Alfredo Matias is the son of Doña Carmen García and a Young Lord going back to the mid-1960s. Mr. Matias joined the Young Lords during the Month of Soul Dances at St. Michael’s Church Gymnasium in Lincoln Park. Mr. Matias lived in Lincoln Park and…

Obed López-Zacarias is founder of the Latin American Defense Organization (LADO), that organized for a caseworker union and for the dignified treatment of welfare recipients at the Wicker Park Welfare Office of Chicago. LADO was also instrumental in…

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…

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.…

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.…

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.…

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…

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…

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…

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…