6 24 165 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/446554776fc9ec5d991921873cb28c80.pdf 31bed162ba5db06c903c3326fe5530f7 PDF Text Text Young Lords In Lincoln Park Interviewee: Melisa Jiménez Interviewers: José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez Location: Grand Valley State University Special Collections Date: 7/15/2012 Biography and Description 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. �Transcript JOSE JIMENEZ: [00:00:00] Okay, we were talking about the substance abuse and the neighborhoods being filled with drugs and all that as part of sociology. MELISA JIMENEZ: It’s my personal opinion that that is why my generation lost fathers in the household because you have soldiers who came back traumatized from war. Whether they’re physically okay or not, they were not able to be part of the family the way that families were used to having the man of the house. You have people who were very hard-working who became a part of the Civil Rights Movement and were extremely passionate and had their souls crushed, watching everything around them be destroyed. You know, the movement starts with this anger and it turns into this excitement and this purpose, and then you watch people who [00:01:00] finally understand you be destroyed and killed or discredited. JJ: And so people were talking about that among that group of people, your family, that you call the extended family? Around Angie and -- MJ: I still feel -- and I wasn’t even born then -- I feel it as if it was part of my history, part of a memory I’ve had, and it’s the feeling of it. It’s not the times and dates and, oh, so-and-so did this. It’s something that still affects my generation. I’m getting older now so it may not affect the people who are a little bit younger than me, but it crushes your spirit to think that you can finally have a voice that’s the American dream. Everybody has the right to their own freedom of speech and freedom of opinion, and if you do, you might be destroyed by it. You know, that’s 1 �not really freedom. That’s a trap. And to be able to believe in something [00:02:00] and then have it torn apart is not something that affects one person. It affects everybody. Everybody feels it. JJ: What do you mean, torn apart? Do you believe in something that is torn apart? What do you mean? MJ: To have people, you know, like Malcolm X or Martin Luther King or Fred Hampton or the Reverend -- JJ: Bruce Johnson? MJ: -- Bruce Johnson. People who love their people, but not because it’s a cause. Because they really love people, and they have felt this and they’ve lived through it and they’re finding a way to talk to other people -- JJ: Now, you’re only reading about these people, right? MJ: I’m not reading about just these people. I’m knowing the people that they affected. I grew up with the people that they affected. I just happened to be born in the middle of this, and everybody I know was personally touched, knew these people individually, and -- JJ: I mean, did you know anybody that knew Fred Hampton? MJ: I do. I mean, [00:03:00] you worked with Fred Hampton. You know, you as ChaCha Jiménez, then Fred Hampton created along with the Brown Berets the Rainbow Coalition. JJ: Along with the Young Patriots. MJ: The Young Patriots. JJ: Yeah. That’s all right. 2 �MJ: I know them as -- JJ: Okay, no, no, the Brown Berets were on it too. MJ: I mean, and later in my life, my mother, after she retired, she still did community work but she does it with children. You know, she doesn’t do it -- JJ: Didn’t you know Fred Hampton’s mother? MJ: Yes, that’s what I’m saying. She was doing community events with the children, my mother was, and at a community event, she happened to bump into this other woman and they had a great conversation and that was it. They were at different community events and they kept bumping into each other and they became friends. JJ: Which other woman? MJ: Just because of who they are, how they are a part of the community, they just got along. Their personalities matched. And it wasn’t until months after that that she found out that was Fred Hampton’s mother, and Mrs. Hampton found out that my mother [00:04:00] used to be involved with you, or married to you. So these two women had already developed a friendship without knowing their connection to the movement because it is a neighborhood thing. It’s just a neighborhood feeling. It’s who you are as a person, to take care of each other, that they were involved in activities that was taking care of the whole community and they kept bumping into each other and they really got along and they really started spending time together. They didn’t pass each other’s resumes to each other. They’re just normal women who have loved through this and lost through this and they had a lot in common. 3 �JJ: So what did she say Fred Hampton’s mother was doing? Iberia Hampton. MJ: Iberia Hampton, Mrs. Hampton, she’s been in a number -- her other son, Bill Hampton, is very involved in the community and he works a lot with the children. He sets up incredibly programs with the children and he runs -- JJ: Back in Oak Park? MJ: In Maywood and he [00:05:00] does a lot of work in the city and he runs the Fred Hampton Legal Scholarship Fund to help students become lawyers. But he I think put together a lot of the different events, and because he found out through other parents about my mom and different things she was doing, he came to where she was working at the time and invited her to come to some of these events and she thought that was really nice. She thought some of the kids’ parents invited her. She really didn’t know. And it was months later that they figured out together, we’ve pretty much been running in the same circles all these years, and they’re very good friends. They feel more like family. JJ: So did Fred Hampton’s mother know about the Young Lords? MJ: Oh, sure. I think she’s met you a couple times. We didn’t all know each other at the same time. I wasn’t born yet, but you know, my mother and you and Mrs. Hampton [00:06:00] all had different time periods that you were connected to each other, and it just so happened that even years later, without being an activist or protesting, but just doing things for the kids in the neighborhood, that they were brought together and met each other as two people, normal people. JJ: And so how long as their relationship existed? 4 �MJ: Between my mother and Mrs. Hampton, they’ve been friends for now, like, seven or eight years. JJ: Seven or eight years? MJ: Yeah. JJ: So have you gone there yourself? MJ: I have. I haven’t been there lately and I’m probably in trouble for it, but I need to call her pretty much today. (laughs) I’m a little late. But yeah, no, she actually, my mother and she just talked to each other two days ago. JJ: So you’re consistent. MJ: Yeah, they’re friends. They are good friends. She’s a wonderful person. Her husband was a wonderful [00:07:00] person. He passed away. JJ: What’s his name? MJ: I don’t call them by their first names. I call them Mr. and Mrs. Hampton. But he passed away. JJ: (inaudible). MJ: I went to his funeral. It was sad but they both have beautiful, beautiful spirits. JJ: Did you go to his funeral? Okay. MJ: Yeah. I don’t like people saying funerals are beautiful because it seems painful, but he had a beautiful funeral and it was sad to say goodbye to him, to his spirit. JJ: So how is Mrs. Hampton? How is she? What type of person? MJ: She’s very funny. She can be very quiet but she knows exactly what’s going on and she’s just letting other people do their thing. She allows other people to 5 �express themselves, but she does not miss a second of it. She’s very, very quick and very funny and very loving. [00:08:00] Super sweet. JJ: Okay. Well, what do you mean, she lets them speak? MJ: Well, you know, you almost think that she’s not paying any attention and she’s in the other room doing her own thing and she is not missing a beat. She is on it. Someone says something and she gets excited about it. She’s been paying attention the whole time and she’ll tell you exactly what she feels and it’s obvious she’s been paying attention the entire conversation, not just that minute. Very, very smart. JJ: But you said Ginger called her a couple days ago? MJ: Well, she missed her call. She called back, returned a phone call. No, Bill Hampton’s birthday was last week and they just threw him a surprise party. Then there was a different event this week. It was fun stuff. JJ: So you visit also to the house or just call? MJ: I mean, I [00:09:00] did. I haven’t lately because I’ve been busy working, but I’ve missed seeing a lot of people. (laughs) Don’t be mad at me. JJ: No, no, I’m not mad. I was happy to find out that you knew her, Mrs. Hampton. MJ: Oh, yeah. But it was a complete coincidence, if you believe in them. You know, a lot of people don’t believe in coincidences. But it was very special. I think they were meant to be friends. They just had never met before. They have a good friendship. JJ: And each accepts each other without hesitation or whatever? 6 �MJ: Oh, no, as if they’ve known each other forever, almost sisters. They’re very natural and honest with each other. JJ: ’Cause I know your mother’s a little religious. But she doesn’t call it religion. MJ: No, she’s a spiritual person too. She was raised Catholic. But she’s very spiritual. JJ: And is Mrs. Hampton the same way or similar? MJ: Mrs. Hampton, I know she believes. [00:10:00] They talk about God all the time. They talk about life. They talk about love and pain and they’re just girlfriends. They’re just not teenagers, but you know, it’s like they’re teenagers when they’re around each other. They’re just friends. They have a good relationship. JJ: Okay, so their connection is not just Young Lords or Panthers. MJ: No. It’s more surviving that, losing someone you love -- JJ: Surviving that? MJ: In the movement. You know, there are real people involved in this. This is not just about political heads or people with motives. There are real families that survive it. They lose people or -- I don’t know the word for that. It’s not a negotiation that they get to participate in, but they have to feel all of. You know, Mrs. Hampton lost her son. That’s not [00:11:00] a public thing for her. That’s real personal. Being the wife of someone involved in this and the mother of their child, watching someone’s child -- not legally married, but in our family when you are in a committed relationship, you are basically each other’s husband and wife. You’re each other’s partner. But having a child with that person and watching your child, you know, grow up and have different questions and having to figure 7 �out -- you know, you have your own memories of living through it and then you have to figure out how to help your child get through something normal that they can’t have. You know, these are not things that are part-time and they don’t last for a certain month that there’s a campaign or a certain year that there’s a campaign. This is the everyday forever and the rest of our lives, living through. [00:12:00] It becomes a part of you. It’s something that you grow from. It becomes something you make it through. JJ: What do you know of the death of Fred Hampton? What do you know about that? What happened? MJ: I don’t really know it through newspapers and media. I know it through family stories, like it was someone close to our family, this happened to them. And I know it as -- JJ: Family stories. Who told you? MJ: Both my mother and my father. JJ: Oh. MJ: But my mother had an incredible amount of respect for Fred Hampton. She knew him before she ever met you. She went to school. He spoke at the school she went to several times. JJ: At Roosevelt. MJ: At Roosevelt. JJ: He spoke a lot at Roosevelt, yeah. MJ: And she had a tremendous amount of respect for him. [00:13:00] He was incredibly intelligent and he was in no way violent. He was in no way -- 8 �JJ: Well, he spoke of armed struggle and revolution. MJ: He did speak of those things, but he was more about education and sharing education with other people and not just seeing whose back he can climb up to get there himself, but for everybody to rise up, for everybody to be able to elevate to a new level together. He wanted to be a lawyer. He didn’t wanna be a gangster. He wasn’t a gangster. He wanted to teach everybody around. He wanted everybody to want to learn. He loved learning. He was very respectful. He didn’t come from the street life. He came from the country life. He came from a family life. You know, you came from a family life. You came from a religious home. You’re not people that were out there hustling, trying [00:14:00] to get over and see how much you could get. There’s such a different mentality now of “Screw the person next to me. Whatever I can get. We have to worry about us. We can’t think of anybody else.” And that’s not what either one of you came from or spread. That wasn’t your message. There was no agenda of personal propriety. But no, he was an intellect who wanted to share that wealth. That was the wealth that he wanted to share with other people and that’s what I mean about not violent. You know, he wasn’t out there trying to be the hardest thug on the corner. He was out there trying to spread this information, this knowledge, and that was a very scary threat to government, I guess, to certain government. There’s different [00:15:00] levels of government. There’s city government, state government, national government. And he was murdered for it because he was too loud. He was talking too loud. Too many people were able to hear his message and I believe they, in terms of government -- the government in that 9 �time period. I’m not saying all government. I’m saying that particular regime of government -- did not want people to stay thinking. They didn’t want them to start noticing how things could be different or better or that everybody had a voice. They wanted to have the voice that everybody followed and he was talking too loud for them. So, I mean, in my own words, they assassinated him and that’s still a very special word, a very big word. They killed this man who was about education and fairness, who everybody could relate to and [00:16:00] looked up to, that they maybe could be like that too. “Wow, we could do something for ourselves instead of everything being the same and out of our hands. We could have some sort of power ourselves and be responsible and active ourselves.” That was the opposite of what this particular government regime was interested in and they killed this man. It’s very personal. Assassination is just a big word. That’s a personal thing. They took this man from people ’cause they didn’t agree with him. JJ: Was there any other, like, repression that you were familiar with at that time? Like, even the Young Lords or the Panthers? You know what I mean by repression, right? MJ: I’m not sure what you- JJ: Like trying to stop the movement, trying to repress it, trying to stop it. MJ: I think they were -- JJ: [00:17:00] Were there any, you know, plans to try to do that? Or did they do that? MJ: I think there were just a few moments at the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement where -- 10 �JJ: I mean, that you experienced, I mean. MJ: That I experienced? I was born after the movement was disembodied. JJ: Let me ask you this. When did you first hear about the Young Lords? MJ: I’m sure I heard about it from being four years old or younger, being in the house and hearing about it all the time. But the first time I was aware of it was probably after I asked my mom why we didn’t have any family. It was just the two of us. And part of her telling stories about my family, she also was telling stories about the Young Lords. So I learned at the same time. So from about seven, eight, nine [00:18:00] years old, that’s when I started hearing about the Young Lords. JJ: So how did you feel about that? I mean, you know, what did you hear and how did you feel about it? MJ: I was so proud. I was so tiny and so empowered. (laughs) This itty-bitty little eight-year-old walking around like, “Wow,” you know? This is pretty amazing. First of all, it was very sad to know that people were treated horribly. It was heartbreaking to know that people were not all treated with the same amount of respect, and how could you look at somebody struggling this way and not go and help them? You don’t teach your kids to be mean like that. You teach your kids to be polite and to help people out. So a child is full of kindness and caring for the person in front of them, and to hear that there is people in the [00:19:00] world that are being treated horribly, disrespected constantly, and being not treated as an equal but treated, like, dismissive -- JJ: Who was not being treated as an equal? MJ: Well, I was taught about the whole Civil Rights Movement. 11 �JJ: Okay, it was the Civil Rights Movement and then it was, like, our movement there afterwards, the Panthers and the Young Lords. MJ: But I was taught about the whole history of it. Why was there ever Young Lords or Black Panthers? It’s because of the Civil Rights Movement. Why was there ever a Civil Rights Movement? Because of all this history of pent-up aggression building and building until it bursts. This oppression is overwhelming until there’s got to be a crack in it at some point. I was [layered?] in history, talked about all of it. JJ: Well, who was [the narrator?]? Your mom? MJ: Well, she did teach me about it. She was the first introduction to it because [00:20:00] at eight years old, you’re in second grade. You know, I’m talking about watching movies on TV and not understanding what’s going on and she’s like, “Well, this is related to this part of the country,” or “This part of history.” She was very topical with it, very objective. You know, she would only answer the question I asked. She wouldn’t paint a whole picture for me. It was like, “I don’t understand what that sentence is, Mom. What did she mean?” Or “What did he mean?” And it’s like, “Oh, well, why don’t you go get the encyclopedia? In the 1800s, this is what they used to do.” So it would start a conversation and in second grade, you’re not talking about history. You’re talking about addition and cursive and spelling tests. So we just started those conversations. But that’s how it is all connected and that’s how I was introduced to the Young Lords. It started a doorway of, “Well, why would that happen?” “Because this was happening.” “Well, why did that happen?” “And this bigger thing was 12 �happening.” And so [00:21:00] I don’t remember the original question you asked me, but how I heard about the Young Lords was around seven or eight years old. There was a layering to it. There is something that happened to create this situation, these circumstances that Young Lords was born from, why it was happening. There was a lot going on. JJ: And you said you felt some pride in that? MJ: I was very proud. Once I understood that people would ever be treated that way, then it was like, well, somebody has to do something about it. That’s just the natural thing. When you get in trouble in school, it’s like somebody’s responsible. Aren’t you going to tell the teacher to help? You don’t just let somebody sit there and bleed, you know? Somebody has to help. Somebody has to do something. And so even as a child, you have the mentality of, “Well, what happened next? Didn’t somebody do anything?” And it was like, “Well, yes. In our area, you know, people in this area were the ones that were bleeding and [00:22:00] they got tired of watching their parents bleed and they would be hurt, be stifled by all their efforts. They’re trying just to make a home for their family and everything they’re doing keeps being undone or undercut and their children got tired of watching it. They got tired of being pushed around and watching their parents being knocked over and they stood up and spoke back and said, we have rights and we deserve respect and this is what we need and you cannot ignore our voices.” And in this area, that was the Young Lords. That was happening all over the country, but the thing that is so significant about the Young Lords is it didn’t start as an organized program or an organization. It started as a street 13 �gang and it is still to this point in history the only street gang that turned into a political organization. It did not manhandle its way into papers [00:23:00] and thug out the neighborhood or steal from people. It was for the people and it didn’t start off in a classroom. It started in the streets, protecting their own homes, and what I’m aware of, that’s the only group that has started out as a street gang and become a political organization. JJ: So protecting their own homes, was that an issue that they were, you know, attacking? MJ: I mean, from what I’m told. JJ: Yeah, from your understanding. MJ: From what I understand. JJ: Well, what were the main issues? MJ: People were getting -- JJ: It had to do with Puerto Ricans ’cause it had to do with Puerto Rico. MJ: Well, that whole area was mainly -- even though there were different ethnic backgrounds, it was mainly Puerto Rican at the time. That was the Puerto Rican neighborhood of the city and it happened to be lakefront property as well and it was more valuable monetarily to people [00:24:00] in power at that time, whether it was corporate or government. And so they were coming in and telling people, “It’s time to move.” JJ: They were telling people to move? MJ: They were raising people’s rents from 80 dollars to 400 in a month or 120 dollars to 800 dollars the next month. Well, you can’t pay? You gotta go. This is how I 14 �was told. As I was told, there were times as well that people were being manhandled directly out of their homes. Someone would just come in and kick all of their things out onto the ground and say, “You don’t live here anymore. Go. You guys can move over.” JJ: [The share?], basically, [’cause it was the candles?] (inaudible). MJ: But that’s gotta be quite an experience to know you’re doing everything you can to pay your bills and you’re paying them and you come home from work one day and someone just told you, “You moved today, in case you didn’t know.” [00:25:00] And you can’t do anything about it. There’s nobody to go to. JJ: But even while you were growing up, you’re saying the neighborhood was still changing, no? MJ: When I was growing up? JJ: Yeah. Or you didn’t notice? I mean, you weren’t living there anymore, but I mean, you went back there ’cause the neighborhood is completely changed, right? MJ: It has completely changed. They kept the shape of it, but they changed everything in between. I guess when I was growing up, it did change. It was much more human before. You could just walk down the street and know somebody and everybody was happy to just wave and say hello, and now it’s just a tourist spot and the people who live there are not very welcoming. (laughs) But mostly it’s a tourist area. And [00:26:00] no, before it was, like, going to visit your cousin’s house. JJ: So do you remember before? 15 �MJ: Yeah. JJ: Okay. MJ: You knew everybody on the block and you just got off the bus or came off the train, and walking to the person’s house you’re going to, you see five different people you know. You stop and you have a conversation, like a neighborhood. Like home. And you don’t know anybody there now. They don’t do that with each other. JJ: Okay. So that made you feel proud in everything. You had some proud moments. What about some painful moments when they talked about the Young Lords? With you, since your father was involved in it. Did you ever have any painful moments? MJ: Painful moments, I think that we all did. JJ: Did anybody talk [00:27:00] negative about the Young Lords? MJ: Sure. I mean, I have bumped into people and I tend not to introduce myself first if I’m in an area where people still talk about the Young Lords, not because I’m not proud, because I’d rather get an honest reaction to what they think. I am always absorbing information and I love to get a lot of different perspectives and I don’t take it personal because that was their experience, so I wanna hear it. JJ: What are some of the negative things that you heard? MJ: (laughs) I remember walking into a building once and I was with someone who could not wait to introduce me and I was like, “Shh. Just say hello. Give this person a chance to get up in their chair.” And this person was very polite and shook my hand and I said, “I’m Melisa,” and he told me his name. And the 16 �person I was with said, “Oh, do you remember that guy? You know the Young Lords. Do you remember that guy, Cha-Cha?” “Oh my God, that thug. He used to --” [00:28:00] I mean, I was laughing ’cause he’s sitting there, he’s like, “He used to just make so much trouble around here. He was such a headache and I can’t believe --” And I guess the person I was with gave him a look because all the sudden, he stopped talking and he looked at me, and then I was introduced as Cha-Cha’s daughter and he just went completely pale and he was like, “I’m so sorry.” I said, “Why would you be? Maybe he was mean to you. (laughs) Maybe you guys didn’t like each other. That’s your experience and I’m not taking anything away from that.” And he was like, “No, but I’m so sorry,” and I said, “That was your experience. That’s your history. But I happen to like the guy so I’m okay with it. So don’t worry about it.” And he just couldn’t catch his breath for a long time. I felt bad. But I don’t introduce myself first, and it’s not to set anybody up. I just wanna know what they really think, what their real memories were. I wasn’t older at that time period, so I like to know what people went through. JJ: Actually there’s a similar experience that my mother [00:29:00] had with somebody from the church. So you know, that’s kind of a pretty good -- because it was like 50-50 real controversial. MJ: It wasn’t controversial. I’ve bumped into people that just said, like, I was royalty, like you were royalty, and “Oh my God, you’re his daughter.” And that experience is much more common than the other. But, like, I didn’t do anything. You know, I’m glad that you had a positive experience. And they’re like, “No, no, this was so 17 �important. He did this and he did this.” I’ve had people treat me wonderfully because of how much it meant to them and I’ve had people be very nasty because they don’t agree with the politics and I personally -JJ: I know you’re joking but it must hurt. MJ: No, it doesn’t hurt because I like to see how people think. I like to see through other people’s eyes. JJ: That’s now, but when you were growing up. MJ: No. JJ: [00:30:00] Never? MJ: Because I was a child and there was more of a filter on them. I was prepared for it, but they had more of a filter because they were looking at a child, and I mean, you shouldn’t attack a child. But when they were honest about what they said, I appreciated it. I want to know all of the story. I don’t wanna know just the things I like or I agree with. And I need to understand. That’s how I’ve learned about it, by being open about it and not expecting someone to agree with something that I think. That’s not gonna work. JJ: I’m gonna kind of wrap it up a little bit, but I just wanted to -- MJ: Am I a talker? (laughs) JJ: No, no, no. No, I was just trying to -- MJ: I am, it’s all right. JJ: -- just because of the schedule. MJ: Okay. No, I have had painful moments, though. JJ: You had painful moments? 18 �MJ: I didn’t lose my father like Angie’s kids did or like Fred Hampton [00:31:00] Junior did, but I still lost my father, having a father in my home. My brothers and sisters still lost having a father while they were growing up. And we’ve had the opportunity to still get to know you, which they didn’t, but we still lost the possession of, “That’s my dad. He just belongs to me and everybody else doesn’t get a piece of him. He’s just ours.” We didn’t get that opportunity. And maybe that had something to do with it. When my mother and I left when I was four and a half during the height of your substance abuse, very shortly after, you disappeared. [00:32:00] You were just gone and nobody knew where you were and I think some people even blamed my mom. Like, if you hadn’t left him, he wouldn’t have just disappeared, you know? What did you do? Nobody can find him. No one even knows where he is. And that went on for a little while, and then a couple years passed and then -- JJ: So that went on for a few years. MJ: It went on for a little while. JJ: Like, five years, something like that. MJ: A little while. A couple years later, people started trying to prepare themselves that you just were never coming back, and so they started saying, you know, “I don’t wanna say the thing that you’re not supposed to say, but I think he’s dead.” And they would try not to say it around me but I heard them talking about it and I knew it wasn’t true. And more time passed. Then it finally got to being five years, you were gone and nobody knew where you were. Everybody [00:33:00] had accepted that you were just dead. 19 �JJ: You’re talking about family members? MJ: Family members were at the point -- five years after my mother and I left, five years almost to the day, everybody for at least the last six months had been trying to figure out how do we tell Melisa that her father is dead? Because she walks around here like -- she’s just so happy and she’s gonna talk to him one day, and we have to figure out how to tell her. And they were whispering about it over and over and I know that I went up to them one day. I was nine years old at the time. And I put my hand on Angie’s hand and I put my other hand on my mom’s hand and I said, “Don’t worry, he’s not dead. I know he’s not dead. You guys don’t have to worry about how to talk to me about it.” And they just couldn’t believe that I even knew what they were talking about, but I seriously said, “I can [00:34:00] feel him. I know he’s okay. He’s just not ready to be with us right now. But don’t worry.” And Angie seriously was like -- they never talked about it again, and within a month -- I’m gonna tell you -- that particular month I prayed for two things, and never in my life, I have never prayed to ask for something back. I pray to thank God for things. I don’t pray to ask for things in return. But that month, I prayed for two things, and one of them was just for my dad to let everybody know he was okay. Even if he’s not ready to come back, can you just please -- they’re starting to really worry. Can you just let him know or have him let everybody know that he’s okay? And then I prayed for something else. And that particular month, not even a week later, my mom got a call from Angie and said, “You will not believe. He’s alive. He’s gonna be here on Friday. He wanted to know if you would bring Melisa because he really wants to see her.” 20 �[00:35:00] And they just couldn’t believe. And I told my mom, I said, “I’m not supposed to tell you what I talked to God about because that’s between us, but I knew he was going to --” And maybe that sounds mystical and spooky or whatever, but those are the only two things in my life that I ever asked for, and that month, they both came true. Not that I’m saying I had any effect on that, but I’m saying the timeframe, when I was four and a half and we left you, soon after, you left, and the whole family went through an experience where they grieved your loss. They really believed you were gone. Everybody was certain of it because by that point, five years had passed. They tried for years to just deal with the fact that you were probably underground or something or maybe just doing drugs and not in a good place. And they finally got to the point where they accepted that you were gone and they really went through a hard time trying to figure out how to tell your kids that we would never see you again. But [00:36:00] your mother -- my grandmother -- and I knew that you were alive because we both could feel you and we talked about it. Everybody else was really broken, trying to figure out how to help us deal with it ’cause they thought we were in denial. And lo and behold, you showed up in Chicago (laughs) within the same month and you were okay and you had changed your life in a big way and you were in a good place. And everybody was just shocked. They really thought you were gone. And that was not an easy time. It was sad. But I knew that you were okay. I just knew that I didn’t know when I would ever talk to you again. I didn’t know. At that time, I had no picture of your face in my mind. I just remembered loving you and you loving me. But I could not remember your face. And then 21 �everybody around me is so sad, thinking you’re gone. That was hard to watch everybody I loved so sad. JJ: So do you remember where -- MJ: [00:37:00] I don’t remember when you left the city but I know that you moved to Michigan. By the time you came back, you were living in Michigan and you came back just to see us. JJ: Right. I was trying to get myself together. MJ: You did. You did a very good job. JJ: I was going a little downhill by that time and I didn’t have the [will?] or money or anything like that (inaudible). And my perfectionism, I had to make sure everything’s perfect. MJ: You are, and I missed a lot of times spending time with you because you were afraid you didn’t have anything to give me and I didn’t want anything but you. And that took a few years for you to accept that. JJ: I keep that in mind now. MJ: All right, good. (laughter) That’s good. You don’t need to give me anything. No. But we missed more time later. JJ: What did you want? What did you want to tell your father? What was the most important thing that you wanted people to know? Not just [00:38:00] your father. Maybe the world or -- about you. MJ: About me? That’s a loaded question. You have layers to that. 22 �JJ: Okay, (inaudible). I mean, what’s the main thing that you want people to know about you? This is an oral history (inaudible) but I [shouldn’t be so formal?] after what you just said. MJ: (laughter) No. I don’t know that there’s anything I need the world to know about me. JJ: Or me, maybe I don’t -- ’cause I was underground. I’m just trying to go with [that?]. MJ: I think people don’t know that you are hilarious unless they know you. They don’t know that you’re hilarious. You have an incredible sense of humor and you are always cracking jokes at moments that everybody thinks you’re gonna be serious, just come out of nowhere and everybody’s cracking up because it’s a surprise. JJ: But I was talking about you. MJ: [00:39:00] I know. JJ: Okay. MJ: I’m just saying I don’t think anybody knows -- and I’m not sure if you’re ready for anybody to know -- that you’re very sensitive. JJ: What do you mean? MJ: (laughs) You’re very sensitive. You’re very loving. You love your children very much. You may not always know how to share that with them or they don’t know how to receive it from you, but I don’t think there’s a way to measure how much we mean to you, and it’s obvious. It’s just there’s other things that go with it, other emotions that go with it. But you are very sensitive and things hit you. 23 �People are a little rough with you. People are used to you being hardcore and determined and focused, and you’re human. You’re very caring. About me? I don’t really think that -- [00:40:00] maybe we have not discussed fully, you know, all of my opinions. We don’t need to have all my opinions. But all the things we have talked about, I’m very passionate about. They mean a lot to me. They’re the majority of the rest of what makes up me. You know, my mother and father and the rest of my family are the core of me and all of the things we talked about are very much the rest of me. They mean a lot to me. It seems real basic and yet it’s lost on our culture now to treat people with care and respect and look out for each other, not to cover for each other when you’re doing something you shouldn’t be doing. Look out that you are all doing well, that you are healthy, that your needs are met, that you’re not alone in this world, that we’re each other’s, you know, keeper. It’s real simple. It’s in all the religions. [00:41:00] It’s not one religious belief. It’s how you treat each other, and I don’t think that any of these issues would be real if we had that, if that was happening, if people were treating each other equally or respectfully. There may never have been a Civil Rights Movement. What would we talk about? I don’t know. JJ: So you feel like the Young Lords were like a civil rights movement. MJ: Yeah. JJ: ’Cause some people don’t look at -- I mean, like when we were talking about, they still think it’s a gang or whatever. MJ: You’re taking care of basic needs. JJ: To you, why do you look at it like a civil rights movement or a movement? 24 �MJ: What I know of what they actually accomplished, what they were involved in, what people were participating in, it’s taking care of basic needs in an entire community that should have been leveled. Everybody [00:42:00] everywhere should have these basic things. You should be able to have clean water and food to eat and healthcare and education and immunizations, and civil rights is the basic line of saying we all have these basic human rights and they’re fair for everybody, and if somebody slips, we just have to remind them, “No, no, no, you might have crossed the line with somebody. Come back. This is where your mistake was made.” But it’s for everybody. They’re real simple. It’s not complicated. It’s not like trigonometry or something. It’s real basic human needs and rights and respect, and when people slip up, they get so lost in their personal greed and hunger for power, they are willing to destroy anything in their path, and sometimes it’s entire cultures. And [00:43:00] that’s not acceptable. Everybody should be enraged by that or at least passionate enough to say something. It should matter. It’s real simple. I don’t know how else to -- JJ: That’s good. I know that your father was attacking Mayor Daley a lot because of the displacement of the Puerto Rican community and he was Irish and you have a little Irish -- MJ: I’m half-Irish, yes. JJ: You’re half-Irish. How did you feel about that? You know, we’re attacking -- MJ: I don’t take it as a cultural attack. I take it as two men who have very clear opinions and they do not agree with each other. (laughter) Point blank. And 25 �they’re in different positions and they both speak until they’re heard. Both of them. So there’s different repercussions to that, though. JJ: And it’s never about the Irish. It’s about -- MJ: [00:44:00] No, I never -- JJ: -- the policy. MJ: I don’t think that has anything to do with that, no. JJ: Because I’m just joking. It’s about the wrong policies of the mayor. I never had an attack personally on him. But it’s an attack on his policies, basically. We just felt they were corrupt and incorrect and we didn’t agree with that. Any final thoughts? Any final thoughts? MJ: Educate yourselves. (laughs) Don’t take somebody’s word for it because you’ve known them for a long time or because they’re someplace in the world that you wish you could be. Educate yourself. You know, if you hear something that’s different from anything you’ve ever heard before, look around. Get different perspectives. Don’t just open a textbook because they all come from the same publishing company. Read different sources. Talk to different people and be open to different perceptions. Everybody has a different place they’re standing from. They [00:45:00] get a different view of what’s happening even in the same moment. So learn. Just learn. That’s real important. Otherwise you’re gonna let somebody else decide your destiny. JJ: Thank you. END OF VIDEO FILE 26 �27 � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/7bbcf72cd601369e2df52710367f8510.mp4 56592d6e98c121620fc07c59c69d51d9 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Young Lords in Lincoln Park Collection Subject The topic of the resource Young Lords (Organization) Puerto Ricans--United States Civil Rights--United States--History Lincoln Park (Chicago, Ill.) Personal narratives Social justice Community activists--Illinois--Chicago Description An account of the resource Collection of oral history interviews and digitized materials documenting the history of the Young Lords Organization in Lincoln Park, Chicago. Interviews were conducted by Young Lords' founder, José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez, and documents were digitized from Mr. Jiménez' archives. The Young Lords in Lincoln Park collection grows out of the ongoing struggle for fair housing, self-determination, and human rights that was launched by Mr. José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez, founder of the Young Lords Movement. This project is dedicated to documenting the history of the displacement of Puerto Ricans, Mejicanos, other Latinos, and the poor from Lincoln Park, as well as the history of the Young Lords nationwide. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Jiménez, José, 1948- Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/491">Young Lords in Lincoln Park collection (RHC-65)</a> Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-04-25 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Language A language of the resource eng spa Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-65 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 2012-2017 Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Título Spanish language Title entry Melisa Jiménez vídeo entrevista y biografía, entrevista 2 Sujetos Spanish language Subject terms Young Lords (Organización) Puertorriqueños--Estados Unidos Derechos civiles--Estados Unidos--Historia Lincoln Park (Chicago, Ill.) Puertorriqueños--Relatos personales Justicia social Activistas comunitarios--Illinois--Chicago Source <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/491">Young Lords in Lincoln Park (RHC-65)</a> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-65_Jimenez_Melisa_2 Title A name given to the resource Melisa Jiménez video interview and transcript, interview 2 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Jiménez, Melisa Description An account of the resource 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. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Jiménez, José, 1948- Subject The topic of the resource Young Lords (Organization) Puerto Ricans--United States Civil Rights--United States--History Lincoln Park (Chicago, Ill.) Personal narratives Social justice Community activists--Illinois--Chicago Language A language of the resource eng Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2012-07-15 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/d84e090228651be9efc7c279456114c5.pdf 4432c12379a61b6df25c4eb325890351 PDF Text Text Young Lords In Lincoln Park Interviewee: Melisa Jiménez Interviewers: José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez Location: Grand Valley State University Special Collections Date: 7/15/2012 Biography and Description 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. �Transcript JOSE JIMENEZ: [00:00:00] Okay, we were talking about the substance abuse and the neighborhoods being filled with drugs and all that as part of sociology. MELISA JIMENEZ: It’s my personal opinion that that is why my generation lost fathers in the household because you have soldiers who came back traumatized from war. Whether they’re physically okay or not, they were not able to be part of the family the way that families were used to having the man of the house. You have people who were very hard-working who became a part of the Civil Rights Movement and were extremely passionate and had their souls crushed, watching everything around them be destroyed. You know, the movement starts with this anger and it turns into this excitement and this purpose, and then you watch people who [00:01:00] finally understand you be destroyed and killed or discredited. JJ: And so people were talking about that among that group of people, your family, that you call the extended family? Around Angie and -- MJ: I still feel -- and I wasn’t even born then -- I feel it as if it was part of my history, part of a memory I’ve had, and it’s the feeling of it. It’s not the times and dates and, oh, so-and-so did this. It’s something that still affects my generation. I’m getting older now so it may not affect the people who are a little bit younger than me, but it crushes your spirit to think that you can finally have a voice that’s the American dream. Everybody has the right to their own freedom of speech and freedom of opinion, and if you do, you might be destroyed by it. You know, that’s 1 �not really freedom. That’s a trap. And to be able to believe in something [00:02:00] and then have it torn apart is not something that affects one person. It affects everybody. Everybody feels it. JJ: What do you mean, torn apart? Do you believe in something that is torn apart? What do you mean? MJ: To have people, you know, like Malcolm X or Martin Luther King or Fred Hampton or the Reverend -- JJ: Bruce Johnson? MJ: -- Bruce Johnson. People who love their people, but not because it’s a cause. Because they really love people, and they have felt this and they’ve lived through it and they’re finding a way to talk to other people -- JJ: Now, you’re only reading about these people, right? MJ: I’m not reading about just these people. I’m knowing the people that they affected. I grew up with the people that they affected. I just happened to be born in the middle of this, and everybody I know was personally touched, knew these people individually, and -- JJ: I mean, did you know anybody that knew Fred Hampton? MJ: I do. I mean, [00:03:00] you worked with Fred Hampton. You know, you as ChaCha Jiménez, then Fred Hampton created along with the Brown Berets the Rainbow Coalition. JJ: Along with the Young Patriots. MJ: The Young Patriots. JJ: Yeah. That’s all right. 2 �MJ: I know them as -- JJ: Okay, no, no, the Brown Berets were on it too. MJ: I mean, and later in my life, my mother, after she retired, she still did community work but she does it with children. You know, she doesn’t do it -- JJ: Didn’t you know Fred Hampton’s mother? MJ: Yes, that’s what I’m saying. She was doing community events with the children, my mother was, and at a community event, she happened to bump into this other woman and they had a great conversation and that was it. They were at different community events and they kept bumping into each other and they became friends. JJ: Which other woman? MJ: Just because of who they are, how they are a part of the community, they just got along. Their personalities matched. And it wasn’t until months after that that she found out that was Fred Hampton’s mother, and Mrs. Hampton found out that my mother [00:04:00] used to be involved with you, or married to you. So these two women had already developed a friendship without knowing their connection to the movement because it is a neighborhood thing. It’s just a neighborhood feeling. It’s who you are as a person, to take care of each other, that they were involved in activities that was taking care of the whole community and they kept bumping into each other and they really got along and they really started spending time together. They didn’t pass each other’s resumes to each other. They’re just normal women who have loved through this and lost through this and they had a lot in common. 3 �JJ: So what did she say Fred Hampton’s mother was doing? Iberia Hampton. MJ: Iberia Hampton, Mrs. Hampton, she’s been in a number -- her other son, Bill Hampton, is very involved in the community and he works a lot with the children. He sets up incredibly programs with the children and he runs -- JJ: Back in Oak Park? MJ: In Maywood and he [00:05:00] does a lot of work in the city and he runs the Fred Hampton Legal Scholarship Fund to help students become lawyers. But he I think put together a lot of the different events, and because he found out through other parents about my mom and different things she was doing, he came to where she was working at the time and invited her to come to some of these events and she thought that was really nice. She thought some of the kids’ parents invited her. She really didn’t know. And it was months later that they figured out together, we’ve pretty much been running in the same circles all these years, and they’re very good friends. They feel more like family. JJ: So did Fred Hampton’s mother know about the Young Lords? MJ: Oh, sure. I think she’s met you a couple times. We didn’t all know each other at the same time. I wasn’t born yet, but you know, my mother and you and Mrs. Hampton [00:06:00] all had different time periods that you were connected to each other, and it just so happened that even years later, without being an activist or protesting, but just doing things for the kids in the neighborhood, that they were brought together and met each other as two people, normal people. JJ: And so how long as their relationship existed? 4 �MJ: Between my mother and Mrs. Hampton, they’ve been friends for now, like, seven or eight years. JJ: Seven or eight years? MJ: Yeah. JJ: So have you gone there yourself? MJ: I have. I haven’t been there lately and I’m probably in trouble for it, but I need to call her pretty much today. (laughs) I’m a little late. But yeah, no, she actually, my mother and she just talked to each other two days ago. JJ: So you’re consistent. MJ: Yeah, they’re friends. They are good friends. She’s a wonderful person. Her husband was a wonderful [00:07:00] person. He passed away. JJ: What’s his name? MJ: I don’t call them by their first names. I call them Mr. and Mrs. Hampton. But he passed away. JJ: (inaudible). MJ: I went to his funeral. It was sad but they both have beautiful, beautiful spirits. JJ: Did you go to his funeral? Okay. MJ: Yeah. I don’t like people saying funerals are beautiful because it seems painful, but he had a beautiful funeral and it was sad to say goodbye to him, to his spirit. JJ: So how is Mrs. Hampton? How is she? What type of person? MJ: She’s very funny. She can be very quiet but she knows exactly what’s going on and she’s just letting other people do their thing. She allows other people to 5 �express themselves, but she does not miss a second of it. She’s very, very quick and very funny and very loving. [00:08:00] Super sweet. JJ: Okay. Well, what do you mean, she lets them speak? MJ: Well, you know, you almost think that she’s not paying any attention and she’s in the other room doing her own thing and she is not missing a beat. She is on it. Someone says something and she gets excited about it. She’s been paying attention the whole time and she’ll tell you exactly what she feels and it’s obvious she’s been paying attention the entire conversation, not just that minute. Very, very smart. JJ: But you said Ginger called her a couple days ago? MJ: Well, she missed her call. She called back, returned a phone call. No, Bill Hampton’s birthday was last week and they just threw him a surprise party. Then there was a different event this week. It was fun stuff. JJ: So you visit also to the house or just call? MJ: I mean, I [00:09:00] did. I haven’t lately because I’ve been busy working, but I’ve missed seeing a lot of people. (laughs) Don’t be mad at me. JJ: No, no, I’m not mad. I was happy to find out that you knew her, Mrs. Hampton. MJ: Oh, yeah. But it was a complete coincidence, if you believe in them. You know, a lot of people don’t believe in coincidences. But it was very special. I think they were meant to be friends. They just had never met before. They have a good friendship. JJ: And each accepts each other without hesitation or whatever? 6 �MJ: Oh, no, as if they’ve known each other forever, almost sisters. They’re very natural and honest with each other. JJ: ’Cause I know your mother’s a little religious. But she doesn’t call it religion. MJ: No, she’s a spiritual person too. She was raised Catholic. But she’s very spiritual. JJ: And is Mrs. Hampton the same way or similar? MJ: Mrs. Hampton, I know she believes. [00:10:00] They talk about God all the time. They talk about life. They talk about love and pain and they’re just girlfriends. They’re just not teenagers, but you know, it’s like they’re teenagers when they’re around each other. They’re just friends. They have a good relationship. JJ: Okay, so their connection is not just Young Lords or Panthers. MJ: No. It’s more surviving that, losing someone you love -- JJ: Surviving that? MJ: In the movement. You know, there are real people involved in this. This is not just about political heads or people with motives. There are real families that survive it. They lose people or -- I don’t know the word for that. It’s not a negotiation that they get to participate in, but they have to feel all of. You know, Mrs. Hampton lost her son. That’s not [00:11:00] a public thing for her. That’s real personal. Being the wife of someone involved in this and the mother of their child, watching someone’s child -- not legally married, but in our family when you are in a committed relationship, you are basically each other’s husband and wife. You’re each other’s partner. But having a child with that person and watching your child, you know, grow up and have different questions and having to figure 7 �out -- you know, you have your own memories of living through it and then you have to figure out how to help your child get through something normal that they can’t have. You know, these are not things that are part-time and they don’t last for a certain month that there’s a campaign or a certain year that there’s a campaign. This is the everyday forever and the rest of our lives, living through. [00:12:00] It becomes a part of you. It’s something that you grow from. It becomes something you make it through. JJ: What do you know of the death of Fred Hampton? What do you know about that? What happened? MJ: I don’t really know it through newspapers and media. I know it through family stories, like it was someone close to our family, this happened to them. And I know it as -- JJ: Family stories. Who told you? MJ: Both my mother and my father. JJ: Oh. MJ: But my mother had an incredible amount of respect for Fred Hampton. She knew him before she ever met you. She went to school. He spoke at the school she went to several times. JJ: At Roosevelt. MJ: At Roosevelt. JJ: He spoke a lot at Roosevelt, yeah. MJ: And she had a tremendous amount of respect for him. [00:13:00] He was incredibly intelligent and he was in no way violent. He was in no way -- 8 �JJ: Well, he spoke of armed struggle and revolution. MJ: He did speak of those things, but he was more about education and sharing education with other people and not just seeing whose back he can climb up to get there himself, but for everybody to rise up, for everybody to be able to elevate to a new level together. He wanted to be a lawyer. He didn’t wanna be a gangster. He wasn’t a gangster. He wanted to teach everybody around. He wanted everybody to want to learn. He loved learning. He was very respectful. He didn’t come from the street life. He came from the country life. He came from a family life. You know, you came from a family life. You came from a religious home. You’re not people that were out there hustling, trying [00:14:00] to get over and see how much you could get. There’s such a different mentality now of “Screw the person next to me. Whatever I can get. We have to worry about us. We can’t think of anybody else.” And that’s not what either one of you came from or spread. That wasn’t your message. There was no agenda of personal propriety. But no, he was an intellect who wanted to share that wealth. That was the wealth that he wanted to share with other people and that’s what I mean about not violent. You know, he wasn’t out there trying to be the hardest thug on the corner. He was out there trying to spread this information, this knowledge, and that was a very scary threat to government, I guess, to certain government. There’s different [00:15:00] levels of government. There’s city government, state government, national government. And he was murdered for it because he was too loud. He was talking too loud. Too many people were able to hear his message and I believe they, in terms of government -- the government in that 9 �time period. I’m not saying all government. I’m saying that particular regime of government -- did not want people to stay thinking. They didn’t want them to start noticing how things could be different or better or that everybody had a voice. They wanted to have the voice that everybody followed and he was talking too loud for them. So, I mean, in my own words, they assassinated him and that’s still a very special word, a very big word. They killed this man who was about education and fairness, who everybody could relate to and [00:16:00] looked up to, that they maybe could be like that too. “Wow, we could do something for ourselves instead of everything being the same and out of our hands. We could have some sort of power ourselves and be responsible and active ourselves.” That was the opposite of what this particular government regime was interested in and they killed this man. It’s very personal. Assassination is just a big word. That’s a personal thing. They took this man from people ’cause they didn’t agree with him. JJ: Was there any other, like, repression that you were familiar with at that time? Like, even the Young Lords or the Panthers? You know what I mean by repression, right? MJ: I’m not sure what you- JJ: Like trying to stop the movement, trying to repress it, trying to stop it. MJ: I think they were -- JJ: [00:17:00] Were there any, you know, plans to try to do that? Or did they do that? MJ: I think there were just a few moments at the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement where -- 10 �JJ: I mean, that you experienced, I mean. MJ: That I experienced? I was born after the movement was disembodied. JJ: Let me ask you this. When did you first hear about the Young Lords? MJ: I’m sure I heard about it from being four years old or younger, being in the house and hearing about it all the time. But the first time I was aware of it was probably after I asked my mom why we didn’t have any family. It was just the two of us. And part of her telling stories about my family, she also was telling stories about the Young Lords. So I learned at the same time. So from about seven, eight, nine [00:18:00] years old, that’s when I started hearing about the Young Lords. JJ: So how did you feel about that? I mean, you know, what did you hear and how did you feel about it? MJ: I was so proud. I was so tiny and so empowered. (laughs) This itty-bitty little eight-year-old walking around like, “Wow,” you know? This is pretty amazing. First of all, it was very sad to know that people were treated horribly. It was heartbreaking to know that people were not all treated with the same amount of respect, and how could you look at somebody struggling this way and not go and help them? You don’t teach your kids to be mean like that. You teach your kids to be polite and to help people out. So a child is full of kindness and caring for the person in front of them, and to hear that there is people in the [00:19:00] world that are being treated horribly, disrespected constantly, and being not treated as an equal but treated, like, dismissive -- JJ: Who was not being treated as an equal? MJ: Well, I was taught about the whole Civil Rights Movement. 11 �JJ: Okay, it was the Civil Rights Movement and then it was, like, our movement there afterwards, the Panthers and the Young Lords. MJ: But I was taught about the whole history of it. Why was there ever Young Lords or Black Panthers? It’s because of the Civil Rights Movement. Why was there ever a Civil Rights Movement? Because of all this history of pent-up aggression building and building until it bursts. This oppression is overwhelming until there’s got to be a crack in it at some point. I was [layered?] in history, talked about all of it. JJ: Well, who was [the narrator?]? Your mom? MJ: Well, she did teach me about it. She was the first introduction to it because [00:20:00] at eight years old, you’re in second grade. You know, I’m talking about watching movies on TV and not understanding what’s going on and she’s like, “Well, this is related to this part of the country,” or “This part of history.” She was very topical with it, very objective. You know, she would only answer the question I asked. She wouldn’t paint a whole picture for me. It was like, “I don’t understand what that sentence is, Mom. What did she mean?” Or “What did he mean?” And it’s like, “Oh, well, why don’t you go get the encyclopedia? In the 1800s, this is what they used to do.” So it would start a conversation and in second grade, you’re not talking about history. You’re talking about addition and cursive and spelling tests. So we just started those conversations. But that’s how it is all connected and that’s how I was introduced to the Young Lords. It started a doorway of, “Well, why would that happen?” “Because this was happening.” “Well, why did that happen?” “And this bigger thing was 12 �happening.” And so [00:21:00] I don’t remember the original question you asked me, but how I heard about the Young Lords was around seven or eight years old. There was a layering to it. There is something that happened to create this situation, these circumstances that Young Lords was born from, why it was happening. There was a lot going on. JJ: And you said you felt some pride in that? MJ: I was very proud. Once I understood that people would ever be treated that way, then it was like, well, somebody has to do something about it. That’s just the natural thing. When you get in trouble in school, it’s like somebody’s responsible. Aren’t you going to tell the teacher to help? You don’t just let somebody sit there and bleed, you know? Somebody has to help. Somebody has to do something. And so even as a child, you have the mentality of, “Well, what happened next? Didn’t somebody do anything?” And it was like, “Well, yes. In our area, you know, people in this area were the ones that were bleeding and [00:22:00] they got tired of watching their parents bleed and they would be hurt, be stifled by all their efforts. They’re trying just to make a home for their family and everything they’re doing keeps being undone or undercut and their children got tired of watching it. They got tired of being pushed around and watching their parents being knocked over and they stood up and spoke back and said, we have rights and we deserve respect and this is what we need and you cannot ignore our voices.” And in this area, that was the Young Lords. That was happening all over the country, but the thing that is so significant about the Young Lords is it didn’t start as an organized program or an organization. It started as a street 13 �gang and it is still to this point in history the only street gang that turned into a political organization. It did not manhandle its way into papers [00:23:00] and thug out the neighborhood or steal from people. It was for the people and it didn’t start off in a classroom. It started in the streets, protecting their own homes, and what I’m aware of, that’s the only group that has started out as a street gang and become a political organization. JJ: So protecting their own homes, was that an issue that they were, you know, attacking? MJ: I mean, from what I’m told. JJ: Yeah, from your understanding. MJ: From what I understand. JJ: Well, what were the main issues? MJ: People were getting -- JJ: It had to do with Puerto Ricans ’cause it had to do with Puerto Rico. MJ: Well, that whole area was mainly -- even though there were different ethnic backgrounds, it was mainly Puerto Rican at the time. That was the Puerto Rican neighborhood of the city and it happened to be lakefront property as well and it was more valuable monetarily to people [00:24:00] in power at that time, whether it was corporate or government. And so they were coming in and telling people, “It’s time to move.” JJ: They were telling people to move? MJ: They were raising people’s rents from 80 dollars to 400 in a month or 120 dollars to 800 dollars the next month. Well, you can’t pay? You gotta go. This is how I 14 �was told. As I was told, there were times as well that people were being manhandled directly out of their homes. Someone would just come in and kick all of their things out onto the ground and say, “You don’t live here anymore. Go. You guys can move over.” JJ: [The share?], basically, [’cause it was the candles?] (inaudible). MJ: But that’s gotta be quite an experience to know you’re doing everything you can to pay your bills and you’re paying them and you come home from work one day and someone just told you, “You moved today, in case you didn’t know.” [00:25:00] And you can’t do anything about it. There’s nobody to go to. JJ: But even while you were growing up, you’re saying the neighborhood was still changing, no? MJ: When I was growing up? JJ: Yeah. Or you didn’t notice? I mean, you weren’t living there anymore, but I mean, you went back there ’cause the neighborhood is completely changed, right? MJ: It has completely changed. They kept the shape of it, but they changed everything in between. I guess when I was growing up, it did change. It was much more human before. You could just walk down the street and know somebody and everybody was happy to just wave and say hello, and now it’s just a tourist spot and the people who live there are not very welcoming. (laughs) But mostly it’s a tourist area. And [00:26:00] no, before it was, like, going to visit your cousin’s house. JJ: So do you remember before? 15 �MJ: Yeah. JJ: Okay. MJ: You knew everybody on the block and you just got off the bus or came off the train, and walking to the person’s house you’re going to, you see five different people you know. You stop and you have a conversation, like a neighborhood. Like home. And you don’t know anybody there now. They don’t do that with each other. JJ: Okay. So that made you feel proud in everything. You had some proud moments. What about some painful moments when they talked about the Young Lords? With you, since your father was involved in it. Did you ever have any painful moments? MJ: Painful moments, I think that we all did. JJ: Did anybody talk [00:27:00] negative about the Young Lords? MJ: Sure. I mean, I have bumped into people and I tend not to introduce myself first if I’m in an area where people still talk about the Young Lords, not because I’m not proud, because I’d rather get an honest reaction to what they think. I am always absorbing information and I love to get a lot of different perspectives and I don’t take it personal because that was their experience, so I wanna hear it. JJ: What are some of the negative things that you heard? MJ: (laughs) I remember walking into a building once and I was with someone who could not wait to introduce me and I was like, “Shh. Just say hello. Give this person a chance to get up in their chair.” And this person was very polite and shook my hand and I said, “I’m Melisa,” and he told me his name. And the 16 �person I was with said, “Oh, do you remember that guy? You know the Young Lords. Do you remember that guy, Cha-Cha?” “Oh my God, that thug. He used to --” [00:28:00] I mean, I was laughing ’cause he’s sitting there, he’s like, “He used to just make so much trouble around here. He was such a headache and I can’t believe --” And I guess the person I was with gave him a look because all the sudden, he stopped talking and he looked at me, and then I was introduced as Cha-Cha’s daughter and he just went completely pale and he was like, “I’m so sorry.” I said, “Why would you be? Maybe he was mean to you. (laughs) Maybe you guys didn’t like each other. That’s your experience and I’m not taking anything away from that.” And he was like, “No, but I’m so sorry,” and I said, “That was your experience. That’s your history. But I happen to like the guy so I’m okay with it. So don’t worry about it.” And he just couldn’t catch his breath for a long time. I felt bad. But I don’t introduce myself first, and it’s not to set anybody up. I just wanna know what they really think, what their real memories were. I wasn’t older at that time period, so I like to know what people went through. JJ: Actually there’s a similar experience that my mother [00:29:00] had with somebody from the church. So you know, that’s kind of a pretty good -- because it was like 50-50 real controversial. MJ: It wasn’t controversial. I’ve bumped into people that just said, like, I was royalty, like you were royalty, and “Oh my God, you’re his daughter.” And that experience is much more common than the other. But, like, I didn’t do anything. You know, I’m glad that you had a positive experience. And they’re like, “No, no, this was so 17 �important. He did this and he did this.” I’ve had people treat me wonderfully because of how much it meant to them and I’ve had people be very nasty because they don’t agree with the politics and I personally -JJ: I know you’re joking but it must hurt. MJ: No, it doesn’t hurt because I like to see how people think. I like to see through other people’s eyes. JJ: That’s now, but when you were growing up. MJ: No. JJ: [00:30:00] Never? MJ: Because I was a child and there was more of a filter on them. I was prepared for it, but they had more of a filter because they were looking at a child, and I mean, you shouldn’t attack a child. But when they were honest about what they said, I appreciated it. I want to know all of the story. I don’t wanna know just the things I like or I agree with. And I need to understand. That’s how I’ve learned about it, by being open about it and not expecting someone to agree with something that I think. That’s not gonna work. JJ: I’m gonna kind of wrap it up a little bit, but I just wanted to -- MJ: Am I a talker? (laughs) JJ: No, no, no. No, I was just trying to -- MJ: I am, it’s all right. JJ: -- just because of the schedule. MJ: Okay. No, I have had painful moments, though. JJ: You had painful moments? 18 �MJ: I didn’t lose my father like Angie’s kids did or like Fred Hampton [00:31:00] Junior did, but I still lost my father, having a father in my home. My brothers and sisters still lost having a father while they were growing up. And we’ve had the opportunity to still get to know you, which they didn’t, but we still lost the possession of, “That’s my dad. He just belongs to me and everybody else doesn’t get a piece of him. He’s just ours.” We didn’t get that opportunity. And maybe that had something to do with it. When my mother and I left when I was four and a half during the height of your substance abuse, very shortly after, you disappeared. [00:32:00] You were just gone and nobody knew where you were and I think some people even blamed my mom. Like, if you hadn’t left him, he wouldn’t have just disappeared, you know? What did you do? Nobody can find him. No one even knows where he is. And that went on for a little while, and then a couple years passed and then -- JJ: So that went on for a few years. MJ: It went on for a little while. JJ: Like, five years, something like that. MJ: A little while. A couple years later, people started trying to prepare themselves that you just were never coming back, and so they started saying, you know, “I don’t wanna say the thing that you’re not supposed to say, but I think he’s dead.” And they would try not to say it around me but I heard them talking about it and I knew it wasn’t true. And more time passed. Then it finally got to being five years, you were gone and nobody knew where you were. Everybody [00:33:00] had accepted that you were just dead. 19 �JJ: You’re talking about family members? MJ: Family members were at the point -- five years after my mother and I left, five years almost to the day, everybody for at least the last six months had been trying to figure out how do we tell Melisa that her father is dead? Because she walks around here like -- she’s just so happy and she’s gonna talk to him one day, and we have to figure out how to tell her. And they were whispering about it over and over and I know that I went up to them one day. I was nine years old at the time. And I put my hand on Angie’s hand and I put my other hand on my mom’s hand and I said, “Don’t worry, he’s not dead. I know he’s not dead. You guys don’t have to worry about how to talk to me about it.” And they just couldn’t believe that I even knew what they were talking about, but I seriously said, “I can [00:34:00] feel him. I know he’s okay. He’s just not ready to be with us right now. But don’t worry.” And Angie seriously was like -- they never talked about it again, and within a month -- I’m gonna tell you -- that particular month I prayed for two things, and never in my life, I have never prayed to ask for something back. I pray to thank God for things. I don’t pray to ask for things in return. But that month, I prayed for two things, and one of them was just for my dad to let everybody know he was okay. Even if he’s not ready to come back, can you just please -- they’re starting to really worry. Can you just let him know or have him let everybody know that he’s okay? And then I prayed for something else. And that particular month, not even a week later, my mom got a call from Angie and said, “You will not believe. He’s alive. He’s gonna be here on Friday. He wanted to know if you would bring Melisa because he really wants to see her.” 20 �[00:35:00] And they just couldn’t believe. And I told my mom, I said, “I’m not supposed to tell you what I talked to God about because that’s between us, but I knew he was going to --” And maybe that sounds mystical and spooky or whatever, but those are the only two things in my life that I ever asked for, and that month, they both came true. Not that I’m saying I had any effect on that, but I’m saying the timeframe, when I was four and a half and we left you, soon after, you left, and the whole family went through an experience where they grieved your loss. They really believed you were gone. Everybody was certain of it because by that point, five years had passed. They tried for years to just deal with the fact that you were probably underground or something or maybe just doing drugs and not in a good place. And they finally got to the point where they accepted that you were gone and they really went through a hard time trying to figure out how to tell your kids that we would never see you again. But [00:36:00] your mother -- my grandmother -- and I knew that you were alive because we both could feel you and we talked about it. Everybody else was really broken, trying to figure out how to help us deal with it ’cause they thought we were in denial. And lo and behold, you showed up in Chicago (laughs) within the same month and you were okay and you had changed your life in a big way and you were in a good place. And everybody was just shocked. They really thought you were gone. And that was not an easy time. It was sad. But I knew that you were okay. I just knew that I didn’t know when I would ever talk to you again. I didn’t know. At that time, I had no picture of your face in my mind. I just remembered loving you and you loving me. But I could not remember your face. And then 21 �everybody around me is so sad, thinking you’re gone. That was hard to watch everybody I loved so sad. JJ: So do you remember where -- MJ: [00:37:00] I don’t remember when you left the city but I know that you moved to Michigan. By the time you came back, you were living in Michigan and you came back just to see us. JJ: Right. I was trying to get myself together. MJ: You did. You did a very good job. JJ: I was going a little downhill by that time and I didn’t have the [will?] or money or anything like that (inaudible). And my perfectionism, I had to make sure everything’s perfect. MJ: You are, and I missed a lot of times spending time with you because you were afraid you didn’t have anything to give me and I didn’t want anything but you. And that took a few years for you to accept that. JJ: I keep that in mind now. MJ: All right, good. (laughter) That’s good. You don’t need to give me anything. No. But we missed more time later. JJ: What did you want? What did you want to tell your father? What was the most important thing that you wanted people to know? Not just [00:38:00] your father. Maybe the world or -- about you. MJ: About me? That’s a loaded question. You have layers to that. 22 �JJ: Okay, (inaudible). I mean, what’s the main thing that you want people to know about you? This is an oral history (inaudible) but I [shouldn’t be so formal?] after what you just said. MJ: (laughter) No. I don’t know that there’s anything I need the world to know about me. JJ: Or me, maybe I don’t -- ’cause I was underground. I’m just trying to go with [that?]. MJ: I think people don’t know that you are hilarious unless they know you. They don’t know that you’re hilarious. You have an incredible sense of humor and you are always cracking jokes at moments that everybody thinks you’re gonna be serious, just come out of nowhere and everybody’s cracking up because it’s a surprise. JJ: But I was talking about you. MJ: [00:39:00] I know. JJ: Okay. MJ: I’m just saying I don’t think anybody knows -- and I’m not sure if you’re ready for anybody to know -- that you’re very sensitive. JJ: What do you mean? MJ: (laughs) You’re very sensitive. You’re very loving. You love your children very much. You may not always know how to share that with them or they don’t know how to receive it from you, but I don’t think there’s a way to measure how much we mean to you, and it’s obvious. It’s just there’s other things that go with it, other emotions that go with it. But you are very sensitive and things hit you. 23 �People are a little rough with you. People are used to you being hardcore and determined and focused, and you’re human. You’re very caring. About me? I don’t really think that -- [00:40:00] maybe we have not discussed fully, you know, all of my opinions. We don’t need to have all my opinions. But all the things we have talked about, I’m very passionate about. They mean a lot to me. They’re the majority of the rest of what makes up me. You know, my mother and father and the rest of my family are the core of me and all of the things we talked about are very much the rest of me. They mean a lot to me. It seems real basic and yet it’s lost on our culture now to treat people with care and respect and look out for each other, not to cover for each other when you’re doing something you shouldn’t be doing. Look out that you are all doing well, that you are healthy, that your needs are met, that you’re not alone in this world, that we’re each other’s, you know, keeper. It’s real simple. It’s in all the religions. [00:41:00] It’s not one religious belief. It’s how you treat each other, and I don’t think that any of these issues would be real if we had that, if that was happening, if people were treating each other equally or respectfully. There may never have been a Civil Rights Movement. What would we talk about? I don’t know. JJ: So you feel like the Young Lords were like a civil rights movement. MJ: Yeah. JJ: ’Cause some people don’t look at -- I mean, like when we were talking about, they still think it’s a gang or whatever. MJ: You’re taking care of basic needs. JJ: To you, why do you look at it like a civil rights movement or a movement? 24 �MJ: What I know of what they actually accomplished, what they were involved in, what people were participating in, it’s taking care of basic needs in an entire community that should have been leveled. Everybody [00:42:00] everywhere should have these basic things. You should be able to have clean water and food to eat and healthcare and education and immunizations, and civil rights is the basic line of saying we all have these basic human rights and they’re fair for everybody, and if somebody slips, we just have to remind them, “No, no, no, you might have crossed the line with somebody. Come back. This is where your mistake was made.” But it’s for everybody. They’re real simple. It’s not complicated. It’s not like trigonometry or something. It’s real basic human needs and rights and respect, and when people slip up, they get so lost in their personal greed and hunger for power, they are willing to destroy anything in their path, and sometimes it’s entire cultures. And [00:43:00] that’s not acceptable. Everybody should be enraged by that or at least passionate enough to say something. It should matter. It’s real simple. I don’t know how else to -- JJ: That’s good. I know that your father was attacking Mayor Daley a lot because of the displacement of the Puerto Rican community and he was Irish and you have a little Irish -- MJ: I’m half-Irish, yes. JJ: You’re half-Irish. How did you feel about that? You know, we’re attacking -- MJ: I don’t take it as a cultural attack. I take it as two men who have very clear opinions and they do not agree with each other. (laughter) Point blank. And 25 �they’re in different positions and they both speak until they’re heard. Both of them. So there’s different repercussions to that, though. JJ: And it’s never about the Irish. It’s about -- MJ: [00:44:00] No, I never -- JJ: -- the policy. MJ: I don’t think that has anything to do with that, no. JJ: Because I’m just joking. It’s about the wrong policies of the mayor. I never had an attack personally on him. But it’s an attack on his policies, basically. We just felt they were corrupt and incorrect and we didn’t agree with that. Any final thoughts? Any final thoughts? MJ: Educate yourselves. (laughs) Don’t take somebody’s word for it because you’ve known them for a long time or because they’re someplace in the world that you wish you could be. Educate yourself. You know, if you hear something that’s different from anything you’ve ever heard before, look around. Get different perspectives. Don’t just open a textbook because they all come from the same publishing company. Read different sources. Talk to different people and be open to different perceptions. Everybody has a different place they’re standing from. They [00:45:00] get a different view of what’s happening even in the same moment. So learn. Just learn. That’s real important. Otherwise you’re gonna let somebody else decide your destiny. JJ: Thank you. END OF VIDEO FILE 26 �27 � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/1cd08aeb94045f6ef044cfd8712af775.mp4 bff0c6395edef45230efab1f9ce9e558 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Young Lords in Lincoln Park Collection Subject The topic of the resource Young Lords (Organization) Puerto Ricans--United States Civil Rights--United States--History Lincoln Park (Chicago, Ill.) Personal narratives Social justice Community activists--Illinois--Chicago Description An account of the resource Collection of oral history interviews and digitized materials documenting the history of the Young Lords Organization in Lincoln Park, Chicago. Interviews were conducted by Young Lords' founder, José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez, and documents were digitized from Mr. Jiménez' archives. The Young Lords in Lincoln Park collection grows out of the ongoing struggle for fair housing, self-determination, and human rights that was launched by Mr. José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez, founder of the Young Lords Movement. This project is dedicated to documenting the history of the displacement of Puerto Ricans, Mejicanos, other Latinos, and the poor from Lincoln Park, as well as the history of the Young Lords nationwide. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Jiménez, José, 1948- Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/491">Young Lords in Lincoln Park collection (RHC-65)</a> Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-04-25 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Language A language of the resource eng spa Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-65 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 2012-2017 Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Título Spanish language Title entry Melisa Jiménez vídeo entrevista y biografía, entrevista 1 Sujetos Spanish language Subject terms Young Lords (Organización) Puertorriqueños--Estados Unidos Derechos civiles--Estados Unidos--Historia Lincoln Park (Chicago, Ill.) Puertorriqueños--Relatos personales Justicia social Activistas comunitarios--Illinois--Chicago Source <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/491">Young Lords in Lincoln Park (RHC-65)</a> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-65_Jimenez_Melisa_1 Title A name given to the resource Melisa Jiménez video interview and transcript, interview 1 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Jiménez, Melisa Description An account of the resource 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. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Jiménez, José, 1948- Subject The topic of the resource Young Lords (Organization) Puerto Ricans--United States Civil Rights--United States--History Lincoln Park (Chicago, Ill.) Personal narratives Social justice Community activists--Illinois--Chicago Language A language of the resource eng Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2012-07-15 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/b79328206530ed61af8bd8099fbabd9d.pdf 24611a3bf384fddb08ba23281efcd23d PDF Text Text Young Lords In Lincoln Park Interviewee: Marcelo Jiménez Interviewers: José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez Location: Grand Valley State University Special Collections Date: 5/12/2012 Biography and Description 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. � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/ce63e47b2950c0dd9d380a41a9d3ed46.mp4 fc32d0fbb486c60edce5f0d3faab69e9 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Young Lords in Lincoln Park Collection Subject The topic of the resource Young Lords (Organization) Puerto Ricans--United States Civil Rights--United States--History Lincoln Park (Chicago, Ill.) Personal narratives Social justice Community activists--Illinois--Chicago Description An account of the resource Collection of oral history interviews and digitized materials documenting the history of the Young Lords Organization in Lincoln Park, Chicago. Interviews were conducted by Young Lords' founder, José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez, and documents were digitized from Mr. Jiménez' archives. The Young Lords in Lincoln Park collection grows out of the ongoing struggle for fair housing, self-determination, and human rights that was launched by Mr. José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez, founder of the Young Lords Movement. This project is dedicated to documenting the history of the displacement of Puerto Ricans, Mejicanos, other Latinos, and the poor from Lincoln Park, as well as the history of the Young Lords nationwide. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Jiménez, José, 1948- Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/491">Young Lords in Lincoln Park collection (RHC-65)</a> Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-04-25 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Language A language of the resource eng spa Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-65 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 2012-2017 Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Título Spanish language Title entry Marcelo Jiménez vídeo entrevista y biografía Sujetos Spanish language Subject terms Young Lords (Organización) Puertorriqueños--Estados Unidos Derechos civiles--Estados Unidos--Historia Lincoln Park (Chicago, Ill.) Puertorriqueños--Relatos personales Justicia social Activistas comunitarios--Illinois--Chicago Source <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/491">Young Lords in Lincoln Park (RHC-65)</a> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-65_Jimenez_Marcelo Title A name given to the resource Marcelo Jiménez video interview and biography Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Jiménez, Marcelo Description An account of the resource 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. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Jiménez, José, 1948- Subject The topic of the resource Young Lords (Organization) Puerto Ricans--United States Civil Rights--United States--History Lincoln Park (Chicago, Ill.) Spanish language--Personal narratives Social justice Community activists--Illinois--Chicago Language A language of the resource spa Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2012-05-12 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/638df8240d99be75a44efabfbef4a625.pdf e69277df19f11218272a11319045a496 PDF Text Text Young Lords In Lincoln Park Interviewee: Juana “Jenny” Jiménez Interviewers: José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez Location: Grand Valley State University Special Collections Date: 5/10/2012 Biography and Description English 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. Spanish Juana Jiménez es una hermana de José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez. Nació en Minot, Massachusetts cerca de Concord donde su padre trabajo como tomatero para Andy Boy Farms en 1940. Aquí recogieron vegetables para la compañía de Campbell Soup. En 1951 la familia se cambio a Chicago para acercarse �con familiares que vivían en La Clark. Juana creció en Lincoln Park Wicker Park. Cuando se embarazo, antes de tener esposo, la mandaron a una casa para mujeres jóvenes que era atendida por monjas Católicas. Aquí es donde ella desarrollo su espirituelidad y todavía sigue muy dedicada en su comunida igual que ayudando los equipos de Béisbol y boliche en que esta su esposo y corriendo el grupo de Boy Scout para sus hijos y los del vecindario. Ahora vive en Camuy, Puerto Rico. �Transcript JUANA JIMENEZ: I didn’t like that name, Cha-Cha. (laughs) JOSE JIMENEZ: Oh, you don’t like Cha-Cha. All right, all right. No, that’s good. It was a good answer. Okay, (inaudible), ready? If you could tell me your name, your full name, and where you were born. JUANA JIMENEZ: Okay. My name is Juana Jiménez, and as my mom used to say, I was born in Boston in Massachusetts, but I wasn’t. I was born in Concord, Massachusetts. JOSE JIMENEZ: Okay. Does it say that on your birth certificate? JUANA JIMENEZ: It says that on my birth certificate. Says Concord, Massachusetts. JOSE JIMENEZ: ’Cause he also said that it was Minot, there was a place called Minot. But your birth certificate says Concord. JUANA JIMENEZ: Yeah, my birth certificate says Concord, Massachusetts. JOSE JIMENEZ: Okay, and did she say anything else? Where you were born, what was it like or whatever? Or anything? JUANA JIMENEZ: No, she just said -- well, [00:01:00] they lived in like a farm place or something. JOSE JIMENEZ: Like a migrant farm? JUANA JIMENEZ: Yeah. They went down from Puerto Rico to Massachusetts so they could work, and they could at least have some money, and have a better life than what they did have when they were living here. At that time, of course, here 1 �there was no roads, everything dust roads and things like that. So it was really pretty hard for them. JOSE JIMENEZ: Okay. So they were working like a migrant farm camp? JUANA JIMENEZ: Yeah. JOSE JIMENEZ: And then you were born in the town of Concord? JUANA JIMENEZ: I was born. She said from that town, I guess the owner of the farm or something, they took her to the hospital, and then -- they took her over there, and they kept thinking that the owner of the farm was [00:02:00] the father. Instead of my dad being my father, it would be the boss’s. But that’s because he paid for everything, but it wasn’t true. They fixed that right away. JOSE JIMENEZ: He paid for the insurance? JUANA JIMENEZ: Yeah, he paid for everything. JOSE JIMENEZ: Did they say who the owner of the farm was? JUANA JIMENEZ: I really can’t remember the name. [Dowdry?], or -JOSE JIMENEZ: Oh, [Dowry?]. JUANA JIMENEZ: Dowry, something like that. That’s what she says. JOSE JIMENEZ: Oh, yeah. I’ve heard that name before. JUANA JIMENEZ: Yeah. Well, something like that. So I really don’t know. I always tell everybody the only thing I remember from Massachusetts is the blanket. I was underneath it, (laughs) and then we went down to Chicago because I don’t remember anything. I don’t know, I was just a baby. JOSE JIMENEZ: So you were born -- what year was that, again? JUANA JIMENEZ: Nineteen fifty-one. 2 �JOSE JIMENEZ: So 1951 she was in Concord, Massachusetts. JUANA JIMENEZ: In Concord, Massachusetts. JOSE JIMENEZ: Okay, so after that, then they moved to Chicago? JUANA JIMENEZ: After that, they moved to Chicago, [00:03:00] and -JOSE JIMENEZ: So around ’51 or ’52? JUANA JIMENEZ: No, I think it was really in the same year. Yeah, ’51. JOSE JIMENEZ: Fifty-one? Okay, so they moved to Chicago. Do you know where they moved to? JUANA JIMENEZ: The only place that I remember -- oh, my God. I don’t remember much about names of streets or something, but I know it was a really slum area. And I remember to get into the apartment -- it was a big building -- to get into the apartment, you had to go through the alley and the door was on the side of the alley. It was a bad -JOSE JIMENEZ: Oh, that was on Dayton. That was on Dayton -- JUANA JIMENEZ: Way in back. JOSE JIMENEZ: Dayton by North Avenue. JUANA JIMENEZ: Yeah, and I really didn’t like that place. JOSE JIMENEZ: So the entrance was in the alley, I remember that. JUANA JIMENEZ: It was in the alley. JOSE JIMENEZ: It was behind the businesses. JUANA JIMENEZ: Yes, right. JOSE JIMENEZ: The North Avenue businesses. JUANA JIMENEZ: That’s right. 3 �JOSE JIMENEZ: So there was North Avenue businesses between Halsted and Dayton, and right behind there was an alley, and there was a building there. JUANA JIMENEZ: That’s right, yeah. [00:04:00] And I hated that place. JOSE JIMENEZ: ’Cause there was a cat called kitty that we had or something. JUANA JIMENEZ: No, no. JOSE JIMENEZ: There wasn’t? JUANA JIMENEZ: That was in a different area. JOSE JIMENEZ: Oh, that was a different -- JUANA JIMENEZ: That was way back later on. But when we were a lot smaller, we lived in that area, and I didn’t like it because they had a lot of roaches, a lot of -JOSE JIMENEZ: Oh, so this is still on Clark Street that you’re talking about? It’s not North Avenue, then? JUANA JIMENEZ: No, it must not be. I just don’t know the name of the streets or anything. JOSE JIMENEZ: Oh, you remember Maple. That was another alley. There was another alley. JUANA JIMENEZ: It was this little small alley I remember, and the other side was busy streets. JOSE JIMENEZ: That was La Salle. La Salle and Maple. JUANA JIMENEZ: You could see drunk people all the time in the streets. JOSE JIMENEZ: Clark Street. That was Clark Street. JUANA JIMENEZ: That was horrible. I hated it. I hated it. JOSE JIMENEZ: Okay, that was La Salle and Maple. Yeah, I remember that. Okay. 4 �JUANA JIMENEZ: ’Cause I remember that when -JOSE JIMENEZ: So what do you remember about there? JUANA JIMENEZ: The only thing I remember, we never had anything. At least we had food, but not much of anything. [00:05:00] We had to get our clothes was from the secondhand store all the time or from people that gave us clothes. For Christmas, we never had anything. I remember one time really special from school, the police officers, they went around to see the poor families. We were very, very poor. And they came around to our house, and they took you to go to their party and their Christmas party where Santa Claus was and everything, and I stayed home crying because they didn’t pick me to go. But later on, they came back about an hour later on, and they got my shoes, my clothes, and they finished dressing me in their car so I could go with them. And the first thing I saw when I went down there was Santa Claus, the kids running around everywhere, and the table filled with food. And when we got home, you had a great big sack of clothes [00:06:00] and toys, and I had the same. And that was one of the good times, at least I thought. JOSE JIMENEZ: I think that was Catholic Charities. JUANA JIMENEZ: Maybe, I don’t know. I really don’t know. JOSE JIMENEZ: Yeah, they were located by Superior and La Salle at that time. JUANA JIMENEZ: We had another time -- we had another -JOSE JIMENEZ: But we weren’t living there at that time. We were living -- JUANA JIMENEZ: ’Cause there was another time that we had a good time for the Catholic Charities that they did help us. And we were living -- 5 �JOSE JIMENEZ: It was at St. Teresa’s, I think? From St. Teresa’s (inaudible). JUANA JIMENEZ: I don’t know, but I know that -- this was in a different place, where we lived, and they came to the house and brought us a big Christmas tree and big presents. JOSE JIMENEZ: Oh, yeah, that was a different time. JUANA JIMENEZ: Different time. JOSE JIMENEZ: Yeah, but the first one was Catholic Charities. JUANA JIMENEZ: The first time I was really, really young I remember. But that place that I hated was because of all the rats and the roaches everywhere. [00:07:00] You could see the walls moving. JOSE JIMENEZ: So that was on Maple and La Salle with the rats and the roaches. JUANA JIMENEZ: Okay. I really don’t know, but -JOSE JIMENEZ: It was a basement. It was a basement apartment. JUANA JIMENEZ: It was a basement. JOSE JIMENEZ: Okay. Actually, there’s a picture of that on Facebook. JUANA JIMENEZ: Is it? JOSE JIMENEZ: I got to show it to you. JUANA JIMENEZ: I hated that place. I hated that place. JOSE JIMENEZ: So you remember that, that place there. That was at La Salle and Maple. Where did you go to school? JUANA JIMENEZ: At that time, we were going to St. Teresa. We were going to a Catholic school, I believe. Or how was that? I’m not sure that we went first to a public school and then we went to a Catholic school, but -- no, we did go to a 6 �public school first because [00:08:00] I remember going to kindergarten and not wanting to go to school, starting to scream because I wanted to go back home. I remember that one. That was in a (inaudible). JOSE JIMENEZ: Was it Newberry? Do you remember that school? JUANA JIMENEZ: I don’t remember them. JOSE JIMENEZ: Franklin? JUANA JIMENEZ: I don’t know the names of the -- I don’t know. JOSE JIMENEZ: None of the schools you know the name of. You remember St. Teresa. JUANA JIMENEZ: Yes, I remember St. Teresa. And I think it was after that that we did go to St. Teresa’s. And I remember mom working, making pasteles. JOSE JIMENEZ: I think before that we went to Newberry, (inaudible). JUANA JIMENEZ: Just to pay for the tuition. JOSE JIMENEZ: Or at least I was going to Newberry before I went to St. Teresa’s. JUANA JIMENEZ: Okay, could be. JOSE JIMENEZ: [Probably?] you were going somewhere else. JUANA JIMENEZ: But I remember going to that school, and it was nice, but -- but we did go to St. Teresa. But it wasn’t at that time. JOSE JIMENEZ: So what are your first memories of Chicago growing up? JUANA JIMENEZ: Being a girl, [00:09:00] growing up, you only saw the inside of the house because it came with Puerto Rican -JOSE JIMENEZ: Culture. JUANA JIMENEZ: -- cultures and everything. My mom and dad -- 7 �JOSE JIMENEZ: Okay, so what kind of cultures? JUANA JIMENEZ: Well, the women would stay in the house, clean, cook, do whatever they had to do. They wouldn’t go out for anything. The husbands or the men could do whatever they wanted. All the food had to be done for them, clothes had to be fixed, everything had to be ready for them. JOSE JIMENEZ: And mom was comfortable with that? JUANA JIMENEZ: She taught us that’s the way we had to do it. JOSE JIMENEZ: She told you that’s the way you had to do it? JUANA JIMENEZ: That’s the way you had to do it. JOSE JIMENEZ: And you had to behave yourself and -- I mean she actually said that? JUANA JIMENEZ: Yeah. She told us, “When your father comes, the food has to be done, [00:10:00] the house has to be clean, you can’t let them fight,” and stuff like that. The men can go out drinking, and having fun, and whatever and the women had to stay in the house. Of course, she didn’t like that much either because dad would go out drinking and come back really drunk and half the time beat her up because of that. The first apartment -- you said it was Mayberry? By Clark? JOSE JIMENEZ: Maple. JUANA JIMENEZ: Maple, okay. Maple and Clark. JOSE JIMENEZ: La Salle. Maple and La Salle. JUANA JIMENEZ: I remember -- ’cause [Myrna?] was a baby -- my sister, Myrna. She was -- 8 �JOSE JIMENEZ: She was born right there in (inaudible) Hospital, right? JUANA JIMENEZ: Yeah, she was a baby ’cause there were only two bedrooms in that apartment. There was two bedrooms, living room, and kitchen. JOSE JIMENEZ: It was a basement and the entrance was on Maple, on the small street. JUANA JIMENEZ: Yeah. And then I remember my dad going out, and I decided I wanted to sleep out -- I didn’t want sleep with -- I had to sleep -- on one bed, I had to sleep [00:11:00] me, Daisy, and you. All three of us had to sleep there in one bed because there was nowhere else to sleep. And that day, I said, “I’m not sleeping in this bed anymore. I’m tired of being in this room.” So in the living room, there was a little crib, and I asked my mom, “Can I sleep on this crib tonight?” She said, “Fine,” because my sister slept with them. So in the middle of the night, all I did was open my eyes, and all you could see were these roaches, and these rats, and everything, but then they’d run. My dad came in drunk, and I could see him throwing baby food jars, throwing them because he was so drunk he didn’t know what he was doing. He started fighting with my mom, throwing food everywhere on the walls. There was baby food everywhere, everywhere you could see. JOSE JIMENEZ: What was he drunk about? What was he mad about? JUANA JIMENEZ: I don’t know. He was always mad at something. Always mad at something. And he wanted to fight with her. [00:12:00] So I really wouldn’t know. I really couldn’t tell you what they were fighting about. She wasn’t doing 9 �the fighting, he was doing the fighting. She was just running around so that he wouldn’t hurt her. JOSE JIMENEZ: What would happen the next day? JUANA JIMENEZ: The next day he’d either wake up by the bathroom floor throwing up, or half on the floor in the bedroom, or on the bed or whatever. And he would act like nothing, and she would have to get him his coffee, and make him some soup, or get him something cool to drink like 7UP or something because he wasn’t feeling well. But then the next day it was like nothing. He was an alcoholic and he didn’t realize that. And he always had to drink. All weekend he had to keep drinking. The whole weekend. JOSE JIMENEZ: That’s his negative side. What about his positive side? JUANA JIMENEZ: His positive side, he was a great dad. JOSE JIMENEZ: What do you mean? JUANA JIMENEZ: At least with me. [00:13:00] He could talk to me. I would sit on his lap, rub his face, would talk to him -- “Why are you so upset?” “I’m not upset. Go over there.” He’d tell me to get off his lap or go somewhere else. (laughs) But, you know, then he would smile and laugh a lot, make jokes. I liked the way when he would -- he loved movies from cowboys especially. And he would take the chairs, the back ends of the chairs, and turn it around, and sit with his legs spread apart. And since he had a big fat belly, the chairs instead of being straight up, it already had the form of the belly coming to the side. You could see him just kind of fighting, “Come on, you can do it.” And then when they started saying on the TV that that was too much violence, and they were taking all these 10 �movies out because of the violence and stuff, he was so mad. [00:14:00] He didn’t want to watch anymore cowboy and Indian movies (laughs) anymore because he said it was really wasn’t (inaudible). JOSE JIMENEZ: Didn’t he also watch The Honeymooners or something like that? JUANA JIMENEZ: He was what? JOSE JIMENEZ: You remember that show The Honeymooners? JUANA JIMENEZ: Yes, I remember. The Jackie Gleason show. JOSE JIMENEZ: And he reminded me of Jackie Gleason. JUANA JIMENEZ: Yes, he did. JOSE JIMENEZ: (inaudible). JUANA JIMENEZ: That’s how it was. JOSE JIMENEZ: And that was one of his favorite shows. JUANA JIMENEZ: Yes. Except the lady was -- Jackie Gleason’s wife -- my mom was more quiet because the one there on TV was a little mouthy. My mother wasn’t. JOSE JIMENEZ: But Antonio liked that. JUANA JIMENEZ: Yeah, he liked that. JOSE JIMENEZ: Your dad. JUANA JIMENEZ: He liked that. Yeah, he did. JOSE JIMENEZ: Except for the lady wasn’t like mom. Mom was more quiet, she was more Puerto Rican. JUANA JIMENEZ: Yeah, that’s it. JOSE JIMENEZ: Would you say Puerto Rican or that’s just the way she -- not really Puerto Rican, but -- were all Puerto Ricans like that or no? 11 �JUANA JIMENEZ: I really don’t know, but mom was because that’s the way she was raised. JOSE JIMENEZ: Were there many other women like that? Other women raised that way [00:15:00] or no? JUANA JIMENEZ: I really wouldn’t know. At least at that time -JOSE JIMENEZ: Why do you think mom was so quiet like that, accepting that? JUANA JIMENEZ: I think she was that way because she was raised and always -when she was younger, she went to a convent, and she learned a lot with the nuns. You have to be quiet, you can’t raise your voice, have to be cleaning all the time. That’s why we did a lot of cleaning on our hands and knees, cleaning and shining floors. But she said that’s the way the women had to be. And I kept thinking, “This can’t be life,” (laughs) you know? But we either behaved or we got punished kneeling in front of the altar. JOSE JIMENEZ: So she was very religious? JUANA JIMENEZ: She was very religious. JOSE JIMENEZ: Okay, but before we go into very religious, she also threw a few punches. Do you remember, [00:16:00] right in that spot, there was a fight or something? Do you remember that? JUANA JIMENEZ: What street? JOSE JIMENEZ: On Maple and La Salle, there was a fight -- JUANA JIMENEZ: There was a fight? JOSE JIMENEZ: -- with mom, right? You don’t remember that? JUANA JIMENEZ: With mom and who else? 12 �JOSE JIMENEZ: Some lady or something like that. It was a street fight. All the neighbors were outside (laughs) watching the fight. JUANA JIMENEZ: I really don’t remember that. JOSE JIMENEZ: You don’t remember that? JUANA JIMENEZ: I really don’t. And I don’t know why -JOSE JIMENEZ: So you never remember mom ever being aggressive? JUANA JIMENEZ: No, no. JOSE JIMENEZ: Fighting back on anybody? JUANA JIMENEZ: No. JOSE JIMENEZ: You just only remember her in the church. JUANA JIMENEZ: In the church, in the house. JOSE JIMENEZ: Gambling? JUANA JIMENEZ: Oh, yes, she did. (laughs) I remember her playing a lotería, but it’s not the lottery like they play now ’cause there was the three small cards. JOSE JIMENEZ: So it was like bingo? JUANA JIMENEZ: It’s like bingo, but it wasn’t. Bingo uses those cards, and straight across and down to the side. These were like three small cards -- [00:17:00] of course, it was illegal. JOSE JIMENEZ: But this was Spanish bingo. JUANA JIMENEZ: Spanish bingo. JOSE JIMENEZ: So why is Spanish bingo illegal and not English bingo? 