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…

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…

Carlos Flores is a cultural activist who lived at La Salle and Superior in the La Clark barrio, growing up on Armitage Avenue. He takes pride in relating that his family was “the last of the Puerto Ricans to leave Lincoln Park” and recalls life in…

Carmen de Leon is a Young Lord who grew up in New York City and today lives in Loíza, Puerto Rico. A strong advocate for women, Ms. de Leon worked closely with Young Lord Richie Pérez on a range of education and youth centered programs. In her oral…

Gloria Rosario grew up in Lincoln Park and Wicker Park during the 1960s, as those communities were becoming unstable, and the forced dislocations had already pushed many of the areas Latino pioneers from their homes. Ms. Rosario describes spending…

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…

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…

Mike Lawson is a civil rights activist who first met Mr. José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez in 1968, after Mr. Jiménez was released from prison. At that time, Mr. Lawson was in charge of a G.E.D. program for ex-offenders that already had enrolled a number of…

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. …