Melisa Jiménez video interview and transcript, interview 2
Young Lords (Organization)
Puerto Ricans--United States
Civil Rights--United States--History
Lincoln Park (Chicago, Ill.)
Personal narratives
Social justice
Community activists--Illinois--Chicago
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
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives
In Copyright
Melisa Jiménez video interview and transcript, interview 1
Marcelo Jiménez video interview and biography
Spanish language--Personal narratives
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
Juana “Jenny” Jiménez video interview and transcript
Puerto Ricans--Personal narratives
Puerto Ricans--Illinois--Chicago--Social life and customs
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
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
Jose Jimenez video interview and transcript,interview 2
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 7/14/2012 about the Young Lords in Lincoln Park.
Jimenez, Jose
Jose Jimenez video interview and transcript, interview 1
Oral history of Jose 'Cha-Cha' Jimenez, interviewed on 3/15/2012 about the Young Lords in Lincoln Park.
Daisy Jiménez video interview and transcript, interview 2
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 1
Religion
Benedicto Jiménez video interview and biography
Puerto Ricans--Illinois--Chicago--Social conditions
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
Amparo Jiménez video interview and biography
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
Michael Gaylord James video interview and transcript
A resident of Chicago’s Roger’s Park neighborhood, Mike James was the first leader of Rising Up Angry, a white, working-class group formed in the late 1960s and early 1970s that sought to organize residents of Lakeview/Uptown and offer a range of free or low cost services to the community including a free legal clinic, free health service, a women’s discussion group, occasional free pet-care clinic, and a variety of community events. The group also published a newspaper, the only underground newspaper aimed specifically at white, blue-collar greaser youth in Chicago at that time. The paper presented a combination of international news with news from local Chicago neighborhoods. Rising Up Angry members were also known for their distinctive way of dressing – dark banlon shirts, leather jackets, baggy pants, and pointed toe shoes.
James, Michael
Erica Huggins video interview and transcript
Oral history of Erica Huggins, interviewed by Jose 'Cha-Cha' Jimenez, on 3/13/2013 about the Young Lords in Lincoln Park.
Huggins, Erica
Rosa Meria Hernández video interview and transcript
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.
Hernández, Rosa
David Hernández video interview and transcript
Arts, Puerto Rican--Illinois--Chicago
Urban renewal--Illinois--Chicago
Youth--Illinois--Chicago
Discrimination in housing--Illinois--Chicago
Housing--Illinois--Chicago
David Hernández was born in Cidra, Puerto Rico and arrived in Chicago in 1955. He has volunteered with the Young Lords in many activities and events. But his primary community work has been with La Gente, an organization he founded that worked with Latinos and the poor of Lakeview. Originally the group was called the Latin Eagles Organization. Like the Young Lords, La Gente also had a Breakfast for Children Program. The group stood with the Young Lords for affordable housing and against Mayor Richard J. Daley’s displacement of Puerto Ricans from the lakefront and near downtown areas of the city. Mr. Hernández has been called the unofficial, “Poet Laureate of Chicago.” He blends folk, jazz, and Afro-Latin music that chronicles the pedestrian walking down Chicago’s streets. One of his famous poems is called “La Armitage” and features the neighborhood of Lincoln Park and several prominent Young Lords. Mr. Hernández performed at Harold Washington’s mayoral inauguration in 1977 and at his funeral. He also performed in Humboldt Park for the Young Lords and at their 40th Anniversary in 2008. Today, David Hernández lives in Wicker Park, continues to be active in the community, and to collaborate with the Young Lords.
Hernández, David
Father Donald J. Headley video interview and transcript
Catholic Church. Archdiocese of Chicago (Ill.)
Fr. Donald Headley was first ordained as a Catholic priest in 1958 and is resident priest at the St. Mary’s of the Woods Faith Community in Chicago. He recalls meeting with Saul Alinsky and working with Rev. Jack Eagan, the founder of urban Catholic activism. He also recalls a great deal about the Puerto Rican community in La Clark that grew up through the 1950s. Fr. Headley’s work in Chicago also prompted him to spend 13 years working with the poor in the San Miguelito Mission in Panama during the late 1960s and 1970s.
Headley, Donald
Jack Hart video interview and transcript
Chicago (Ill.)--Politics and government--1951-
Chicago (Ill.). Mayor (1983-1987 : Washington)
Jack Hart was a primary assistant to Walter “Slim” Coleman during the Jiménez for Alderman Campaign of 1975. He continues to live and work in Chicago’s 46th Ward, primarily in the Uptown Community. In the 1970s, Hart was a member of the Intercommunal Survival Committee, a white group that supported the Black Panther Party. He worked closely with the Young Lords. Mr. Hart joined Mayor Harold Washington’s Administration as Assistant Commissioner and was responsible for administering all of the City of Chicago’s rehabilitation loan programs.