13 �JUANA JIMENEZ: All bingos were illegal if you went over the limit of the money. You weren’t playing for pennies here. You were playing -- you know, $5.00, $10.00, $50.00, things like this. JOSE JIMENEZ: So it was illegal because they charged too much money? JUANA JIMENEZ: Yes, it was gambling. It was gambling. JOSE JIMENEZ: So all bingo was illegal at that time. JUANA JIMENEZ: All bingo was illegal at that time. JOSE JIMENEZ: But did a lot of people play it? JUANA JIMENEZ: Yes. Hiding, yes. (laughs) JOSE JIMENEZ: So it was common. JUANA JIMENEZ: Yes, it was common especially in the Puerto Ricans ’cause I remember standing -- trying to go to sleep standing up by a wall, “Let me go to sleep, I’m tired. We want to go home.” And we wouldn’t go home until they played their bingos. And the kids had to be quiet -- “Go over there and sit down and watch TV or just be quiet. You can’t be over here because there’s money here.” Half the time it was more [00:18:00] or less more family playing it, but it was still illegal. So as soon as somebody would knock at the door, everybody would stop, I remember, and look out the window, see who it was or whatever. JOSE JIMENEZ: Now, we moved up towards Clark Street by Lincoln Park. Do you remember that place? JUANA JIMENEZ: Yes, I do ’cause there were some Italian people that were the landlords or something, wasn’t that? JOSE JIMENEZ: Oh, that wasn’t that. But that was in -- 14 �JUANA JIMENEZ: That was another place. JOSE JIMENEZ: That was on Fremont. The Italian people, (inaudible). I was thinking about right across the street from Lincoln Park on Clark Street. Right there on North Avenue and Clark. Do you remember that or no? JUANA JIMENEZ: What’s that? JOSE JIMENEZ: You remember Fremont Street, though, right? With the Italian gangs? JUANA JIMENEZ: Yeah, I remember that. JOSE JIMENEZ: So what do you remember there? JUANA JIMENEZ: I remember my mom being very superstitious, and she kept saying [00:19:00] that there were ghosts or something that could hear people walking around, or people knocking at the doors, or things like this. And she kept saying that we had to be very quiet because the landlord lived downstairs and he didn’t want any noise or else they were going to throw us out, you know? I can remember a lot of things because we were always in the house, like I told you. We were never outside. We couldn’t go outside to the stairs. In the summertime, maybe, for a little bit with them out in the front, and then back in the house. JOSE JIMENEZ: With who? With mom? JUANA JIMENEZ: With mom, with my dad. JOSE JIMENEZ: So you would go outside? JUANA JIMENEZ: Yeah. I remember there mom made a lot of pasteles so she could take it to Lincoln Park area and sell it. They sold a lot of pasteles. 15 �JOSE JIMENEZ: Pasteles, like Puerto Rican tamales? JUANA JIMENEZ: They’re the Puerto Rican tamales, like they say. A lot better than tamales. A lot more work. So I don’t make ’em, I buy them. (laughter) [00:20:00] I’m too lazy for that. JOSE JIMENEZ: So they went to Lincoln Park and sold them? JUANA JIMENEZ: They went to Lincoln Park and sold them, and they were sold right away. Right away. JOSE JIMENEZ: Why? Were there a lot of Puerto Ricans (inaudible)? JUANA JIMENEZ: There were a lot of Puerto Ricans at that time. There was a hippie stage at that time, there were a lot -JOSE JIMENEZ: This was like ’68, ’70? Around there, ’67-’68? JUANA JIMENEZ: Yeah, around there, I believe. Yeah ’cause I remember her saying, “Don’t go in that area. Stay over there.” Because, of course, they would take off their bras and burn them or something, and mom wouldn’t want me to hang around with that. Of course, I liked that. JOSE JIMENEZ: So there was Puerto Ricans and hippies in the Lincoln Park? JUANA JIMENEZ: In the Lincoln Park. JOSE JIMENEZ: That end of the park. JUANA JIMENEZ: Yeah. JOSE JIMENEZ: Was there like softball games or something? JUANA JIMENEZ: Yeah, they did have a lot of softball games because the Puerto Ricans had a lot of softball games. It was really nice. It was really good. JOSE JIMENEZ: And so mom would go to the softball games to sell. 16 �JUANA JIMENEZ: Just to sell pasteles. JOSE JIMENEZ: Were those softball games part of the church that mom was involved in? JUANA JIMENEZ: [00:21:00] I think they were, but she wasn’t involved with the softball team, that I don’t believe. JOSE JIMENEZ: She was just selling. JUANA JIMENEZ: She was just there to sell pasteles. JOSE JIMENEZ: The pasteles were money for her. JUANA JIMENEZ: Money for her for income ’cause the income was very -JOSE JIMENEZ: Because she also sold for the teams later or something. JUANA JIMENEZ: Later on. JOSE JIMENEZ: Or before (inaudible). JUANA JIMENEZ: But that was a lot later on for the Puerto Rican community. Let’s say they would have raffles and things that would help for the girls that wanted to run like for Puerto Rican queen or something, she did a lot of selling of pasteles. JOSE JIMENEZ: Oh, for the ones that ran for Puerto Rican queens. JUANA JIMENEZ: Puerto Rican queens. JOSE JIMENEZ: So Puerto Rican queen in Chicago. So this was later on in Aurora or was this in Chicago? JUANA JIMENEZ: She did that later on in Aurora, but she did this in Chicago, too. But in Chicago she did it first because for our income. We didn’t have a lot of money. [00:22:00] At that time, there was no food. I remember dad going one time when we lived there on Bissell Street, he would go out to these farm areas, he would 17 �bring back sacks of potatoes. One week would be potatoes. We’d have potatoes for breakfast, for lunch -- different ways he would make them, but he would make them and bring them. Another time he would bring a sack or corn. We’d have corn different ways. You know, all sorts of fruit, vegetables, or whatever, but he would bring sacks of them because it was a time of depression. There was no money, no jobs, nothing. Nothing. JOSE JIMENEZ: So what year was this about? JUANA JIMENEZ: You’re going to tell me the year. All I remember is we had food in our stomachs. (laughs) I don’t know. I remember being small. It’s really weird because there’s a lot of things that I would like to remember, and I can’t remember them. JOSE JIMENEZ: Was this the hippie time? JUANA JIMENEZ: [00:23:00] That was at the hippie time. That was the hippie time. JOSE JIMENEZ: So ’67, ’66, ’68 -- JUANA JIMENEZ: Around there. JOSE JIMENEZ: Around there. Okay, so that’s when he brought the sacks of food, and that’s when you said it was a depression. People were kind of poor. Yeah, that sounds like that time. JUANA JIMENEZ: He would go out and work on these farms and just come back and bring back sacks. JOSE JIMENEZ: He would work at the farms? JUANA JIMENEZ: Yeah, he would work at farms. He said they would pick him up or something at a certain place, and he would work, and then come back. 18 �JOSE JIMENEZ: Oh, so this was west Chicago. This was (inaudible) or something like that. JUANA JIMENEZ: Yeah, something like that. JOSE JIMENEZ: Okay. (inaudible) was in west Chicago, and people straight from Puerto Rico would come to work there. And, in fact, dad did work that as a migrant work before, so he was used to working that. So he probably went and worked -- from Chicago he went to work -JUANA JIMENEZ: Yeah, he did. JOSE JIMENEZ: ’Cause he couldn’t find no job. JUANA JIMENEZ: There was no jobs anywhere. JOSE JIMENEZ: But didn’t he work for Armour Food Company? JUANA JIMENEZ: He worked for Armour Food Company. JOSE JIMENEZ: And where was that? Was that the one on [00:24:00] Sedgwick or something? JUANA JIMENEZ: I don’t know. I really don’t know much about -JOSE JIMENEZ: But it was Armour Food. JUANA JIMENEZ: It was Armour Food ’cause I remember also one of our uncles, my dad’s brother -JOSE JIMENEZ: So it was a meat company. JUANA JIMENEZ: Yeah, the meat company. Our uncle would work for the like nuts or something, and he would bring to our house -JOSE JIMENEZ: Peanuts across the street from (inaudible). JUANA JIMENEZ: Yes. They were all these different -- 19 �JOSE JIMENEZ: Superior and [Wells?] Street, it was a peanut factory. JUANA JIMENEZ: -- all these sorts of nuts. And then we were really happy for that. JOSE JIMENEZ: So Superior and Wells Street, the peanut factory there. So a lot of us worked there. A lot the family worked there. So you mentioned the Italian gangs on Fremont and Armitage, around there. But then what about Bissell Street and Dickens? Do you remember that? JUANA JIMENEZ: Bissell and Dickens, yes, I remember that. JOSE JIMENEZ: 2117 Bissell. JUANA JIMENEZ: I liked that place. [00:25:00] It was -JOSE JIMENEZ: Why did you like that place? JUANA JIMENEZ: Well, it was nice. There was a lot of people, especially during the summertime, there was a lot of people that would come out and, you know, have fun, and talk, and things like that. I remember one time that I really didn’t like that you were looking for a job, and I think that’s the time that the cops beat you up or something. JOSE JIMENEZ: I was coming home from work. JUANA JIMENEZ: You were coming home from work on a Friday. JOSE JIMENEZ: I was working at (inaudible), and I was coming, and (inaudible). JUANA JIMENEZ: You were happy because it was your first paycheck, and you already was drinkin’, but you were just walking down. And I was inside the house cooking with my sisters. And, of course, we had to be cooking all the time, and my mom would either be next door talkin’ to somebody, and we had to be fixing the food and having that ready. And someone told me, “Oh, Joseph’s coming,” 20 �you know, [00:26:00] “José is coming, and he’s arguing with someone on the corner.” So I ran over there to see what was going on, and I heard the man said something that he was gonna kill you or something, and he was going to get his gun, and he went inside to get a gun. I remember saying to you, “Everything is fine, don’t worry. Let’s just go home. Let’s go home.” And you just wanted to keep arguing with the man ’cause you were drunk. But I just kept pushing you towards the house and almost -JOSE JIMENEZ: That’s why I thought he was arguing at you (inaudible). JUANA JIMENEZ: Yeah, you thought he was arguing and saying something to me, and he wasn’t. JOSE JIMENEZ: He was talking to some other girl. JUANA JIMENEZ: He was talking to somebody else. JOSE JIMENEZ: Some other girl. JUANA JIMENEZ: And you wanted to save me from -- but I kept pushing you away, “He’s okay, he’s okay.” And I guess he went in the house, and he said he was gonna get a gun or something. Somebody called the cops. I don’t know. And as we were walking down to the house, almost right in front of the house, like a house away from our house, the cops [00:27:00] stopped you and asked you if there was any problem. And I said, “No, there’s no problem. He just came home from work, he’s fine. He’s going home.” And they wanted to see your ID or whatever, I don’t know. The next thing I know they had thrown you on the ground, and they were all -- it was like three guys on top of you trying to beat you up, and hitting you, and kicking your head, and slamming it on the sidewalk. And 21 �I didn’t want them to hurt you, so I went and I put my hand under your head so it wouldn’t hurt you. And they just went like this, and slammed their hand against my body and, of course, I was so thin I just flew and hit my back against this fence that was there. And I just said, “Leave him alone. Leave him alone.” But, of course, they just kept kicking you. And all the neighbors were all around trying to find out what was going on. And then mom came out and [00:28:00] they had taken you away. JOSE JIMENEZ: So mom comes out and what happens? JUANA JIMENEZ: Nothing. She started screaming, and telling ’em that that was her son, that you weren’t doing anything, “Let’s just talk about it to fix it.” And I believe they said -- because my mom was trying to stop them from fighting and hitting you -- I think she grabbed somebody or one of the cops by the mouth or something, and they said -JOSE JIMENEZ: She threw a bottle at them. JUANA JIMENEZ: I don’t know, she did something, and they said that my mom -JOSE JIMENEZ: It broke a tooth. Broke a tooth. JUANA JIMENEZ: -- broke a tooth, yeah. JOSE JIMENEZ: Broke a policeman’s tooth. JUANA JIMENEZ: Broke a policeman’s tooth. JOSE JIMENEZ: ’Cause she just threw a bottle at somebody. Everybody got involved, right? JUANA JIMENEZ: Yeah, everybody got involved. JOSE JIMENEZ: I mean the whole family -- Daisy, you, Myrna. 22 �JUANA JIMENEZ: Yeah, everybody. So they were gonna take my mom because she broke the tooth, and I went with her because I didn’t want her to be alone over there. Of course, she didn’t know any English. JOSE JIMENEZ: So you went with her over there? JUANA JIMENEZ: I went with her. JOSE JIMENEZ: Was she in the police car? JUANA JIMENEZ: [00:29:00] She went in the police car. JOSE JIMENEZ: Not in paddy wagon? JUANA JIMENEZ: Well, I don’t know if it was a paddy wagon. JOSE JIMENEZ: Paddy wagon is like a truck. JUANA JIMENEZ: Yeah, I know. JOSE JIMENEZ: Or was it a police car that she went? I thought I had seen her in a paddy wagon. JUANA JIMENEZ: It could have been a paddy wagon. It could have been. JOSE JIMENEZ: You know, at least for a little bit. JUANA JIMENEZ: I know they took her and I went with her. JOSE JIMENEZ: ’Cause I was half asleep drunk, but I woke up and I thought I saw her. But you drove in the squad car. JUANA JIMENEZ: Yeah, I probably drove in the -JOSE JIMENEZ: Me and mom drove in the paddy wagon. That’s what it was. JUANA JIMENEZ: That’s what it was because I knew you didn’t do anything, and they told her that she broke somebody’s tooth, and I thought, “How could that little old lady (laughs) chip somebody’s tooth?” But there was my mom defending us. 23 �JOSE JIMENEZ: So how did you feel about that? What was that to you? Seeing your mom and your brother being arrested. JUANA JIMENEZ: I had a lot of mixed feelings. You know, it was really [00:30:00] weird because the police are supposed to be helping us, saving us, but I believe that those cops were drunk themselves because you could smell beer or something, the alcohol from them. And the way they acted. And when I went over there and I told them about it, they had to let my mother go, too, because I was a minor and they hurt me. They threw me against a fence. I kept telling them, “Leave him alone,” and they didn’t say anything to me, they just -- with one hand and I flew away. That was me. JOSE JIMENEZ: Okay, then what happened later with the case? Do you know? JUANA JIMENEZ: I don’t know what happened to the case later on. I was never told about anything anyway. But I know that you were in jail for a little bit. And I just kept thinking, “How?” You just got yourself a job, trying to get yourself fixed, [00:31:00] go to work and do things good, and the cops ruin it again. It was really hard growing up especially there that you weren’t there the half the time ’cause -JOSE JIMENEZ: Where was I? JUANA JIMENEZ: You were either with your friends or in jail. And it’s like if we grew up without a brother, really, it was just the three girls. Just the three girls always ’cause you were really never really there. JOSE JIMENEZ: So what did the three girls do to live? JUANA JIMENEZ: To live? Clean, cook, wash clothes -- wash clothes by hand in the bath tub because we had no washing machine. Just like if she would be living 24 �over here, “Oh, I did this all the time in the river.” There was no river there, there was a bath tub. JOSE JIMENEZ: So mom would say, “I did it in the river?” JUANA JIMENEZ: Yeah. So we had to be washing clothes. JOSE JIMENEZ: [00:32:00] In the bath tub water. JUANA JIMENEZ: In the bath tub with one of those -- the boards. JOSE JIMENEZ: Washboards. JUANA JIMENEZ: Washboards. That’s what it was. One of those boards. JOSE JIMENEZ: And where did you dry the clothes? JUANA JIMENEZ: When it was wash day, there was like rope hanging from the living room, dining room, bedrooms, everywhere. You had push away the clothes just to get from one room to the other. That’s the way the clothes were dried because we didn’t even have money to go and wash clothes in the laundromat, or it was too cold to go out to wash the clothes. And then after that, we had to iron all this. And my mother was the type that she would iron t-shirts, underwear, and the bed sheets -- the sheets for the beds, we had to iron the sheets, and pillowcases, and all this other stuff. JOSE JIMENEZ: What about grocery shopping? [00:33:00] Where did you go shopping? JUANA JIMENEZ: I don’t remember ever going shopping with her -- or with my mom or dad, grocery shopping. We had to stay at home until they bought groceries. JOSE JIMENEZ: Now, you’re living in the best place that you like, 2117 Bissell. What happened? Why did you move from there? 25 �JUANA JIMENEZ: Well, we moved from there because at that time, my father was always -- “You have to go to work, you have to go to work.” I was going to high school -- “You have to find work.” JOSE JIMENEZ: You were going to high school where? JUANA JIMENEZ: When we were on Bissell Street. JOSE JIMENEZ: What high school? JUANA JIMENEZ: Waller High School in Chicago. JOSE JIMENEZ: Oh, you went to Waller High School? JUANA JIMENEZ: I went to Waller High School. And I went to Arnold Upper Grade Center, and then I went to Waller High School. And he just kept [00:34:00] saying, “You have to look for a job, you have to look for a job, you have to” -- he just drove me crazy because I had to look for a job because there was no jobs anywhere. Looking for jobs in Chicago -JOSE JIMENEZ: Why would you have to look for a job? JUANA JIMENEZ: Pardon? JOSE JIMENEZ: Why did you have to look for a job? JUANA JIMENEZ: Because there was no money, and, you know, to get to live, and have more bills, and to help my parents out, I had to look for a job and work. I remember my -JOSE JIMENEZ: So he wanted you to go look for work and then give him money. JUANA JIMENEZ: Yeah, and give him money. But I’m slick, I never gave him anything. (laughs) I never gave him anything. But, anyway, the thing was that the very first job that I looked for was with a friend of mine and we both got lost 26 �looking. We went to this nursing home looking for a job, and she says, “Oh, I know exactly where it’s at.” We went from one train to the other, got another train, and then got off of that, got on another train, we got onto the bus. [00:35:00] I don’t know where we were at, but I know we were walking, we were lost. I said, “Well, let’s ask a police officer.” “No.” She didn’t want to ask no police officer. And I said, “Well, okay. Let’s find somewhere where we can call.” She finally called her dad, and in that little car it was her dad, her mom, my mom, my dad, me, and her. We were all squished into one car -- oh, plus my sisters. (laughs) We were all squeezed in one little car when they picked us up and went back. We never got the job, but we looked for the job. My first job that I did finally find was a spot-welding place. Don’t know the name of it, but that’s where I met my neighbor’s cousin. And he offered to take me ’cause he said that he would go that way all the time [00:36:00] so that he could work, so he would offer to take me as a ride. And I would have rather taken the bus, it didn’t bother me. But at that time, things went back and forth, and we just started talking and stuff like that. And he says to me one day, he says, “Let’s go to the movies.” And I had never been to a movie. I never went to the movies before. And he says, “Well, you don’t have to go to work. Nobody will find out that you went to the movies.” I say, “Okay, let’s go to the movies.” Well, we went to the movies, things got a little bit late, he says, “Now you can’t go home because if you go home, your mom’s gonna -- you know, they’re gonna get you because they’re gonna say, ‘Where were you?’” I says, “Well, I’ll tell them that I was with you,” 27 �and stuff like this. He says, “She’s not gonna believe that we didn’t do anything, you with a guy.” So he kinda blackmailed me. JOSE JIMENEZ: Who was this guy? JUANA JIMENEZ: His name is [00:37:00] Michael (inaudible). JOSE JIMENEZ: So Michael. Just say Michael. JUANA JIMENEZ: Mike, yes. JOSE JIMENEZ: And this guy was from the school? JUANA JIMENEZ: No, this guy was not from the school. JOSE JIMENEZ: From the neighborhood? JUANA JIMENEZ: He was the cousin that went to visit -- he would come to visit his cousin next door. JOSE JIMENEZ: From Bissell? JUANA JIMENEZ: From Bissell. That’s how I met him. JOSE JIMENEZ: So you met him like sitting on the stairs? People used to sit on the stairs. JUANA JIMENEZ: Yeah, people used to sit on the stairs. And she said, “Oh, this is my cousin. He can give you a ride.” And things got back and forth, and, well, like I said, he came and he kind of blackmailed me. And I had to stay at this place for a while, and my mom was looking for me. JOSE JIMENEZ: You stayed for a while? JUANA JIMENEZ: Yeah, I had to stay there a few days -- forever almost because -JOSE JIMENEZ: Okay, so that was a boyfriend you had. 28 �JUANA JIMENEZ: Yeah, well, at that time he became a boyfriend. But [00:38:00] he mistreated me, also. JOSE JIMENEZ: But he blackmailed you. JUANA JIMENEZ: He blackmailed me into staying with him. JOSE JIMENEZ: He suckered you in. JUANA JIMENEZ: He suckered me in, yeah. JOSE JIMENEZ: But how can you be suckered in? JUANA JIMENEZ: Because I was a very naïve person. At that time, remember, we didn’t live -- we didn’t know anything about the streets. All we knew was cooking, cleaning, and staying in the house, and that’s -- we didn’t know anything about the outside. And that was the first time that I went to the movies. First time I went to the movies with that guy. JOSE JIMENEZ: With this guy named Michael? JUANA JIMENEZ: Yes. And so after that, we -- of course, I made him so that I could call my mom and let them know where I was. He went by the house, and my sister had a boyfriend around that area, and Michael knew her boyfriend, they were friends, he told her [00:39:00] that I was with him, and she should tell my mom ’cause my mom was going crazy. And I was already 17, almost going on -that happened like a few weeks before my 18th birthday. Eighteen, and people think, “Wow, 18 and she didn’t have a brain.” Yes because we didn’t know anything about nothing. Things that women should know that I would tell my kids -- that my granddaughter now knows and my granddaughter is nine. She knows all about this. She knows how babies come from -- the real way, and how her 29 �body changes and everything. I never knew any of this because my mother never told me. The first time I ever knew that my body was gonna change and I was gonna get my period or something was from a doctor. And I remember screaming at that doctor saying, “I don’t want it. Take it away. Give me a pill or something. Take that away because I don’t want it.” [00:40:00] And he’s telling me how my body was gonna change and everything because my mother never talked about this stuff to us because that was voodoo, that was stuff that women don’t talk about. As a matter of fact, she would tell us that you could get pregnant by holding hands or a little kiss. What did I know? JOSE JIMENEZ: Your mom? JUANA JIMENEZ: My mom. JOSE JIMENEZ: Mom told you that? JUANA JIMENEZ: Oh, yes. We couldn’t even hold hands. Imagine I was so naïve the very first kiss I got from a boy, I ran and told my mom, “Mom, I just got a kiss, this so and so person kissed me.” She says, “He kissed you on your cheek?” “No, he kissed me on my lips.” (laughter) I was such a dummy. I didn’t know anything because she wouldn’t tell us anything about life. And this is how I got suckered into staying with this guy because -- and I believed him. If I go back home, I was gonna get beat up. I was gonna get really, really badly beat up and they were gonna [00:41:00] throw me out because I stayed with a guy. Believing him, I stayed with him. And look who beat me up? He beat me up. My parents didn’t, he did. JOSE JIMENEZ: Your parents never beat you up? 30 �JUANA JIMENEZ: Beat me up? No. Spanked? Yes. JOSE JIMENEZ: Who spanked you? JUANA JIMENEZ: (laughs) My dad every once in a while. I was not a very good girl (laughs) ’cause I had a mouth. Being not a good girl is having a mouth. I would get tired of things. JOSE JIMENEZ: I was gonna say so the good thing about -- looking at the good side of that is that all those years you didn’t know anything about sex and all that. JUANA JIMENEZ: Nothing. JOSE JIMENEZ: So that means you weren’t abused, right? I mean all those years, never being abused. JUANA JIMENEZ: Abused from my parents? JOSE JIMENEZ: From parents or from anybody. Were you abused? I mean you don’t have to answer it. JUANA JIMENEZ: I’m not gonna answer that. JOSE JIMENEZ: [00:42:00] Okay, all right. (inaudible) I mean we don’t have to answer that. JUANA JIMENEZ: No, I’m not gonna answer that. JOSE JIMENEZ: Okay, so now Michael is there, and now you left Michael and you went back home or what happened? JUANA JIMENEZ: Once I was with him, he would lock me in the house ’cause he was afraid I was gonna leave ’cause he was right. If he left the door open, I would leave ’cause I wanted to get out of there. JOSE JIMENEZ: So was Michael Spanish? 31 �JUANA JIMENEZ: He was Puerto Rican. JOSE JIMENEZ: Oh, he was Puerto Rican? Michael was Latin? Okay. JUANA JIMENEZ: [Algarin?] or something. That’s what he said his last name was, [Algarin?]. So he would lock me -- the door that we had was like one of those skeleton key things. JOSE JIMENEZ: (inaudible). JUANA JIMENEZ: Joey. He would have the little skeleton key. He could lock the door from the inside or lock the door from the outside. So when he went to work, he would lock the door. If there was a fire, I would burn in because I couldn’t get out. [00:43:00] But the neighbors next door could hear me screaming sometimes because he would beat me up. JOSE JIMENEZ: So he lived on Bissell Street? JUANA JIMENEZ: No, he didn’t live on Bissell Street. He lived on Francisco, close to Humboldt Park. JOSE JIMENEZ: But he came over to Bissell. JUANA JIMENEZ: He would go to Bissell because he had his cousin that lived next door to our house. JOSE JIMENEZ: And that’s where you met him on the porch? JUANA JIMENEZ: And that’s where I met him. JOSE JIMENEZ: And then he lied to you -- I mean he tricked you. JUANA JIMENEZ: He tricked me into staying with him which I did. And I remember one time to escape from him, I got out through the kitchen window, opened the window because I couldn’t open the door. I got up through the window, came out 32 �to the ledge, it was like a first floor thing, came out to the ledge, and jumped from that floor all the way down. And I just jumped. When I jumped, and came back up, there was he -- he was standing right there in front of me. [00:44:00] So what happened was that that day (audio cuts out) “I just wanna go home. I want to go back to my parents.” And he says, “Okay, well, let’s go up and get your purse so we can go.” Well, the wrong thing to do ’cause I went back up, he locked the door, and beat me up again. The next day he locked me up real good, locked everything up, I couldn’t go anywhere. But the bed, there was another door -there was the bed and a door right behind the bed. I pulled that bed, and I don’t know how I got my strength, but as soon as he left -- as soon as he left -- I pulled that bed out, and I got the hinges out from the door, and I pulled the door out. And when I went out, the first thing I looked, when I stopped, was the lady next door. And she looked at me, she says, “Don’t be scared. Don’t be scared. Just run and get out.” ’Cause she could hear me every night screaming and crying. She says, “Just run. Just run. He’s not gonna [00:45:00] be around, I won’t tell him anything. Just run and get out.” When I ran, I ran to where the church -JOSE JIMENEZ: The Young Lords church. JUANA JIMENEZ: The Young Lords church was at that corner. JOSE JIMENEZ: This is when the Young Lords were political, they weren’t a gang. JUANA JIMENEZ: No, they weren’t a gang. Not at that time. And I ran down to that section, and I talked to you, and then you said, “What happened?” And I didn’t have to say much because you could see my face, the way I was, anyway. And I also told you what happened, and you said, “Well, just stay here. You’re gonna 33 �stay away. Just stay on this side close by. We’re gonna just see what we’re gonna do.” And you took me, I remember, to my friend’s house, my best friend’s house, and I stayed there. Then you came back for me. When you came back for me, you took me back to where he was at, [00:46:00] and you kinda pushed him. And he was all bruised up, I guess. He got beat up, too. I was never happy for anybody to get beat up, but for him, at that time, I really didn’t care. I was kinda happy he got it, too. I kept telling myself inside, “I told him this was gonna happen. I told him.” (laughs) I’m glad for my brother. He says, “Oh, look what I let him do to me.” And I kept thinking, “Yeah, right. They hold him down while Joseph beat him up. That’s fine with me. I don’t care.” I don’t want to believe anything he said -- “Oh, but I’m sorry. I love you. I love you. I’m gonna marry you.” Didn’t believe anything he had to say. From there, you took me back to mom’s. At that time, I already almost couldn’t even walk because jumping from the day before, jumping from the first story down, I was all bruised up. I was really hurting. [00:47:00] And when you took me back to mom’s house, my bedroom wasn’t mine anymore, it was my sister’s bedroom. My mom says, “Well, you left, we gave your bedroom to somebody else.” And I remember sleeping in the living room on one of those folding -JOSE JIMENEZ: So did she want to take you back? JUANA JIMENEZ: Yeah, she took me back. She took me back. And the next day, my father, we went to Aurora, and -JOSE JIMENEZ: This was on Claremont Street. When you were living on Claremont. We started on Bissell, but by that time -- 34 �JUANA JIMENEZ: No. JOSE JIMENEZ: -- mom was living on Claremont. JUANA JIMENEZ: Yeah, then mom was living already on Claremont. We started on Bissell, and then from there we moved. JOSE JIMENEZ: North Avenue and Claremont. JUANA JIMENEZ: Yeah, then we moved and went down to Claremont. And then from Claremont, that’s where we moved -- when I went back ’cause I didn’t know that they were already there, and they took -- then we went down to Aurora. JOSE JIMENEZ: What happened after that? You had a child from him, right? JUANA JIMENEZ: Yes, I did. [00:48:00] My son. I was pregnant, which I didn’t know that I was pregnant. And I kept thinking, “Oh, my God. How am I gonna have this baby without a father?” Didn’t think about that a woman can do it. I kept thinking, “No, he needs a father, he needs a father.” So I went back with him. And all I did was go back with him, the slapping and the beating up again. I ran out right the next day. I went out, went to this church that was close by, and I talked to the priest there, and he says, “You know, you’re of age, if you want, you can stay living here in this unwed mother’s home that he knew.” And I said, “Fine.” Didn’t bother me. But, of course, there were girls there that were giving up their baby, but I wasn’t gonna give up my baby. So I had to work there for my stay. I worked there. And, well, after that, he kept trying to look for us, [00:49:00] and we moved from where we at in my cousin’s house in Aurora, they found another apartment or another house to rent on Claim. It was on Claim Street. JOSE JIMENEZ: Claim in Aurora. 35 �JUANA JIMENEZ: In Aurora. JOSE JIMENEZ: Okay. Let’s go on back a little bit. JUANA JIMENEZ: That’s really far back now. (laughs) JOSE JIMENEZ: But we’ll go back a little bit. Did I ask you about mom’s catechism classes or no? JUANA JIMENEZ: No, you didn’t. JOSE JIMENEZ: Okay, do you remember those? JUANA JIMENEZ: I remember, but she was giving catechism classes -- I think it was even in that one basement. JOSE JIMENEZ: By Dayton Street, right? JUANA JIMENEZ: Yeah, around there. JOSE JIMENEZ: Yeah, we lived near -- we lived on one side of the street then we moved to the other. JUANA JIMENEZ: Then we [00:50:00] moved the other street. JOSE JIMENEZ: (inaudible). JUANA JIMENEZ: We kept moving from one side to the other, we were like gypsies just moving from one side to the other. JOSE JIMENEZ: Dayton near Willow Street. Near Willow. JUANA JIMENEZ: Yeah. She did a lot of catechism there. And that’s where my sister -JOSE JIMENEZ: What was that about? What was that about? JUANA JIMENEZ: Well, I guess she was involved in all this stuff of the church. And one day, she comes up and she says that she’s gonna -- there was some kids 36 �that were gonna be coming in so they could do their communion and stuff. And I had to, of course, be there, too. We were like -- well, I just did what I was told. She says, “Stay here. You gotta learn this and you have to learn about God.” And we just had to do what we were told. JOSE JIMENEZ: That’s where your sister what? You were saying. JUANA JIMENEZ: Well, because Daisy was too small. She was about four, she wasn’t quite five yet. And you had to be a certain age to do your communion. And she wasn’t gonna be [00:51:00] the one in the classes, but since she was close, she was very smart, she learned everything -- everything. And they let her make her first communion ’cause when they were doing the test, and they said that she couldn’t because she was too young, she started to cry. And when they gave her the test to see if she knew it, she knew it better than anybody. Mom didn’t even give her classes, she was just there close by, and she listened to everything. She listened. JOSE JIMENEZ: How were the classes? Do you remember seeing any of the classes? I mean ’cause mom didn’t go to school, so how did she do that? JUANA JIMENEZ: No. She didn’t go to school, but -JOSE JIMENEZ: So how could she teach people if she didn’t go to school? JUANA JIMENEZ: Because she didn’t go to school, but her sister taught her how to read and write. She didn’t know how to write real well, but she -JOSE JIMENEZ: Her sister, (inaudible)? JUANA JIMENEZ: Yeah. JOSE JIMENEZ: So she learned how to write. 37 �JUANA JIMENEZ: She learned how to read. JOSE JIMENEZ: Or write. JUANA JIMENEZ: Yeah, she could read. JOSE JIMENEZ: So how did she run the classes then? JUANA JIMENEZ: [00:52:00] Just by learning by heart all the -JOSE JIMENEZ: Learning by heart? JUANA JIMENEZ: Everything was learned by heart. JOSE JIMENEZ: In other words, the kids had to repeat everything? JUANA JIMENEZ: Everything. Everything. JOSE JIMENEZ: She would say a sentence and they would have to repeat it? JUANA JIMENEZ: And they would have to repeat it. And she would just teach ’em what she knew. She taught them everything that she knew. JOSE JIMENEZ: They had to repeat her with respect, too, right? JUANA JIMENEZ: Well, of course. JOSE JIMENEZ: Didn’t they have to say, “Yes, mam,” “No, mam.” JUANA JIMENEZ: Yes, (laughs) that was it. JOSE JIMENEZ: Okay, so they would say, “Yes, mam. Christ rose from the dead on the third day.” “No, mam. He didn’t do this, he didn’t do that.” That’s the way she taught it? JUANA JIMENEZ: Yeah. But she would say it in Spanish. It was, “Si, señora.” JOSE JIMENEZ: Yeah, “Si, señora,” in Spanish. JUANA JIMENEZ: “Si, señora.” JOSE JIMENEZ: But that’s the way she taught? 38 �JUANA JIMENEZ: That’s the way she taught. JOSE JIMENEZ: So everybody had it memorized. JUANA JIMENEZ: And it was the old way of learning and teaching, the way she -JOSE JIMENEZ: Did she graduate a lot of kids? JUANA JIMENEZ: Yeah, a lot of them. A lot of them. JOSE JIMENEZ: How many were in a class at a time about? Thirty? Twenty? JUANA JIMENEZ: No, I think that was [00:53:00] too many. They were a lot. But in one class -JOSE JIMENEZ: Twenty-five? JUANA JIMENEZ: Could be about 25. It was a lot. There was a lot. A lot, a lot of kids. She even taught a lot of kids for the altar boys. JOSE JIMENEZ: To become altar boys? JUANA JIMENEZ: To become altar boys. JOSE JIMENEZ: She’d train ’em? JUANA JIMENEZ: She would train ’em. She did a lot of that, too. JOSE JIMENEZ: You said you went to Waller, and you went to what’s that other school? Arnold? JUANA JIMENEZ: Arnold Upper Grade Center. JOSE JIMENEZ: Okay. You went for three years there? JUANA JIMENEZ: I went there for -- it was sixth, seventh, eighth -- the two years in Arnold Upper Grade Center. JOSE JIMENEZ: Okay. And how was that? JUANA JIMENEZ: It was different. 39 �JOSE JIMENEZ: Were there Spanish kids or no? JUANA JIMENEZ: There were a lot of Black people. [00:54:00] There were a lot of Black kids. Some Spanish kids. I didn’t like the Catholic school that we went to. They were all high-class American kids. Out of the whole school there was one Black girl, I remember, and just a few Puerto Ricans. The rest was all white. All white kids which they thought they were in a (inaudible) Catholic School, they were better than anybody. We were very quiet. And I really didn’t like it. And it was really hard for me, and I did fail. I failed to go to sixth grade, I failed there, and I told my mom, “If you don’t take me out of this school, I don’t want to go back to school.” So that’s when she put me in a public school. And I went to a public school in sixth grade, and from there, then I went to [00:55:00] Arnold Upper Grade Center in seventh and eighth grade. JOSE JIMENEZ: So that’s St. Teresa’s where you had all these white kids. JUANA JIMENEZ: All white kids. JOSE JIMENEZ: And when you say white you mean like Italian, Irish? JUANA JIMENEZ: Italian, Irish -- to me, they were all white. Anybody that wasn’t Puerto Rican was white -- or either Puerto Rican or Black. Other than that, everybody else was -- to me, there were just three people: white, Blacks, Puerto Ricans. JOSE JIMENEZ: So that’s all? There was white? JUANA JIMENEZ: Yeah, it was just white, Puerto Ricans, and one Black. JOSE JIMENEZ: Okay, that was it. Just three races. 40 �JUANA JIMENEZ: Yeah, three races to me. That’s the only people that was around until I went to public school. When I went to public school, you see all these different people. And I was very popular, and I loved sixth grade. I was glad I failed. (laughs) JOSE JIMENEZ: At Arnold? This was at Arnold? JUANA JIMENEZ: No, this was not at Arnold. This was the school before Arnold which I don’t remember the name of the school, but I was there just for one year. That was in sixth grade. And then from -JOSE JIMENEZ: [00:56:00] Sexton? Not Sexton. Newberry? JUANA JIMENEZ: It was maybe Newberry School. Newberry School. JOSE JIMENEZ: That was on Willow Street. JUANA JIMENEZ: I think it was Newberry School. JOSE JIMENEZ: Burling and Willow. JUANA JIMENEZ: It had to be because I remember that name, Newberry. But then after that, at Arnold -JOSE JIMENEZ: I remember Newberry before we went to St. Teresa’s, and then St. Teresa -- but you went to Arnold. JUANA JIMENEZ: I went to Arnold Upper Grade Center which was nice. And remember -JOSE JIMENEZ: So you probably went to Newberry. JUANA JIMENEZ: -- at that time, the girls could not wear pants. Of course, at that time, it was like miniskirts, and mini dresses, and stuff like this. But to school, you were not allowed to wear pants at all even in the freezing whether that we 41 �had to walk six, seven blocks down just to go to school -- [00:57:00] below zero weather. You’d go to school freezing until they finally said, “Well, the girls could wear pants, but under the skirt.” As soon as they got in the school, they had to hurry up and take those pants off and put ’em in their locker. They were not allowed to be walking around with the pants. But it was nice. I liked it. I remember graduating from there and everything. JOSE JIMENEZ: Do you remember any of your classmates? JUANA JIMENEZ: One Mexican girl. Oh, God, I can’t remember her name. This one Mexican girl. And another girl which became my best friend, an American girl, her name was [Sandra Morales?] because her father was a Puerto Rican. Her mother was American, (laugher) her father was a Puerto Rican, and she lived close by. It was Sandra Morales, she was my best friend, and that’s why I named my oldest daughter [Sandy?]. It was Sandra, her name. JOSE JIMENEZ: Okay, this was from Arnold. JUANA JIMENEZ: It was from [00:58:00] Arnold. JOSE JIMENEZ: Were you in gym or anything? What kind of classes? JUANA JIMENEZ: Oh, yes, I went to gym class. And, of course, Joseph, Cha-Cha, was very famous there because even the teacher in the gym class knew you. He says, “But your brother did this, and he was a good student, how is your brother?” And I thought, “He’s fine.” (laughs) Just like, “Who is this guy telling me about my brother?” (laughs) He wanted me to be better than my brother because he knew that my brother was always in gangs and stuff like this, and getting himself in trouble, and he didn’t want me to go through that. And gym 42 �class was okay. Never got beat up from anybody in school there, in that school at least. (laughs) [00:59:00] But there were some Black girls that were bothering me one time, but this other group of Black girls said, “Hey, leave her alone, she didn’t do anything.” They were really nice to me, but not in gym. When they played kickball, they kicked that ball and hit your face, hit your arm, hit whatever it was and they did it hard. (laughs) JOSE JIMENEZ: Kickball or dodgeball? JUANA JIMENEZ: Dodgeball. JOSE JIMENEZ: Dodgeball. So you played a lot of dodgeball? JUANA JIMENEZ: Oh, yes. And I really got all the bruises at that time for it. But it was okay. After I graduated -- of course, my mother never went to my graduation class -- or my father. Never went to school, I never saw them inside a school for nothing. Nothing. I remember being in Arnold School, and I had to go to my sister’s -- [01:00:00] one of these recital things that she had from school. And I had to go from one -- from my school, skip class to go and see what she was doing so at least a family member could go ’cause my mother wasn’t gonna go. I asked a teacher for permission, the teacher said at least she knows where I was at, but she couldn’t give me permission, but try to get to school as soon as I can. Said at least she knew where I was at. Anything my sisters had for school, I would go. I would skip school just so I could go what my sisters were doing ’cause my mom and dad never -- ’cause in Puerto Rico here, they never went to anything like this. In Puerto Rico, you either go to school, learn what you had to do, come home. You never had to go to the school and find out how your kids 43 �are doing unless they were fighting. That’s about it. So I did all the [01:01:00] going to the school for my sisters. And then from there, when I graduated, then I went to Waller High School. JOSE JIMENEZ: How far did you go at Waller? JUANA JIMENEZ: In Waller, I was a freshman and I didn’t even finish freshman because my father kept fighting -- “Go look for job. Go look for a job.” At that time, it was Blacks against whites. It was the time of just fighting all the time with the Blacks and the whites. All the time pulling down the fire alarm -JOSE JIMENEZ: (inaudible). Pulling the alarm. JUANA JIMENEZ: Pulling the alarm, a lot of riots. So my father would wait for me -JOSE JIMENEZ: A lot of kids would pull the alarm? JUANA JIMENEZ: They would pull the alarm, and everybody had to run outside, and you’d get trampled down the stairs, really hurt bad, just to get out of the building. So my father, he got tired of waiting for me, he would take me to school -- and this is in high school -- he would take me to school, and when [01:02:00] I got out of school at the end of the day, he was out there waiting for me just so nothing would happen until he saw that everything was fine. Then I could go home on my home. Or the times he was working he wouldn’t pick me up, but when he wasn’t working, he’d be there waiting for me to make sure I was gonna get home fine. JOSE JIMENEZ: What did you think about the Young Lords? JUANA JIMENEZ: The Young Lords as a gang or Young Lords -JOSE JIMENEZ: What did you think when they were a gang? 44 �JUANA JIMENEZ: All I could think was, “Oh, wow. My brother’s the head of these guys.” (laughs) I was happy ’cause you were the one -- like the president of the gang. You were the head one there, and I thought that was cool. But then after all this time that they would come to the house [01:03:00] looking for you all the time because someone stole the car, or they look everywhere -JOSE JIMENEZ: Who would come? JUANA JIMENEZ: The police. The police would come to the house with their flashlight going into the bedrooms. And my mother’s over here yelling at the police, “Get out of the girls’ room! Get out of the girls’ room!” I remember -JOSE JIMENEZ: Detectives or regular cops? JUANA JIMENEZ: Both. There were detectives and cops with them, together, because there were some that wore plain clothes and some that had their uniforms. JOSE JIMENEZ: And this was during the gang? JUANA JIMENEZ: During the gang time. JOSE JIMENEZ: They were looking for stolen stuff? JUANA JIMENEZ: They were really looking for you to take you away for stolen things. They had it in for you guys all the time. Whenever anything happened, it was the Young Lords Organization -- or not an organization, the Young Lords gang at that time that did it. JOSE JIMENEZ: Okay, but I mean I don’t -- JUANA JIMENEZ: I remember that you did go to jail for something. I don’t know if it was for stealing a car or something. I really can’t remember, [01:04:00] but I 45 �know that you were in this institute really far away. I remember driving down just to visit you with mom, and dad, and someone else that they found to take them down. JOSE JIMENEZ: Oh, Vandalia. Vandalia, Illinois. Southern Illinois. JUANA JIMENEZ: Yes. JOSE JIMENEZ: So that was for the stabbing. JUANA JIMENEZ: Oh, that was for the stabbing. You stayed there for a while. JOSE JIMENEZ: Six months. JUANA JIMENEZ: I remember that you would say, “Oh, they want me to work out here.” And you would do things on purpose so that they can just leave you in solitary so you wouldn’t have to work in the sun. You’d be out away from the sun and stuff like that you would say. JOSE JIMENEZ: Yeah, 15 days in the hole because I refused to work. But it was better than working in the sun. Okay, so you went with mom to Vandalia to visit me there? JUANA JIMENEZ: Yeah, I remember that. JOSE JIMENEZ: So how did you feel on that trip that you were visiting your brother that’s in jail? JUANA JIMENEZ: Oh, I was happy to at least see you. I really didn’t think bad about anything. I thought, to me, it was just part of [01:05:00] life. We’re gonna go see my brother finally, and I hadn’t seen you for a long time, and half the time you were never there. 46 �JOSE JIMENEZ: So that was when it was a gang. So how did you feel when it was a political group? JUANA JIMENEZ: Well, when it was a political group, I thought it was really good because you were really helping the Puerto Rican community. You were helping so that at least the parents can go to work and the kids can have a daycare and stuff, they can have good breakfast. You were trying to help the people. JOSE JIMENEZ: You mean there was breakfast for children (inaudible)? JUANA JIMENEZ: There was breakfast for children. JOSE JIMENEZ: And then there was also a daycare center. JUANA JIMENEZ: And a daycare center. JOSE JIMENEZ: And so you thought that the Young Lords were helping at that time. JUANA JIMENEZ: I thought that was helping a lot. JOSE JIMENEZ: Now, did you know some of those Young Lords or no? JUANA JIMENEZ: No, not really because I was not allowed to even associate with any of them. JOSE JIMENEZ: Even the women? You didn’t know the other women? JUANA JIMENEZ: No. I would know them by far away. It’s not like we would stay there, [01:06:00] and stay talking, and have a conversation with them at all. Not at all. (audio cuts out) allowed to. You especially would not want us to have any contact with any of them ’cause you didn’t want us to get in trouble in case something would happen. They wouldn’t blame -JOSE JIMENEZ: What kind of trouble? 47 �JUANA JIMENEZ: Well, like if they would have any fights, or any stealing, or anything so they wouldn’t start saying, “Oh, they’re also part of a gang,” or whatever. We were never allowed to even associate with anything. And I remember one time there was a party, and one of your gang members picked me out to dance, and when they found out that you were -- I was your sister, right away he stopped dancing and took me back to sit down. JOSE JIMENEZ: But this was in the gang time? JUANA JIMENEZ: That was the gang group. JOSE JIMENEZ: That was the gang time. JUANA JIMENEZ: I remember that part. JOSE JIMENEZ: [01:07:00] I was missing for a few years, right? I had to go underground when it was a political group. Do you recall that? JUANA JIMENEZ: I remember when nobody knew where you were at. JOSE JIMENEZ: Okay, so what happened? Because I think you made a video later, too, or something like that. You sent me a video that you made with the whole family. I mean I still have the video (inaudible). JUANA JIMENEZ: Of the whole family? JOSE JIMENEZ: You just put together like a family video and you sent it to me. From here. You were living (inaudible). JUANA JIMENEZ: From Caguas and stuff? JOSE JIMENEZ: Yeah. JUANA JIMENEZ: Yeah. ’Cause you wanted to see some pictures and stuff and I did -- 48 �JOSE JIMENEZ: But that was after I came back. I was hiding. JUANA JIMENEZ: After you came back. After you came back. JOSE JIMENEZ: So where do you think I was? And where do you think people were? JUANA JIMENEZ: Well, I didn’t know where you were. You wouldn’t say anything. At first, I thought you were in jail somewhere. I thought, “Well, maybe he’s in jail, he doesn’t want no one to know where he’s at, [01:08:00] so just leave it alone.” I know mother would cry a lot because she didn’t know anything from you. I just kept saying, “Don’t worry. He’ll be fine. If something was wrong, we would hear something from you or somebody would say something.” My mom, she suffered a lot. JOSE JIMENEZ: Did the police ever come by the house after the Young Lords were political? JUANA JIMENEZ: If they did, I wasn’t around to see anything. JOSE JIMENEZ: Oh, you weren’t living there anymore? JUANA JIMENEZ: No. JOSE JIMENEZ: Okay ’cause you got remarried and that. JUANA JIMENEZ: Yeah, then I got remarried. Once I left Michael, I had a baby, and I kept thinking, “Well, this is not for me. And I’m not going to let this guy kill me or my baby.” So I just left him, and after a while I remarried. Not remarried [01:09:00] because I wasn’t married with Michael, but I got married with Willie. JOSE JIMENEZ: You got married with Willie right around that time. How did you meet Willie? 49 �JUANA JIMENEZ: I met Willie because since I was in the unwed mother’s home, my mom and my dad would go visit me, and Willie was my cousin’s (inaudible) friend. And since they were friends, they would go down in the car, driving down, and sometimes Willie would drive or (inaudible) would drive, they would drive ’em down to where I was at, and we met each other. I got tired of staying there, listening to girls cry because they didn’t want to leave their babies and their parents are making them leave their babies there. And I told my mom, I says, “Mom, I really want to go home. I’m tired of this. [01:10:00] I’m tired of hearing these girls cry. This is horrible.” And, “Do you think dad will let me come home?” “I don’t care what he says. I’m gonna pick you up right now.” And she got somebody and they went to pick me up. And I believe that was in March. The month was March, and the next day when my cousin came, he brought Willie also. And all I kept thinking was, “Oh, cute guy. Cute guy.” (laughs) JOSE JIMENEZ: Okay, so now you’re with Willie and then you’re raising the kids. You were involved in different community stuff, no? I mean what kind of community stuff were you involved in? JUANA JIMENEZ: In which community? JOSE JIMENEZ: I’m wondering about with the scouts or something? What was that about? JUANA JIMENEZ: With the boy scouts, that’s when my oldest son, Joey, [01:11:00] he was a lot older -- well, he went to boy scouts from St. Joseph’s church here in Aurora. And then he just kept going, and we helped out a little bit. That wasn’t too bad. But we helped out more with boy scouts after we came back to Puerto 50 �Rico to live. And my youngest, Danny, he was with the boy scouts, and we did a lot of stuff there with them. JOSE JIMENEZ: What do you call your position? Didn’t you become a member of it? JUANA JIMENEZ: There, once, I was a secretary for them for just a little bit. And we were always just involved with it. If they had anything -- like for their 50-mile hike, we’d be walking with them. Or if they had camping, we’d be camping out with them. Of course, the parents on one side and the scouts on the other side. JOSE JIMENEZ: And this is in [01:12:00] Puerto Rico? JUANA JIMENEZ: This is in Puerto Rico. But in Aurora, no, Joey just went down to the boy scouts, but we weren’t that involved. And then I tried at one time to be with the cub scouts, but it really didn’t work out. I guess I didn’t know what I was doing really, so I just gave it up. It was very different so I didn’t really know what I was doing. JOSE JIMENEZ: Some of the stuff that the Young Lords were fighting for -- they were fighting against police brutality, they were fighting for self-determination for Puerto Rico, they were fighting for ex-offenders, they were fighting for free breakfast for children, like you said, the daycare center. How did you feel about those things? JUANA JIMENEZ: [01:13:00] Well, I thought that that was good that they were helping finally instead of being a gang. Instead of beating up on people, or stealing, or doing bad things, all of a sudden they changed and were -- they turned their whole -JOSE JIMENEZ: Did you see a change or were they just saying it? 51 �JUANA JIMENEZ: No, I did see a change. JOSE JIMENEZ: What kind of a -- JUANA JIMENEZ: You could see the change in the people. The way the people would talk about it -- more of the people around, that was around saying and talking about it. And I kept thinking, “Is it the gang they’re talking about?” Because I wasn’t sure about the organization and the gang part. To me, at that time, it was the same thing except I just kept thinking, “They’re just better. They’re not being bad anymore. They turned good.” (laughs) JOSE JIMENEZ: So you’re saying they turned good. [01:14:00] But you couldn’t see the difference that much. JUANA JIMENEZ: I saw a little difference but not too much because remember we were always inside. If people were talking, we were always taught not to get into conversations. Never. You were always behind, go to the room, go somewhere else. “We’re talking here. Can’t listen.” JOSE JIMENEZ: There was a community right there in Lincoln Park. Let’s say from Larrabee all the way to Racine, from North Avenue to Diversey. There was like a Puerto Rican community there, too. So have you been to Chicago lately? JUANA JIMENEZ: Have I been to Chicago lately? JOSE JIMENEZ: Yeah, when was the last time you were in Chicago? JUANA JIMENEZ: Last time I was in Chicago was last year, I believe. JOSE JIMENEZ: Have you seen that there’s -- at Lincoln Park, that neighborhood. JUANA JIMENEZ: I didn’t go down to Lincoln Park, around there. 52 �JOSE JIMENEZ: [01:15:00] Have you heard that there’s no more Puerto Ricans living there? JUANA JIMENEZ: Yes, I did hear. And the last time I went was many, many, many, many years back. We just kinda passed by just to see what the old neighborhood looked like. It looked nothing -- nothing. And I kept thinking, “Wow, it must be like rich people now or something,” because it didn’t look like it before. You would go before, the stairs -- like you just on there and there was no plant life or something. And now it’s like big old fences. JOSE JIMENEZ: Did you care that all those people moved out? JUANA JIMENEZ: Yes, I did care because it kinda bothered me. I kept thinking, “Wow, it’s not like that anymore.” It would have been nice to bring back memories about how it looked before. It looked too clean. (laughs) [01:16:00] I don’t know. JOSE JIMENEZ: But I mean a lot of Puerto Ricans moved out of there. JUANA JIMENEZ: A lot? I think everybody moved out. I don’t think there’s any of them in there. I really don’t know. I really can’t say if they are living there or not, but it didn’t really look like that. JOSE JIMENEZ: So how do you feel that they were kinda pushed out? JUANA JIMENEZ: Didn’t really like it because it seems like you’re pushing us away from things -- “Let somebody else come in because you guys can’t afford this place. Just by looking at you, you can’t afford this place.” And you feel bad about it. And I’ll give you an example. I went to Chicago once, and I went to a store, and I said, “Well, I want to get this.” And, “Well, this costs so and so.” 53 �“So? Like I don’t have money for it [01:17:00] because I’m a Puerto Rican or am a Latin person or something? I’m asking about it because I know I could afford it.” I was at that store because I knew I could afford whatever they had there, or whatever it was that I wanted to buy. You feel like they’re degrading you. JOSE JIMENEZ: This was where? Where was this at? JUANA JIMENEZ: This was -- oh, God. It was a women’s store. JOSE JIMENEZ: In Lincoln Park? JUANA JIMENEZ: No, not in Lincoln Park. Not in Lincoln Park. I can’t remember, but that wasn’t even that long ago either. And I just kept thinking -JOSE JIMENEZ: Well, this neighborhood changed, everybody moved away, and so - JUANA JIMENEZ: Everybody moved away. JOSE JIMENEZ: Was it a choice? Did they have any choice to make? JUANA JIMENEZ: I think they didn’t have a choice because they just kept raising the rent always. Kept raising the rent, kept raising the rent, and then we couldn’t afford it. So we would have to look for [01:18:00] somewhere else to live, you know? And then after they were raising the rent, the person that had their homes there, they were obligated to sell their homes to -- (phone rings). (break in audio) JOSE JIMENEZ: How do you feel because, you know, the Young Lords, they were a gang and then they changed. Then they wanted to help the community. But they were attacked by the government because they were also fighting against people being kicked out of their homes, displaced, like the city. So they were 54 �fighting with Mayor Daley and they were fighting the government because they wanted Puerto Rico to govern themselves whether you agree or not. But because of that -JUANA JIMENEZ: At that time -JOSE JIMENEZ: At that time what? JUANA JIMENEZ: At that time, to me, I really didn’t think anything of it because I had nothing to do with [01:19:00] political stuff. I just kept thinking, “Why does he keep attacking” -- I think they’re doing fine, politics or whatever. I’m never into anything of politics. Never because I don’t like politics. But now, you think back and you think, “Wow, why would they want Puerto Rico to govern itself?” Thinking, “Wow. Why would they want to go back to the stone ages?” You’re trying to move ahead, and Puerto Rico’s not moving ahead. It’s in a standstill, just like moving back a little bit -- inch by inch, but moving back just a little bit. They try, but they move back a little bit, and that’s all just government. JOSE JIMENEZ: But still, the Young Lords had a right to kinda -- JUANA JIMENEZ: Yeah, you had a right. JOSE JIMENEZ: -- make their choices. JUANA JIMENEZ: They had to make their choices and that’s their choice. JOSE JIMENEZ: But they were attacked real rough by the government. [01:20:00] In fact, remember Bruce Johnson got killed and all that? JUANA JIMENEZ: Yes. JOSE JIMENEZ: How do you feel about that time when you heard about that? 55 �JUANA JIMENEZ: First, I thought it was just a plan that the police themselves made up so that you guys could get in trouble because I kept thinking, “Why would they kill” -- because they were blaming you guys for doing that killing, or the organization or somebody in that organization for killing him. And I kept thinking, “How can anybody do that if he’s the one that’s helping these people? And the organization knows that he’s helping them, why would they kill him?” So I believe that, to me, it was just like a set up, and it was like the police themselves that did it or something there because never would I believe that it would be -even to this day, [01:21:00] I wouldn’t believe that it was anybody from the Young Lords. Not to kill the Reverend because he was the one helping the Young Lords there. Letting them use the church, letting them -- and everything. And I don’t think nobody would -JOSE JIMENEZ: Did you ever participate in any of the marches or anything? JUANA JIMENEZ: Never. We were never allowed to. Never allowed to. JOSE JIMENEZ: And most of the family didn’t agree with the Young Lords, did they? JUANA JIMENEZ: No. Not at all because they just kept thinking it was just a gang -“It’s a gang.” The organization to them was just like nothing. It was just a gang. JOSE JIMENEZ: So it was like the Puerto Ricans putting each other down, basically. JUANA JIMENEZ: Yeah, they were putting each other down. JOSE JIMENEZ: In other words, “They can’t make it, they’re just a gang.” JUANA JIMENEZ: Yeah. JOSE JIMENEZ: Or, “They’re just a gang, they’re nothing.” 56 �JUANA JIMENEZ: Yeah, “They’re a gang.” Or, “They’re just doing that -- it’s just a set up. They’re trying to do it -- being good, doing good things for other people so [01:22:00] people can see that they’re doing nothing wrong, but they’re really a gang.” So the police wouldn’t blame the organization for anything. JOSE JIMENEZ: And did I ask you how many kids you had? JUANA JIMENEZ: No, you didn’t. I have four kids. JOSE JIMENEZ: What’s their names? JUANA JIMENEZ: My eldest is Joseph, and, of course, I named him after you. I don’t know why, but I did. (laughs) The next one was Sandy, then Margie -- about four years later, Margie came along. And after Margie, about eight years later, Danny came along. So four kids, three with Willie and one with -- the first one with -JOSE JIMENEZ: And now you got some grandkids, too? JUANA JIMENEZ: Yes, I have about six grandkids. I had eight and two of my grandkids are not with us anymore. They were babies. JOSE JIMENEZ: Sorry about that. JUANA JIMENEZ: [01:23:00] They were sick babies, but it’s fine. JOSE JIMENEZ: Anything that you want to add? Otherwise, we’ll just finish it up. JUANA JIMENEZ: I don’t know. I could say that now I’m happy. I keep telling my husband, “Now, I’m in Puerto Rico, but I’m dying -- I am dying to sell my home and leave to the states,” because I am tired of Puerto Rico. I am tired of Puerto Rico. JOSE JIMENEZ: How long have you been here? 57 �JUANA JIMENEZ: We’ve been here -- let me see. I’ve been here for about 26 -Danny’s 30 -- about 26 years. And that’s 26 years, all I could see is nothing really good for Puerto Rico and I’m tired of it. [01:24:00] You don’t get a job unless you have one of these family member or somebody -- like they say, you scratch my back, I scratch yours or whatever. (Spanish) [01:24:11], they say in Spanish, (Spanish) [01:24:14]. Someone in the political view so they can help you find a job. If not, you’re not gonna get a job here unless it’s in a store or something. But not at all. No jobs here at all. I’m tired of not having water. I’m tired of the light leaving whenever it feels like it and out for days. We have to live. We have to live. And I don’t like the cold weather, but if there was a place that I could stay that it was not expensive, I’d move out of here because I cannot -- I’m tired of this place. I’m tired of people [01:25:00] being so nosy. You’re too close to the family, too close to people next door. And at this age, you just want to relax. And the government is not getting any better. Not at all. It’s not gonna become a state. You either become a state -- the commonwealth, they don’t want to keep it as a commonwealth. Become a state, be independent, or something. And independence is not gonna work, let me tell you. It’s not gonna work. I think it would be a great idea if there was some way that there would be good jobs that they could do something. It’s not gonna work. Nobody really wants it independent. And being a state, we’re paying taxes anyway. JOSE JIMENEZ: How about like the Young Lords say? They’re not talking about independence, [01:26:00] they’re talking about people determining their own life, their own destiny. What do you think about that? 58 �JUANA JIMENEZ: People already determine their own destiny, their own life. People already do that. You don’t have to have anybody tell you. That was before -JOSE JIMENEZ: In Puerto Rico, people determine their own government. That’s what they mean, (inaudible). JUANA JIMENEZ: Oh, their own government? JOSE JIMENEZ: Yeah, people make decisions that affect their own government. For example, in Chicago, when they had the urban renewal and kicked everybody out, none of the Puerto Ricans were able to make a decision for their own neighborhood. JUANA JIMENEZ: Over there, no. At that time. JOSE JIMENEZ: So in Puerto Rico, it means the same thing. It means just like Puerto Ricans should have been allowed to make decisions about what type of neighborhood they wanted to live in, they need to be able to make a decision in terms of [01:27:00] what type of nation they need to be living in. How do you feel about that? JUANA JIMENEZ: I think everybody -- of course, you want to live in a nation -- let’s say Cuba, they move to Cuba. That’s the way I feel. JOSE JIMENEZ: So you feel that the Young Lords are more closer to Cuba. That’s what you’re saying? In their thinking? JUANA JIMENEZ: In their thinking. JOSE JIMENEZ: And that’s not good? JUANA JIMENEZ: And, also, like Santa Domingo. They’re thinking like that, too, because they want to be apart on their own, but, see, Cubans -- what I know a 59 �little bit of, I don’t know much -- but they don’t want help from the United States, they don’t want help from anybody, but on their own. And for the Dominican Republic, [01:28:00] they’re just a republic, but they’re on their own also. They just get a little bit of help. They don’t get a lot of help. But you look at both of them, they’re both really very poor places. And in Puerto Rico, nobody here is really, really poor. You see people in the streets asking for money and stuff because they want to be that way. You don’t really see people that are really, really, really poor unless you don’t ask for the help. The government usually helps you, but you have to ask for the help. And a lot of times, they’ll show them on TV -- “Oh, look at this poor old lady. Look at the way she’s living in her home.” But, of course, they give them the help and they use the money for other things instead of really helping themselves. I don’t know. [01:29:00] You have to look for help. JOSE JIMENEZ: So you’re saying the homeless, it’s all their fault, basically? JUANA JIMENEZ: No, I’m not saying -JOSE JIMENEZ: Yeah, I think it’s probably their fault if they’re drinking -- JUANA JIMENEZ: If they’re drinking and doing their stuff, but I don’t think it’s all their fault either because drinking is a sickness, and you need to get help from it. But if you don’t take the help, if you don’t want the help -- an example. There is a man I know down right on Route 129 he stands there by the light, and he goes like this so you can give him some money. We give him change, sometimes I give him a dollar or whatever. But I heard if you give him pennies, he throws it. A penny is money. One hundred of those pennies is gonna give you a dollar. 60 �That could get you a cup of coffee, [01:30:00] but he throws money away. He chooses not to take that. So he’s that way because he wants to be, because the government does help him. He does get help. He’ll ask for money for food, go down and sit and drink his coffee, or donut, or whatever, read his newspaper, and walk back to wherever he lives. Down the road or whatever. Pennies? He throws away. I would never throw away pennies. I’m sorry. That’s money. You choose what you want. And if you want to live that way, that’s the way you’re gonna live. If you don’t ask for the help, you’re not gonna get it. JOSE JIMENEZ: Do you also believe that -- and we’re just kind of -- ’cause we don’t want to get into the philosophy, we’re just trying to tell the history and stuff like that. So do you think the Young Lords [01:31:00] did anything to help the community at all or what do you think? It’s a loaded question. JUANA JIMENEZ: It is a loaded question. (laughs) JOSE JIMENEZ: So what do you think? Did they do anything or were they just worthless? JUANA JIMENEZ: I don’t think they were worthless because some of those people that I did see that -- even in the newspapers that you would see -- you would see pictures of them helping other people. And they probably didn’t help, let’s say, for many, many years or stay at the thing for many, many years because they didn’t -- other people wouldn’t let them. Like the government wouldn’t let them or the police wouldn’t let them. They were always trying to get them to separate and break everything apart. Let’s say the daycare center. They went in there and they tore everything out. The police went in there and tore everything out. 61 �And they would look for a way [01:32:00] so that -- you know, let’s say they looked for something wrong to say, “Okay, you’re not -- there’s a fire hazard here you have to close the place down because it is wrong. You don’t have this, you don’t have that.” They would always look for something. JOSE JIMENEZ: The building inspectors. They came to the daycare center to try to close it down. They did close it down. JUANA JIMENEZ: Yeah, they did close it down. JOSE JIMENEZ: So you felt that that was wrong? JUANA JIMENEZ: I thought that was wrong because you guys were doing something really good at that time. I thought it was really great. When they had that daycare center, I thought, “Oh, God. Thank God. Finally, something good is coming out of this.” I thought it was very unfair. Very unfair the way they would go hunting you guys down and treating you -JOSE JIMENEZ: [01:33:00] Hunting the Young Lords down? JUANA JIMENEZ: Yes. They would -JOSE JIMENEZ: The police was hunting them down? JUANA JIMENEZ: Wherever you guys would be, do anything good, they would find something negative about what you were doing, a lot of times. I remember one time walking down the street with my mom going -- I don’t know where we were going, but just walking down with her, and some guy came out, “Oh, you spics, go back to your home.” And, of course, me with my big mouth, “Why don’t you shut the mm out?” And my mom’s grabbing me, “Come on. Come on.” Well, I was learning to defend myself at that time. I was tired of being pushed around. 62 �Speaking of pushing around, let’s leave that. (laughs) I got pushed around sometimes till I got myself [01:34:00] defended by somebody in my brain. (laughs) JOSE JIMENEZ: Okay. Who pushed you around? JUANA JIMENEZ: You. (laughs) You did a lot of pushing around. You pushed Daisy a lot, and I would have to be there trying to defend her. I thought, “I can’t take this. I don’t mind if he’s hitting me, but not her.” Yeah, I had -JOSE JIMENEZ: I didn’t want to leave it at that point, but we’re gonna have to leave it there. JUANA JIMENEZ: Yeah, let’s leave it at that point. (laughter) It’s past. END OF VIDEO FILE 63 � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/22e09bbc070228d6d1829942d05abe52.mp4 794fbfc364021e71b25841bcf3f8229e Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Young Lords in Lincoln Park Collection Subject The topic of the resource Young Lords (Organization) Puerto Ricans--United States Civil Rights--United States--History Lincoln Park (Chicago, Ill.) Personal narratives Social justice Community activists--Illinois--Chicago Description An account of the resource Collection of oral history interviews and digitized materials documenting the history of the Young Lords Organization in Lincoln Park, Chicago. Interviews were conducted by Young Lords' founder, José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez, and documents were digitized from Mr. Jiménez' archives. The Young Lords in Lincoln Park collection grows out of the ongoing struggle for fair housing, self-determination, and human rights that was launched by Mr. José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez, founder of the Young Lords Movement. This project is dedicated to documenting the history of the displacement of Puerto Ricans, Mejicanos, other Latinos, and the poor from Lincoln Park, as well as the history of the Young Lords nationwide. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Jiménez, José, 1948- Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/491">Young Lords in Lincoln Park collection (RHC-65)</a> Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-04-25 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Language A language of the resource eng spa Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-65 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 2012-2017 Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Título Spanish language Title entry Juana Jiménez vídeo entrevista y biografía Descripción Spanish language Description entry Juana Jiménez es una hermana de José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez. Nació en Minot, Massachusetts cerca de Concord donde su padre trabajo como tomatero para Andy Boy Farms en 1940. Aquí recogieron vegetables para la compañía de Campbell Soup. En 1951 la familia se cambio a Chicago para acercarse con familiares que vivían en La Clark. Juana creció en Lincoln Park Wicker Park. Cuando se embarazo, antes de tener esposo, la mandaron a una casa para mujeres jóvenes que era atendida por monjas Católicas. Aquí es donde ella desarrollo su espirituelidad y todavía sigue muy dedicada en su comunida igual que ayudando los equipos de Béisbol y boliche en que esta su esposo y corriendo el grupo de Boy Scout para sus hijos y los del vecindario. Ahora vive en Camuy, Puerto Rico. Sujetos Spanish language Subject terms Young Lords (Organización) Puertorriqueños--Estados Unidos Derechos civiles--Estados Unidos--Historia Lincoln Park (Chicago, Ill.) Narrativas personales Justicia social Activistas comunitarios--Illinois--Chicago Puertorriqueños--Illinois--Chicago--Vida social y costumbres Source <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/491">Young Lords in Lincoln Park (RHC-65)</a> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-65_Jimenez_Juana Title A name given to the resource Juana “Jenny” Jiménez video interview and transcript Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Jiménez, Juana Description An account of the resource 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. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Jiménez, José, 1948- Subject The topic of the resource Young Lords (Organization) Puerto Ricans--United States Civil Rights--United States--History Lincoln Park (Chicago, Ill.) Puerto Ricans--Personal narratives Social justice Community activists--Illinois--Chicago Puerto Ricans--Illinois--Chicago--Social life and customs Language A language of the resource eng Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2012-05-10 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/0e67381514a680bbff71de5e4eb6115a.pdf 3a57be96d0ff015e74585f129963741c PDF Text Text Young Lords In Lincoln Park Interviewee: Juan Jiménez Interviewers: José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez Location: Grand Valley State University Special Collections Date: 6/25/2012 Biography and Description 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 collegeaged 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. � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/df06c938618b52fad12039221f98d8b1.mp4 046695338093175c3a4cf9b0f6cf6b62 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Young Lords in Lincoln Park Collection Subject The topic of the resource Young Lords (Organization) Puerto Ricans--United States Civil Rights--United States--History Lincoln Park (Chicago, Ill.) Personal narratives Social justice Community activists--Illinois--Chicago Description An account of the resource Collection of oral history interviews and digitized materials documenting the history of the Young Lords Organization in Lincoln Park, Chicago. Interviews were conducted by Young Lords' founder, José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez, and documents were digitized from Mr. Jiménez' archives. The Young Lords in Lincoln Park collection grows out of the ongoing struggle for fair housing, self-determination, and human rights that was launched by Mr. José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez, founder of the Young Lords Movement. This project is dedicated to documenting the history of the displacement of Puerto Ricans, Mejicanos, other Latinos, and the poor from Lincoln Park, as well as the history of the Young Lords nationwide. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Jiménez, José, 1948- Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/491">Young Lords in Lincoln Park collection (RHC-65)</a> Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-04-25 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Language A language of the resource eng spa Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-65 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 2012-2017 Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Título Spanish language Title entry Juan Jiménez vídeo entrevista y biografía, entrevista 1 Sujetos Spanish language Subject terms Young Lords (Organización) Puertorriqueños--Estados Unidos Derechos civiles--Estados Unidos--Historia Lincoln Park (Chicago, Ill.) Puertorriqueños--Relatos personales Justicia social Activistas comunitarios--Illinois--Chicago Source <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/491">Young Lords in Lincoln Park (RHC-65)</a> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-65_Jimenez_Juan_1 Title A name given to the resource Juan Jiménez video interview and biography Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Jiménez, Juan Description An account of the resource 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. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Jiménez, José, 1948- Subject The topic of the resource Young Lords (Organization) Puerto Ricans--United States Civil Rights--United States--History Lincoln Park (Chicago, Ill.) Spanish language--Personal narratives Social justice Community activists--Illinois--Chicago Language A language of the resource spa Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2012-06-25 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/4c3bf5e1e33c7819d42bcf28fa55154a.pdf 723307eca2555bbeff1f0f266f28c814 PDF Text Text Young Lords In Lincoln Park Interviewee: Jose Jimenez Location: Grand Valley State University Special Collections Date: 7/14/2012 Runtime: 00:28:27 Biography and Description Oral history and interview of Jose “Cha-Cha” Jimenez on March 15, 2012 about the Young Lords in Lincoln Park. "The Young Lords in Lincoln Park" collection grows out of decades of work to more fully document the history of Chicago's Puerto Rican community which gave birth to the Young Lords Organization and later, the Young Lords Party. Founded by Mr. José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez, the Young Lords became one of the premier struggles for international human rights. Where thriving church congregations, social and political clubs, restaurants, groceries, and family residences once flourished, successive waves of urban �renewal and gentrification forcibly displaced most of those Puerto Ricans, Mejicanos, other Latinos, working-class and impoverished families, and their children in the 1950s and 1960s. Today these same families and activists also risk losing their history. �Transcript yl_Jimenez_Jose_2 Q1: Yeah, it is kinda low. JOSE JIMENEZ: It is low. Q2: Okay. Could you state your name? JJ: Yeah. It’s José Jiménez, born 1948. Q2: Good. (inaudible). Q1: [And you were?] -- JJ: Is this one on? Is this one on? (inaudible) [press?] that button. Q1: Yes, it is on. JJ: Okay, the red button -- Q1: And the voice is going. I can see the audio. JJ: Okay. Q1: Okay. Q2: Okay. I’d heard a report from a former Young Lord about the killing of a pastor in the DePaul University area. [If you could?] tell me what you know about it. JJ: Yeah. Reverend Bruce Johnson and Eugenia Johnson, his wife, were -- he was found stabbed seventeen times, and his wife nine times. They tried to make it look like it was [00:01:00] a gang that did it because we had been in his church, at People’s Church. Reverend Bruce Johnson was a member of the Northside Cooperative Ministry, which was a coalition of ministers that were supporting the Young Lords. His congregation were Cuban exiles that were against us having murals on the wall, but, I mean -- and they were against us being in the church. 1 �We were also having problems with the local mafia at the time, and also -because we were picketing. They ran the real estate offices that were displacing the Puerto Rican community of Lincoln Park. Q2: What was the address of this church? JJ: It was 834 West Armitage. When we took over the church, he prevented the police from coming into the church, where the congregation was trying to get us arrested, [00:02:00] so we were able to work with him, and we started saying, “Well, this is not really a takeover. We’re gonna work together.” And, together, we renamed it People’s Church. We came up with buttons and everything to go along with that. We set up the first free community daycare center in Chicago. We set up the Ramón Emeterio Betances Health Clinic, and also a dental clinic in the basement. We also had a Puerto Rican Cultural Center in the church. So, we did a lot of work, and he supported us. He was under attack. They fined the church 200 dollars a day every time it remained open, so he was going under that attack, and the local alderman, Alderman Barr McCutcheon, had organized a group called -- something about [00:03:00] uniting the do-gooders, basically, it was called, but they were sending letters to the Methodist bishop to try to get him out of there. This is just prior to when he was killed. Of course, we had -- the police were parked, the [Red Squad?] was parked, like, 24 hours a day in front of the church. There were people being arrested for wearing the Young Lords buttons or arrested for disorderly conduct, harassed. They had the stop-and-frisk law, so they would stop and frisk them any time they wanted to. So, he was under attack, basically, before that happened. On the week that it happened, I 2 �had been in the county jail because of -- I had, like, 18 cases pending. And so, I would have to go to court, and, sometimes, [00:04:00] it was three courtrooms at the same time. And so, one judge would get angry and give me another charge for bond jumping because I wasn’t in his courtroom when I had to be in three at the same time. So, I mean, that was me. I was the head of the group, the Young Lords, but other members were also going through repression, similar repression, at the same time. So, all that was going on, and this was 30 days before Fred Hampton and Mark Clark were killed, so this was right around that time. They had announced one time that we had a cache of weapons inside the church. It was announced on ABC News, on the national news. Well, we didn’t have any weapons. I mean, we had to set up, like, a [vigil?] because we knew that a raid was coming to the church ’cause the Panthers had been raided three times. They had had three shootouts [00:05:00] with the police or -- you know, the police started shooting at them, basically. It’s not that they were having shootouts, but the police were shooting into their offices and that. So, that’s the kind of climate that existed at that time. Our main, primary concern at that time was that our neighborhood was being displaced, that they wanted to create an inner city suburb in Lincoln Park. And so, you know, like, some people use the term gentrification. To us, that’s like cookies and milk. It’s not really reflective of what was going on. What was going on was that these were -- was what they did to the indigenous people, where they took their land for [beads?], and that’s what really was going on. The Latino community was being ripped off of prime real estate because we were so close to downtown and so close [00:06:00] to the 3 �lakefront, so this was prime land, which -- we were not aware of it. We were new immigrants coming into Chicago since the ’50s, since the late ’40s and ’50s, so we were buying houses cheap, like 15,000, 24,000, that are, today, being sold for a million dollars. So, I mean, that’s why I’m saying gentrification is a sweet term to what they actually did there. It was a rip-off, basically. But Reverend Bruce Johnson and Eugenia Johnson were supporting us. Q2: Can you tell me anything about them? How old were they? JJ: Well, they were young. They were young ministers. I don’t really know them that well. They were young ministers. They were trying to work with the poor at that time. Maybe a little naive, a little idealistic, [00:07:00] naive, there, but we had respect for them. They did have our respect. He used to teach Puerto Rican history to some of the gang members that -- we would hang around in front of the church before we became political. Some of us hung around in front of the church, so some of us already knew him, so he would teach Puerto Rican history, which we didn’t get in any school. So, he was actually trying to awaken us to the conditions that were going on at that time. His church was also -- they were renting space to the welfare department (inaudible), so the people in the neighborhood would go there to pick up their food stamps, or their cheese, or whatever the welfare department was giving out. But, as soon as urban renewal came to Lincoln Park, that was the first place that was moved, so it became an empty church. It wasn’t being utilized, and that’s one of the reasons that [00:08:00] the Young Lords were meeting for about four or five months prior to the takeover. We were meeting, and we were being frustrated because the 4 �congregation didn’t want us in there, even though we offered to pay them money, to raise money, to pay to help pay the rent, just like the city had had the welfare department (inaudible). We offered to pay them some money, [some rental space?], but they said no, and especially when they heard that we were connected with the Black Panther Party, they didn’t want anything to do with us there. What happened [on the?] takeover was -- I remember standing outside after meeting with Reverend Bruce Johnson, and one of the members of the Young Lords signaled to me that, you know, we got the church. The church is taken over. I wasn’t even aware of it. This was something that was spontaneous, and they had decided to do it because we had just come from [00:09:00] the takeover of McCormick Theological Seminary, where we had stayed there for a week and won all of our demands, including 601,000 dollars to be invested in low-income housing. So, we even had our architect draw up plans, and we had a project. So, we had won a victory there, and, now, we were coming, and these people from the Young Lords, on their own, basically, took it over, and they’re signaling to me, “We have it. We have the church.” So, right after that, soon after that, the congregation called the police, and we’re trying to talk to each other, myself and Reverend Bruce Johnson, about -- this is gonna be a bloodshed here if the police try to enter the church. So, we were trying to calm things down, and that’s what he did. He basically told the police that he gave us permission to be in the church while the congregation is [00:10:00] saying, “No, they can’t be there. What are you doing?” So, you know, clearly, they were angry with their own pastor at the time. So, he was getting a lot of enemies 5 �because he was working with Puerto Ricans at that time. And so, I believe that’s why they -- you know, to us, he was our pastor. The reporters asked me, “Are you going to allow the church to have service?” The very next day after we had taken it over. And we said, “We’re not here to disrupt anything from the church, and, in fact, we’re gonna be at the service ourselves.” So, we had respect for them and the church. A lot of the Young Lords are -- a lot of Latinos are Catholic, and we kind of respect the church, even though they were -- he’s a United Methodist minister, but we respected any church at that time. And so, our concern for the takeover of the church was [00:11:00] more -- we’re trying to stop displacement of our people, and we’re trying to talk about community rights, you know, because all the decisions that were made in Lincoln Park were not done with us. In fact, that was really our primary concern. We’re not against improving the community, but we just wanted a voice in it. It was our neighborhood, and they just came in and took it over physically because a lot of - the people were evicted by sheriffs. They were evicted by the police. At that time in Lincoln Park, where you don’t see that today, I mean, you would walk around and see people’s furnitures on the sidewalk, where they were evicted because the rents went from -- I know, myself, personally, we paid 80 dollars a month rent one month, and the next month, it was 400. So, I mean, this is what was going on all over [00:12:00] Lincoln Park to a lot of families and that, but that was our main concern at that time. And then, we also learned -- because we joined with the Black Panther Party and the Rainbow Coalition, we began to learn about the programs, and we set up a free breakfast for children program, a clinic, 6 �some other programs in the church and that. And so, we had some other ideas from the Panthers, but our concern, instead of the police, was more housingrelated, and, today, it’s been brought up more like with the Occupy movement, the Wall Street movement. [At that time?], but it was more reflective in terms of the neighborhood at that time. Q2: What government agencies were involved in either keeping tabs on you or harassing or (overlapping dialogue; inaudible)? JJ: They were trying to encircle us to destroy us, I guess. You had this regular [00:13:00] Chicago police. They were against us, that were keeping tabs on us. You had the Alderman Barr McCutcheon, and the UPTIGD. That’s the name of the group. United People to Inform Good Doers. UPTIGD. So, they had an organization. They were keeping tabs on us. The local mafia, we had picketed several times, so they didn’t get along with us too well. You had the Red Squad. They had a car parked 24 hours a day in front of the church. They would literally change shifts there. You know, you would see them change the shift. That car was there 24 hours a day. And then, in the neighborhood, you had the Gang Intelligence Unit because we had been a former gang, so they had files on us, and they had people checking us out. We, later on, found out that the Panthers in Chicago were being investigated by [00:14:00] COINTELPRO, so that meant that anybody part of the Rainbow Coalition was also being investigated. I mean, they kept very good records. We had congressional committees that were set up to investigate the Black Panthers, and the Young Lords, and all that. We, later on, were reading some of their documents and that. So, you had quite a few 7 �people -- well, and then, Mayor Daley called the War on Gangs. And so, now, you have the regular precinct organization that were spreading rumor campaigns about the Young Lords to try to disrupt us, but on the other side of the coin is that, because we were former gang members of that neighborhood -- our parents grew up there in that neighborhood, we grew up there -- we had a very tight connection to the community, and that’s why it was difficult. That’s why they needed all these -- the precinct captains [00:15:00] and everybody else to try to discredit us. When we were growing up, I remember being in altar boy at St. Michael’s. Our parents were involved in the church there. They had an organization called the Caballeros de San Juan or Knights of St. John and the Damas de María, the Daughters of Mary. Their whole concern was just to get Spanish Mass, and yet, if you look at a lot of the churches where they got Spanish Mass, they got it, but it was usually kept in a hall. They didn’t have it in the regular chapel, so there was a prejudice where people -- the old-timers didn’t want these new Puerto Ricans coming in, so they said, “Okay, you can have Mass, but not in the regular chapel,” although they said later that they preferred that. In the oral histories that I’m doing, some clearly say that, no, they did not want us there [00:16:00] [in the thing?]. So, we had seen what our parents had done, but, to us, they were more [docile?]. They knew there was discrimination because, when they went to rent apartments, they would say, “No dogs allowed.” You know, they were telling them, “We don’t rent to Puerto Ricans,” or, “No dogs allowed,” or whatever. That kind of attitude. And some of our parents were beaten up by the white gangs at that time in that neighborhood, the Anglo gangs, 8 �the greaser gangs that we were talking about earlier, that we fought later. But, of course, we were all kicked out, so, you know, we later joined together. So, it was a community. It was basically a community. Our parents were very good organizers. They organized the softball teams. The first Puerto Rican Parade came out of the Lincoln Park neighborhood. [00:17:00] So, all the first Puerto Rican businesses in Chicago came out of there, out of the Lincoln Park neighborhood. So, this was a broad community that we became the representatives of and the leaders in fighting back Mayor Daley. I mean, we were fighting Mayor Daley directly, and even his own people don’t fight him. I mean, but we were fighting -- so, we got scapegoated. We took a lot of [hits?] for that. We eventually ended up in the underground. When I had to serve -- the first of my cases was a year. That was the maximum that they could give me for -- they said I took 23 dollars’ worth of lumber for the daycare center or whatever, but I actually pleaded guilty to that, but the other cases that I pleaded not guilty, we negotiated for them. They threw them out of court and that, but there [00:18:00] were a total of 18 felony counts on me at that time. But, anyway, I knew that they were trying to destroy the group, so I didn’t go to court. I did jump bail then, and I went underground for about two and a half years. We organized a underground training school for new leaders. And then, we came back, and I began [doing a year?] -- we came back on the exact date of the memorial to Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, on December 4, 1972. I turned myself in then because I felt that I needed to -- we wanted to organize. Some people saw me in 9 �Cuba, [they thought I was?] in Cuba, but I wanted to continue organizing. We wanted to keep the Young Lords alive at that time for our community. Q2: Well, the FBI has been very focused on Puerto Rican nationalism and people [00:19:00] who want the status of Puerto Rico changed to either a state or independent country. Was that tied to the Young Lords (overlapping dialogue; inaudible)? JJ: Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. We saw urban renewal -- we connected that to the issue of self-determination for Puerto Rico. So, we held the first demonstrations in Chicago. There had been demonstrations in New York, but, I mean, we held the biggest demonstrations and the first ones in the city of Chicago, supporting self-determination for Puerto Rico, and we connected that to this -- we would tell our people, “You see what they did here in Lincoln Park? That’s exactly what they’re gonna do in Puerto Rico. They’re gonna come in with businesses, and flowers, and everything else, and beautify the country with the only purpose of continuing their colonialism, continuing to take it over even more.” And today, [00:20:00] this year, they were talking about the plebiscite and trying to make it a state. Every time the republican governor goes there, that’s what happens. So, no, that was our major issue, was the self-determination for Puerto Rico, but we had -- we started because of the urban renewal. That’s what got us -- we could see that clearly because we were right there in Lincoln Park, and we saw what was going on. Q2: Do you have any idea who killed that pastor and his wife? 10 �JJ: Well, I mean, we don’t know who killed him. I mean, we think it’s the government, but, I mean, we don’t have any proof, but he had enemies, like I said, the alderman. At DePaul University, there are letters that were being sent to the bishop by the alderman and the UPTIGD organization, demanding that the United Methodist Church kick him out and the Young Lords from the church. [00:21:00] The local mafia that we were picketing in the neighborhood -- when I said local mafia, they ran the numbers, and I know they was a local mafia ’cause my father used to sell the numbers and turn in the receipts to them, so it’s not like we didn’t know. Everybody in the neighborhood knew they were involved with the numbers, and, now, they were also involved in real estate. They had three real estate offices on the same block, so we know that there was a local mafia. We didn’t bother them. We weren’t against them. It’s said that they had put a submachine gun on a Puerto Rican store owner, and we wanted that corrected. We didn’t want that Puerto Rican business owner disrespected like that, and that’s why we picketed them, but they looked at us -- since we were young, they probably blamed Reverend Bruce Johnson because he was the pastor at the church, and he allowed us to be at the church, and that’s why they were angry with him. [00:22:00] So, you had that, and then you had the police. I mean, the Red Squad, clearly. You had COINTELPRO that, 30 days later, killed Fred Hampton and Mark Clark. They were against us. By being against us, they were against him. So -- Q2: But the Cuban emigres, you mentioned them. Cubans? 