography
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.
Jiménez, Marcelo
Melisa Jiménez video interview and transcript, interview 1
Personal narratives
Melisa Jiménez is the youngest daughter of Mr. José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez. Like his other children she was not able to grow up with Mr. Jiménez. But she has always maintained a close relationship with him, even though they live miles away from each other. Ms. Jiménez’s other siblings are Jackie, Jodie, Sonia, and Alex. Ms. Jiménez lives not far from Mrs. Iberia Hampton, Fred Hampton’s mother, and they have maintained a close personal relationship for many years. Ms. Jiménez was born in the Lincoln Park neighborhood hospital, via the use of the La Maze childbirth method. Her father reminds her that he was the first to hold her. Ms. Jiménez lived in Lincoln Park for the first years of her life until the rent became unbearable for her mother. Only a couple of months after she was born, her father was incarcerated for a year, awaiting trial because his bond was too far out of range for his income. He later explained to her that he was doing, “volunteer work, supporting the Puerto Rican Freedom fighters.” When Mr. Jiménez won the case, Ms. Jiménez was living in Logan Square and they were once again united. This time Jackie, the oldest of Mr. Jiménez’s daughters from another relationship, moved in with them briefly. Teenage Jackie had a young boyfriend who was extremely polite, but very persistent. So Jackie’s mother, frustrated, dropped her off for Mr. Jiménez “to take responsibility and to take care of her.” He gladly agreed. And It was a way for Melisa and Jackie to get to know each other. Each sibling plays a role and Ms. Jiménez has played the role of sibling unifier in a world of divorce and separations. She graduated from Oak Park River Forest High School in 1998 and attended some college. She loves photography and is an accomplished artist. Some of her jobs have included child care, marketing research and mortgage broker sales.
Jiménez, Melisa
Melisa Jiménez video interview and transcript, interview 2
Ramonia “Monin” Jiménez Rodríguez video interview and biography
Youth--Illinois--Chicago
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.
Jiménez, Ramonia