Hart, Jack
Iberia Hampton video interview and transcript
African Americans--Personal narratives
Hampton, Fred, 1948-1969
Iberia Hampton is the mother of murdered Illinois Black Panther Party Chairman Fred Hampton, as well as Dee and Bill Hampton. Throughout her life she has been active within her church and the community. Along with Bill Hampton and the board, Mrs. Iberia Hampton is the primary organizer of the annual celebration of the Fred Hampton Scholarship Fund.
Hampton, Iberia
Bill Hampton video interview and transcript
Bill Hampton is a former Chicago public school teacher and the brother of Fred Hampton, Deputy Chairman of the Illinois Chapter of the Black Panther Party who was murdered by a special police squad in an early morning raid on December 4, 1969. Bill Hampton grew up in Maywood, Illinois, where he organizes an annual commemoration event for his brother.
Hampton, Bill
Dennis Cunningham video interview and transcript
Oral history of Dennis Cunningham, interviewed by Jose 'Cha-Cha' Jimenez on 10/23/2016 about the Young Lords in Lincoln Park.
Cunningham, Dennis
Gregorio Gómez video interview and transcript
Gregorio Gómez is known as the “G Man” at one of Chicago’s longest running underground poetry venues, “Weeds,” at 1515 North Dayton Street. Opened in 1964, “Weeds” still serves the Lincoln Park neighborhood; the building has existed there since 1928. Today “Weeds” is known as “the neighborhood bar without a neighborhood.” In the 1980s, prior to the Harold Washington campaign, José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez organized a reorganizing event at “Weeds.” It was a small party reunion and the place was packed. The purpose was to remember the Young Lords’ work and the Puerto Ricans who were displaced from Lincoln Park. Mr. Jiménez was assisted by Iris (Martha) Ramos, who, before the Young Lords were political, was one of three different presidents of the Young Lordettes. Ms. Ramos had previously been married to Benny Pérez, one of the original Young Lords club founders, who also turned political when the Young Lords became a human rights movement on September 23, 1968. She was also the sister of Manuel Ramos who was a Young Lord killed by off duty policeman James Lamb on May 3, 1969. Mr. Gómez emigrated from Vera Cruz, Mexico to Chicago in 1963. And he has been in the poetry community for nearly three decades. He has been the Managing Director of the Latino Chicago Theatre Company, which has been in the forefront of theatre and arts in Wicker Park. Mr. Gómez’s work has been published and recorded in numerous venues, including Stray Bullets: A Celebration of Chicago Saloon Poetry (1991) and Poetry for Peace Anthology, published by the Peace Museum of Chicago. In 1986, White Panther Party Minister of Information, Bob “Righteous” Rudnick, now deceased, approached the owner of “Weeds,” Sergio Mayora, about staging “Poetry Slams.”. Soon after that Mr. Gómez started to MC. Some of the patrons are a mix of newcomers and old timers, a few white pacifists and anarchists, some revolutionaries, primarily Blacks and Latinos. Early poets who presented their work at “Weeds” includes Chris “Man Defender” Chandler, “Sultry” Sue McDonald, and Susie “Mellow” Greenspan. Poet and Young Lord Alfredo Matias is a regular at “Weeds,” along with Sergio Mayora who always recites his two poems, and Mr. Gómez himself. As Mr. Gómez reiterates, “I stand for hundreds of Poets who will never be famous.”
Gómez, Gregorio
Laura Garcia video interview and transcript
Laura Garcia was raised in an immigrant farmworker family. She was a member of MECha, the Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán, in the struggle to build the United Farmworkers Union, and joined the Teatro de las Chicanas, a theatre troupe started by Felicitas Nuñez and Delia Ravelo, in the 1970s. She recently co-edited, with Sandra M. Gutierrez and Ms. Nuñez a collection of memoirs by members of Teatro Chicanas called Teatro Chicana (2008). Their most recent play is “Madres por Justicia,” which was first performed at the MALCS Conference in Los Angeles, August 2011.
Garcia, Laura
Carmen Garcia video interview and biography
Oral history of Carmen Garcia, interviewed by Jose 'Cha-Cha' Jimenez, on 11/16/2012 about the Young Lords in Lincoln Park.
Garcia, Carmen
Hilda E. Frontany video interview and transcript
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.
Frontany, Hilda