11 �JJ: Right, also, yeah, the Cuban -- they had just come from Cuba, and they were totally anti-Castro, and a lot of them had been connected with the CIA in the Bay of Pigs Invasion. You know, some of the Cubans that were there at that church had been involved in the Bay of Pigs Invasion. We knew of that ’cause they had talked about it. And so, they could have been connected with the CIA, with that group -- you know, the CIA recruits gang members. They recruit killers, murderers. They give them breaks, and that’s who their cadre is. [00:23:00] So, we’re thinking that they were part of the cadre of the CIA. They were there. So, that was another group, and, again, we had the Gang Intelligence, the Red Squad. There were a lot of enemies. And then, you had groups, [clear?] white groups that were racist. I mean, these were racist groups, organizations, that were also writing letters at that time to the pastor, and I was getting pictures, pornographic pictures of men having sex with other men in my mail every day. I got that for, like, six months. Somebody was just sending me that. It was a way of harassment. I don’t know if it was coming from the Red Squad, or the police, or whatever, but that’s just one example. Of course, all the times that we were picked up just for wearing the button and harassed. They would come [00:24:00] on the street with a megaphone, out loud, and, “Cha-Cha this,” and, “You punks,” and all that. This is the police, you know, so that the -- they would stop and frisk us when they saw the community, a lot of people in that street, so that the people would look at us as criminals because we’re being arrested by the police or stopped and frisked by the police. And then, the precinct captains, you know, they were clearly telling people that we were communists, that we were with 12 �Castro, we were communist, that kind of stuff. And it didn’t help the fact that we had Che Guevara on the mural on the wall of the church. We painted that. We had Don Pedro Albizu Campos, who was the leader of the Nationalist Party in Puerto Rico and fought for independence. We had Lolita Lebrón, who was one of the nationalists that went [00:25:00] to Blair House in the ’50s. We had her photo up there. We had Adelita, who was a Mexican woman, revolutionary woman. We had Emiliano Zapata on the wall. All this stuff was on the wall outside after we took over the church. It was painted on the wall. So, as you could see, there were -- the congregation would be angry about that, or other people in the community would be, including Puerto Ricans. Not just Cubans would be angry that we would have that, but we didn’t think twice about it. These were our heroes. We didn’t have any heroes, so these became our heroes. There was a lot of discussion in the neighborhood of were the Young Lords -- are they doing good things or bad things? So, you know, we were definitely talked about in the community, so there was some controversy in the neighborhood. Q2: How strong of an area was this Puerto Rican concentration? JJ: We’re talking about from North Avenue to Diversey, Lincoln [00:26:00] Park, from Racine to about Clark Street. So, the lakefront was always the [goalpost?], but the mid-section of Lincoln Park was the Puerto Rican area that was displaced. You know, you’re talking about 65,000 people that were displaced. A good 30 percent of them were Puerto Ricans (overlapping dialogue; inaudible). Q2: [Where did they go?]? In Chicago? 13 �JJ: No, in Lincoln Park. In Lincoln Park. Now, today, it’s sort of like what the Japanese -- they were put in internship [sic] camps, and we were kinda doing the same thing with the research project. We’re trying to document that community, but it’s not just for that community ’cause we’re concerned about -- today, it’s in Humboldt Park. That’s being displaced. Pilsen, the Mexican community on Pilsen was being displaced. So, we’re concerned -- New York, other cities. They’re being displaced. The whole Occupy Wall Street movement that talks [00:27:00] about that housing displacement -- today, they were talking about homelessness. Well, it comes out of that displacement era that we were involved in. And so, people need to connect the dots. We’re trying to connect the dots. Q2: Okay. I’m out of (overlapping dialogue; inaudible). JJ: Okay. Q2: Thank you. (overlapping dialogue; inaudible). You gave me a lot of good information. I have to get your contact info so we can. Q1: Well, I have one great horoscope, which is just what I said in the interview. JJ: What’s it say? What’s your sign? I’m glad that’s not on the interview. What’s your sign? Q1: I’m a double Capricorn with Aquarius rising. JJ: Oh, okay. Q1: And I don’t really know what that means, but I have a strong stomach. Here’s what it said, though. It said, “Capricorn -- a change of locations will [00:28:00] help you determine your next move.” JJ: Okay. 14 �Q1: “Visualize what you want and begin the process of turning a dream into a reality. Refrain from being impulsive. Time is on your side.” JJ: Okay. P3: I say you need to cut that out and put that on your refrigerator. JJ: Yeah, [that would be good?]. Q1: It’s kinda what I said at the end, right? P3: Yeah. Yeah. Q1: I said, “Yeah, I gotta finish up some stuff, and -- END OF VIDEO FILE 15 � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/18c866a914e1b2f5351e1fbd60a13863.mp4 38ee91c6402e64e0309efc16ae75b5d5 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Young Lords in Lincoln Park Collection Subject The topic of the resource Young Lords (Organization) Puerto Ricans--United States Civil Rights--United States--History Lincoln Park (Chicago, Ill.) Personal narratives Social justice Community activists--Illinois--Chicago Description An account of the resource Collection of oral history interviews and digitized materials documenting the history of the Young Lords Organization in Lincoln Park, Chicago. Interviews were conducted by Young Lords' founder, José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez, and documents were digitized from Mr. Jiménez' archives. The Young Lords in Lincoln Park collection grows out of the ongoing struggle for fair housing, self-determination, and human rights that was launched by Mr. José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez, founder of the Young Lords Movement. This project is dedicated to documenting the history of the displacement of Puerto Ricans, Mejicanos, other Latinos, and the poor from Lincoln Park, as well as the history of the Young Lords nationwide. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Jiménez, José, 1948- Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/491">Young Lords in Lincoln Park collection (RHC-65)</a> Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-04-25 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Language A language of the resource eng spa Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-65 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 2012-2017 Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Título Spanish language Title entry Jose Jimenez vídeo entrevista y biografía, entrevista 2 Descripción Spanish language Description entry La historia oral de Jose 'Cha-Cha' Jimenez, entrevistado en 7/14/2012 sobre los Young Lords en Lincoln Park. Sujetos Spanish language Subject terms Young Lords (Organización) Puertorriqueños--Estados Unidos Derechos civiles--Estados Unidos--Historia Lincoln Park (Chicago, Ill.) Mexicano-Americanos--Relatos personales Justicia social Activistas comunitarios--Illinois--Chicago Mexico-Americanos--Illinois--Chicago--Condiciones sociales Relaciones raciales Conflicto social Identitad cultural Partido Pantera Negra. Illinois Capí­tulo Source <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/491">Young Lords in Lincoln Park (RHC-65)</a> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-65_Jimenez_Jose_2 Title A name given to the resource Jose Jimenez video interview and transcript,interview 2 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Jimenez, Jose Description An account of the resource Oral history of Jose 'Cha-Cha' Jimenez, interviewed on 7/14/2012 about the Young Lords in Lincoln Park. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Jimenez, Jose, 1948- Subject The topic of the resource Young Lords (Organization) Puerto Ricans--United States Civil Rights--United States--History Lincoln Park (Chicago, Ill.) Mexican Americans--Personal narratives Social justice Community activists--Illinois--Chicago Mexican Americans--Illinois--Chicago--Social conditions Race relations Social conflict Cultural identity Black Panther Party. Illinois Chapter Language A language of the resource eng Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2012-07-14 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/d2fafae31a1865622f9098c49424e475.pdf 0aa45ed4e8309475f3d307b104fd8a68 PDF Text Text Young Lords In Lincoln Park Interviewee: Jose Jimenez Location: Grand Valley State University Special Collections Date: 3/15/2012 Runtime: 01:14:00 Biography and Description Oral history and interview of Jose “Cha-Cha” Jimenez on March 15, 2012 about the Young Lords in Lincoln Park. "The Young Lords in Lincoln Park" collection grows out of decades of work to more fully document the history of Chicago's Puerto Rican community which gave birth to the Young Lords Organization and later, the Young Lords Party. Founded by Mr. José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez, the Young Lords became one of the premier struggles for international human rights. Where thriving church congregations, social and political clubs, restaurants, groceries, and family residences once flourished, successive waves of urban �renewal and gentrification forcibly displaced most of those Puerto Ricans, Mejicanos, other Latinos, working-class and impoverished families, and their children in the 1950s and 1960s. Today these same families and activists also risk losing their history. �Transcript Jimenez_Jose_1 Q1: All right. First off, if you wouldn’t mind just introducing yourself and telling us where you’re from. JOSE JIMENEZ: I’m José Jiménez, Cha-Cha Jiménez, from the Young Lords, founder of the Young Lords organization. Q1: Can you tell us a little bit about the Young Lords? JJ: Well, the Young Lords were a neighborhood youth group in Lincoln Park, Chicago back in the ’60s and ’70s, and then, late ’60s, 1968, we transformed ourselves into a human rights movement for self-determination for Puerto Rico and for neighborhood control. We were in the middle of -- the neighborhood was being displaced by the city that wanted to expand downtown and clean up the Lakefront area, which is where we were located at the [00:01:00] time. So, we were kinda caught in the middle by accident, and we were just trying to defend our hood. We looked at it like that. Although the majority of the people thought it was a good idea to rehab the housing, we just felt that they were taking away our community from us. So, those things, and the things that were going on in the country at that time -- the anti-war movement. There was, the late ’60s, the whole revolution movement, and it happened right there in Lincoln Park also with the Democratic Convention. And so, all those things together and what was going on in Puerto Rico, our people were trying to fight for self-determination 1 �there, all those things together contributed to our development into a human rights group. Q1: What was it originally that drew you to the Young Lords? JJ: [00:02:00] As the gang or as a political --? Q1: Well, initially. So, when it was still, first, a gang. JJ: Well, you know, when we first became a gang, there was several things that were going on. We had just got displaced from the neighborhood that Puerto Ricans called La Clark on Chicago Avenue and LaSalle -- Chicago Avenue and Clark. And so, we had just been displaced and pushed into the Lincoln Park neighborhood. The Lincoln Park neighborhood was an ethnic community. It was a very segregated community, but segregated by -- you know, Polish [were two or three blocks away?], we’d see Polish people, or Italian people, or German people, Gypsies, hillbillies, and Puerto Ricans that were coming in. And so, we were the new kids on the block at that [00:03:00] time, and we were being harassed by the other gangs that existed. At that time, the gangs were not like the gangs of today. Those were more territorial gangs, and based on culture and ethnicity. And so, we started getting robbed, you know, lunch money taken away from us. We started getting chased from school, and we started growing. There were more Puerto Ricans starting to move in. So, as we expanded, we started thinking about protection for ourselves. And so, the Young Lords, there were already some social clubs that were Puerto Rican that had been connected with the church, or individuals organized, like, sports leagues and that. They were older than we were. We were the younger [00:04:00] ones. And so, they were 2 �concerned more with playing softball and things like that, and then, later on, they turned into gangs, but we started -- from the very beginning, we wanted to look for territory. You know, we just wanted to have some kind of say-so in our area. So, we were going to other neighborhoods, and we would pick fights with people just to get a reputation. So, we’d go into an Italian neighborhood, hillbilly neighborhood, Irish neighborhood, and just taunt people until we were fighting with them. And then, if we won, then we could brag about that at the school that most of us were going to, Waller High School at the time, or [Arnold?] Elementary. So, [00:05:00] basically, that’s how we began. Again, we’re being harassed by other people that were more organized. They already had gangs. And so, we saw a need to begin our own gang for protection, and, you know, some of us even saw our parents beaten up, our uncles and fathers beaten up also, ’cause they were young too. I mean, they were in their twenties, early twenties, and that -- maybe up to thirties. It was just a young community at that time, and we were kinda breaking ground, and the kids saw a lot of things that were going on. Like I said, we were being chased around. And so, that’s how we originated as a gang, for protection and for recognition, and we went like that till the community became primarily Puerto Rican [00:06:00] at the time. People just kept move-- but that was a natural movement, I guess, that took place, where, later on, it was more done with the city and with the urban renewal programs, and, you know, was unnatural at that time. And, in fact, not only Puerto Ricans were evicted, but Italians, Irish, and Germans, all the people that 3 �we were going to school with at the time that we were fighting. We, later on, came together to try to defend the community from city hall. Q1: Do you want to move on or?(inaudible)? JJ: Probably going into the political stuff now. Q1: [00:07:00] ’Cause I wanted to touch on -- JJ: (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) -- Q1: -- a little more -- JJ: -- the gang. Q1: -- how -- just, I mean, kind of the idea that you felt you had to defend yourself to have just a better quality of life. Like -- JJ: Well, we -- Q1: -- ’cause I know, for you, you were saying that there was a changing point, where you realized that fighting wasn’t so much the answer, and you had to search something else out. I mean -- JJ: Well, you know, we were looking -- we originally began like that, like a gang, but, as time changed and the country was changing also, we began, also, to experience -- that was just simple prejudice, where we didn’t even look at it as prejudice. We looked at it more like one gang against another gang, but, in a way, it was subtle, you know. [00:08:00] But our parents were experiencing discrimination. I remember running home. My mother wanted to find an apartment, and I had talked to an Italian family, and they said, “We have an empty apartment,” and I ran home and told my mom, “Hey, there’s an apartment over here, not too far,” and she was all excited, and got dressed, and everything, 4 �and we went to see the Italian family, and, when they saw my mother, they said, “We don’t have any apartments.” To me, being light-skinned, that kind of opened up my eyes a little bit more, that I knew something was fishy, that something was funny there. It happened where our parents were like pilgrims, you know, moving into Chicago from Puerto Rico and being -- in Puerto Rico, like [00:09:00] 97 percent of the people were Catholic. And so, they’re coming into Chicago, and they see that some of the youth are going into gangs, and some of the parents also are having problems with alcohol or whatever. And so, they come together as a church, as a Catholic church, to try to change those things, to try to improve the community, to develop the community. And so, they come together, but then, they go into the Catholic church, and the Catholic church is saying, “We’ll give you space. We’ll give you --” All they wanted was Spanish Mass, Mass to be celebrated in Spanish. They said, “Well, we’ll give you Spanish Mass, but you have to do it in the hall. You can’t do it at the regular church because some of the people there don’t want you there.” But, you know, our parents didn’t -- they were not concerned with that. I mean, later on is when we found this out. [00:10:00] They were more concerned with Spanish Mass. So, they had to organize. They had to go door-to-door in Lincoln Park, and they would do Rosaries in different people’s homes. They organized themselves. They had retreats, church retreats. They formed the Caballeros de San Juan and the Damas de María, Daughters of Mary. So, it was like the Knights of Columbus, that type of organization, so they began to form organization. They form a credit union. They had an annual play of the Crucifixion of Jesus that they participated 5 �in. They had dances. You know, so, they involved the family. And very good dances, very well organized. Dinners, annual dinners that they had. They had picnics, where they would -- 10 to [00:11:00] 15 busloads would go to Oconomowoc, Wisconsin on picnics and that -- or to Libertyville, Illinois. So, our parents began to organize, and Lincoln Park became a barrio or a community, a Latino community. It was one of the first Puerto Rican communities in Chicago, well organized -- council number three, even though they were -- council number three ’cause there was -- council number one was on 63rd Street, and council number two was Holy Name Cathedral, where we had just been displaced from. So, they became well organized, a community. They cared for the youth. When the youth were getting in trouble, they started -- hey, you know, we can have dances, and make money, and still work with our children. So, they didn’t depend on the city. There was no political power [00:12:00] at the time. They created their own political power, their own base. In fact, the first Puerto Rican Parade Committee or first Puerto Rican Parade in Chicago came from Lincoln Park, from that community. There was a lot of bands at that time, youth bands, orchestras, that were organized in Lincoln Park -- bilingual. Some were primarily in Spanish, Spanish music, and some were the Motown type of music at that time, but that originated, again, in Lincoln Park and spread later. So, you know, we see this community. We grew up with that. We participated with our parents. You know, we went to their Rosaries, to the funerals, to the baptisms. Some of us were confirmed. Our parents had catechism classes. My mother had catechism classes [00:13:00] in our living room. That’s what I mean. We were 6 �like pilgrims at the time. And so, we see a community being organized, a community beginning to make a name for itself, a community that is becoming more stable, and, all of a sudden, the city of Chicago decides that they need that area. It’s prime real estate. It’s 15 minutes from the Loop downtown. It’s like five minutes from Lake Michigan, and lakefront property is prime real estate. Near downtown property is prime real estate, and that’s where we were at. We were located there because, when we first came to the city, many of our people were -- they used to joke around, called “grabando discos.” “Grabando discos” means making records. What they meant by that was that they were washing [00:14:00] dishes. So, that was their occupation. So, they were making records by washing dishes. So, meaning by that that many of the Puerto Ricans that came to Chicago at that time, in the ’50s and ’60s, were working downtown at the hotels, you know, some as maids for some of the rich people that lived near downtown, personal maids and that. But a community arose from that, and the city wanted that land, wanted to expand downtown, wanted these -- there was what they called at that time white flight to the suburbs. Many people were afraid of the Puerto Ricans ’cause they were new. They were odd to them and that. So, they wanted to flee to the suburbs to get away from Blacks and from Latinos at that time, and from poor whites, [00:15:00] you know, [or hillbillies running around there also?], and people didn’t want to be around poor people, basically. In fact, it was more income-oriented that was the problem, but, in a way, if you go today, what you see is it’s segregated. There is no integration. It’s primarily white, and I’m light-skinned myself, but it’s primarily white people with money that 7 �live in that community. And so, the poor have been wiped out. You can count them on the fingers of your hand, the poor that live in Lincoln Park. Of course, there’s some that work there, but they don’t live there. So, that was the answer to white flight, was an inner city suburb, which is what the city was calling Lincoln Park, [00:16:00] an inner city suburb, at that time. [Got a little racist in there?] (inaudible). Q1: It’s all right. I kind of feel like there’s almost a transition of anger a little bit here, between how -- just between the different races that were trying to live in Chicago, and then this movement towards kind of an anger towards the actual city. JJ: Yeah. Exactly. There was a little anger of people trying to get control. More of a -- trying to control their own lives, their own destiny at the time. The African American community was coming from the south at that time. They were moving from the south. The Appalachian white community, the hillbilly community, was moving from the mountain range in the East Coast. So, they were coming [00:17:00] into Chicago at that time, and Puerto Ricans and Mexicans were also moving into the city. So, you know, you have these new minorities coming there, and then you have the ethnic minorities that were there before. And so, there’s a big change going on, and change, you know, that destabilization, I think, is what created the gang problem there. I mean, gangs are always there, but it’s what created the problematic gangs, [to contributed to that?] and poverty, because we’re a lot of poor people living together in one area, which is what Lincoln Park was. But, you know, Lincoln Park was a very -- although it was segregated every 8 �three or four blocks, you can say it was diverse. You can say it was, in a way, integrated because, every three or four blocks, you would see a different [00:18:00] minority. But Chicago in the ’50s was a very segregated city, where African Americans were living on the West Side and South Side, and the white community was on the North Side, and Latinos were kind of in the middle, near downtown, at that time, so it was a very segregated city -- not to say that has changed much because, now, those minorities are on the outskirts, on the periphery of the city and in the suburbs. They’ve been pushed to the suburbs, and the Lakefront and downtown is primarily upper class white community that exists there today. But it wasn’t done for -- it was done racially. I mean, I’m not gonna say it wasn’t -- you know, I remember when I would get a haircut when I was younger in Lincoln Park, and people didn’t know that I was Spanish, and they would be talking about how Mayor [00:19:00] Daley was not gonna allow Blacks north of North Avenue. I mean, hearing things like that. So, it was done racially. I mean, that’s who was in power at that time, but it was also done economically. I mean, it was done for profit. It was done to advance the democratic machine, you know, to keep Mayor Daley in power. In Puerto Rico, every time there’s an election, they get machetes, and they cut the grass, you know, the little trails, the little [cow trails?], and they make them look like roads. I remember, when I was younger, they used to do that. It’s sort of what Mayor Daley did in Chicago, but he did it with housing. He did it, you know, fixing [each?] neighborhood and -- be he used that to keep himself elected. So, it’s a 9 �political thing that people do at that [00:20:00] time, and that’s what was done in Lincoln Park. (coughs) Excuse me. Q1: So, do you think some of the poverty was result of lack of opportunity, or just too many people within the area? JJ: Well, no. A lot of poor people that were coming in and no services for the -- no welcoming committee for the poor people. You have all these people moving in, and, instead of accepting them, you’re trying to push them out. You’re saying that there is the blighted area. We need to fix this area. And so, instead of providing for the youth, like an after school program so that they’re occupied, busy, supervised, because, you know, both of their parents had to work, so they couldn’t supervise them just to survive. So, instead of, for the city, welcoming people in, the new immigrants [00:21:00] in, what they were doing was to displace them, just push them to another neighborhood and just push them away to get rid of them. So, urban renewal became urban removal of poor people. They were just being kicked out. No attention was being given to these new immigrants, and these new immigrants, Puerto Ricans, are United States citizens. They fought in every war that the United States has fought in since they became connected to the United States, since they were invaded by the United States in 1898. They were made citizens 1917 for World War I, so they fought in World War I, World War II, in Korea, in Vietnam. They’re fighting today in the Middle East. So, you know, these are citizens of the United States, and they were being treated [00:22:00] like illegal aliens and like they treat undocumented workers at that time. I’m just saying that they were treated incorrectly, not as 10 �citizens and not welcomed to this country, and they were not the only ones. You know, African Americans were being treated, other ethnic minorities were also being treated the same way. The urban renewal program that was supposed to be geared to helping renovate poor areas and uplifting communities was basically a for-profit scheme that we know now today that the banks were involved, and the politicians want to blame the banks, and the banks want to blame the politicians, but they were both in cahoots with each other. It’s part of the [00:23:00] dynasty of Chicago. You know, so many people in Chicago that have been put in jail for corruption. If you look at it, most of them were -- it was connected to the housing situation in Chicago. But, today, we blame the youth for all these problems, and they need to take responsibility, but city hall did not do anything to help the youth or to help the new immigrants, which is where most gangs originated, from new immigrants that no one is paying attention to. So, in Lincoln Park, had we paid attention to them, there probably wouldn’t be the supergangs that we have today. They probably would have just been neighborhood little kids playing, doing some petty little crime here and there that could have been resolved, but, instead, now, what we have [00:24:00] are drug enterprises and supergangs because the city not only did not pay attention to the youth, but they displaced them. They discriminated against them. They scapegoated them. And so, the Young Lords were unique in the fact that not only individuals changed, but an entire gang changed and began to work -- we set up, you know, a daycare center so that the women of the group can participate in what we were doing. We modeled ourselves after some of the 11 �Panther programs. So, we had a free breakfast for children program. We had a free health clinic. We had a dental clinic. We had a Puerto Rican cultural center. We began a little militant because, again, we didn’t have any [00:25:00] role models. Our parents were involved in the church, and here we are, becoming more and more militant. So, we didn’t have any role models. We just had to fend for ourselves, but we didn’t want -- you know, our parents were being discriminated, but they were quiet and silent, and we had grown up here. And so, we knew we had rights, and we were trying to defend our rights, and that’s more or less how we began. So, we held the first large demonstrations in Chicago in terms of the Puerto Rican community, in terms of the Latino community, where we had 10,000 people, up to 100,000 people in 1983, when Harold Washington, the first African American mayor, was elected, and we played a major role in that election. There was 100,000 people in June of 1983 at Humboldt Park, and I was the only one on stage [00:26:00] representing the Young Lords and introducing the newly elected mayor. We gave out 30,000 buttons with “Tengo Puerto Rico En Mi Corazon, I have Puerto Rico in my heart,” because the Young Lords stood for self-determination for Puerto Rico, and also, you know, self-determination [for?] neighborhood empowerment. It was a simple philosophy that we had. We fought against police brutality. We marched against police brutality, but our main concern was more the community. We were not just thinking about ourselves. We knew that the police were -- there was a lot of repression on our group, but we were more concerned with trying to set up programs for the community, trying to save the community from being -- today, 12 �they call it gentrification or that. We call it more -- we needed to control [00:27:00] our own neighborhood, our own destiny at the time. Q1: So, could you actually describe the moment where you realized that the gang activity just wasn’t the right way to go and that this more political front could [better?] --? JJ: I mean, there were changes that were going on with a lot of people at that time, but, personally, I had become the leader of the gang in the mid-’60s, and then I [had gone?] into jail. You know, mostly, that’s why I was the leader. I was going in and out of jail and that, and I began to do organizing within the group and that and tried to keep the group together because, you know, groups have internal fights also. So, I was the one that would keep everyone together and thinking Young Lords first before [00:28:00] our little, petty differences. And so, I remember organizing a month of Soul Dances, where, every Saturday, every weekend, we met at St. Michael’s, and we -- was the first time that we were on the radio. You know, we bought a advertisement on the radio, and we filled up the gymnasium for four weeks straight. So, it was a month of soul. We got this other gang called the Blackstone Rangers. They had a dance group and African dancers. Remember bringing them and some Spanish bands to our dances. We had learned from our parents, the Knights of St. John and the Hijas de María, and how they organized their dances, so we did the same thing also. You know, my mother was pretty active in the church at that time. And I had -- myself, personally, was thinking even of going into the priesthood. She had taken me out of [00:29:00] Newberry School because I was getting into fights and, because 13 �she was involved in the church, they were able to put me at St. Teresa’s for sixth, seventh, and eighth grade. So, all that and my mother preaching to me every day made me want to think about going into the priesthood, but, you know, it was difficult with poverty. [I ended up?] throwing a snowball at a bus where the pastor was in, and so I got punished, and I couldn’t go that year, and, actually, it was a blessing, anyway, in disguise, but that year that I didn’t go was when I got deeper into the Young Lords gang, where I got deported to Puerto Rico because they were looking for gang leaders at that time. So, I was put in handcuffs on a plane and sent back to Puerto Rico versus going to jail till I was 21 years old, but I actually wanted to go to jail because I didn’t know Puerto Rico. I was crying when they put me on the [00:30:00] plane. I thought I was going to a foreign country. The only country I knew was Lincoln Park, Chicago. Anyway, I came back from Puerto Rico. I called myself El Cagüeño. I changed my name from Cha-Cha to El Cagüeño. Cagüeño is Caguas, the town in Puerto Rico where I was born ’cause I came when I was two years old. But, anyway, I came back after a year. I kinda snuck back in. My father came and picked me up, and, now, I have a little culture in me. I had learned even some jíbaro music in Puerto Rico that I really appreciated my culture. I didn’t appreciate it when I was there. When I was there, I actually wanted Puerto Rico to become a state because all I remember was the United States while I was there, but, when I came back here, it was the opposite thing. I only remembered -- was Puerto Rico, so, now, I wanted the Puerto Rican culture to be brought out and all that. So, you know, we had gang sweaters, and I put my name, El [00:31:00] Cagüeño, and I became -- I 14 �was still the president of the group. But, anyway, the gang was kind of going downhill, like most gangs go through phases. And so, the gang was getting into drugs, and crime, and all the other stuff that gangs do when they’re being destroyed, when they’re destroying themselves. It was the Vietnam War era also. And so, many of the Young Lords were going to Vietnam or coming out of Vietnam, getting married. The gang was falling apart, and I’m trying to keep the gang together, but I’m involved in drugs myself. So, I went to jail for possession of drugs, and I was given a 60-day sentence, but, because, right away, when you go to jail, you hang out with other Puerto Ricans, some -- a Black gang that was there thought that [00:32:00] we were a gang, and we were just Puerto Ricans hanging out. And so, they told the guards that we were trying to escape, and, anyway, they took all the Puerto Ricans. They strip-searched us and put us in maximum security, or the hole. I had just come in, so I had 60 days, so that was -- it was a city jail, the House of Correction, so the most you can do was a year, and I had 60 days, so I had the most of that group of nine people that got put into the hole. And, you know, I’m in the hole. I’m in a cell by myself. I’m on the third level. It’s an old Civil War cell. The catwalk is made out of wood. There’s rats running around, so they have large cats that they allow to live with us so they can get the rats. There’s roaches [hanging?] -- I mean, can you imagine going to jail and having to fight roaches? We had roaches in the jail, [00:33:00] where, basically, it’s summer. It’s hot. There’s no air conditioning, so we’re in our underwear and just hanging onto the bars. I mean, it’s a old Civil War jail cell. And so, I began to read. I hadn’t read since I had been in eighth grade and I 15 �read Seven Storey Mountain by Thomas Merton, which was about a Catholic hermit. Just, I read him only because the books were there. I mean, had it been another book, I probably would have read that one, but I read Thomas Merton. I didn’t really get too much out of it except that he was a hermit, and I’m in the hole, and I feel like a hermit myself. So, now, I want to go to confession. You know, I want to end drugs. I don’t want to be addicted to drugs. And so, I went to confession, and they said, “Well, you’re just trying to get out of your cell, so we’re not going to allow you to see a priest.” So, I talked to the -- I kept sending [00:34:00] messages to the priest, and he finally came to see me in my cell. And so, I went to confession there, and then I felt good, you know, like people, Catholics, feel when they go to confession. They feel real good. I had cleansed myself, my soul, and everything, and I joke about it now, but, I mean, I really took it serious because it was like standing up for your rights because other inmates are taunting you because, “Hey, this guy, Cha-Cha got a priest comin’ up here. He’s crazy.” But I was standing up for what I believed at that time. Again, we were Catholic. My mother had ingrained that in us. So, anyway, after that, I started reading Martin Luther King, and, you know, he’s a religious person. And then, I also read another religious person, Malcolm X. So, I kind of got both sides. I got the peace side, and I [00:35:00] got the Malcolm X talking about revolution, Black revolution, and, you know, there were no Latino books at that time, no Latino role models. And then, I started hearing on the news -- we had a loudspeaker with a radio on that would be blasting 24 hours a day with the old dusties. We didn’t call them oldies [but?] we called them dusties, but there would 16 �be, I mean, real old songs. And so, I would hear that, but, in between, there would be the news, and so I was hearing about the Black Panther Party in Oakland, taking over a courthouse with guns, and I’m going, “These people are crazy,” where, you know, they had different laws in the West Coast. From Chicago, you can’t be walking around in Chicago with guns, but -- not publicly. But, over there, you can walk with rifles, but that’s why they were protesting, because they were changing the laws and that at that [00:36:00] time. But, anyway, that kind of fascinated me a little bit, and I felt, you know, this is what we need to do in the Puerto Rican community. And so, I said, “When I get out of here, that’s what I want to do.” So, I got out, but we had to go through an exoffender program because I had to look for work. I needed employment. I didn’t want to get involved with any more drugs. So, I got -- half a day, we would go to get the GED, and the other -- you know, these were all ex-gang members, [exoffenders?], but we were still gang members, but they called us ex-gang members, but we were all together. We weren’t fighting. We were in school half a day. This was at the Argonne National Laboratory program there, and the other half a day -- so, half the day, we were janitors, and the other half a day, we were at school, getting our GED. So, we had a lot of fun there. [00:37:00] I remember opening up the maintenance room, and there’d be somebody asleep, and we would be stealing the golf carts and driving all over the place. I mean, we were little mischievous people, but we were studying and that. And, in fact, on one of the field trips, the teacher took us to the Democratic Convention so we can be exposed to the current events of the time. About 10 of us went to the 17 �Democratic Convention. We’re all gangbangers, and the hippies are getting beaten up and that, and that kind of affected us because we were used to getting beat up. That was a big thing, and then we’re reading about it in the newspaper. They’re calling it a police riot against the press ’cause the press was also getting beat up at that time. Mayor Daley was talking about -- I mean, later on, when the Black riots, when he was talking about shoot to kill. [00:38:00] You know, when Martin Luther King died, there were riots. So, anyway, even while I was there, I had seen people coming in from the Black riots, and also undocumented workers. Mexican people, which, to us, are our people, were being brought in, and the only crime they were committing was that they were working. So, we’re looking at it -- we’re inmates in jail. We’re criminals, and these people are coming in just because they’re working. They’re bringing them in, and pushing them around, and discriminating against them because they can’t speak any English. So, I mean, I offered to translate, and they said, again, “You just want to get out of your cell.” And I said, “Look. I’ll translate from up here.” So, they let me translate from my cell, and, you know, “Just don’t push them around. You just don’t understand. They don’t speak any English,” ’cause they were being pushed around and smiling. Ask ’em a question, they would smile ’cause they didn’t know what the officer [00:39:00] was asking them. But, anyway, all those things were kinda contributing to my enlightenment in terms of -- I don’t know if it’s enlightenment but in terms of seeing our people being discriminated and in terms of seeing a need to organizing something similar to the Black Panther Party but in the Puerto Rican community. I was fascinated with the Black 18 �Panther Party because, to me, they were like an army, and I felt that that’s what we needed at that time, was like an army and that. They started that way, but later on, they also were involved in primarily organizing, and I learned that later as I became more involved, that they were concerned with organizing the community for change. Not just the military aspect of it, but also the [mass line?] of organizing [00:40:00] the community with programs like the breakfast for children program, the health clinic, sickle cell anemia concerns, women’s rights. They stood for gay rights, gay liberation. Environmental movement, all those movements were right around that time that the Black Panther Party worked on. In Chicago, we made a coalition with Fred Hampton, and it was called the Rainbow Coalition. Later on, Jesse Jackson adopted that name, which is fine, but it originated from Fred Hampton, Chairman Fred Hampton of the Chicago Black Panther Party, and it was the originators that [were with?] the Young Lords, the young preachers, and the Black Panthers, and then it spread nationwide. So, all these things -- you know, a lot of movement going on in Chicago, a lot of stuff. [00:41:00] And then, we had no choice. Although the Black Panther Party’s main issue at that time was police abuse, police brutality, they did have a Ten-Point Program. Our main issue was not our choice. It was being displaced from our community, so our main issue was a housing issue, and it still is today. I mean, today, the Humboldt Park area in Chicago is still being displaced, and we’ve been displaced out of other cities, like in New York, and other areas, and in Puerto Rico. It’s a way to destabilize the community and to take control by the city of those areas. (inaudible). 19 �Q1: Well, what was one of the major acts that the new political group strived for in order to help with this whole displacement issue? JJ: Well, the first act that we did was -- [00:42:00] I was standing on the corner, and this lady named Pat Devine was from the Concerned Citizens of Lincoln Park. They had been organizing poor people to fight against urban renewal. They weren’t organizing Latinos. They were just organizing poor people. And so, remember, she was on the corner of Halsted and Dickens, which used to be our neighborhood, but it was displaced, but we still hung around there ’cause a new hot dog stand had moved to the other side of the street, and, in Chicago at that time, if you were a gang, you belonged to a hot dog stand. I mean, that was your neighborhood hangout. We even had credit and everything at our hot dog stand on Halsted and Dickens. But, anyway, she was there, and this guy, [Benny?], was in uniform. He was [00:43:00] on leave from Vietnam, and I was talking to him. He’s a Young Lord, and I’m talking to him, and I’m excited to see him. I hadn’t seen him in a while. I had just got out of jail. And Pat Devine just starts telling him, “You know, you kill all the Vietnamese people. What’s wrong with you? You should be ashamed of yourself.” I say, “What are you talking about, you white B?” You know what I’m saying? I was very annoyed by her. I said, “You’re trying to kick us out of our neighborhood.” And, anyway, she got into a fight, and then she says, you know, “You’re a communist.” I called her a communist. She says, “Oh, yeah? Well, I’m proud to be one, then.” And I’m going like, “This lady’s crazy.” You know what I’m saying? She’s a communist. We got into an argument, but the guys intervene and stop this arguing and that, 20 �[00:44:00] but I was convinced that she was one of the people that was kicking us out. I found out from her later, as we spent some time talking -- all of us went to her house and spent some time, and she explained how they were trying to stop urban renewal in that community, and she wanted us to get involved. Well, the other people were not that interested, but I got interested ’cause I had just come out of jail, and I had seen the changes in two months. I mean, you see people get their possessions thrown out on the street. The streets that were twoways became one-ways. The fire departments and police departments were all being renovated. All the hospitals and institutions were being renovated and expanded. And so, this all happened, like, in a two-month period, this was all going on. And so, I could see the difference. It was like a whole new area at the time. So, she asked me to bring people to a meeting, and I says, “Well, [00:45:00] you know, how many people can you bring to a meeting?” I said, “I can bring you thousands ’cause I’m the leader of the Young Lords street gang. I can bring you thousands.” Well, I began to ask people to come to the meeting, and I was getting involved in fights, physical fights, and they were calling me a communist, and I didn’t know anywhere else to organize. All I knew was to organize where we hung out at, in the street corners, and in the bars, and places like that, and parties and that, so I was going into -- when I couldn’t get enough Young Lords, I was going to the other groups, like the Black Eagles, and the Paragons, and the Flaming Arrows, and Imperial Aces [and Queens?], Trojans, Continentals, all these different groups that were in Lincoln Park at the time. I was going to their neighborhoods and getting into fistfights with them. When they 21 �saw me, they’d [00:46:00] go, “Oh, here he comes again. Here comes that crazy nut trying to talk to us, some crazy stuff.” I mean, I became obsessed with trying to fight against urban renewal, and I was trying to bring people to that meeting, but I wasn’t having a good -- I wasn’t making too much progress. In fact, half of the Young Lords quit. They didn’t want anything to do with me anymore because I was talking about political stuff and politics, you know. So, anyway, on the day of the meeting, I was able to get people from the various groups, just a few representatives from the various groups, and, remember, we met at Dayton and Armitage, which -- we were hanging out there, which, later, was where we took over the church there. But we met there, and we marched from there. We kinda walked from there. I wouldn’t say march. I mean, we kind of -- it looked like we were going to a gang [00:47:00] fight, like we usually did. About 60 of us walked to Larrabee Street, about four, five blocks away, and we entered the building, and there was a display there, and I told people -- I wasn’t educated about urban renewal. I tell them, “You see this display? Look at -- your houses are all empty. That means that they’re gonna destroy your houses. These people are meeting here to kick you out.” It was a meeting of the Community Conservation Council. It was the urban renewal headquarters at that time, and it was in Lincoln Park. And so, we didn’t know then, at that time. But, anyway, the people saw the display. Then, we walked into the meeting, and in the hall, on the stage, were about 10, 12 Americans. There were no Blacks, no Spanish people there, no poor people. In fact, most of them were, like, [00:48:00] developers. Some were members and the audience were members of the Lincoln Park Conservation 22 �Association, and a few people like Pat Devine was there, and some other people, but she hadn’t come with us. We came on our own. She was glad to see us, but, see, our people were not used to -- you know, we were gangs. We were representing different gangs, so our people were not used to -- first of all, we didn’t understand urban renewal, and we were not used to going to meetings. So, all I remember was saying something to the nature of, “This meeting is over. It’s dead. You’re not meeting here no more until you have Black, Latino, and poor white representation, and I remember them looking at me like I’m crazy. So, anyway, to make our point, some of the gang members start picking up chairs and didn’t throw it at the people ’cause we said, “We’re not here to jump on anybody,” [00:49:00] but started just throwing it at windows and stuff like that. Anyway, we ended up -- this guy told me later to use the word “trash.” We trashed the place, but, I mean, we would have probably used a different term then because that’s what we were trying to do. We were trying to tear it up, and then, we went to -- messed up the plumbing. The display was broken in 20 million pieces, and we all walked down and told everybody, “Go straight home. That way, we don’t get arrested.” So, you know, we had about 60 people, and everybody goes home. Nobody got arrested. The next day, we were giving each other five. It was like a victory and stuff like that that we did. So, that was the first action that we did, was -- some people would call it militant today. It was just a natural -- we didn’t know what we were doing, so that’s what we did. So, that was followed by what we call an organized riot because there had been so many -- a few riots [00:50:00] already, but we had people from Vietnam [in that 23 �school?]. We say, “We don’t want to destroy our community. We just want to get the stores that don’t belong here, that are not Puerto Rican -- we want them wiped out. So, we had an organized riot. Some of the Vietnam veterans synchronized their watches, and everybody took windows and bricks from all the way from Larrabee to Racine and Armitage, and we busted all the windows that were not Puerto Rican. And, the next day, they were all boarded up, and we’re giving each other five again. It’s another victory. We got one victory after the other. We went to the real estate office, and we picketed because it’s the local mafia -- we called him Fat Larry later -- had put a submachine gun on a Puerto Rican store owner that was renting [00:51:00] and didn’t have money for the rent. So, he didn’t want to go to the police because he knew the police were connected with the local mafia, and the reason we knew he was a local mafia was my father used to sell the numbers, Orlando’s father used to sell the numbers, and they used to turn the money in to the local mafia, so that’s what ran the numbers game in that neighborhood. So, everybody knew that they were Italian, they were the local mafia, whatever. Not that the mafia’s only Italian. (coughs) Excuse me. I messed it up. [I can stop?]. Q1: You’re fine. (inaudible) take a break. JJ: Okay. Yeah, I think I need (inaudible). Q1: Yeah. Yeah, you’re free to take a drink. Q2: (inaudible). JJ: But, anyway, I was -- let me finish. Q1: Okay. 24 �JJ: I don’t know if I can or not. No, let’s take a break. Q1: Okay. Yeah. JJ: Yeah. [00:52:00] It’s like dust. The dust gets in my -- Q1: Yeah. Q2: Yeah. JJ: (inaudible). How much time do you want to go with this? Q2: There is -- Q1: We’ve gone for almost -- it’s like 50 minutes right now. JJ: [Did you shut mine off?]? Q1: Fifty-three minutes. JJ: But do you want to go to 50 -- (break in recording) Q1: So, you’re rolling. JJ: So, you know, we knew who they were. They were the local mafia. At that time, they were organized, and they didn’t want to really create any disturbance because they were reaping profits from the real estate. They were involved in the real estate market. There were three offices, three real estate offices on one small block, so they were making a lot of money on the real estate. So, anyway, we picketed his office. [Yeah, he put a?] [00:53:00] submachine gun on us, and then I remember I didn’t know what to do at the time. I just put my hand in my pocket like I had something, but he went in the back office [with a window on?], and he called the police. The police came, and, instead of searching him, he was locked up in the office, although he left his partner on the front desk, scared, 25 �and we told his partner, “We’re not here to create any problems.” But we had some photographers with us, and they started taking photos. So, what we did was, the next week, we took all those photos and put them on the front page of a local newspaper that we produced, and we spread about 20,000 copies all through the neighborhood. So, now, the community is riled up. Our parents are upset. The Caguas Social Club, were [00:54:00] my father and other -- uncles and that, other people, would go, they started taking it on their own to break his windows. We were not breaking his windows. So, his windows went from big picture windows to little cube windows, basically, and that was the parents doing that, not us. So, you know, the community was getting there. We started uniting with other groups, like the North Side Cooperative Ministry, the Concerned Citizens of Lincoln Park, the SDS, Students for a Democratic Society, Rising Up Angry, different organizations. I mean, the churches were all involved with the Young Lords and that at that time. So, now, we’re broadening ourselves, and we’re forming the Lincoln Park Poor People’s Coalition, and I was elected president of that, [as being?] with the Young Lords. Also, we were connected with the Waller [00:55:00] High School Planning Committee, and I was elected vice president of that. You know, keep in mind, I didn’t go that far in school, but the Young Lords were gaining a reputation in the political field at that time and standing up for the community. So, anyway, that group, the Lincoln Park Poor People’s Coalition, and the Young Lords were meeting with the institutions, like the hospitals and McCormick Seminary, and asking them to -- we’re kinda demanding that they be involved in low-income housing. Somebody had to -- 26 �’cause they were the ones that were involved in trying to displace us. We were trying to put pressure on them to also invest in low-income housing. We were not against improving the community. We just wanted to make sure that there was neighborhood diversity, that everyone was included. Well, McCormick Theological Seminary, a religious institution, [00:56:00] clearly stated that they were not gonna be involved in low-income housing because it was not profitable. So, it was like our group was demoralized. The coalition was demoralized, so the Young Lords -- we took it upon ourselves. We walked out [in caucus?] at the meeting, and we took it upon ourselves. We were walking back, and we’re looking at McCormick Theological Seminary, and we said, “You know what? We can take this building over,” and we went in, and we had no cars at that time, no vehicles. Most of us had bicycles, so that’s what we used, was chains from the bicycle chains, and we chained the doors, and we -- you know, broke in, and chained the doors, and took it over. We used the offices and the phones. By the next morning, we had called the media. The media had broadcast it, and the place was filling up with our [00:57:00] people. And so, by the next morning, we had about 350 people inside that seminary with us, the administration building. Today, it’s DePaul University. We stayed there for about a week. During that process, there was a theater there, so we had singers. We had poetry readings. We had acting. We had all kind of stuff going on at that time. People started organizing. We hadn’t provided any provisions. We hadn’t really planned it, so, the next morning, restaurants and neighborhood people were coming with food for us, delivering food, and we set up a kitchen crew, and we started cooking 27 �inside the administration building and that, and started feeding the people. So, [instead of going?] to [00:58:00] students from the -- seminarians that were going to the school wanted -- we kinda didn’t trust them because they were connected with the school, but we did trust them a bit, so we told them that they could -- you know, they wanted to join with us, and we said, “Fine. If you want to be our security in the front so, when the police comes, you’re there, and you are students, so it’s gonna be more difficult for them to attack you first. But, if you’re willing to do that --” And they were definitely willing to do that. At one point, McKay, the administrator, wanted to send in the police, and the -- we didn’t want the women to do it, but they did. They started bringing in their children. We asked them not to do that, but they did it on their own. We threatened to burn down the library, and that was the final [00:59:00] thing that made McKay, the director, change his mind. We also had sent a representative to Texas, to their annual conference of the Presbyterian Church, who were the people that were running the seminary, so we had a representative go all the way to Texas, Obed López. And then, by Sunday, when we threatened to burn down the library, is when they negotiated with us, and we received all our demands. We won all our demands -- 601,000 dollars to be invested in low-income housing, to hire an architect so that we can come up with our own plans, 30,000 dollar -- no, 50,000 dollars for a health clinic for Lincoln Park, the Ramón Emeterio Betances Health Clinic, which we later put in at People’s Church on Dayton and [01:00:00] Armitage, another 50,000 dollars for a clinic in West Town, in the Wicker Park neighborhood, which -- today, Wicker Park has also been displaced. We had 28 �50,000 dollars for a cultural center. Fifty thousand dollars went for the People’s Law Office, which still exists today. In fact, that clinic existed to maybe 15 years ago, so, I mean, it was -- these became institutions in their own right. But, anyway, right after that, McCormick -- that victory -- where we hung out, it was Dayton and Armitage, and there was a vacant United Methodist Church there. And so, we had been negotiating with them to see if they would let us use their gymnasium so that the guys who were hanging out outside of their church would be able to go inside and play basketball instead of just hanging out and creating a ruckus outside, [01:01:00] but we can work with the youth, and they wouldn’t be involved in gangs. But the congregation was a Cuban congregation, and they did not like what the Young Lords were doing. At that time, we didn’t understand what we were doing wrong, but the community was primarily Puerto Rican anyway, but the congregation was Cuban at the time. But, anyway, we ended up -- Reverend Bruce Johnson, who was there, was also a member of the Northside Cooperative Ministry, so he was already working with us. So, when we took over that church, he basically went against his own congregation. His congregation called the police, and I was standing outside with him, and I said, “There’s gonna be a bloodbath.” You know, there was weapons there. “There’s gonna be a bloodbath.” And so, Reverend Bruce Johnson decided to [01:02:00] tell the police that he had given us permission to be there. So, because of that action, we in turn said, well, this is really not a takeover. So, the next day, we had opened up the day care center of the clinic and all that right away, and there was a press conference, and the press conference asked me, were we gonna permit 29 �the church to have Mass, and I told them, “This is not a takeover, and not only are they gonna have Mass, but I intend to be there myself.” And so, after that, they came up with a button that said, “People’s Church,” so they became part of the movement that we also were doing. In fact, that’s what was good about the Young Lords, was we were increasing in numbers. We got many people to be involved, so it became more than just a Puerto Rican movement, but it became more of a diverse movement. [01:03:00] So, after that, the police came down heavy with repression. There were building inspectors being brought to the church to try to close it down ’cause we were there. They had a police car that changed their shift right there, in front of the church, so it was there, parked, 24 hours a day. They were photographing everybody going in and out of the church. They were calling the radio and stop people like a block away, shake them down, you know, go through their possessions. Many times, I would be arrested, and they would take my phone book with out -- just, they knew they could do that, and they were getting people’s numbers, and addresses, and that from me, so I know they were doing that with a lot of other people. So, you know, they had put the Young Lords and the Black Panthers in the police training videos, so -- [01:04:00] we didn’t have cars, so, when we walked down the street, we were being stopped by new recruits, new police recruits, because, hey, this is Cha-Cha, or this is Fred Hampton, or these are Panthers. These are Young Lords. Anybody with our buttons, and there were a lot of people wearing our buttons, would be stopped and harassed, which is freedom of speech, wearing a button, but they would be stopped and harassed. But, anyway, when we saw 30 �that that was taking place, we were learning more from the Black Panther Party. Say, “That’s why we need these programs,” the breakfast for children program, the health clinic, and that, so not only are we showing people what type of society we want, a cooperative society that we want, you know, to work together, more collectivism, to work together, as we call it, but these are ways also to keep us alive, to survive, so [01:05:00] that the police cannot attack us and destroy our movement, which is what they wanted to do at that time. So, we said, instead of being so -- the Puerto Rican community had not gone, like the African American community, through a phase of -- at least the Puerto Rican community in Chicago -- through a phase of nonviolence, and demonstrations, (inaudible), so we needed to involve more of the people in the community. And so, we began to organize demonstrations, and one turning point was when Manuel Ramos was killed by an off-duty policeman, James Lamb, and people in the Young Lords wanted to get even, and we had discussions and said, “You know, the best way to get even is to organize the community.” [All the?] hotheads in the group wanted just to shoot people, to get even the old-fashioned way, [01:06:00] but we were able to organize, and we had a march of about 10,000 strong. At that time, we had other groups join in. I remember the Horsemen was a motorcycle group, and they came with their motorcycles in front, and they looked beautiful. And then, the Caballeros de San Juan and Hijas de María of council number nine, they were deeply involved with us at that time, so the church was involved. In fact, Antulio Parrilla, the bishop of Puerto Rico, came to celebrate -- specifically to Chicago -- to celebrate a Mass for the Young Lords, so we were very grateful 31 �for that. This is the bishop of Puerto Rico coming just to see us, and the Caballeros of San Juan were the ones that brought him in. Jesús Rodríguez was the leader at that time that brought him in. So, we were getting [01:07:00] not only the Protestants with the Northside Cooperative Ministry, but the Catholic Church was also, now, supporting us and that. Later on, of course, I was involved in the [aldermanic campaign?] where I ran for alderman also, and we got 39 percent of the vote. You know, all you need is 51 percent to win, so, for the first time ever -- usually you get maybe one or two percent. Here, we got 39 percent. The second time that we were involved in a campaign was the campaign for mayor Harold Washington in 1983, and he won, and it was a different feeling from picketing and protesting to being victors, to winning, and that’s when I introduced him in front of 100,000 Puerto Ricans in Humboldt Park with 30,000 people wearing our buttons. So, you know, we started kind of militant from the [01:08:00] gang, kinda evil and mischievous, and became citizens, honest citizens working for the community, and, now, many of our people know us. Our history’s being taught in many Latino studies departments in many universities across this country. Right now, as a student at Grand Valley State University, I’m in the process of documenting the community of Lincoln Park that was completely displaced with an oral history project. We have done some work with DePaul University, but this is -- I’m excited. This is a bigger project, and it’s the people themselves, telling their own history. And so, that’s what we’re doing. That’s what I’m doing today. That’s what we’re doing today as a group. 32 �Q1: [01:09:00] Now, with that, why is documenting the past so important to you, and what do you want to achieve with this project? JJ: Well, you know, it’s not just documenting the past, but this is a group of people that stood up for their rights, so it’s -- we’re telling the history of an immigrant group, the Puerto Rican community, that -- not many people know about the Puerto Rican community. The first Puerto Ricans to Chicago, their community that was displaced, and we’re saying that they stood up for their rights. So, it’s like a historical piece that we’re doing for the community. I mean, they stood up. They marched. They protested. They were militant. They were religious. They were pilgrims. [01:10:00] There’s many lessons to be learned. They worked with their own youth. The whole lessons of how they were a stable community, and then they were destabilized and destroyed, and supergangs came out of that. All those are lessons that not only the Puerto Rican community can learn but everyone can learn. And so, I think it’s an important element in terms of the history of the United States itself. I mean, this is the first gang that completely turned themselves around. I mean, you don’t have that. That’s history by itself. You don’t have that in the history of -- this is good for the sociologists and anybody that wants to study the gang problem that exists today to at least get some ideas how we can change that for future immigrants that will be coming -[01:11:00] you know, this is the land of immigrants. So, it’s important, I think, for America. It’s important for Puerto Ricans that we do this history. Q1: Well, thank you. JJ: Thank you. 33 �Q1: Awesome stuff. Q2: Very nice. Q1: Thank you. (break in recording) Q1: And recording. JJ: Well, I’m against the plebiscite mainly because it’s not Puerto Rican. It’s more of a master plan for Puerto Rico that was put in place since 1898. It’s a tool to try to complete the process of colonization for Puerto Rico. It’s not half of the population of Puerto Ricans that live in the United States, who live in what we call a shuttle culture because they move back and [01:12:00] forth to Puerto Rico. They travel back and forth to Puerto Rico. Their children were born here or born there. It’s a shuttle culture. Half of the Puerto Ricans will not be able to vote in this plebiscite, so it’s a rigged election from the beginning. It’s only there for the purposes of helping to elect the current governor that exists there. Puerto Rico is an occupied nation. There is no army, no military. They government of Puerto Rico is basically on the payroll so that, you know, you have more people in government than you really need, and they’re just basically there to maintain the island [colonized?]. One-third of Puerto Rico is a military base. Puerto Rico does not have its own currency. From the peso, they went to the American dollar. Puerto Ricans [01:13:00] are not against the Americans. We have fought for the American people, so we -- Puerto Ricans are American citizens. What we’re saying is that we have a right to determine our own destiny, the same thing that the United States was saying against England. We have been in existence 34 �300 years more than the United States. In fact, the first governor of Puerto Rico, Ponce de León, discovered the oldest city in the United States, St. Augustine, Florida. So, I mean, Puerto Rico is a nation with its own culture, with its own language, with its own history, a nation of 500 years and more, and we feel it’s an occupied nation, and it needs to remain free. Libre, as we call it. [Thanks?]. END OF VIDEO FILE 35 � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/c5131908777cdf642451538df4f7adaf.mp4 9002636d2da7277abcfb9ae39d32c14d Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Young Lords in Lincoln Park Collection Subject The topic of the resource Young Lords (Organization) Puerto Ricans--United States Civil Rights--United States--History Lincoln Park (Chicago, Ill.) Personal narratives Social justice Community activists--Illinois--Chicago Description An account of the resource Collection of oral history interviews and digitized materials documenting the history of the Young Lords Organization in Lincoln Park, Chicago. Interviews were conducted by Young Lords' founder, José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez, and documents were digitized from Mr. Jiménez' archives. The Young Lords in Lincoln Park collection grows out of the ongoing struggle for fair housing, self-determination, and human rights that was launched by Mr. José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez, founder of the Young Lords Movement. This project is dedicated to documenting the history of the displacement of Puerto Ricans, Mejicanos, other Latinos, and the poor from Lincoln Park, as well as the history of the Young Lords nationwide. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Jiménez, José, 1948- Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/491">Young Lords in Lincoln Park collection (RHC-65)</a> Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-04-25 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Language A language of the resource eng spa Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-65 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 2012-2017 Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Título Spanish language Title entry Jose Jimenez vídeo entrevista y biografía, entrevista 1 Descripción Spanish language Description entry La historia oral de Jose 'Cha-Cha' Jimenez, entrevistado en 3/15/2012 sobre los Young Lords en Lincoln Park. Sujetos Spanish language Subject terms Young Lords (Organización) Puertorriqueños--Estados Unidos Derechos civiles--Estados Unidos--Historia Lincoln Park (Chicago, Ill.) Mexicano-Americanos--Relatos personales Justicia social Activistas comunitarios--Illinois--Chicago Mexico-Americanos--Illinois--Chicago--Condiciones sociales Relaciones raciales Conflicto social Identitad cultural Partido Pantera Negra. Illinois Capí­tulo Source <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/491">Young Lords in Lincoln Park (RHC-65)</a> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-65_Jimenez_Jose_1 Title A name given to the resource Jose Jimenez video interview and transcript, interview 1 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Jimenez, Jose Description An account of the resource Oral history of Jose 'Cha-Cha' Jimenez, interviewed on 3/15/2012 about the Young Lords in Lincoln Park. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Jimenez, Jose, 1948- Subject The topic of the resource Young Lords (Organization) Puerto Ricans--United States Civil Rights--United States--History Lincoln Park (Chicago, Ill.) Mexican Americans--Personal narratives Social justice Community activists--Illinois--Chicago Mexican Americans--Illinois--Chicago--Social conditions Race relations Social conflict Cultural identity Black Panther Party. Illinois Chapter Language A language of the resource eng Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2012-03-15 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/3143b58bebcdf41996ddd2297dbdf157.pdf 372238cba2e8c0bd6849941f646ad9c1 PDF Text Text Young Lords In Lincoln Park Interviewee: Daisy Jiménez Interviewers: José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez Location: Grand Valley State University Special Collections Date: 5/10/2012 Biography and Description English 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. Spanish Daisy Jiménez o como la llamaba su padre, “La Prieta”, es una hermana de José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez. Nació en el séptimo piso del Water Hotel en la calle Superior y La Salle Streets en Chicago, donde vivía su familia. Creció en La Clark medio Ohio y North Ave. , y luego en Lincoln Park donde ayudo a su mama �a reclutar gente para misa en Español y dando rosarios para los Caballeros de San Juan y Damas de María. Después de vivir en Claremont y North Ave. Por unos años, la familia se movió ah Aurora, Illinois. Aquí conocieron a Teo Arroyo quien estaba organizando el primer desfilo Puertorriqueño en Aurora, y también era de Barrio San Salvado de Caguas. Daisy entro la carrera para ser Reina del Desfilo Puertorriqueño y gano. Ahora vive en Camuy, Puerto Rico con su esposo Israel Rodríguez y cuatro hijos. �Transcript 2 JOSE JIMENEZ: -- about you ran for Puerto Rican Queen in Aurora. Tell me what was that all about? DAISY JIMENEZ: That was when we moved to Aurora. There was candidates. They had, like, three girls that were running for Puerto Rican Queen. JJ: What year did you move to Aurora? DJ: That was in 1969. JJ: Nineteen sixty-nine, you moved to Aurora. DJ: We moved to Aurora. JJ: So right after the Young Lords started, that’s when you moved there? DJ: Yes. JJ: Okay. And what was the reason for moving there? DJ: The reason we had to move was because my older sister eloped with her boyfriend and he beat up on my sister. She walked all the way to the Young Lords church where they were all located, where everybody lived out there. JJ: (inaudible). Then what happened? DJ: Then my brother -- then you beat up on him [00:01:00] and you took him back to our house with my sister and you made her stay there and he had to leave. JJ: How do you know he was beaten up? DJ: Because he couldn’t open his eyes. That’s how swollen his eyes were. And he had said that you had beat him up. And then you made him take my sister back 1 �home, so since you made him take my sister back home, after everybody left and everything, my dad came home from work. JJ: He was being treated with respect when he went to your house? DJ: Yes. JJ: And you (inaudible) maybe he was beat up. He was -- DJ: Oh no, he was treated -- no, he went into the house, took her back home, nobody said anything to him or whatever, and then he had to leave. So he left and after he left -- JJ: Was he beaten up because he eloped? DJ: He was beaten up because he beat my sister really bad. Really [00:02:00] bad. And he had no reason to do that to my sister. And then my sister told you that he would hit her every day for no reason at all. She had to walk -- he was very -- the word is machista. He was very machista, so when they would walk down the street, my sister had to walk looking at the ground. If she would raise her head up at all or look at a window at a store or anything like that, automatically when he got home, he would beat her up. JJ: So was he jealous of her? DJ: He was very insecure. Our sister actually threw herself out of the second floor window because he had her locked up in the house with the bolt and keys. She couldn’t get out of the house, so she tried to escape, so she jumped out of a window and he was waiting for her downstairs, brought her in the house, and beat her up again. And then that’s when he got up all of the sudden and he left. JJ: [00:03:00] Now wasn’t he also married or something like that? 2 �DJ: On top of all that, he brought his wife -- his ex-wife -- to their apartment and had her staying there overnight with their child while my sister was there. So there was a lot of issues there. There was a lot, a lot of issues there. So then because of that, my mom could not take -- JJ: That was on Claremont, right? Why did you move from Bissell to Claremont? DJ: We moved from Bissell to Claremont because the owner of the house on Claremont was a compadre of my mom and dad. So since they were compadres, he had an empty apartment at the time and they just decided they were moving from Bissell to Claremont, to that area. JJ: Why all of the sudden? Because you lived many years on Bissell Street. DJ: I don’t know. JJ: [They weren’t talking about him?]? Nothing happened? (inaudible) DJ: It could have been. [00:04:00] It could have been that they raised the rent. It could have been a lot of different -- JJ: It could have been, but you don’t know. DJ: I don’t remember. At that time, I don’t remember ’cause at that time, I actually was not paying attention to much. JJ: So you moved from Bissell Street and Dickens, Bissell and Dickens, 2117. DJ: Twenty-one seventeen North Bissell. JJ: Well, we lived several years there. DJ: We lived a lot of years there. 3 �JJ: A lot of years there. And so we knew everybody in the community. ’Cause when we moved from there to Claremont and North Avenue, there was a church -- I think the FML or something like that. DJ: The what? JJ: I think they’re called FLM or something, that group, the Puerto Rican group? DJ: I’m not sure. JJ: (inaudible) over there (inaudible) there in the corner or something? DJ: There was people there at the corner. But I don’t remember. Like, I wasn’t really into all that stuff. I know all about this. I know about my sister getting beat up because we lived it. I mean, we saw it. But at that time, [00:05:00] I hadn’t gone to the church where my brother was with his organization. At that time, we weren’t there, and then from there, because of all the problems that we were having at the house with my sister, my parents decided that we were moving. Out of the blue. It was like overnight. We had a cousin. We moved to Aurora. He let us stay with him for a couple of weeks until we got our own apartment. JJ: Who was that? DJ: [Benedicto?]. JJ: Benedicto Jimenez? DJ: Jimenez. JJ: So you stayed at his house for a couple weeks until you were able to find a -- DJ: Until we were able to find an apartment. JJ: Okay, and that was -- DJ: That was in 1969. 4 �JJ: Okay, so now you found an apartment where? What street? DJ: On Claim Street. On Claim Street. Claim and High. JJ: And was it a big apartment? DJ: It was a little house. It was a little house, a detached home, and we got the apartment. We got the house and we were living there. And that was fine then. JJ: You don’t have the [00:06:00] address on Claim? DJ: Six fifteen. JJ: Six fifteen? DJ: I think it’s 615 Claim Street. JJ: In Aurora? DJ: In Aurora. JJ: Okay. So now you’re at 615 Claim Street in Aurora and are you in school? DJ: I was going to school. I believe I was in ninth grade. I was in the ninth. I was in eighth grade. I remember eighth grade. I had just finished -- JJ: You don’t know what school? You don’t know what school, do you? What school? DJ: No, and it wasn’t eighth grade, it was ninth grade. It was Waldo High School. JJ: Waldo High School. DJ: Yes, because I did ninth, tenth, eleventh, and twelfth there. Or, no, I went ninth and tenth. JJ: Okay, so you didn’t finish high school, then? DJ: No. I finished ninth there and then we went to East High and I started tenth, but that’s when I really started cutting class. 5 �JJ: And why were you cutting class? DJ: It just didn’t faze me. School was not fazing me [00:07:00] anymore. I was upset because we had to move from Chicago. I didn’t want to move. I had a boyfriend in Chicago. I didn’t want to move to Aurora. I couldn’t see him. I couldn’t talk to him. So this went on and on, so all of the sudden, we went to school one day -and I’ll never forget this because it was the first time I ever cut school in my life -we go and we cut school and my sister’s decided they were gonna cut school as well. We were just at a girlfriend’s house down the street by the school. There was like a group of us cut class, and we all went there. Well, all of the sudden, my brother -- which is you -- had an auto accident. JJ: Jose, Joseph. DJ: Jose, Joseph Jimenez. JJ: Okay. DJ: ’Cause I’ve always called him Joseph. JJ: Why was that? Why did you call him? DJ: I thought his name was Joseph. All my life, I grew up, I thought it his name. I never thought he was Jose. Could be because I’ve always -- JJ: But Mom called [00:08:00] me Jose. DJ: But I always thought you were Joseph, and probably because I’ve always considered myself more American than Puerto Rican. For some reason, I’ve always thought myself as that. I always go with what the Americans do. Puerto Ricans like rice and beans and everything. I prefer mashed potatoes, green 6 �beans, a salad, stuff like that. I mean, I eat it. It’s not like I don’t eat the Spanish food. But I would prefer American food. JJ: ’Cause you were born there too. DJ: ’Cause I was born and raised in Chicago, and at school, I loved their hot lunches, so that’s what I liked. JJ: What they actually did in school, they kind of changed peoples’ names. Anyway, but Daisy, yeah, they kind of changed peoples’ names when you’d go to school too. DJ: Uh-huh, exactly. JJ: So instead of the Spanish name, they called me -- DJ: Well, they never called me Daisy Jimenez. My name was Daisy Jiminez. And they also spelled it J-I-M-E-N-E-Z and it’s J-I-M-É-N-E-Z. [00:09:00] They spelled it J-I-M-I-N-E-Z. So they never spelled it correctly either, so it was a big ordeal. So then I’ll never forget that day, my first time in my life cutting class. The first time I cut. And here goes -- my brother goes and has -- which is you -- but decides on having an auto accident clear across -- I don’t know where it was. It was far away. JJ: In Aurora? DJ: You had a car accident. So what happened? My mom was babysitting some little kids during the day, so my dad goes to the school to go pick us up so we can go to the house, take care of the little kids so they can go to the hospital and go see you to make sure you were okay. When my dad goes to the school to pick us up, we were not in school. So we started coming home and we get home 7 �from school. He asks us, “Where were you?” We said, “In school.” “You were not in school because your brother had a car accident. We’ve been looking for you all [00:10:00] day. Where were you? We will take care of this later,” whatever, whatever. And they took off and left us with the little kids and they took off to the hospital, go see you to make sure you were okay. And then also while we lived in Aurora, I decided I’m running for Puerto Rican Queen. There was three girls running. And running for Puerto Rican Queen, it was the person that sold the most tickets. There would be a big raffle but the person that sold the most tickets, that would be the person that would actually win, and by winning -JJ: What organization was sponsoring this? DJ: Oh God. JJ: (inaudible) DJ: [Doroteo Arroyo?]. And it was just the Puerto Rican Parade Committee. That’s what it was called. So he was the president of the committee and it was three of us that were running for Puerto Rican Queen. We had to sell tons of tickets, so we were selling. Mom was cooking all these pasteles and selling this and selling that, and [00:11:00] we actually got to 2,000 tickets sold, and I for a fact knew that one of the other girls, one of them had 1,300 and the other one only had 1,000, so I already knew I was gonna win because I had the most tickets. But because I got upset at my dad -- I already had my dress, my gown, and everything. I had it altered. Everything was fine, ready for -- the dance was supposed to be -- and the crowning and everything -- on a Saturday. Well, the Tuesday before that Saturday -- the Saturday before, there was a dance. We 8 �had to sell more tickets, more raffles, more stuff to make more money for this organization. They were gonna pay us a trip to Puerto Rico at that time. JJ: Do you remember the other girls’ names or no? Not that important. DJ: One of them is [Carmen?]. JJ: What’s her last name? DJ: [00:12:00] Carmen [Brasero?]. That was one of ’em. And the other one I don’t remember, and the other one was the one that got crowned because she had 1,300 tickets sold, because what happened was that we went to this dance the week before. Our father already knew I had a boyfriend, which is my husband now. And we were not allowed to go out of the house together. He can visit me at my house, but I couldn’t go in his car and go anywhere with him like on a date or nothing like that, okay? So every time he would come over, for some reason when my husband came to talk to my dad and say, “I wanna see your daughter, and this and that. I want her to be my girlfriend,” and out of respect. That’s how the Puerto Ricans do that. They have to ask permission to be able to visit the daughter at the house. So my husband did that. At that time, he was my boyfriend. He did that. Well, my father didn’t [00:13:00] want to talk to him, so my mother talked to him. My mother said, “Fine, no problem, he can come by.” I believe it was on a Tuesday. “And he can come on Saturday.” So what happens? No, on Sunday. So what happens? He started coming on Tuesdays and Sundays and every time he would come, every time he would leave, there would be an argument at my house with my father. “Why is he here? Why did he come here? Why this?” And this was, like, every time, every time, and all we 9 �would do is sit on the couch and hold hands. I mean, we couldn’t even touch each other, I mean, like clothes, my elbow, or anything. We couldn’t do none of that. And for me to give him a goodbye kiss, my sister would have to, like, stand and hold up the wall in front of us, like hiding so he can give me a kiss and he can go home. So it was like one fight after the other all the time, all the time, all the time. JJ: What was [00:14:00] your father’s concern? What was he worried about? DJ: Because he said my husband drank and he don’t want him as my boyfriend because he drank. But my father drank. So what was the big deal? But no, he didn’t want him to be my boyfriend because he drank. JJ: Was he drinking a lot at that time, your father? DJ: No, no. Well, no, not at that time because my father at time, he would drink once a week. He either would drink on a Friday or drink on a Saturday. If he wanted to get drunk, he would get drunk either on a Friday or a Saturday. He would never touch anything Sunday through Thursday. JJ: What did he drink? DJ: Beer. At that time, he was really having beer. He wasn’t into drinking a lot of -before that, he did drink more, but when we moved to Aurora, he was just really drinking beer. I don’t remember him actually just like pounding down drinks or something like that. [00:15:00] I saw him more drinking beer. JJ: Was he being abusive at all at that time? ’Cause I don’t know if maybe when he was younger, he was a little abusive. 10 �DJ: No, he didn’t actually get abusive. He wanted to hit Mom one day and [Jenny?] got into it, but it was really more like an argument or whatever, not actually hitting. That’s why when my mom says, “Oh, your father always hit me,” and this and that, I don’t remember none of that. I don’t remember my father putting a hand on my mother ever. Ever. So that’s why I would like to know where was this hitting, because I never saw it, and I lived in the same house. It’s not like he did it in the bedroom ’cause when he wanted to fight, we would fight -- I know abusive in the part that she could be sleeping and he would get home at 3:00 in the morning with some friends, with the Hacha Viejas, and he would come and say, “Get up out of that bed, and I want you to cook for us.” And that, I found abusive ’cause she would get up and cook, but he didn’t hit her. So if there was hitting, it had to be when we were babies. JJ: Yeah. There was hitting when we were babies. DJ: [00:16:00] Yeah, but then after that, I don’t remember. JJ: Once we grew up, he didn’t. DJ: Yeah, I don’t remember him even touching her. JJ: Right, no. DJ: They didn’t actually talk. I don’t remember all this talking. I don’t remember hugging. I don’t remember kissing. I don’t remember my mom ever hugging me and kissing me. Ever. JJ: She never hugged you or kissed you? DJ: She would hug and kiss you because you were her son. You were her favorite. She only liked you because you were the male of the house. She didn’t like none 11 �of us three. Our three sisters? We don’t remember that. I remember one birthday party all my life, all my life, and that’s when I was 15. JJ: So did you resent that then? DJ: Oh, I resent it now. I still resent it because where we? I mean, she would come home from work. I remember having to be on my hands and knees waxing the floor, on my hands and knees. [00:17:00] So it was like all of the sudden, we grew up. We were the age of 9, 10, 11, 12. I remember we had to do everything at the house. One of us had to mop. One of us had to sweep. I had to get on my hands and knees and wax the floor by hand. It was the whole house, not just one little living room. It was the entire house. And to wash clothes, we didn’t have a machine. She would get a pillow case full of clothes. She would take that entire pillow case full of clothes and she would throw all those clothes -- it was everybody’s clothes -- dirty clothes in that bag. She would take those dirty clothes and she would throw them in the bathtub and with one of those little wooden things with the metal on it, she would put the -- JJ: The scrub boards. DJ: And we had to do the scrubbing boards. We would have to do that by hand. JJ: Instead of going to the laundromat? DJ: Exactly, and the laundromat was across the street. JJ: So you could’ve just (inaudible). DJ: Yeah. So we had to do that. We [00:18:00] had to rinse it out. We had to hang it up. And that wasn’t all because once it was dry, that whole sack of clothes, we 12 �had to stand there and we had to iron it all. She would make us iron the underwear. JJ: Do you think, was she trying to save money or maybe she wasn’t used to the new technology or something like that? DJ: No. JJ: Because she used to wash, you know, like the old days where they used to wash clothes. DJ: But she also had a machine. JJ: On the rocks. DJ: That was in Puerto Rico. But then after that, we did have machines. It’s not like we didn’t have machines. But it broke down, and so we had -- JJ: So she didn’t know how to use the machines. DJ: No, because we had a laundromat right across the street. We could’ve put all the clothes at the same time and had them all done. JJ: Did she know how to use the laundromat? DJ: It didn’t matter. If she didn’t know, we knew how to use it. All she had to do was give us the money and we would go and do it at the laundromat. No, she would make us do that. She would make us be home from school at 3:15 on the dot. We had to [00:19:00] be home and we had to start dinner. One of us had to start dinner. The other one had to start sweeping. The other one had to start mopping. And this was every day, every day, every day. We hated Saturdays. Saturdays, she would get in our room. She would take everything out of the closet. One shoe could not be out of place. Everything had to be. And in the 13 �meantime, she’d come home and just lie on the sofa. “Give me my black coffee. Give me a cigarette.” See, those are the things that you don’t remember ’cause you weren’t there. We remember a lot. There was things that I don’t know if I should say, but there’s things that happened, that bad. There was fight -- I know that they were gonna split up at one time because my mom was with some man. JJ: Okay, so it was a man. DJ: And she thinks that we don’t know. That’s the whole thing. She tried to [00:20:00] make it look like that some guy went in the house and tried to get nasty with her. But that’s not how it happened. She was getting ready for work and she knew this guy and she let him in the house and she knew Daddy wasn’t home. She knew Daddy was working. Why did she let him in the house? And then on top of that, you know that Daddy would take and get her check out of her purse to pay for the groceries, to do groceries. JJ: Let’s (inaudible). So how long was this man in the house? DJ: No, that man didn’t live there. That man just came that day. JJ: Oh, he came that day. Were you there with them? DJ: No, we were not there. We were in school. JJ: Oh, okay, so you weren’t there. You were in school. DJ: And Daddy was working. So he was there at the house. JJ: So something happened. DJ: I obviously think that something happened, but of course what happened was that our cousin Benedicto that lived in Aurora happened to be in Chicago and knocked on the door -- 14 �JJ: At that time. DJ: -- at that moment and she was in a robe. And so when he knocked and he saw her in a robe and saw this man there, [00:21:00] her excuse was -- and she put it in his mind and put it through all minds -- that this man tried to force himself on her, is what she says. But Daddy found a letter in her purse, some type of love letter in her purse, and she didn’t get rid of the love letter, so he found it. I remember we stayed next door. She had us underground, all of us. We were hiding next door. We couldn’t leave the house ’cause Daddy wanted to kill her. But we didn’t know why he wanted to kill her. We did not know why and we didn’t know why, and why? And then all of the sudden, we heard them talking. We heard all this fighting and this and that. Daddy started arguing. He wanted to hit her, but she grabbed us and we left, and then all of the sudden we just came next door on the second floor. But we would see Daddy go in and out, in and out. Well, that happened all weekend, but by Monday -- see, that’s why Daddy always loved me [00:22:00] and I know he did -- by Monday, we were walking to school and he was under the train tracks waiting for us. “You’re gonna tell me where your mother is.” And my mom specifically told us, “Don’t you tell your father where we’re at.” So I told him, I said, “Oh, we’re right next door, Daddy. We’re there. Why are you guys fighting?” And he wouldn’t tell us and wouldn’t tell us, but then we heard him talking again and I knew it was because the letter that was in her purse. And then she tries to justify herself because that wasn’t the only time. JJ: How come? 15 �DJ: That I remember. JJ: With the same person? DJ: No, this is then somebody else. Then we know. We went to a carnival. Had the carnival. We were dying to go to the carnival. Well, she kept saying, “No, we have no money. I have no money.” Daddy was working nights. “We have no money.” But all of the sudden we had money to go to the carnival. We go to the carnival. We’re getting on all [00:23:00] these rides. All of the sudden, we’re up, we’re up on the Ferris wheel, we see our mother down there talking to some man. We’re on our rides. All of the sudden, the man kept paying us rides while they were by themselves talking. Of course, at that time you don’t think anything about it, but our sister was three years -- JJ: So she was flirting with the man at that time. DJ: Of course, but our sister was three years older, which was Jenny. JJ: So I mean, on that day, you didn’t see them doing anything sexual. DJ: Not sexual. She was with him and all this laughing and all this thing. JJ: Well, that’s flirting. DJ: Exactly. And then another time when we actually lived on Bissell Street, the landlord -- JJ: But the other time, they weren’t in the house. That’s what you were saying. DJ: One of them one time was in the house. JJ: That’s the only time you saw them? Where there was a man in the house? DJ: That they talked about, that he tried to get nasty with her in the house. That’s what she said. But the only reason she was saying that was because she got 16 �caught, because she got caught. If she wouldn’t have gotten caught, she wouldn’t have even said [00:24:00] anything. But because she got caught, she had to say that. And then it was a man at the carnival that I remember. Then when we lived at 2117 North Bissell, the owner of the house lived in the basement. We lived on the first floor. Well, the lady, the owner downstairs, she had a brother. See, I didn’t know this, but my sister Jenny told me this. She says, “Daisy, I’m three years older than you. There was things that happened that you don’t know.” And I go, “Well, what happened?” “Well, don’t you remember the lady downstairs had a brother?” I go, “Yeah.” I always would see Mom talking to them, to him. JJ: So who’s telling you this? DJ: My sister Jenny told me. JJ: Jenny, okay. DJ: I would always see them talking but I never said anything until one day, I was going down the stairs. Jenny’s the one that told me this, that she was going down the stairs and she heard Mom tell the lady -- the owner of the house -- say, “Listen, tell your brother [00:25:00] that I can’t meet him tonight because so-andso wasn’t working,” or something, which was our father, and she couldn’t go. “Just make sure you tell him that I can’t go tonight.” I didn’t know what it was. Jenny told me and she goes, “Yeah, she was seeing him.” So that justifies probably all the arguing and all the fighting that was happening in our house when we were growing up. That’s what I’m thinking. I don’t know. But anyway, 17 �that’s why there’s a lot of resentment there. There’s resentment and the fact that my father died. JJ: So you resented that she was doing that? DJ: Because she taught us that you don’t do stuff like that, and what makes her any better than us? That’s how I see it. She taught us -- we were Catholic. We respect our husband. We do this. We do that. Whatever. Threw the whole Book. You can’t do this. This is bad. [00:26:00] Don’t French kiss, ’cause we did that. Don’t go out with a guy that has tattoos. When you get married by the Catholic church, you can’t get a divorce. That’s a sin. Unless you’re a widow, you can’t remarry. You know, all this sin and all this thing and all this Catholic church and all this for what? My father died, and two months after my father was dead, she was sending me a letter stating that she had a boyfriend. Two months after my father died. And she remarried seven months after my father was dead. She didn’t even wait a year. And then she had this huge wedding. JJ: And it’s custom to wait a year? DJ: At least custom to wear black. At that time, a widow wore black for a year. JJ: Wore black for a year? DJ: Yeah. And then you can do whatever you wanted and people wouldn’t say nothing. Everybody talked. She didn’t care. JJ: What do you -- talk -- DJ: Everybody talked [00:27:00] about her. JJ: So everybody knew? DJ: Why was she seeing a man when her husband wasn’t even cold in the grave? 18 �JJ: Everybody in San Salvado? DJ: Everybody. Everybody in San Salvador, her brothers and sister. My uncles on my father’s side. Everybody talked about her. We were all upset. And then we weren’t even part of her wedding, not even my younger sister. She threw my younger sister out of the house. She’s ready to get married. She still has a 17year-old living with her, which is my younger sister, 17-year-old living with her, so what does she do? My sister cuts class, goes to the beach with her boyfriend, some friend of hers sees my sister. When she gets home -- mind you, our dad’s already dead. She’s already preparing to get married -- she puts her house up for rent, a new house, because she says that she needed to get married because -- the necessity. How was she gonna eat? There [00:28:00] was food stamps. What makes her better than anybody else to take food stamps? There was factories. She was only 40-something. She could’ve gone to work. She wasn’t disabled. She could’ve gone to work. I told her to come and live with me and she didn’t wanna go to New Jersey. You know, Jenny told her to go live with her in Aurora, go back to Chicago, and she didn’t want her. Her excuse was -- we knew she just wanted to go to bed. She wanted to have a boyfriend. She wanted to get married. She didn’t care. So she goes. My sister cuts class. My younger sister cuts school. She tells her brother because my mother couldn’t go. She was ready to get married and she couldn’t walk ’cause she had had a broken leg right before the wedding, so she didn’t walk very well. She tells her brother, “I want you to take my daughter to her boyfriend’s house because she’s moving out. She is moving in with her boyfriend because she cut class and I 19 �don’t know if she’s a virgin now.” Those were her exact words and she threw my sister out of the house. JJ: [00:29:00] Because she didn’t know if she was a virgin? DJ: But she didn’t take her to the doctor either to see if she was a virgin. She just wanted to get rid of her because she wanted to start a new life with her new husband and she didn’t care about her. That is what it was. JJ: Okay, this is after Antonio died. DJ: Yes, this was after our father died. This was seven months after our father died. JJ: Okay, so then she’s marrying this new guy and she wants [him around?]. DJ: She wants to be very soft with him. She doesn’t want a 17-year-old girl in her life. She didn’t even ask her to be in her wedding. This is her daughter that lived with her. She didn’t ask her anything. That is why we’re all resentful. Those are things that you don’t understand because you didn’t live with us. So that happened. Anyway, that happened, that part of the life. JJ: (inaudible) you’re real angry. DJ: I’m still mad at her. We all are. [00:30:00] Joseph, this doesn’t go away. And then now on top of all this -- JJ: But she’s been living with you for how many years now? DJ: Three years and I’m still mad. JJ: For the last three years. DJ: And I’m still mad. JJ: So if she’s been living with you for the last three years and you’re angry, why is she living with you? 20 �DJ: Because nobody else wants her. Because nobody else wants to keep her fulltime. They made me quit my job, leave my kids to come to Puerto Rico when I was living in Florida. JJ: Why doesn’t she go with Jenny or something? DJ: Because Jenny all of the sudden now has Paget’s disease. Not all of the sudden, because she does have Paget’s disease. But she says she can’t deal with that and can’t deal with her appointments and can’t deal with this. So then I come here to Puerto Rico with no job, no nothing. JJ: Does she want to (inaudible) or no? DJ: My mother? JJ: Right. DJ: I don’t know. She’ll want to be with you. I mean, if you noticed, [00:31:00] she got up this morning thinking that she was gonna go hang out with you. I told her, “Mom, you’re going to the nursing home.” “Oh, I thought I was going with Jose.” I go, “No, Joseph is doing interviews today.” You notice that ever since you’re here, she’s with you. She gets up in the mornings, sits with you. When you’re not here, she doesn’t come in this house. JJ: So you’ve gotten less angry since she’s been with you or more angry? DJ: I’m the same. JJ: The same? DJ: I’m about the same because she also told me -- I understand she’s starting Alzheimer’s, but she also told my daughter -- my daughter says to her -- my daughter comes on vacation from Florida, says, “Grandma, when are you going 21 �to Chicago?” “Oh, I don’t know.” And my daughter says to her, “Well, you know, Grandma, you do have a daughter and a son over there. Maybe you should go visit and you can stay a couple [00:32:00] months because they are your son and daughters as well.” “Oh no, I’m staying here in Puerto Rico. This is my house here and your mother has to take care of me because I had her in my stomach for nine months and it’s her job to take care of me.” JJ: She told this to who? DJ: To my daughter. She told me that I had to take care of her because that was my job and that pissed me off more. So then that’s when I got on her case and I told her, “I take care of you because I wanna take care of you, because I can easily put you in a nursing home. If nobody wants to deal with you, I can put you -- but because I wanna take care of you, that is why I’m taking care of you.” JJ: So is she kind of controlling? DJ: She tries, but she can’t pass me. She tries to control me but I won’t let her. JJ: But she is controlling? DJ: Oh, she’s very controlling. JJ: How does she control? What does she control? DJ: Oh, she’ll say something like -- I have to take out her clothes. I go, “Here, Mom, here’s your clothes.” “I’m not wearing that.” And I go, [00:33:00] “Mom, I just spent 30 dollars on this outfit for you. You said you liked the outfit. You need to put it on because I don’t have money to keep spending to be throwing clothes away.” JJ: So she confronts one way or another. 22 �DJ: She likes to confront. She comes up and she says, “I’m not wearing it.” And then I’ll tell her, “Well, you either wear it or you’re not going to the nursing home.” JJ: What other ways is she controlling? Does she use guilt at all? DJ: Does she what? JJ: Does she try to make you feel guilty? DJ: No, she just swears. All of the sudden -- she never used to swear. That’s how I know it’s part of the Alzheimer’s. JJ: She didn’t used to swear? DJ: No, she told me to go to hell not too long ago. She told me, “Why don’t you go to hell?” Because she had eaten lunch at around 2:30 and it was only, like, four o’clock, and mind you, she had a big, huge lunch, and she wanted to eat again, rice. So I said, “No, I can give you [00:34:00] a piece of cake and milk or something, but you’re not having rice again, not a big bowl.” “Oh, you never wanna --” And I go, “Mom, you just ate.” “Oh, I wanna eat again.” I go, “Mom, you can’t keep eating. Look how heavy you are. You cannot continue to eat. You keep gaining weight and gaining weight.” “Oh, why don’t you just go to hell?” And I opened this door and I said, “Who did you tell to go to hell?” I go, “Not in my house.” I go, “This is my house and you respect --” “Oh, I didn’t say go to hell.” I go, “Now you’re calling me a liar?” So she does try, but I know some of it is the Alzheimer’s, so I try to control myself. I do and I try to control myself. But I do need you to help from time to time. I need Jenny to help because otherwise, I get angrier and angrier and angrier, you know? I wanna be with my kids and I 23 �have to see my kids at least twice a year. [00:35:00] The entire last year, I only saw my kids for eight days and it’s hard. JJ: And then you’re going through something (inaudible) [yourself?]. DJ: Yeah. JJ: What kind of stuff? DJ: Well, now I have some white lesions inside my left cheek all the way on the inside, but it’s taken most of my cheek. It’s called pre-cancer. It has to be removed and then it has to be watched every month. Every month, I have to go to a specialist, have it watched because there’s like 85 percent it’s gonna return, and once it returns, it could be carcinoma. It could be cancer. And there’s, like, 65 percent of the women that have this have never smoked, so I guess I’m one of the 31 percent that does smoke. This is very rare. It’s not like everybody has this. Women get it more than men but I was reading [00:36:00] on it. It said something about African women, women that came from Spain, family heritage from Spain. It has different things. JJ: Nationalities have more? DJ: Yeah, more that get this. JJ: But is it African? Could be Latino? DJ: I believe it said African and I know it said Spaniards. I know it said that. JJ: It’s the Moors. Yeah, the Moors were African. DJ: And out of five people, four of them are women, so it’s very low for men to get this. The risk is higher for women. And like I said, 65 percent of the women, they 24 �have never smoked, and 85 percent of the people, it’ll return again. I will get it later on. JJ: When you say it could, not that I want to be in denial, but they did say that sometimes if it comes back, it might not be cancerous? DJ: No, most of it. Most of the time when it comes back, they’ll find a cell that’ll be cancer. It’ll be cancerous. JJ: [00:37:00] But it’s something very serious. DJ: Yeah, it is serious, so you have to keep watching it and watching it all the time. What they mean with watching is all of the sudden, they’ll remove it now. If all the sudden they see one, they’ll do a biopsy on that one, and if it’s cancerous, then right away they’ll remove it and do whatever they can do to it. But yeah. So anyway, going back to all of this ’cause we changed back to Mother and all that. JJ: Yeah. I just wanna ask one more thing about Mom. Okay, at different times in her life, she was very religious. DJ: Yes. JJ: You think she was lying then or was she religious then? DJ: Well, she was religious then. But then because now she married three times -she’s been widowed three times. She’s a widow three times. What happens is that she doesn’t want us to talk about our father. If we mention our father, right away she talks about how he used to hit her, but I don’t remember that. [00:38:00] So she’s always talking bad about our father, always, always, so we don’t even mention him. But then her second husband -- and also she never had to take care of our father. Our father had a stroke in July and he died in August 25 �and he was in the hospital the whole time, so she never had to do anything for him. JJ: But her second husband? DJ: But her second husband that she wanted so bad after only seven months, she marries him and he was already, like, a year later turning blind because he had diabetes real bad. It just got worse and worse and then he got bedridden and he was bedridden, like, for 5, 10 years, something like that, and she had to take care of him. JJ: For 10 years. DJ: Yeah, she had to take care of him for 10 years. JJ: So she had no life? DJ: Exactly. And then he died, but see, that’s what she wanted. And then he dies and we had to have her come move over here because she had nobody over there in Caguas. So we had to have her move over here. I found her [00:39:00] a little apartment for people 65 or older. JJ: Senior citizens only? DJ: Senior citizens only. I found her like a little studio apartment. We set it all up. She had everything. She was very modern. She had all her stuff, so she was doing okay and she was fine. All of the sudden, she goes to the nursing home, started visiting the nursing home. The bus would pick her up. She’d go down there, play dominoes. They would bring her back. All of the sudden I go to her house after about a year. About a year, year and a half after going to the nursing home, all of the sudden I see her. “Mom, who painted your nails?” ’Cause I 26 �always offered and she was like, “No, leave them like that.” She was already in her seventies. She was, like, 72, 74. All of the sudden, another day, I see her eyebrows plucked. Never in her life had she ever plucked her eyebrows. [00:40:00] I’m working one day. A lady at the nursing home calls me. The administrator from the nursing home calls me because I know her. She says, “Daisy, did you know your mom’s getting married?” And I go, “What?” “Yeah, your mom’s getting married with so-and-so,” and I go, “Since when?” “Oh, she asked us if she can get married here. His daughter makes cakes, so she’s gonna do the cake here. The ceremony’s gonna be here. She said that she had her dress already. I didn’t know if you knew. I just wanted to make sure you knew. But it looks like she’s the one planning the whole wedding. It doesn’t look like he’s the one that wants it. It looks like she’s the one that wants to get married,” is what she told me. So I confronted her and I says, “Mom --” Then Jenny found out and Jenny was crying and she was upset and I was upset too. I go, “Mom, what are you doing? How can you say you’re gonna marry somebody? You don’t even know this [00:41:00] person. We don’t even know him. What if he’s a killer? What’s if he’s a drunk? What if he beats you up? You don’t know. What if he has AIDS? You don’t know. We don’t even know him. You met him in the nursing --” “Oh no, he’s fine.” And I says, “How do you know if he’s divorced?” “No, no, he’s a widow.” And I says, “Oh yeah, he’s a widow?” “Yes, he’s a widow.” And I go, “You know Jenny is crying, Mom. Jenny is sick and she’s crying. She’s got her blood pressure going up.” “I don’t care if she’s got her high blood pressure going up. I don’t care if she cries. I don’t care if she 27 �dies. I don’t care of anything. I am getting married and that’s it, and I’m old enough to make my own decisions and nobody has to get into my life. I can do what I want.” Those were her exact words. JJ: Why was she angry in that moment? DJ: Because she’s didn’t want none of us to get involved. She was doing all this hiding. We would’ve found out when she was already married. She didn’t include us in anything. It’s [00:42:00] like we don’t exist. But here she turns 82 and we have to exist because we have to watch her. Those are the things that I say that she’s being selfish about because she likes to be with the old people, senior citizens. She likes to play dominoes all day. She comes here to my house and as soon as she gets here, all she does is go in her room, watch TV, and sleep, and lie in her bed, so why can’t she do that at the nursing home? Why can’t she continue being with the seniors, have a good time with them? ’Cause they take them on trips and everything. When she’s tired, she can go in her room in the nursing home, go to bed, get up in the morning and play dominoes all day ’cause that’s all she likes to do is play dominoes. Here she doesn’t play dominoes. She doesn’t do nothing. But no, and I told her one day, I go, “Mom, all you do is sleep here. Why don’t you just stay at the nursing home and sleep there?” “No, because I don’t want to. I’m staying here. You’re supposed to watch me.” That’s what makes me so mad is because she -- JJ: So she says you’re -- DJ: [00:43:00] I have to watch her. Nobody else. I have to watch her. JJ: And that’s because of her tradition, her beliefs, and all that? 28 �DJ: That children are supposed to watch their parents. JJ: So that is because of her beliefs. DJ: Exactly. JJ: So she’s just following her beliefs. DJ: But that’s okay. But see, my mother is not -- JJ: Right now, that’s not the way reality is. DJ: Exactly. First of all, my mother’s never taken care of my kids ever. She doesn’t know how to be a grandmother. My kids don’t even know. They’ll say, “Oh, hi Grandma,” and that’s it. But they don’t have that love connection between a grandmother and their -- no, not with my mother. My mother never took care of any of our kids, none of them. They’ve never spent the night by themselves like a grandmother would have them, to baby them and all that. Uh-uh. And we’ve lived like that all our lives. That is probably why I’m angrier more, that why do I have to do this, you know? Why? [00:44:00] ’Cause she didn’t care about us before. She didn’t care, and mind you, she didn’t care about us till the age of probably 76, so it’s not like -- she just started her Alzheimer’s, like, a year and a half ago, but way before that, her mind was fine, so why was she treating us like that, you know? But anyway, that’s in the past. And like I said, we lived in Aurora, going back to the Puerto Rican Queen thing. And because my father -he was abusive that day, that Saturday right before the coronation. That Saturday, my boyfriend -- which is my husband -- was at the dance. I was at the dance. My two sisters were at the dance. But he was already my boyfriend. He visited me. We were standing in a circle. Standing, not sitting or holding hands. 29 �[00:45:00] Nothing. Just standing. It was like six or seven of us just talking. My father comes and sees me next to him talking. We were all talking together. “What are you doing?” I go, “Nothing, Daddy, we’re just standing here talking.” “You’d better not be standing there talking. You’d better get away from him unless I want you to go home.” I go, “Dad, but I’m not doing nothing.” And he says, “I told you to stay away from him. I’m taking you home.” He took us out of the dance. We got home and then he went back. JJ: How could he take you to the dance? DJ: He got us in his car. He says, “We’re leaving. Get in the car.” This was the week before. JJ: You had you and your -- DJ: My two sisters. This was the week before of the coronation. JJ: What did you tell your boyfriend? DJ: That I had to leave and then he got upset. So when we got home, my father went back to the dance and my boyfriend showed up at the house and my mom says, “Oh, you’d better go before he comes because he’s gonna get upset.” Well, my father went and got drunk. He got drunk and then came home that night drunk, [00:46:00] like at midnight, and when he came, he started yelling and my sisters were saying, “Daddy, stop yelling,” or whatever. “You shut your mouth, you little tramp.” And this and that. And then we were lying in bed and I remember he grabbed me by my hair and threw me on the floor. I’ll never forget that. I hit myself with the metal on the side of the bed. That was the first time he had ever hit me ’cause my dad never hit me. First time he had ever hit me. Then 30 �he was fighting in my mom’s room, not hitting her but just fighting. “Oh, this and that. You’re a bunch of tramps,” and this and that and all this. He just went on and on. My sister got up, older sister. “You’d better shut up and you’d better not lay a hand on anybody or I will call the --” “You call the police, you little bitch,” and this and that. That’s exactly how he was talking to her, but he was drunk. He was mad. He was drunk. I was crying so bad that night ’cause I was so upset ’cause he had touched me. He had never hit me. [00:47:00] And I was so mad and so mad. The next day, I go, “You will never touch me again.” My boyfriend, which is my husband now, calls me. “How can your father do this and that? And we’re not doing nothing wrong. I want you to elope with me.” All he had to do was tell me once. I wanted to get out of there. He told me once. We were planning it for Monday, but because Monday was a holiday, we couldn’t go on Monday. So then Tuesday was Columbus’s birthday, October 13th, 1970, Columbus’s birthday. I left, I got on a plane and went to New Jersey, and they were looking for me for three weeks until I finally called somebody. JJ: Who did you call? DJ: I called my mother because -- JJ: What’d she say then? DJ: “Are you okay?” And this and that, whatever. “I hope you don’t come here pregnant.” I go, “Well --” [00:48:00] But that, she didn’t know. So then that happened in October and in January -- but going back, before I eloped, when I was eloping that Tuesday, since I was running for Queen, that Saturday was the coronation. I knew I had already won. I had my dress in my closet and I left four 31 �days before the coronation. That was the biggest embarrassment my mother could’ve had and my dad could’ve had. They were saying that I had left, that they had already crowned me because I wasn’t gonna be a virgin, and all this and that. Oh, they talked. The whole town talked. I didn’t care. I lived in New Jersey. I wasn’t there. But it was all over, all over, all over that I had left. So they had no choice. They only had two girls running and they picked the other one that had sold the 1,200 tickets. So they crowned her. And then [00:49:00] from there -JJ: Okay, I’m not clear how you lost (inaudible). DJ: How did I lose the coronation? JJ: Can you repeat that? I’m not clear. DJ: Okay, I lost the coronation ’cause I left. I eloped four days before the coronation. JJ: So they had messed up the -- DJ: That messed the entire thing up. JJ: Oh, you eloped. You didn’t win -- DJ: I eloped. I wasn’t there. JJ: You weren’t there. DJ: So they continued. They did the crowning and everything, but I wasn’t there. But everybody was upset because everybody knew that I had won. They had already counted the tickets so everybody knew I had won. So then that happened. We went to New Jersey. I was there till -- yeah. Yeah, I was [over there?] to New Jersey, and then I came back in January. When I came back in January, I was pregnant then. I was two months pregnant. 32 �JJ: So you were there a few months in New Jersey. DJ: And then I came back. JJ: Okay. And you went back then to live in New Jersey? DJ: I went in 1972. [00:50:00] I went back and lived two years -- I hated it. I hated it, hated it. JJ: Where did you live [in town?]? DJ: In Jersey City. JJ: Jersey City, okay. DJ: New Jersey, and I hated it. I didn’t like it at all. JJ: What part of Jersey City? Was it divided by north and south sides? DJ: I don’t know. All I know is Jersey City is, like, the town, and the state is New Jersey. That’s all. ’Cause they have North New Jersey, Elizabeth, New Jersey -- JJ: Were you working there? Were you working at all? DJ: I started working, like, in a factory where they sewed coats but I didn’t like doing none of that stuff, so I just stayed home. I worked, like, for two weeks ’cause we had to be real fast and I was only 15. JJ: What other places have you worked? DJ: Have I worked? Then I started getting into the medical field. Then we left from New Jersey and we went back to Aurora and then in 1970 -- I got married in 1976. JJ: [00:51:00] So you’ve been married for a while, right? DJ: I’ve been living with my husband for 42 years. In 1976, we actually got married after being together for five and a half years, and my son was in my wedding and 33 �I had two boys at that time. And then in 1979, I started working at Dreyer Medical Clinic as an interpreter. I was the interpreter there and then from there, we came here to Puerto Rico in ’86. In ’86, I came down. I started working in (inaudible) in Caguas and then -JJ: What were you doing there? DJ: I was a supervisor of the billing department in the emergency room, which they’re actually called secretaries. I had 13 secretaries. [00:52:00] I had to do their shifts, like 3:00 to 7:00, 3:00 to 11:00, 11:00 to 7:00. JJ: You had to schedule them? DJ: I had to schedule them. I had to do their timecards. I had to supervise them, make sure one covered the other. We had to do that. I did that for six years. JJ: In Caguas? DJ: In Caguas. Then we decided we were moving to Florida. We were in Florida, like, for about two months, three months. JJ: What part of Florida? DJ: In Orlando. JJ: Orlando. DJ: But we were there only four months because I kept getting asthma attacks and asthma attacks and then we figured out it was because I had the dog inside the house. And the air and the vent, I was getting sick every day, so we had to come back to Puerto Rico. So we came back to Puerto Rico. We came to Camuy, this part of town, because that’s where my husband’s from. And we started building this house. We stayed here for 15 years, and all of the sudden, my kids were 34 �gone. I have four [00:53:00] kids -- two daughters, two sons. They were all gone, married, and they all have moved to Florida. My husband, after working here in Camuy -JJ: Where do they live? DJ: They live in West Palm Beach, Florida. JJ: West Palm Beach, okay. DJ: I’ve got two daughters in West Palm Beach, Florida. I have a son in Kissimmee, Florida, and I have a son that lives in Chicago. I started working here. I worked for 10 years, and all of the sudden, my husband one day says to me, “Let’s move to Florida. Why are we here? We have no kids here, we have no grandkids, we don’t have nobody here. We need to move.” So we moved to Florida where my kids were. I was there for six and a half years until all of the sudden, my mom’s third husband dies because she did get married in the nursing home that none of us went, so she’s a widow again. JJ: What type of person was he? DJ: [00:54:00] Like I said, they got married in September -- JJ: Was he a religious man? DJ: No. Then on top of this, I found out that he was divorced. He was never widowed. On top of this, my mother got married through a pastor from some Pentecostal church when we has been Catholic all her life. So that’s why my whole religion thing was like -- JJ: So he kind of took over her life at that point. DJ: Yes. 35 �JJ: Okay. DJ: But not even take over. The point is that she knew that she was supposed to marry somebody Catholic. She knew that she had to be married by the Catholic church. She knew that she couldn’t marry this man because he was divorced and not widowed, so she was committing all the sins in the book. But then she’s trying to preach to me and tell me that this is how life is? She said that God forgave her because of her age. Now, what does that have to do with it? JJ: [00:55:00] The Catholic church forgives when you go to confession. DJ: Yeah, but she didn’t go to confession. She went and married through a pastor from a Pentecostal church and we’re Catholic. JJ: So she was changing her beliefs. DJ: She was just doing it because she wanted to get married, and then she lied to us through the whole thing. You know, she lied to us. She told us that he was a widow. She did all this on purpose. And then now we have to deal with that. That’s what it is. So like I said, we lived six and a half years in Florida. When I was in Florida, I worked for Dr. [Wilbert Pino?], an orthopedic surgeon, and I was the surgical coordinator. That was my last job until I had to come here to take care of my mother. So I quit my job after six and a half years and come here, and this is where I am with my husband, dying to get up and leave, again, to Florida because I wanna be with my kids. So next week, [00:56:00] I will be taking a vacation to be with them and eventually, probably, I will end up living over there, and if nobody can take care of my mom, I guess I’ll have to take her 36 �with me, you know, here and there because I definitely have to be with my grandkids and my kids. I have to. JJ: Mainly because of what’s going on now with your life? DJ: With my life, with my face, with my illness. You know, what if something happens and I don’t see them? It’s hard. But that’s okay. Take one day at a time. And now I live here with my husband and my mom, and this is my story. JJ: Okay. (inaudible). END OF VIDEO FILE 37 � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/20212cfc54134870ddfc1ebca7a039e0.mp4 918d82d1a11e767b1094e5069a274946 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Young Lords in Lincoln Park Collection Subject The topic of the resource Young Lords (Organization) Puerto Ricans--United States Civil Rights--United States--History Lincoln Park (Chicago, Ill.) Personal narratives Social justice Community activists--Illinois--Chicago Description An account of the resource Collection of oral history interviews and digitized materials documenting the history of the Young Lords Organization in Lincoln Park, Chicago. Interviews were conducted by Young Lords' founder, José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez, and documents were digitized from Mr. Jiménez' archives. The Young Lords in Lincoln Park collection grows out of the ongoing struggle for fair housing, self-determination, and human rights that was launched by Mr. José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez, founder of the Young Lords Movement. This project is dedicated to documenting the history of the displacement of Puerto Ricans, Mejicanos, other Latinos, and the poor from Lincoln Park, as well as the history of the Young Lords nationwide. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Jiménez, José, 1948- Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/491">Young Lords in Lincoln Park collection (RHC-65)</a> Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-04-25 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Language A language of the resource eng spa Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-65 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 2012-2017 Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Título Spanish language Title entry Daisy Jiménez vídeo entrevista y biografía, entrevista 2 Descripción Spanish language Description entry Daisy Jiménez o como la llamaba su padre, “La Prieta”, es una hermana de José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez. Nació en el séptimo piso del Water Hotel en la calle Superior y La Salle Streets en Chicago, donde vivía su familia. Creció en La Clark medio Ohio y North Ave. , y luego en Lincoln Park donde ayudo a su mama a reclutar gente para misa en Español y dando rosarios para los Caballeros de San Juan y Damas de María. Después de vivir en Claremont y North Ave. Por unos años, la familia se movió ah Aurora, Illinois. Aquí conocieron a Teo Arroyo quien estaba organizando el primer desfilo Puertorriqueño en Aurora, y también era de Barrio San Salvado de Caguas. Daisy entro la carrera para ser Reina del Desfilo Puertorriqueño y gano. Ahora vive en Camuy, Puerto Rico con su esposo Israel Rodríguez y cuatro hijos. Sujetos Spanish language Subject terms Young Lords (Organización) Puertorriqueños--Estados Unidos Derechos civiles--Estados Unidos--Historia Lincoln Park (Chicago, Ill.) Narrativas personales Justicia social Activistas comunitarios--Illinois--Chicago Puertorriqueños--Illinois--Chicago--Vida social y costumbres Source <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/491">Young Lords in Lincoln Park (RHC-65)</a> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-65_Jimenez_Daisy_2 Title A name given to the resource Daisy Jiménez video interview and transcript, interview 2 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Jiménez, Daisy Description An account of the resource 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. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Jiménez, José, 1948- Subject The topic of the resource Young Lords (Organization) Puerto Ricans--United States Civil Rights--United States--History Lincoln Park (Chicago, Ill.) Puerto Ricans--Personal narratives Social justice Community activists--Illinois--Chicago Puerto Ricans--Illinois--Chicago--Social life and customs Language A language of the resource eng Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2012-05-10 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/e32790486f7770dad960ec68d122c299.pdf 930c9e18e8ffcbddfb9a938caa210791 PDF Text Text Young Lords In Lincoln Park Interviewee: Daisy Jiménez Interviewers: José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez Location: Grand Valley State University Special Collections Date: 5/16/2012 Biography and Description English 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. Spanish Daisy Jiménez o como la llamaba su padre, “La Prieta”, es una hermana de José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez. Nació en el séptimo piso del Water Hotel en la calle Superior y La Salle Streets en Chicago, donde vivía su familia. Creció en La Clark medio Ohio y North Ave. , y luego en Lincoln Park donde ayudo a su mama �a reclutar gente para misa en Español y dando rosarios para los Caballeros de San Juan y Damas de María. Después de vivir en Claremont y North Ave. Por unos años, la familia se movió ah Aurora, Illinois. Aquí conocieron a Teo Arroyo quien estaba organizando el primer desfilo Puertorriqueño en Aurora, y también era de Barrio San Salvado de Caguas. Daisy entro la carrera para ser Reina del Desfilo Puertorriqueño y gano. Ahora vive en Camuy, Puerto Rico con su esposo Israel Rodríguez y cuatro hijos. �Transcript JOSE JIMENEZ: Give me your name, when you were born, your birthday. DAISY JIMENEZ: Daisy Jimenez. JJ: Okay. DJ: December 1st, 1954 in Chicago, Illinois. JJ: And what’s your relationship to the Young Lords? DJ: My brother was the president of the Young Lords. JJ: Okay. And your brother’s name is what? DJ: Jose “Cha-Cha” Jimenez. JJ: Okay. All right. All right. DJ: But I call him Joseph. JJ: Okay. Why do you call him Joseph? DJ: Because I always thought when I was growing up, that’s what his name was. They told me that his name was Joseph because in English, Jose is Joseph. And I grew up thinking that’s what his name, so I’ve always called him Joseph. JJ: But I mean, did his mother call him Joseph too, your mom? DJ: No, everybody else calls him Jose. I call him Joseph. JJ: Okay, because it’s in English? Is that why? DJ: Because it’s in English. JJ: Okay. Okay. And you were born where? Where were you born at? DJ: I was born in the Water [00:01:00] Hotel in Chicago on La Salle. I was born -- JJ: La Salle. Do you know where the street, or -- 1 �DJ: I’m not sure if it was Wells. I don’t know if it was in that area. JJ: Okay. Well -- DJ: Superior is what it’s -- it was Superior Street, exactly. That’s where it was at, located. JJ: And La Salle, Superior and La Salle. DJ: Mm-hmm. JJ: Okay. DJ: And I was born at the hotel because they had told my mother she could not have any more children. JJ: Who told her? DJ: The doctors, and she shouldn’t have any more children, so she still -- JJ: Why would he say that? DJ: Because she had already had -- with me, would’ve been probably eight pregnancies. She had lost a couple, had miscarriages, had one on a plane, had a son on a plane that died. JJ: Coming in from Puerto Rico? DJ: Coming from Puerto Rico. JJ: [00:02:00] Okay. DJ: Well, that’s what they told her at that time, that she shouldn’t be having any more kids, even though after me, she got pregnant another time, and that was the last time. It was for my younger sister. But she did have me. They didn’t want to take her in the hospital because she can sue the hospital if anything would happen, so they had all these issues about you couldn’t do this, you couldn’t do 2 �that. So when she was in labor, she had me. They called the hospital. A nurse came from the hospital and I was born at the hotel. JJ: Okay, so a nurse from the hospital took care of -- DJ: A midwife came to the -- JJ: Was that legal? DJ: Well, I think at that time, that’s what they used most of the time were midwives. [00:03:00] I’m not really sure, but I just know that they did use midwives at that time. JJ: I know they did that in Puerto Rico, but this was in Chicago. DJ: But I still think -- well, maybe a nurse, but I still think they used midwives. I really think they did. JJ: Okay. Well, they used them for you. DJ: Yeah, a nurse did me or a midwife or somebody because I was born at the hotel. JJ: You were born at the hotel in the bedroom. DJ: In the bedroom there, and my birth certificate is saying that my father’s name is Gregorio, which is -- my father’s name is Antonio, but I assume that’s because they probably asked, “What is the father’s name?” and they assumed they said “What is your father’s name?” because my father was not there at that moment. There was uncles and compadres that were there because they all lived at the hotel as well, but they all had their own little apartments. JJ: All your uncles [00:04:00] were -- DJ: Uncles. This was a hotel that when the people were living there, they actually were like little apartments. Like little studio apartments, I assume, is what it was. 3 �And all of our aunts and uncles and family members lived in this little hotel. And I guess when I was gonna be born, there was a lot of people there. My uncles or somebody was there. When they asked the name, they said Gregorio instead of Antonio. They used my mom’s maiden name instead of my dad’s last name, so my birth certificate is Daisy Rodriguez Jimenez instead of being Daisy Jimenez Rodriguez. JJ: Okay, so they got all the paperwork mixed up. DJ: All the paperwork mixed up. I have an affidavit that says I am the same person both ways with the same name. JJ: That’s probably ’cause most of the people, they didn’t speak English at that time, or? DJ: They didn’t speak English at that time, and at the same time is [00:05:00] I didn’t -- the first time I actually had a birth certificate, that I actually found my birth certificate, was when I was 16 years old. Before that, all I had was a little registration, [pink?] paper. Well, that’s when I eloped with my husband. JJ: At 15? DJ: At 15. And when I asked -- JJ: Who’s your husband? DJ: Israel Rodriguez. And when I asked my mom for my birth certificate ’cause I eloped and went to New Jersey, she sent me a little pink slip. Through that little pink slip, I had to find out the department where you get the birth certificates at. JJ: City Hall, you mean? 4 �DJ: No, there’s a name. Statistics. Vital Statistics, it’s called. [00:06:00] And I found out that I was born in Chicago. I put down on a letter that I was born in a hotel. I put all that information down and I put down my mother’s name and my father’s and they couldn’t find me. And then they sent me a statement with that number, with that little registry number. That’s the birth certificate I got, and when I looked at it, it had my grandfather’s name as being my father. JJ: So you were born in this hotel. Did you have other brothers and sisters there? DJ: I have two sisters and one brother. JJ: And they were living in the hotel also, in the same one? DJ: When we lived there, my brother lived there. My older sister lived there and I lived there. My younger sister was not born yet. JJ: Okay. And there were other family? DJ: And my uncles and other uncles. JJ: And their families were living there? DJ: And their families were there as well. JJ: And this was a hotel, not an apartment building? DJ: No, this was called the Water Hotel. JJ: And so they were like apartments that were kind of turned -- DJ: [00:07:00] I think it was -- JJ: -- turned into a -- DJ: I really think they -- JJ: -- studio apartments. 5 �DJ: Exactly, is what I’m thinking. I’m thinking that it had like a little kitchenette and actually it was probably a one-bedroom or something like that, a bathroom, and maybe a little area and a little kitchenette is what I’m thinking it would’ve been. JJ: Of course, you were young and -- DJ: No, I don’t know anything about -- this is all what my mother has told me. But I know that she did say we lived there. JJ: When do you start remembering Chicago? Was it when you -- how old were you when you start -- DJ: I remember when I did my first communion. I was four and a half. We were not allowed to do our first communion until you were five or six, but because my mother taught catechism -- JJ: Oh, okay, so your mother taught catechism where? In a school or -- DJ: No, at the house. JJ: What do you mean, at the house? DJ: Our apartment. We had an apartment, a first-floor apartment. JJ: On what street? DJ: I don’t know. That’s what I [00:08:00] don’t remember. I’m thinking of Fremont for some reason. If it was a one-bedroom, I’m thinking Fremont. JJ: Or Dayton? DJ: Or Dayton. It was Dayton or Fremont, one of those two. JJ: There were both. DJ: Mm-hmm. JJ: So she taught catechism? 6 �DJ: She taught catechism to a group of kids at the Catholic church, but I wasn’t allowed to be inside because I was too young. So they would have me outside and I was only able to stay outside playing while my mom would teach the catechism. But because I sat on the windowsill outside, I would hear everything that they were saying, so I memorized it all. JJ: So how many people were in the catechism? DJ: In the catechism, there could have been about 20 kids. JJ: About 20 kids. From the neighborhood? DJ: Mm-hmm, and we liked it because that was the day we all had cookies all the time. Every time the catechism kids came, Mom always had cookies, so we all had cookies all the time, and that’s what we did. And when the priest came, there was a day that the priest was supposed to come for a test and it was an oral test. You had to know everything, like the Our Father, the Hail Mary, the Apostle’s Creed. You had to know all that. The sign of the cross. You had to know all that by memory. And my mom, I told her I wanted to do my first communion. She said I couldn’t do it because I was too young. The priest said, “Well, let me see what she knows.” And I told them everything. So I was able to do my first communion at the age of four and a half years old. JJ: Because you were listening from the windows? DJ: Because I was listening to everything and I knew exactly. JJ: And so were these kids in public school or Catholic school? 7 �DJ: I think they were in public school because we went to Catholic school. When we started in school, we went to Catholic school and none of those kids were with us in school. JJ: Were they American kids? Black kids? DJ: They were all different nationalities. JJ: Different nationalities? DJ: They were Black. That was one thing that we grew up with, [00:10:00] Black, Hispanics, white, Mexican. We grew up with all of them, a mixture of all. JJ: Okay. But your mom, did she speak -- DJ: My mom spoke Spanish. JJ: So how did she teach the other kids that spoke English? DJ: She would teach them in Spanish. So I guess they would have all been Spanish, then. Yeah, because the catechism was in Spanish. JJ: It was in Spanish? Okay. Okay. But there were kids in the neighborhood -there was a mixed community? DJ: Exactly. JJ: That’s what I’m trying to say. DJ: Exactly. JJ: But the catechism was in Spanish because she didn’t speak English, then. DJ: No, she didn’t speak English very well, but then now that I’m thinking, all my prayers, I know them in English and not in Spanish. At my age that I am now, I know all them and more in English than I do Spanish. But that also could’ve been because I went to Catholic [00:11:00] school. 8 �JJ: What school did you go to? DJ: It’s either St. Joseph’s -- was it St. Joseph or St. Teresa's? JJ: Both, yeah. DJ: I only went to Catholic school till I was in fifth grade, from kindergarten till fifth grade because they couldn’t afford it and ’cause we were all in Catholic school and they couldn’t afford Catholic school anymore. So when I started sixth grade, sixth, seventh, and eighth, [phone dings] I went to Arnold. That’s my phone. I went to Arnold for sixth, seventh, and eighth grade, and that was -- JJ: Oh, you went to Arnold? DJ: Yeah, that was a public school. That’s when there was the riots with the Blacks and the whites. JJ: Yeah, what was that about? DJ: Oh, that was terrible. That was when my brother was in the Young Lords. That was the gang part. That was when a lot [00:12:00] was going on, and wherever you went, there was gangs here, there was Latin Kids here, there was Disciples here, Young Lords here, and you couldn’t walk down this block because that block didn’t belong to the Young Lords. And then my brother was the president, so it was like you either can say you were related or you couldn’t say you were related because you didn’t know. And he wasn’t in school with me, so he doesn’t know what I had to go through. You would go to school and people would look at you and say stuff like, “Oh, this is Cha-Cha’s sister,” something like that. And I remember there was a fight at one time, and my brother had a girlfriend. Her name was [LaVaughn?]. I’ll never forget. She was Black. Very pretty, very, very 9 �pretty. I remember him saying that was his girlfriend and then all of the sudden, [00:13:00] she was with some guy -- Black guy -- at a restaurant or some cafe or something. One of the other Young Lords told my brother that she was there with some guy. They went over there. They got into fights. Somebody ended up getting stabbed. The guy got stabbed. It was all over the news. It was all over all the newspapers and everything. When I went to school, “Oh, this is ChaCha’s sister.” I had denied. I quite denied it, and that hurt. Then I actually told somebody that he was my brother and it was only because I wanted to be protected ’cause I was afraid. And at the same time, [00:14:00] my mom went to court. The guy then -JJ: You said he was your brother or that he wasn’t your brother? DJ: I said that he wasn’t my brother, that I didn’t know who he was, and everybody kept saying, “Oh, yes.” There was one kid in school -- ’cause I never talked about my brother when I was there in school. And so there was one kid that knew, “Oh, this is --” And he was going all over the school and everybody was laughing and everybody was talking about it. I had to pretend I didn’t know anything. I left that day. I went home early. So that happened and my mom had to go to court. My mom went to court, and when they were in court, the guy that actually got stabbed looked at my brother and said, no, that my brother did not do that, that he did not stab him because he said that when he got stabbed, he felt where my brother [00:15:00] had punched him in the face. And at the same time, he felt the stab wound. That’s why they couldn’t accuse my brother of doing it. But then now, after so many years, I found out that, yeah, it was true. He did 10 �stab him. But I find this out when I’m in my forties. But all my life, I always felt that he had never done it, that he wasn’t involved with that. JJ: So there were, like, some kind of denial, not wanting to think that your brother would do something like that? DJ: That I couldn’t believe that my brother would actually do something like that. But because of how things were, though, you also would think, yeah, he would’ve done it. So is it true or is it not true? That’s how -- JJ: Why would you think that he would’ve done it? DJ: Because he was the president of the Young Lords. He had to show respect. I mean, [00:16:00] you have the Young Lords and if the president, that’s the one that’s making his gang strong, if he backs out of it, how does that make him look? He has to be the strong person in there so he can have his followers. Otherwise, they will take him out of being a president. So he had to always show that he was in charge and he did, and that’s how we grew up. But he was more or less to himself. He didn’t get us involved in his stuff with the Young Lords. We knew some of his friends, but we knew him as protection for us. That’s how it was. He would protect us. I remember there was a boyfriend I had. It was lunchtime. I was sitting in his car and I’m there and we’re having an argument right there, and here comes one of the Young Lords, this big [00:17:00] Black -- his name was [Lacy?] -- comes up and sees me. Now he knocks on the window. “What are you doing in that car?” I had to beg him so he wouldn’t tell my brother that I was in that car, or my brother would beat the shit out of my boyfriend. And mind you, I shouldn’t have even had a boyfriend. I was only 13, so I shouldn’t have even 11 �had one. But that's the respect that everybody had for my brother. They were protective. JJ: So you went out with Lacy? You used to go out with Lacy? DJ: No, Lacy saw me with my boyfriend. JJ: Oh, with your boyfriend. DJ: And I was afraid that Lacy was gonna tell you and then you would beat up my boyfriend, so I told -- JJ: (inaudible)? DJ: That’s probably [Melissa?]. I made Lacy promise that he wouldn’t tell you. I said, he goes, “I won’t tell him, but you’d better get out of that car right now and go back to school.” JJ: So there were other people watching you. DJ: Everybody was watching us. Everybody would watch us. Everybody. Even though we [00:18:00] weren’t walking down the street with the Young Lords or anything, but on every corner, there was one on your way to school because that was our area and that’s where they would hang out. So since they were hanging out, that’s how it was. JJ: And this was your area. Where was that? DJ: This was on Bissell Street, Fremont, and between Armitage, Sheffield, all that area. In all that area. JJ: And this was about what years? DJ: This had to have been, like, in ’66 ’cause I would’ve been, like, 11, 12 years old, 13 years old. Sixty-six, ’67. 12 �JJ: Okay. Going back to La Salle Street for a little bit, what do you remember about your father, Antonio? DJ: There, I don’t remember. I don’t remember hardly nothing ’cause that’s when I was born, so I was really -- JJ: When do you start remembering [00:19:00] things? DJ: I remember, like I said, when I was four and a half and I did my first communion. JJ: Okay, but I’m talking about Antonio specifically, Antonio Jimenez, your father. DJ: There are things that you remember and you don’t forget certain things in your house. I remember living in a basement and I don’t remember the street. JJ: That was La Salle. On La Salle Street? DJ: It was a basement that had a two-bedroom, a small living room, and a kitchen, and the bathroom was inside the kitchen, and we had ducks inside the tub. And there, I was, like, eight years old ’cause I remember I had gotten the mumps and it was very rare for kids to get it. Or I don’t know if it was rare, but I was the only one in my family to get the mumps and I remember that they didn’t know what was wrong with me. My face was all swollen up and I had all these hives. And my mom called the ambulance. [00:20:00] The ambulance picked me up and the people in the ambulance didn’t want me to even lie down on the bed because it was contagious. And they took me to the hospital and they sent me back home saying that I had the mumps and I specifically remember because in that apartment, some next-door neighbor across the street gave us all these ducks and we wanted them as pets. We all slept in the same room, my brother and all of us. We had two full-size beds and all of us slept in one room and my mom and 13 �dad in the other. And I remember specifically about one day that my mom, that day with the ducks, because my father -- how would I say this word in English? Machista? JJ: Machista? Macho. DJ: He was very macho, [00:21:00] and that’s what they said or whatever. JJ: What do you mean, he was macho? What do you mean? DJ: Because that’s what they said. JJ: Okay, that’s what they said, but what did you see? DJ: What did I see? Well, because my dad would take my mom’s check away. My mom would work. He would take her check. She didn’t own the check. She would have to work but she didn’t own the check. JJ: I mean, what do you mean, he would take -- DJ: He would take her check. Friday is payday. Friday, give me the check, and she would have to hand over her check to him. But there was always food in the house. That’s one thing I can always say, that he made sure that we had food, and bills and stuff like that were paid always. That, always, always. And I’m not talking about a cupboard with just a little bit of food here, a little bit of -- my father always believed in having a lot of food and a lot of meat inside that freezer, always. But I remember specifically that Friday, my mom went grocery shopping and they had these little vans that they would bring the people home with their groceries, and the guy slammed the door, and when he slammed the door, [00:22:00] he smashed my mother’s finger on the door. My mom came home crying with a swollen finger and it was killing her and killing her and she didn’t 14 �know what to do. My dad was out with his friends, which they would call -- it was like a little Spanish gang called the [Hacha Viejas?] and he was with them and he comes home, like, at 2:00 in the morning and my mom’s crying and he made her get up out of bed to cook for all these men because that’s what men did at that time. The husbands would go out with their friends, come home, and they’d expect the wives to get up out of bed and do all these things. That was at that time. JJ: These were Hacha Viejas? DJ: Yes. JJ: Old Hatchets. DJ: Yeah. JJ: That was a gang at that time. DJ: That was a gang at that time. JJ: That he belonged to. DJ: Mm-hmm, and this is what I remember of them. I won’t forget that incident ’cause I remember my mom holding up her finger and crying and frying pork chops at the same time. [00:23:00] And this and that, and crying, and over and over and over, and he wouldn’t -- “No, hurry up and cook this.” And I remember him going to the bathroom and the ducks were there. They were all quacking. And my mom says, “Your father’s gonna kill you,” and this and that. And then we had to get rid of the ducks the next day. Those are the things I remember of my dad, stuff like that. I remember going with my dad to the South Side. That was the best times of my life. That, I’ll never forget. 15 �JJ: So, what? DJ: We used to take two buses to go to the South Side because my dad would go buy [coats?]. He had three girls and he would buy coats. But let me go back. Let me go back before getting to that part because I’m gonna tell you an incident with my brother when he was still with the Young Lords as a gang. They were looking for him. The cops were looking for him. My brother showed up. He would take off for days and come show up. There was a time [00:24:00] when my brother got arrested, like, 20 times, one day after another, 20 times in a row because they kept telling him the curfew was to be at home at ten o’clock and he always had to be home at 10:15, 10 after, 10:30. On his way home? He would be on his way home. The cops would stop him. At that time, I would think, how stupid were the cops at that time? I really think they were stupid because they would come to my house. First, they would take my brother. They were not arresting him. They were picking him up because everybody was under a curfew. They would pick him up, take him to the police station, but then they’d have to drive all the way to my house, pick up my mother to go take her to the police station to pick up my brother and bring them both back. Now, wouldn’t it be easier just for the cop to go and take him home? [00:25:00] Instead of going through that whole ordeal? My mother did that, like, 20 days in a row, day after day after day after day. That stuff started to get old because my brother, it didn’t matter, he was still always walking home after ten o’clock. He was never home at ten o’clock. So I remember that and those instances at that time. I remember when I found my brother smoking for the first time. He was 16. He thought he 16 �was all cool with his Young Lords and his big old friends and everybody, and my mom saying -- that was one of the days that my mom was looking for him because he was supposed to be home before curfew. My mom says, “No, I’m gonna go get him. I’m gonna go get Jose.” So I was always volunteering to go with my mother everywhere. When she would take me, I would go. A lot of times, she didn’t want me to go. So I went and here we’re walking down the street and we’re going closer. We’re getting closer and I see my brother from far away. We’re walking. [00:26:00] He almost ate the cigarette. He took that cigarette. When he saw my mother, he about dropped dead. He dropped that cigarette so quick but I already knew he was smoking it because the smoke was coming out of his nose. But my mom totally ignored it, of course, because out of all of this, my brother is my mother’s favorite son. That’s the only son she has, so even though she had three daughters, my brother was always the baby of the family. She always overprotected him. JJ: So do you think that your brother, or, you know, that -- you could say me or whatever. It doesn’t matter. But do you think that he was afraid of your mom or was it more like feeling guilty? You know, because he tried to eat the cigarette at that time, right? DJ: I think he was just doing it out of respect. JJ: Okay. What do you mean by that? DJ: Out of respect because we knew he was too young to be smoking, but in my house, my mother and father [00:27:00] both smoked, and my mother would’ve forgiven him anyway. It didn’t matter what she caught him doing. She would’ve 17 �forgave him anyway because whatever he did, she always forgave him, always, always, always. JJ: So it was respect, something -- DJ: I think most of it is respect. JJ: Was that an important thing for your brother? DJ: Oh, that’s very important. At that time when we were growing up, you had to have respect. We have to have respect for our adults. When you go past in front of them, you say excuse me. It’s a big thing. You have to. You bow your head down when you’re walking between two people. That’s how we were raised. You need the TV off? Should I get up, stop it -- (break in audio) DJ: Oh, the respect, because when Puerto Ricans or Latinos -- I don’t know all Latinos, but Puerto Ricans -- when two people like us, that we’re sitting right now facing each other, if someone’s gonna walk in front of us, we have to bow our heads [00:28:00] down lower than their faces. That’s out of respect. We just don’t walk straight up with, you know, straight and just walk straight across them, not even say excuse me. No, we bow our heads down and we go underneath their heads. That’s respect. That’s how we were taught. JJ: Who taught you that? DJ: We were taught that by our parents. JJ: Right, who? DJ: By my mother and my father. JJ: Your father too? 18 �DJ: Mm-hmm. JJ: So he would say that too, that you’ve gotta -- DJ: We have to respect, yeah. JJ: You have to respect older people, stuff like that? DJ: Mm-hmm. JJ: So even though your brother, or I was in a gang, and I’m the leader of the gang at that time, and I have to fight and whatever, there was still the thing about respecting your parents? DJ: Oh yes. JJ: It wasn’t being afraid, it was just respect? DJ: Yeah, it’s not being afraid. JJ: ’Cause today, kids don’t respect their parents. DJ: No, and exactly, and that’s why now today now -- JJ: But you’re saying at that time, it was big. DJ: Oh, [00:29:00] you have kids. My children, they will walk underneath like that. My children will say excuse me. My children know better than to say something to an adult, somebody older than them. They know better. They know that that is not allowed. And they’ll even tell me, “Mom, I’m only doing this because out of respect.” Because they know that’s how I was taught and that’s how I taught them. You respect your elders. It doesn’t matter if you like the person, if you don’t like the person, if you don’t wanna talk to them. I don’t care. And just like education, you don’t have to have a college education to walk into a room and say good morning. You walk into the room, it’s your job to say good morning 19 �because you’re the one that walked into the room. The people that were there were already there. So that’s respect and that’s what they do. But yeah, that’s how it was, and that instance [00:30:00] was -- that part about the cigarette and the time that the police were looking for my brother. JJ: Okay, what was the (inaudible), the police? DJ: The police were looking for my brother. I don’t remember for what, but I know they had gone to our house and they were looking for him and they couldn’t find him or whatever. And then one day out of the blue, my brother comes in through the alley. He sees my sister talking to some guy and he thought that the guy was trying to get nasty with her or something like that, but they were just friends. It wasn’t nothing like boyfriend or girlfriend, nothing like that. And then they were gonna get into a fight. A big mess happened. The cops came. So they were looking for my brother anyway. They went and grabbed my brother. They handcuffed him. But then they started taking his head and banging it on the cement out in the street [00:31:00] on the sidewalk, just would lift his head and bang it down, lift it, and my older sister -- my mom went in there. She tried to get the cops away from him and they wouldn’t. They kept saying, you know, “Take him. If you’re gonna arrest him, just take him. Why are you doing this? Why are you hurting him like this? He’s in handcuffs. He can’t move.” And my older sister went and she put her hands underneath his head and his face so they wouldn’t keep smashing his face on the cement and one of the cops just took his hand out and backslapped her on the face and knocked her clear across. And at the end, they all got arrested, my mother, my brother, my sister. My father was 20 �working and my younger sister that was at that time 10, and I was 11, we were left by ourselves. And that was the cops. JJ: So your mom got arrested? DJ: My mom got arrested. My sister got arrested. We even had the priest from the church [00:32:00] go down to bail my mother out. We had everybody from the Catholic church bailing my mother and my sister out, and all this time my father was working. He didn’t even know what was going on. JJ: What do you mean, everybody -- DJ: Everybody in the community got together because everybody was there. They saw it. JJ: (inaudible) hearing? DJ: The whole community. The whole block came out. Everybody knew. My brother was already in handcuffs. There was no reason for them to be hitting him or punching him or slamming his face on the ground. There was no reason for that. JJ: So this was, like, a neighborhood incident where everybody came out and everybody took the side of -- DJ: Of my brother and my mother. JJ: Oh, your mother. DJ: My mother. JJ: Okay, there was a big -- DJ: Yeah, because they were still looking for my brother anyway, so that was fine, but they already had him. They didn’t have to do that. JJ: And what happened after that? 21 �DJ: No, then they went to court and my mom had to go to court. My sister had to go to court. They let my mom go after the priest [00:33:00] and my uncles went down there and got them out of jail. Then they went to court and they said that my mom knocked a tooth out of the cop during the incident or whatever. JJ: How did -- DJ: We don’t know. They said that she hit him in the face, and she was like, “How could I hit you in the face?” Not even the judge believed it, so they dropped everything. They dropped the charges or whatever. JJ: On your mother? DJ: Yeah, and my sister, ’cause they already knew they did more abuse on my brother by hitting him when he was handcuffed ’cause everybody was there ready to testify that my brother was handcuffed, and why were they beating him? Because he was the president of a gang? That’s not why they should’ve done that. JJ: So that’s when you felt that there was no reason they were beating him ’cause he was president? DJ: I think so. I think they were abusing more because he was the president of the Young Lords versus just somebody that they were looking for. They could’ve just stopped, grabbed him, [00:34:00] and handcuffed him and put him in the patrol car. JJ: Okay, now, this is when the Young Lords were a gang, but you knew some of these people. I mean, what did you think about some of these people? DJ: Nowadays? 22 �JJ: At that time, what did you think? DJ: Oh no, at that time, oh, I was all proud. I mean, we’re walking with the Young Lords. This is a gang. Everybody had to belong. So you belonged to something, even though we weren’t allowed. JJ: Even though a gang is a bad thing. DJ: Exactly. But there was gangs everywhere, so it didn’t matter. So they had the Young Lords. They had the Disciples. They had the Latin Kings. So somebody belonged to some gang on any block, so it didn’t matter. There was not one block where there wasn’t gang people. JJ: So you’re saying it was actually a good thing to be in a gang? DJ: No, I can’t say that. I can say it’s a good thing for protection, but not a good thing to think that you could hurt other people by being in a gang. But then also [00:35:00] I know that they -- JJ: But there was some benefit that your brother was in a gang? DJ: There was benefits because we were protected all the time. JJ: Protected from what? DJ: Protected from other gangs. You were not allowed to go to another block. If the next block -- or three blocks down, it was the area for the Young Lords. It was the area for the Latin Kings and you’re a Young Lord, you’re not allowed to walk down that street. They catch you, they will beat you up. That’s how it was. JJ: You mean that you weren’t in the gang? DJ: Exact-- well, no, no, if you weren’t in the gang, you could walk down there, but if you were in a gang -- I mean, they each had their colors. Everybody had their 23 �colors. You wore purple and black, those were Young Lords. Yellow and black, that was Latin Kings. Disciples, I believe they wore red and black. So it was like everybody had their colors and everybody had to respect their colors. I mean, that’s all it was. And not necessarily they would actually all beat each other up because there was people from Latin Kings [00:36:00] and the Disciples that knew some Young Lords and they didn’t have no conflict with each other. They respected each other. But when it came down to, okay, this one got beat up and we have to beat up, everybody got into it. The whole gang was into it. So that’s what it was. JJ: Even other people that weren’t in gangs that were around, they got into it too? DJ: Yeah. JJ: So it was like a neighborhood -- DJ: It was a lot of neighborhood. JJ: It was like a neighborhood thing and then the gang -- DJ: And then the gang was in there, so they had the gang, like, being their protectors. The gang was like the police station, let’s put it that way. The gang is the police station and everybody else is just the civilians. So these civilians would count on the gang for protection. That’s how I saw it. Everybody else probably didn’t see it that way, but that’s how I saw it. JJ: So these civilians are living in an area [00:37:00] where the gangs are the policemen? DJ: More or less. More or less, that’s how it was. JJ: And [they were?] soldiers, whatever. 24 �DJ: Whatever, exactly. JJ: And they’re in their community and they feel safe in their community. DJ: Exactly. JJ: I’m not putting words in your mouth, okay. DJ: No, that’s exactly how it is, or how it was at that time. And then it turned into an organization. JJ: Okay, before we get into the organization, what was it like growing up in the same -- Bissell Street? DJ: Oh, I loved Bissell Street, but that was just because I like boys, so I was -- JJ: Explain that, then. DJ: At the age of 12, I already liked boys, so at 12, 13 -- they could send me to the store 100 times -- JJ: What do you mean, you liked boys? DJ: I liked boys and I liked older boys. I didn’t like no 12-year-old. If I was 12, I liked a 14, 15-year-old, 16-year-old. [00:38:00] Actually that boyfriend that Lacy caught me with, talking in the car, he was actually 18 and I was 13. I never had a boyfriend in school. In school, I never had a boyfriend. I’ve had three boyfriends in my life. One is my husband. Two other boyfriends before that. And they were all between the ages of 13 and 14. One at 13, one at 14. And then my husband at 15. JJ: Why did you seek out other older -- DJ: Because I considered myself, that the kids that were in school were like little kids. My mind was always way up, higher up than my age. I was always thinking 25 �ahead. I was always stronger. And that’s how I still am and that’s how I’ve always been. I’ve always been stronger and you have a problem, [00:39:00] you deal with it. You can’t fall apart because if you fall apart, who’s gonna take care of the problem? So that’s how it was. I liked boys and it wasn’t that I had a lot of boyfriends ’cause I actually only had three, but they all were like a year. This boyfriend was my boyfriend for a whole year and then we moved somewhere else and then from there, then I had a boyfriend from there for another year until we moved to Aurora, and then that’s where I met my husband. But no, that’s how. I always wanted a boyfriend that had a car and that had a job. I was not into having no little boyfriend that cannot buy me a candy, that cannot buy me for Valentine’s Day some candy or flowers or whatever. No. I wasn’t into little kids. I wanted older guys that can work and pay for it. If I wanted a gift, I wanted to make sure I got a gift. [00:40:00] That’s how I always was. And I was always at the store. I mean, they would send me 20 times and 20 times I’d be volunteering to go to the store. JJ: Who would send you? DJ: Oh, my mom, my dad, or whatever. “Oh, go get this.” JJ: So you would run the errands? DJ: I was the one that ran all the errands all the time, all the time, all the time. JJ: And so you would go to the store and the boys would be there -- DJ: Oh, I’d go to the store 20 times just to -- I would break pencils -- JJ: Just to go to the store so you -- DJ: -- to buy another pencil. 26 �JJ: So you weren’t worried about them whistling. You were going there to get with somebody. DJ: Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. I always wore my little tight pants. I wore my little shirts. That’s how I was when I was growing up. But I was always respected. I never let anybody touch me, that part. I knew what was allowed and what wasn’t allowed, what was good, what was bad. I knew that. JJ: Now, how could you prevent -- there’s all these gang [00:41:00] members out there. How can you prevent them from touching you or -- DJ: All I had to do was say that I was Cha-Cha’s sister. That’s all I had to say. “Don’t look at her, that’s Cha-Cha’s sister.” None of the Young Lords were allowed to look at us other than being friends of my brother’s and we didn’t have a lot of them as friends of ours. The gang was a very big gang but they were only allowed, like, maybe four or five -- JJ: What do you mean, a very big gang? DJ: It was a big gang. It was a lot of people. It was a lot of guys in the gang and a lot of girls in the gang, but -- JJ: There were a lot of girls in the gang? DJ: There was girls in the gang as well. But we were only allowed to know a certain amount. JJ: So this gang, the Young Lords, were in several blocks or something like that? DJ: Mm-hmm. JJ: And so they were kind of all in the neighborhood? DJ: Mm-hmm, [00:42:00] they were. 27 �JJ: And they knew that you were related? DJ: Exactly. They knew who was whose sister, whose sister was whose, and everybody knew each other. JJ: So everybody knew each other. So other people’s sisters were respected too? DJ: Yeah, it wasn’t just us. It was other people’s as well. “Oh, this is so-and-so’s sister. This is so-and-so.” Yeah, that’s how it was. JJ: So it wasn’t just like a gang on one corner. These were people respecting each other’s family members at that time. DJ: At that time, they were. JJ: We’re not talking about the gangs today. Was there any difference? DJ: No. No, because the differences at that time, it was more that they were trying to help people. JJ: The gang? DJ: The gang was like -- I mean, there was certain gangs -- JJ: This is before they were -- the gang -- DJ: Even before they turned into an organization. It was like, no, they tried to help, you know. JJ: How would they help? DJ: I remember [00:43:00] something about a church. I remember there was a church. JJ: But that was when it was political. DJ: That it was political, uh-huh. JJ: But I’m saying before that. 28 �DJ: Before that, they would just hang out on corners and stuff like that, but they would just watch for each other. That’s all, what it was, and they wouldn’t actually go out and look for a problem. They would have problems because the other gangs would go into your territory when they knew they weren’t supposed to. And they would start looking for fights and stuff like that. But not because they would just go automatically out there. And when my brother got picked up those 20 every day, he wasn’t doing nothing bad. He was coming home. Just that, it was not because he didn’t listen to the policeman, told him, “You need to be home in the house at 10:00, not walking home at 10:00.” And that’s why he got picked up. They didn’t follow rules is what it was. JJ: So there was a big curfew at that time. DJ: There was a big curfew. It was a big riot as well when I was 12 years old with the Blacks against the whites, [00:44:00] humongous. My father had to go pick us up at school for a week because we were not allowed to leave the school. JJ: Because there were riots? DJ: There was a riot with the Blacks against the whites. Not with the Hispanics. Hispanics can go down the street with no problem and the Blacks were not touching them and the whites were not touching them, the Hispanics. But it was Blacks against the whites. And the school, it was on lockdown. You were not allowed to go out of the school until your parents came to pick you up after school. JJ: This was at Arnold? DJ: That was at Arnold. 29 �JJ: Okay. Did you ever go to Waller? DJ: My sister went to Waller. I never got to go to Waller. JJ: You just went to grammar school? DJ: No, we moved is what it was, so I didn’t go to that, to Waller. I graduated from eighth grade, from Pulaski School. JJ: From Pulaski School? Okay, so you were on the West Side, okay. DJ: At that [00:45:00] time. JJ: Pulaski was where, do you remember? DJ: No. JJ: Okay, you don’t remember what direction it was in? DJ: No. We walked like 10 blocks to get to the school because we had just moved there and we actually -- JJ: You walked on North Avenue or something like that? DJ: When we lived with -- Claremont -- JJ: Claremont, okay. DJ: -- we would walk down Claremont. We wouldn’t go towards North Avenue. We would go the other way. JJ: Oh, okay. DJ: We would go that way down. JJ: North, you went north. DJ: Yeah, like about four or five blocks down. JJ: (inaudible) around there. DJ: Exactly. 30 �JJ: Okay. Now, so you were living on Claremont. Okay, but before that, you lived on Bissell and Dickens? DJ: That was where the cops had arrested Mom and my sister, all that. That’s when you were -- JJ: That’s when we became political [later?]. DJ: Exactly. JJ: [00:46:00] Okay. Now, but before that, why did you move from there? You lived there for a while, right? DJ: On Bissell Street? JJ: Yeah. And what do you remember about Bissell Street besides that? DJ: Playing with our friends outside. We played a lot of Chinese jump rope, hopscotch. I did babysitting. I babysat two little girls. I did that as well. JJ: Wait a minute, it was 2117 Bissell? DJ: Twenty-one seventeen Bissell, North Bissell Street, and oh my God, [Johnny?]. Johnny, Johnny, Johnny. I was in love with that boy. He lived upstairs on the second floor. JJ: When we lived at 2117 -- DJ: He lived on the second floor. JJ: Johnny. Do you know his last name? DJ: No. He was white. He was a white guy. JJ: (inaudible) you was in love with Johnny? DJ: Oh, I was, and oh, he was so cute and he would drink Dr. Pepper and I would go to the store and buy him his Dr. Peppers and bring them to him and everything. 31 �He knew I liked him but he was too white. [00:47:00] He was too old. I was only 10 or 11 at that time, but oh, I thought I was in heaven every time I would see him. That, I remember of Johnny. JJ: So you played hopscotch. You had Johnny. DJ: Johnny. Chinese jump rope. JJ: Okay. Anything else that you remember? DJ: No. JJ: That’s when you were going to St. Teresa's, right? When you were in Catholic school, what school were you in then? DJ: I guess we had finished because then I went to sixth and seventh at Arnold. JJ: So what was Arnold like? That’s not Catholic. DJ: No, Arnold, that’s when I started the public school. That’s where the riots were. That’s where it got scary. I remember I would buy my dad -- JJ: So across the street from Waller High School? DJ: Yes. My dad would give us two dollars and fifty cents for lunch for the week. He would give it to us every Sunday, and of course, I wouldn’t eat because I liked music. JJ: What kind of music? DJ: [00:48:00] Everything. Spanish, English, Motown, anything. I would dance to everything. And what I would do is I would take all my money, all my lunch money, and I would buy records, the little 45 records. So that’s what I always used to do. And then the hot dog stand was there. One time, if I would get hungry, I would buy -- 32 �JJ: Where was that hot dog stand? DJ: On Halsted. JJ: And Dickens? DJ: Uh-huh, on Halsted and Dickens. JJ: So you were going there? DJ: I would go there and I would love their hot dogs with the French fries, greasy French fries all wrapped up and put them in a paper bag. You would get a bag of fries for a quarter and that was enough to fill you for lunch. For 50 cents, you would get the hot dog and fries, for 50 cents at that time. JJ: Did other people go there? I mean, other Hispanics? DJ: A lot of people. JJ: Okay, a lot of Spanish people went to that place? Okay, so you lived on 2117 Bissell. DJ: And then from there, we moved to (inaudible). JJ: You had a pretty good -- any other experiences that you [00:49:00] remember there? DJ: No. JJ: Okay. And then all of the sudden, you moved from there. Why? DJ: We moved because the owner on Claremont were a family or compadres of our father and mother and they had an empty apartment and we moved over there. JJ: But why would you leave a place that you liked, that was [well away?]? DJ: Because it’s all about what the dad says. We’re moving and we’re moving and that’s it. 33 �JJ: So Dad said we’re moving. DJ: We’re moving and we moved. They didn’t care how we were doing in school. They didn’t care. I would do my dad’s homework. JJ: Okay, you did your dad’s homework. DJ: When we lived on Bissell Street, my dad was going to school at night, learning how to speak English. I would do all his homework. He had all his homework done every day for him to take to school. JJ: So he wouldn’t learn any English, then. DJ: But he did. He did. He did learn. JJ: Why was he learning English? DJ: [00:50:00] I have no idea. I don’t even know why he was going to school. JJ: What did he do, your dad, Antonio? DJ: He worked. JJ: What did Dad do? DJ: My dad used to work nights. JJ: Where did he work? DJ: That, I don’t know. JJ: He used to work nights. DJ: I don’t remember. He worked nights and he would cook and we loved Fridays because Fridays was fried eggs and French fry day and Pepsi day. JJ: Fried eggs? DJ: Fried eggs with homemade French fries and a 16-ounce Pepsi because it was a day that he would do grocery shopping. He would go grocery shopping in the 34 �morning and he wouldn’t have time to come home and cook. My dad would cook every day, so my dad would work nights. Before he would go to work, he would have dinner ready. He would cook it at twelve o’clock so that when we got home from school, dinner was already done and ready. When my mom would come home from work, dinner was already cooked, and my dad would be at work [00:51:00] ’cause he would work second shift and get out. He would work 3:00 to 11:00. JJ: So he would (inaudible) and Mom worked during the day? DJ: During the day. So then he would go and -- JJ: Now, was that enough to pay the bills, or everybody lived good? DJ: They never gave us money. They had issues about that. But my father always had money in the house. If there was an emergency, he had money. At that time, people would always have 2, 300 dollars in a sports coat in a pocket. That was the bank. They would keep their money in a pocket. An emergency all of the sudden would happen, they had their money there. JJ: What kind of discipline did your dad use? DJ: For us? JJ: Did he yell? Did he make you feel (inaudible)? DJ: For us, not that much. He used to hit my brother. JJ: Okay. So he used to hit me, then. DJ: Yeah. JJ: So how would he do that? 35 �DJ: But he wouldn’t hit [00:52:00] you all the time, but when he would hit you, he would hit you hard. He would actually hit hard when he would hit you. JJ: Punch or? DJ: No, he would hit you with whatever. I remember him breaking a broomstick on you for stupidity because he told you to put the dishes inside the sink, but he used a different word and you didn’t know what he meant with the word he said in Spanish and you didn’t put it on, so he got mad and hit you. Then you had ice skates. You would hide them behind the refrigerator. He didn’t want you with that. He kept saying that Mom would baby you, which was true because Mom babied you. You know, that’s what the thing was. You were like Momma’s little boy and I guess he didn’t like that. Because now growing up, us, we sit down and I think of my mom and everything and we feel like she didn’t really want us. JJ: What do you mean? DJ: Us daughters. My mom did not like daughters. [00:53:00] She liked her son. My mom would leave us with our brother and my brother used to beat the shit out of us for no reason because he was born machista. So it was what he said. JJ: So your brother was a macho too? [That’s where he stands?]. DJ: And he thinks he still is, though, but I control him. (laughter) He still thinks, but I control him because I don’t take his crap ’cause I can hit back now. He would be, “I want that shirt washed, dried --” JJ: Now, you’re talking right to me right now. DJ: Exactly. “I want that shirt washed, dried, and ironed in five minutes.” And if we didn’t do that -- “I want it now.” “But we can’t do that.” “Give me the belt. Give 36 �me the belt. Give me that belt right now.” And he would get the belt and he would hit us. And my mom would think it was a joke. [00:54:00] She would be out in the street playing lotto numbers, selling illegal, because that is illegal. You play the numbers. JJ: Now, she’s a Christian woman, right? DJ: Yeah, but she played numbers. JJ: But she played the numbers and that was illegal. What would she say? DJ: I have no idea. She would go to people’s houses and collect money and play numbers for them, and that’s illegal. JJ: Oh, so she was collecting the numbers. DJ: The numbers. JJ: ’Cause I know your father did that too. DJ: No, she would do it too. JJ: She would do it too. DJ: When my dad was working at night, she would go out at night and she would collect numbers. JJ: She would collect the numbers. DJ: But then she didn’t know -- JJ: That was part of the syndicate. DJ: Exactly. But then the thing was that she kept leaving us with our brother. She didn’t understand and we kept telling her, “He keeps hitting us.” And she didn’t care. “Jose, I told you not to touch the girls.” And my brother would run around the table and my mom would run after him and they would start laughing at the 37 �end and nobody would get hit. [00:55:00] But we would get hit all the time. And I remember my brother. He used to say the mass. We used to prepare the altar. Those were our games. That’s why I don’t remember -- when my childhood, I never liked dolls. I never played with dolls. That’s probably why I liked boys because I never played with dolls. We didn’t do that. We played priest and nuns. We were in the Catholic church. We did a whole mass, I remember. I mean, when we would snap our finger, we would kneel down, snap the finger back up. My brother was the priest. He would put on a sheet over him. He would say the entire mass. We would take bread, smash them up, and that was our communion. JJ: So what do you think was going on with your brother at that time (inaudible) to make a priest? DJ: My brother wanted to become a priest. My brother was in Catholic school and he wanted to become a priest, but because there wasn’t money for certain [00:56:00] things -- mind you, we went to Catholic school, but for a certain age, then it gets more expensive and more expensive. So he was gonna go into high school and because he was gonna go to high school, the Catholic school was more expensive. And then he wanted to become a priest, and this is what my mom says. My mom says the priest said that my dad had to go to the school, and because my dad didn’t want to go to the school and he wouldn’t go and he wouldn’t go, then that’s why they took my brother out of the seminary that he was supposed to be. JJ: So your brother was suspended from school? 38 �DJ: Well, they just told him, yeah, that he couldn’t go to that. They couldn’t afford it so he couldn’t go to that Catholic high school. He would have to go to a public school, a public high school, and that was the wrong thing to have done because that’s when everything started. That’s when he stole the car. Of course, he said that he didn’t know [00:57:00] it was stolen, but I never believed that. He showed up in Indiana. My father had to get on a train and pick him up. That’s why I can’t say that my father didn’t like my brother because I think he loved him very much. But in his own way. Because if he really didn’t care, he would’ve let my brother rot it jail. He would’ve let him. And no, he always made it a point to find how to get him out of trouble because he always did. But the thing was that my mother was always smothering him. She always smothered you. JJ: So there was like a time where your brother ran away in a stolen car? DJ: Yes. JJ: And then got arrested? DJ: My father had to go all the way to Indiana and there was a snow blizzard. JJ: I think it was Missouri. DJ: Okay. JJ: It was Missouri, St. Louis, Missouri. DJ: Okay. And there was a blizzard and he had to go on the train. I remember that. And he had to go over there to go pick you up and bring [00:58:00] you back. That was a big ordeal. JJ: Okay. Now, your mother did catechism classes, right? Our mom did catechism classes. Okay. Wasn’t she involved with Damas de María? 39 �DJ: Damas de María, and we were Hijas de María. JJ: You were Hijas de María. DJ: Mm-hmm, those are the women that -- Hijas de María, the Damas are the [word?] ’cause they’re the women, the married women, which belong to the Virgin Mary, and then the Hijas were the daughters of the Virgin Mary. That’s what the groups were called. JJ: So you were like the daughters of Mary. DJ: So it’s daughters of Mary. So it’s mothers and daughters. And the group, like right now if you go to a Catholic church right now, they have groups for the young children. They have [00:59:00] groups that might be for just girls only. These were just for girls. They had the men that were Caballeros de San Juan. That’s where the men -- Damas of María were the mothers and Hijas de María were the younger girls. JJ: Okay. What did, for example, the Hijas de Marías do? What did you do? DJ: We would organize parties, do stuff like that, bake sales, raffles, stuff like that. The moms would help and all that stuff as well. I remember getting involved in doing actually parties, like trying to get a band, sell tickets, you know, doing all that stuff. JJ: Why did you do that? I mean, were you raising money? DJ: I was doing it to get out of the house, let’s put it that way. I did it to get out of the house. I tried to get involved in anything to get out of the house. JJ: Were other girls doing the same thing? DJ: Yeah. 40 �JJ: (inaudible) to get involved to get out of -- DJ: We wanted to go dancing. The only way we’re going to go -- you know, these men are machistas. They don’t take us anywhere. So if we want to go dancing, [01:00:00] you need to do that. You go, “Oh, I’ll volunteer. I’ll do this. I’ll do that.” I get to go out, I get to dance. That’s how it was. JJ: Okay. And what about the mothers? Why would they do it? DJ: They would do it to raise money for the church. That’s what they did mostly. It’s like they do nowadays. You have your organizations in the church and some of them teach catechism. Some of them do this. Some of them go -- JJ: So there were other mothers teaching catechism classes? DJ: Yeah, there was other people that did that. JJ: (inaudible) Lincoln Park? DJ: Well, Mother was one of them, the basic one that I remember when I was small. But then Mother didn’t do it later on. Mother did it when we were growing up. But once we were older, she was in the Damas de María, so she wasn’t really teaching catechism that much. JJ: But you heard of other women doing it later? DJ: I don’t really know. I think Mother was like the main one that I knew. JJ: Now, I remember they were trying to get like a Spanish mass [01:01:00] at St. Teresa's or something. DJ: To do Spanish mass? JJ: Or St. Michael’s. Do you remember St. Michael’s at all? DJ: Not too much St. Michael’s. 41 �JJ: You remember -- DJ: St. Teresa's, ’cause that was like in a corner. St. Michael’s was where I think I did my first communion. That was on La Salle down there, that way. JJ: Yeah, by Cleveland and -- DJ: No. No, no, no, it was St. Teresa's because -- JJ: No, you went to St. Joseph’s. I think you went to St. Joseph’s. That was more like La Salle. DJ: Uh-huh. Oh, St. Joseph’s, yes. JJ: Right. So they had some stuff. They were trying to get the Spanish mass there. DJ: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. JJ: Okay. Do you remember anything there? DJ: No. But I guess they must’ve had the Spanish mass, if they had the Caballeros of San Juan and they had Damas de María. They had to have had the Spanish mass. JJ: What about St. Teresa's? What do you remember about that? How did that mass come along? DJ: That, I don’t remember too much because at that time, we would go to church, but we wouldn’t go to church all the [01:02:00] time. We would go because we wanted to belong in the group to be able to do that and do the dances and stuff, and we would go to church at that -- but there was a lot of times Mom stopped going to church every Sunday. I know she wasn’t going there and we weren’t going either. JJ: Why did she stop going to church? Just tired? 42 �DJ: She was always doing promises for my brother. JJ: What do you mean, promises? DJ: That you have to wear an outfit, like if you were the Virgin Mary. You wore the whole robe thing and you tie it with these little balls that hang down. JJ: Like a Franciscan monk. DJ: Something like that. JJ: Not Virgin Mary. DJ: Exactly. JJ: Franciscan monk. DJ: And those were promises. That’s like a promise you make to God. “I will wear this for a year if you help my son get out of jail.” It was promises, or “Please protect my son and I will do this for another year.” I mean, she constantly had that for you. This was like a constant thing. JJ: So she would pray to God -- DJ: All the time. JJ: -- and make a promise. DJ: [01:03:00] And then a lot of times, she wouldn’t finish. JJ: That I wouldn’t go to jail or something. DJ: That you wouldn’t go to jail or that you wouldn’t get in trouble or if she couldn’t find you, then say that he can come home safe or whatever. JJ: Did she ever do that for your father? DJ: Hell no. She never did it for us either. JJ: I thought she had done it for -- 43 �DJ: I don’t ever remember her doing it for our father. JJ: On Dayton Street. DJ: But you were three years older, so you could -- JJ: I didn’t know that she did that for me. DJ: This was our entire life. JJ: Okay, she was doing that. DJ: I remember that. JJ: I remember she did it for my father. DJ: Well, she could’ve done it at one time, but I don’t remember. JJ: (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) for me too. DJ: She could’ve done it for you but she never finished. Like, it was for a year and she would stop, like, seven months later. So if you stopped seven months later and didn’t complete the year, then it doesn’t count. That’s why you kept getting into trouble. (laughter) If she would have done it the whole year, maybe you would’ve stayed out of trouble. JJ: Okay. Now, let’s look at [01:04:00] the Young Lords. They became political, right? Did you see any difference, like you were talking about the church? DJ: I don’t know much about it but I do remember the church. I remember a church. I remember going to that church. I remember a lot of Young Lords there, girls, women, and men, and they lived there or they stayed there or something. I remember my sister leaving home. She ran away with her boyfriend. Her boyfriend beat her up so bad that my sister left him and walked all the way down to that church. I remember my brother being there and my brother grabbed my 44 �sister. All the Young Lord women grabbed my sister, put her in this room. Then her boyfriend went in there to try -- he says, “Oh, I’m looking for my wife,” and you [01:05:00] said, “What do you mean, your wife? Are you talking about my sister? She’s not your wife. And who are you to beat up on my --” ’Cause he had beat up on my sister really bad. So I remember that my brother went, that you went and you beat him up so bad that you couldn’t even see his eyes. They were closed shut. I remember you beat him up and after you beat him up, you made him take my sister back home to our house. I remember that night because that was, like, I was so upset at everybody because I hadn’t seen my boyfriend that day because everything was going on and I kept saying, “You had to go run away with your boyfriend and Joseph had to go and beat up your boyfriend and now I can’t go see Johnny,” and all this and that. You know, it was like a constant, and I go, “Why do you keep doing stuff like that?” But it didn’t help ’cause she kept going back to him and he kept beating her [01:06:00] up. But she will tell you that part, if she wants to say it. I’m not gonna say that part ’cause I don’t know if she wants to talk about it. JJ: So there was another incident. DJ: That was a big incident. But after that, it wasn’t like a gang anymore. It was like community. It was doing breakfasts. I remember that. I remember a lot of stuff in the newspaper. I remember in the news -- JJ: Did you ever see the breakfasts? DJ: They would show it on the news. It would show people going up to get breakfast, to go in there. They would cook. They were helping the whole Spanish 45 �community. I remember that. But at that time, I remember at that time -- I left my house when I was 15, so after that, I wasn’t involved anymore. I wasn’t in Chicago anymore. We moved to Aurora because of my sister and that boyfriend that kept beating her up. We actually moved to Aurora, so I had to leave my boyfriend, break up with him, so that was -JJ: So at that time, you were living [01:07:00] in Claremont or -- DJ: We were living in Claremont. From Claremont, we moved -- JJ: Claremont and North Avenue. DJ: And that’s when we moved to Aurora because of my sister and her boyfriend. And then I had to break up with mine and that was like -- I thought I was gonna die. It was a huge ordeal, a huge, huge ordeal for me to have to get used to a small town when you were used to living in Chicago. JJ: Why did you pick Aurora? DJ: Our cousins lived there. We had cousins that lived there and they said it was okay for us to go there. So my dad stayed in Chicago for a couple months until we got a place to stay out in Aurora, whatever. We stayed at our cousins’ house until we got an apartment. JJ: Okay, so you didn’t hear anything about the Young Lords after that? DJ: After that, I would see my brother here and there. My brother went underground. JJ: Okay, what do you mean underground? DJ: Underground, that we didn’t know where he was at. JJ: For how long? DJ: For years. 46 �JJ: For years? DJ: For years. JJ: So for years, you didn’t [01:08:00] know where your brother was at? DJ: After, there was an incident at the church. There was an incident with some material. They had my brother arrested because they said he had stole some material that they were -- JJ: (inaudible). DJ: Exactly, and they arrested him and he had to serve time for a year. After my brother got out of there, after you got out of there after that year, we don’t remember where you were at for years and years and years. JJ: And so what were you guys thinking about at that time? DJ: Well, we thought you were with gangs and all that, and I know you had gone I think to California. You had gone to a lot of different places. You had gone -- that we would hear here and there and here and there that we were hearing all this stuff. JJ: From who would you hear it? DJ: Just from family members that were actually still living in Chicago, ’cause remember, we moved to Aurora, so we weren’t in contact with -- so we would just hear like from our aunts and uncles. “Well, no, I heard this [on the news?].” Or “So-and-so’s cousin [01:09:00] knew this.” ’Cause the gossip always goes here with the family, and if they’re still living in this neighborhood, oh no, we heard -- JJ: So this was uncles too and aunts saying they had heard something? DJ: They had heard stuff. “No, well, I thought he was --” “He had left here and --” 47 �JJ: So they knew what was going on with the Young Lords. DJ: It was always all over the news. It was in the newspapers and it was in the news. When it turned into an organization, that they had the church, and then when that preacher, that pastor died, or they shot him or something -- JJ: Reverend Bruce Johnson. DJ: The reverend. That was another big ordeal. JJ: How did people take that? DJ: Well, I don’t know because I didn’t live there anymore. I lived in Aurora. JJ: You say it was a big ordeal. DJ: Well, when I say a big ordeal, it’s because it’s came out all over the news, and they would come out on the news, they would always mention Jose “Cha-Cha” Jimenez. They would always mention the Young Lords. They would always mention -- I think they even tried to think that the Young Lords had had something to do with it. [01:10:00] So it was always they had stuff like that on. JJ: So when they thought that the Young Lords had something to do or they tried to make them think that way, what did people say? What did family members say? DJ: Well, people were not believing it because they already knew the Young Lords, what they were trying to do was help the community and help all the poor Spanish Hispanic people because they weren’t treated right. So that’s more or less how it was. But after that, like I said, after that, I was with my husband and I had my kids and that’s how it was. I didn’t go back to Chicago. Till then, I’ve never lived back in Chicago. JJ: Okay, but did you ever participate in any demonstrations? 48 �DJ: I went I think to two of them. I believe I went to two of them. There was a walk when one member got killed. JJ: Manuel Ramos. DJ: Manuel Ramos. I went for that. JJ: So you went to the funeral? DJ: I went to that. JJ: [01:11:00] To the wake -- DJ: To the wake. JJ: -- at St. Teresa's? How was that like? What can you remember about that? DJ: It was just a big walk with thousands and thousands and thousands of people walking in the street. I mean, it was like something I had never seen in my life. JJ: Gang members? DJ: Everybody. Gang members. Family. Just people. It was just thousands of people. JJ: So how did you feel then, seeing all those people? DJ: Then that’s when I actually realized this thing was huge, that the Young Lords were not something small, that the Young Lords changed, and I was glad and happy at the same time that it changed from being a gang to an organization to help people. And I actually at one time -- I don’t know where I was at -- I went into a library, something. I picked up a book or something and I don’t even know what it was and I was reading this book and there was something mentioned about my brother in that [01:12:00] book. I don’t even remember the book’s name now ’cause this was years ago. It mentioned my brother, mentioned the 49 �Young Lords. It mentioned walks, and this, from Manuel Ramos, that was all over -- there was clippings. There was a lot of stuff on that. JJ: So that was the only book that you had ever read about the Young Lords before? DJ: That I actually said, “Oh my God, my brother’s in a book.” JJ: There was no newspaper or anything? They always used some -- DJ: Yeah, there was always clippings and there was stuff all over of the Young Lords and stuff. JJ: What about when they took over the seminary? Did you hear anything about that? DJ: Mm-mm. JJ: Okay. Okay, so from Claremont, you moved to Aurora, and now you got married with Israel? DJ: Mm-hmm. JJ: Okay. But you had eloped. I mean, what was that about, (inaudible)? DJ: Eloped. JJ: Why did you elope? Couldn’t communicate with your mom or what? DJ: No, ’cause of communication. [01:13:00] My mother would -- remember, you were the favorite. She didn’t like us. We were slaves. We had to come home from school. We had to mop. We had to wax the floor on our hands and knees. We had to have dinner ready. We had to wash clothes by hand. We had to wring ’em out. We had to iron. I considered that slavery at that time. We had to do all that every day, every day, every day. And okay, she worked, yeah, but she 50 �would come home from work and just sit down. We did everything else. It was that. It was the fact that my -JJ: So you didn’t [like?] your brother because of that? DJ: I’ve always loved my brother. I have always. Didn’t matter what he did. Always, always. I didn’t like a lot -- JJ: Is this ’cause we’re here in front of each other or what? DJ: No, no, no, no, it’s always been like this. It’s just that my brother and I are two different people. My brother has certain [01:14:00] beliefs of independence and I don’t believe that. JJ: Tell me what you believe. DJ: I believe that men and women are equal. I don’t believe that a man is better than a woman. I don’t believe that a man has to say -- if you say, “Oh, well, you have to do this.” No, nobody’s gonna tell me what I have to do or what I don’t have to do. I do it because out of respect and because I wanna do it, but not because I have to do it. And that’s how I am in my family and that’s probably why I feel that I have to take on so many problems of my family, of my kids, of my brother, my sister. I worry about everybody. Everybody. Even my brother can say, “If anybody has a problem or whatever, call Daisy. Daisy knows what she has to do.” Because I take care of the problem. I do this. I do that. I make things happen. I don’t fall apart. I don’t have time to fall apart. And you learn that when you have kids [01:15:00] because when I was growing up, no way. I kept saying, “I don’t want to, and we’re not living in Chicago. I don’t want anything to do with gangs. I don’t want anything to do with drugs. I don’t want anything like that.” 51 �But that’s not how life is. That is not how life is, so you have to be realistic. So when you’re realistic -- I can say and I can swear on the Bible. I can say I’ve never used drugs in my life ever. Ever, ever, ever. I’ve always said I would never, never do that and I never have. I would protect my kids against that. But we live in a world where that’s all over the place. I can tell my kids, “Don’t smoke weed.” JJ: Did your brother use any drugs? DJ: My brother used to use drugs. JJ: And everybody knew that? DJ: Not everybody knew it. We knew it. I knew it. JJ: How did you know? DJ: I just knew. I just knew that being in a gang [01:16:00] had to do with drugs. I just knew it had to do with that. JJ: So it had to do with being in a gang. DJ: But my brother has changed so much from the person he used to be. I know you used to smoke weed. I know you used to shoot up. JJ: Shoot up heroin? DJ: Everything, I guess. I don’t know, like I said, a lot of the stuff because I don’t know. But I know you used to shoot up. He was an alcoholic. JJ: Alcoholic, okay. DJ: He was an alcoholic. He stopped and now I’m so proud and proud. He doesn’t drink. He doesn’t smoke. He doesn’t smoke weed. He doesn’t shoot up. He drinks coffee and that’s it. 52 �JJ: That’s not saying much. It’s caffeine. DJ: No. But it’s saying a lot to what you were years ago. But one thing that you can never change on my brother, and I will say this, you can never change him [01:17:00] speaking of the Young Lords. I mean, I’ve got tapes here. He sends me everything. I’ve got tapes here. I’ve got everything that he sends me. I read it and I will say sometimes -- you’ll say, “Daisy, I’m sending you so you can read it.” “Yeah, okay, okay, okay.” And I tell my husband, I go, “Oh, here comes Joseph sending me some stuff. It’s some stuff of the Young Lords.” I read it. He’s my brother. I’m gonna read everything or whatever. I have it and I keep it. I save it. JJ: Okay, now another thing that you disagreed with which are within your brother, about the question of Puerto Rico. How do you feel about that? DJ: What do you mean? JJ: Puerto Rican independence and all that. DJ: Oh. You don’t want to get me started. JJ: No, no, I want it. DJ: You wanna know independence? Because when the people that live in the United States in Chicago, in Illinois, they’re people that do not live in Puerto Rico. [01:18:00] They have some nerve to come and say, “I want Puerto Rico independent. I want Puerto Rico to stay the way it is.” Well, you know what? The people that are saying that don’t live here because if they would live here, they would want Puerto Rico to be a state because then we would be equal to everybody else. We are not equal to everybody else. We are a colonial. We’re 53 �part of the United States. We’re not complete. We’re part of it, okay? So for instance, you’re in my house right now. We’re in 2012. I built this house in 1992. This house was finished building. At that time, hardly had water. Our light would go on and off here and there. We’re in 2012. My brother just came today, showed up this morning for this interview, and I have no water. Now, why is that? And we are [01:19:00] in 2012. That’s ridiculous. But there’s cell phones. But they have internet. So why isn’t the system of the water and the light fixed? Why are we still struggling? Why do I have to go to an appointment at two o’clock in the morning? Go to an appointment at two o’clock in the morning, wait for the secretary to show up at 8:00 in the morning. The doctor shows up at 9:00 or 10:00. They see you. At two o’clock in the morning, and you might be number 15 at two o’clock in the morning because there’s people that slept there all night. Now, why do we have to struggle like that? Why do we have to? Why do old people have to go through all this? And then they don’t want to pay you but the minimum, and in certain stores, they pay you five dollars an hour. What is that? I don’t believe that. I don’t believe that. This should be a state because in a state, everybody’s gonna be equal. You will have to pay everybody equally. [01:20:00] But also the Puerto Ricans are lazy because they are. I worked all my life in the States. I came to Puerto Rico. I worked here. I couldn’t believe the way they worked. There’s a saying that they said -- when those buildings from 9/11 happened, something like that with all these deaths and people dying. None of that would ever happen here in Puerto Rico. Why? Because Puerto Ricans are never where they’re supposed to be at time we work. That happened to 54 �those people because they were doing their job. They were in their offices. They were at work. Puerto Ricans, they go into work at 7:00. This one has to kiss this one’s face. “Hi, how are you?” Hug this one, do this. “Let me go get a coffee here.” “Oh, how was last night?” “Oh, did you see the novella last night?” And this and that. By the time they get to [their area?], it’s around 10:30 in the morning. When you have patients -- [01:21:00] I’ve always worked in hospitals. When you’ve got patients standing in the line, do they care? Because it’s all about them and not about the patients and not about the other people. That is why I don’t like Puerto Rico and if it wasn’t because of my mother, that I have to take care of her, I wouldn’t be living here. I would have already sold my house and I would be living in Florida with my kids and my grandkids. JJ: So you want it to be a state but you don’t like it, Puerto Rico, or because if it’s a state, then it won’t be Puerto Rico? DJ: No, if it would be a state, I think things would be better. We wouldn’t have all these problems. I mean, why would I have to worry about water? I have my brother coming to visit me and I have no water. Now, what is this? For two days. We’re not talking about an hour. We’re talking about two days with no water. Does the government think that people don’t take baths? JJ: So you’re saying the Puerto Rican Commonwealth government -- DJ: Exactly. JJ: -- is not doing their job. 55 �DJ: [01:22:00] They don’t know what they’re doing and it doesn’t matter who’s there. It doesn’t even matter if it’s independent, if it’s Republican or Democrat. It’s all bullshit. It’s all the same. JJ: So [where does?] the state [of the party?]. Today, now that the government today, the state of the party, so how do you feel about that? DJ: Right now? To me? JJ: Yeah. DJ: I don’t trust any of them. I don’t like any of them, period. I’m tired of it. I came here to live with my family and we did and my kids are grown up. They’re married and none of them live with me. None of them live in Puerto Rico and they tell me right off the bat -- and they went to school here also. They go, “Oh no, Mom, I can never have my kids go to school in Puerto Rico. They don’t learn anything.” My daughter, how can you get an A in gym if the teacher never went to school the whole year? But in her report card, she got an A in gym. Now, how can they do [01:23:00] that? JJ: The teacher wasn’t there at all? DJ: Not the entire year. There was no gym. They have no gym classes here. JJ: But she had an A? DJ: She had an A and there’s no gym. JJ: So people are not doing their jobs, basically. DJ: Exactly. JJ: Okay. 56 �DJ: You’re gonna watch. They’re gonna fix the light or whatever and the water. There’ll be five people. One will be digging and the other three are watching, but they’re all getting paid. That is the problem that they have in Puerto Rico. JJ: Okay, yeah. I was just trying to get how you think. I’m not trying to take sides or anything like that, not for this thing. DJ: Oh, it doesn’t matter. I know you’re independent. I don’t agree with you. That’s okay. Now, the day that you live here, you’re going to be independent. Now, in the meantime, I’m not gonna believe anything you tell me. JJ: Okay. Okay. Well, that’s a point down. DJ: That is a point down. The day that you move to Puerto Rico and you go to a two o’clock in the morning appointment or you have no water or you don’t have light, when you have all that and you go through all that struggle [01:24:00] that I go through, then you can tell me you can be independent and I’ll let you be independent. JJ: In Aurora, you were the Puerto Rican Queen. We’re gonna go to that since you’re attacking me already. DJ: Okay, but we need to cut the interview. JJ: Right now? DJ: Yeah. JJ: Okay, let me stop it running. END OF VIDEO FILE 57 � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/1840aa9d349dbe21ee0e59802d4aade2.mp4 cd29aa0e01d97f76b28aea2c5789c1be Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Young Lords in Lincoln Park Collection Subject The topic of the resource Young Lords (Organization) Puerto Ricans--United States Civil Rights--United States--History Lincoln Park (Chicago, Ill.) Personal narratives Social justice Community activists--Illinois--Chicago Description An account of the resource Collection of oral history interviews and digitized materials documenting the history of the Young Lords Organization in Lincoln Park, Chicago. Interviews were conducted by Young Lords' founder, José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez, and documents were digitized from Mr. Jiménez' archives. The Young Lords in Lincoln Park collection grows out of the ongoing struggle for fair housing, self-determination, and human rights that was launched by Mr. José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez, founder of the Young Lords Movement. This project is dedicated to documenting the history of the displacement of Puerto Ricans, Mejicanos, other Latinos, and the poor from Lincoln Park, as well as the history of the Young Lords nationwide. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Jiménez, José, 1948- Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/491">Young Lords in Lincoln Park collection (RHC-65)</a> Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-04-25 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Language A language of the resource eng spa Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-65 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 2012-2017 Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Título Spanish language Title entry Daisy Jiménez vídeo entrevista y biografía, entrevista 1 Descripción Spanish language Description entry Daisy Jiménez o como la llamaba su padre, “La Prieta”, es una hermana de José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez. Nació en el séptimo piso del Water Hotel en la calle Superior y La Salle Streets en Chicago, donde vivía su familia. Creció en La Clark medio Ohio y North Ave. , y luego en Lincoln Park donde ayudo a su mama a reclutar gente para misa en Español y dando rosarios para los Caballeros de San Juan y Damas de María. Después de vivir en Claremont y North Ave. Por unos años, la familia se movió ah Aurora, Illinois. Aquí conocieron a Teo Arroyo quien estaba organizando el primer desfilo Puertorriqueño en Aurora, y también era de Barrio San Salvado de Caguas. Daisy entro la carrera para ser Reina del Desfilo Puertorriqueño y gano. Ahora vive en Camuy, Puerto Rico con su esposo Israel Rodríguez y cuatro hijos. Sujetos Spanish language Subject terms Young Lords (Organización) Puertorriqueños--Estados Unidos Derechos civiles--Estados Unidos--Historia Lincoln Park (Chicago, Ill.) Justicia social Activistas comunitarios--Illinois--Chicago Puertorriqueños--Relatos personales Puertorriqueños--Illinois--Chicago--Vida social y costumbres Religión Source <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/491">Young Lords in Lincoln Park (RHC-65)</a> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-65_Jimenez_Daisy_1 Title A name given to the resource Daisy Jiménez video interview and transcript, interview 1 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Jiménez, Daisy Description An account of the resource 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. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Jiménez, José, 1948- Subject The topic of the resource Young Lords (Organization) Puerto Ricans--United States Civil Rights--United States--History Lincoln Park (Chicago, Ill.) Puerto Ricans--Personal narratives Social justice Community activists--Illinois--Chicago Puerto Ricans--Illinois--Chicago--Social life and customs Religion Language A language of the resource eng Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2012-05-16 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/e6838aa4d06c81277201caf813361160.pdf 862c934f3bbfe53dff77d15003c35dcd PDF Text Text Young Lords In Lincoln Park Interviewee: Benedicto Jiménez Interviewers: José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez Location: Grand Valley State University Special Collections Date: 6/2/2012 Biography and Description Benedicto Jiménez is the son of Toribia Rodríguez and Miguel Jiménez. His father, Miguel, is the oldest of Gregorio Jiménez’s sons, but is the only son from Gregorio’s first wife. 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.” They would research on and on until they could prove that they were related, or at the very least that they were close friends of close friends, or from a nearby town. Initially, Mr. Jiménez wanted to become a priest. Instead he became a different type of father and raised a wonderful, stable family in Aurora, Illinois. He also lived in Lincoln Park for a couple of years on Seminary Street near Armitage, close to Eugenia Rodríguez, who he would frequently visit, who lived at 2117 North Bissell Street. Rather than returning to Chicago, 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 many times. For this help the company bosses would relate more to him but this 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. The company would pay for their trip from Puerto Rico or Mexico and the employee would work to at least he made enough to reimburse the company. Mr. Jiménez describes long days and work weeks in an enclosed, unlit room because the mushrooms are grown in the dark. He could talk to them but could not see who he worked next to during that day. It was there that he was reintroduced to Don Teo Arroyo, whose wife Gina cooked at the camp for the men. They too were from Barrio San Salvador of Caguas and would help Latinos, later becoming the ones to begin organizing the community for Aurora’s first Puerto Rican Day parades. Since West Chicago was a small town, when the migrant workers decided to settle down with their families, they often would move to Chicago or settle in Aurora. Significant Mexican and Puerto Rican communities have grown in both places. � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/dc4c2aaf462d2e7bb2afa7c315b8f810.mp4 9f344c940d52ac570e5a9443b7bb1f40 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Young Lords in Lincoln Park Collection Subject The topic of the resource Young Lords (Organization) Puerto Ricans--United States Civil Rights--United States--History Lincoln Park (Chicago, Ill.) Personal narratives Social justice Community activists--Illinois--Chicago Description An account of the resource Collection of oral history interviews and digitized materials documenting the history of the Young Lords Organization in Lincoln Park, Chicago. Interviews were conducted by Young Lords' founder, José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez, and documents were digitized from Mr. Jiménez' archives. The Young Lords in Lincoln Park collection grows out of the ongoing struggle for fair housing, self-determination, and human rights that was launched by Mr. José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez, founder of the Young Lords Movement. This project is dedicated to documenting the history of the displacement of Puerto Ricans, Mejicanos, other Latinos, and the poor from Lincoln Park, as well as the history of the Young Lords nationwide. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Jiménez, José, 1948- Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/491">Young Lords in Lincoln Park collection (RHC-65)</a> Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-04-25 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Language A language of the resource eng spa Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-65 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 2012-2017 Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Título Spanish language Title entry Benedicto Jiménez vídeo entrevista y biografía Sujetos Spanish language Subject terms Young Lords (Organización) Puertorriqueños--Estados Unidos Derechos civiles--Estados Unidos--Historia Lincoln Park (Chicago, Ill.) Puertorriqueños--Relatos personales Idioma español--Relatos personales Justicia social Activistas comunitarios--Illinois--Chicago Puertorriqueños--Illinois--Chicago--Condiciones sociales Puertorriqueños--Illinois--Chicago--Vida social y costumbres Trabajadores migratorios agrícolas--Illinois--Chicago Source <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/491">Young Lords in Lincoln Park (RHC-65)</a> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-65_Jimenez_Benedicto Title A name given to the resource Benedicto Jiménez video interview and biography Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Jiménez, Benedicto Description An account of the resource 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. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Jiménez, José, 1948- Subject The topic of the resource 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--Illinois--Chicago--Social conditions Puerto Ricans--Illinois--Chicago--Social life and customs Migrant agricultural laborers--Illinois--Chicago Language A language of the resource spa Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2012-06-02 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/e6413f0cb89de1407c181a8d7fe62a96.pdf dcd274a4db7981ab446239ab54c1a86c PDF Text Text Young Lords In Lincoln Park Interviewee: Amparo Jiménez Interviewers: José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez Location: Grand Valley State University Special Collections Date: 6/22/2012 Biography and Description Amparo Jiménez lives in Aguas Buenas, Puerto Rico where she is very active within the Catholic Church. During her oral history, Ms. Jiménez had a statute of the Virgin Mary at her home with a lit candle next to it. A small group of people had brought the statue to her house and prayed the rosary with her. She would keep the statue and candle lit in her home for nine days, a novena. During that time, she would also pray to it. After that, the group would return and pray together once again. They would then keep the chain unbroken by processing together to another neighbor’s home, giving them the statue after praying the rosary. This is the charismatic way of keeping the Catholic Church alive through actions or events within the community. It is also what the Caballeros de San Juan and Damas de María did in Chicago to wake up and unite Puerto Ricans who were dispersed within Chicago, and as a result of their diasporic situation. 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. She does not want to think of her cousins, the children of “Tio Gabriel Jiménez” as members of the Hacha Viejas and she states it because she grew up with them in this town of Aguas Buenas and that she knows them well. She stresses how her uncle Gabriel was a good, decent hardworking farmer and so were his children. � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/7cd2894d5a446a28a133ca1f2d2a1876.mp4 3fadee4830da6ce3dae3c35f9c5efbb7 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Young Lords in Lincoln Park Collection Subject The topic of the resource Young Lords (Organization) Puerto Ricans--United States Civil Rights--United States--History Lincoln Park (Chicago, Ill.) Personal narratives Social justice Community activists--Illinois--Chicago Description An account of the resource Collection of oral history interviews and digitized materials documenting the history of the Young Lords Organization in Lincoln Park, Chicago. Interviews were conducted by Young Lords' founder, José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez, and documents were digitized from Mr. Jiménez' archives. The Young Lords in Lincoln Park collection grows out of the ongoing struggle for fair housing, self-determination, and human rights that was launched by Mr. José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez, founder of the Young Lords Movement. This project is dedicated to documenting the history of the displacement of Puerto Ricans, Mejicanos, other Latinos, and the poor from Lincoln Park, as well as the history of the Young Lords nationwide. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Jiménez, José, 1948- Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/491">Young Lords in Lincoln Park collection (RHC-65)</a> Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-04-25 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Language A language of the resource eng spa Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-65 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 2012-2017 Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Título Spanish language Title entry Amparo Jiménez vídeo entrevista y biografía Sujetos Spanish language Subject terms Young Lords (Organización) Puertorriqueños--Estados Unidos Derechos civiles--Estados Unidos--Historia Lincoln Park (Chicago, Ill.) Puertorriqueños--Relatos personales Idioma español--Relatos personales Justicia social Activistas comunitarios--Illinois--Chicago Puertorriqueños--Vida social y costumbres Source <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/491">Young Lords in Lincoln Park (RHC-65)</a> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-65_Jimenez_Amparo Title A name given to the resource Amparo Jiménez video interview and biography Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Jiménez, Amparo Description An account of the resource 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. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Jiménez, José , 1948- Subject The topic of the resource 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 Language A language of the resource spa Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2012-06-22 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/578d84c3e207eb36b8478c39ed9fe494.pdf 28eb236eb1efb14536f6cfdc5a355566 PDF Text Text Young Lords In Lincoln Park Interviewee: Michael Gaylord James Interviewers: José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez Location: Grand Valley State University Special Collections Date: 7/14/2012 Biography and Description 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. The group modeled its efforts off community-based programs run by the Black Panther Party, Young Patriots and Young Lords. They also sought to convince white, working-class youth not to fight with other rival groups but to unite with the Panthers, Young Lords, and others to fight racism, injustice, and the forced displacement of poor and working-class families from their homes in Uptown, Lakeview, Lincoln Park, and the other near downtown and lakefront areas of Chicago. The organization lasted until 1975. Today, Mr. James owns and operates, a theatre, a journal, a general store and the Heartland Café in Chicago’s Rogers Park Neighborhood and features a progressive Saturday morning live Radio Program on WLUW 88.7 FM. �yl_James_Michael JOSE JIMINEZ: Give me your name, date, and date of birth, and then we can start from there. This is an oral history project. MICHAEL JAMES: Well, good morning. I forget that we don’t know what time of day it is. Hi, I’m Michael James, actually Michael Gaylord James, and I was born in 1942, January 16, 1942 in New York City. JJ: Okay. And Gaylord, that’s your -- MJ: Middle name. JJ: That’s your middle name. MJ: I got a lot of nicknames. But that’s my whole -- Michael Gaylord James. I’ve gone by Michael Gaylord James, I’ve gone by Michael James, by Mike James, and then I had some aliases over time. JJ: So okay, your parents, were they active at all in the movement? Who were they? MJ: My dad is Hal James, born in St. Joseph, Missouri. My mother is Florence James, she was born in the Bronx. They got married a few years before I was born. They had both worked in [00:01:00] advertising in radio production. My father I would have to say was a liberal Democrat. My first political campaign, I remember, was Adlai Stevenson, who was a very distant relative of our family. But that was -- my dad was real active in that campaign. I know that my dad had a number of friends who were activists in the Communist Party because when I became involved in the movement he basically said, “This is serious stuff and you just want to be really careful.” And he knew people who were blacklisted 1 �through the 1950s through the McCarthy Era and he would not buy any products from Wisconsin during the McCarthy time. That’s Senator Joe McCarthy back in the 1950s. JJ: And he was from Wisconsin. MJ: So his favorite beer was Miller High Life, he stopped drinking that, etcetera. Later he had a beef with Lyndon Johnson [00:02:00] over some TV deal that he was involved with and he wouldn’t buy anything from Texas, which probably was really good. My mom? I don’t think of my mom as political. My mom passed away in October of 2011, she was 97 and a half. I think she had really good values and was principled, certainly around race and the gay issues as it came up in our family. She had -- her mom, my grandma, was a Republican in the old school sense of Republicans, but my mom was, as far as I know, always a Democrat, and was quite supportive of our work in Civil Rights, Anti-War Movement, that kind of thing. My dad played more of a devil’s advocate. I remember him when the Montgomery Bus Boycott [00:03:00] was happening in 1956, which would have made me fourteen, I remember my dad kind of asking what I would call challenging questions. I could have even called them racist. But I think that was pretty much helping me in his sense of how to get me to think more. Because we -- in our family is an adopted brother who is an African American and my dad I think in the times of the 1960s, he was out of work -- JJ: What was his name? MJ: Hal James. He was out of work and he produced -- JJ: I mean your brother. 2 �MJ: Jim Arden is my brother and he was a hot shot -- he is a hot shot weight lifter. He’s in his seventies. He was Junior Mr. Connecticut fourth over forty Mr. America. My dad did produce a concert I remember with Odetta in the 1960s and then he produced a play called Hallelujah Baby with Leslie Uggams. And so I think in his way [00:04:00] he was trying to stay in tune with the times. My mother actually when Dr. King was killed, she and some other women started a daycare in the Saugatuck Congregational Church in my hometown of Westport, Connecticut. She always prided herself on doing Civil Rights kind of oriented work and helping with fundraising for Tougaloo or Tuskegee, one of those colleges. So that’s my folks. JJ: And what about your -- you mentioned that there was a gay issue in the family. MJ: Actually the gay issue is my son Jesse, who was around in the early days of Rising Up Angry, when he was thirteen or so he came out. That was interesting for me. I was certainly already aware of gay rights and basically supportive. [00:05:00] But then when you have it in your own family it’s like ooh, you do a double-take, and that -- there was some challenging moments for Jesse growing up and some situations he got into. He ended up marrying his boyfriend, whose dad was a Greek communist, and they have a daughter. They live in New York City. He was married in California back when it was legal to do that. I guess it is again. Then I have a daughter, Coya Paz who teaches at DePaul in the theater department, and she was the co-founder of the Teatro Luna, and is quite a playwright, and a good actress herself. And she married her girlfriend, Nina, so it’s my daughter in law. I don’t know if they’re legally married, but they have a 3 �baby, Coya actually carried the baby, Ida Rocket. I have two of my [00:06:00] six blood -- my five -- how many blood kids? Five blood kids are gay, three aren’t, and then my other kids from my marriages are not gay either. JJ: What are the other names? What are some of the other children? MJ: My first son was Jesse James, Jesse Hampton Nathaniel William Floyd Robin James, and then Coya Paz is my daughter, and those are my two gay kids. And then Casey Blue James, who just graduated from Yale, and is in New York looking into the publishing industry. She’s quite a good poet. Then I have a son Hal James, Hal Coltrane Cadien James, his name is, and he toured with a band that was getting a lot of play, the Smith Westerns. He toured Europe, Japan, the United States, a bunch of times in both the States in Europe. He didn’t really enjoy the life of the road and he wants to be a screenwriter, [00:07:00] so he’s taking screenwriting classes, working on some screenplays, and works at the Heartland Café, which is a restaurant I co-founded in 1976. Then my youngest son is Cadien Lake Jack Henry James. He’s eighteen. He just graduated from Jones Commercial-- excuse me, Jones College Prep -- it used to be Jones Commercial -- in Chicago. He has a band called Twin Peaks and they are currently on the road. They played in Tacoma last night. They’re in Seattle and Redmond, Washington today, tomorrow, which will be the 15 of July they’re in Portland, and then they go down the coast. They go across to Austin, Texas, and then they go up to Topeka, Omaha, Lawrence, Kansas, back to Omaha. I’m going to join them for the last four days of the tour. They had a kick-off concert last Sunday here in the backyard. It was quite a scene, the police only came 4 �once. They’re quite good, so you might [00:08:00] want to go to Twinpeaksmusic.blogspot.com to see his stuff. I always thought my kids would be athletes, but they’re musicians and poets. I also have, through my first wife Stormy, I have two stepsons Chuck and David. Both of them were around during the Rising Up Angry period. Then I have my wife Paige had a daughter Molly Cane is her name, now she’s married, her last name is Dodin, and she’s a teacher in New York City, and about to have a baby, it could happen today. JJ: What about your brothers and sisters? MJ: Oh, my brothers and sisters. JJ: Who are they? MJ: I’ve got -- beside my adopted brother Jim Arden, who I talked about. He adopted our family. He and I had met in the weight room in the YMCA in my hometown. [00:09:00] I have a brother Beau James and he is in the toy business. He’s not a political activist but is certainly a good thinker and would have to be called a Democrat of some sort. Then I have a sister Melody James, who is an actress and a teacher. After all the stuff that went on at San Francisco State in the old days she came to work with JOIN Community Union, which was a predecessor to Rising Up Angry, which is an organization I founded. Melody has a daughter and a husband. She was there for a number of years in the San Francisco Mime Troupe, so she did a lot of political plays, she wrote and acted in both. JJ: Okay, you mentioned Rising Up Angry. We’re going to get to that. How [00:10:00] long -- New York, how long were you there? MJ: I was in New York for the first two years of my life. I grew up in Connecticut. My 5 �dad was in advertising at that point. He had been an actor. He came out of St. Joseph, Missouri, grew up in Chicago on South Shore, went to the University of Chicago, went to Reed out in Oregon for a while, I guess he had screwed up at U of C. Then he went back to U of C, got involved in theater, knew Edgar Lee Master, Thornton Wilder, a number of people, Sherwood Anderson, and ended up producing Man of La Mancha, Hallelujah Baby, etcetera. When I was two -- I don’t really remember anything about New York City except that I think I was born in a hospital near the UN, which for me was always symbolic that I was near people from different places, and getting along, and working together. We moved to Westport, Connecticut [00:11:00] to a little house on a place called Red Coat Road. One of the most distinct activities I had beside helping the farmer down the road butcher cows and pigs, and riding around on a Harley Davison at the age of ten with his son who had just come back from the Korean War, Victor, I remember really being hostile to New York. I kind of took New York as wealth because there were wealthy New Yorkers in our town and people who would come for the summer. And when people would ask directions from a Cadillac with New York plates, we would always give them the wrong stuff. We had a little group called The Night Riders. Actually, we were kind of -- this was before I was ten, so we were really young juvenile delinquent types, because we would try and sabotage construction. I don’t think we ever did anything that mattered, but sabotaged construction of new houses that went up in the area. The other thing I remember very distinctly has to do with the notion of revolution. Growing up in New England, [00:12:00] there was a lot of attention to the Revolutionary 6 �War, and in my hometown down at the beach there were some cannons on the beach. And we had always heard how the British troops marched up what is now Route 7 to Danbury to burn the hat factories. The road I grew up on was Red Coat Road, which is the Red Coats were the British, who were the enemy at the time. And so we basically saw ourselves as defenders of the good people, the small people, the regular folks, and anti to colonialism and imperialism at an early age. JJ: When did you move to Chicago? MJ: Well, Cha-Cha, the first time I came to Chicago was in December of 1942. I would have been eleven months old. I came to visit my grandparents who lived on Euclid Avenue along South Shore. I’m not sure of the exact place. I went by there [00:13:00] a couple of times in my life. I came back to Chicago when I was thirteen or fourteen with my father, who was in radio and TV advertising business, and we came out, and while he was working, I remember we stayed at the Executive House down on Wacker Drive, and I took a bus up -- JJ: What year was this? MJ: Well at fourteen, let’s say I’m fourteen, so it’d be 1956 or so. I was already in hot rod cars, which took a lot of my time. Football, girls, hot rod cars, and early political consciousness. I took a ride on a bus up Lake Shore Drive to Irving Park, and I took a bus west on Irving Park to a place called Ray Erickson Speed Shop, which I do not believe is still there. But it was a shop where you would get equipment for your hot rod car. I remember as a kid [00:14:00] walking in and kind of looking at the stuff. So that was my second visit to Chicago. I had been 7 �with family, I think, in Michigan. I don’t know if we came to Chicago earlier than that. But I came back to Chicago in the fall of -- into the Chicago area in the fall of 1960 to go to Lake Forest College. I ended up there kind of by accident. I had applied to -JJ: Where are you living? By Lake Forrest? MJ: I lived in Lake Forest in a dormitory and then I lived in some wealthy folks’ home doing work for them in exchange for room and board. I did that at two different places. And I also lived at Arden Shore Home for Boys, which were kids who were smart but were a little troubled or wise ass. It was up in Lake Bluff, just south of the Great Lakes Naval Training Center. And I worked there -- JJ: Were you sent there or did you -- MJ: No, I worked there. (laughs) I worked there. We would -- and I also worked at Lake Forest Academy [00:15:00] washing dishes in the fall of 1960, I believe. The first time I lived in Chicago was in the summer of 1964. I had graduated from Lake Forest with honors. I got a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship to the University of California Berkeley, is where I took it. I could have gone to -- I had applied to U of C, to Columbia in New York, to Brandeis, but I was interested in -already then I think I was kind of interested in the more radical sociologists. JJ: So you were studying sociology? MJ: I was studying sociology. So I got a job in the summer of 1964 working for a guy named Mel Diamond who was working with Notre Dame Anthropology Department. They were doing a study on Southern White Migrants. I didn’t know a lot -- I don’t know what ever happened with that study, I’m not in touch 8 �with Mel Diamond, [00:16:00] but I spent that summer in Uptown not too far from where I saw you one time on Montrose, on Kenmore Avenue, and I would hang out with these people. An old guy named [Penny Menzer?], who taught me how to roll cigarettes. Which I have not rolled many cigarettes in my life, but I’ve rolled a lot of other things, but I learned that skill when I was there in Uptown in 1964. I also remember drinking Jim Beam from little bottles under the L Track and learning to do various picks on the guitar. I learned how to make biscuits and gravy. I would just hang out, and then go home, and then write notes for these guys. What they did with them I’m not sure. JJ: When did you -- you mentioned political consciousness -- I know it was in the family, but when did you start to do that? MJ: I think I always had [00:17:00] an inclination to stick up for the downtrodden and poor people. I remember at the age of ten being in Florida with my relatives. My dad’s family, a lot of them lived down there, they had moved down there. I remember we were playing with two of my cousins, maybe more of them, and the maid -- they had a maid who was African American -- and the maid’s daughter was there. We were all playing together. I remember my Aunt Helen telling us to go play in the backyard. I asked her why did we have to play in the backyard. She very matter-of-factly said that the neighbors wouldn’t like it in the front yard. That was my first kind of awareness. On that same trip with my father, we went to a business partner of his and a good friend whose stepmother and I guess father had a [00:18:00] turpentine plantation up near Jacksonville -- up there Tallahassee, Florida. We were out on this plantation and I remember driving 9 �around with the foreman in a pickup truck with a rifle in the back. There were all these literally shacks where the Black plantation workers lived. And just being kind of aware of that. That same time on that trip, I think it was probably sitting around, it could have been at a restaurant somewhere, or somewhere with my father, but I think it was actually on this plantation, I referred to the African American waiters, the help, as, “Sir”. My dad called me out on that and of course I held it against my dad for a long time. He said, “You don’t call people who are waiting on you, sir.” And maybe you don’t. I did as a kid. [00:19:00] So that was a real kind of an eye opener. When the Montgomery Bus Boycott started, I was totally involved in that as a young kid, reading about that, following that. In a lot of ways, Black people were my heroes. It took me till much later to realize there were plenty of Black people who were not so noble and all that. But I remember following the Civil Rights Movement. JJ: How -- through books or? MJ: Through the news. My dad was in radio TV so we had a TV from 1948 on. Then when all the stuff was coming down in the South, watching that. I actually as a kid started reading The New York Times. We got The New York Times on Sunday and I would look at the sports section and the ads in the back of that and I obviously read some other stuff. [00:20:00] I also -- my first hero I remember, it was Jackie Robinson of the Dodgers. My dad was a Dodger fan and we went to a guy named Barney [Carlin?] who worked for Castro Convertible Sofas in New York, who was one of my dad’s clients. They took me to a Dodgers game in probably 1947 or 1948. Maybe 1949, I’m not sure, but I could look it up. It was 10 �nine to eight going into the second inning, or was nine to nothing, nine to eight, when the Cardinals were beating the Dodgers, and the Dodgers came back and won it by a run. So Barney Carlin considered me to be a good luck charm, so I got to go to a lot of Dodgers games and they always won. He took me to a game in I think 1952 when Bobby Thompson of the Giants hit the homerun off [00:21:00] of Ralph Branca and the Dodgers lost the pennant. I remember as a kid crying. I had eaten about ten hot dogs, I had my Dodgers hat, I had my Dodger flag, pennant, and I was just totally devastated. Then I was the jinx in my mind. I was even hesitant to go when the Bears won the Super Bowl down in New Orleans, I had tickets, I went with my business partner Katie Hogan, took the train down there, it was a hell of an adventure, and I remember being really kind of worried that I would jinx the team. But the jinx was off, the Dodgers won - excuse me, the Bears won. Since then the White Sox have won, the Bulls have won, I’ve been to some games, I don’t think I have much to do with the determination or the outcome of these great sporting events. You asked about becoming politically aware and socially conscious. I have to say that in high school I had some teachers who were pretty good. I had a guy [00:22:00] named Gordon Hall who -JJ: What high school? MJ: Staples High School in Westport, Connecticut. I graduated in 1960. I was head of the -- I lost the run for the president of the high school, so I was head of the hall patrol, and I think we were a little corrupt because I think we probably smoked in the parking lot. I also was involved in hot rod cars, and to me that was 11 �kind of a class issue. I remember writing these kind of -- I look back on them now, I might be a little critical -- but it was talking about how we built our own cars, and we raised money to fix our cars, and that kind of stuff. Clearly I was a middle class or upper middle class kid, but there were kids in that town who were a lot wealthier, and there were people who had sports cars that their parents bought for them. We saw that as a cutting-edge issue. A little bit later, I don’t know if you want to address it, but I did go to Mexico on a motorcycle trip during 1962, and that a big [00:23:00] eye-opener. JJ: What happened there? MJ: Well even before I get to that, let me go in chronological order. In 1960 I’m applying to colleges. My dad had these great notions that maybe I would go to prep school for an extra year and then I’d play football at Stanford. I don’t think I was that good. I applied to University of Virginia on my dad’s insistence. His friend, the same one whose relatives had this plantation in Florida, had a daughter named Joan Bennett, who married Teddy Kennedy. While we were in - I’m going back to the Florida trip -- I remember hanging out with Joan as a kid and she had skinned her kneecaps while falling through a cattle crossing. My dad -- I’m getting a little lost here. In the summer of 1960 -- [00:24:00] we’re talking about my college. You’re going to have to edit it. JJ: We can move back and forth. MJ: Okay, so my dad wanted me to go to the University of Virginia. I got a nice letter from Joan Bennett Kennedy telling me what a great place it was, how they had tennis, and golf, and all this stuff. And I was just totally turned off my it. On my 12 �application I put down what books had you read, I put Native Son by Richard Wright, I put Strive Toward Freedom by Dr. King, in a lot of ways I think I did sabotage my application. I was on the waiting list to go to University of Virginia. I wanted to go to University of Connecticut where my girlfriend Susan [Lumm?] was going to go. My dad didn’t really want -- he wanted me to go away to school, leave Connecticut. I had applied also to University of Arizona and Arizona State, but I applied to the College Placement Service. It was an outfit that takes a single application and sends it to a number of places. Lo and behold I got accepted at many colleges here in the [00:25:00] Midwest. I had never heard of any of them. But on a Saturday morning when the letter came from Lake Forest, my dad said, “Oh, that’s a great place. I used to go to dances up there.” Okay, dad. Having graduated from high school, not sure where I’m going to go to college, got in my 1940 Ford hot rod car with its 1953 Olds engine with another guy named Buzz [Willouer?], and we took off to work in a cannery. My dad had set me up with this job. His dad had worked for Libby, had come out of - my dad was born in St. Joseph, Missouri, had come to Chicago. JJ: Libby, Indiana, right? MJ: Libby Food. My grandpa Roy had gotten my father jobs at various places, so my dad had the same notion that he could get me jobs. He did. He got me a job in Sunnyvale, California, just outside of San Jose, working in a Libby plant in the summer of 1960. [00:26:00] I leave home, I drive across to Lake Forest where I just gotten this acceptance letter, I stopped in late afternoon, I meet the director of admissions, took off, that night we crossed the old bridge going across the 13 �Mississippi River at St. Louis and into Missouri -- or into Iowa -- no, into Missouri. Iowa is another trip. And I headed west. I had a lot of adventure on that trip. That was an eye opener too. The car overheated in Joplin, Missouri. My friend Buzz got left there in the hospital because when it overheated, I was taking the cap off the radiator as he came bopping over to say what’s happening, and it exploded, and he got burned. I then drove on myself. I stopped in Oklahoma City. I had just seen the movie Psycho with my girlfriend in Connecticut, so I thought that was the same road to California that I was on [00:27:00] in that movie. I distinctly remember being in a shower at a motel with my back to the wall with my fists ready if any mother came after me. (laughs) I drove -- I picked up some hitchhikers, people going to join the Marine Corp in San Diego. I went through some towns in Arizona with Native people on reservations. I remember being at a truck stop in California as you come out of the desert, not too far from Mexicali, where there were Blacks, and Latinos, and whites, and it was the morning. I remember driving up the coast. Then I ended up letting another hitchhiker, a migrant worker who was going to pick peaches in Fresno, he wanted to get off -- I was taking the cut off to San Jose. I pulled over, the car apparently stalled, and we had to jump start it. I think we had just jump [00:28:00] started it, he was out of the car, I jumped back in the car, the lights were not on, I got rear ended by people coming home from a wedding on a Sunday night. I was pulled out of a burning car by a truck driver. I remember waking up on the other side of the road. This would be Highway 101. There’s a song back in the time called The Fool was the Terror of Highway 101. I 14 �remember saying, “There’s a guy in that car!” And I started to go run across the street and the truck driver grabbed me and said, “If he’s in there now, he’s dead.” Turns out he was okay and the police had talked to him later. That summer though I worked for just a number of weeks because I wanted to go back and see my girlfriend, which was an issue. My dad was disappointed I didn’t stay longer. But I did work at the Sunnyvale Cannery for a period of time. I have my union card still. I joined the teamsters, the Cannery Workers Union. I worked with a Black kid and a [00:29:00] Mexican kid and we worked with the garbage dump. I had to go into these vats in the giant freezer buildings to clean out the sludge of the antifreeze in these big moon suits kind of gloves keeping us warm. It’s twenty below zero in there. It was an eye opener for me. Because the main thing, the distinct thing I remember was I showed up to work and there were lines of lines of people waiting for jobs, Mexicans, Blacks, white, probably some Filipinos, that was the nucleus of what formed the Farm Workers Union later, so I’m assuming there were Filipinos there too. Maybe, maybe not. But I showed up to work and I had a job. I got to walk right in, I got to fill out my papers, pay my union dues, all that stuff, and all these other people are waiting for a job. That’s a distinct [00:30:00] memory that I have talking about that and saying I really understand privilege and in this case probably white-skinned privilege, which is a term [Nolan Nathan?], who we both knew, he used to -- he’d bring up and it’s probably still really relevant today. So that summer was kind of an eye opener for me. I went back to home. My dad picked me up at the airport, the car had burned up and was in the junk yard. I do have photographs of it. My dad 15 �gave me that kind of look that dads give their kids when they’re disappointed. I got to see my girlfriend Susan and then my parents and I drove out to Lake Forest College where they left me. My first distinct memory at Lake Forest College was someone coming up to me and telling me I’m supposed to wear this beanie. They had the little red and black thing you put on your head. I had been voted the coolest in my high school. There’s a photograph in my high school yearbook of Casey Cutmore and myself shivering [00:31:00] like we’re the coolest. But I thought of myself as a cool dude and I certainly was not going to wear this beanie. Then my dad said to me, he said, “I don’t think things have changed that much in twenty years. You should wear it.” I said, “Maybe thirty years, dad, or forty.” I don’t know how long ago. But Lake Forest was a great place to go. I went there by accident. They were recruiting kids from the east who didn’t get into probably better prep schools or better colleges, but had come out of prep schools, so there were a number of those folks. There were a number of what I would call North Shore screw ups, people from some wealth and money from the North Shore who had gone to eastern schools or other schools, and were living at home for some reason, or had screwed up. Then there were a number of people who were kind of upwardly mobile working class. One example was a beer truck driver’s kid who I knew. [00:32:00] Lake Forest was sort of changing its vibe. They had a number of young teachers out of University of Chicago, older teachers, all kinds of interest-- I’m sure at every school there are really interesting professors. A guy named Dr. [Roose?], Jerry Gerasimo, [Tomasovic?], there just were a lot of people that I think gave me 16 �some direction. Because I wanted to be I thought at that time -JJ: You had conversations or -- MJ: Oh yeah. And there was a lot of opportunity to hang out with your teachers at that small school. I had gone off to college thinking I was going to be a minister. I had grown up in the congregational church. I guess I looked up to a minister named Ted Hoskins and kind of wanted to be a minister. The only hitch was I couldn’t get the Jesus part. I would say, “Why is Jesus --” [00:33:00] This is me in high school, “Why is Jesus anymore the son of God than Dr. King or Ghandi?” And the only answer they would give me is I just know. The other thing I was interested in was social work, helping people. I wanted to help people so I figured social work. JJ: And major, that was the major for you -- MJ: Well I’m still figuring out -- I ended up going into sociology because that’s what I thought was going to be social work. I had a professor named Dr. Roose who really broke my heart when I came back a few years later from Berkeley, and was involved in the movement, and the Anti-War Movement, and maybe he was being a devil’s advocate, but he was challenging me around the War in Vietnam. But before that, he really gave me a lot of direction. He basically said, “So you want to help people.” He said, “All right, that’s great, but who’s going to concern themselves with the structural forces that shape peoples’ lives? The social, the economic, the political conditions, the environment in which people are reared that leave them to end up [00:34:00] one way or another. Or at least influence it.” So that was how I ended up wanted to be a sociologist or a minister. I ended up 17 �in sociology at Lake Forest. Over the course of a few years I definitely think I’m going to become a sociology professor. I liked the participant/observer in sociology where you go into a situation and kind of are one with the people. I certainly read about sociologists studying poor communities in Chicago and other places. I did a lot of anthropology. I did end up getting a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship. I went to Berkeley. That’s another segment we can get to. But I also did still entertain this minister notion. I believe I was offered a Danforth’s Fellowship [00:35:00] to go to divinity school. It was designed for people who were open to being a minister but weren’t planning on it. I think there was the Peabody Divinity School at Harvard, I think I was thinking about going there. But when I got into Berkeley, I thought that would be the hippest of all of sociology, and I ended up going to Berkeley. Now in this time one of the things I haven’t addressed yet was taking a motorcycle trip to Mexico. As I had mentioned earlier I was into hot rod cars. I also liked motorcycles. I had driven all over eastern Connecticut at age ten on Saturday or Sunday mornings with Vic [Birchy?], who would have been as the third on the back of a Harley. He’d have one woman in the morning and then he’d have another date in the afternoon. He had warned me not to mention the morning to the afternoon. So I was being introduced to the conniving [00:36:00] sneaky ways of men. Which I try not to do too much of. But at Lake Forest I bought a motorcycle up at Sunset Cycle Sales in -- what’s that little religious town up to the north here? JJ: Zion. MJ: Zion, Illinois. It was yellow. It was a 1956 Thunderbird. It kind of had the license 18 �plate on the front wheel, had a kind of a windshield on it. I had wanted to, as I say, help people, and one of the things that -- I did apply to the Vista and the Peace Corp, that kind of thing, but they weren’t really happening yet. I remember also looking at American Friends Service Committee actions that were going to happen or activities in Mexico. Anyway, I ended up [00:37:00] applying to Mexico City College, which is now Universidad de las Américas. I think it’s in Puebla. But it was kind of a school for hippies and gringos up on the Carretera México Toluca outside of Mexico City. I rode my bike down there. I drove from here to Peoria where my girlfriend Lucia lived and then the next day I drove to Little Rock, Arkansas. The next day I drove to Victoria, Texas. The next day I drove through Brownsville-Matamoros to Ciudad Victoria. And then the next morning I ended up -- by the afternoon I ended up in Mexico City. Obviously for a young kid once you cross the border it’s just complete contrast. Everyone trying to sell you Chiclets, kids with their hands out, beggars, [00:38:00] people, you know, it’s just a border scene. You can probably find that in a lot of borders on both sides in many ways. But Mexico really opened my eyes up. The Cuban Revolution had just happened, so while I was certainly a supporter of President Kennedy at the time, I also dug the Cuban Revolution. While I was there, Kennedy showed up with Alliance for Progress, where they let all the Latin American countries except Cuba in. It turns out Lopez Mateos, the President of Mexico, and their policy was they cleared the streets of the leftists, there was a big welcome for Kennedy. I took two photographs of that that I have, as well as the scene, more of those, and lots of pictures in Mexico which I have put together 19 �over the years in an exhibit called Mexico ‘62. That was fifty years ago this summer. [00:39:00] Actually on this date, the 14th, back in 1962 I think I had been in San Miguel de Allende, and I wrote some notes about it. I have a lot of writing. I have these beautiful photographs. Tonight at a gallery called Phantom Gallery over at Berteau and Damen is an opening of some of my photos, a selection from that show, along with other peoples’ stuff. So that just happens to be happening tonight. That kind of covers the Lake Forest years. One of the other really important things I guess I should mention is we would go to -- we would go down to Chicago to check things out. We’d go to the University of Chicago. I remember seeing the great socialist Norman Thomas at the University of Chicago. I remember the book The Other America by [00:40:00] Michael Harrington, who I got to meet later and hang out with a little bit at a party at Berkeley. But that book had a big impact on me. I saw him speak at the University of Chicago too. I remember dropping people off. I couldn’t go because I was in a play, they needed a big guy to play the executioner in Anouilh’s The Lark, and I was a football player at Lake Forest. I was six-two, I was in better shape than now. I didn’t get to go to Washington to the first big peace march, but I did drop people off down there who were from Lake Forest who were going. So obviously at Lake Forest we had a lot of things starting to happen. One of the things that really popped for me is I had wanted to join the Marine Corp and I had applied -- I had grown up wanting to be a Marine. You know, we played Marine crawling on our stomachs and all that. There was a guy named Buzz [Bailey?] I think his name was, worked at the [00:41:00] Sport Mart. 20 �It was a local independent in the old days called the Sport Mart. He had come back from the war, and Iwo Jima, and these kind of images, and I just wanted to be a Marine. At Lake Forest I joined the Platoon Leader Corp, which meant I would spend summers at Quantico training to be a Marine, and then I would be an officer in the Marines when I got out. Fortunately, I think, in the course of those probably around 1962 or so, 1963, maybe 1962, a group of demonstrators called the Moscow to San Francisco Peace March who were a lot -- I think there were a lot of Brits -- came through. They had just been up to the Great Lakes Naval Training Center, which is just north of Lake Forest. They came to campus and they talked about -- that’s the first time I saw the peace symbol. You know the -- and they talked about war [00:42:00] and they talked about peace. And that was it. I flipped. I was not going to be a Marine anymore. I didn’t go through with it. That was -- from then on I was consciously part of the movement. I was reading about the Civil Rights Movement. I was SNCC, Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee showed up in Chicago to do a benefit or to raise money with the Freedom Singers. I remember we invited them to Lake Forest College. We had them perform at the college and I was the guy who got to drive them back down to Hyde Park. So I met James Foreman there, Willy Peacock. I remember people asking for money to get back to Mississippi and the performance gives them twenty-five bucks a piece. One of them says -Bernard Lafayette or Willy Peacock, somebody says, “We can’t get there on that.” He says, “You have to.” And I’m not sure who the family was that was having it there, some socialist that I know I have the same somewhere. 21 �[00:43:00] But that was big influence on me. I remember when Goodman, Chaney, and Schwerner were killed. I followed the SNCC people all along. It was only a couple of years later till I would start meeting a lot of these people coming out of Mississippi and working in other projects in the north. I don’t think I have any more great stories at the tip of my -JJ: What about -- where does SDS come in? MJ: The first time I heard of SDS was at Lake Forest College because we had taken over the school newspaper called the Stentor. The Stentor were always a rahrah college paper and we started putting challenging the sororities and the fraternities. There was a service called the College Press Service. College Press Service came out of [00:44:00] the National Student Association, which later we learned was implicated in working with the CIA and bringing foreign students over here. But we did get their weekly releases. I remember reading about a conference in Hazard, Kentucky of unemployed miners, SNCC workers, Northern Student Movement people, which was another group that Danny Schechter the News Dissector, who does a lot of media stuff in New York, he was the leader of that as I recall, and also Students for Democratic Society. You had these people meeting together talking about students, and Civil Rights, and unemployed white workers, you know, miners, and it captured my attention. I go off to Berkeley summer of 1964. As I say, I worked in Uptown that summer, finished up, got in my -- I had a 1957 Ford convertible. I got it from a guy at Lake Forest [00:45:00] named Richard Simon. And I drove that car across the eastern sector back to Connecticut and then I headed back west to Berkeley. I showed 22 �up at the University of California Berkeley and when I went to register and get all squared away, there was a police car sitting in the middle of the campus surrounded by students. The guy in the car was a guy named Jack Weinberg, who was a long-time activist, and I think he may still work with Green Peace, and lives over on the shore somewhere of Lake Michigan in Indiana. I haven’t see Jack in a while. I think he probably was in -- I don’t know if that’s true he was in the International Socialists. That was one of the first things at Berkeley, all of the sudden there were a million tables. There were the SNCC people, there were the DuBois Society, [00:46:00] there were SDS. Not so much SDS right away. But there were all these political groups out there talking to you in Sproul Hall in the plaza. And I showed up and there was already this police car was surrounded. And what happened was the university was trying to say you could not raise money on campus for off-campus activities. I had believed in the Civil Rights Movement, I believed in SNCC. SNCC captured my heart. Bob Moses or Bob Paris, you know, who was really -- did a lot of the key voter registration, leadership stuff. These were my heroes. So what do you mean you can’t raise money to support off-campus activities? From the first moment I got to Berkeley it was going on. I’m living out in a little town called Canyon with it’s little hippie town a few miles out of Berkeley. [00:47:00] A guy name Skip [Richeimer?], who was -- I had known. He had a motorcycle, he took a lot of photographs, he was a graduate student at the University of Chicago, and I had met him through some people at Lake Forest. And I had gotten into the motorcycle stuff, Danny Lyon, the famed photographer who did the book The Bikeriders and a lot of Civil Rights 23 �stuff was one of those guys. Skip was a contact I had at Berkeley, so when I got out there, I stayed with him and his then wife out in Canyon. Soon after I met Davey Wellman, who was the president of the Graduate Sociology Club, whose father was a commissar in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, was the head of the Communist Party in Michigan. Davey had over the next course of time shared a lot of information about having a -- his mother was from Canada, which he was from the States, being followed around by the FBI. [00:48:00] I was learning a lot about the left pretty quickly. I moved in with Davey at 5600 Telegraph in Berkeley, in Oakland, there was a bar downstairs next door. I remember meeting Lou Rawls there one night. Around the corner I saw Little Junior Parker play. It’s not there anymore, but we had our crib there, and while I was starting graduate work in sociology this police car was still there surrounded by these students. We ended up having the Free Speech Movement. Every day there would be a rally on campus and there would be a speaker. Whether it was Willie Brown, who was a state rep. JJ: You were there when it began? MJ: I was there when it began. I remember -- you asked about first hearing about SDS. Besides reading about it in the College Press Service, I remember someone saying -- sitting around in this demonstration scene, someone saying, “Oh there’s the SDS.” [00:49:00] And I found on the ground a little pamphlet in the course of that first period of time at Berkeley. The pamphlet had an older Black gentleman, not old, was a lot younger than I am now, with a box with apples. He was selling apples. The pamphlet said, “Build the interracial 24 �movement of the poor.” I had always had this kind of -- from college at Lake Forest I had written a paper where I envisioned a world where you would be wearing a Dutch shoes, a kimono, a yarmulke, eating Chinese food while listening to the John Lee Hooker sing the blues. I was always into this kind of rainbow coalition notion. SDS talked about building a movement in poor communities in both Black and white [00:50:00] and I assumed Latino, although that wasn’t -- there was a Puerto Rican community in New York, there was one in Chicago, Toledo, obviously there were some Puerto Ricans who had been taken to Hawaii, but the Latino thing was not like it is today where the Mexicans have come everywhere, and the Puerto Ricans have expanded, and you’ve got a lot of other countries too. This is my dog Che. (laughter) JJ: Che? Che’s (inaudible). So what you’re saying, it sounds like it was they were there, it was just that they weren’t speaking out or? MJ: I don’t think there were as many Mexicans. You had a small Mexican community in Chicago, or not that small, 18th Street, and you also had down by the Bush, who actually were silver miners that were brought from Colorado to work in the steel mills. Or after silver closed up, or however it worked. [00:51:00] That’s where -- I remember reading this. You certainly had Mexicans. But you go anywhere in this country today and there are Mexican restaurants, there are Mexican kids in school, there are Mexican lawn people. You didn’t have that in the 1950s and 1960s. You had it in a few places, I’m sure California, Arizona, but it wasn’t widespread. And this was before the Brown Berets, before Caesar Chavez, that kind of thing. However, correcting myself. When I first drove to 25 �Berkeley in 1964, I stopped in Delano -- is that where -JJ: Delano, yeah. MJ: Delano, Delano. Delano is a Roosevelt. Delano. We knew about the farm workers. Obviously we did know about them then because I stopped there and I had a meeting with Caesar Chavez. I had my Lake Forest College football jacket, which I remember leaving as a donation. I’d love to have it back. I got one later from a guy [00:52:00] who was selling it on the street near here and it was a little small on me. So the farm worker stuff was already starting to happen and I was aware of it actually. I did meet Chavez again. Later, as you know, during the Rainbow Coalition, we all did a lot of work around the Great Boycott, etcetera. But Chavez showed up at the Heartland Café one time. He told me he was interested in jazz. I have, you’ll notice here I have, I don’t know if anyone wants to pan on it, but I have a lot of jazz and a lot of other music. But this was all in my office. I took him in the back and I showed him my jazz collection. There are records here from the 1950s on. (laughs) He said, “Would you make me some tapes of some of these?” I said, “Sure.” He made a pile literally three feet high of my records that he wanted me to convert to tapes for him. Whether or not I would have done that, who knows. [00:53:00] They have technology that does that these days. But unfortunately he passed away. I don’t think I have any pictures of him at the Heartland, but he was there. We were talking about SDS and we were talking about first getting involved with SDS. I heard about SDS. I found the pamphlet that said, “Build the interracial movement of the poor.” I was already trying to figure out how you would bring Black, white, Latino, Asian, 26 �American Indian together. I really had this notion, this melting pot notion, of America. This Rainbow Coalition notion of America. I wrote to SDS and said, “I would like to build the interracial movement of the poor. How do I get involved?” I got a letter back I think from Paul Booth, who has been an activist for a long time with AFSCME Union, and he wrote back, “Well, you have to build it.” [00:54:00] I remember a guy named Mike Davis showing up and Mike Davis has written a lot of interesting books. And he was an SDS traveler. He was the guy that signed my card, my SDS card, and we joined up. My interest in studying sociology was beginning to wane. We had the Free Speech Movement happening, we had the Vietnam Day Committee happening, we had massive marches into Oakland, and I wanted to start a project. So a number of us who were in the Sociology Department who were forming this little SDS network, we ended up moving into West Oakland. I think it was the wrong time for mostly whites. There was one African American guy who had been involved in SNCC a little bit. [00:55:00] I think his name was John Thomas, I’m not sure. I somewhere have a photograph of him. We moved into a place at Seventh and Henry Street in West Oakland, not too far from the Southern Pacific Yards. I remember a band of people from the Peter Maurin House, which is the Catholic Worker Anarchists, and they were mostly Black, and mostly drunk, and they were coming around, and wanted to know what the action was, and what was happening. I remember walking around with an older Black gentleman who would try and shield me from the young kids and the younger tough people. “Oh, you don’t want to talk to those people.” He saw these white kids coming in to try 27 �to help. We worked in an issue in Peralta Village, which I think was public housing, about them tearing down fences or putting up fences, I’m not quite sure what it was. But it was not really the time to be [00:56:00] necessarily working in a Black neighborhood when you were mostly white. We did go to the Newark Poor Peoples Conference, which was all of the SDS projects. So the Oakland people, we drove across country. We drove across with a guy named Doy Gorton, who had worked with SNCC a little bit, a white kid out of Mississippi who is now married to Jane Adams, who was an SDS national officer at one time. They were living in Carbondale. He was a young kind of SNCC photographer, a connected guy. We all drove to Newark for the Poor Peoples’ Conference. I think the JOIN people were probably there, there were some other projects. I met a woman on the way there who was here at JOIN, we stopped at JOIN, named Casey Hayden. Now Casey Hayden was married to Tom Hayden. She was one of the first white woman working in the South and one of the white people who were moved out of SNCC at the end when Stokely came on with Black Power. [00:57:00] I met Casey in Uptown and we hitchhiked to Cleveland and we stayed at the Cleveland Project for a few days. Then we hitchhiked to Newark. So I drove as far as Chicago with Doy Gorton and some people, after that we hitchhiked. After the conference, she and I and a sociology student named Nigel Young from England and his wife Antonia, had a drive away car that we drove -- we were driving back to Berkeley. We did go through Idaho, and we saw a lot of the country, and took some pictures. Casey was really in a place where she was kind of mourning leaving SNCC. She wrote a lot of poetry 28 �[00:58:00] along with Mary Varela about that time. That’s what was occupying her time. I was a graduate student and I also had this Oakland project and we were going to move back into Oakland. Myself and Barry Kalish, who had worked in Newark, and I think a woman named Robinson, a Black woman who had worked in Newark, they were a couple, and myself, and Vivian Rothstein. She had a different name then. She’s been active in LA for years. We moved back to another place in West Oakland. But it just wasn’t happening because what was going on even that summer was the Anti-War Movement and stopping the troop trains. So you had a situation where those of us working in West Oakland were always going to these demonstrations with lots of other people from the Bay Area trying to stop the troop trains. [00:59:00] I remember these trains coming through very slowly as they cleared us off the tracks. Later some guys lost their legs, years later, trying to stop troop trains going to Iraq or -- this was Vietnam. So there’s been a lot of people trying to stop troop trains. I remember these shaved head white kids in the train just kind of laughing but with this fearful look as we were slapping these signs against the window and saying, “No, Vietnam! Get out of Vietnam! Bring the troops home!” Whatever we were yelling. But clearly the move was to the Anti-War Movement. And then the antiuniversity oppression movement, schools as factories movement. There weren’t a lot of people at the time, the Civil Rights Movement was going on, but moving into poor neighborhoods. I went to a SNCC benefit at the Filmore in San Francisco. It was a Bill Graham kind of [01:00:00] production. Richard Pryor was there, the Grateful Dead were there, the Jefferson Starship were there, 29 �Airplane were there, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Richard Pryor the comedian, the great Black comedian, and Stokely Carmichael. I remember talking to Stokely and I said, “Stokely, I’m going to leave graduate school. I’m going to go get involved in one of this SDS project, not Oakland, that’s ended. I’m either going to go to Newark and work with Tom Hayden or I’m going to go Uptown and work with JOIN Community Union, Rennie Davis,” and people who were here then. Very clearly he says, “Work with whit e people.” He says, “We’ve got a lot going on in the Black community, we need more happening in the white community.” And that was my decision to go back to Uptown where I had [01:01:00] worked with this anthropologist in the summer of 1964, it’s now the spring of 1966, and I decided to do this. I was in the middle of writing a paper at Berkeley. As I say, I was already trying to figure out before I got involved with the interracial movement of the poor, I was always trying to figure out how you brought people together. I was studying conflict theory and try to figure out how you would overcome peoples’ negatives, bring them together, find the positive things. I was writing a paper on organizing the poor and I was comparing three attempts. I was comparing the government efforts with the war on poverty, Alinsky’s work with the Woodlawn Organization, [01:02:00] and the SDS projects. Of course the SDS projects came out the best in my writing. I basically completed enough work, all I had was a couple incompletes I think, to have gotten a Masters, but the decision of the department was that in order for me if I wanted to continue to get a PhD at Berkeley, I would 30 �have to write another paper about something other than poverty. I was not up for that. In the spring of -- April of 1966 I think I turned in this paper on organizing the poor and I drove back in that 1957 Ford convertible back to Chicago with a guy named Burt Steck, who was already working in JOIN, to work in Uptown. And I showed up on a summer -- I had a few adventures [01:03:00] traveling across country, but basically end up in Uptown. Well, the only real adventure I’d like to share is we stopped in Des Moines. There was a guy named Fred Stover at the United States Farmers Association. Stover had been the -- whatever you call -- the Secretary of Agriculture under Roosevelt. He had come out as opposing the Korean War, so that probably ended his career. But he had this kind of radical farmers organization. We had set up to meet him and talk. Carl Davidson of SDS, he’s an active dude to this day, thank you, Carl. He I think had made the initial contact with him. I ended up waiting for his office to open, and we were sleeping in the car, and the police rousted us, and they [01:04:00] -- we had kind of longer hair and they wanted to know if we had dope or marijuana. I said no way. It was -- I always get along with cops pretty much. Not always, but I have with a lot of them. We had a little chat and then Stover took us out to eat. We talked about farming, and agriculture, and the Anti-War Movement. Then I drove on to Chicago where the JOIN people were active up on Argyle in front of Price Right TV, some brothers named Price, southern guys. The protest was all about Mrs. Hinton, who was an Indian from India. She had had her TV repaired there and she said she was ripped off. We were demonstrating that she should get her money back or some kind of justice. These guys were very hostile. I 31 �remember they came out -- I was a welcome sight on a picket line anywhere. I was a big guy, had worked [01:05:00] out, I’d played football, and thought of myself as someone -- I’ve certainly always been aware that plenty of people I get into situations with that could probably wipe me up, but you also don’t show a lot of fear, and you do talk and reason, and then -- so anyhow, I ended up engaged in these guys and later they became involved in JOIN Community Union, and you win them over. You always try to win the enemy over, win the opposition, or overcome what we call false consciousness. Marx called it that first where people act in the interests that’s opposed to their real interest. Which is why you have workers going for the Republicans. That was the beginning of my life in Uptown. JJ: So now joining -- MJ: Can I get -- can I get you to get me another hit of this coffee? JJ: A small -- (break in recording) MJ: Okay, we’re talking about JOIN. I was sharing with you the life and times of JOIN Community Union. [01:06:00] JOIN was one of the projects of SDS, Students for a Democratic Society, and it was before SDS really became the big major group that it was around the Anti-War Movement. Before that it was about poverty. And this was fifty years, I believe, since the Port Huron Statement, so there’s a lot of talk about the Port Huron Statement, which was written by the early SDS people, Tom Hayden and some others. That’s going on around the country right now. SDS was very much concerned with poverty at that time. They initiated the projects to build the interracial movement of the poor. As I was saying a little bit 32 �earlier, I got involved. I was attracted to [01:07:00] the project as a whole. Stokely Carmichael encouraged me to go work with poor whites and I did that, I went to Uptown. JOIN had originally been a joint effort of both the Students for a Democratic Society and the packing house workers, particularly with Jesse Prosten, who was the head of the packing house workers here in Chicago, to my understanding. The idea was to work around jobs or income now. In other words, we need jobs or we need some money. They tried to organize unemployed people. That’s why the original pamphlet I’d seen is a picture of a Black guy selling apples in front of an unemployment office. What they used to do is the student volunteers here in Chicago, they would go out to Lawrence Avenue over by the unemployment comp office, and they would get names, and talk to people. [01:08:00] They didn’t really see it as a real movement developing, so they ended up taking the contact cards, and they determined that most of them, or the majority, or the largest number, came out of Uptown, which was 60640. They decided to move into Uptown with a concept of a community union. So instead of jobs or income now it became JOIN Community Union. Join the community union, just like a labor union works in the plant, or the factory, or wherever it is to secure workers’ rights and better conditions, a community union would do that in community. You would organize people around issues of welfare, housing, police, food, you name it. So when I showed up it was now JOIN Community Union. [01:09:00] And we actually over the course of 1966 to -JJ: It’s union organizing at the community level. 33 �MJ: Yeah, tried to build this kind of one big union notion. On every issue we’re going to have some action on it. What JOINT actually did was have an office -- they had a couple offices. One up on Argyle, that’s -- and then one on Sheridan Road, 4431 North Sheridan, on the east side of the street. What happened, when I showed up there all these welfare people would be coming in. Welfare was a real issue. JOIN had a welfare union that included Black, white, Native American, Latinos, it was a whole lot of different people. Mainly southern white, but the leadership were these two Black women, Big Debbie and Little Debbie, Debbie [Coleman?] and Debbie [Thurman?], both who I think have passed away. [01:10:00] We had demonstrations at the welfare office. You can’t treat people with disrespect, people have rights. These student activists were actually working with the clients, so to speak, to help make sure they got their just do. Then other than that we had developed rent strikes. We took on some buildings on Kenmore, various other places. I spent time, I remember, going into basements and turning on people’s electricity and gas that had been turned off. I learned that skill early. Then we found that the majority of the people around who were involved were not so much the men but the women and the young guys. Not the young girls. Little girlfriend action. It was mainly young guys. So what we ended up doing was starting a thing called -- the young guys [01:11:00] put together the Good Fellows and there was a Good Fellows Hall on Wilson Avenue. This was across from where Reverend Morey had had an outreach center where initially people -- we met people. And the Good Fellows were a part of JOIN but were kind of independent and they had a march on the police. 34 �There were a lot of repercussions from that. The police came back and were busting a lot of people, but it was over harassment of kids, people in the neighborhood. A number of these people who were involved in the Good Fellows and in JOIN, young guys, became the nucleus of what were the Young Patriots, which comes along a little bit later, as well as Rising Up Angry. These things overlapped a lot. We’ll get to that history in a minute. But JOIN had developed a food buying co-op, we had the rent strikes, we had the [01:12:00] marches and the demonstrations at the welfare office, we had talked about police brutality, and we put out a newspaper. I’ve always been involved and started newspapers, but this one was called The Firing Line. It started as a newsletter. We recruited a local welfare mother who turns out had had a little bit of political indoctrination, Peggy Terry. Peggy Terry has been written up and featured in a number of Studs Terkel’s books, she was on a PBS thing about people coming north in the 1940s around the war time. She was out of Oklahoma; she says she was a racist. But she ended up linking up with a guy named Gil Terry, who was in some political sect later on, and they were in Birmingham, so she was down there in Birmingham during the [01:13:00] bus boycott and that kind of stuff, and she got turned around. She was living in Chicago, she had some kids. Her older son, who has passed away, guy had been in trouble. He became a real leader with the Young Patriots early on. That’s Doug Youngblood. There’s another kid who I think is in prison still, but about to get out. There’s a daughter who did really well and has been active over the years. Peggy and I became good friends and she became the editor of The Firing Line and we turned it into a 35 �newspaper. We’d have little stories about like there’s one [Fawn?] Madden who was related to Junebug Boykin who was a name that comes up around JOIN and the Patriots, even Rising Up Angry. Fawn, I remember interviewing Fawn about life in Hazard, Kentucky and coming up to Chicago and what it was like. So we had a lot going on. [01:14:00] The police raided JOIN. They busted my sister and Pat Sturgis, who had showed up not too -- he had gone to Lake Forest with me and he was coming to help out. Then my sister came and left college and was going to work and do a community theater, which she did. We had the JOIN Community Theater, which put on plays at our meetings, put on plays in empty lots over let’s turn this lot into the Hank Williams Memorial Playground. The plays were really kind of evil landlord, you know, and virtuous tenants. They were great. But she had just shown up -JJ: What was the raid for? She had just shown up. MJ: The raid is the police are getting pissed off at us. She had just come to Chicago. Or Patrick, one of them had. There were two in the office and they got busted. If you look in a book called JOIN or Uptown, called Uptown by [01:15:00] Nancy Hollander or Nancy Gitlin and Todd Gitlin. It’s not so much about JOIN, but it’s about life of southern white migrants in Chicago. In that book is a picture -- I believe that’s where that picture is -- of the office wrecked by the police. There’s also a couple pictures of me at a welfare demonstration at Hilliard’s office. Hilliard was the head guy of welfare then. Later on every one got off of that case because they planted dope. It was really blatant. But it was an issue we had to deal with. Out of that came a group called Citizens -- or no, Citizens Alert. 36 �Today on my radio show I had John -JJ: Conroy. MJ: John Conroy. Today I had John Conroy on my radio show and I know that he’s the guy that broke the John Burge [01:16:00] story and the police torture over 22 years -- he followed it. But one of the groups that was active around that whole issue was Citizens Alert. Citizens Alert is not unlike what the Black Panthers did right around that time, but we didn’t know about, where they followed police around. We followed the police around in Uptown. They didn’t like that a whole lot. So that was going on back then. There was a lot of really interesting activity going on in Uptown. In 1968 the focus shifted from poverty to the war. I myself, I would say I was a little backward. I didn’t want the Democratic Convention to come to town and the demonstrations around it. I thought that would interfere with what I considered to be the very long slow arduous process of becoming one with the people, winning people’s trust, winning them over time, so that they could be about social change. That was [01:17:00] the thought. You had to spend a lot of time with people. However, once the Democratic Convention was coming to town it was pretty clear that young people were getting into this and it was happening. But Rennie Davis, who was the de facto leader, one of them, of the JOIN Community Union, went over to Bratislava to meet with the Vietnamese and with the National Liberation Front. This was all going on. The war was starting to happen big time. Rennie is gone and a number of other people decide to leave. The young guys in the neighborhood, influenced by a really treacherous dude named Tom Mosher, who had been -- he is the son of a 37 �teamster enforcer, he had gone to Stanford, he had worked Al Lowenstein in Mississippi around SNCC stuff, and he [01:18:00] was hanging around Reverend Morey’s haul in Uptown, and with the young guys. He became a little bit involved with JOIN. He went to Cuba with the SDS people and then wrote about it for the Reader’s Digest. He was involved in all kinds of stuff at Stanford. I think he was involved in the murder of Mark Comfort and other people in early organizing prePanthers out there on the West Coast. There was an article recently in a French magazine by Steve Weissman from SDS, which goes through the details on this guy you wouldn’t believe. Later on he works for (inaudible), so tell you where he’s at. But Mosher is -- I think he’s fanning the flames of division between the students organizers and the young guys in Uptown. Because at the SDS convention in Bloomington, Indiana with Peggy Terry as their front person, and Youngblood, and Dave Puckett, and Junebug, and Bobby Lee -- not Bobby Lee. [01:19:00] Bobby McGinnis, etcetera, Bobby Joe they called him. They declared their independence. JJ: Hy Thurman, was he involved? MJ: He was around too. His older brother had been involved more, Melvin Thurman, I think. Anyhow, they declared their independence from SDS. You can find this in the New Left notes if you really want to dig through the history. Then they kicked out all of the remaining students. JOIN kicked out all of the remaining students except for me. I’m still in their good graces. (laughs) And there had been a guy who showed up at that time whose nickname was Preacherman. What is his real name? 38 �JJ: William -- MJ: Fesperman. JJ: Fesperman, yeah. MJ: Now William Fesperman [01:20:00] and his wife -- JJ: Hold on a second. (break in recording) MJ: All right. I was sharing about the young guys in Uptown, I think under the influence of Tom Mosher, they kick out all of the JOIN people, all of the students, except for me, and at the same time Preacherman shows up. I only vaguely remember this guy being around. He was a divinity student. He was at McCormick Theological Seminary. He had a beret and they thought of this Young Patriots. The Young Patriots, as you know, in Mike Gray’s American Revolution 2 there’s a lot of footage of Bobby Lee meeting with these young kids in Uptown, these young white kids. Well, some of them were not southern whites like Jimmy Cartier, who was a football player from Lake Forest out of Waukegan with me, [01:21:00] who was one of the early Rising Up Angry people, he’s in that movie. Bobby Lee in the movie is talking about how we’ve got to work together and all of that. There’s these young kids who become the Young Patriot. Fesperman, along with Doug Youngblood, Hy Thurman, Junebug, some other people, they ended up having an office, they ended up taking the Firing Line, which was the JOIN paper, and it really was very hard for me to take. They put out a thing that said, “White power”. They certainly meant it in the sense that okay, Fred used to talk about red power to red people, brown power to brown people, black power to black people, white power to white people, you know, 39 �brown power to brown people, and he would do that rap, and that was we have to kind of -- it’s hillbilly nationalist. There’s a new book out called [01:22:00] Hillbilly Nationalists: Urban Race Rebels and Black Power. There was the -- and I actually flirted with that too. Uptown was like hillbilly migrant’s Harlem. One of the things that distinguished us from other groups that worked with the Panthers, other mainly white groups, is that we were not about just being a support for the Panthers, we were about fighting for the rights, the integrity, the justice for oppressed white people or exploited white people. That was clearly a different -made us different than I think some of the groups like the National Committee to Combat Fascism, which came out of the Panthers and led to whatever Slim’s groups were. They were mainly support groups. We certainly played that role, but we were also about white people got to get organized too around their own self interests. I think the Young Patriots tried to [01:23:00] do that a little bit. So there was a big splash. The Panthers, particularly when Preacherman went to Oakland to some conference and gave a speech. You had the Young Patriots with confederate flags on their backs, that kind of stuff, showing up and talking about getting along with the Black Panther Party. But there was a split after that. I don’t have a lot of the details. I know that there were some internal issues with some of the people of the local Young Patriots and the police, some not too hip stuff. It kind of left some people disenchanted with each other and there was kind of a split. The Young Patriots did go to New York, had something going, and there was a Young Patriots thing up in Washington state, Oregon, or something. And they had an office for a while over on Racine because the 40 �landlord was Irv Birnbaum who had been a landlord and a supporter or lawyer for JOIN. [01:24:00] I kind of split places then. I had this notion, I had this vision really, of -- I drew a picture. It was a picture of a flower and it said Wildwood Flower, which was a famous country tune by the Carter Family. I said who knows about Wildwood Flower? Not a lot of college students, but millions and millions of Americans living out there. Now it’s not a political song but to me it was just like there are a lot of white people that were -- I thought of people listening to country music as poor, that kind of thing. Not that it has the mainstream aspects today. I had made the decision to work with white people. I guess I flirted with some kind of nationalism. It wasn’t nationalism in the sense of us versus them, it was like you can love yourself and love the whole. And that was always my -- in fact, I’m going to say it right now, the way I put [01:25:00] things to students, I say the best hope for white people is at some time in the world they will be viewed as an international minority that works for the good of the whole. You can say that about the United States. Hopefully the United States gets viewed in the world community down the line as a country made up of people who work for the good of the whole and not for the good of just one race, or one nationality, or one class. I had this idea of we needed to build a new organization of basically white working class youth initially to ally with the Panthers, to ally with the Young Lords. These are the groups that are influencing us at the time, and were in our environment so to speak. We held a conference in Fairborn, Ohio in 1968. Hamish Sinclair was there, who had worked in Hazard, Kentucky, [01:26:00] and has been active on the West Coast with 41 �prisoners I think since then. Some other people. Basically the conference was what are we going to do next, JOIN is kind of over, and where are we going to go. We held it in Fairborn, Ohio on a farm, but we went to Yellow Springs, Ohio, where Antioch College was, to see a movie that night. I will confess we were a little smoked up, we’d been drinking, we basically were out of control. We went into the movie theater without paying. This is the rowdier -- we all have parts in our life where it’s sort of cool but it’s got its negative aspects. (laughs) I remember this kind of Andy Frain usher guy, security guy, who we just totally ignored. I remember being drunk up in the [01:27:00] photo booth. I’m not sure this can go on air. (laughs) In the projection booth. And the movie was Wild in the Streets. Wild in the Streets is made by the same people who made the FBI series, who made the anti-Mao movie called The Chairman, who made a movie about Malcolm X that was critical, you know, hostile to Malcolm X, and I think they may have done I Live Three Lives, the FBI thing on TV. But they -- Wild in the Streets the premise was these little white kids who were into rock and roll and stuff were challenging the older people, and they took it over, and everybody who was over thirty was written off. Then the little kids come along and wipe them out. But in the movie there was a song that goes, (singing) “There’s a new song rising up angry in the sky.” And that’s where I got the name. So I had been influenced by the Young Lords, this is crucial, [01:28:00] that they started putting out a paper. Whether that was here or New York, but I think it was the New York people, and a guy that says, “To liberate you got to educate. Educate to liberate.” That came from here. It came from right here in Chicago. So I was 42 �very much influenced by the Young Lords here in Chicago and they were talking about you’ve got to educate to liberate. So Rising Up Angry was my notion of a newspaper that would do that. I didn’t just get it from the Young Lords, I had read Lenin. Lenin talked about the role of a newspaper in a pre-party situation. You’ve got to educate people. That’s why now in this decade, I just turned 70, well seven months ago, I’ve put out a newspaper called The Heartland Journal over the years, and whether it’s called that or something else I’m going to do another online as well as printed and video, a lot of kind of journalism stuff. So that’s just a little advance warning. [01:29:00] We started a newspaper called Rising Up Angry. It was all things cool. What’s going on? The Black Panthers is cool, Young Lords is happening, we like the movie Bullet with Steve McQueen because the cops are chasing him. We had the stuff happening in Berkeley where the People’s Park was going on. I liked hot rod cars, so drag racing, all that stuff. All of that is in the first issue of Rising Up Angry. What we had been doing was since I had left Uptown, and I don’t know what’s going with the Patriots much and all that, but they’re active now because they aren’t active by 1969 when we actually started the paper, they’re done. I was delivering groceries up here in Rogers Park with Jimmy Cartier, and Patrick Sturgis, and [01:30:00] people who had been involved in my life. Patrick goes back to a little bit of JOIN. JJ: What about Diversey and the bookstore? MJ: Diversey and --? JJ: In the -- it was Diversey or Fullerton, you had a bookstore. MJ: That’s in Rising Up Angry. We aren’t there yet. 43 �JJ: Okay. You’re in Rogers Park. MJ: I’m living in Uptown, but I’m delivering groceries up here, and we’re getting to know these young kids on the corner, young greaser kids, who are -- now they’re firemen, now they’re train engineers, conductors. But they were working class youth in the neighborhood. Everybody wore -- the style of clothes then was baggy work pants, t-shirts or Ban-Lon shirts or Italian knits, black leather jackets, your hair was kind of short but growing longer, greased back, A1 stay press pants [01:31:00] or those baggy points, and pointy toe shoes, and black leather jackets. And that was the greaser style. There was a Black style like that too, the Gousters. And I’m sure the Puerto Rican -- everybody wore that style. And everyone’s listening to the same music. There was still Black on white, Latino, all that shit, but everything was starting -- the groundwork was being laid for the Rainbow Coalition. What I used to do is I’d take young kids and we had other contacts too. I remember meeting some people from the South Side, Billy Bonner and other people who went to Central [Y?] High school. A guy named John Starr, who still eats at the Heartland, he’s an actor and a teacher. He’s in his eighties. I think he’s in his eighties now. He was teaching at Central Y and we went to talk to them. I would go talk to students, people on the corners, we said, “Look, Black and white, Latinos, are all fighting each other, we’ve got to get along. The man is sticking to it to us, all of us.” [01:32:00] You know, the classic rap. The working class is oppressed, we have to overcome our false consciousness, we have to work together in our interests, and there’s a lot of singularities between us. You’ve got to go beyond the color of the skin. 44 �JJ: And the reaction is what? MJ: There’s some people say, “Oh, fuck the niggers.” Or, you know, “Spics this.” Some people go, “Yeah, I hear ya, man, right on!” So we would take these young kids to other events. If you had a demonstration or a march going on, this was before we became officially an organization, we would lay the groundwork for the paper. We went to the Panther office. We were kind of just hipping people to the cross-racial, cross-cultural fertilization that makes this country wonderful and probably makes the world wonderful. On July 28, 1969 we came out with the first issue of [01:33:00] Rising Up Angry, which I described a moment ago. That was really the way we reached out to a lot of people. We would jump out of the car, we’d drive around neighborhoods, three or four of us, and we’d pull up to Kosciuszko Park, we’d go down to the Gas for Less at Armitage -- at Sedgwick and Lincoln over there. That’s where the Mohawks, the Hudson’s, the North Parks come, commonly known as the [CORE?], who used to go to the same school with guys who became parts of the Young Lords. JJ: We used to fight them (inaudible). MJ: You used to fight when you were kids. JJ: With a gang, yeah. MJ: Yeah. And we would hang out with them. My sister in law Kimmy was going out with those guys. We’d drink a little ripple, we’d smoke a little smoke, we’d talk about revolution. When the Weathermen did their Wild in the Streets action, what was it called? Days of Rage. We took a bunch of CORE guys to that. But it wasn’t just [01:34:00] here, it was South Side, it was everywhere. We would go 45 �places. We would pass out the paper or we’d sell the paper. I spent hundreds of hours, maybe more. I would be at the corner of Lincoln and Belmont. I would be at Milwaukee near Kedzie and Diversey and I would be on the corner say, “Okay, it’s time to take a change from the brain. It’s time to get back in the peoples’ camp. It’s time we move it from the lower level to the higher, from the shallower to the deeper, from the one-sided to the many, from the abstract to the concrete. All power to the people, brothers and sisters. All power to the people. Rising up angry. Get your Rising Up Angry. Twenty-five cents, Rising Up Angry, you need this information.” So I would be -- you know, that’s what I did. I was the king of selling the papers on the corner. And we had quotas. Some people did work in the legal program. They didn’t have to sell as many papers. I was the head of outreach. I would be the guy who would -- [01:35:00] we would organize meetings at the old Wobbly Hall or other places where we would recruit as many kids as we could from around the city, come and watch us -- watch the Battle of Algiers, which is a great movie about the Algerian revolution, and secret cells, and militaristic stuff. We would show them that movie. There was an operation, outfit, called Newsreel who were filmmakers out of New York and San Francisco and Chicago and they would make short movies about all kinds of issues. Jimi Hendrix, it starts out come to San Francisco with flowers in your hair, and the next thing you know there’s riot scenes fighting the police. And were a little left wing adventurous, a little militaristic. All of us, the Young Lords, the Black Panthers, Rising Up Angry, everyone was buying guns in those days. You got your gun card. Clark Kissinger, who he was [01:36:00] a moderate kind of SDS 46 �guy who later is now in the RCP, Revolutionary Communist Party, and pushing Mao to this day. He opened a gun store. I remember going to Bell’s Gun Shop on Manheim Road in Franklin Park and the Lords would be there, the Panthers would be there, the cops would be there, Rising Up Angry would be there. It was like hairy times. We all had High Standard Riot pumps, just like Huey Newton in the photo with Bobby Seale. We had Browning 9mm. I was so grateful when my guns were stolen by some Native American guys. I’ve got to say, I didn’t ever like guns a lot. I’ve been trained in the use of guns at my Y camp and people who were shooting skeet down in this gravel pit, but I just -- the guns was not my favorite thing. But I did have some guns. Some guys I know [01:37:00] they stole my guns and they were going to Wounded Knee, maybe they went to Wisconsin, I have no idea where they are, I hope it never comes back on me. (laughs) JJ: Would you say the emotion at that time was? MJ: Arms struggle. I had grown up Adlai Stevenson kind of Democratic Party, Kennedy. I did vote for Johnson. Then we were down on politics later. Later on it was okay to vote for McGovern. I ran the Peggy Terry campaign for Vice President with Eldritch Cleaver in 1968 with the Peace and Freedom Party. We didn’t even talk about that part of the history. We had gotten more and more disillusioned, we had gotten more left wing adventurous, infantile radicalism, I’m not sure what the Lenin term is for that. But we thought we were actually going to take over the country and it was going to be an armed struggle. [01:38:00] I got to say that we were not the only ones that thought that because the year after 47 �the Bears won the Super Bowl, I think it was 1995, I went with my friend Dave Meggyesy, who had played for the Cardinals and was an organizer for the Player’s Union, and is a very close friend to this day. I was in San Francisco; we went to see the Bears. They lost to the 49ers. We ended up at a bar that night. This was 1995. At the bar, while the rest of us are sneaking around doing illicit activities, (laughs) there’s a guy named -- he’s an FBI agent and I’m blocking his name. It will come back to me. I’m so sorry I’m blocking his name. But he was the FBI agent on the Delorean case where the guy that made those Delorean cars was busted on cocaine. This guy has an Irish name. He also was after the Weathermen. So here [01:39:00] we are, I’m with a bunch pro-football -- former pro-football players. And so somehow, we’re all chumming it up with this FBI guy who says to me, he says, “We thought you were going to win. We thought it was coming down.” I went like -- I said, “Well, you know, I guess on a scale of however you measure it, it was perceived as a major movement. We were for real. We engendered these reactions from the forces that be in the government to try and wipe us out.” Which in many ways they did. If you think about COINTEL Program and the Panthers and the murder of all kinds of people by the government and the FBI, including our beloved Fred Hampton in this town in, and Mark Clark, it just -- the movement that you and I, all of us here, [01:40:00] were involved with was serious, it was real, it had ramifications both positively and negatively. JJ: When Reverend Bruce Johnson -- because it was like thirty days before Fred Hampton. Were you around at that time? When Bruce Johnson -- 48 �MJ: When Bruce Johnson was killed? JJ: Yeah. MJ: I remember him getting killed. I remember the march, I think, on Armitage Avenue. We were involved in -- Rising Up Angry was involved, like the Panthers, in free health clinics. I think the Young Lords had one for a while; the Panthers had them, Doc Satchel was the Minister of Health. He had been wounded in the raid on the Hampton apartment. I think probably the most -- the Patriots and the Uptown people had an Uptown people’s health clinic too. But I think the most successful clinic to be honest was the Fritzi Engelstein Free People’s Health Center which I think Slim had been -- Slim Coleman had been involved with. Then the Rising Up Angry people [01:41:00] basically ended up taking it over, running it, and for years we had this Free People’s Health Center at the corner of Wilton and Diversey at the Church of the Holy Covenant. The reverend was Jim something. JJ: Was it Jim Reed? MJ: Jim Reed is the minister there. I remember him. The other minister, Bruce Johnson, over -- that was involved at your church where you had your offices on Armitage. I don’t remember a lot of stuff about that, to be honest with you. But he was assassinated, he was killed. JJ: Like Manuel Ramos, were you involved -- MJ: I remember the march on Manuel Ramos. JJ: What do you remember about that? MJ: I don’t remember much other than he was a figure in your literature. Then we put 49 �him in Rising Up Angry and there were marches. He was an activist with you guys, he had come out of the Young Lords gang, became part of the Young Lords organization. I don’t know much other than that. I’ve got to say that I held you [01:42:00] in high esteem and probably -- I probably wasn’t aware of my own potential early on, but when I met the Fred Hamptons of the world and the ChaCha Jimenez’s of the world, they were guys I looked up to. I think everyone who looks at this kind of thing, you can look to leaders for guidance, advice, and inspiration, but leaders are leaders. A lot of people who follow leaders have a lot of real serious potential themselves. You want to say okay, I’m learning from these guys, I look to them as a leader, I too can be a leader. Back to where I started on that, I was a little shy talking to you. I don’t think it was until I saw you of altered consciousness one time that I realized you were a human guy. JJ: You’re talking about altered -- MJ: You were messed up. (laughs) In the night on Montrose one night. “All right, Cha-Cha!” (laughs) It was like -- we all go [01:43:00] through our periods. Some people probably have seen me out in the world -- well, I’ve been married for a good amount of time now, which probably saved my life in many ways. All of us guys are lucky to hook up with some really fine wives. (laughter) I remember I spent a lot of nights out running around. Which was part of the deal though. Where did Bobby Lee first start talking to people when he was a Panther organizer? I’d see him in Oxford Pub. He was the guy that got sent to work with the white people. We’d be out there drinking and later on there was a period of time when people were snorting and weed and weed from then until today even. 50 �I would be an advocate of not only medical marijuana but recreational use. I think that a lot of drugs can be pretty harmful. But also I think there is a positive side to all of that. I will refer people to the Andrew Wild book The Natural Mind. In that he talks about the -- every culture on the planet uses some [01:44:00] chemical substance to alter consciousness except the Eskimos, because they didn’t have it. They didn’t have fermented this or fermented that or they didn’t have some kind of plant growing. Everybody has used it. In the book he talked about it can help you in many ways. But then he talks about going beyond it. You don’t really need it. You can reach consciousness and awareness at higher levels without the aid of some kind of substance that alters your consciousness. I’m not an anti-drug guy. I tend to be kind of pro the use of recreational drugs. I think it’s better than people getting drunk. But that’s an issue that’s going on today. Back then it was, back now. JJ: And you were organizing greasers who were on the corners. MJ: They were on the corners. They were just -- they were drinkers but then they started [01:45:00] to be smokers. Because what happened was the older brothers started coming back from Vietnam. The older brothers had been in Vietnam and they had gotten along with Black guys and Latino guys. They’d all smoked weed over there. You had all of the sudden the greasers in the neighborhood are growing their hair long and they’re smoking weed. And like I said earlier, they’re listening to the music. Then you’ve got Rising Up Angry, you’ve got the Young Lords, you’ve got the Black Panther Party, you’ve got the American Indian Movement, you’ve got I Wor Kuen, which was an Asian group 51 �for a while. They were pretty serious Maoist types and pretty critical of anyone -I remember I wrote a -JJ: Were they more like in New York? MJ: They were in New York and the West Coast, but they were here in Chinatown too. Yeah. Because I remember I was invited to speak at something, I had written a piece that had been put out in a benefit -- I brought [01:46:00] a band called XIT (Crossing of Indian Tribes) to Chicago to do some shows for Rising Up Angry to raise money. There is footage of all of that, there’s a movie of them. In the program I wrote a thing about the American Indian Movement. And the line is, “To the place where we share one heart.” I always kind of mixed a lot of the little New Age stuff, with Marxist politics, with American populism, whatever I read or am looking at I’m influenced by. So I had this phrase, “Where we work together --” blah, blah, blah, “Where we join together to go to that place where we share one heart.” And I was asked to talk at the I Wor Kuen thing and I basically gave this talk where I used that line and they attacked me. It’s not being hardassed Marxist enough. [01:47:00] So I wasn’t fond on that organization. And then they disappeared. But they were around here for about that much time. I don’t include them in my discussions or talks about the Rainbow Coalition. I do include the Young Lords, and the Panthers, and the Patriots were the original. The Patriots were so short-lived and it kind of merged with the Rising Up Angry. I do mention the American Indian Movement was around too. There was also in the Mexican community there were the Brown Berets. JJ: Because they spread to other cities too. 52 �MJ: The Brown Berets, they were short-lived here. The leader became a kind of conversative -- JJ: The Young Lords were learning from that. We were learning from the Brown Berets. MJ: You had Brown Berets here? JJ: They came before us but you know, we went to the West Coast. MJ: I remember you were with Corky Gonzales. When you and I were at Rainbow Coalition of Elders meeting, I remember we were at the same camp, and Corky Gonzales, who had been an influence. JJ: And the children of Corky Gonzales came to visit us. MJ: I got photos of that. [01:48:00] I’ve got a lot of photos so show you guys. JJ: Okay, so the impact of the Rainbow Coalition, what do you think? MJ: The Rainbow Coalition was just the real deal. It was what we were about. Enjoying -- there had been white people working in the welfare union, working with the Kenwood Oakland Community Organization, which goes till this day. So there were Black people, so you had Blacks and whites. Then once Rising Up Angry comes along, Rising Up Angry is not only influenced by the Panthers and the Young Lords, but we go to the demonstrations, and people start talking about each other. I remember the Panthers being -- I was introduced at a Panther event where someone was referring to having seen this name written on the wall, Rising Up Angry, who are they, what are they? Well it was kids first out of Lincoln Park, Logan Square, because we were in both places in Uptown [01:49:00] coming out of Uptown. We began an organization and we had some 53 �skills at getting press, and we did have a newspaper that put out 20,000 copies of the paper every three weeks. We would sell it all over town. In that we pushed -- we didn’t use the term Rainbow Coalition a lot. I think the Uptown -the Patriot guys did and they made those buttons early on. There’s these handpainted buttons of red, brown, black, yellow, and white, which were kind of the Rainbow Coalition. I don’t remember talking about the Rainbow Coalition until years later when you’re working on the kind of the history of the Young Lords and the Black Panthers, and Ray Santisteban started coming and making his interviews for his movies. Since then it’s become the way we describe those [01:50:00] times. You correct me if I’m wrong, but other than maybe Bobby Lee using the term, I don’t even know if in the movie it’s Rainbow Coalition. JJ: Bobby Lee was working with the Patriots and then when we started working with the Panthers Fred asked us to join the Rainbow Coalition, so that’s how the original group -- then it spread to other cities. MJ: Then Fred’s dead, then the Patriots are gone. JJ: Yeah, but then spread to other cities for a while. It just said we were supporting each other. MJ: Yeah, and so we did that. The way the history is described now, and I did an article which hopefully becomes the basis of a book by the same name, it’s Rising Up Angry and Chicago’s Early Rainbow Coalition. I don’t talk a lot about it, but I do talk about the influence of the Lords, the Panthers, and then Rising Up Angry. The way I came up with that article to become a book was because you, Cha-Cha Jiminez, [01:51:00] were doing something at DePaul where you were 54 �going to have -- they were going to talk about the Black Panthers and the Young Lords, leaving us guys out. So all of the sudden, someone knew I had photographs. Because the photographs they were using in the exhibit were of the Panthers in New York or on Oakland. JJ: We told them. MJ: Okay, good. And the stuff on the Young Lords was stuff in New York, of the Young Lords Party in New York. I remember they all came up here from -what’s that guy’s name? JJ: Masud, Felix Masud. MJ: Yeah, Felix. How do you say his name? JJ: Felix Masud Piloto. MJ: And then Maria? JJ: Maria Isabel Ochoa. MJ: Yeah, and one other woman? JJ: Jackie Lazú. MJ: No, it wasn’t her. JJ: Christina -- MJ: Christina. JJ: -- Rodrigeuz. MJ: Okay, so all of these people, Christina, and Maria, and Felix, [01:52:00] they came up to the Heartland Café and I took them in the back into the Michael James archive section/studio/prairie dancer gallery, whatever we’re going to call it. I did have from the Rising Up Angry files not a lot of pictures I shot myself, 55 �although I’ve shot plenty of pictures, but also during that period I’ve got to confess, while I shot some photos early on in Angry, I was considered -- I’m the organizer, I’m doing stuff and other people take the pictures. But I have the archives and I still have the archives. That’s why the people making the Black Panther movie, who also did the Freedom Rider movie, just came and talked to me because people want to look at the pictures. Lo and behold, you came up -or they came up and they wanted to do this show on the Panthers and the Lords. I showed them the stuff, so it became, okay, [01:53:00] it’s going to be the Black Panthers and the Young Lords and Rising Up Angry. And as you know we had an exhibit at DePaul a few years back of photos -- of not only the Panthers from New York and the Young Lords from New York, but Panthers and Lords from Chicago, and some Rising Up Angry and some Young Patriots. It’s still a great exhibit. There’s this book out, as I said earlier, Hillbilly Nationalists, Urban Race Rebels, and Black Power, and certainly when I get my Rising up Angry book out, I’ve got all these photos, they’re all framed, they’re ready to go, it’s an exhibit, it can go anywhere anytime. It’s getting hot. JJ: Any final thoughts? Any final thoughts? MJ: Let’s think. Yeah, let’s try to stab at some final thoughts. In 1975 things came to a transition. The War in Vietnam [01:54:00] was coming to an end, Rising Up Angry closes, there’s a debate in Rising Up Angry whether we’re going to end the organization. I voted to have a new organization called the Rising of Us All. I still think that’s a good title. I was outvoted. We sold the building on Belmont at Racine, which is where we had Right On Books. Right On Books was a little 56 �bookstore. We actually had -- it was two floors, we had big meetings there, we showed films there, put out the newspaper there, we owned the building. Actually the reception area when you walk in had a steel plate about this thick because we were concerned with -- it was a militaristic time on a lot of fronts. So the building gets sold and I’m -- the vote doesn’t go with us having a new organization [01:55:00] so I started a thing called Freedom Road Delivery. Freedom Road Delivery was a number of things. It was going to be a musical production thing and during the Rising Up Angry time we had done the People’s Dances. That was really a popular thing where you’d have all these little contacts from these little gangs and peer groups on corners, some Latinos from Lawndale down that way and 18th Street, some Black people, we’d have bands, and we’d get together, and we’d dance our asses off, get along. We’d serve food, we’d have poetry, and folk music in another room. We did these at the Midland Hotel. They were pretty far out. After Rising Up Angry closed though, those People’s Dances didn’t happen as much because they didn’t have the base of organizers that were pulling all of these people together. I tried to put on some [01:56:00] concerts and we started to -- what are we going to do now? I was interested in sports, I was interested in music, I was interested in politics. We started what we called Freedom Road Delivery to put on events and to distribute magazines and newspapers. I was also teaching at Columbia College. I was teaching a course called Organizing for Social Change. In the course of that course I started talking about building the mini progressive economy. I had been reading Mao on the base areas in China, I’d been reading about the Nation 57 �of Islam with businesses, I had been reading about the role of small businesses and credit unions in the independent struggle in Kenya, and I just had this idea that we would -- we had to start businesses that would not only provide people with work, but would serve the community [01:57:00] and would give the workers time to go do political work. At the heart of this was a restaurant. So I’m teaching this class, I said, “We’re going to have a restaurant, we’re going to have a daycare center, we’re going to have bicycle repair co-op, automobile repair coop, we’re going to have art galleries, we’re going to have free people’s health clinics, anything the people needed we were going to do. Someone offered to give me money, which they did not do, to open a restaurant. It was either going to be called -- I was doing a lot of running, I was eating healthy food, I was influenced by Frances Moore Lappé, Diet for a Small Planet, how you cannot meet the world’s protein needs on a meat-based diet. You had to do like a Chinese restaurant, a lot of vegetables, and rice, and a little bit of meat. And I started talking about the restaurant. She said she’d offer some -- she offered us money to do it, didn’t give it to us, but that got us going. In August, on August 11 in 1976 Katie Hogan and Stormy Brown, [01:58:00] who was my ex-wife already, along with her mother Jean, started working on the place, and we opened August 11th. We started working on it May 1st. It was the first time we didn’t do any May Day stuff. JJ: You’re talking about the Heartland Café. MJ: We opened the Heartland Café. It was either going to be Sweet Home Chicago or Heartland Café, so it became Sweet Home Chicago’s Heartland Café. We 58 �opened August 11. We had 43 customers. JJ: In Rogers Park. MJ: In Rogers Park. We’ve been here since then. We’re just about to complete our thirty-sixth year on August 11 and I’m very happy to say that Katie Hogan and I, who have been there carrying on for many years, we have taken in a business partner named Tom Rosenfeld. He has an organic farm in Michigan, sells cider under the name of Earth First Cider. He clearly made some dough somewhere else. I think he will keep the integrity of the Heartland, the tradition, and obviously there will be some little bumps in the road, but [01:59:00] Katie and I are still part owners, and we are still working there for another year, and we’re about to engage on our reupping our -- not only keeping our radio show going, but selling the Heartland Journal, finishing some books, holding some events. I kind of envision a big space with art on the walls and you coming to talk, you showing some film, speakers. JJ: Let’s hear the different components of it, because you had the radio show. MJ: Yeah, we have the radio show, I have books in the works, we have certainly a lot of contacts with people who need to share what they’ve got going. JJ: And this came from the bookstore also, it’s kind of like an extension. MJ: Yeah. JJ: Of that time. MJ: Our bookstore in Rising Up Angry, we had a bookstore, general store, at Heartland, and what I do next will be more like education, art, advocating, social justice, etcetera. [02:00:00] I don’t know what this will be called and when it will 59 �happen. JJ: It also kind of comes from the base area of Mao, so I mean -- MJ: Everything the people need. JJ: Everything what? MJ: Everything the people need. Kind of where I was always at. I said if the people want -- the people are -- I believe in something I would called comprehensive consciousness. A lot of people are focused on one thing or another. To me -some people use the term renaissance person, renaissance man, where you’ve got a lot of interests and you do a lot of different things. I think that that’s a -- it’s okay if you’re focused on one or two things in your life, it’s okay if you try and handle a lot of stuff. But I think that for people who are consciously political organizers and activists, you want to not exclude anything out there or any group of people, and you want to include lots of things that will help make a better world, make a better society, make a more comprehensive -- so I use this term [02:01:00] comprehensive consciousness to include not only social justice issues, but art, but music, the food we eat, everything. You know, everything has a place in this -- as Huey Newton used to call it the many layered onion. It had lots of layers. We’re the many something or other something or other. We’re working on the rap on it. I want to help to not only foster interest and learning from the things that you and I, we’ve all experienced and done, but to do it in a way that reinforces the new activism, the new forces of social justice. I used a slogan on our radio show that says, “Do good in the world because the world needs all the good that you do.” “Do good in the world because the world needs 60 �all the good that you do.” And I believe that. I think that we want to encourage people to do good in the world [02:02:00] and I think we want to continue to try and take on people who we consider our adversaries and win them over to make them see the ills of what they’re about or to just clearly know that they’re on the other side. As well as reinforce people who are expanding their own awareness and their own consciousness, they’re just beginning to grasp what the world is all about, what’s already happened, what’s about to happen, what could happen. I like to use the thing we’ve got to know where we’re coming from. We’ve got to really know where we’re at in order to have a really clear vision about where we’re going to go. JJ: In 1975 I ran for alderman in the 46th Ward. MJ: I would have voted for you but I wasn’t voting at that time and I wasn’t living in that ward. JJ: Right, so you also had been working with the alderman in this area. MJ: Joe Moore. David Orr. JJ: (inaudible) the committee for a while? MJ: No, I’m not the committeeman. I’m actually the President of the Democratic Party Organization [02:03:00] in the 49th Ward. It’s elected by the membership but it’s not elected by the populus as a whole. In Chicago you have 50 wards, every ward as an alderman, and every ward has a representative both to the Democratic Party and the Republican Party, which doesn’t really matter in this town. Or the Green Party. Any party that’s running. In this ward we have Joe Moore is our long-time alderman and David Orr is the board committeeman who 61 �is like the rep from the party to the central committee of the Democratic Party. JJ: He’s a progressive -- MJ: He’s kind of progressive, yeah, he’s progressive. Joe Moore’s been one of the most progressive. I think Joe’s having to figure out how he deals with this mayor, Mayor Rahm Emmanuel, who does some really neat things, and does some stuff that makes us crazy. I’ve got to say that when he showed up at the Heartland for an event that was going on, [02:04:00] he talked to a number of students, and Emanuel lauded the Heartland as this historic institution, it’s been so important to the community. He then turns to me at the end and he says, “How was that?” I gave him a five and then I jumped up and hugged him. Where is security? But I also -- there’s many things he’s doing that I do not like. So it’s a mixed bag. But I don’t think it’s an easy job. And back then we would say that’s good, don’t vote, we’re against this, we’re against that, we’re for some altruistic utopian vision. I think you have to be realistic in real life. You’ve got to work with what you’ve got, you’ve got to defend what you have. Even in left theory, whether it’s Mao, whether it’s Lenin, anyone, at times you’ve got to be in the united front where you’re going into the lowest common denominator of inclusiveness [02:05:00] of people who are on your side in order to keep out some more reactionary forces. If you are solidified and you have power -- let’s say Obama was not under such attack from the forces on the right with so much money, then maybe we could be -- I would be more critical of Obama, and I would be pushing him to left more. But right now you’re defending what we got, holding on, so that we have a sea that’s not too polluted to swim in during the next four years after he’s re-elected. 62 �That’s kind of the way I think about it. So I don’t mind being associated with the Democratic Party. I make jokes, say I am the President of the 49th Ward Democratic Party Organization, which was a move to my right. (laughs) And I’ve also -- I’ve got to say I’m good at mixing things, influences together. [02:06:00] I’m not necessarily an original thinker, although I’ve put together stuff that are unique from parts of things and given them my own twist. If I hang around with you, I’m going to take on some of your stuff and filter it and utilize it. Same thing with you. And I think that’s just way it is. JJ: Kind of you as Paul -- MJ: You as Paul Wozniak who came up out of Rising Up Angry and is the videographer, along with his lovely wife, Mary Wozniak. Not the same Mary Wozniak from the old Rising Up Angry but Mary Wozniak who’s married to Paul now. They worked closely with me on the Life in the Heartland Show. They’re in on all the plans of where we’re going next and how that’s going to be. We’ll include you too, Cha-Cha. JJ: Any final thoughts? MJ: I think I’ve said enough. (laughter) END OF VIDEO FILE 63 � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/895f7cee838f871865322b48dee6a11e.mp4 1746257879ebee38fc494a01870e03f2 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Young Lords in Lincoln Park Collection Subject The topic of the resource Young Lords (Organization) Puerto Ricans--United States Civil Rights--United States--History Lincoln Park (Chicago, Ill.) Personal narratives Social justice Community activists--Illinois--Chicago Description An account of the resource Collection of oral history interviews and digitized materials documenting the history of the Young Lords Organization in Lincoln Park, Chicago. Interviews were conducted by Young Lords' founder, José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez, and documents were digitized from Mr. Jiménez' archives. The Young Lords in Lincoln Park collection grows out of the ongoing struggle for fair housing, self-determination, and human rights that was launched by Mr. José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez, founder of the Young Lords Movement. This project is dedicated to documenting the history of the displacement of Puerto Ricans, Mejicanos, other Latinos, and the poor from Lincoln Park, as well as the history of the Young Lords nationwide. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Jiménez, José, 1948- Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/491">Young Lords in Lincoln Park collection (RHC-65)</a> Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-04-25 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Language A language of the resource eng spa Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-65 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 2012-2017 Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Título Spanish language Title entry Michael Gaylord James vídeo entrevista y biografía Sujetos Spanish language Subject terms Young Lords (Organización) Puertorriqueños--Estados Unidos Derechos civiles--Estados Unidos--Historia Lincoln Park (Chicago, Ill.) Narrativas personales Justicia social Activistas comunitarios--Illinois--Chicago Source <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/491">Young Lords in Lincoln Park (RHC-65)</a> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-65_James_Michael Title A name given to the resource Michael Gaylord James video interview and transcript Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource James, Michael Description An account of the resource 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. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Jiménez, José, 1948- Subject The topic of the resource Young Lords (Organization) Puerto Ricans--United States Civil Rights--United States--History Lincoln Park (Chicago, Ill.) Personal narratives Social justice Community activists--Illinois--Chicago Language A language of the resource eng Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2012-07-04 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/911d0ad556cf6140e1bf015c44b0d375.pdf 6e05c579dfb1767be70f4aee018b6c16 PDF Text Text Young Lords In Lincoln Park Interviewee: Erica Huggins Interviewer: Jose Jimenez Location: Grand Valley State University Special Collections Date: 3/13/2013 Runtime: 01:24:45 Biography and Description Oral history of Erica Huggins, interviewed by Jose “Cha-Cha” Jimenez on March 13, 2013 about the Young Lords in Lincoln Park. "The Young Lords in Lincoln Park" collection grows out of decades of work to more fully document the history of Chicago's Puerto Rican community which gave birth to the Young Lords Organization and later, the Young Lords Party. Founded by Mr. José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez, the Young Lords became one of the premier struggles for international human rights. Where thriving church congregations, social and �political clubs, restaurants, groceries, and family residences once flourished, successive waves of urban renewal and gentrification forcibly displaced most of those Puerto Ricans, Mejicanos, other Latinos, working-class and impoverished families, and their children in the 1950s and 1960s. Today these same families and activists also risk losing their history. �Transcript JOSE JIMINEZ: Okay, Ericka, if you could give me your name and where you were born and that? ERICKA HUGGINS: I’m Ericka Huggins. I was born Ericka Cozette Jenkins. I was born in Washington D.C. on January 5, 1948. JJ: (inaudible) Now it’s taping. It wasn’t taping. Okay, so go ahead. EH: I have three children. My oldest is my daughter, who is also the daughter of John Huggins, who was assassinated on January 17, 1969 by the FBI COINTELPRO. My older son is also the son of James Mott, one of the Lumpen, the Black Panther Party’s revolutionary singing group. And my younger son is too young to have been [00:01:00] anywhere near anybody connected with the Black Panther Party, he’s twenty-five, and he is a poet and a teacher, and very much a revolutionary from his heart outward. So, I really dedicate this interview to them. JJ: Thank you, that’s good. Now you mentioned John Huggins. Can you describe -I know he was in Los Angeles; can you describe who he is? EH: Well John Huggins was born in New Haven, Connecticut and we met at -- John and I met at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, about an hour outside of Philly. He had left the Navy and was coming back to college and I was in college [00:02:00] thinking about why I was there. Long story short, we both read about the Black Panther Party for Self Defense, that was its original name, and we decided to leave that college campus and drive across country to become a part of the Huey Newton Defense Committee and to join the Black Panther Party. 1 �And so we did. So at the end of 1968 -- no, at the end of 1967 we joined the Party, and we spent a year working with the Los Angeles chapter of the party. We visited the Oakland headquarters a few times. Our daughter was born on December 27 [00:03:00] and she was three weeks old when he was killed. He was a very compassionate man. And I think I want to say that the Black Panther Party drew lots of compassionate and kind people to it. Of course, though, we were median age nineteen or twenty, so there was a way in which we knew exactly what we were doing, and there was a way in which we didn’t know the consequences of what we were doing. We were just brave and ignorant at the same time. But John taught me a lot about serving people because his courage preceded him wherever he went. He wasn’t just courageous when it came to [00:04:00] standing up to and telling truth to power, he was also courageous in his relationships with people, and cared about people in a really deep way. So that’s who he was. He came from a family of people who worked at Yale. They were not faculty or professors, but they worked at Yale, and they were a part of a long-standing New Haven Black community. JJ: Okay, now, you say he was strong with people and courageous, but what was the conversation? Why all of the sudden you decided to go to the Black Panther Party? EH: Yes. I read Ramparts magazine and saw the picture of Huey Newton strapped to a hospital gurney with a bullet wound in his belly. And I decided that I was going to leave Lincoln University and join the Black Panther Party. And I asked John if he was coming, we were friends, and he said, “Yes.” You’re going to pause it? I 2 �think this is -- (break in recording) So my parents were similar in a way to John Huggins parents, and completely different. By that I mean that my mother was raised on a farm one of the two oldest of eleven children. They were very poor. And she finished [00:06:00] part of high school before she left the farm to come to Washington D.C. to kind of make it. She wanted a different life for herself. She met my father as she was continuing high school to get a GED -- she met my father who was just finished the eighth grade. He refused to complete high school. And she says that she fell in love with him because he was so handsome and she knew that they would make beautiful children. I was like, “Mama, that’s not a good reason to be with anybody,” because my father -- I’ll tell you in a minute more about my father. [00:07:00] My father was born and raised in Washington D.C. in a very -- not wealthy or prominent Black family, but a wellknown Black family in Washington D.C. in Northwest, near Howard University. But all of them worked government jobs. And I was telling you earlier that the Huggins’s worked at Yale all of their career, but it wasn’t at a faculty level or in education, it was serving the faculty and serving the students, both in the Yale Men’s Club, Mr. Huggins worked there, and Mrs. Huggins in the Yale library. The similarity between both our [00:08:00] parents is that both of our parents were very interested in their children having education. And the other similarity is that both sets of parents had very rebellious children. So John and I were drawn to each other because we had a similar outlook on the world. We both really cared about people and we knew that there was something wrong, there were inequities, there was an imbalance. Actually, John left the Navy before his time 3 �was up, and one of the things that was prompting him to leave is that while he was on the ship, the four little girls who were killed in the church in Birmingham, and he was in the Philippines at the time, and felt, “What the hell am I doing here? [00:09:00] I should be at home; there’s a war at home.” So by the time we met at Lincoln University, we were both thinking about freedom for Black people and other people of color in a very strong way. And I think that that’s important to know about John and I because in both instances we could see the history of Black people in the United States was the most horrific and long-standing, that so many groups of people were suffering abuse at the hands of the United States government. So, my parents encouraged me to look out for my people. My mother told me that almost every day. And as a result of that, I went to the March on Washington when I was fifteen [00:10:00] years old. By myself. And it transformed my young life. It was there at the March on Washington that I decided to serve people for the rest of my life. JJ: What did you see? EH: What I saw was thousands and thousands of Black people. I’d never seen that except when people gathered for a concert or a church conference or because something had happened. This was the best gathering of people I’d ever witness and the most diverse. People of all classes, all ages. I would say every kind of person gathered that day. And there were Latinos and Latinas there, but not very many. [00:11:00] This was 1963. There were White students there. I assumed them to be students because they were older than me but not functioning in any leadership capacity in the movement that I could tell. They 4 �seemed to be college students who came together to be there. And there were older White movement people. But it was very Black and White. I remember that distinctly because when I look back on it, where I live in California it’s not Black and White at all. Nothing is Black and White in our world actually. But it was that way then. And I think it needed to be because of the history of enslaved Africans in this country. [00:12:00] So I’m standing there with my fifteen-year-old self, by myself, looking out at the sea of people, and I found this mound of dirt kind of like the mound of dirt out there in the construction area, out of our beautiful window. And I stood on the top of that mound of dirt so that I could see all the people gathered. And I could also see their transportation. People came in pick-up trucks that looked like my grandfather’s truck that he took tobacco to sell. They came in church buses. They came in vans. They came in rickety station wagons and hoopty cars. They came on foot because many people marched to get there from parts of the metropolitan area of D.C. [00:13:00] There were people on bicycles. There were people on motorcycles, groups of people on motorcycles. There were just all kinds of people. And then there were the speakers. JJ: How did you find out about it? EH: It was the talk of the city. I don’t remember watching the news, I don’t remember hearing it on the radio, but I know that it was the talk of the city, and my mother was talking about it. And I don’t remember friends at school talking about it. I was very singular in that way. My peers did not seem interested. I’ve reflected a lot on why I went by myself that day. I’m glad I did because I was meant to 5 �experience this inner commitment that I experienced that day. [00:14:00] My mother talked -- when I asked her about the March on Washington and what it was for, after she explained that it was happening, she told me that Black people were gathering together to put -- to make everyone aware that, as she called us, Negros couldn’t be treated in the awful way that they’d been treated for hundreds of years, and that it had to stop. No more Jim Crow. And I knew what she meant. Although I wasn’t learning much about history in school, I learned a lot from my mother. Not details, not dates, not names, but the flow of history. Because she grew up in a very violently segregated South with the Ku Klux Klan absolutely active. So she was my [00:15:00] go-to about the Negro people. JJ: What do you mean, she saw them, the Ku Klux Klan? EH: Oh yeah. They burned crosses on peoples’ lawns, they shot up peoples’ houses, they were crazy. You know, my mother’s 94 and there are times -- there have been times in her life when she was in her 80s. She has no short-term memory anymore, so she’s absolutely happy, doesn’t remember the horrible things, but she was afraid to look a White person in the eye because of her training. She was so proud that I could hang out with everybody and that I wasn’t afraid of anyone. She taught me not to be afraid and to stand up. But I didn’t realize until I talked to her later in [00:16:00] my life that her let’s say socialization, her social training was such that you whispered around White people. You didn’t have to ask their permission anymore, but there was a subtle way in which she always did. But she really wanted life different for her children and her grandchildren, and I think that life is different. So when I had questions, and I always had lots of 6 �them, “Why did the people on Capitol Hill live with such wealth, and why did the people in South East live in such conditions of poverty? Why are there housing projects? Why is it that people have to sleep in their cars? Why is that the White House is so big and beautiful?” I remember asking her one day, “Can’t some of the people from the housing projects [00:17:00] live in the White House? They’ve got lots of space.” But I didn’t understand how it all worked, and she helped me to understand that no, Ericka, Negros can’t live in the White House. And so, of course, when Barack Obama became president, she was absolutely convinced that 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue would never be the same again. There was nothing in her history or in her present experience that would lead her to believe that an African American man could become President of the United States. She did her best with her limited knowledge to let me know that there was a way that I could help to change things. She said, “You’re smart. You ask a lot of questions. You keep [00:18:00] asking those questions, maybe we’ll get some answers.” And so when I went to her to say, “Okay, I’m going to the March on Washington.” And she said, “No, you’re not.” I said, “Yes, I am. I’m getting right on the bus. I’m going to go. It’s just two buses away.” She said, “No, something could happen to you.” I said, “Something could happen to me anywhere.” I said, “You’re the one who told me I should help the Negro people.” Maybe she said colored people. (laughs) I can’t remember. Both of those terms were annoying to me. She said, “Yes, I asked you help them, but I didn’t ask you to put yourself out there in front. Not you. Not my daughter. Go ask your father.” And I told him I was going, I didn’t ask him, and that was really different 7 �because I had to always ask my father’s [00:19:00] permission for any and everything. I just told him I was going. I had such conviction about it. I know now why I did. It was where I was meant to be on that day in that time in my life. And so against my parents’ wishes -- my father didn’t want me to go either -- I went. I got on the bus, I asked if I could take my brother and sister, who were younger than me, and they said no, and I said, “I’ll be back. I’ll be fine. I know the bus route.” And what I didn’t say is how many police were out there that day. And because of where I grew up, I was used to the police, sort of like, it was occupied territory where I lived in Southeast Washington. So I was used to seeing the police around, but this was a new way of seeing them. I knew that they were there not to protect the people who were gathered, but in case [00:20:00] the people who had gathered were going to do something to harm property, D.C., I don’t know, I couldn’t figure it out. I didn’t have any systemic understanding at that time, although I had some ideas. So I listened to all of the speeches, and there were many of them, and I can’t really remember the speeches. But there is one thing that I do remember and it kind of locked -- it gelled for me the sense that I must serve people. Two of my favorite people, because they were always on TV, and I also knew from my mother that they always spoke up on behalf of Black people and people of color in general, Harry Belafonte, and Lena Horne were there, and they both spoke. I don’t remember except that they were -- [00:21:00] I just loved them. I loved seeing them there. I loved seeing “stars,” as my mother called them, standing up for Black people. That just did something for me. More than all of the movement leaders, these 8 �two stood out to me. And the most poignant moment for me was Lena Horne said some words, I don’t remember what they were, but then she sung the word, “Freedom.” She just sung it. And the word took so long to exit her being and into the air and people became really quiet as it landed on their ears, and of course it entered my heart. Just that word: “Freedom.” And it was right at that moment of the word ringing out like that, that I said, “This is it. This is [00:22:00] what I have to do. I have to fight for freedom.” And little did I know what form it would take and what challenges I would face. JJ: What about your dad? EH: Oh yeah, I said I was going to tell you more. So my father was a Washingtonian. Very handsome, just like my mother said. Very brilliant. But he’d given up on life after World War -- during World War II when he was in the Army he started to drink and came back from the war an alcoholic. He was an abusive alcoholic. So when I say that I had to ask his permission for everything, I really meant it, because I never knew which way was up. [00:23:00] He wasn’t the kind of alcoholic who would drink and then fall asleep. He beat me, he beat my mother, we broke up fights. My sister, my brother, and I broke up fights between the two of them. That’s how it was. We didn’t think it was normal for families to live like that, but we didn’t feel like we had any ability to change it. And that was another thing that prompted me -- there were two prompts that come out of living with my father. One was I don’t want to be like my father. I don’t want to be an alcoholic is what I mean. I wanted to be an artist like him. I wanted to be able to open my mouth and sing like he could. I found out after he died that he was a poet also, 9 �and I’m a poet. [00:24:00] I didn’t want to abuse my children or whoever I loved. And I think I already knew by that time that I loved both -- that I could fall in love with both men and women. That wasn’t something that I could share with my Christian mother and my unpredictable father. But I also knew that I didn’t want to give up on life. That I wanted to -- if I was challenged, I wanted to meet the challenge, face it head-on, and then move through it. So, this is important to know because later, after John was killed -- he never got to meet John. My mother didn’t meet John either, which is sad. There wasn’t time. But after John was killed, [00:25:00] three months later, I was arrested in New Haven, Connecticut for conspiracy charges. A bunch of charges, but conspiracy to commit murder was the charge that stuck. JJ: Can you explain what that was about? EH: I will. But my father never came to visit me in prison. Not because he was mean, he couldn’t face it. He lived in a lot of denial. He just couldn’t face it. So, why was I in prison in New Haven, Connecticut? JJ: And that was your first arrest, that was -- EH: Oh, that was the second -- that was the third time I was arrested. The first-time: arbitrary arrest. And there were other instances where we were routinely -- Party members were routinely [00:26:00] stopped and searched, and that happened lots of times. The second time that I was arrested was the day that John and Alprentice “Bunchy” Carter were killed. The police just picked us up, charged us with malicious mischief, and put us all in jail. And that was because they didn’t want the plan that they’d hatched with the FBI to get exposed because we 10 �already knew. I don’t want to say that we had definite knowledge, but we knew that the FBI was involved, just like we knew that our phones were bugged, we knew that we were followed at night, and we knew that the people following us were not the police. The police followed us and stopped us. JJ: How did you know? I mean -- EH: It’s like sixth sense. However, [00:27:00] we knew that -- at first, I thought these are detectives working with the Los Angeles Police Department. And then Bunchy educated us to -- JJ: You talking about the US Organization? EH: No, I’m not talking about the US Organization, I’m talking about the FBI. I’ll talk about the US Organization in a minute. Long before we had anything much to do with our communications with the US Organization, we realized that the government wanted to kill us. The US Organization couldn’t have wiretapped our phones, they didn’t leave notes on our cars, they didn’t follow us at night, they didn’t shine spotlights on us when we were getting ready to leave the Party office. That was the FBI. And LAPD [00:28:00] was such a wonderful tool for the FBI because they were so backward, ignorant, and overtly racist. I have friends from Texas who said that there were billboards in Los Angeles -- pardon me, in Texas saying, “Join the LAPD.” And the billboards would say all kinds of things. Who paid for this kind of advertisement, I don’t know. At any rate though, by the time John and Bunchy were killed, we knew that the government was set on killing all of us, and we knew that people wearing dashikis and bald heads, which was the [00:29:00] signature of the US Organization member’s, men and women, 11 �that they were not entirely at fault. We knew this. We knew that Black men pulled the trigger on the gun that killed John and Bunchy, but something more was happening. And I think we also had an inkling of it because we knew that one man with a gun didn’t kill Martin Luther King. We knew that one man with a gun didn’t kill Malcolm X, or John Kennedy, or Robert Kennedy. But we didn’t know what we didn’t know about until after John and Bunchy were killed or maybe even almost half a year later was the Counterintelligence Program. We didn’t have a name for it. But Bunchy made it clear to us -- [00:30:00] I will tell you this story. Bunchy was -- have you talked to anybody who ever met Alprentice “Bunchy” Carter? JJ: No, not yet. EH: Well, there’s a lot I could say. We don’t have time, but I could tell you this: That when you met him, that if you had the good fortune of meeting him, you knew immediately that you were in the presence of royalty. That was the distinct feeling I had. And I didn’t know it, but other people had the same sense. He carried himself like a king. He taught himself about African American and African history in prison. He was the head of a gang called the Slauson’s. And from prison, he politicized them. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Because the Young Lords came out of a similar [00:31:00] base. He just got the word out, “Quit killing each other. It’s time for us to uplift our people.” And so when John and I joined the Black Panther Party, Bunchy was still in prison or back in prison for a while, I don’t remember, we didn’t meet him right away. But as soon as we did, he sort of took us under his wing. He wasn’t that much older than John or me. 12 �It’s just that he had a great leadership power. I’m not saying that I didn’t, I’m not saying that John didn’t, but he was charismatic and powerful, and hundreds of young men and women, all over Los Angeles, if Bunchy said it, it was true. If Bunchy said we don’t need to be killing each other, we’re not going to kill each other. They didn’t even understand why. Bunchy said it. And that was a good beginning, wasn’t it? I’m talking like I’m having a [00:32:00] conversation with you, but I’m really not. I’m talking to the camera. So one day Bunchy came to the office that we worked out of, a building called the Black Congress. And the Black Congress was an office building that had small offices down a long hallway. And the US Organization had an office three doors from the Black Panther Party office. They were always there; we were always there. And though we teased one another, there was no animosity. What was the teasing about? They believed that culture would uplift people, we believed that the whole system of capitalism needed to be overthrown. And not just for the benefit of Black people, but all oppressed people. [00:33:00] So there wasn’t any changing the Black Panther Party’s view, there wasn’t any changing the US Organization’s view, so we teased one another. Well one day Bunchy came to the office, and the office had those little sort of cubicle spaces that had a desk and a phone, but it also had a community meeting room, and he called ahead of his arrival and said, “Tell the comrades to meet me in the community room.” And we were like “Uh-oh.” So we got there, Bunchy walked in, and we knew that something was up because he walked in with his coat slung over his shoulders and his house slippers on. In other words, he left immediately because he was always 13 �impeccably dressed, not a hair out of place, his clothes were always put together, and he would not show up [00:34:00] anywhere in slippers. He walked into that meeting room and he had papers in his hand. He often led -- by the way -- he often led our political education classes. It was with Bunchy that I first really -- I didn’t understand African and African American history in college. It was through Bunchy that I came to understand colonization and imperialism and the economy of the slave trade. So he walked in and we were all sitting there waiting for him. He said, “Comrades, see this?” And he held up those papers. And we looked and those of us sitting in the front row, I believe I was sitting with Elaine Brown and Joan Kelly, and what we saw were cartoons drawn supposedly of Ron Karenga, the head of the US Organization. And we all [00:35:00] wanted to laugh! This was not the time to laugh. But we wanted to laugh because the cartoons could not have been drawn by anybody Black. You could tell that they were made up, they were fake. And there were letters in slang trying to replicate Black street dialect, it was hilarious. But we bit our lips, we didn’t laugh, and Bunchy said, “We didn’t draw these cartoons, and we didn’t write these letters to the US Organization. Here’s what I want to say. You may not tease any members of the US Organization about their bald heads, about what African clothes they wear, or their ideology. You will not do anything but say “hello,” “good morning,” “good evening,” and keep going. We are all Black people together. We don’t have any beef [00:36:00] with the US Organization. I am on my way now to apologize for these letters and to let Ron Karenga and his organization know that not only did we not write these letters, that the FBI is 14 �writing them.” We found out later that, of course, in Oakland the Black Panther Party was receiving the same kind of letters from organizations. So there was an interest, the FBI had an interest in marketing both organizations and many others to be like enemies, and in creating conflict, and that’s what they did. I’ll never forget that day because when people say, “Oh, what happened on January [00:37:00] 17th was just a fight between the US Organization and the Black Panther Party, two rival groups.” Or some people say two rival gangs. No, it wasn’t. It was the FBI. And it was later that I found out through an FBI informant who met with me that we were right because he told me what was happening on the UCLA campus and in the local office at the FBI to set up situations that would leave the leadership of the Black Panther Party and, I would imagine, the US Organization, diminished. It’s unfortunate that people had to die and that the setup included people [00:38:00] firing at each other. But it was orchestrated by J. Edgar Hoover’s Counterintelligence Program. JJ: Has there been any information later (inaudible)? EH: Yes. About a year later The Los Angeles Times printed an article saying that there was proof that the US Organization wasn’t entirely to blame, nor was the Black Panther Party for what happened on the UCLA campus. Utilizing the student desire to find a director for the High Potential Program (it was an EOP program), the FBI just orchestrated a conflict, and used operatives [00:39:00] to carry out the conflict. So the LA Times wrote this. I don’t have the article anymore, but I used to keep it. Also this informant who met with me said that the director of the field office there in Los Angeles, near Westwood, kept saying 15 �aloud when he went back to the office that day on January 17th there was chaos. And he said that the director there kept saying over and over again, “We fucked up, we fucked up. Nobody was supposed to die.” Why would I believe an FBI informant? An operative? Because he sought me out, and with great sincerity, and a lot of guilt and sadness, he told me this story. [00:40:00] I try as much as I can to pay attention to human beings when they’re talking to me, and I believed him. I didn’t have any reason not to believe him because it really affirmed a belief I already had, that the US Organization did not do this alone. And I think that Black people are so used to fighting with one another that that’s easier to believe, that so and so pulled the trigger, and then so and so pulled his trigger, and then some people died. But, you know, the person who pulled the trigger, and my husband John Huggins, and Bunchy Carter were all pawns in some bigger game. The sad thing, and the almost idiotic thing about all of this, is that the FBI [00:41:00] and the United States government actually thought that they would kill the movement by killing leaders. That never really happened. It didn’t happen. If that were true, then movements wouldn’t continue to pop up everywhere ever so often. But it certainly didn’t stop the Los Angeles chapter of the Black Panther Party and it definitely did not stop me. JJ: Why -- I know the [US?] Organization was involved with Kwanzaa-- EH: Kwanzaa? JJ: Why did they target the Black Panther Party in Los Angeles? What were they afraid about? What were the Panthers doing that they were afraid? EH: US Organization? 16 �JJ: No, the government. The government. EH: Oh, okay. You know it’s fine if you [00:42:00] wear your cultural outfit and talk about Puerto Rican independence, right? That’s fine. You dress up and dance and sing. They’re not going to come after you. You start talking about creating an equal balance in the imbalance of wealth, that wealth needs to be redistributed, and that people shouldn’t be pushed out, shoved out, otherwise left out in the cold without food, shelter, clothing, healthcare, education? Then the government, at that time the government was really upset with that, and considered us communists -- whatever that meant to them. And [00:43:00] their narrative, their story, was that we were a threat to internal security. We were the greatest threat to internal security. Wait a minute, the Breakfast for Children Program that the Black Panther Party started was a great threat to national security. It’s because we were talking about wealth, and power, and privilege, and we were wise enough -- because of Huey Newton and Bobby Seale -- we were wise enough to know that skin color was utilized as an excuse for making it okay in the American mainstream story. “Look, they’re not intelligent, look, they’re less than human, look, they’re the descendants of slaves, it’s okay, we know what we’re doing here.” And we said “No, it’s not okay. No, [00:44:00] wealth needs to be redistributed.” And we also talked about overthrowing the government. We really didn’t, except in rhetoric, talk about killing anybody, and that was mostly, I’m sorry to say, the men of the Black Panther Party talked like that. But we continually talked about overhauling the whole system. And I remember many, many times when we spoke about changing the conditions 17 �(coughs) that create poverty. So, hope that answers that question. JJ: Were you working with some of the other groups there in Los Angeles? EH: We worked with everybody. We worked with the Socialist Workers Party, the Communist Party, we would have worked with US Organization if they -- they were a little bit sequestered. We worked with the Brown Berets when they began, [00:45:00] the labor unions, student movements. That’s why John and Bunchy were on the UCLA campus. They had both become students and had become a part of the Black Student Union, so to speak, so that they could help the students to feel empowered to have their needs met. This was at a time when Black and Brown students were just being allowed to be on UC campuses with financial aid. We worked with the Women’s Movement, the Gay Liberation Movement, the Vietnam vets, the Anti-War Movement, we worked with the Black Police Officers Association. There wasn’t any organization I can think of we did not work with, [00:46:00] unless we knew that their leadership was infiltrated by the FBI, and that was often the case. You know, organizations where they came to create chaos where there was none. And we didn’t all like each other, we didn’t agree with each other’s ideologies, but we knew that united, “a united front” as we used to say, was better than one organization working in a singular fashion. JJ: What about the case in Connecticut? What was that about? EH: Wow, that case in Connecticut was about a lot. That’s exactly what I’m talking about. There was an FBI informant, [00:47:00] George Sams -- now, the leadership of Black Panther Party didn’t know that he was an FBI informant, nor 18 �did I when I first met him. So, by this time I am twenty years old, I have a three week -- well, almost three months, give or take a few weeks, baby, and I’m a widow. And I was living in a traumatized state. I do remember that. I was sad, and when I wasn’t sad, I was withdrawn, and when I wasn’t withdrawn, I was just making it through the days. John was my best friend. He wasn’t just my husband, he was my best friend, and he’s my baby’s father. And I [00:48:00] kept doing Party work because I knew it would make me feel like I was of use. You know, when John -- when we buried John, I wanted to -- I tried actually, literally, to crawl into his grave. And I remember somebody just sort of pulling me from behind from my jacket and I kind of woke up. I couldn’t bear that he wasn’t around anymore. And so, when I met this FBI informant, George Sams, he came -- it was the first time I’d ever seen him in my life -- he came into the New Haven office of the Black Panther Party, which was, by the way, in the home of a man, Warren Kimbro, it was in his apartment. And the chapter of the Black Panther Party was started because when I went to bury John [00:49:00] and to be with his family, the members of the Yale student community and faculty, as well as members of the New Haven Black community asked me to stay and start a chapter of the Party. And so I contacted the Party’s chief of staff, David Hilliard, and I said, “Should I do this?” And he said, “Yes.” And so I did, with the help of so many people. And again, I’m in this state that’s almost -- it’s an altered state. Breastfeeding widow, right? That’s a doubly altered state. New widow, twenty years old. And in walks this strange -- [00:50:00] he was one of the strangest people I think I’d ever met to that point in my life. He walks into the Party office. 19 �He’s pushing in front of him a young man, who seemed to be maybe a year younger or older than me, I don’t know. I had never met the man before. And he’s pushing him, and I see that he, George Sams, has a gun, and he’s got it focused on the back of this young man. And he says to all of us gathered there - and I don’t remember exactly who was in the room, I distinctly remember that I was there -- he said, “This man’s name is Alex and he’s an FBI informant. And we’re going to hold him because we can’t turn him over to the police, we’re in a state of war.” This is how we talked then. All of that rhetoric. [00:51:00] I can’t say that I believed George Sams right in that moment because with the state that I was in was a certain level of cynicism and bitterness. “Well, if he’s an informant, then maybe we should hold him. Well, then the government just killed John…” Those were the kinds of thoughts I was having. The ones that I can remember. And then he sat Alex down somewhere and all of us kind of just were quiet, waiting to see what was going to happen. And George Sams, from that moment forward, kind of took over the Party office. He bossed Warren Kimbro around, he bossed me around, he treated the young -- there was -- very young women joined the Party and I want to say right here and now [00:52:00] that men in the Party didn’t always treat women in the Party as fully capable, as equal. At that time. And people were afraid of George Sams because he wielded a gun. He didn’t have any reservations about hitting someone in the head with the gun butt. He was sadistic. He enjoyed inflicting pain. How do I know that? I saw it. And that was the environment we were in and so eventually Alex Rackley was held under house arrest. He wasn’t allowed to go. He wasn’t treated like a 20 �human being. And I was there. And one night, George Sams and two other people took [00:53:00] Alex Rackley out for the first time I guess in days. It seemed like years to me. It just seemed like it was so -- such a long period of time. And I felt like I couldn’t tell anybody what was going on. I certainly wasn’t going to ring up the police and say guess what. And I didn’t tell my family, I didn’t tell John’s family. I was living in a state of fear and confusion. And you know what? There isn’t a day that goes by all these decades later that I don’t wish that I had stopped this chain of events that occurred in some way. I look back at it and I say, “Well, what could you have done?” [00:54:00] And I think of lots of things I could have done, but would it have been helpful? Would I have died in the process? Probably. But it wasn’t like a had a fear for my life actually. I didn’t feel that my life was worth that much, the state that I was in. But I held myself responsible for Alex’s death because there must have been something I could do. JJ: Even though George had the gun and all that. EH: And took him out and we know now that he had someone else -- this is the thing about George Sams, he didn’t even do it, he had someone else kill him and dump his body in the swamp. The night after Alex Rackley was taken away from that little house in New Haven, that little apartment, I was having trouble sleeping [00:55:00] so I was up. It was a warm summer night, it was May, mid-May, a very warm night. I’m sitting there holding my baby and just waiting. There was a -- I want to say I had an intuitive feeling and there was an energy in the air like something was about to happen. That’s the best way I can explain it to you. And 21 �Party members slept some of everywhere. When we came together people had little pallets on the floor, people were sleeping on the couch, I was sitting on the couch holding my baby, there were three other moms there with their children, there were people upstairs in the bedroom sleeping. We were going to just wake up, brush our teeth, and do Party work. Right? That’s how it was. The windows were all open. The door is locked, but the windows are open to let in fresh air, and all of a [00:56:00] sudden I hear rapid footsteps coming and I knew without a doubt it was the police. Not the FBI, the police. And I could see them coming up the -- there was a little walkway before you got to the apartment door and I could see them running to come, and they knocked the door in, and they came in with their guns pointed. It felt like there were a thousand of them, but there probably were in reality ten or fifteen, and they woke up -- they ran over the women sleeping on the floor, and startled and awakened them, so we have women screaming, you have babies crying, and I’m sitting there just waiting… It's funny how an incident so long ago can be absolutely gone from memory [00:57:00] and in the same time frame an incident so long ago could be absolutely indelible, every second of it, in your brain, and I can remember that night so distinctly. They began overturning -- there were cannisters in the kitchen because Warren had lived in that apartment with his wife before she left him. And so there were flour cannisters, and sugar cannisters, and it was a real little kitchen. And they were throwing flour and sugar everywhere looking for drugs, they said. They were turning over everything they could. It was chaos. And then within about -it seemed like a really long time, but I know it wasn’t, these two suited men came 22 �in, and I knew they were FBI. And they looked directly at me and they said, “Good [00:58:00] evening, Huggins. Come with us.” And I didn’t move. And they said, “Come upstairs with us.” So one of the women who wasn’t so afraid took my daughter and held her for me and I walked up the -- it was a two-floor apartment and I walked upstairs with these men. And, you know, good guy, bad guy. That was the good cop, bad cop thing. To get -- I think they thought they were going to get some information from me, and they asked me what had happened, and I didn’t respond, and they asked me again, and I didn’t respond, and they asked me again and I didn’t respond. And the bad guy leaned forward to me and he said, “We’re going to see burn in the chair, Huggins!” And I said, “Are you done now?” [00:59:00] And he said, “Yes,” and I went downstairs and got my daughter. I held her and I waited. I was so sad… There was a very kind police officer who came to where I was sitting. And he’s an African American police officer and he said, “Miss Huggins?” And I said, “Yes?” He said, “I just want to say that I’m so sorry for your loss. I knew the Huggins family, New Haven’s not a big Black community, but I knew them. I am so sorry and I’m so sorry for tonight.” [01:00:00] And he indicated without words that he was doing what he was told to do, come in and tear up the office, and ransack, and scare people. We were all taken off to jail. There were fourteen of us. Then Bobby Seale, who was not staying in that apartment at all, but who was in town to speak at Yale, was also arrested. So the next morning I was in prison with four other women, and Bobby Seale, and a few other men were arrested and put in prison. Long story short, the people who stayed on trial were myself and Bobby, the 23 �minor [01:01:00] women, meaning they were under eighteen years old were released, and the two people who were accused of actually firing the gun were tried separately. George Sams’ the state’s witness. JJ: So you never got out on bond or anything like that? EH: No, there was no -- there was no bail for that. It was a capital offense. First we were arrested for kidnapping, murder in the first degree, conspiracy with the intent to commit murder, and binding, meaning tying someone up, restraining them, with the intent to commit a crime. It was an ancient law that had been on the Connecticut law books since the 1800s. They dropped that one immediately. They dropped murder one for Bobby and I. [01:02:00] Because they knew full well we didn’t murder anybody. They said that we conspired to have Alex murdered and that Bobby ordered that he be murdered. Bobby did not do any such thing and neither did I. But the charge that stuck, all the other charges were dropped against us, conspiracy with the intent to commit murder. And once again there was no bail. And not only was there no bail, Bobby was sequestered from the rest of the men in the inmate population, and when I was arrested with four other women, we were sequestered from the main inmate population as well. And then when those women were released, I was by myself. There was a period of time when I was in solitary confinement as well. And then the two men who were accused of killing Alex Rackley, and Warren Kimbro was one of them, Lonnie [01:03:00] McLucas, the other, I don’t remember the name of the prison they were in. It was a men’s prison in Connecticut, but they were not anywhere near Bobby Seale. And so we were fourteen months awaiting trial with motions 24 �from time to time, no bail, and six months on trial. JJ: And what came in the trial, what -- ? EH: What came out was that -- JJ: Fourteen months is a long time to be -- EH: I know. New Haven -- well, New England is a very sort of -- at the time was very rigid. What is the word I’m searching -- I’m searching for a word -- it was a very conservative [01:04:00] culture, New England. And so, this was the first trial of any kind in New Haven like this that wasn’t just a hit and run or an outright murder. This was the Black Panther Party. And Yale got very involved. As a matter of fact you might know that President Kingman Brewster came out on behalf of Bobby and I and got shit for it. He almost got fired because he supported us. People marched on the New Haven green in the thousands to free Bobby, free Ericka. And you know, the whole time I never really felt like I deserved any of that attention because I felt responsible for Alex’s death. I don’t think [01:05:00] Bobby Seale ever felt responsible for Alex’s death. Why should he have? He didn’t do a thing. But I was there in that house and though I didn’t harm him directly, I did not stop it, and I didn’t say to George Sams, “You are the craziest butthole I have ever met in my life, and no, you shouldn’t pour boiling water on this man.” I acquiesced, so therefore I felt I was a part of it. So in the trial all of this was brought up to make me seem like -- not even Bobby -- but I was demonized. Now that I’m talking to you about it I can see something that hadn’t really dawned on me before, that it was easier to demonize, to make the jury believe [01:06:00] that it was so wrong for a woman to be doing anything of 25 �this kind. Actually I took the stand on my behalf because it was important that I do so because if New England and New Haven were very conservative, imagine their views about women in leadership of a revolutionary organization. Which in New Haven, one of the reasons why it took so long to pick the jury, trial was six months, it took three months to pick the jury, and the reason why was there was so much bias. We were called a militant hate group, we were called a gang of thugs, all of this. So here I am this woman who supposedly orchestrated the murder of this young man, so the DA was bent on demonizing me. That was the easiest way to get me [01:07:00] and Bobby because they couldn’t say that Bobby was there. They could say that I was there and I was at fault. And I believed it. I didn’t believe I had killed anybody, but I believed the demonization. So what came out is that this man -JJ: What do you mean that you believed the -- EH: I believed what was being said about me. I believed it. Just like we believe in slavery -- I’m talking about internalized oppression. In slavery we believed that we were after a while, after maybe the first fifty or so years, we believed that we weren’t worthy as human beings. So I began to believe it because it’s what I heard all the time. My lawyers didn’t tell me that. My friends [01:08:00] didn’t tell me that. But there was something in me that believed it. Because I so believed that I should have been able to know better, to not co-sign George Sams. JJ: So did you feel you were going to lose the case? EH: M-mm. [No.] JJ: You never felt -- 26 �EH: I didn’t think about it like that. I thought I was going to spend the rest of my life in prison. JJ: That’s what I mean. EH: But I didn’t feel like we were losing. I wasn’t in that kind of state, lose or win. JJ: You thought you were going to be (inaudible). EH: I felt like they’re going to find a way to keep me here. And so what I did was I taught myself to meditate. That’s how I got through it and began to feel a sense of myself again. Eventually the jury hung when it came time [01:09:00] for a jury deliberation. The judge sent them back, “No, we need a verdict.” They hung again. He declared a mistrial and set us free. And he said when he did it, I wish I had it in writing, he said something like, “The Connecticut taxpayers have paid enough for this trial. There’s no evidence against these defendants, they’re free to go.” And there really wasn’t any evidence. There was a tape admitted. I don’t know if it got heard in the courtroom or was admitted as a transcript, I can’t remember. But it was of George Sams trying to get Alex Rackley to admit that he was [01:10:00] an informant. And my voice is on the tape. So that was why -that was one reason why they thought that there was a case against me and it was also another reason why I believed that I was responsible for this young man’s death. So every day I think of him. Every day I send blessings to his family because I know that I was not then in the state where I could have been helpful to anybody, not even to myself. JJ: Could you mention the Party work? What do you mean -- what was the chapter doing there [01:11:00] at the time? 27 �EH: We started a breakfast program, a clinic, we were helping people with cases of police brutality. It was only a short time that I had been there. I got there in January, right after John’s death. JJ: So you had a breakfast program and a -- EH: And a clinic. JJ: But how many kids were attending at that time? EH: I don’t remember. A lot of them though. And the clinic was named after John Huggins. So it was January to May, so that’s a relatively short time. I guess I -- JJ: What section of town that you were -- ? EH: The Hill area. JJ: It was called the Hill? EH: Yeah, and the Hill is just like any other barrio or ghetto in any other city. JJ: So you were picking barrios or ghettos? EH: Oh yeah, we wanted to go where the people were in most need. That’s where the Black Panther Party always went. [01:12:00] The Party office in Oakland, the first office in Oakland, was in West Oakland, which is really poor. Well the people are living in conditions of poverty. The schools, the health, the housing, the food is substandard. JJ: So you just wanted to give away food or? EH: Well, the breakfast program did give away food, they gave breakfast, and sometimes lunch. But what were also doing is awakening people to their own power. That yes, there’s a breakfast program, yes, there’s a clinic, but you have the power to change your destiny. You don’t have to live in these conditions. 28 �You can speak up; you can ask for more. And New Haven is a very rich immigrant community as well. I didn’t know that until I was there [01:13:00] then. And it’s even more so now but it was like African Americans, immigrant Italians, immigrant Irish, Haitian, Dominican, Puerto Rican, and African. And wherever these groups of people were, there was poverty! But instead of working together they were pitted against each other for whatever little poverty program crumbs fell off the cake plate. And so we tried to help people the same thing we did wherever we were -- the Black Panther Party did the same thing everywhere because the Ten Point Program was about clothing, food, shelter, education, the end to police brutality, justice, peace. Are we out of time? [01:14:00] JJ: I think we were just when we’re getting into the program. (break in recording) EH: (cellphone ringing) There’s another whole room right there that’s back -- you can close the door in the bathroom. I’m just directing her all around your apartment. (laughs) I did come to terms with this feeling of unworthiness. I did recognize through my practice of meditation in prison and since then -- I meditate every day -- that it’s important for us to recognize our mistakes and keep moving. [01:15:00] It’s important to have love for ourselves, not just for “the people.” We’re part of the people! And I was thinking back to that period of time when I meditated in prison and I would do so every day. I would just sit -- I didn’t know what I was doing, nobody taught me. I just read a little book that said if you sit quietly and notice your breath, your mind will become calm. I’m glad I thought that that was possible for me, because that’s what happened. It isn’t that my thoughts stop, and like magic I was immediately in a thought-free state or quiet, 29 �it’s just that the thoughts had less power over me. Those emotions of sadness, [01:16:00] and the feeling of unworthiness, and “I-shoulda-woulda-coulda,” kind of dissipated, and I was able to just be right in the present moment. As a result of my practice of meditation, I started an in-prison organization called Sister Love. It was just a way for women in the prison to connect with one another and support one another rather than waiting on the pimp who was supposed to bail them out or the husband that had beat them or to be so terribly sad because they were separated from their children, just like me. I could only see my daughter for an hour once a week on Saturday. The way Sister Love worked, because it couldn’t be an overt political organization, that’s why it had that sweet-sounding little name, is that the [17:00:00] prison allowed us to do each other’s hair. Well, I’m glad they did. Because what they didn’t know that we knew, it was primarily Black and Puerto Rican women, is that around the doing of hair, a lot of conversation can happen, and a lot of transformative education occurs. So every -- once a week we would get together and we would do each other’s hair and we would end up talking about our communities. And it was quiet, and it was under the -- it was beneath the radar of the guards, the prison guards, and the prison authorities. But we actually started an organization in the prison that one of the things we did was to help women who had been brought in addicted to heroin, we would smuggle things to them so they wouldn’t have to kick cold, which is horrific. It’s just horrific to [01:18:00] kick that kind of habit without any medication and no support, which is what the prison did. We watched women die in there. And so we did that. What I’m saying to you is, and what I would like 30 �anyone who uses this interview to help them in their studies, or in their life, or in their activism, it is important to merge spiritual practice and social justice. One without the other doesn’t work. I’m not talking about religion. I’m talking about some kind of practice that uplifts your spirit because activism will burn you out for sure if you don’t have something that holds you from the inside out. JJ: And a final thing, you did some other programs, too right, the liberation school later? [01:19:00] EH: Oh yeah, my life is a series of… doing! (laughs) The Oakland Community School was by far one of the most outstanding things I’ve ever participated in in my life. And someday I’ll write a book about it. When I first was released from prison and after a month collected my daughter and moved back to Oakland, I became one of the teachers, a writing teacher, and then a creative writing teacher, at the Oakland Community School. It was called the Intercommunal Youth Institute at the time because of Huey’s theory of a boundaryless, community-based world. And it was named after Sam Napier, who was the Party newspaper’s distribution manager, who was killed [01:20:00] once again in one of those set-ups that was based in this effort of the COINTELPRO. I’m not talking about who actually pulled the trigger, I’m talking about what was at the foundation of it. Anyway, so then one of the grandmothers of one of the students said why don’t we have -rather than having this big wonderful house, it’s wonderful, to educate the children, why don’t we have a dedicated school building. She said this to Huey. And he formed the Educational Opportunities Corporation to buy a school building, and we opened in the school year 1973-1974 as the Oakland 31 �Community School. And I became the director because the prior director left the Party. And it was student-centered, community-based, tuition-free, [01:21:00] and really taught children how to think. Not what to think, how to think. There were a hundred -- there were ninety children when we first opened our doors and almost immediately a hundred and fifty, which was our capacity. And we always had children on the waiting list, including unborn children. This is how much the community loved it. And we all loved it because our children were not just surviving, they were thriving. We served three meals a day, we had martial arts, we taught them -- after a while we taught them to meditate. Every day, everybody from age four and a half to twelve would sit in the multipurpose room and just sit quietly. I was the most amazing wonderful thing. We didn’t discipline children by demeaning them, yelling at them, [01:22:00] putting them in a detention room, and making them feel terrible. We taught them Hatha yoga postures that they would have to leave and do. Because in doing the posture they had to focus and maintain balance, and so it brought them back to center so that they could come back to the classroom feeling okay, I’ll all right now, I’m a human being again. And those young people are now in their forties. I interviewed them for my master’s thesis, you might want to read it at some point. And they all say, every single one of them, that the Oakland Community School was the high point of their lives. And they’ve gone every which way in their lives, some of them went to jail -- how would they not? They grew up in our communities -- some of them became doctors, some of them became CEOs of organizations, [01:23:00] some of them became actors or actresses, some of 32 �them became lawyers, one became a museum docent, a number of them became teachers. All of them say the same thing, that “The reason why Oakland Community School worked is because you loved us enough.” We took care of them, we loved them. They were individual human beings. And there was nothing they could do that would make us stop loving them. They could make a mistake, but we would still love them. They could get in a fight, but we would still love them. They could not love themselves and we would still love them. And that made an imprint on their hearts. So it was really wonderful to work on that thesis because of them. Being in the academy wasn’t that fun, but interviewing them was really wonderful. JJ: Final thoughts, and then we’ll stop. [01:24:00] EH: One day I was talking to a young poet and he asked me about love. And for some reason I responded with this, that’s now become a quote attributed to me, “Love is a great expression of power. Use it to transform your world.” JJ: That’s great. Thank you very much. EH: Thank you very much! END OF VIDEO FILE 33 � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/1c1aa03937b2ebbf465a87d5822de9fd.mp4 98026b3d70e1bf17cd325fc7e09eceeb Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Young Lords in Lincoln Park Collection Subject The topic of the resource Young Lords (Organization) Puerto Ricans--United States Civil Rights--United States--History Lincoln Park (Chicago, Ill.) Personal narratives Social justice Community activists--Illinois--Chicago Description An account of the resource Collection of oral history interviews and digitized materials documenting the history of the Young Lords Organization in Lincoln Park, Chicago. Interviews were conducted by Young Lords' founder, José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez, and documents were digitized from Mr. Jiménez' archives. The Young Lords in Lincoln Park collection grows out of the ongoing struggle for fair housing, self-determination, and human rights that was launched by Mr. José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez, founder of the Young Lords Movement. This project is dedicated to documenting the history of the displacement of Puerto Ricans, Mejicanos, other Latinos, and the poor from Lincoln Park, as well as the history of the Young Lords nationwide. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Jiménez, José, 1948- Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/491">Young Lords in Lincoln Park collection (RHC-65)</a> Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-04-25 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Language A language of the resource eng spa Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-65 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 2012-2017 Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Título Spanish language Title entry Erica Huggins vídeo entrevista y biografía Descripción Spanish language Description entry La historia oral de Erica Huggins, entrevistado por Jose 'Cha-Cha' Jimenez el 3/13/2013 acerca de los Young Lords en Lincoln Park. Sujetos Spanish language Subject terms Young Lords (Organización) Puertorriqueños--Estados Unidos Derechos civiles--Estados Unidos--Historia Lincoln Park (Chicago, Ill.) Mexicano-Americanos--Relatos personales Justicia social Activistas comunitarios--Illinois--Chicago Mexico-Americanos--Illinois--Chicago--Condiciones sociales Relaciones raciales Conflicto social Identitad cultural Partido Pantera Negra. Illinois Capí­tulo Source <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/491">Young Lords in Lincoln Park (RHC-65)</a> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-65_Huggins_Erica Title A name given to the resource Erica Huggins video interview and transcript Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Huggins, Erica Description An account of the resource Oral history of Erica Huggins, interviewed by Jose 'Cha-Cha' Jimenez, on 3/13/2013 about the Young Lords in Lincoln Park. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Jimenez, Jose, 1948- Subject The topic of the resource Young Lords (Organization) Puerto Ricans--United States Civil Rights--United States--History Lincoln Park (Chicago, Ill.) Mexican Americans--Personal narratives Social justice Community activists--Illinois--Chicago Mexican Americans--Illinois--Chicago--Social conditions Race relations Social conflict Cultural identity Black Panther Party. Illinois Chapter Language A language of the resource eng Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2013-03-13 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/6f9963969fed44d074cddb5153f62759.pdf a280183ab9d48ff495031d4dcc5c3e2a PDF Text Text Young Lords In Lincoln Park Interviewee: Rosa Meria Hernández Interviewers: José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez Location: Grand Valley State University Special Collections Date: 3/28/2012 Biography and Description Rosa M. Hernández grew up on Orchard Street, just down from Waller High School. Like many of the Puerto Rican women of that era, she grew up sheltered, kept inside while boys were free to stay out late and roam the streets. So Ms. Hernández was glad to be the neighborhood store errand girl because it was a way to be free and visit with her friends and neighbors, and to see boys. There were other reasons why Ms. Hernández’s family tried to keep her inside in the evenings. Right 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. Even they would not bring their women, though occasionally they would drive around with them in their soupedup cars and stop briefly to chat. Several of these groups also had auxiliary women’s groups, like the Imperial Queens and Young Lordettes, who would be seen during the day. Ms. Hernández knew everyone of importance in the neighborhood from youth to adults, including Eugenia Rodríguez who attended the same churches as Ms. Hernández and her parents. 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 mis-1960s for the Puerto Rican community. �Transcript JOSE JIMENEZ: Okay, and whenever you want to start -- ROSA HERNANDEZ: Okay. JJ: -- just start with your name and, you know, like that. RH: Okay. JJ: Okay? RH: All right. My name is Rosa Meria Hernández. The age of 12, I went by the name [as Rosalind?]. I didn’t want to combine my Spanish name, so I put Rosalind, like Rosalind Russell. But I was born here in Chicago on June 12, 1957, Cook County Hospital. My mother was 20 years old. Her name was [Margarita González?]. She came from San Lorenzo, Puerto Rico. She came here to Chicago at the age of 15, married, and my father -- JJ: You know what part of San Lorenzo, or --? RH: Huh? JJ: You know what part of San Lorenzo? RH: Barriada Roosevelt. JJ: Roosevelt, okay. RH: Yeah, from [Lo Arzuaga, Rosales?]. [00:01:00] My father’s from Caguas. His name is [Ramón?] Hernández. He was 24 years old. JJ: You know what part of Caguas? The country or the city? RH: The pueblo that my father is from was, I think, Santiago. JJ: San Salvador or --? 1 �RH: San Salvador. Yes. San Salvador. I know it goes like San. You know, San Salvador. JJ: (inaudible). RH: Where he’s from there. My grandfather is from there also, was from there also, from San Salvador. (Spanish) [00:01:39] [Damian Garai Perez?], (Spanish) [00:01:45]. JJ: (inaudible) RH: (Spanish) [00:02:00] [Felicita Hernández Trinidad?] or Trinidad Hernández. I was born in Chicago in 1957. JJ: Okay, but when did your parents come here? RH: My father came here in 1952. JJ: ’52. RH: Yes. My father came here at the age of 17. JJ: And what did he come for? I mean, what (overlapping dialogue; inaudible)? RH: He came here to work. He started working washing dishes at the Palmer House Hotel, and he had family here, a lot of cousins, male cousins with their families that lived here, so -- JJ: Do you remember some of them? RH: -- we lived in the Lincoln Park area. JJ: Do you remember some of the male cousins [here?]? RH: Yes. [Manolo?] -- last name -- I [00:03:00] forgot the last name. Maloco, [Juancho?] -- JJ: Actually, Maloco was Jiménez. 2 �RH: Jiménez, (Spanish) [00:03:08] a lot of old-timers. You know, there was a lot of old-timers in the neighborhood -- JJ: (overlapping dialogue; inaudible). RH: -- especially in the Lincoln Park area. JJ: Maloco was part of this group they had in [Aguas Buenas?], Hacha Vieja. RH: La Hacha Vieja. JJ: Do you remember them? (inaudible)? RH: Yes. Yes. I remember them because my father had a jacket, a leather jacket, and I used to put it on, and he used to tell me to go hang it back up, and I used to laugh at -- you know, make fun of my dad because I said he was in a motorcycle gang. Some movie that I watched. But we lived in the Lincoln Park area. The first time I remember was that I lived on Orchard and Armitage with a family that my mom [00:04:00] had baptized one of the sons that was near my age. I was three, and I was left with the family, and something happened. My mom left me, and she never came back. So, I remember the first place where my -- even though I remember before, Clark and Barry, memories of my mother, of where we lived because I was little. I have a good memory, but -- was on Armitage and Orchard, 653 -- JJ: You said Clark and Barry, ’cause that’s [up north?]. RH: Yes, Clark and Barry that -- my mom lived there because Clark and Barry -- my mom and my dad, when they first got together, we lived on Belden, or -- when they first got together, when I was born, they lived on Cleveland and Armitage and Lincoln, by the [Old President Hotel?]. Remember [00:05:00] the Old 3 �President Hotel in the Lincoln Park area that had the medicine cabinet to the other apartment? Did you remember that? JJ: Oh, I didn’t know that. (inaudible). RH: Yeah. You shared the medicine cabinets together in the President Hotel. There were a lot of families -- JJ: So, you could see right through to the other apartment? RH: You could see in the bathroom. You shared the same medicine cabinet back in the Old President Hotel, and that was on Lincoln and Cleveland -- Sedgwick. Lincoln and Sedgwick. Yes. And, at that time -- JJ: So, you guys lived in that hotel, or --? RH: -- was when Vitin bought El Coco Loco. Vitin Santiago bought the Coco Loco, and my uncle at that time had the old 1800 Club on Halsted and Willow, which is [Rafa?]. Rafa [Rivera?]. JJ: Rafa Rivera. RH: Rafael Rivera (Spanish) [00:05:55] Turin Acevedo, you know, with the long [00:06:00] hair. That’s how Turin Acevedo [want, like, copied?] that from my uncle, [Padrino?] (Spanish) [00:06:06]. Rafael Rivera. JJ: Rivera. Were they related to [Mario Rivera?], the [store?]? RH: No, no. No Mario Rivera. [El Campo?]? JJ: Yeah. RH: No, no, no. JJ: [They weren’t?]? RH: They were not related, no. I knew Mario. 4 �JJ: So, this was a different Rivera. RH: Yeah, [Del Campo?]. JJ: (Spanish) [00:06:23] So, his club was called what? RH: The 1800 Club. JJ: The 1800 Club. RH: He was partners with someone else. I can’t recall -- (Spanish) [00:06:33] because (Spanish) [00:06:43] -- they had a lot of problems, and it was real domestic. She was a beautiful woman, and she [stood?] with us for a while, and he left, I think to Cleveland. Something [00:07:00] happened where he left to Cleveland. And so, my father went into business with my uncle and the 1800 Club, only for a few months. This was on 1800 North Halsted and Willow Street. JJ: On Halsted and Willow? (inaudible) ’cause the Campo was right there too. They had (overlapping dialogue; inaudible). RH: Yes, right across the street. JJ: So, you had a couple businesses [there?]. RH: Right. So, my father was located -- he lived on Lincoln and Larrabee, right in front of Grant Hospital. JJ: Ramón Garai. RH: Ramón Garai Hernández, my father, and the husband of the -- I called her my aunt, my mom’s comadre, found my father living at that address. At that time, my father had remarried, and I had a six-month-old sister and a six-year-old stepbrother. JJ: Okay. And we’re talking about [00:08:00] what year? 5 �RH: In 1964. JJ: ’64, okay. RH: ’63, ’64. I’ve tried to go back with my mom about things, but my mom did not really like to talk about anything, you know. My dad -- JJ: Why is that? I mean, why --? RH: Because my mom -- at the time, on 1900 North Bissell and Wisconsin, my father mutilated my mother’s face in that bar. That’s one of the dark -- JJ: In the 1800 Club? RH: No, no, no. This was on Bissell and Wisconsin. JJ: It was a different bar? (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) RH: When I was two. I think I was two. They don’t like talking about stuff like that, you know. JJ: So, mutilated meaning that he cut her -- RH: He mutilated my mother in the face. He found her in the bar. I was in the [00:09:00] car, and she was looking for my dad, so I can vouch for that. They don’t talk about stuff like that, but I remember. I was two. From that, my mother totally disappeared from Chicago, and, at two and a half to three years old, I was left in the care of my mother’s godsister, comadre, and, after a while -- I’d say maybe, like, 10 months -- my father was located ’cause my father was nowhere to be found either. I guess, in that time, in that area, things happened. He went - I don’t know where. I think he went to Philadelphia, New Jersey, but, you know, my mom totally just abandoned me. So, I went to live with my dad, and his wife, and my sister, my baby sister, and my stepbrother, [00:10:00] and I grew up on 6 �Lincoln and Larrabee. I think it was 2758 or 2157 -- I can’t remember the address -- on North Lincoln, and it had the porches. It was in an [angle?], and there was the old Stand-JJ: So, this is more like around Belmont or [somewhere?] -- RH: No, no, no. This was on Lincoln, Webster -- JJ: Webster. RH: -- and Larrabee. JJ: And Larrabee. RH: And there was the old Standard Oil station right there. Remember? And the building that we lived in used to be a hall. I don’t know if it was a theater or a banquet, but I remember that they had front gates with chains on it. The building was real big, and it had four floors, and it was combined with -- you know. We used to have a burglar in the neighborhood called [El Gato?], and he used to go and rob in this [00:11:00] building, so -- and we all had our [heads up with?] El Gato. And, from our porch, we could see Larrabee Street and the store there on Larrabee, and Lincoln, and -- JJ: Was it a Spanish store or no, just a --? RH: It was a candy -- they had a lot of candy. JJ: A candy store. RH: I’m a candy fanatic. Me and my brother. My brother and I, we were candy -- we grew up right there. We went to Lincoln School. We went to Lincoln School, and we lived right in front of Grant Hospital. JJ: Where was Lincoln School? Where was Lincoln School? 7 �RH: Lincoln School’s on Geneva, [Terrence?], and Grant Street. Right there. [Belden?] and [Eugenie?]. JJ: By Grant Hospital, right there. RH: Grant Hospital, yes. Grant Hospital is right in front. And that area there -- I used to [00:12:00] go walk to the Carnival grocery store, and, for a couple of years, my grandfather would pick up his granddaughters -- my aunt’s granddaughters -- and there used to be a [Bernardine Ballet School?], and, on Saturdays, my grandfather would pick us up, and take us to do ballet, and read a paper in front while we practiced ballet, my grandfather. Those are one of my most cherished memories. JJ: So, he was really into ballet, or he just [liked it?]? RH: We were into ballet. JJ: I mean, he was into it too, then. RH: My grandfather wanted to keep us busy because we were so many girls in the family. My aunt had, like, seven girls, and my other aunt had, like -- at that time, at my age, she had little boys. The boys started coming -- JJ: Were they all living in the same area? RH: And we all lived in the same area. My aunt -- JJ: Was that a common thing, [00:13:00] for families to --? RH: Yes, we all lived around together, and -- JJ: In Lincoln Park. So, it was common to have -- RH: It was common. JJ: -- [different families?]. 8 �RH: We had family -- we all moved together. We all lived together, and we went trickor-treating together. We went to school together. When we moved from Lincoln, we moved back to that building that I lived in, where my mother left me, which is Orchard and Armitage. I lived 653 West Armitage, and we moved to 657. And then, my aunt, [Heidi?], moved to the second floor, and we lived on the third floor, in front of Robert Waller High School and Arnold Upper Grade Center. JJ: Right in front of the school, right there. RH: Right in front. Armitage and Orchard. Right there. But my most memories are really [00:14:00] Lincoln Avenue, the Biograph Theater. We went every Sunday. JJ: So, if you were with a lot of family [and that?], you actually hung out outside, not like some other women that are sheltered. You were more, like, outside. RH: No. See, we grew up on a porch. JJ: (overlapping dialogue; inaudible). RH: We grew up on a porch, but -- JJ: Okay. What does that --? RH: -- I was the store girl -- JJ: The store girl. RH: -- you see. My stepmother was the kind -- if she wanted to eat a piece of gum, she sent me to the store to get it, so I was always out, you know? I’d go to the store, and I put down my stuff, and I buy me candy, and I swing on the swing. I used to take hours coming back from the store, but I used to go to the store, like, four, five, six times a day in the winter, the blizzard, and the rain, and the cold. It was a freedom for me because we were not allowed -- the only time that we were 9 �allowed, any of the kids in [00:15:00] that neighborhood -- we were not kids that roamed the streets. We were not children -- because there are families in that neighborhood that had nine, like the [Betinas?] had nine, and the [Nieveses?] had eleven. JJ: So, these were big, huge families. RH: Huge families. My aunt had eight. JJ: And not only did they have eleven, but they had other relatives -- RH: And they had other relatives. So -- JJ: -- living in the same neighborhood. RH: So, we all went to school together, so we -- JJ: So, what year are we talking about (overlapping dialogue; inaudible)? RH: I’m talking about -- we moved out of Lincoln Avenue in 1960-- right after the blizzard, ’67. We moved -- JJ: ’67. RH: -- there in ’68. JJ: ’68. RH: Yeah. We moved there. JJ: So, at that time, there were a lot of Latinos still living there, in 1968. RH: The buildings were still there, and the gas station was -- when we moved, you know, because I used to go to the Carnival grocery store. So, from [00:16:00] Armitage and Orchard, I had cut through. Remember, there used to be a playground on Larrabee and Armitage, so I used to cut through the playground 10 �and cut through Dickens into Carnival ’cause Carnival was on Lincoln and Dickens. Now, I was, like -- ’67, I was 11 years old, so I had shortcuts. JJ: Now, going back, now, is that were your father came to live first when he came -? RH: My father first came to live -- was on Belden and Clark. JJ: Belden and Clark. RH: Belden and Clark by Augustana Hospital and that area. JJ: And what year was that? RH: My father came in 1952 to Chicago. JJ: So, he didn’t -- RH: He was 17. JJ: -- live on Chicago Avenue (inaudible). RH: No. He never lived on Chicago Avenue. JJ: But he lived on Belden and Clark. RH: We lived right there, on Belden and Clark. JJ: Okay, so -- RH: He [00:17:00] lived right by the warehouse where they had the St. Valentine’s Massacre. JJ: Right, (overlapping dialogue; inaudible). RH: Because he would show us. JJ: Right. RH: He used to take us on a tour on Sundays of the neighborhood. My father taught me Chicago history, which I now -- 11 �JJ: So, were there more Puerto Ricans living there [on Belden at that time?] (overlapping dialogue; inaudible)? RH: Yes, at that time, yes. Really, everybody started settling -- JJ: In ’52? 1952? RH: 1952. Everybody started settling into the President Hotel. That’s where everybody was a couple. JJ: Now, there was a Lincoln Hotel. Was it the President Hotel or the Lincoln Hotel? RH: Was it the Lincoln Hotel? JJ: Maybe it was the Lincoln Hotel. RH: But then, it was changed to the President Hotel. JJ: Maybe it was called President Hotel too. RH: It was changed to the President Hotel. JJ: (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) there was -- RH: Because there was a candy store right across the street. JJ: I just want (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) -- RH: The same area, same hotel. JJ: Oh, same hotel, [just changed name?]. RH: So, everybody that started coming into -- [that lived?] because we had the old Harrison Gents on Halsted [00:18:00] South, you know, Halsted past Elston. Was it? Past Elston? Halsted? JJ: Over by Division, by --? RH: Right. Right. That’s where there were families from there, like -- oh, God. There’s some families that came from that way, but the brothers started coming 12 �from the families, and the sisters. Everybody married into people from the neighborhood, so everybody that married went to live at the Lincoln Hotel, President Hotel. They all went to live there. And then, once they had children, they couldn’t have their kids there. JJ: And this was a hotel where the -- RH: On Sedgwick, Lincoln -- JJ: Right, but, I mean, it had the -- RH: -- and Cleveland. JJ: What else? What other features did it have besides the -- RH: Oh, okay. JJ: -- medicine cabinet that --? RH: The [00:19:00] other feature about the Lincoln Hotel was -- JJ: [Just try to?] describe what it looked like. RH: It was tall. It was a tall building. I think it was, like, seven stories high. Think it was seven stories high because it had a old elevator. I used to be scared of that elevator, and my father -- JJ: But was it apartments or -- I mean -- RH: Yes, there were rooms. It was a hotel, so, apparently, there were rooms. It had close to 80-something rooms. JJ: So, a whole family lived in one room? RH: No, no, no, no. No. Certain couples, you know, from the families. Like, one family would have a brother, or they would have a sister, or two brothers, and, once they met women from other of our families, they would go live there before 13 �they rent an apartment, you see. But I know that there were no kids there. You could have the babies, but you [would have?] no kids because there were some families in [00:20:00] that hotel that snuck children in, and they would fall out the window. That’s why they closed the hotel, ’cause too many kids were falling out the window. JJ: Oh, there were kids that were falling out the window? RH: So, that’s why it was closed down. JJ: Okay. So, that did happen (overlapping dialogue; inaudible). RH: That did happen, yes. It did happen. So, we never [intervened?] with the West Side, like to Humboldt Park area. We didn’t know anything. We mainly kept in the Lincoln Park area because we had the lake right there, and we had the zoo, and we had -- the zoo wasn’t built -- we had the zoo, but we didn’t have the farm yet. The farm was built in ’70, around that time. JJ: The Lincoln Park Zoo farm? RH: The farm, when the brought -- JJ: The farm. RH: -- the cows and all that stuff. JJ: But you had the lagoon? RH: Where our parents used to drag us to the dairy, where they -- and it stunk. JJ: [00:21:00] Were you involved in any organization? Was your family involved in any organization? RH: Yes. My family came from North Avenue and Western, [Los Hijos de Caguas Sociedad?]. Los Hijos de Caguas. 14 �JJ: On North Avenue -- RH: That’s where we had all our weddings, all our baptism parties, all our cotillions, all our -- we were members of that hall. That’s where I started meeting kids from the West Side, like the [Suchet?] family, [Raymond Suchet?], and a lot of -- the [Cruzes?] from Division, [George?] Cruz. I started meeting them because I knew them when I was little from this club that -- you know, where everybody would get together for weddings and events. We would see the [Condes?], Lily y Su Gran Trio come. At that [00:22:00] time, a lot of singers -- because, see, my mother’s related to [González?] from La Rosa del Monte moving company. Forgot his name. JJ: Not [Ramos Movers?]. Not them. RH: No, not Ramos. Not (inaudible). No. JJ: [The González movers?]. RH: No. González. JJ: González. RH: Yeah, he was from San Lorenzo Express, and then he opened his own. I this it was La Rosa del -- no, he worked for La Rosa del Monte Movers, and then he opened San Lorenzo Express. That was my mother’s cousin, [El González de?] San Lorenzo. They’re from San Lorenzo. So, we, growing up -- JJ: Were there a lot of people at that club, or -- I mean -- RH: Yes, there was a lot of [00:23:00] members because my uncle, my godfather, Rafael Rivera, was one of the -- like a [shrine?]. They had banners. He was a -- JJ: [In the club?]? 15 �RH: -- loyal members. JJ: So, these were, like, lodges today, what they call -- RH: Right. So, he was a loyal member, my uncle, and he -- JJ: I didn’t know they got that elaborate, that fancy, with the club. RH: Yes, they used to have -- that was our hall. JJ: They had officers and all that stuff? RH: Yeah. [La Sociedad?] Hijos de Caguas. JJ: Okay. Society. Society. RH: Yes, it was a society. Yes. And so, my uncle was one of the true members, loyal -- JJ: And he had a uniform? RH: No. He had a suit, but they would wear, like, this big banner thing. JJ: [Oh, I see?]. RH: Like, president banner, but, you know, they didn’t have no funny hats like the Shrine brothers. JJ: Okay. And then, they would be part of the parade or something? RH: Yes, they used to -- JJ: [They would participate?]? RH: -- be part of the parade. And, [00:24:00] at that time, we were mainly -- a lot of the families, the children were kept indoors at the time because there was no gangs. There were no gangs. JJ: There were no gangs? RH: The boys -- no. 16 �JJ: In Lincoln Park? RH: No. No. Now, Lincoln Park, there was -- [as?] growing up, they started to become gangs. JJ: But, in the beginning, there were -- RH: But, in the beginning, we’d never seen any gangs. All we knew about was the Harrison Gents, you know, and, as we started growing into -- the only first really society of organization was the Young Lords. JJ: Okay. That was later. RH: That was, yes, later. That history there, for me, was the heart of my neighborhood. JJ: Can you explain that, or -- I mean, we can go back to it later too. RH: Because, at that time, see, we lived in that neighborhood. We were behind [00:25:00] Cabrini-Greens. We had Cabrini-Greens on Division and Halsted. We had them close. There was a way you could get to Cabrini-Greens. Even though there were Spanish families that lived in Cabrini-Greens, like the [Negrons?], Quiñonez family, you know, Adolfo Quiñonez, the breakdancer -- for breakdancing. Yes, he came from Cabrini-Greens, and a lot of -- there were some families that were Latinos that lived in Cabrini-Greens, so we did a lot of going into Cabrini-Greens when I was a little girl, like, maybe five, six years old. JJ: To visit the families, or --? RH: To visit families. See, my father was a chef later on, international chef, and he drove a taxi in the day, and he delivered bread for the Gonnella bread company. [00:26:00] My father had three jobs. So, you know, he delivered bread from four 17 �in the morning until ten o’clock, come home, take a nap, get up at twelve, one o’clock, drive a taxi ’til four o’clock, get home, eat, and then go to the restaurant from six to two. My father was a master chef on Lake Shore Drive. JJ: You said he did work at the Palmer House. RH: Yeah, but -- when he was younger, he washed dishes. [When? What year?]? You know, when he washed dishes -- he originated working in the job in a restaurant in a hotel, my father. My father started to learn -- he mainly became a dishwasher, my father, and I guess he learned in the restaurant, you know, the area, the cooks and that. So, my father became a chef on [00:27:00] Lake Shore Drive, 1400 North Lake Shore Drive, called [Le Coq Au Vin?], and, at that time, the owner’s sister or mother lived in the apartment next -- we moved in in that apartment because I remember it was all furnished. See, that apartment was furnished because, you know, there were the Nancy Drew books, the Trixie Belden books, the Hardy Boy books. See, when we were growing up in Newberry and Lincoln School, my father didn’t want us to speak Spanish. He wanted us to learn English the right way. He wanted us to learn Spanish. He put us in TESL, which was Teaching English in the Spanish Language, but we were already English because we would speak [00:28:00] English, and we spoke Spanish to our parents, but our parents wanted us to make sure we were fluent in writing and reading, so he made us go to the classes, and, in certain areas -- JJ: How was his English? RH: Huh? JJ: How was his English? 18 �RH: That was easy. That -- JJ: I mean, how was his English? RH: His English was broken up, but, you know, my father talks English, but he has the Puerto Rican accent. My father, and my mom too. They know how to defend themselves in English. JJ: But do you think that was a reason that -- RH: That we -- yeah. They learned from us. JJ: That he wanted you to speak perfect English. RH: Yes, to teach -- what happened was it was a interchangeable thing for -- we were teaching them English too. They paid attention because, see, they had to keep up with us, you see. [00:29:00] My brother would say, “Hurry up. Let’s finish up your chores, and we’re gonna go to the show.” And, you know, my dad would pop out. “What do you mean, ’the show?’ Why are you gonna go to the show?” And we go, “Dad, Dad, we’re gonna go to the Biograph. We want to see the Beatles movie, or we want to see Godzilla.” “Oh, well, I don’t know. How long is that gonna be? How long?” “We’re gonna come back at 10 o’clock.” I remember we used to come back, walk on Lincoln Avenue. This is Lincoln Avenue. JJ: You went to the Biograph? RH: The Biograph. Our -- JJ: Was that the neighborhood show? RH: That was our neighborhood show. JJ: So, were there a lot of Spanish people that went to that --? 19 �RH: Not really because -- JJ: (overlapping dialogue; inaudible). RH: -- my brother and I grew up very interested in history. We were movies. We were always in front of a TV, my brother and I. We watched everything. We were housebound children, you know, except for me. I was always in the store. Sometimes, I’d run and get [00:30:00] some [homework?], or sometimes I’d run to my aunt and see if she needed anything from the store. See, I made my candy money. I would make candy money, which, later on, turned into cigarette money. JJ: Candy to cigarettes. RH: Because I was very nervous girl. A lot of Latinos in that time were very hard, disciplinary people, you know. We didn’t get the time out and the little punishment. We got whupped. We got our butts -- JJ: No time out, no. RH: -- kicked. They’d beat us like a man. Oh, and don’t swear. They’re swearing all over the place, and, if you say one swear word, you’re dead. I used to tell my dad, “Why are you hitting me? You swear.” He goes, “Yeah, but I’m a big man. I [00:31:00] work hard.” JJ: But how did he feel later? I mean -- RH: After that, we -- JJ: But was that a common thing? I mean -- RH: No. We grew up with -- JJ: Was that only your father, or were -- 20 �RH: Everybody. JJ: In the neighborhood? Everybody? RH: Oh, yeah. Everybody had strict fathers. See, we came from a household, that neighborhood came from a house -- every household had a mother and a father. JJ: Okay. So, they had a mother and a father. RH: And, now, as we’re older, we found out the father had women too. The men in that neighborhood handled two families at a time. Sometimes three. They had kids somewhere else. JJ: You found that out later? RH: And we found it out later. You know, once we got started going into high school, you meet a girl that’s [Linda Hernández?], and I told my dad, “Dad, there’s a Linda Hernández in my school,” and my father goes, “Oh, that’s your sister.” “What? I have a sister?” Like nothing [00:32:00] because they never talked. They never came to visit. [I didn’t have any?] brothers and sisters, you know? JJ: So, it was common for men to have mistresses. RH: Yes, mistresses. They pass them as their cousins. JJ: And what about their wives? What did they think about that? RH: Their wives were too busy taking care of the kids, and cooking, and cleaning, and giving us lunch. You know, we didn’t eat lunch at school. They had to cook us three meals a day. Our favorite was coffee and corn flakes growing up. JJ: So, there was no lunch program or breakfast? RH: There was no lunch program. There were times that kids used to get hit by a car. They’d see ’em in the morning and, “Hey, what happened to So-and-so?” “Oh, 21 �did you hear? He got hit by a car.” “What?” You know, we all had to run home to see Bozo. We had to run home and see [00:33:00] Bozo, so our lunch was Chef Boyardee spaghetti and meatballs and white rice, or guanimes, with habichuelas. JJ: What is guanimes? What is that? RH: That’s flour -- like dumplings -- JJ: Dumplings, okay. RH: -- that my stepmother would make these long -- they looked like icicles, long ones, and then she’d make them, and boil them, and boil them, and she used to bake them, and, by the time we came for lunch, we had beans and guanimes, and sometimes eggs, papas fritas, French fries, and amarillos. That was our lunch. Then, we go, ten to one -- JJ: Amarillos are what? What --? RH: Soft plantain, yellow plantain. Bananas. Plantain. Platanos. That was our lunch. That’s what we grew up on. [00:34:00] We did have a milkman. We did have a milkman. I remember my stepmother’s sister’s husband [Joe?] used to be the driver, the milkman, and it was run by the Home Juice Company, and they were gallons that you would leave out on the porch, and he would pick them up and leave the milk. I remember that. But, see, I had to go buy the milk myself ’cause my stepmother -- she didn’t invest in none of that, but I used to remember him driving the little truck and the bottles clanging in there. And, in the summer, everybody was an ice cream driver. See? My dad tried it one summer. He went, and he got an ice cream truck, and he put everything in there. Ice cream, 22 �nuts, bananas, cherries, [00:35:00] pineapple, and he stuffed it up, and he went to take a nap because, see, these men loved naps. And this is in the Halsted and Armitage area. I’m still talking about Halsted and Armitage. JJ: It sounds like there’s a lot of Spanish people living there. RH: A lot. It was everybody. You know, the baker was Puerto Rican. The cleaners were -- they were Cuban. They were always [there, Cubans?]. That was the cleaners, our cleaners. They became mega-rich with us because, then, after the ’90s, the yuppies moved in. They’re still there. They still own that cleaners. My godfather was (Spanish) [00:35:48]. He upholstered furniture. [Charlie?]. Charlie -- forgot his name. He was like my godfather of water, and he upholstered. He was the upholsterer. [00:36:00] He had a shop on Halsted and Armitage, and he would upholster green, and yellow, and blue, and white vinyl on the couches. JJ: So, you had the godfather of water. What do you mean? Was that confirmation or baptism? RH: Yeah. Okay. Back in the days, coming from Puerto Rico, they all were families, and friends, and cousins, and stuff. What happens is, when they’re best friends, and they’re in a party, and the wife’s having a baby, you know, the men are like, “Oh, I want you to be my kid’s -- put water on my baby.” You know, before you get baptized, they put water on you. JJ: So, they would baptize you first. 23 �RH: Yeah. So, I have four godfathers. I have Charlie, the one that put water on me. I have Rafael Rivera, the one that bought my dress. [00:37:00] I have another godfather that drove us to the church, and then I have my real godfather. JJ: You said your real godfather? RH: My real godfather. JJ: Why is he the real one? RH: He’s the one that baptized me. He’s the one that baptized -- JJ: So, the other ones were -- RH: The other ones -- JJ: -- (overlapping dialogue; inaudible). RH: -- were just friends. JJ: But in case you got sick before you got baptized. RH: Right. In case, like me, when I busted my chin on the porch. JJ: In case you passed away. Then, you already were baptized. RH: I was two, and I remember, and I know my father was with my mother at that time. JJ: So, these were Catholics, then? So -- RH: We were all Catholic. JJ: Were most of the people in the community Catholic, the Latinos? RH: Yes. We were all Catholic, yes. JJ: So, where did you go to church? RH: We went to church at St. Michael’s. We were all baptized at St. Michael’s in the Lincoln Park area. [00:38:00] Father Kathrein was very busy. 24 �JJ: Father Kathrein. (inaudible). RH: Yeah. He was very busy. He did all the baptisms, all the weddings, and there weren’t too many sweet 15s. You know why? Because we were all -- there were struggling families. There were families -- like, my uncle worked in the day and then worked on the Turin Acevedo Show, and my other uncle, his brother [Pedro?] that lived on Howe Street, he worked at the gas station, the Gas for Less, right there on Armitage and Sedgwick. That was my uncle, [Tío Pedrito?]. JJ: That’s when gas was 50 cents. RH: Right, right, right. That’s when we used to put air in our -- well, see, we didn’t ride bikes, but, you know, my brother and I, we used to go with -- my brother never went outside since [00:39:00] Lincoln Avenue. My brother [Josi?] -- that’s my stepmother’s son. That’s my brother. JJ: What do you mean, “never went outside?” RH: Huh? JJ: Never went outside? RH: We never rode bikes. JJ: Oh, I see what you’re saying. RH: We weren’t allowed to jump rope because I was always clumsy. I was always getting hurt, so I never played gym. A lot of the fathers never let the girls in that neighborhood play gym. Okay? But, when we got affiliated with the neighborhood, affiliated, we got to know people in the neighborhood because we used to see the guys with the berets on, the purple berets, you know, which -- JJ: The Young Lords. 25 �RH: Yeah, and we said, “Wow, what is that?” And my brother said, “I’m gonna be one. I’m gonna be one of those.” And I go, “They don’t even know you. You never go outside. You got to be outside.” Plus, you know, we were terrified of my mom, his mother, but she [00:40:00] just protected us. She was overprotective. JJ: Now, you said that you saw the purple berets, and were they big? You said they were big in the neighborhood, or what do you mean? RH: They were mainly everywhere. They remind me of the Guardian Angels at first, like the Guardian Angels are at first, because there was a lot of -- a lot of crime started happening after Martin Luther King got assassinated. We started having a lot of [hostile?]. The neighborhood started getting dangerous, or bad, or not safe at night. A lot of poetry was written about the L on Sheffield and Willow. There’s a poem. “Under the L”, it’s called. There were certain areas you couldn’t go at night. I did a lot of babysitting, [00:41:00] mainly a lot in Magnolia, and Racine, and Lakewood, as I got older. When I was in eighth grade, I was walking dogs in the neighborhood. I was making money every Saturday because, you know, I grew up deprived of -- no clothes. I wore clothes from the second-hand store. By the time I went to eighth grade, I had everything paid. I paid everything myself. I left home at 12. I went to live with my mom. When I met my mom, she lived on Halsted and Webster, and I went to live with her and her boyfriend that was living with us, and I had already been to school. I was pretty good in school. I just was not happy at my stepmother, even though [00:42:00] my brother and my sister -- leaving them behind, but, at that age, 12, I learned a lot of 26 �perspectives things, important things, being a Hispanic. I used to pick up your newspapers and read them. JJ: When you say you -- the Young Lords? RH: The Young Lords’ newspapers. I used to even take some to school with me. I used to -- JJ: Why would you -- so -- RH: Because I wanted my friends to read stuff that -- you know, we were kept in the dark about things because our family really -- we didn’t have no history of the neighborhood. A lot of people now, they come, and they know I know my history because I know every building [has its?] history, and I was privileged [00:43:00] to have the English language put in us because we were -- some of us ended up in summer school, lot of us, and it wasn’t because we weren’t smart. It was because it was open. There were teachers in there, so we had to go. That was the summer. A lot of us were in summer school. So, you know, as we got into older, we weren’t into -- the teenage pregnancy came out in the neighborhood, and I got caught into it at 15, but I was responsible. I don’t have a police record. I never stole. I never -- JJ: So, were they trying to make that, like, criminal, or --? RH: Yeah. The neighborhood was mainly [00:44:00] falling -- JJ: What do you mean? RH: -- apart. JJ: What do you mean, falling apart? 27 �RH: Like, falling apart -- as I was growing up, some mothers that had single children had to go work because they were separated, but, you know, some had -- as we got older, the fathers were there when we were little, and I was (inaudible) growing up and wondering. I was the wonder girl. I wondered, like, wow. I knew my mother’s name. I remembered her face, and I was, like, on a hunt, so, when I met my mother at 12 years old on the corner of Halsted and Armitage, I knew who she was. I had memories of her, and I left my dad. That was the -- JJ: All of a sudden, she appeared there [00:45:00] on Halsted and --? RH: She appeared. She lived on Halsted and Webster. She lived in the neighborhood. She had came back in the neighborhood. She was around. She was around because my stepmother used to let her come in when I was little. She was around. It’s just that I was -- my dad kinda protected me from that, but, growing up, you know, you make something in school for Mother’s Day, and I wasn’t really -- I felt I wasn’t my stepmother’s child. I was just a kid that she was taking care of, but, for mother’s day, I always brought my father something. Anything I made in school was for my dad because my dad was all I had. You see? My dad was all I had, even though I had cousins, and his sister, and my uncle’s brothers, their family, and [00:46:00] I kind of grew up [by myself, really?], but my brother, he protected my childhood, you see. As we got older, my brother would be in the yard, playing with the friends downstairs. I had to go upstairs. My brother wouldn’t let me be out there with his friends. JJ: This was your older brother? RH: This is my stepbrother. 28 �JJ: Stepbrother. RH: And, you know, my father didn’t like us sitting on nobody’s lap. The only person we could sit -- at a certain age because Abuelo was like that too. Once you’re seven years old, you’re off the lap. We weren’t -- JJ: So, you had rules like that. RH: Yeah. JJ: Don’t sit on nobody’s lap. RH: Don’t sit on no man’s lap. JJ: Any other rules like that, or --? RH: Yeah. That’s -- JJ: Any other type of rules? RH: Yeah. When people came over, like my dad’s friends and their wives, the wives would be with my stepmother in the kitchen, and they would come with kids. We weren’t running around the house. We were in our [00:47:00] room, and I was the waiter. [Papi?] called me (Spanish) [00:47:06] because I would bring the beer and light the cigarette. That’s how I started smoking. He’d say, “Here, go light the cigarette for me.” And I’d go, and I’d light the cigarette, and I’d smoke it and bring it back, and he’s like, “What happened?” I go, “I had to walk down the hallway.” That’s how I started smoking. I was, like, eight. JJ: So, when visitors came, you were the waitress. RH: Yeah, I would serve them. I’d be around. I won’t be in their way, but I knew the timing. See? I’d bring ’em new beers and empty the ash tray. You see? I was the waitress, so Papi always called me (Spanish) [00:47:48]. “(Spanish) 29 �[00:47:48].” I was the waiter, and I still do. I do that because I have a problem -I have to be on a [00:48:00] track. A pattern. I have a pattern. I suffer from, like, OCD. I’m always -- like, if I’m talking to you, and you have something here, it has to come off your face. JJ: OCD stands for what? RH: I forget the name of it. I have it. It’s written down. I just got diagnosed with it, so -- it’s where you’re perfectly -- everything has to be perfect. If you have a carpet with fringe on it, you got to make sure they’re straight. Like, if I see that dirty, that plant, I have to clean it. I was real bad, but, now, I don’t think about it, but, when I was little, I was like that, but I never knew I was like that, and I was a reader. [00:49:00] I always had a book in front of me. I read all Nancy Drew, all those big books that were in that library. See, I have a library. I have books everywhere. This is all me. All these books, everything, that’s what I cherish. That’s what I learned in school. I didn’t carry books going home. I stole them. I’d steal a book, and leave it at home, and mark down my homework, and I didn’t have to carry books coming from school. I’d just go home. Sometimes, my dad would have to pay for a missing book that I would keep, but I have books that my father gave me when I was little. I still have ’em. JJ: Now, this was a community, then, when you were growing up. RH: This was a community. We all went to the library together. [00:50:00] We were not troublemakers. There was music everywhere. See, I loved music. I always had a transistor radio, or I had -- my grandfather would buy me all types of things. My grandfather bought me the record player that you carried. My 30 �grandfather had us radios. He had us watches. I had a good upbringing. I had a good upbringing. We weren’t poor. We weren’t that poor because my dad had three jobs. My dad was a moneymaker. My stepmother, (Spanish) [00:50:40]. She used to make things for tables, towels, which I hated, with the [doll’s?] faces on them. Oh, my God, I hate those. Or the toilet tissue covers. My stepmother sewed everything. My stepmother made everything. But, you know -JJ: Were there other [00:51:00] people in the neighborhood like her, that --? RH: Yeah, there were people that were selling clothes, like the Negron. [Josephine?], [Josefina?], she used to sew (Spanish) [00:51:11]. There was another -- JJ: And this was house-to-house that she sold them? RH: There was another man with -- (inaudible) sold a lot of the (Spanish) [00:51:19] and the curtains, but we weren’t into curtains. We grew up with the plastic curtains. Remember the plastic curtains? My stepmother did not like curtains, so, now, you’ll see, I don’t like curtains either. JJ: (inaudible). RH: She hated the dust. It drove her [nuts?], my stepmother, so I grew up with no curtains. I only have ’em in my bedroom. That’s why I will not -- and I’ve got -- JJ: But you decorated [and everything looks good?]. RH: Yeah. I don’t like curtains. I think they’re messy. I like the light. I like [00:52:00] the light because I grew up with brightness, you know. We grew up mainly -Chicago area. We grew up in a neighborhood where we had to learn how to sit. We go to somebody’s house. We had to sit down. We couldn’t jump around. 31 �We had to sit there. We were asleep while everybody played dominoes at one, two in the morning, but we’re still sittin’ there. JJ: The kids just sat in the living room. RH: Yeah. Our father’d sit us there, and there you sat. There, we would play, and throw things, and stick our tongues out, and me and your sister, we used to jump everywhere. We drove your mom crazy. I remember. I think you had yellow and green sofas. JJ: In my house? In our house? You got a better [00:53:00] memory than I do. RH: Yellow and green, ’cause we would jump from one sofa to here. Not jumping. Just playing, me and Daisy. We were always playing, and my Papi would be in the kitchen. JJ: Daisy, my sister. RH: Uh-huh, your sister Daisy. And I remember your sofas were so cute ’cause they had little leaves on ’em. JJ: [That’s right?]. RH: And I don’t know if they had plastic. I think they had plastic later on. JJ: I think we did. RH: Yeah. Yeah. But we were always playing, me and Daisy, and she was blonde. She was blonde. JJ: I think she dyes her hair. RH: Yeah, but she was blonde when she was little. JJ: Well, that might have been -- I think [Myrna?] had more blondish -- RH: Uh-huh, more blonde, but they were light. They had pretty eyes and everything. 32 �JJ: Yeah. Daisy’s hair is more dark [now?]. RH: Uh-huh. JJ: (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) but she dyes it, though. (inaudible). RH: Mm-hmm, and we used to play together, me and her, and she was fun. She was -- JJ: Yeah, you were telling me (inaudible). RH: She’s fun. I’ll never forget that. I still can see her playing. JJ: [00:54:00] Was this on Bissell, when we lived on Bissell, or --? RH: You know, I think when you lived on Bissell. JJ: Okay. So, you lived on Bissell too. RH: No, I had [Pilar?]. Remember Pilar, that lady? She had her husband, and then he died. JJ: Oh, okay. You were babysitting? RH: She lived on the first floor. (Spanish) [00:54:17]. She was a friend of my family. She knew all the families, and she had no children, so she used to pick me up for the weekend, and I remember playing on Bissell and Wisconsin. Remember, where the train track? But you couldn’t go through the other side. It was closed. You could only go through under by -- JJ: Right, they had that tunnel. RH: -- Mulligan. JJ: They had the tunnel by Mulligan. RH: The tunnel, but not there. Not on that part, on Wisconsin. It was just closed up, and there were two buildings. One on the corner, the bar, the 1800 bar right 33 �there, and then, there was the red brick building ’cause that’s where she lived, [00:55:00] [Tía Pilar?], and she used to pick me up for the weekend, and I used to go and play with the kids in the neighborhood. That’s when Dad would come and get me, and we’d go to your house, like, on a Sunday afternoon. JJ: I know my mother did a lot of work with Father Kathrein too, so maybe your family were connected [in that way?]? RH: Is she still alive? JJ: Yeah, my mother is (inaudible). RH: Wow. God bless her. I remember her house. I still remember it. JJ: And the leaves on the furniture. RH: The furniture. JJ: With leaves. RH: With leaves. I never seen sofas with leaves in my life, and it was a sectional. It was a weird sofa. It had the table already or something on there. JJ: In the middle, yeah. RH: In the middle. It had it in the middle -- JJ: [I remember that?]. RH: -- or something. It was -- JJ: (inaudible). RH: I know we would jump from -- we would go like this on our [00:56:00] arms, like jump, you know, like, twist our legs around. We were little, and I know we would hit it, and turn around, and hit the other -- we would do that, me and Daisy, and your mom used to be yelling, “(Spanish) [00:56:12].” And then, Papi’d stick his 34 �head out, and I used to sit down. My Papi’s like, “You better not be jumping,” and I -- “We’re not jumping,” and Daisy’d go, “We’re not jumping. We’re playing.” And so, growing up, once we got to junior high, which was Arnold, sixth, seventh, and eighth -- when I came out of Newberry, it was only fifth grade, and I came into Newberry at third grade because I was at Lincoln School from kindergarten ’til that summer we moved to Armitage and Orchard from Lincoln Avenue, and we went to Newberry, and I went in third grade. [00:57:00] And, from third grade, we went up to fifth. My brother went first to Arnold. I [was still in?] fifth grade. I was the last one [to stay?] that year, but I walked down Orchard Street, straight down, and my brother went to Arnold. Then, when I went, sixth grade, to Arnold, my brother was already in seventh or eighth grade, and I did sixth grade, and I was very quiet in school. I was very quiet. I did all my work. I had good grades. My father said I had good grades, but, when I got to Arnold, I started getting a little funny, you know, tell jokes and stories, and I felt -- I was a friendly person. I didn’t look trouble for nobody. [00:58:00] I wasn’t a bully. I wasn’t scared of bullies. I wasn’t scared of anybody because I had a grandfather that talked to us, a father that warned us, and I had a brother that was there for me, even though I didn’t need nobody beat up. I was friends with everybody. I had no enemies. The only enemies I had was how I lived with my stepmother, and it wasn’t an enemy. It was a thing that she went through, and I endured it, but I overcame that myself. I started reading very young. We all started reading very young. We read everything. We were taught everything in the school. We paid 35 �attention. We never ditched school. It was impossible to ditch school, [00:59:00] to play hooky, because we lived right there, in the neighborhood. JJ: You lived right in front of the school. RH: I lived across the street. My [friends were like?], “Come on. Let’s ditch school.” I’m like, “[Girl, are you?] crazy? I live across the street. My father’s a cab driver. My grandfather’s out there. My uncle. I’ll be dead by the time --” JJ: (inaudible). RH: We could not ditch school. JJ: The teacher wouldn’t catch you. Your father would catch you in the cab. RH: Everybody. Even if somebody in the neighborhood said, “(Spanish) [00:59:31], Ramón, I saw your daughter.” He goes, “Oh, my God.” JJ: So, the neighborhood kinda watched out for everybody. RH: Everybody, yeah. JJ: Everybody’s kids. RH: Mm-hmm, and the girls, my friends, they had, like, six, seven brothers. I met my brothers when I was 12. I had, like, five. I found out I had more brothers with my last name, my sister and my three brothers, and I was [01:00:00] jubilant. I had brothers. So, their brothers became my brothers, so, altogether, I had 11 brothers. JJ: Big family. (inaudible). RH: So, I used to say, “I’m gonna bring my brother.” But everybody, you know -- so, I think it was -- when I came into Arnold, eighth grade, I changed my name. Rosa was gone. She was dead. I was like, “I hate that name.” [My father’s like?], 36 �“That’s your name. That’s the name you’re gonna stay with. That’s the name that’s gonna go on your tombstone.” And, “I hate that name.” Rosa, ’cause everybody used to say, “Rosa posa, Rosa posa,” and I remember, third grade in Lincoln School, before second grade, when I started reading about Rosa, the little Mexican girl in the potato sack dress, everybody would make fun [01:01:00] of me because of that book, and do you know, José, that I still have that book? I stole it. I said, “Ain’t nobody’s gonna read this book ever again,” and I still have it, and it’s a book that said “Rosa.” The book is Rosa, and it’s the little Mexican girl in a potato sack dress, and I hated that book, and everybody’s like, “Oh, Rosa, Rosa,” and I’m like, “Oh, why --” So, one day, I stole that book. I took it with me, and I still have it. I still have that book. I said, “Nobody’s gonna ever read this book again, ever again.” So, when I got into Arnold, I took my sister’s name. I met my sister, [Linda?], so I said, “You know what? I like Rosalind Russell. I like that name, so I’m gonna put myself Rosalind.” [01:02:00] And, every time I would put my homework or my (inaudible), my teachers would scratch it out with a red pen, and I still would write it, and still would write it, and still would write it until, legally, I kept it. So, now, it’s my alias now. I can’t use it, like, in a bank account or sign checks, but I went to school under that name, so that’s what’s -- Rosalind Hernández. And so, when I came back from eighth grade, when I went to eighth grade, I was Rosalind, and Rosa was gone. She was gone. People’d say, “Do you have a sister named Rosa?” I’m like, “Yeah. I’m her sister, Rosalind.” People thought I was two people ’cause we had imaginary -- we were [full?]. We had imaginations and stuff. So, the 37 �neighborhood, like you said, started getting really [01:03:00] [caution?]. We started going into high school and that, junior high and high school. The neighborhood was getting -- it wasn’t falling apart, but it was getting kind of -things you hear, you know. Things you hear. JJ: So, there was more crime, or --? RH: It was starting to get more crime. JJ: So, in the beginning, it wasn’t that -- there weren’t that many gangs? RH: You could walk anywhere. Anywhere. You could walk anywhere, but -- JJ: And this was when there were a lot of Latinos there. RH: A lot of Latinos. JJ: Like, you could walk anywhere. RH: And, mainly, it wasn’t that bad because, like I said, most of the friends that I had, they had a lot of brothers. So, when I would go to see my friend on Fremont Street to pick her up for school, [Olga?], Olga [Santos?], she had, like, four brothers, or Nieves, [01:04:00] they had, like, eight brothers. So, everywhere you walked, they would go, “Hey, what are you doin’ over here?” And we used to say, “None of your business.” And they’d go, “Hey, don’t talk to me like that, you little shrimp.” They used to call us shrimps. “You little shrimps.” And I’m like, “I don’t care. You’re not my brother. You’re not my brother.” And then, their sister, I had to be nice to them because they wouldn’t want me hanging with their sister. So, the brothers were protective of all the girls, of their friends, their sisters. So, you know -- JJ: So, there was just a common respect at that time -- 38 �RH: A respect, yes. JJ: -- for -- RH: Like, we didn’t get in nobody’s car we didn’t know. We didn’t do that. JJ: And everybody knew each other. RH: We all knew each other, but my father was a person that raised us on our guard. JJ: So, when did it start going down? About what year? Do you [remember?]? RH: Excuse me? JJ: About what year did it start going down? RH: [01:05:00] 1976, ’77. JJ: Around that time is when it down completely, the neighborhood? RH: People started movin’ out of the neighborhood. They wanted to take their -- I don’t know. They all moved west. I lived on Sheffield and Armitage until 1978. JJ: ’78? RH: 1978. By then, I had three children. I had them in a youth center. Across the street, there was a Chicago Youth Center on Sheffield. 1930. I lived 1930 North Sheffield, and there was a youth center across the street, so I had my kids in the youth center, and I went to DePaul. I took the train, and then I’d go to school, and then I’d come back. JJ: So, you went to school at DePaul. RH: I went to Truman [01:06:00] in 1978, and then I went to DePaul in 1979. JJ: This is the college, DePaul University? RH: Yes, right there. DePaul University. Lincoln Park campus. JJ: Now, did you --? 39 �RH: I had one class in the Lewis and Clark. JJ: Oh, the Lewis and Clark. RH: Yeah. JJ: [But then?] you graduated? RH: No, I was an undergraduate. JJ: An undergraduate. RH: I just went for liberal arts, and I went for -- I took undergraduate. I was starting already to go -- but I was accepted into DePaul University, and, even though I came out with Cs, but I tried because I had three kids, and I didn’t have a nursery for them at the time, until I did move on Sheffield at the end. But, you know, I got (inaudible) said you get your credits together. You do something, and you stop, and I went back, and I got all my stuff, what I needed. [I just have?], like, four and a half credits. That’s all, but it was just a term [01:07:00] that I went. I went the winter and spring. I went two terms. JJ: Okay, two terms. RH: I went two terms, which was 1,100 dollars apiece. And then, I had my books. I still have my books. I got my books still. I went liberal arts [skills?]. Liberal arts, I went to [skills, behavior skills?]. I took philosophy and religion, and I had Psychology 101. No, I had it in Truman, Psychology 101. I was taking Psychology 102 at DePaul. That was to help me raise my kids. I didn’t raise my kids beating my children. Well, they said I was Hitler, but, you know, I was like -I did the same rearing my father did on me. There was no [01:08:00] beating. My kids didn’t suffer. My girls, I raised my kids because of the rearing -- the 40 �neighborhood that I come from. I get insulted when people tell me, “Oh, you’re from Humboldt Park.” I get upset. I’m not from Humboldt Park. “Oh, but you’re Puerto Rican. You don’t have the Puerto Rican [flag?].” I’m like, “No, no, no, no, no. I’m not from Humboldt Park. I come from the Lincoln Park area.” It’s different, you know. We have a difference. I can tell by the manners, the way they speak. See, we don’t speak like that. We don’t speak like that. You see how I speak? You see, there’s no division, culture, in me because I can tell, the way they were educated, that area. I speak -- [01:09:00] that’s how we all speak. JJ: Okay. [Community type?] at that time. Yeah, that community came later. Humboldt Park came later. RH: Yeah. The neighborhood wasn’t bad at all because, like I said, we had the Young Lords. Then, later on, we had the Kings. I was sent to a boarding school, you see, ’cause my father didn’t want me falling in the hands -- the wrong places. My father saw I was a little exploring thing. I just smoke. I never drank. I didn’t drink ’til I was 24. I didn’t take drugs, but I had something in me that I was just not -- I wanted a freedom. And so, I was sent to a boarding [01:10:00] school in Omaha, Nebraska for almost two years. When I graduated from eighth grade, I left that same weekend. I came back. I started junior high. I started junior high. I lived with this lady that -- I befriended her because I did a lot of babysitting and walking dogs, and she became like my foster mother, so I lived with her on Burling, right in front of Arnold, and she did a lot of community too. Her name was [Mamie Govilla?]. You remember Mamie Govilla? JJ: I don’t (inaudible). 41 �RH: She worked for [Danny O’Brian?]. She was his secretary. JJ: (inaudible). RH: The alderman. I lived with her. And, there, I learned antiques. She was an antique collector, [01:11:00] and I wrote a lot of stuff. I did a lot of stuff in Waller that -- you know, I used to go down and smoke cigarettes with Mr. [Cusack?] and Mr. [Tamika?] ’cause they were good friends. JJ: I remember them. I remember them, yeah. RH: Me and Mr. Tamika. On a break, I used to go see Mr. Tamika, and we used to smoke cigarettes, puffing. Then, we quit. We tried everything. Me and Mr. Tamika, you know. We tried everything to quit. It was so funny. I went down from Tareytons, to Viceroys, to [True Blue?]. Those were my cigarettes, True Blue, the ones you couldn’t smoke nothing. You think you’re smoking, and you don’t smoke nothing. Well, yeah. I was a smoker. I was a (inaudible) girl. I didn’t fight. I didn’t like nobody touching me. [01:12:00] I grew up a little promiscuous. I started being a little promiscuous at the age of, you know, 15, but that was my first love, [Nick Reyes?], and I ended up having a daughter by him. He went in the Army, 1973. That was it. That’s what happened to me. But, you know -- JJ: Any last thoughts that -- you know, so we can kind of -- RH: Yeah. JJ: What about the community? How did you feel that it’s changed completely? I mean -- 42 �RH: It has changed, but, coming from that neighborhood, going down the streets, if [01:13:00] you have a memory instilled in your mind, and you can still close your eyes and remember how it looked before. That’s the way I see it. I could never go there when I had my kids because I didn’t really talk too much about my kids, how I grew up. I only talked about my brother and my dad. There was no little sister. I excluded them, and there was no stepmother. I left her out. So, as my kids were growing up, I would go in the neighborhood, and, right when we turned on from Clybourn into Racine into Armitage, I used to feel like a pit in my stomach, like I was gonna be so emotional [01:14:00] just driving on the bus or driving down the street and looking at every story in the neighborhood. At first, I was very emotional going down there, but, now, my daughter’s lived in that neighborhood, so, now, I’ve -- since she was 20, my daughter. She lived on Larrabee and Armitage, and she loved the neighborhood. She comes from that neighborhood, and I got used to it. When [Lolly?], my granddaughter, started Newberry school and I had to go pick her up, I was a mess in the school because I still pictured Ms. [Peterson?] banging somebody against the locker, someone throwing up in the hall, and they put that [01:15:00] [pieces in there?], whatever that was. That made it even more disgusting. And I can still see myself walking in the hallway in Newberry, and my granddaughter would say, “That’s okay, Grandma. You’ll be okay.” I’m like, “Sorry. I just can’t go in there. I just can’t. You don’t know. It’s very emotional for me.” She goes, “I know, Grandma.” And, when she graduated, I was in the hall, see, because my granddaughter’s Alderman Robert Shaw’s granddaughter [with?] the alderman. Robert Shaw’s. 43 �That’s my son-in-law, [John?], (Spanish) [01:15:44] in the South Side 13 years ago. JJ: He’s pretty well known, Robert Shaw, in Chicago. RH: Robert, yeah. That’s my granddaughter’s grandfather. So, we went to graduation, and they said, “Can someone stand up from [01:16:00] those -- do we have any Newberry alumnis?” And my daughter and my grand-- looked at me, and I’m like -- I felt so proud. But, yeah, it was kinda funny because I’d go pick up Lolly, and, “I just can’t go in there. Just come out.” [And, sometimes?], it’d be cold, or they’re in the assembly, or something, and, “Oh, I have to go in there.” Because I would come out overwhelmed. “Oh, my God. I can’t believe it. Look it, Lolly. This was the assembly that I used to sing in the choir,” ’cause I was in the Newberry Choir. I was -- original Newberry Choir. “Yes, I know, Grandma. I know. You told me that, Grandma.” (inaudible). The gymnasium was our [01:17:00] lunch room, but we never ate lunch, so we had to go home. And that’s when things started happening, around that time. Kids would get hit by cars. We had some girl get abducted one time from that neighborhood. I know the Young Lords were looking for her too, and I remember that, and the time that Martin Luther King -- we were in school. I was in Newberry. ’68, I was in Newberry School, and, when Martin Luther King got shot, it was gettin’ really smoky. I remember it was very smoky. JJ: [I think it ran out?]. RH: But -- JJ: (inaudible). 44 �RH: Did I talk too much? JJ: No, no, no, no. You did fine, but I think it’s -- I was supposed to stop anyway. RH: Okay. JJ: (inaudible). RH: But, no, you want to talk more, [01:18:00] I got more stuff. It’s just, like I said, you know, I have -- JJ: For sure, we got to get the -- END OF VIDEO FILE 45 � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/9da818a4fef9dde24258818d62b48e43.mp4 e500520bf8a0826da54f5f08386816ba Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Young Lords in Lincoln Park Collection Subject The topic of the resource Young Lords (Organization) Puerto Ricans--United States Civil Rights--United States--History Lincoln Park (Chicago, Ill.) Personal narratives Social justice Community activists--Illinois--Chicago Description An account of the resource Collection of oral history interviews and digitized materials documenting the history of the Young Lords Organization in Lincoln Park, Chicago. Interviews were conducted by Young Lords' founder, José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez, and documents were digitized from Mr. Jiménez' archives. The Young Lords in Lincoln Park collection grows out of the ongoing struggle for fair housing, self-determination, and human rights that was launched by Mr. José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez, founder of the Young Lords Movement. This project is dedicated to documenting the history of the displacement of Puerto Ricans, Mejicanos, other Latinos, and the poor from Lincoln Park, as well as the history of the Young Lords nationwide. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Jiménez, José, 1948- Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/491">Young Lords in Lincoln Park collection (RHC-65)</a> Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-04-25 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Language A language of the resource eng spa Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-65 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 2012-2017 Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Título Spanish language Title entry Rosa Meria Hernández vídeo entrevista y biografía Sujetos Spanish language Subject terms Young Lords (Organización) Puertorriqueños--Estados Unidos Derechos civiles--Estados Unidos--Historia Lincoln Park (Chicago, Ill.) Puertorriqueños--Relatos personales Justicia social Activistas comunitarios--Illinois--Chicago Puertorriqueños--Illinois--Chicago--Vida social y costumbres Source <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/491">Young Lords in Lincoln Park (RHC-65)</a> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-65_Hernandez_Rosa Title A name given to the resource Rosa Meria Hernández video interview and transcript Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Hernández, Rosa Description An account of the resource 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. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Jiménez, José, 1948- Subject The topic of the resource Young Lords (Organization) Puerto Ricans--United States Civil Rights--United States--History Lincoln Park (Chicago, Ill.) Puerto Ricans--Personal narratives Social justice Community activists--Illinois--Chicago Puerto Ricans--Illinois--Chicago--Social life and customs Language A language of the resource eng Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2012-03-28 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/fb36423bafb608528ed87b3edc049789.pdf 8bb8102fad436d3dee31d287bf8e56c1 PDF Text Text Young Lords In Lincoln Park Interviewee: David Hernández Interviewers: José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez Location: Grand Valley State University Special Collections Date: 3/29/2012 Biography and Description 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 because he was working the Commission of Youth Welfare for the City of Chicago and the Latin Eagles were a serious presence in the neighborhood where he was assigned. 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. For several years he ran El Taller, a community based workshop. He also founded Street Sounds in 1971. 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. Mr. Hernández has taught poetry workshops for the Uptown Community Clinic, the Chicago Public Schools, and community arts programs like Gallery Humboldt Park. His first books of poetry, Despertando/Waking Up and Rooftop �Piper were published in 1971. He followed with Collected Words for Dirty Shelf (1973), Satin City Lullaby (1989), and Elvis is Dead but at Least He Isn’t Gaining Any Weight (1995), and The Urban Poems (2004). Mr. Hernández also starred in a movie, “David Hernandez and Street Sounds” and recorded an album by the same name. His poem, “Immigrants/Liquid Thoughts” was included on the audio anthology, “A Snake in the Heart: Poems and Music by Chicago Spoken Word Performers” (1994). Today, David Hernández lives in Wicker Park, continues to be active in the community, and to collaborate with the Young Lords. �Transcript JOSE JIMENEZ: Okay, so if you can give me your name, and where you were born, and your date of birth, and that -- (inaudible). (laughter) DAVID HERNÁNDEZ: Yeah, my name is David Hernández, and I was born on May 1, 1946 that means that I’m 65 years old. I came to Chicago from Puerto Rico, a little town called Cidra, back in 1955. And my parents came over here because there were a lot of job offers at that time. A lot of these little factories in Chicago, a lot of jobs for Puerto Ricans, and specifically they wanted Puerto Ricans over here. So my whole family, uncles, and aunts, and all of that, they all worked in these small factories. So that was back in 1955, and I was nine years old when I came here. JJ: Now, do you remember what part of the city you came from at the time [00:01:00] or to first? DH: That I came to? Yeah, I lived on Armitage Street. Yeah, Clark and Armitage at that time. And then we moved a little further -- JJ: Do you remember what street or anything like that? DH: Well, it’s Clark and Armitage. There’s a big high rise building right there now. And that was right next to the park, Lincoln Park. And so a lot of Puerto Ricans lived in that whole area right there. And what they call Old Town, at that time, I lived on Clark and Wisconsin which was what they call Old Town right now. So we were all over the place around there, the Old Town area and the Lincoln Park area. 1 �JJ: So you’re saying you remember at nine years old -- you should remember some of it. DH: Oh, yeah. JJ: What was it like at that time? I mean what type of -- DH: [00:02:00] It was a working, poor-class neighborhood. The apartment that I lived in, I lived in what’s known a cold water flat at first. It was in the basement. (laughter) My family was -- there were four -- JJ: Why did they call it cold water flat in our neighborhood? Why did they call it that? DH: ’Cause there was no heated water, (laughter) so they called it cold water flat. It was cheap. And we had to take baths by heating up water, so I remember that. And it was really small. What was going on is that a lot of these buildings around there were being subdivided, and they were cramming as many Puerto Rican families as they could in these places. Really small. Tiny. JJ: [00:03:00] So when they’re subdivided, what do you mean? DH: At one time, these apartments used to be really big. Subdivided is that they would put a wall in the middle somewhere and fix it up so that there were two entrances. And then where there used to be one family, now they could fit two families, sometimes three families. So these were cramped, small places that we lived in at the very beginning. And so, you know, it was -- JJ: Was your family big, like how many? DH: I have three brothers and one sister, so there were six of us living in an area that was maybe what they call a studio apartment today. All of us lived there. We used to sleep in the same -- you know, two to a bed. The little one used to sleep 2 �on a mattress on the floor every night. [00:04:00] So this was the kind of thing that was going -- that we lived on. My uncles and aunts were in the same situation. Everybody around there lived in small places. They were roachinfested, a lot of rats and all of that. The landlords never came around, they just primarily left us. They didn’t fix anything. Everything had to be fixed by us or else it wouldn’t get done. At that point, we didn’t know, but everything was painted with that lead paint. So later on, as kids were being born and all that, some of them were mentally -- they were retarded, basically, because of those paint chips, and the fumes, and everything that was going on -- the dust that was coming in. So it was way different than what it is now, [00:05:00] that whole area. A lot of old buildings, red brick buildings, and no stores hardly around there. It was just one big long street with a lot of buildings. That’s what I remember. The hallways were always dark. And that’s how my parents lived for a long time. I always wondered why my parents were always tired, and part of the reason was that they would stay up night so they could flick the cockroaches off our faces as we were sleeping. They had to go to work, and then at night they have to be night guards against the cucarachas. (laughter) JJ: A lot of roaches. DH: Yeah, a lot. But we were a community, and a lot of families really stuck together -- my aunts, and my uncles, [00:06:00] and all of that. And so there was a lightness to it. I mean we had these big parties and -- JJ: So were other Puerto Rican families bringing their families, too? So your family came with a lot of other aunts, and uncles, and all that? 3 �DH: Right. Right. JJ: And it was also happening in that area? DH: Yeah. JJ: ’Cause you said (inaudible) -- DH: My grandmother was the first who came, and she lived on Halsted and Armitage in that big corner building which is still there. And you can’t touch it today. I don’t know, it’s a condo thing. But that’s where they used to live because that place was really full of our people. My grandmother was the first one to come. She came, I think, in ’48. Yeah, 1948. She lived there for a long time. JJ: Why did she come from Puerto Rico? DH: Better life. The small factories weren’t just cutting sheet metal and all that, they also had a lot sewing factories, and so she was a [00:07:00] seamstress, making baby clothes in a baby factory. So that’s why she came. JJ: She was a seamstress in Puerto Rico, too, then? DH: Yeah, right. JJ: So she actually knew a skill. DH: Right. Yeah, she brought that skill over here back in ’48. So she came first, and then a few of my uncles. JJ: And she came to Armitage and Halsted or to another place? DH: Straight to Halsted and Armitage. JJ: Straight to Halsted and Armitage in ’48. DH: Nineteen forty-eight, there were already Puerto Ricans here. (laughter) JJ: On Halsted and Armitage, okay. (inaudible) 4 �DH: Yeah, right. So that whole area was there. Then my uncles settled in -- and they came in the ’50s, and we were -- I think my family was about the last one to come in into Chicago and that was in ’55. So there was a big family. [00:08:00] My grandmother had like, I don’t know, 10 kids because at that time, you had big families. My friend, [George Perez?], he has 17 brothers and sisters ’cause they were big families. (laughs) JJ: Where did he live? DH: He lived right next door to me. (laughs) JJ: (inaudible) apartments. DH: Right. And his apartment was bigger because they had to hold 17 people in there. So somehow or other there was a sense of that community. And the church was around, the Catholic church was around. We weren’t Catholic, we went to the Protestant church. JJ: What denomination? DH: I think it was Methodist. JJ: Methodist? DH: Yeah, Methodist ’cause they were doing a lot of outreach work and all of that. JJ: (inaudible). DH: So we were pretty active in that in those [00:09:00] -- we were like -- JJ: You were pretty active? What do you mean active? DH: The church, at that time, was changing because the neighborhood -- it used to be like there was a lot of Germans and Italians around there, and some African Americans, but not too much. I think it was probably the main ethnics which had 5 �German, Irish, and Italians, you know? Italiano. And so they were in the process of being moved out or moving out. And so -JJ: Was it a natural movement out or they decided to move out? DH: They were already moving out of the city, basically. They had improved their lot. I’m quite sure that they went through a lot of stuff, too, but they were already [00:10:00] in a place where they could do that, they could afford to move out. They were the ones that owned some of the stores around there. So they were moving out to the burbs, or starting to move out to the burbs, because the suburban explosion was happening. So some of them moved out there. The church that we started going to, we were the first of the Latino families to come in. JJ: You remember where that was at? DH: I can’t remember. JJ: ’Cause I know they had some Methodist on Larrabee and something. DH: It was around Larrabee. The Ideal Theatre was around there. The Ideal Theater was -- JJ: I remember (inaudible). Close to (inaudible). DH: Yeah. So that whole area was, of course, like that, you know? Yeah, so that’s what happened. [00:11:00] The churches were changing because the Latino families were coming in and all that. That’s what was going on. So the services started being in Spanish and all that. JJ: In the Methodist and the Catholic? 6 �DH: Yeah, the Catholic, too. Yeah, the Catholic, too. And you could see that because of the other -- as I said, the other ethnics were moving out. So that population in the churches was changing. But that became our social thing. JJ: What do you mean? What kind (inaudible)? DH: Well, that’s where a lot of families, that’s where they met. There wasn’t any place for them to go. My family and a lot of the families just worked, and they were tired all day, and then they would go to services at night or whatever was going on in the church. They had dinners and all that. But the churches were also helping us because we were poor. We were the poor people. [00:12:00] I remember during Christmas that I would get Christmas packages, and it didn’t have my name on it, it would just say, “Boy, 9.” “Girl, 12.” “Oh, I’m boy.” I remember that real vividly. Then they would come to me later, they were all, “These were donated by the richer parishioners.” (laughs) So that’s what I grew up with, all these things. We were poor and all that, pero como Puerto Rican there was a sense of tightness of community that was really going on. I’ll give you an example. When somebody died, everybody would chip in for the funeral expenses. For the holidays and all of that, everybody would have these big parties, and we even [00:13:00] cooked a pig in the bathtub. (laughter) We didn’t know. I remember a lot of my uncles drinking all this Pabst Blue Ribbon beer. All the adults drank Pabst Blue Ribbon beer. When they started making a little money, they would buy a new car every year that they could -- Studebakers. That’s what they had in those days. And I went to school. My older brother went to Waller High School which is now called Lincoln Park High School, it’s a real 7 �fancy school now. And I went Arnold School which was a little grammar school right next door. JJ: How was Arnold at that time? What do you remember of Arnold? DH: Arnold and [LaSalle?]? JJ: [00:14:00] And LaSalle School you went to? DH: Yeah, LaSalle School. At that time, when I was going in there, it was kind of diverse. You still had the German kids, and the Italian, and the Irish, and all that. You had those, and it wasn’t too bad. Although there was tension, you know -- I ran a lot, I got chased a lot. (laughter) If you went by the Italian neighborhood, forget it. You know you’re going to get your ass kicked or you know that you were gonna to get chased, so I knew how to run and I knew -- you know, we learned what our boundaries were, you know what I’m saying? We knew that if you went this way, it might be dangerous, so you had to be careful which way you crossed and all of that. JJ: And this is when you were living near the park? DH: By the park, right. JJ: [00:15:00] Was there white gangs or just white youth? DH: Yeah, white gangs. JJ: They were chasing the Latinos? DH: Right because the thing about us is that -- JJ: And you weren’t in a gang at that time? DH: No. JJ: You were just Puerto Rican, and they were just chasing you. 8 �DH: They were just chasing us. Right. There wasn’t a gang at that time. The gangs came later on, and it was kind of, I think, for protection. It was really protecting ourselves and all of that. We were getting chased a lot. Part of the thing was the racism that existed. The ethnics and all that, like I said, the Irish, the Italians, and the Germans, and whatever -- and the Italians were the ones that would first called spic. It wasn’t us, [00:16:00] but we inherited that word. These were lightskinned Europeans most of them, but the Italians were a little darker, and it took them a long time to get accepted. But when we came, we had this African Caribbean look to us and all that, and they didn’t know what the hell to make of us because we were darker-skinned and so forth, and really mixed, it confused the hell of out of them ’cause some of us were real light-skinned. Like I got cousins that were red-haired and freckled face, and I have cousins that had really (Spanish) kinky hair like I had and all that. So that’s when we were introduced to racism and all that. [00:17:00] I couldn’t get a haircut at a regular barber shop because they said, “We don’t do your type of hair.” I remember that. So we had to go and get our hair cut by [Don Benjamin?] who was our community barber shop. He didn’t have a license, but he did it in his basement or whatever -- in the back, somewhat of a garage. We learned to survive with that. That was our sense of neighborhood. The little stores, and there was [Vicente’s?] store which was really like a bodega, he was one of the first ones to own a store. JJ: Do you know where that was located or no? 9 �DH: That was around Larrabee. Larrabee and Webster. Webster and Lincoln and Larrabee, right there. That whole area was -- it’s where we lived. Some of my uncles moved further [00:18:00] west. JJ: When did they start moving west? DH: About a couple of years later. JJ: Fifty-seven? DH: Yeah, ’57 and all that. But they had been here already, so they were making a little bit more money, so they were able to afford -- what we did was we moved to 626 West Webster. That’s by what they call Oz Park now. And that was all Puerto Ricans around there. It used to be a Swedish neighborhood ’cause they still had the Swedish hall or whatever it was. JJ: When you say all Puerto Rican, 60 percent? DH: I would say about 70 percent. Again, families, big families, and we all kind of knew each other. I’ll give you an example. A few of my aunts, we all lived in the same -- there was a house here -- [00:19:00] because we were able to afford a little bit more -- and it was these old wooden houses. So they were bigger and all that. So we took up about three or four of those houses with just my family -cousins, and uncles, and all that -- and friends like George Perez and all that. And a couple of friends who were -- I had a friend whose name was [Randy, yeah?], he was German. And he had blond hair, blue eyes, and he was a good kid. His family accepted what was going on and all that. So it wasn’t total -- you know, just being alienated by everybody. But we were all basically in the same boat. It was like a class thing at that time, you know? Struggling to make it 10 �better and so forth. So this was on Webster Street, 626 West Webster, [00:20:00] and my grandmother still lived on Halsted. She lived there all of her life, Halsted and Armitage, in that same building. She lived there from ’48 until, I don’t know, sixty-something when she went back to Puerto Rico. JJ: What was her name? DH: Her name was Juana, [Tonya?] Juana everybody called her. And she liked to have a shot of rum every morning, and she smoked a cigar -- handmade cigar from -- they used to bring them in and [Don Filomeno?] used to make them [right there?]. Illegally, but -- JJ: Did they make cigars in Cidra? Was that a tobacco area? DH: Yeah, Cidra, my hometown. I remember some of the things that were in Cidra. And [Don Filomeno?] was the guy who made the cigars. And he lived right next door, and he had this little -- ’cause in my hometown, there were three things [00:21:00] that were around there in terms of agriculture: sugar cane, tobacco, and -- what’s the last one? Coffee. Coffee, they used to grow coffee. Those were the three main products that were coming out of Cidra at that time. JJ: Did people own farms there or did they work on the farms? DH: My grandfather and a lot of my family, when they were in Puerto Rico, they were agriculture. My dad worked in the cane fields and all that. He was a truck driver, he would bring in the cane and all that. But what happened was that the factories basically took over everything, so everything got industrialized, so there were no jobs for people that had an agricultural background. It was changing. I 11 �think that was when [00:22:00] Operation Bootstrap came in where the factories JJ: The ’40s. DH: Right, yeah. Well, the factories came in, and they were tax-free for seven years or whatever, and so they industrialized everything including (inaudible) aspect of it. Where my uncles and my family used to have little cane fields or growing coffee and all of that, these were taken over by the big corporations, and so then you had to work for them. So there were no jobs. It got harder and harder. And the cities didn’t have any jobs. Everything was being industrialized. So that’s why there was this big migration to Chicago -- specifically Chicago -- and they were encouraging the workers here -- the factory owners here and everybody was encouraging for Puerto Ricans to come over here. I mean there were ads in Puerto Rico, [00:23:00] in [el periódico?], in the newspapers in Puerto Rico talking about that they would pay your fare over here, set you up in an apartment and all of that. And those apartments that were in the ads, they looked really nice, but when we came here, (laughter) man, they didn’t look so good. But it was being encouraged because they had a lot of unskilled labor jobs at that time, what they called. And these were dangerous jobs. I had two of my uncles whose fingers were cut off. So you see a lot of old Puerto Ricans missing one finger and you know that they worked for these small factories and all that. Stewart-Warner was a big employer. This place right here, where I live now which is a loft space, these are old factories. Two of my uncles worked here. (laughs) 12 �JJ: What is the name of this factory? DH: I forgot what the name of it was. [00:24:00] Hein something -- or Hendrickson. All of these things that you see are called loft spaces today are really old factories. That’s how small they were, but a lot of Puerto Ricans worked in these places. JJ: You said there were like poetry people, or art -- culture people. DH: What we did is we bought three factories, old factories, these. There’s three of them in this complex, and we renovated them. Every one us, and it’s only artists. What we did is every one of us, we chipped in. This was around 10 years ago. We chipped in $3,000 each, and we bought them because we got tired -- not only as a Puerto Rican being moved out and gentrified, but as an artist, the same thing. [00:25:00] Artists go where it’s cheap, where the rent is cheap and all that, and then what follows is we make it pretty or attractive, and we do shows and that attracts, and boom, before you know it, we get moved out because the realty people come and that’s a prime area right now. I saw this happen in Old Town when we were there. I saw artists moving in and all that, and I saw a little theater space going up there called Second City. (laughs) I saw the storefront. I used to get coffee for those guys, they would send me to go get coffee for them. And so I saw that, and a few years later, boom. Got commercialized. And everybody, including the artists, got moved out. So not only did I get moved out as a Puerto Rican, low-income and all that, but I got moved out also as an artist. So this place here is a result of gentrification. [00:26:00] What they call Wicker Park now 13 �on Milwaukee and Damen North Avenue, that used to be artists a few years ago, and then it got commercialized because -JJ: Wasn’t that also a Puerto Rican community, too? DH: Yeah, before that, it used to be a Puerto Rican community. The whole thing around here was Puerto Ricans. Again, a few of my cousins lived over there on Damen North and all that. And so I remember my friends, [Eddie?], (inaudible), and some of them, we all grew up there, they all grew up around there. So they got moved out. At first, they were living well with the artists who could afford it in the little storefront. The artists were encouraged to move over there. That was a real conscious thing done by the realty people, bring in the artists. Then in a few years, boom. It got gentrified. You go over there now, you can’t touch that area. [00:27:00] You cannot touch it rent-wise. So we got moved out not only as Puerto Ricans, but as artists, also. That’s been the history of artists. We move into a neighborhood, and then we get commercialized out and gentrified. We got this building here with the idea that we were not going to get moved out again. So we all chipped in, bought the building, and we got the city to subsidize us. Our argument was that we are low-income to moderate-income people and therefore we should get subsidized, and they did. They subsidized the hell out of it. So we bought the building, we prettied it up, Mayor Daley came by, at that time, and he loved it. [00:28:00] We were a case study. (laughs) But here’s the idea. We all own our own units, and they’re beautiful. We had an architect come in and all that. We all own our own units, and we got them cheap. But the thing is we can’t sell at the market price. In other words, we can’t buy here and then 14 �make a killing and then -- sell it and make a killing on it. We can only sell a little bit more for the improvements -- whatever improvements we got, not to make a lot of money. And if we sell, we have to sell it to another artist or a family that’s low to moderate income. That way we don’t we get gentrified. That way we’re not going to have a lot of rich realty people coming here and trying to buy us out. JJ: So that concept came because when you were younger you were also [00:29:00] involved in organizing, too, with -- what was the name of the organization that you had? DH: The name of the organization that I had was called La Gente which means The People. And this is when I was younger. JJ: They were located where? DH: They were on Halsted and Roscoe. Halsted and Roscoe Street just a little north of Lincoln Park area. Just a little north of there. Lincoln Park was around Halsted and Armitage, Halsted and Lincoln Avenue, that whole area. We were just a little north of there. But they called it Lakeview area. But the same thing, that whole area was being gentrified. JJ: What was that area like in terms of population? Were there a lot of Puerto Ricans there, too? DH: Yeah. When we got moved out of Old Town and that whole area around there, some of us went west as far as Humboldt Park. [00:30:00] Some of us went north in the Lakeview and Uptown area, and that’s where we went to, we moved to the Lakeview area right around Belmont, Halsted. Yeah, that’s basically kind of like the dividing line that I remember. So from there -- 15 �JJ: Clark Street is also there, too. DH: Right. Clark Street. JJ: You were following Clark. DH: Right. Going up north on Clark Street. Thank God we didn’t go east because now we’d be at the lake drowned by now. (laughter) So that’s what happened. And it was a pattern -- boom, boom, boom, boom. We kept getting moved out. But part of the reason was -- one thing was that some of the adults, some of our parents and all that, always had the idea of going back to Puerto Rico. They were going to make money here and move back. [00:31:00] Twenty years in, they’re still waiting, (laughter) and they got stuck here. So they didn’t really invest in terms of buying. So they were at the mercy of these landlords and realty, and that’s why we kept moving around. That’s why I went to one, two, three, about four different schools because one apartment, the rent would go up and we had to move out again, you know, keep going. So that was the issue. So when I was living around Halsted and Roscoe in the Lakeview area, there was -- this was ’60s, so I learned -- Saul Alinksy, the organizer, he had a lot of influence on a lot of us. And so I learned how to organize. A whole bunch of us young people learned how to organize and how to create tenant’s unions to help our people and the people in that area, [00:32:00] meaning that hold back the rent because a slum lord didn’t fix the pipes, or didn’t give us heat in the winter because we couldn’t afford the rent that month or whatever, so they would cut off the heat or didn’t fix things. And again, roach and rat infested and all that. They just didn’t give a damn. And so we learned how to organize, and form tenant’s 16 �unions, and go in there and hold the rent until things got fixed. And we learned how to do the publicity game. Bring in the newspapers, bring in whatever just to shame these landlords. So it became a big issue. JJ: So La Gente was doing this? DH: Yeah. What happened was this -- I used to be a youth worker [00:33:00] at that time. I had graduated from Lake View High School and I was going to Wright City College, and so I got a part-time job as a youth worker, and I worked for Jane Addams Center. So I was supposed to work with the gangs. At that time, the gangs were like the Eagles, the Latin Eagles and all that. In that area, there was the Aristocrats which was the last stronghold of the Irish. (laughter) And so I used to do that. And so with the Latin Eagles and all that. And we really did a great job at keeping things cool and all that because we’re close to them, we’re from the streets. We knew how to identify with them and they trusted us and that was the thing. But a lot of changes were going on. These were the ’60s, so things were getting politicized more. [00:34:00] People’s consciousness was being raised. And so south of us in the Lincoln Park area, there’s a group called the Young Lords. They started an organization, they started organizing there, and that influenced us. A little further up north, the same thing. It was trickling up. Again, the sense of community. JJ: What sort of things influenced the -- DH: The way that they were working with the community, the way that they were organizing. As a model, I think they used the Black Panther Party and all of that. And in terms of setting up free food pantries, the free breakfast programs and all 17 �of that, these were models that we also used. Advocating for poor people in the welfare office, we learned how to do that from the Young Lords. [00:35:00] We learned the people at the welfare office, they have to be there all day, so we would go over there with pots of rice and beans and feed the people (laughter) and advocate for the welfare people because they were -- the people on welfare that were there because these welfare offices, they were abusive. They made everybody that needed money or needed help, they made them feel bad. They made them wait all day there, and shame them. And these workers, they just treated them bad, and so that’s why. And at the same time, we learned that you could form unions, organize for the welfare recipients. So the welfare recipients started learning [00:36:00] all of that. They became advocates. And so that’s what we were doing. Doing tenant’s unions, forming tenant’s unions around there. Basically the same thing because, again, this community organizing became a real thing for me. JJ: Who were some of the people that were working with you at that time? What were some of their names? I remember [Americo?] or something like that. Was it -- DH: Americo. Americo Rodriguez was there. (inaudible) Ramirez was there. [Elba?] -- I forgot her last name. There was a whole bunch of us. A couple of priests, Father [Lizek?] and I forgot the other one. They were pretty radical. And so they all worked with us. [Sally Contreras?] was another one. She took on the telephone [00:37:00] company. JJ: What was that? What did she do? 18 �DH: Well, what she did is that they weren’t hiring enough Latinos, Puerto Ricans in the telephone company. So she did some research and found out that a lot of Puerto Ricans were making long distance phone calls all the way to Puerto Rico and that they were making money off of us. So she threatened them with boycott. They started saying, “If you don’t hire more people, we’re going to boycott you.” And I’ll be damned if it didn’t work. And she brought a whole group of people. JJ: Sally Contreras? DH: Sally Contreras. She brought a whole bunch of people to the telephone company and said, “If you don’t hire us, more Latinos, more Puerto Ricans, we will boycott.” And that was a threat, and it worked. It really worked. More Latinos started [00:38:00] being hired and all that. JJ: Did you work with any other groups in Lakeview? DH: What happened with me was that I was working with the Eagles. And the police thought that I was teaching them -- well, I was -- but what happened was that the Civil Liberties Union, they had a little booklet about your rights. And at the playground, the Eagles and some of the other street clubs, I gave them copies of this, little manuals on learning their rights if they were arrested and all that. And I’ll be damned, they picked it up. That’s what was going on. JJ: So if they were arrested not to say anything and -- DH: Right. Say, “Why are you arresting me?” And they would ask why. And the police didn’t like this. So they thought that I was some kind of a radical. So they set it up so that I [00:39:00] would get beaten get up by them. They wanted to kill 19 �me. They set it up, they made an arrest and all of that the night I went out there to see what I could do. Before I know it, I was surrounded by police. JJ: You were beaten up? DH: Yeah, I was beaten up, they were trying to open my hand and put a gun in it. I knew what time what was. That was a [drop?] gun, and one of them was gonna do me fatal (laughs) injury. But I didn’t open. But after that, I was so upset that I quit. I quit working and I just became an organizer. So the Latin Eagles became the Latin Eagle Organization. Again, using the Young Lords as an example. And it was called LEO, but then we changed our name to La Gente because we wanted to like -- that whole neighborhood was -- although it was primarily Puerto Rican, it also had some African American and some poor white people that lived in that area. [00:40:00] Because just north of us was Uptown, and there was a lot of poor white up there. Southern Appalachians, they used to work the mines and now were living up there. And it was pretty bad. So we changed our name to be inclusive of everybody in that neighborhood. It represented what we had. So it was called La Gente, and it was -- the model that we used was the model that the Young Lords had set up just south of us. And the same issues -- getting moved out, being gentrified. The same problems. So we set that up. And if you look at it, at Lincoln Park, you had the Young Lords, the Lakeview area had La Gente, and then north of us was the Young Patriots. So that whole area around there was influenced by the Young Lords [00:41:00] in terms of what was going on. And in turn, I think it was the Black Panther Party and some of the other groups that influenced all of us. So we were learning from the Civil Rights 20 �Movement, everything that was going on at that time. So our consciousness was raised, and so that’s what came about. That’s what came about. So that’s where La Gente came into being. And we organized, we did, like I said, free pantry which is now still in existence, it’s called the Lake View Free Food Pantry. It’s still going on. It’s still going on. So some things lasted. So that was the dynamics that were happening at that time. JJ: So there was some connection not only in the -- in terms of the ideology, but I mean there was [00:42:00] actually good communication with the Young Lords at the time and vice versa? DH: Oh, yeah. We supported each other, you know? JJ: What do you remember that we did together? DH: I remember whenever the Young Lords or the Young Patriots or whatever, whenever there was a big event or a march that was going on, we would participate in that. Here’s the thing is that I had friends in the Young Lords that I grew up with who went to high school with me and who I had known since we were little. So even though they were a Young Lords member, we were still together. (laughs) So it was like -- you know what I’m saying? It was our familia. You know, [Carlos Flores?], [Alfredo?], all of these guys I’ve known. JJ: And, actually, there was no initiation or anything, you just started working. DH: Right, we just started working. We just started coming and doing it. JJ: ’Cause I remember being at a lot of your events, not just one or two. DH: Right, [00:43:00] a lot of events that we were -- JJ: But I always knew that you were also the head of La Gente. 21 �DH: Right. Yeah. JJ: So the Young Lords were political, but they were also from the street. So I mean did you actually hang out with any of the Young Lords? DH: Yeah, and I hung out -- JJ: What do you remember about that? I mean what type of people? How were they? DH: I remember we used to party a lot. (laughs) I used to hang out -- JJ: When you say party, what do you mean? DH: Partying. We would go to parties together, (Spanish) [00:43:46] and all of that stuff. JJ: Dancing? DH: Yeah, dances. JJ: (inaudible). DH: Yeah, yeah. JJ: I’m talking about this is before they became political or -- DH: Yeah. JJ: Okay, so you knew them [00:44:00] before they became political. DH: Right. JJ: How were they before they became political, the Young Lords? I mean what do you remember? You said the parties and -- DH: That’s basically about it. There were fights once in a while and all that stuff, but, again, it was because, basically, we had to defend ourselves from the white boys 22 �-- from the white gangs around there. They used to try to beat the shit out of us. So there was this territorial thing that happened. So I remember some of that -JJ: So there wasn’t that [gang of?] today? I mean there was a difference or -- I mean at that time, that was the early part of the gangs, but today -- but it was more territorial. Can you describe what that means? The difference? DH: There was a sense of protection. [00:45:00] We had to protect -- the Young Lords, what I saw, and I remember some of the other gangs and all that, even though once in a while they would fight amongst each other, it was primarily protecting themselves from some of the -- you know, Lo Italiano and some of the Irish gangs and all of that. I think it was born out of protecting ourselves and protecting the neighborhood ’cause even though -- they didn’t call themselves gangs. We used to call them street clubs. (laughs) So these street clubs weren’t just -- a lot of people were not afraid of them because these were their sons and daughters and all of that that were a part of it. And they used to hang out together so they could go to the boys’ club or whatever and feel safe. [00:46:00] But, also, they used to do things like, again, when [Donia Josefa?] died or something like that, these clubs would make a collective. They would go around and make a collection and so they could have a proper burial for her or ship her back to Puerto Rico where they would buried and all of that. So there was thing of helping out the community. They never really attacked their own community. Never. I never saw that. Never saw that. So we used to hang out, and that’s about it. Just hang out and talk about what was going on. 23 �JJ: Do you remember there was a big incident that happened and it was about a week long. [00:47:00] It was on Halsted near Belmont by California Terrace. There was a place called -- DH: Oh, yeah. JJ: What do you remember about that? DH: I remember there was -- JJ: What was that about? DH: I had two friends that lived in that. JJ: What year was that around? Basically it was like sixty -- DH: Sixty-five maybe. Yeah, around ’65, ’66. JJ: This was at California Terrace by Barry. DH: By Barry, right over there. Right. JJ: Was that Lincoln or Clark? DH: Halsted. It was Halsted, Barry, and Clark. California Terrace. A lot of Puerto Ricans lived there, and that was a slum. I mean really bad. My friend, [Jimmy Morales?], lived there. What happened is that it got -- it got so bad that I think it was Father Lizek and maybe [Father Charlie?], [00:48:00] real activists -- and a lot of Puerto Ricans there went to their church which was -- I forgot the name of that church on Wellington. Anyway -- JJ: (inaudible). DH: Yeah, right. And so they organized the people there -- JJ: But there was an incident. I believe the Aristocrats had to jump somebody from there or -- were you involved? 24 �DH: No. JJ: I know that a lot of people from Halsted & Dickens and the Eagles -- DH: Oh, yeah. Yeah, right. Eagles. JJ: -- came here to fight with the Aristocrats. DH: The Outcast Angels. (laughs) JJ: Yeah, the Angels. DH: Well, they used to be called the Angels. JJ: They had a whole week of -- gang-banging for a whole week. DH: Yeah. JJ: (inaudible). DH: Yeah, against the Aristocrats. JJ: Were you involved? Were you a part? DH: Oh, yeah. Yeah. JJ: What do you remember of that, of that era? ’Cause other people have mentioned that, also. DH: What I remember is that we were really -- I was really pissed off [00:49:00] at what happened. And Jimmy Morales and some of the other people, we wanted to exact some vengeance on what happened because they really -- I think what they did is they beat up a kid or tried to rape one -- I think they tried to rape one of the girls. What was her name? I can’t remember her name. I want to say [Ava?]. But they really roughed her up pretty bad. So that’s what did it. That’s what lit the fuel. And so the Eagles, Outcast Angels -- who else was there? JJ: I know Halsted & Dickens, all the different gangs -- clubs, all the different clubs. 25 �DH: Yeah, clubs, all the clubs around there. JJ: And Halsted & Dickens came up there. There were two or three hundred people out there (laughs) for a week. For a whole week. DH: For a whole week, yeah. And driving around. They used to drive [00:50:00] around looking for the -- and I think that was about the last -- that’s what really did the Aristocrats in. I think they were never powerful (laughs) after that. They lost. So it was a statement that was being made. So the Aristocrats, they understood what was going on, so they chilled out. After that, they were no longer that powerful. But I remember that. The thing I’m talking about is in California Terrace -- there’s two. A few years later -- yeah, it was a few years later. You know, that place was so bad that they organized, and they -everybody there, all the tenants, they organized and they held their rent back in escrow. And then they had an opening, [00:51:00] a house -- what do you call that? A house-warming party or whatever, and they invited the press, the invited the public to come and see what it was really like in there. And they had in little baggies or something, they had a cockroach, a dead mouse in there, and they were giving it to people just to show how bad it was. And it worked. It worked. The city got on their case over there, the inspectors came and really -- because the inspectors were on the take. So, of course, all these slum lords, they could just pay off and nothing would be done about it. JJ: So what do you mean on the take? I mean inspectors. DH: The take means that a lot of inspectors, they’re supposed to come in and inspect, and if they see things that are bad or wrong, they’re supposed to report it back to 26 �the city and force the landlord to make repairs, basically to improve the building. And a lot of them [00:52:00] were on the take, that means that they were bribed. That means that the landlords, once a month or whatever, he would pay them off. So much was set aside just to pay off the inspectors not to come in there. And I’m talking about electrical work, I’m talking about just things that really needed to be done. A lot of fires occurred in these buildings ’cause of the bad wiring that happened, and the electrical inspector and all that was supposed to come, and he would take a bribe and just leave it as is and say everything’s perfect. So that’s what happened. JJ: What else do you think we should add to the interview that we haven’t touched upon? I know we didn’t go into other events that you participated in. DH: So much to say. One of the things I want to say is [00:53:00] that at that time -all of us were young, we were the ones who were really leading a lot of this stuff, and organizing, and doing really great stuff not just in our community, but in terms of nationwide. The anti-war movement, that influenced us. The hippies, (laughs) the Yippies, the Youth International Party -- all of these things. The Black Panther Party, all of the -- SDS, all of these. We were all basically together on all of this. So that’s what I remember. It’s all connected. This is not an isolated factor, this was going on nationwide, [00:54:00] and so that influenced us. One of the things, also, that happened was that I’m a poet, I’ve been a poet since I was 11 years old. And so me and other artists, we organized. Got Gamaliel Ramírez, some musicians, artists, and all that, we started doing a lot of things together. And out of that outcome we created El Taller which means The 27 �Workshop. And what we did is that all of us artists got together and formed this organization to deal with community, and we recruited a lot of kids, and we work primarily with kids, to come and help us do art. So the graffiti that was being painted up there by some of the kids on the street, some of the gang bangers if you want to call them, some of them really have talent. (laughs) [00:55:00] So Gamaliel and other artists took them in and showed them how to do murals. So out of that graffiti experience came these beautiful murals that are out there today, you see? So we had an influence to a lot of these kids. Some of them are really talented. They knew how to play bongo, and congas, and music and all that. So we steered them that way, and it worked. It worked. I was part of the whole cultural movement that we created. JJ: And on that same topic (inaudible) campaign, the aldermanic campaign. You did a thing with Bob Gibson or -- do you recall that? DH: Yeah. That’s when Cha-Cha Jiménez was running for alderman. (laughter) JJ: Do you remember any of those verses or anything? DH: And together. And together we can make it. [00:56:00] Turn around and we shape it. That’s how I remember that. That was a great song that Bob Gibson and I wrote together for -- JJ: For the aldermanic campaign. DH: -- for the aldermanic campaign of Cha-Cha Jiménez and the Young Lords. JJ: Bob Gibson is a folk singer and (inaudible). DH: Bob Gibson was really well -- I mean he made it big at one time. He was the ultimate folk singer. 28 �JJ: Well, you’re well-known, too, (inaudible). (laughter) So you did a few things like this, some events, in terms of supporting the Young Lords through the years. DH: In ’71, I published my first book. So then unbeknownst to me, I became the first Latino poet to be published in the state of Illinois. So that’s been an honor that I created, but I didn’t know that at that time. [00:57:00] In terms of the arts and the cultural aspect of it, it’s been a movement. It’s been a part of the movement for a long time. I’m part of that movement that was influenced by the Young Lords. I was influenced by the Black Panther Party, I was influenced by a lot of what was going on at that time. I’m a product of that. At that time, I had an afro. I’m baldheaded now, but I was 6’2” with that damn afro because I used to pick that sucker up. (laugher) I used to wear dashikis and all of that stuff. And, plus, the connection to Puerto Rico, that was important. Puerto Rico Libre, you know, tengo Puerto Rico en mi corazon. That was an influence from the Young Lords ’cause they were the ones that really brought that aspect into the Puerto Rican community here. Free Puerto Rico [00:58:00] about the colonial status of Puerto Rico and all of that, all of that was taught to us by the Young Lords. I know there are other people now that are trying to revise history and say, “Well, we’re the ones” -- no. No, it was the Young Lords. Cha-Cha Jiménez and that group over there that really raised our consciousness in terms of connecting back to our culture because we were losing it here in some ways, so we got acculturated. If it wasn’t for the Young Lords, there wouldn’t be this Puerto Rican pride that we have today that still exists. I think it was (inaudible) that wrote something about the identity crises that we suffered because when we came here everything was 29 �in terms of Black or white, but we were both. We’re multicultural, multiracial, and all of that. [00:59:00] And so the Young Lords, again, were the ones that really instigated that whole concept of being proud of who were, and learning about our culture, learning about our roots. That’s important. Really important, you know? And so that’s what rooted us together. If it wasn’t for all those lessons taught -because, see, the Young Lords were not just an organization, they became the teachers. Simple. END OF VIDEO FILE 30 � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/f830d6aab9659211fea61a0b5bd0fefe.mp4 a722e34654698b20c1842a63b07199a3 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Young Lords in Lincoln Park Collection Subject The topic of the resource Young Lords (Organization) Puerto Ricans--United States Civil Rights--United States--History Lincoln Park (Chicago, Ill.) Personal narratives Social justice Community activists--Illinois--Chicago Description An account of the resource Collection of oral history interviews and digitized materials documenting the history of the Young Lords Organization in Lincoln Park, Chicago. Interviews were conducted by Young Lords' founder, José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez, and documents were digitized from Mr. Jiménez' archives. The Young Lords in Lincoln Park collection grows out of the ongoing struggle for fair housing, self-determination, and human rights that was launched by Mr. José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez, founder of the Young Lords Movement. This project is dedicated to documenting the history of the displacement of Puerto Ricans, Mejicanos, other Latinos, and the poor from Lincoln Park, as well as the history of the Young Lords nationwide. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Jiménez, José, 1948- Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/491">Young Lords in Lincoln Park collection (RHC-65)</a> Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-04-25 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Language A language of the resource eng spa Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-65 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 2012-2017 Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Título Spanish language Title entry David Hernández vídeo entrevista y biografía Sujetos Spanish language Subject terms Young Lords (Organización) Puertorriqueños--Estados Unidos Derechos civiles--Estados Unidos--Historia Lincoln Park (Chicago, Ill.) Puertorriqueños--Relatos personales Justicia social Activistas comunitarios--Illinois--Chicago Artes, Puertorriqueños--Illinois--Chicago Renovación urbana--Illinois--Chicago Juventud--Illinois--Chicago Discriminación en la vivienda--Illinois--Chicago Derechos civiles--Estados Unidos--Historia Viviendas--Illinois--Chicago Source <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/491">Young Lords in Lincoln Park (RHC-65)</a> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-65_Hernandez_David Title A name given to the resource David Hernández video interview and transcript Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Hernández, David Description An account of the resource 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. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Jiménez, José, 1948- Subject The topic of the resource Young Lords (Organization) Puerto Ricans--United States Civil Rights--United States--History Lincoln Park (Chicago, Ill.) Puerto Ricans--Personal narratives Social justice Community activists--Illinois--Chicago Arts, Puerto Rican--Illinois--Chicago Urban renewal--Illinois--Chicago Youth--Illinois--Chicago Discrimination in housing--Illinois--Chicago Civil Rights--United States--History Housing--Illinois--Chicago Language A language of the resource eng Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2012-03-29 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/7cb3b494022c81d79fb578c0522d9879.pdf 274424eb40c72b6844ff644586b7b3b6 PDF Text Text Young Lords In Lincoln Park Interviewee: Father Donald J. Headley Interviewers: José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez Location: Grand Valley State University Special Collections Date: 8/21/2012 Biography and Description 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. The mission was an experimental parish, based on the practice of liberation theology, organized by the Archdiocese of Chicago in 1962. By 1980, when the project was terminated by the Archidiocese amidst controversy involving questions of theology and liturgy, the mission had assumed control over 53 parishes and base communities. �Transcript JOSE JIMENEZ: Father Dan Headley, if you can tell me your name, and -- DONALD HEADLEY: Yeah, sure. JJ: -- when you were born, and where. DH: Okay. I was born in Chicago on July 11, 1932. My name is Don Headley, and I’m not Irish. I am English and American Indian -- Pequot, actually -- and I am Kashub and Polish on my mother’s side. My mom’s family came over in 1903. She wasn’t born yet. And my dad came -- moved up from around Pontiac, and he fell in love with my mother, and that’s how I came into existence, so (overlapping dialogue; inaudible). JJ: Oh, Pontiac, Michigan, over by Detroit. DH: Mm-hmm. JJ: Okay. Okay. And so, you were born in the -- DH: In Chicago. JJ: And you grew up where? Where did you grow up? DH: I grew up -- I was on the Southeast Side of Chicago, near Wentworth [00:01:00] Avenue, which is Clark Street on the North Side, but I don’t remember that very much. I was too small, and -- but I actually grew up just a block south of Garfield Boulevard. Fifty-sixth Street, actually, in Winchester, where we lived in a building that my grandfather and grandmother, who were Kashub and Polish respectively, owned. So, we were on the first floor. JJ: So, was that a Polish community then, or --? 1 �DH: No. No, it was just a regular community. JJ: (inaudible). DH: [It was?] St. Basil Parish. JJ: St. Basil, okay. DH: Yeah. Now, it’s pretty much just a clinic, a health clinic. The church was torn down, and other things were changed there, but it’s right down the block from Visitation, where a lot of the people who used to be on 63rd Street -- Puerto Ricans -- still live. [Riveras?], for instance. [Cesar?] Rivera’s family is still there, I think, [00:02:00] on -- near Garfield Boulevard, in Halsted Street, actually. I was between Damen and Ashland Avenue, actually. That’s where I was raised. JJ: Now, you mentioned [La Sesenta y Tres?], 63rd Street. There was a community there at that time? DH: Where? I’m sorry. JJ: Puerto Rican -- Sixty-third Street or -- DH: Oh, 63rd. Well, I don’t think there was much of a community [right at that?] time, of Puerto Ricans, anyway. That was like -- I was there between 1932 -- JJ: Oh, ’32. (inaudible) DH: -- and nine-- they weren’t there yet. Actually, the Puerto Ricans came in because of a deal between President Roosevelt and Muñoz Marín. Any Puerto Rican that came over meant 10 dollars in the budget for Puerto Rico to do urbanization programs and stuff like that, so there was this big -- they needed people to work in the Chrysler plant, for instance, where people were building tanks for the Second World War. That’s when the Puerto Ricans really had their great influx. 2 �JJ: The Chrysler plant in [00:03:00] Detroit or --? DH: No, in Chicago. JJ: In Chicago, okay. DH: Right. JJ: And what area was it? DH: I think that was around Western Avenue somewhere. I’m not sure where -- JJ: But on the South Side? DH: -- but near the Midway Airport. JJ: [Midway?]. DH: That time, Midway was the only airport in the city. There was no O’Hare. JJ: Right. Okay, there was no O’Hare. DH: But the Puerto Ricans were living pretty much, at that time, during that particular war period -- Leo was ordained -- Father Leo Mahon -- JJ: You said the ’40s? You’re talking about in the ’40s? DH: Father Leo Mahon was ordained in 1951, and he was a Holy Cross Parish -- he went there so that he could work with the Afro-American community, and, all of a sudden, Puerto Ricans came into the rectory and said to him, “We are not recognized in this city, and -- what do we do? We don’t know anything about our religion. We don’t know anything about what we’re doing here. We have no concept of what we’re supposed to be doing.” And so, Leo went downtown to talk to the cardinal. The cardinal said, [00:04:00] “Well, do something.” JJ: Which cardinal at that time? DH: Cardinal Stritch at that time. 3 �JJ: Stritch, okay. DH: And he said, “Well, do something. It’s okay. We have to take care of all the people.” I don’t think he knew what he was saying, but Leo then got promoted into what was eventually called the Cardinal’s Committee for Spanish Speaking, and it was -- thank God it was not in the vicar general’s office for the archdiocese, nor in the chancellor’s office for the archdiocese -- JJ: Why do you say -- why do you --? DH: -- but it was backed by Catholic Charities. JJ: But why do you say that? (overlapping dialogue; inaudible)? DH: Well, because those people were -- pretty much, they worked on manipulation of power, and Catholic Charities was a little different item with Cooke at that time, who was the -- Vince Cooke was the head of it, and he raised funds for it. He was a tremendous businessman beside being a great priest -- Monsignor Cooke, Vincent Cooke -- and he had all kinds of staff there, and he made Leo part of his staff. [00:05:00] So, Leo was the executive director. Gilbert Carroll was sort of liaison between Leo and Catholic Charities. And Leo began to look for ways in which he could actually affect the Puerto Rican community, and he said, “Well, what about community organization? How is that possible? [Do we have to?] organize as a community? You have leaders, don’t you?” He said, “Oh, yeah. We have leadership, but they don’t know what to do,” which was normal. JJ: (overlapping dialogue; inaudible). DH: Yeah. They needed somebody to help. So, he went to Saul Alinsky, and Saul Alinsky was -- at that time, he had the -- I’m sorry. 4 �JJ: That’s okay. DH: Saul Alinsky had the -- course, his organization. So, he lent two people to us. Nick von Hoffman was one of the people, who is now a writer and who’s retired. He wrote for the Washington Post after he left Saul Alinsky’s organization. And Lester Hunt, who also, before, [00:06:00] I think, he was here, or just after he was here -- he was here in Chicago, working with the Puerto -- I’m not sure exactly when that happened, but he lives, now, in Chicago, Lester does, and he became a high school teacher eventually. If you want to -- it might be a good idea to talk to him. He’s a really great guy, and he lives on Randolph Street, East Randolph Street. But these people helped to form people like Juan Sosa, [Calvino?] (inaudible), José Valentín, [Julio Vides?], all these people that eventually -- Cesar Rivera, the Chevere brothers. All these people were together in this -- [where that?] really began on the Southeast Side, you know, around 63rd Street and near the parish where Father Leo was. But Leo then, eventually, took up an office. He had one office that was right on Wacker Drive, and then they moved to the [corner of?] what was the -- 1300 Wabash, [00:07:00] which was the big place, which we occupied for a while. We even put murals in there for the [Cursillo?], for the chapel, for the Cursillo, and, on the first -- primer alto, the first floor, we had other things redolent of what was the -- representative of what was the immigration flux into Chicago, not only Puerto Rican, but -- at that time, there were Mexican as well and other communities as well. Pretty much -- you know, when I think of my own passage, I was circumstantial because I used to take 5 �people down from St. Patrick’s, where I -- was my first particular assignment as an associate, and -JJ: St. Patrick’s (overlapping dialogue; inaudible)? DH: St. Patrick’s on Adams and Des Plaines. JJ: [Adams and?] -- okay. DH: And what I found there was a community that was pretty much broken people. [There were?] pimps, prostitutes, drug addicts. There were [00:08:00] drunkards, you know, but -- alcoholics, actually, and it was Skid Row, and I was sent there because, supposedly, I was being punished because I wouldn’t do something for some professor in the seminary. I guess that was why they sent me there. After five years, though, after working there for five years, they wanted me to go teach history at Quigley, and I was going to go to Quigley, when they told me that, well, Leo was going to Panama, and they wanted me to take over the Hispanic office in Chicago, which was the Cardinal’s Committee for the Spanish Speaking. That time, we were organizing the community. So, it was pretty much circumstantial, the way I got involved in all this. That’s what happens in life, you know. You sort of plan for certain things, and it goes in another direction, which is fine. I’ve been very happy in what I do. But, while I was at St. Pat’s, my acquaintance with people was really wonderful and spectacular. I learned more in the [00:09:00] five years that I was at St. Patrick’s than I had learned in twelve years in seminary [presence?], I think. The people taught me a lot, and that people who were on the edge could also put people who cared and loved and who had a lot 6 �of hope -- Puerto Ricans that were coming in, living at the [West Hotel?] -- it was -- horrible situation. JJ: The West Hotel? DH: West Hotel was -- there’s now a hotel on Madison Street, a big, you know, motor hotel. JJ: Right there on Madison? DH: Right there on Madison. Well, that -- JJ: And Des Plaines? DH: -- used to be the West Hotel, which was -- JJ: Madison and Des Plaines there? DH: -- hot and cold, [running roaches?]. That was what it was, and these people had to live in that situation. There was a women there who kept cats, and, when she died, the people went into her room to [find out?] -- she must have a lot of money, and what they found were little packages filled with cat poo, you know. That’s what they found in there. So, it’s pretty awful [in many ways?]. But the place was terrifying, and yet, these people were holding their families together and doing marvelous things with them, and they [00:10:00] would come to Eucharist on a Sunday, and they would participate in spite of the fact it was in Latin, you know, and maybe a homily in Spanish. I would try to fight my way through it. But then, besides that, I began to (inaudible) people coming together in meetings and groups, and I tried to find out where something was going on that would get people involved, get people talking to one another. And so, some of the Mexicans, some of the Puerto Ricans that were pretty much together, they 7 �came together. We would go, on one night, to what was the office at 13th and Wabash, and, at 13th and Wabash, we participated in what was the formation [meetings?], which was how to really run a dialogue in your community. How do you really sit down with neighbors and get them to really talk to one another? Now, I had some acquaintance with Spanish. I was just beginning to really use the language pretty well. [00:11:00] When I was helping out over summer, for instance, with Leo’s office, ’cause I was interested in that even then, in 1956 and ’57 -- ’56, I think, was when the first Puerto Rican parade happened. They keep talking here about it starting in the ’60s. It never did. The first night was (inaudible). JJ: [I think it was?] ’53. I saw a -- DH: [It was really?], yeah. JJ: -- photo of that (overlapping dialogue; inaudible). DH: Right, yeah. It was tremendous, yeah. JJ: (inaudible). DH: Right, (inaudible). That was where it was, and -- JJ: (inaudible). DH: -- it was just a marvelous thing, and I was involved in that, you know. I was there, and I was calling people, and talking to them on the phone, and making sure that they got their people out in the Caballeros de San Juan, which already existed, and all the Concilio de los Caballeros San Juan were involved in that thing. So, this is where I was, and I didn’t know that I was going to eventually be involved in all of this. 8 �JJ: But they were at 13th and Wabash, the Caballeros? DH: They were at 13th and Wabash. Well, the office was [00:12:00] actually, at that time, on Wacker Drive. That’s where I was making the phone calls from. JJ: By 1953, there were some Caballeros at -- DH: There Were Caballeros around somewhere, yeah. JJ: Somewhere. DH: I’m not sure where they were. Probably council number one, two, and three. JJ: [What’s this?] -- one, two -- DH: Two was like San José, St. Joseph’s, with the two Spaniard priests that were there, Spanish priests that were there. JJ: St. Joseph’s was on the West Side? DH: And council three was being founded at that time with the help of Kathrein, John Kathrein -- JJ: [Father Kathrein?]. DH: -- with the Redemptorists. Wonderful old guy, like 112 years old at the time, and he -- learning Spanish for the first time in his life in -- the age of 70, I think, he learned Spanish. He’s a great guy. But that was in the ’50s, but I’m talking about a time like -- closer to 1968. I was ordained in 1958, and that was when I went to St. Patrick’s, and that’s where I began, really, to get involved and to take people to meetings at the center, which, at that time, ’58, [00:13:00] ’60, or -- [it was?] ’59, ’60. I was already at the Cardinal’s Committee for Spanish Speaking on Wabash Avenue, 1300 Wabash. So, this was a really fascinating sort of meeting because I met, there, [Don Sierra?], who eventually became a deacon in 9 �the church here in Chicago, and, eventually, Jesús Rodríguez. Actually, the person that probably taught me most Spanish in the world was [Chuy?] Rodríguez. He was a really conflictive sort of person. He had abandoned his family for a while, living with another woman, and he had children with that woman as well. Wonderful girl. She was a great woman. Both his wives at different times were just wonderful people, but he went back to his first wife and was working with his family. He was doing his best he could. Eventually, though, he had a terrible nervous breakdown. He had had a terrible youth, where his father or grandfather would make him [00:14:00] kneel on stones and pray the rosary, and the sense of religiosity [he had?] -- so, listening to us, you know, priests that were with this whole business of the council that was gonna begin, the Second Vatican Council -- all of a sudden, he got a different image of church. Church became, for him, not so much a religious item, but an item for people’s faith so that they would be able to take steps into their own future and really form their own culture, their own traditions, their own history, and the basis of that -- live what Paul taught us about in his Letter to the Galatians, which is spectacular. He says, “Don’t you understand what the gospel is really all about? The good news of Jesus Christ. It’s that all of us, together, equally -- equally -share the life of the risen Christ. Men and women, Jews and Greeks, slaves and free.” What that means in what is evangelization is that you have to lose all sexism, all racism, and all economic [00:15:00] privilege. Now, not even the Roman Catholic Church has done that [always?]. Look at the conquests, or look at some of the -- our Protestant brothers and sisters who listen to the word, but 10 �I’m afraid, you know, they really treat women poorly, and so do we. I mean, we still have not ordained a woman in the Roman Catholic Church, which is kinds weird, I think. And, also, with racial problems, we’ve had difficulties, as everyone else has had too, and, with regard to economic privilege, well, we all like to have a dollar in our pockets, you know? And that’s the problem. If those are the things that really run our lives, then we are in real trouble. So, the idea is the gospel [is one?] -- when Gregory the Great first, in Rome, was trying to send missionaries to England, by the way, [who were my?] ancestors -- at that time, my ancestors -- not like the Maya. The Maya were building huge pyramids at that time, in that particular century, which was, like, the end of the sixth and the beginning of the seventh century. [00:16:00] He was sending missionaries there, and he said, “Don’t you dare transfer what is Roman culture there. They have their own culture. Honor that culture, but take the gospel and put it into that culture, so, then, the culture will lose its sexism, its racism, and its economic privilege.” And we’re all called by Paul, I think, in his letter [as though?] -- First Letter to the Corinthians, for instance, tells us that the real human being -- human being Adam, which is not a individual at all. He’s the whole human race. “We don’t know how to be human,” he says. It’s Jesus Christ who shows us how to be human, ’cause -- why? ’Cause he’s totally related to God and totally related to one of us. So, the idea was, coming out of the council, the Second Vatican Council, was to help people actually become totally human, to understand that [insertion?] into Christ at baptism, for instance, for the Catholics, is not a separation from the rest of the world, but it’s the way Christ relates to the rest of 11 �the world -- [00:17:00] with total justice, total love, and total compassion. So, I mean, this is the way our office was being organized. We were taking people from different communities, ethnic communities. We had to understand how this was going to work out in a whole archdiocese of Chicago sort of way. And so, by the time I got into the office, Leo went to Panama to found basic Christian community there, transformed all of Latin America with that, and we were doing the same thing in Chicago with these small meetings -JJ: It spread to other areas in Latin America? DH: Right. To get people involved in what was life, not so much -- they didn’t have to be involved so much in the [sacristy?] of the churches. That wasn’t what our interest was, but to get people to really transform the whole community in which they were living. In other words, to be present to that community. Whether they were young, whether they were old, whether they were men, whether they were women, this is what they had to really be involved in. [00:18:00] So, we tried to base their theology on that, so that wouldn’t be a religion-based theology. In other words, go back to the past. Cling to the columns of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and then you would be fine. No, it was an item of how do we create a church now, today, that’s -- with people of faith who are not afraid of the future and who will actually form their lives? All of these things have to work in the circumstances of people’s lives. By the time I took over that office, we already had in process -- we had people meeting on a Monday night and talking about scripture, and theology, and pastoral ways of acting with other people in the community. How do we get people to become what they’re supposed to 12 �become in the world? How do we get them to live their marriages totally, completely, with total love shared between two people, raising their [00:19:00] family with great appreciation and hope for their children, making sure that all their children are well educated and have an opportunity to do something with their lives in the future, not afraid of taking a step into that future, who will not lose, maybe, their whole Latino culture and language, but will also learn the languages that they need here? You know, people have to be bilingual, actually, here, and they are. The only ones that aren’t bilingual are the gringos, you know? But the Latinos certainly are. You know, even the Mexican people in my classes today are all people who are totally bilingual, and they have their kids on the street who are becoming -- they’re not so much of the Latino culture. They’re more of the McDonald culture, you know? “Let’s go get a Big Mac.” That sort of thing. But the people are changing all the time, and they’re in multiethnic settings. So, in other words, the church cannot be a [00:20:00] one-ethnicity sort of reality. It’s got to be a reality that’s going to offer itself to make the changes necessary for people today to tomorrow. This is what it has to be. And so, this is pretty much what we were working on. Course, other people had other approaches to that. José, you had the groups of young people on Division Street and North Avenue that were affecting the young people, and getting them together, and making them talk to one another. [As yet?], when you were there, the drug problem did not really hit everybody. There was some heroin in place, but crack and the other stuff, cocaine, the shoot-ups that people had to go through with sharing needles and bringing AIDS into their family and themselves, 13 �all those things did not exist yet. That didn’t happen until after I left in ’68. That pretty much was just [00:21:00] beginning at that time. It was very disturbing and very horrible, what happened to the communities after that, but that’s where the world is today, and how do we affect that kind of world? That’s another problem. But, at that particular time, we did not have that particular difficulty. I’m sorry. JJ: Going back to Jesús Rodríguez and the -- DH: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. JJ: -- Second Vatican Council -- so, you were -- DH: Oh, yeah. JJ: -- talking about that during that time. It was that period. DH: Oh, yeah. JJ: So, how did that impact him? [I mean, what did he say?]? DH: Well, José -- JJ: What was his role? What was his role in the church? DH: His role in the church was actually -- everybody wanted to be like him, like Jesús, like Chuy, because Chuy was one great, great speaker. He could move an audience, you know. Talk about somebody that [was able to?] move a mountain from one place to another and throw it into the ocean, like Jesus says in that [pretty good parable?]. That’s what Jesús, Chuy, could do. [00:22:00] Tremendous preacher at the Cursillos. He taught me how to preach. He taught me how to do everything, actually. I (inaudible) how to use the language. It was just absolutely spectacular. [Juan Cierro?] is another one. They were really great people, and you had others that had other skills, of course, like Juan Sosa 14 �had a great skill for getting people to talk to each other, and Calvino (inaudible), who had a sense of -- still has today a sense of service for people that’s absolutely excellent. José Valentín, who [they all?] accused of being [council went crazy?], he -- but he was the guy that -- he, with Julio Vides, eventually organized the youth groups around baseball, really good baseball. They had great leagues going on here. JJ: (inaudible). DH: [José?]. All those things ran -- we ran retreats in Cursillos and everything else. Jesús was the master preacher at the Cursillo, and, besides that, when Leo went to [00:23:00] Panama, we let Jesús go a couple of times over summer when we weren’t doing any Cursillos. He would go there and talk to the people there. Of course, when they listened to him speak in Panama, they said, “Oh, my God. We want to be like him,” you know? And this was a great thing. It was like the nuns that went to Panama too. We had three Maryknoll nuns that went there, and all the women wanted to be like the nuns ’cause they were absolutely -- I mean, they were absolutely wonderful with people, and all the guys wanted their wives to be like the nuns too, you know? ’Cause they were just so open, and alive, and filled with hope, and this is the thing that I think we really have to remember. No matter where you are in a parish or in a parish setting for a church, you’re not trying to get people to hang out in the sacristy, or in the building, or -- that’s not what you’re doing. Eucharist is something for us that is meant to send people out the door. The most important thing in the church is the exit [00:24:00] sign, you know? You’re supposed to be able to go out the door 15 �and go do something. If you’re not gonna do something, why are you here? Don’t come in here and tell me that you’re here because God’s gonna give you something. God doesn’t give us a lot of stuff. God’s already given us the gift of life, and our job is to turn it into the task of grace. We’re supposed to go out and share it with the people around us. So, I think this sort of thing -- Jesús got that - Chuy Rodríguez, for instance, got that idea. He also absorbed other people into his group. Like, Chuy García was a Mexican kid. He came in to eventually end up in Panama, eventually got exiled by the government at that time back to Mexico, and I don’t know where he ended up. I don’t know where he is. We never saw him again, but I know he was safe, but that’s not the point. Why did they do this? Because they were against us at that particular time in Panama. Panama became a conflictive place, but that was normal, you know. You expected [00:25:00] that to happen. JJ: I mean, what was going on in Panama? I mean, [I don’t?] -- DH: Well, eventually, in Panama, in -- I went there in 1968. About a little while after I got there, they had elections, and the president that won was eventually -- they had a coup against him. Arnulfo Arias was the president at that time, and he was elected, and then they kicked his butt out of there, and he was a guy that had really transformed Panama. He developed a social security system, a system of hospitals for social security. He developed labor unions. He had developed [at?] different times [when he was?] president, and, every time he was president, someone threw him out. The army came in and threw him out. So, they threw him out on October 12, 1968, and we, in our communities in San Miguelito in 16 �Panama -- our people organized and did a march, and we eventually told the -they [already had?] machine guns in the street against us, [00:26:00] but they did not kill us. They let us go where we were going. We were going from one parish at that time, which was [Cristo El Redentor?], to Cristo Hijo del Hombre. It was at the other end of the community. We’re just gonna march there, and we were gonna do that, and we would sing the national anthem of Panama, and that was the end of it. But they said, “Well, what do you want?” Torrijos, who was the guy in charge at that particular moment -- they called Leo and said, “What do you guys want? What do you think this is? You have no right to do this.” He said, “Oh, yes, we do. We’re not doing it. The people are doing it,” you know, and people were ready to do it. This was after several years of real organization. We had several parishes, and people were really organized to do (overlapping dialogue; inaudible). JJ: When you started, there were no parishes, or --? DH: Well, we went there. There were no -- there was one big parish called San Miguelito, but people were just coming into the area at that time. That was one thing. As soon as people come into an area, you have to be there, and that’s what we learned in Panama. You had to be there right away. I eventually ended up in Panama because [00:27:00] I couldn’t work with Cody, but before that -Cardinal Cody -- but I worked with [Meyer?] really well here while we were organizing (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) -- JJ: Why couldn’t you work with Cody? DH: Pardon? 17 �JJ: Why couldn’t you work with Cody? DH: Well, he just never accepted what we were doing. He was so intent on doing what the mayor wanted, who was one of the Daleys, [a father for?] Richard Daley -- Richard J. Daley at that time. It was not the M. Daley of the present, but he -for instance, the Puerto Rican -- the whole business of the riots that happened here 40 years ago -- a little bit more than 40 years now. Those riots were really partially provoked by the police, and the response by the young people’s community especially was terrific. I was so proud of -- JJ: It was terrific, you said? DH: Oh, I thought it was terrific, and, I mean, I was on top of a police car on Division Street, and they were gonna burn the [00:28:00] police car, and I said, “Don’t do it ’cause the guys that are egging you on are cops.” I knew the cops from Monroe Street District when I was at St. Pat’s. And they burned the car anyway, of course. Of course, I jumped off the damn car. But then, all the police were in the gangways in the neighborhood on Division Street. They came out. They’d beat up everybody on the street, you know, and we were on the street for three days, [the Hermanos en la Familia de Dios?], which was the group of people who were organizing for lay ministry in the church. Caballeros de San Juan were not always that. They were pretty much a community organization at that time. But the Hermanos, they were saying, “We want to learn something about our religion.” And so, they learned stuff on their religion through dialogue and discussion, and that’s the way they taught it to the people in their parishes. And then, at the end of each series of discussions, they would have a Cursillo, which 18 �was a retreat. Sort of tied things together. And that’s the way things were organized out of the [00:29:00] office, and I would meet with them on Monday night. We would have discussion on scripture or whatever. On Wednesday night, we’d go visit a particular parish area, and on Thursday or Friday following that Wednesday, I would go and visit the pastor there, and I would say to the pastor -- this was during Meyer’s time. Cody sort of put an end to this, and that’s why I couldn’t work with him, because we had to keep organizing people. JJ: So, he put an end to the organizing, or --? DH: What he did wasn’t in accord with what we were doing, going in and visiting the pastors afterward. Meyer backed me with the pastors, but Meyer died of a tumor in the brain. So, when he died, Cody came in. It was over, pretty much, but, when he was there, he really supported everything we were doing, and I would go in and talk to the pastor. I said, “You know, you have a lot of [Latinos here.” Pastor said?], “Well, we don’t have any Latinos here.” “Oh, really? Well, this is a list --” JJ: (overlapping dialogue; inaudible). DH: Yeah, pastors. Some of the pastors would say that. JJ: Some of the pastors. DH: I would say, “Well, this is a list of the people in your parish who are Latinos, [00:30:00] and they are going to have a Spanish Mass after July, when a new priest will come in here and be your associate, and he will do a Spanish Mass, and he knows a lot about the culture because we’re training him now.” We trained him, usually, at Dominican University for the language, and we had 19 �people coming in from Latin America and from Puerto Rico, from all over, to really train them culturally [to understand that?] -JJ: Who paid for these people to -- DH: Oh, the archdiocese. JJ: [Oh, they did?]? DH: Catholic Charities. JJ: Oh, [they did pay?]? DH: Oh, yeah. Definitely. Yeah. JJ: For them to come from Puerto Rico and Latin America? DH: Oh, yes. Definitely. Yeah. All kinds of wonderful people came in, and I had them coming in all the time. JJ: So, the archdiocese was supporting it, but there was some resistance? DH: Right. Well, there was probably some resistance, and, when Cody came in, he just stopped it all. But what was really bad was the fact that he stopped this business of really changing the parish structure so that the pastor would have to recognize [people that were?] -- we would invite the -- I wasn’t abusive to the pastors. I would just say that, “You know, you are welcome [00:31:00] [in any of? these homes. Next Tuesday night, one of the Hermanos is gonna be there, and they’re gonna have a discussion on scripture and on what it is to be a parish so they can support the parish and be with you in the parish, and you’re welcome to go to that home and have a cup of tea with them, (Spanish) [00:31:18].” We said, “You can do that if you want to, so go and do this, you know. You’re welcome to do it.” At the same time, there’s all kinds of other things happening in 20 �the community, I think. You had your guys, the Young Lords. They were organizing, and they were doing all kinds of wonderful -- I think they were doing wonderful things, and -JJ: (inaudible). DH: No, I think so because they were getting young people organized. We had another aspect of that. [We’re out on the?] baseball games and the retreats that we had at [Liberty Bell?]. We had a whole series. We had Liberty Bell retreats every single summer. JJ: [Who was?] (inaudible)? DH: There was a center there that we could use. It was not a [00:32:00] luxurious place, but it was a good place, and we had room for people, and we would have - Las Hijas de María would go out, and then we would have the kids go out, the young boys go out, the guys go out for the different levels of baseball. Everybody would have a retreat every single summer, and we would run a couple of meetings for older people out there. JJ: You mean each group, each parish? DH: They would come from the parishes, but the kids were -- JJ: [And the councils?] (inaudible) -- DH: The kids were organized as baseball, so they crossed parish lines ’cause they built their teams, you know. They wanted people who could hit and people who could pitch. That’s what they wanted. So, they would have cross-parish stuff, and, in a certain sense, what we were doing was -- we weren’t building just the parishes. We were building the archdiocese of Chicago with regard to Latinos, 21 �and this is what we wanted to do. We wanted to be aware of one another. So, this was kind of [00:33:00] important, really important at that time. That was pretty much stopped when Cody came in. And so, people were struggling with stuff, and I was just disappointed and discouraged, and I decided, well, maybe I can do some good in Panama, so I asked Leo if they needed something, and he said, “Oh, yeah. We need somebody for scripture and for formation here, and you can also be in charge of one of the parishes. That would be fine. You know, we need somebody.” So, he asked for me, and I asked to go, so that was the way it was. But it was good, and things changed then. JJ: You mentioned there was a difference between the Caballeros [as an?] organization and the Hermanos. DH: Mm-hmm. Oh, yeah. JJ: (inaudible). DH: Well, some of the members of the Caballeros came in. You know, people like [Antonio Villalobos?], who was from council number eight. We had people like -well, you had other people from other [ones of?] the councils would come in, and they would say, “You know, [00:34:00] our wives go to church, but we don’t know anything about our religion. What is it all about? Can we talk about that?” This was way early, when Leo was still in charge of the office -- JJ: (inaudible). DH: -- before he went to Panama in 1963. He left for Panama in 1963. He got there in February of 1963, but he was here from nineteen fifty-- like, two, three, four, until 1962 and pretty much into 1963. So, at that time, you know, this is where 22 �they came. The Caballeros de San Juan would come down for meetings, and some of these guys took Leo aside, said, “We need some help.” So, people like [Juan Sierra?] helped with that. So did Chuy Rodríguez, tremendously so, and, you know, all these people who were involved in the Hermanos Cheos from Puerto Rico, they were the heart of the whole matter. The Hermanos Cheos were one of the finest groups in all of Puerto Rico. They really saved the islands -- for whatever’s left of the Catholic Church there, [00:35:00] they’re the ones that saved it. [They were?] -JJ: I heard about them. So, what were they? I mean -- DH: The Hermanos Cheos? JJ: Yeah, [I’ve heard about them?]. DH: Well, they were a group of guys, lay people. When the priest sort of left and went back to Spain -- a lot of them left. They went back to Spain, where they came from, and there weren’t that many Puerto Rican priests around. And so, these guys got together and said, “We have to save this island for our culture, and our Puerto Rican heritage, and our church, our religion, and all the [stuff?] that we are,” because what happened was the United States government, the president at that time, sent all kinds of missionaries from the Protestant groups into Puerto Rico to break up the culture and the community and take away what people were as Catholics. They didn’t want people to be Catholic. So, they sent that here. [Actually what happened?]. This was in the nineteenth century when the -- JJ: These were sent from -- DH: -- war with Spain was over, and that’s what happened. 23 �JJ: Sent from the United States after the war against Spain? DH: After the war with Spain, yeah. JJ: [00:36:00] (inaudible). DH: After the war with Spain, where they took over the island. And so, Puerto Rico’s very small. You know, it’s built like an ice cream cone, actually. It’s got a very small base and a very large top, and Aibonito’s at the very top of it, but that’s [what it is?], you know, and it’s very small, but it’s the gate to the Antilles. It’s the gate of everything. It’s out there, in the Atlantic Ocean, in the Caribbean, and it’s really -- that’s why the United States wanted [the thing?], and they put their naval bases there and everything. So, it was really kind of an important island for the United States, but it was also important for the people that lived there, and these guys were trying to save what was their faith and their religion. So, people like Jesús Rodríguez and Juan Sierra descended from that group that we call the Hermanos Cheos. They went through the island, you know, praying the rosary, and doing meditations on the rosary, and all these kinds of stuff, really invoking Mary more [00:37:00] than anything else, and they went from place to place, town to town. They established things, like people have the great visits of Christmastime, when they go from town to town with music. JJ: Las Parrandas. DJ: Las Parrandas, yeah. Those are absolutely marvelous things from the culture, and it’s much richer than just saying they’re Catholic. It’s a whole cultural reality that is so beautiful and so wonderful, and watching people do it, it’s just spectacular. It’s just like -- or waking up on the beach in the Fiesta of San Juan 24 �or on Tres Reyes, [Para los Reyes?]. All that stuff is really cultural, and it may have come from the Spaniards, but it’s more than just Spanish. It’s become a cultural inheritance, and this is where people are. JJ: And so, when the development of the Caballeros -- DH: Yeah. JJ: Where did the idea come from? I see a little bit came from [00:38:00] (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) -- DH: It came, pretty much, from Saul Alinsky’s group. JJ: Oh, can you explain that? DH: Pretty much from that. In other words, you have to organize, and you have to develop leadership. In other words, there is always an outside agitator. So, Leo was kind of like the outside agitator, you know, and so was Nick von Hoffman. So was Lester Hunt. But, eventually, the leadership arose in the Puerto Rican community with Juan Sosa, with Calvino (inaudible), with Cesar Rivera, all those people who took on leadership in the different councils. JJ: [How?] -- DH: I think there eventually were 13 councils. JJ: So, did the Cardinal’s Committee reach out to them, or did they reach out? DH: Right -- no. Well, both. Both ways. It was a two-way street, and people had their meetings in their own area. They had to have a chaplain with them. [If they?] had a chaplain, they were very much organized on the basis of the parish in which they were living. Pretty much that. And so -- JJ: They had to have a -- 25 �DH: [00:39:00] Yeah. JJ: -- chaplain to -- DH: Right. JJ: -- be accepted. DH: Right. Right. JJ: I mean -- DH: They were accepted in the parish, yeah. JJ: They were accepted [in the parish?]. DH: Oh, definitely, yeah. But the whole business of lay ministry developed out of these guys. JJ: [Did the?] (inaudible)? DH: Well, eventually, the diaconate came out of it. There were a lot of guys ready for the diaconate when I left for Panama. I asked Cody -- JJ: What does that mean? DH: -- if I could have those guys ordained. JJ: I don’t understand that. What does that mean? How does that --? DH: Oh, okay. Sure. Yeah. Well, lay ministry is one thing. That means laypeople -men, women -- they are in charge of different ministries in a parish, different ways of approaching people, working with them, helping them, being a blessing for them, taking care of the catechesis -- the catechetics that you have to teach children for their participation in sacraments or in life of the parish, the organization of young people. There should be some adults involved in that, as well as the young people organizing things themselves. So, you have all these 26 �different ministries that appear. When I was at [00:40:00] Mercy, for instance, for 20 years after I came back from Panama, we developed -- there must be 3,000 ministers there of different levels of doing things, and working with life, and doing retreats, and, by the time I was three years in the parish, I never gave a retreat at Our Lady of Mercy, but the people gave the retreats. I would just give an introduction to the retreat, and they were in charge of the whole thing. They did all the training for baptism for parishes -- for families. They trained the couples who were -- so that they could train their children for first Communions. The confirmation was built out of not so much the eighth grade, but out of going into high school and saying, “I want this particular reality because it’s the end of my baptismal process, and I want to be like my parents. I want to be what they are. I want to be like what my godparents are. I want to be like that.” So, okay. Fine, kid. Then, sign up. So, we began with [00:41:00] 50 people, 50 kids from high school. We ended up, now, with 250 there every year, 250 kids who become confirmed and who have to choose a ministry once they are confirmed. They have a two-year course with three courses every year. First course is on Saturdays at one o’clock in the afternoon, maybe. I’m not sure when they’re doing it now. I think that’s when they do it. I’m out of the parish, so I don’t know. And then, the second year of the course is for kids that are, like, 16, who can work on weekends, so they have a Friday night class. It’s ’cause they can work on the weekend to help their family a little bit. That’s the second year. Three courses that year as well. So, it’s a really serious project, and it really takes account into what people are and what they want to do in their life. You know, 27 �where they want to go, how they want to -- we would want them to stay in school, for instance. We would want them to work in the community with other young people, really share things with them. [00:42:00] That’s what we would want. That’s what Mercy -- but this is pretty basically the way we approached things in Panama and basically the way we approached things out of the Cardinal’s Committee [when we were?] just beginning the organization. Everything had to be done with conscious effort to put people in charge. In other words, I’m not gonna absorb everything. Now, Saul Alinsky did the same thing. In the organization of communities, you don’t absorb everything. You hand it over to a leader, somebody who’s from the community itself, and they will organize their own leadership as well. Same thing was true with pastoral work. How do you get people actually to be involved? Well, you develop them as people who can organize their own group, their own team, in order to do a particular job. This is what you try to do. So, I’m sorry. I’m, maybe, meandering a bit. JJ: No, no, I think that’s exactly what we’re [looking for?]. DH: But that’s pretty much where it is, I think. [00:43:00] So -- JJ: So, it was -- because we called it self-determination, but -- DH: Yeah. JJ: -- [by the?] Young Lords. DH: Yeah, sure. JJ: But, it sounds -- I mean, it’s similar -- DH: It’s pretty much the same. JJ: It’s pretty much the same? 28 �DH: Oh, yeah. JJ: We got a lot of ideas -- DH: Sure. JJ: -- from the Caballeros de San Juan. DH: I’m sure you did. Everything crosses over. JJ: Right. Right. DH: It all crosses over. JJ: So, okay. So, you were creating the leadership, and this is how the whole movement -- DH: Yeah. JJ: -- of the Caballeros was beginning to form. DH: That’s right. JJ: I know that my mother gave catechism classes -- DH: Sure. JJ: -- in her home (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) -- DH: I know, yeah. JJ: -- and I’m trying to -- so, this is where that fits in. I mean -- DH: Yeah. JJ: -- it’s connected to -- DH: Oh, yeah. JJ: -- what the Caballeros were doing -- DH: There was a lot of connection. JJ: -- at that time. 29 �DH: Yeah, all that stuff. JJ: And so, what about the retreats? I mean, how -- (inaudible) Wisconsin. What was that about? DH: I don’t know much about that. JJ: You don’t know too much about that? DH: No. JJ: Okay. DH: [00:44:00] By the time I was there, we were running the Cursillos right there in the 13th and Wabash address. [In other words?], there were some people that were still being drawn out by the Claretians to go to Indiana (inaudible) [negative?] at that time with -- JJ: The [De Colores movement?] or --? DH: Well, De Colores was us. JJ: Oh, that was you. DH: That was the Cardinal’s Committee for Spanish Speaking. But what they did there -- they moved these people out. They were not quite as attuned to what was going on in Vatican II, and [Peter?] was pretty much against what we were doing. They thought that everything should come through the Claretians, you know? But it wasn’t sufficient at that time. Claretians had done a great job -- JJ: [The Claretians is a?] -- DH: -- in the previous -- JJ: -- [priest?]? 30 �DH: Oh, yeah. (inaudible) priest. Yeah. Peter [Rodríguez?] was a wonderful guy, actually, and he eventually -- when I came back from Panama, he never had a Lenten retreat without inviting me to do the talks. So, he was a good friend, then, after that, but, at the [00:45:00] time, he called me a communist. JJ: Okay. You were called a communist? DH: [Meaning the?] organization. Yeah, right. Called me a communist. He called Jorge Prieto too. JJ: So, I don’t feel alone in that. DH: Wonderful doctor [from the?] Mexican community, was a great friend of Puerto Ricans too. Jorge Prieto. Jorge Prieto’s a wonderful man. JJ: [Oh, Dr. Jorge Prieto?]. DH: Great human being. Yeah. And so, he founded the clinics for the county hospital, and the lady that was my -- [Carmen Mendoza?], who was my secretary and Leo’s secretary, she left the office when I was leaving the office, and went and organized for the union for the city, and also helped -- she eventually helped Jorge Prieto to start the clinics for the Cook County hospital, actually. But Jorge was a great friend. When Jorge and I went to California to accompany Cesar Chavez’s march from Delano, California to Sacramento, well, some of the Hermanos went with us, and -- JJ: [00:46:00] [That’s very?] -- DH: -- some Protestant minsters went with us. JJ: I didn’t know that the Hermanos from Chicago -- DH: Right. 31 �JJ: -- went to Delano -- DH: Went there as well, yeah. JJ: -- with Cesar Chavez. DH: And we all went together, and we accompanied all -- the whole march was all Holy Week, actually, that they did this in, so I was not in a parish, so I could do this on Holy Week. So, even on Friday, I named every person that was in the group there, the marchers, actually, themselves, the people -- the Campesinos -to really do a meditation on each of the Stations of the Cross. So, we did it as we were going towards Sacramento on Good Friday. It was a tremendous experience for people, and, you know, somebody would read this passage from the text, and then they would give their own meditation based on what their life as Campesinos [was all about?], as grape pickers or as lettuce pickers, whatever they were doing. It was a tremendous opportunity. So, these people also got an opportunity to see the way [00:47:00] other people were acting, and moving, and doing things that were significant on a faith level. Some of the people were not even Catholic, but they were -- on a faith level, they were the same as everybody else was. It was a good thing for people to see, I thought. JJ: Now, you had -- Jesus Rodríguez was also from council number three. DH: Pardon? JJ: (Spanish) [00:47:22]. DH: Three. Yeah. Right. JJ: Okay. So, were you at all familiar with that (overlapping dialogue; inaudible)? 32 �DH: Oh, yeah. Sure. I used to go there all the time. A lot of people, I baptized there. When Kathrein wasn’t there, they would invite me to come in and baptize. My dad would always go with me too. My father would always go. Lot of the people from the different councils would come into my mom and dad’s apartment. They would play dominoes, right? There’s a great game. Capicúa (inaudible). It was hilarious, you know? But, beside that, they would wait for my mother’s lemon cream pie because my mom made great pies. She made this huge lemon merengue or lemon cream pie. JJ: I didn’t get your mom’s name. DH: Oh, yeah. JJ: [00:48:00] What was your mom’s name? DH: Virginia. Virginia, yeah. JJ: Virginia. And your father? DH: My dad was Everett. JJ: Everett, okay. DH: [It was a name from?] southern Illinois. JJ: Any brothers and sisters? DH: I had one brother, Dennis, yeah, but he was already married and off (overlapping dialogue; inaudible). JJ: But she made great cream pies, you said? DH: Oh, yeah. She had great pies, and my dad would pour coffee, you know? My dad would pour the coffee, and my -- my dad died in 1968, while I was doing a Cursillo, one of my last Cursillos before I was leaving for Panama, and it was two 33 �in the morning when they called me that my dad had died. Died of a heart attack. But, you know, he was very old, so -- he died at the age of 64. My mother did not die until 92, but she knew all the people in the community. When my dad died, as a matter of fact, there were four buses that came from Waukegan. Puerto Ricans. JJ: Oh, wow. (inaudible). DH: They were [lined?] around (inaudible) Funeral Home on 53rd and Kedzie for three blocks [00:49:00] ’cause they all knew my dad. They all knew my father. JJ: (inaudible) Puerto Ricans in Waukegan? DH: Oh, yeah. From everywhere in the city, actually. JJ: From everywhere in the city. DH: All the councils. Everybody was there. Everybody came. It was like two-night wake. It was just tremendous. It was really a great tribute to my dad, great tribute to the community that we worked in, actually, we loved very much. This Puerto Rican community was -- they taught me everything I know. (Spanish) [00:49:27]. That’s what they told me. JJ: (inaudible). DH: (Spanish) [00:49:30]. I didn’t know anything. I was green. I was green. They were trying to tell me that, and I recognized that fact, you know. I really was green, and I learned from them not only a way into that particular culture but into the Mexican culture, and, when I came back from Panama, I went into a parish eventually, Our Lady of Mercy, that had 60 countries represented and 46 languages. That was Our Lady of Mercy, [00:50:00] Albany Park. So, this is the 34 �way the city is, you know? And so, you have to be very sensitive to what you’re working with and who’s coming in your door. JJ: Now, was Saul Alinsky hired? How does he [figure in?]? DH: That group was hired by Catholic Charities to help organize -- JJ: The Saul Alinsky group? DH: -- at the beginning. Yeah, that was, like, way back in the ’50s. JJ: Yeah, this was in the -- DH: And then, eventually, they -- JJ: And they were hired to do that. DH: We didn’t need them anymore. Once the Caballeros were organized, we didn’t need them very much anymore, so they left, of course. JJ: So, they were hired to help -- DH: Right. JJ: -- organize the Caballeros. DH: [That’s what they were?]. JJ: Actually, so the Caballeros -- DH: Not the Hermanos. JJ: Not the Hermanos. DH: No, the Hermanos were organized within the Caballeros -- JJ: On their own. DH: -- for the different parishes. JJ: On their own, but they -- DH: Yeah. They -- 35 �JJ: But the Caballeros were definitely organized by the -- DH: By -- JJ: -- Saul Alinsky -- DH: With Saul Alinsky’s help. JJ: With Saul Alinsky’s help. DH: Though, they were not recognized by Saul Alinsky. JJ: They weren’t? Okay. DH: Saul never organizes anybody. It’s the leadership that’s formed that organizes the people. So, it was Juan Sosa and -- JJ: So, how did -- DH: -- [00:51:00] Calvino (inaudible). Those people. JJ: So, how did that form? I mean, did he start meeting with some of the leaders? DH: Well, yeah. I’m sure they did, yeah. Leo said, “I want you to meet with this particular group of people.” And so, he met with them, and then they would just sort of say, “Well, okay. Fine.” “Now, where are you guys living? What’s your story? [Where do you want to eat?]? Where do you want to be? How are you gonna get your people involved? What are you gonna go?” You know? Saul Alinsky always asked crazy questions. There’s a great interview after his death. Studs Terkel ran an interview after his death, which is marvelous. It’s Saul asking somebody, “Do you live in this building?” And the guy said, “Yeah, where else am I gonna live?” He said, “Well, why do you live here? Do you have rats?” “Of course we have rats.” “Well, do you have any locks on the windows?” “No, there’s no locks on the windows. What are you talking about?” “Why are you 36 �living in here?” “Well, because where else am I gonna live? [I got no other place?].” And then, Saul would say to the guy, “Yeah, but [anybody else?] live with you?” “Oh, yeah. Why?” “Well, do you pay rent to live here?” “Yeah.” He says, “Of course. I don’t pay rent, they’ll kick my butt out of here.” He said, “Yeah, but if nobody pays rent?” [00:52:00] And that was the question. “Nobody pays rent. You put it all in some kind of an [grow?] fund, you know, and then we make this guy fix the damn building. That’s what we’ll do.” That’s organizing. So, that’s what you do with people when -- and you do the same thing with the church. People come in and tell you that, well, their wife goes to Mass, but they have to reason to go to Mass. Well, let’s see what Eucharist really is. Let’s see what you think it is, first of all, and then we’re gonna -- we ask questions. I don’t think you can go into a parish or into a people and ever tell them answers before they ask any questions, but you have to ask questions. You have to find out where they are first. If you can find out where they are, then you have to go with them where they are, and you grow together with them. Okay? Spirituality is nothing if it’s not solidarity. Solidarity is something very special. Solidarity means that you are willing to [00:53:00] be with this particular group or person for the rest of your life, actually. You’re willing to give yourself away to them. You’re willing to change the gift of your life into the task of what grace is. [You really need to do this?]. In Pauline theology, what Paul writes in his letters, he tells us that the nature of God is not gathering. The nature of God is giving away, that God always empties God’s self. Kenosis is the word he uses in Greek, and God gives God’s self away, but, besides that, that’s why we can be the image of God. 37 �If we give ourselves away to the people we love and truly care about, then we are what we’re supposed to be. We are human. If we relate to the people, in other words. That’s what relationship’s all about. It’s the power to give yourself away to someone else. That’s really what it’s all about. So, if you don’t understand that, you’re never gonna become human, you know? So, that’s just the way it is. JJ: So, it’s [00:54:00] not being individual. DH: Yeah. No. JJ: Individualist, I mean. DH: You have to be a person who gives one’s self away within the community and to the people you care about. That’s, I think, the way it’s supposed to be. But that’s what you do when you’re working with the Hermanos. You sort of teach them how to do that. That’s what you do when you do a retreat or a Cursillo. You try to help them to see how that’s the most important thing in their life. JJ: So, there’s a retreat. There’s a Cursillo. It’s not the same thing? DH: No. Retreats can be on any subject, but a Cursillo is a very definite thing. Here, in Chicago, it was how do you get to be a Latino who is a person of faith? In other words, how do you understand sacraments in the right way? How do you understand church in the right way? It’s not a building, and it’s not a group of people that go to a building. That’s not the church. The only word for church, Iglesia, [00:55:00] comes from a Greek word that the people that made a translation of the Hebrew Bible used for only one thing: the group of people around Moses’s tent, waiting for Moses to say, “Okay, we’re marching towards 38 �freedom today. Let’s go. Let’s go toward the promised land.” So, we’re always people on the march. We’re never people who have the security of sitting in some place. We’re the people who look for the opportunity to escape from the church and go out the door, the exit sign being above us, and we walk out, and we go change the world. That’s what we’re supposed to be doing. So, I mean, that’s pretty much what it was all about. And then, in Panama was the Cursillo de Iniciación Cristiana, [and?] people began a whole different way of looking at what their religion had been and make it into an opportunity of faith, of building something out of where they were, and going into a future that they did not know, and not being afraid of that. That’s pretty much what happened there. JJ: I want to ask you what you’re doing [00:56:00] now, but I also want to -- I just want to try to get a little more description of -- DH: Yeah. JJ: -- those first Puerto Rican parades and that community around -- DH: Oh, yeah. JJ: -- Wabash and Holy Name Cathedral. DH: Oh, sure. Right. Yeah. The cathedral. When they began the parade, for instance, it was a matter of bringing in all the different elements of the Caballeros de San Juan, the Knights of St. John, and all those guys -- JJ: (overlapping dialogue; inaudible). DH: That’s right, and -- JJ: It was 1953. That’s what I -- DH: Right. 39 �JJ: -- discovered was the date of -- DH: Was the date of the parade. JJ: -- first parade, okay. DH: First parade. Right. And then, the second year, they went to St. -- to the parish on -- oh, where was it? What’s the matter with me? The basilica that’s -- JJ: The South Side, or is it North Side? DH: No, no, it was on -- JJ: West Side? DH: Yeah, it’s right in the middle of -- it’s actually right near the Loop, actually, but it’s on the West Side. JJ: Oh, okay. DH: It’s on the West Side. JJ: On Madison. On Madison. DH: Not on Madison, no. JJ: [00:57:00] By the Loop on the West Side. DH: Yeah, it’s on the West Side. yeah. JJ: [What’s that?]? DH: What’s the name of the parish? I know the name of the parish more than I know my own name, but I can’t [really?] think of it now. The first one began at the cathedral and did the march, and I’m not sure where it ended up. I was there, but I can’t remember where -- JJ: Well, I read that they had a dance at the Chicago Armory. I don’t know if it -- DH: That’s right, yeah. 40 �JJ: -- ended up there. DH: They did. Yeah. JJ: So, did it end up there? DH: I think it probably did. I don’t know. I don’t remember that. JJ: You think so? But I know I have -- there’s a picture of the cathedral, Holy Name - DH: Yeah. JJ: -- Cathedral, and there’s a dance at the Chicago Armory also. DH: [It was that same year?], yeah. Right. I don’t know where. This stuff confuses me (overlapping dialogue; inaudible). JJ: But you said, at that time, there were already Caballeros. DH: Oh, yeah. There were different [councils?]. JJ: And several churches. Do you have any idea where they were at, or --? DH: No, I would imagine one of the places would have been St. Michael’s -- JJ: St. Michael’s. DH: -- with Kathrein. I would imagine that would be -- [second one?] would be St. Joseph’s, who had two Dominican priests. JJ: St. Joseph’s by Cabrini Green? DH: The other would be -- right. And on the South Side would have been [00:58:00] 63rd Street. That’s where they would have been. JJ: And I believe [Spanish Mass?] (inaudible). DH: I think it was either four or five councils at that time. JJ: There was a movement for Spanish Mass at Holy Name Cathedral. 41 �DH: Right. JJ: I’m asking a little difficult question. I know that the -- DH: Yeah. JJ: It was St. Michael’s. Some people said that some of the people did not want the people at the church at first, and so -- at the main chapel, so that was a reason for using the hall. DH: I don’t know. JJ: Other people explain it also that they just wanted to be separate -- DH: Yeah. Yeah. JJ: -- at that time, that they felt more comfortable, and that’s why they -- DH: Well, they had to do a Spanish Mass. JJ: Yeah, they -- was there (overlapping dialogue; inaudible)? DH: Sometimes, things started in the basement, but they would eventually end up in the church. JJ: Was there any of that (overlapping dialogue; inaudible)? DH: I don’t know what provoked that. Kathrein would have been managing that, I wound imagine, but I’m not sure what happened. JJ: [He didn’t?] notice any type of discrimination or anything that --? DH: Not that I know of. JJ: Okay. All right. DH: Not that I know of. The people -- JJ: I mean, there was discrimination in the city, [I know?]. DH: People are sometimes -- in [00:59:00] themselves, they’re racist. 42 �JJ: Well, I don’t mean the church. I mean individuals. DH: Yeah, no, as far as the church was concerned, it wasn’t -- it was [thought of?] how people can be more comfortable in what they’re gonna do. JJ: Okay, so it was (overlapping dialogue; inaudible). DH: That was pretty much the idea, I think. Yeah, I think that was what they were thinking of. At the Cardinal’s Committee, all you had were Latinos, which was great. It was wonderful. It was great. JJ: Okay, so the Cardinal’s Committee was definitely -- DH: Yeah, it was all Latinos. JJ: -- all Latinos. DH: Actually, the -- JJ: And it was [opened?] by Cardinal Stritch -- DH: It began with Cardinal Stritch, went through Meyer, and then, when Meyer died, Cody came in and pretty much let it go on, but it was a little bit different agenda. JJ: What was his reasoning for opening it up? DH: He had different ways of looking at life. He didn’t understand the council, that the theology there was gonna be different now. He didn’t understand that too well, but Meyer did understand. Meyer was also a scripture scholar, person who understood scripture very well, and he became a person who was very much against the [01:00:00] clericalism that, at times, afflicts the church, where the priests are, like, separate from the people, and would have approached more the Hélder Câmara way of looking at things. Hélder Câmara, the great bishop of Brazil, Recife, who took off all the fancy garments, you know, and carried a 43 �wooden cross and a regular suit, and went around the world that way. This sort of thing was kind of important, I think, for people as they began to look at the church. What Vatican II did was to bring out the ideas of collegiality. Now, I’m afraid the Vatican is trying to erase that, but -- which is too bad. I think it’s a shame, but that -- if you have collegiality, that means everybody’s talking to everybody, and clericalism says these people that are people that run everything, supposedly, are -JJ: (overlapping dialogue; inaudible). DH: -- the only ones that talk to one another, you know? JJ: Everybody in the church is talking to everybody? DH: Well, you have [01:01:00] collegiality -- JJ: Within the church or outside? DH: -- [would mean?] everybody’s talking to everybody. JJ: Within -- DH: Collegiality would be that. JJ: Within and outside the church? DH: Within and outside, right. JJ: Yeah. Okay. DH: Well, Our Lady of Mercy -- when I was there, we eventually had the group there found a neighborhood organization. Well, the one meeting that I was there for before I moved out of Our Lady of Mercy -- JJ: Was it at Lady of Mercy? 44 �DH: At Our Lady of Mercy. It was, like, in -- oh, maybe 1997 or so, I’m sure. I left there in 2002, but, in the end of the 1990s, we had a big meeting. There must have been six, seven hundred people in the basement, and there were people from Islam. There were Jewish people. There were people from all the different languages that were there. We had at least four or five translations going on with earphones for people so that everybody would be understood. This was [01:02:00] the people that were in that neighborhood. That was in the basement of Our Lady of Mercy Church, in their hall. You know, this was kind of important, that you look at the church as something that is much more than one particular group. I think there are three things that the church has to understand no matter who they’re working with. First of all, they’re not the reign of God. The church is not the reign of God. It’s just a group that’s supposed to live the norms of the reign of God, justice, love, and compassion, ahead of time because we’re not there yet. A better world doesn’t exist yet. Every generation has to look to create a better world. Every generation is gonna have to do that. Second thing is we’re one, but we’re many. One faith, one baptism, one Eucharist, and all that, but we still have different ways of celebrating and different ways of thinking. At Our Lady of Mercy now, for instance, every single Mass has its own choir because each Mass is different, although each Mass is the same. [01:03:00] So, it’s a tension. It creates tension in the community, but that’s good tension and not bad tension. Third thing is we are -- this church, we are also an institution. In other words, we have a pope, and bishops, and all people that are supposed to be the organizers, and then we have the people who are at the door, who are 45 �new people, sometimes, and they have something to offer, and, if these people are not accepted to offer what they have to offer, the trouble is that, the danger is that the institution would become [a cadaver?], and you don’t want that to happen, ever. That make sense? I think, pretty much, those are the principles that ran the organizations of the Knights of St. John, the Caballeros de San Juan, the Hermanos en la Familia de Dios, the parishes at that time in Chicago, the way in which, I think, the Young Lords tried to support one another and act in the world ’cause they had to confront what was a white, powerful, money-possessing [01:04:00] reality in the city, you know, that they had to really confront and to live with, or against, or over. They had to be there, and they had to get something for what was the community that was being left out. There was an interesting passage that comes up in Deuteronomy all the time that the king has only one job. In other words, a leader has only one job. It’s to make sure that these people have a job, food, and roofs over their head. Who are they? Widows, orphans, and the strangers in the land. In other words, they’re supposed to look out for those who are on the edges. If they take care of the people that are on the edges -- which is something we don’t seem to understand in this country anymore, but if they take care of people on the edges, then everybody in the middle is okay. Think about it. You know, when you think about it, it’s true, but we don’t take care of the people on the edges anymore, and there are people in government and outside of government that would like to eliminate everybody that’s on the edges. [01:05:00] That’s not fair. 46 �JJ: So, how did you see the whole thing in Lincoln Park, where a lot of the -- after the community organized. DH: Yeah. Well -- JJ: The Caballeros and [Damas?] organized, and -- DH: Yeah. JJ: And then, they were displaced. I mean, how did you see that? DH: I think, in Lincoln Park and the other park area, like, even -- JJ: [In other parks?]. DH: Yeah. Well, everywhere there were Latinos, the thing was to keep them there and allow them to organize there, help them to better the community and the neighborhood in which they were living, make it a family-based community, and they seem to be doing pretty well. I think what damaged everything happened around ’68, ’69, ’70, when the drug culture began to take over, which is a horrifying thing, when you have kids becoming ill, you have people sharing needles. Even some of the greatest families in our community, you had two and [01:06:00] three children dying of AIDS, and this should never have happened. Eventually perishing, even though they were married, or they had -- but they had been sharing needles with people who had the AIDS virus, and, at that time, there were no antivirals like we have today that are helping people to survive, but that (inaudible) survive. It was terrifying. It was terrible. JJ: And why do you think that happened at that time? DH: What? I’m sorry. JJ: Why do you think that happened? 47 �DH: Why do I think that happened? Because, all of a sudden, you know, we had -- JJ: [I mean?], all of a sudden, that happened. DH: We had laws that were -- they were promoting the fact that you could not have drugs, you could not get drugs, and it was against the law to have them. And so, people started making money selling them on -- you know, where they shouldn’t be able to sell them, and you had the gangs begin, also, to take over that particular operation. JJ: Okay, but I was asking also, [01:07:00] and, again, this is [normally an?] -- DH: Yeah. JJ: -- [investigative?] thing, but, because part of the project is that -- DH: Sure. JJ: -- the neighborhood was being displaces at the time -- DH: Yeah. JJ: -- and they were trying to stabilize the -- DH: Right. JJ: -- neighborhood, so I wanted to know what you felt at that time because, eventually, here’s an organization that’s being built. DH: Right. JJ: Council number three -- DH: Yeah. JJ: -- council number nine -- DH: Yeah. JJ: -- and other councils. 48 �DH: Yeah. JJ: But, now, they’re going along with the community. They’re -- DH: Yeah. Right. JJ: -- getting displaced too. How did you think about that? DH: Well, I -- JJ: How did you see that? DH: The problem, I think, was that they eventually decided to stop the community organization reality of the Knights of Saint John, and they became a cooperative credit union, which eventually collapsed, which was sad, I thought. It was long after I left that they collapsed, but they were [01:08:00] beginning to think on that level, especially the Cheveres, and Cesar Rivera, and those people from that particular family. Gloria Chevere, who’s a judge right now, as a matter of fact. But that family decided to move the Knights of Saint John into this area of credit union, which was a good thing for people, in a sense. People could take loans and build homes, and they did, except that, then, people began to take what they were getting, and going out to a suburb, and building a home there so that, eventually, they would move out of the community in which they were. Something similar to what happens to people in Panama when you build a bridge in a community. Stuff doesn’t come into the community. All the kids escape. All the young people go somewhere else. They certainly, as the country in general, prospers. They may become doctors, and lawyers, and Indian chiefs, but the point is, you know, there they are, but [01:09:00] you thought you were building the bridge so people would be able to get their products out, and, all of a sudden, 49 �you find people not growing rice and beans anymore, doing something else, escaping, going somewhere else. So, things change. JJ: So, you didn’t see them [off?]? So, there was a push factor, and then you didn’t see the [push factor?]? DH: Well, I don’t -- JJ: I mean, [you don’t?] -- DH: -- know whether that’s possible. I think, when people decide they’re gonna be moving out, they’re gonna move out anyway. The thing is, what do they have as an instrument for living as they move out of where they are? For instance, there are people that went with us before I left for Panama to the dedication of the churches in Panama. We went there the year that Cody went there too. Cody went there and left before Martin Luther King came into the city, and we went to Martin Luther King’s presentation in the Soldier Field, and then, after that, we left for Panama. It’s okay. Take your time. (break in audio) DH: (inaudible)? JJ: Yeah. DH: Well, I think, [01:10:00] when the riot occurred, for instance, I think that Daley used it in order to put the wrong people in charge of the Puerto Rican community. They had no Hermanos or Young Lords on it. They had [Claudia Flores?] on it. Remember Claudia Flores? JJ: I remember Claudia -- 50 �DH: One of the biggest crooks in the whole city. [They were?] stealing money from people that were trying to go back to Puerto Rico to visit family, and he would -egregious, terrible costs that he would give people [and stuff?], or doing their taxes. I do not like the man at all, but those are the kind of people that Daley put on his committee after the riot ended, you know? It lasted for three days. It was over. One kid only was shot, but he wasn’t killed. He was just shot, wounded, and this all began when some kid was shot in the park by a policeman, you know? There were no cops that were sympathetic to the Puerto Rican community. None. There were no real [01:11:00] Puerto Ricans on the [committee?]. That didn’t happen until years later, when we began, in the office, actually, a preparation for young guys from the Mexican and Puerto Rican community to prepare for the exam to become a policeman and to become a fireman. JJ: You say “we” -- the Caballeros or (overlapping dialogue; inaudible)? DH: Well, not so much the Caballeros. By that time, they were already moving towards becoming a cooperative credit union, but the Hermanos were promoting that. JJ: (overlapping dialogue; inaudible), okay. DH: And that’s [fruit?] of the Caballeros anyway. Everything goes back to the Caballeros. JJ: Right, ’cause -- right? Today, it’s the Hermanos that are doing the work. DH: Right. Well, the Hermanos -- I don’t know whether they’re doing work now. The -- 51 �JJ: (overlapping dialogue; inaudible). DH: -- group that meets at St. Hedwig’s, for instance, is like a hundred years old. Every once in a while, I go there and give talks to them, but they didn’t call me and remind me about June. I was supposed to go back there in June, but they didn’t call me this June. I have to find out what’s going on there. I’m not sure they’re still meeting. I hope they are, but they’re really an older group. But, [01:12:00] eventually, you know -- when I left, also, the charismatic movement began to come and take over for the Cursillo movement. JJ: Right, my mother was involved with that (overlapping dialogue; inaudible). DH: Right. And [that’s the?] charismatic movement. JJ: What is that? What is that? Can you explain (inaudible)? DH: Well, charismatic movement is more on a Pentecostal level but in the Catholic church, where people get together, and they pray, and they sing, and they speak to God and -- supposedly in languages so that nobody understands or something, but the point is that’s fine, but that’s all emotional stuff, but we -when I went to Mercy, there was a group at Mercy that was there, but I used every single person that was in that group to become [ministry?] in the parish, and I would make sure that they got better scripture, and they got better formation, and they got all that stuff. So, they stayed in the charismatic movement, but they also became part of the parish as ministry. That’s why they have 3,000 people there now who are ministers, because you don’t tell people, “You can’t be here because you’re charismatic.” [01:13:00] What you do is you say, “Okay, fine. You want something more? Let me see how you can be a 52 �better charismatic person,” you know? “How can you do this?” So... But all this stuff -- everything comes with change, and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that, but you have to know how to ask the questions about the change with faith that people are basically going to be able to make good decisions with their life. That’s what you really want, and, to do that, they have to be people of faith, whether the charismatic movement lends that to people or some other movement. Whether it’s in the church or out of the church makes no difference, but that’s what you want to have happen for people’s benefit and for the benefit of their communities and their families. So, that’s pretty much the way it is, I think. JJ: Okay. You’re at the church here now, at St. Mary of the Woods Church, or what are you doing now? I know [01:14:00] you’re retired. DH: Well, Our Lady of Mercy Church -- I just sort of live here. I do Mass in the mornings and weekends, and do the homilies, and -- but I mostly -- my particular job is to teach for the archdiocese. I teach scripture, and history, and pastoral training for people in the diaconate program and people in the lay ministry program. So, September, I start a course out in [Midland?], at the seminary, but for people up in the northern suburbs from Waukegan, and from that area, and from up near Harvard, Illinois and those places, which are really far north. So, I start a course for them on what is the Christian scriptures, the 27 books of what we call the New Testament. I did a course at the end of last year -- well, I think it was the end of last year -- at St. Stanislaus Parish for people in the Hebrew scriptures. [01:15:00] I will do a Hebrew scriptures course for people, but they 53 �meet at St. Philomena’s Parish, which is a little bit west and south of here. You know, it’s all work to be done. Get people ready, and then they graduate from that, and they eventually decide whether they’re going into the diaconate or going to be pastoral ministers in their parish area. So -JJ: So, once they graduate and become diaconate -- DH: Well -- JJ: -- [will they?] -- DH: Diaconate program is a lot longer than this particular program. It begins with this program, but this program goes on for two years. And then, if they want the diaconate, they have to do that in consultation with their parish staff, and then they get permission to start the program for diaconate, which requires a little bit more reflection, and a lot more formation, and more scripture, and more theology, more liturgy, more understanding of how to preach, how to talk to people, how to give a homily, for instance. All that [01:16:00] stuff is included, and they have, like, a five-year preparation. But what I do with the archdiocese on these occasions is the two-year course. Actually, when I came back from Panama, there was nothing. Everything had stopped. It was all in English. Everything was done in English. So, I talked to some of the priests, and we said, “Are you satisfied with this?” And they said, “No.” I said, “Well, let’s start something else.” So, [Juan Retrato?], who’s a priest from Mexico, and [Tero Keef?], and several other priests from the archdiocese here, we decided we were gonna start a course. I got [Larry?] -- [forgot?] Larry’s last name. Damn. It’s at Maternity B.V.M. Parish before we began it. We began to do courses there on 54 �scripture, and history, et cetera. We were all trained people, so we could do it. And so, we started it, and the archdiocese was questioning this. “Why are you doing this? Why are you doing this?” Well, because [01:17:00] you need this in the archdiocese. Eventually, they took it over. It became the Instituto de Liderazgo Pastoral for training for people in the entire diocese, and, also, we began a catechetical program for Latinos because they had all kinds of North American people teaching Latino kids. That’s ridiculous because Latinos [have?] just as much catechism as anybody else. Besides that, if you train them, they know a lot more. And so, the thing was, we began to train people in catechetics in Spanish, and people who were from that culture, and every child needs someone from his own culture to speak to him or her, you know? And you want parents to be involved. So, eventually, I ended up in Mercy, and we just did that constantly in Mercy. Everybody had to have their own way of doing things. Like, we had a Hispanic group. We had Filipino groups. We had Korean groups. We had everything there, and we had some things that were bilingual, some things that [01:18:00] were unilingual for a particular Mass, and other things that were trilingual. Like, the liturgy for Holy Week was always three languages -- Spanish, English, and Tagalog -- and that’s what we would do, and people -- they did the best they could with it. They did a great job, and people wanted to be there, so it was good. But that’s the way we thought it had to be, so it was a matter of rebuilding something that I thought existed when I left in 1968 but that they had destroyed in the meantime. JJ: So, you were gone from ’68, and you came back --? 55 �DH: I came back in 1982. JJ: 1982, right. (inaudible). DH: 1981, actually, but, 1982, I went to Our Lady of Mercy, and, by that time, we were trying to organize something new. JJ: I know that the Hermanos are -- you said St. Hedwig’s? DH: St. Hedwig’s now. They live there, yeah. JJ: And -- DH: Well, they work there. They go there. JJ: So, that’s their base right now? DH: Their base. Usually, they meet on Monday nights. Have you talked to them at all? JJ: [01:19:00] I talked -- DH: To those guys? JJ: -- to one of them. DH: Did you? Okay. JJ: And I do want to talk to some other -- DH: Okay, that’s good. JJ: -- people (inaudible). This project will go on for another year. DH: Yeah. Sure. Sure. JJ: So, we definitely [will contact them?]. DH: That’s good. JJ: Any final thought that we should --? 56 �DH: No, I don’t think so. I just hope that people understand what we’re trying to say, but let’s see what happens. I hope they do. JJ: (inaudible) everybody’s perspective, you know? That’s what we’re trying to do. DH: No, I think it’s a good idea to do this. I think it’s important for people to know where the organizers of things were at that particular time, and we hope people [would be now?]. So many of the Puerto Rican community has gone back to Puerto Rico and moved to suburbs, or they’re more separate now from one another than they were at that time. At that time, they were together, very much together, but, now, they’re pretty much separate, [01:20:00] or they’re gone back to Puerto Rico, where they really are together there, but that’s not the point. And, here, now, in the city, we have so many different communities. Like I mentioned before, Lady of Mercy has 60 countries, and 46 languages, and different varieties of Spanish. You have people from Quechua communities or Aymara communities, from Peru and Bolivia. You have people from all kinds of other places in Latin America. You have people from Asia, people from everywhere, so it’s [a great world?], and it’s a multiethnic church, and you have to pay attention to it. You have to help people to grow in their own culture and celebrate in their own culture, I think, and you have to help them to do it. That’s about it. JJ: I appreciate [it?]. Thank you [very much?]. DH: Thank you very much. JJ: Appreciate it. DH: Oh, you’re welcome. I don’t know whether it was very good, but -- JJ: It was very good. 57 �DH: -- we’ll see. JJ: It was very good. Thank you. END OF VIDEO FILE 58 � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/2e7da8217ca2c257cc82af026c681f92.mp4 19b3328c47dccb17dcb6ae765d00eda8 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Young Lords in Lincoln Park Collection Subject The topic of the resource Young Lords (Organization) Puerto Ricans--United States Civil Rights--United States--History Lincoln Park (Chicago, Ill.) Personal narratives Social justice Community activists--Illinois--Chicago Description An account of the resource Collection of oral history interviews and digitized materials documenting the history of the Young Lords Organization in Lincoln Park, Chicago. Interviews were conducted by Young Lords' founder, José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez, and documents were digitized from Mr. Jiménez' archives. The Young Lords in Lincoln Park collection grows out of the ongoing struggle for fair housing, self-determination, and human rights that was launched by Mr. José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez, founder of the Young Lords Movement. This project is dedicated to documenting the history of the displacement of Puerto Ricans, Mejicanos, other Latinos, and the poor from Lincoln Park, as well as the history of the Young Lords nationwide. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Jiménez, José, 1948- Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/491">Young Lords in Lincoln Park collection (RHC-65)</a> Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-04-25 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Language A language of the resource eng spa Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-65 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 2012-2017 Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Título Spanish language Title entry Father Donald J. Headley vídeo entrevista y biografía Sujetos Spanish language Subject terms Young Lords (Organización) Puertorriqueños--Estados Unidos Derechos civiles--Estados Unidos--Historia Lincoln Park (Chicago, Ill.) Narrativas personales Justicia social Activistas comunitarios--Illinois--Chicago Iglesia Católica. Arquidiócesis de Chicago (Ill.) Source <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/491">Young Lords in Lincoln Park (RHC-65)</a> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-65_Headley_Donald Title A name given to the resource Father Donald J. Headley video interview and transcript Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Headley, Donald Description An account of the resource 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. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Jiménez, José, 1948- Subject The topic of the resource Young Lords (Organization) Puerto Ricans--United States Civil Rights--United States--History Lincoln Park (Chicago, Ill.) Personal narratives Social justice Community activists--Illinois--Chicago Catholic Church. Archdiocese of Chicago (Ill.) Language A language of the resource eng Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2012-08-21 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/6f3ab5c2ab77ca63f201a8dce0cf9a59.pdf a68f11b155a762908cffa11458f4fc3c PDF Text Text Young Lords In Lincoln Park Interviewee: Jack Hart Interviewers: José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez Location: Grand Valley State University Special Collections Date: 3/1/2012 Biography and Description English 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. Members of the Committee worked with Cathy Archibald and Slim Coleman in the Lincoln Park Neighborhood Information Center. They also helped Mr. Jiménez to layout, publish, and finance one of the original Young Lords newspapers, and worked closely with the Young Lords and Mr. Jiménez until Helen Shiller was elected Alderman and Harold Washington became the first African American mayor of Chicago in 1983. Mr. Hart joined Mayor Washington’s Administration as Assistant Commissioner. During that time he was responsible for administering all of the City of Chicago’s rehabilitation loan programs. He also helped to formulate and launch the Chicago Housing partnership, Low Housing Tax Credit, and the City of Chicago’s heat receiver programs. Today he is a licensed real estate broker and Chief Financial Officer of Affordable Property Management Specialists in Chicago. �Spanish Jack Hart era el asistente de Walter “Slim” Coleman durante la campaña de Jiménez para Alderman en 1975. Señor Hart todavía vive y trabaja en el Distrito 46 de Chicago que ahora es una comunidad más nueva y elegante. En los 1907s Hart era un miembro de la Intercommunal Survival committee, un grupo de gente blanca que soportaba el Black Panther Party. Miembros de esa organización trabajaron con Cathy Archibald y Slim Coleman en la el Centro de Información del Vecindario en Lincoln Park. También ayudaron a Señor Jiménez hacer, publicar y financiar uno de los periódicos originales de los Young Lords, y trabajo cerca con Jiménez y los Young Lords hasta 1983 donde Helen Shiller fue elijada como Alderman y Harold Washington fue el primer Afroamericano alcalde de Chicago. Señor Hart junto con la administración de Alcalde Washington, como Asistente del Comisario. Durante este tiempo era responsable de administrar todos los programas de prestemos para la rehabilitación de la cuidad de Chicago. El también ayudo formular y lanchar la asociación de Chicago Housing, Low Housing Tax Credit, y el programa de calefacción de la cuidad de Chicago. Ahora es un agente de urbanización y también el principal Oficial de Financias en Affordable Property Management Specialists en Chicago. �Transcript JACK HART: All right, I’m Jack Hart. I currently am the director of the Affordable Property Management Specialists which is a property management company which specializes in affordable housing. We currently manage 390 apartments on the south side, west side, and this is our -- 4040 N. Sheridan Ruth Shriman House, that’s where we’re at now, that’s one of our projects on the north side. I’ve been managing basically affordable housing since 1988, 1989, somewhere around there. Prior to that, I was the assistant commissioner of housing in the Harold Washington administration. That was from 1984 until 1989. [00:01:00] And then prior to that, I was the director of the Heart of Uptown Coalition Intercommunal Survival Committee going back to 1970. JOSE JIMENEZ: Back to 1970? JH: Yeah. JJ: What is your connection with the Young Lords, basically? JH: Well, that goes way back. In 1970, somewhere thereabouts -- well, I first met you when you were underground or something in Milwaukee. I think you were someplace like that. You were on the lam from -- JJ: What does that mean, underground? JH: That means you were hiding out from the law. Well, 1970, I think, the Young Lords had taken over the church on Armitage and -- what was that street? Dayton. Yeah. I was with Slim Coleman, and Cathy Archibald, and then what 1 �was called the People’s Information [00:02:00] Center. We were like two blocks away from the church there. At that time, there was a coalition -JJ: And who were they connected to, the People’s Information center? JH: I was going to say the coalition existed, but your Black Panther Party, Fred Hampton had basically espoused the idea that white revolutionaries or poor white people who were sympathetic to the Black liberation struggle at that time should be organizing in their own communities. So the People’s Information Center was a group of white radicals, so to speak, who were affiliated with the Black Panther Party. And our job was to begin to organize amongst poor white people with a clear connection between the political struggle [00:03:00] in poor white areas and the liberation struggle of both Black people and other people of color. The Young Lords organization had been involved with Fred Hampton in various kind of rainbow coalitions we called it back then. One of the things was to-you had what we called survival programs. So the Young Lords basically took over this church and were going to set up a health clinic there and various other community programs. So there was a natural affiliation between us, the Black Panther Party, and the Young Lords organization. JJ: So you were organizing in Lincoln Park? JH: Yeah, the first thing we were doing was, again, urban renewal in Lincoln Park. Lincoln Park, at that time, was a fairly poor neighborhood [00:04:00] particularly around Armitage and Halsted was mostly Puerto Rican. You go a little bit further south, I forget the name of the street now, but that was also Blacks, it was Puerto -- it was a concentration of Puerto Rican and Black, and hillbillies mixed in there, 2 �poor white people. So the struggle which was being developed by the Young Lords and other people was to fight the city’s plans to gentrify these areas -- to remove the people, the poor people, and to replace them with a more affluent -- I mean that’s really what happened. So Lincoln Park, if you went there today, you try to tell someone that was a poor area, they’d think you were crazy. I mean I remember we had an apartment, just as an example, on Halsted in 19-- threebedroom apartment on [00:05:00] Halsted in 1970 rented for about $95 a month. Now that same apartment today would probably cost you $3,000 a month. (laughs) JJ: What were some of the things that the Information Center did? JH: Well, we did pretty much whatever the Black Panther Party did. I mean we distributed the Black Panther party newspaper all over the city in white areas. We had various -- like a free breakfast program, and various kinds of educational programs for children, we had a health clinic which we sponsored -- free health clinic. And then we had various other food and shoe giveaways and various things like that. JJ: When did you begin your involvement? Kind of going back a little bit. JH: My first contact was in January of [00:06:00] 1970 which was shortly after Fred Hampton had been murdered. I responded to an ad in the newspaper -- in a seed newspaper it was called which was kind of like an alternative newspaper. They were looking for people to join the Venceremos Brigade which was -- at that time, it was illegal to go Cuba, so they were taking groups of college-aged students to Cuba to participate in the Cuban revolution by assisting them with 3 �sugar cane cutting and things like that. So every year, they put together a group from around the country of 40, 50 people who would then go to Cuba for three months. So I signed up to go on this Venceremos Brigade. And one of the requirements was in the six months preceding the trip, [00:07:00] which was supposed to be in July, you were supposed to be involved in active community organizing. So the people who were sponsoring us were from the People’s Information Center, so I started working with them in January of 1970. And as it turned out, I was dropped from the trip at the last minute and I just ended up staying. (laughs) JJ: And the reason that you were dropped was -- JH: They had cut the quota, there was some immigration issues with the U.S. government. You couldn’t travel to Cuba, so what you had to do was go to Canada, and then you got a visa from Canada to Cuba. And apparently the Canadian government could only take so many people, and so there were 15 of us who were dropped from the trip at the last minute, and I was one of them. JJ: Why would you answer an ad to go to Cuba? I mean (inaudible). [00:08:00] What was your development in terms of (inaudible)? JH: Well, I mean I guess the original thing goes back to -- I was pretty much fresh out of high school, but what was going on in the country -- JJ: You were in Chicago? JH: Yeah. JJ: Okay, so you grew up in Chicago? 4 �JH: Yeah, and Schiller Park was actually -- I was in Chicago until I was about fifth, sixth grade, and then we moved out to the suburbs which was Schiller Park which was right next to the airport there. I went to East Leyden High School in Franklin Park. At that time, in the country, because of the -- you know, the civil rights movement was going on, the war in Vietnam was raging, so there was a big anti-war movement, and it was a fairly active time for people who were seeking social change. [00:09:00] When I was in high school, I was enlightened to the point that I was participating in civil rights in various other things from a standpoint of justice, I guess. So I don’t know. I was just looking for some way to make a difference. I was sort of bored with college, and it seemed like something to do. I mean the consciousness in the country at that time was fairly high because there was a draft, so everybody, when you were 18 years old, graduated from high school, had to face the reality of either avoiding the Army or fighting a war which most people at the time were opposed to. So I think that was sort of the impetus to get involved. And then just one thing sort of led to another. (laughs) JJ: [00:10:00] So you’ve had involvement -- this was around ’68, ’69? JH: ’70. JJ: Around ’70, okay. So this was after -- JH: Yeah, Fred Hampton was killed on December 4th of ’69. JJ: Did you go to that? 5 �JH: That’s what sort of led me to the People’s Information Center ’cause there was a connection there between them and the Black Panther Party. In the process, they said, “Well, these same people are sponsoring this trip to Cuba.” JJ: So how long did you stay in Lincoln Park then? And did you live in Lincoln Park at all? JH: Yeah, we lived in -- I mean I lived there in various apartments all around Lincoln Park. We had an apartment on Lincoln and Little, 2400 North Lincoln, and we had one on Halsted. We moved around [00:11:00] that area. JJ: This was you or the Information Center? JH: The office was at 2154 North Halsted, so the organization, it started out, there was like six or seven of us. And then as it developed, we ended up with 15, 20 hardcore people, and three or four of us would share an apartment. 1972 is when we had a big event at the Aragon Ballroom. It was called the “Campaign to End Police Brutality and Establish Community Control” where we gave away 3,000 bags of groceries at the Aragon Ballroom. The idea there was to introduce the Black Panther party to the people of Uptown. So around late ’71, early ’72 we started circulating a petition door to door in [00:12:00] Uptown. Some still in Lincoln Park, but Lincoln Park, at that time, was already beginning to be gentrified. Uptown was more of a concentration of poor white people. (break in audio) JJ: Okay, (inaudible). 6 �JH: Okay, so what was I saying? All right, so we had this thing at the Aragon, and idea was to -- we were trying to establish a base amongst poor white people in Uptown which was a really a concentration of -- JJ: What do you mean by base? Can you explain that? JH: A political base, a place where we could establish some kind of political power. So what we did was we had this what we called this “Campaign to End Police Brutality and Establish Community [00:13:00] Control.” And we went around circulating petitions, and then all the people who signed the petition from this area, we then went to visit them at their house, and we offered them a subscription to the Black Panther Party newspaper, A, and, B, we invited them to come to the Aragon Ballroom for this rally where they would receive a free bag of groceries and they could listen to the leaders of the Black Panther Party speak. So that was our first foray into Uptown. At that time, one of the theories here was we wanted to begin to get involved in the electoral process on some level. So the first effort was to defeat Edward Hanrahan who was the state’s attorney who was responsible for the murder of Fred Hampton. [00:14:00] So the idea was to begin to get people to vote. In Chicago, at the time, everybody voted for the Democratic machine, and they controlled everything primarily because they controlled city services. So if you wanted city services, then you had to support your precinct captain and then you would get city services. And so we were trying to change some of that so people could begin to vote their conscience instead of just following the party lines, so to speak. So the idea was to begin to identify the people who we could pull into our overall program. So we used this 7 �petition, and then the idea was to visit them, get them involved in our programs, register them to vote, and get them [00:15:00] to vote against the Democratic candidate for state’s attorney who was this Edward Hanrahan who was the one who had killed Fred Hampton. JJ: So you had the food drive and then you did a voter registration drive? JH: Right. JJ: Okay, and this was in ’72? JH: It’s hard to remember exact dates. All this sort of runs together. I mean we were involved in various kind of voter registration efforts over the years. Cha, when you ran for alderman, what year was that? JJ: We announced, I believe, at the end of ’73. JH: ’73, okay. So this was this sort of Edward Hanrahan, “Defeat the Butcher” it was called, I believe that was ’72 or ’73, somewhere around there. That campaign was actually successful particularly in the Black community where people [00:16:00] in droves voted against Ed Hanrahan. In fact, the state’s attorney who was elected was Bernard Carey who was a Republican and that was like the first time a Republican had been elected in a Cook-county wide office in like 25, 30 years. We saw that success, and that people -- if the issue was right, people could be moved to go against the entrenched powers, so to speak. We opened up an office at 1056 West Lawrence around 1973, May of ’73. And then we continued to establish programs in the Uptown area. I think at this time, and the Young Lords -- JJ: That’s the [00:17:00] Heart of Uptown Coalition? 8 �JH: Yeah, we went under various -- the parent organization, the cadre organization which was the hardcore people was called the Intercommunal Survival Committee. That was a committee of the Black Panther Party. We were answerable directly to the Black Panther Party. JJ: So you had a core group called the Intercommunal Survival Committee? JH: Right. JJ: And then this was more like a mass (inaudible)? JH: Yeah, the Heart of Uptown Coalition was sort of like our public arm where anybody who shared our political viewpoint, which was basically that the people should control their own communities, they could join the Heart of Uptown Coalition which was a much broader thing. The Intercommunal Survival Committee were really hardcore revolutionaries. We saw ourselves as hardcore revolutionaries. We [were involved in?] armed struggle [00:18:00] to overthrow the government. (laughter) And there was probably an inner core of maybe 20, 25 people who were actually -- we were run sort of like a military organization. I think at that time, Cha-Cha, who was the head of the Young Lords, had just gotten out of -- JJ: So you ran a military organization, but you actually were more focused on organizing? JH: Yeah. I mean it was the idea of -- JJ: Military discipline but you were focused on organizing. JH: Right, exactly. We weren’t really -- I mean I don’t want to get into all that other shit, but (laughter) -- 9 �JJ: (inaudible). JH: The focus, of course, was organizing the community for political power. The significance of the hardcore group was that these are really dedicated people that are involved in this 24 hours a day, [00:19:00] 7 days a week, and really believed in what they were doing. So I think at that time we still had visions of this rainbow coalition which was -- JJ: Because you actually were kind of living together and everything, right? JH: Yeah. Well, we would share apartments. I mean there’s like three or four of us in an apartment. JJ: So you were really tightly knit? JH: Yeah. I mean we were on call 24/7 and involved in various -- I mean there were other things going on just other than the political organizing. Like I said, we were involved in covert activities for the Black Panthers and various other things, but that’s a whole ’nother discussion. JJ: You went to the campaign? JH: So Cha-Cha of the Young Lords had just gotten out of jail, or just returned from being underground, or something like that. I don’t remember exactly what it was. So they announced [00:20:00] that they were re-establishing an office, I think it was on Wilton and Grace. And as part of that, Cha-Cha announced that he was going to run for alderman of the 46th Ward. Given the nature of the 46th Ward, I’m not sure we ever really believed that we were going to win this election because 60 percent of the ward are fairly affluent people on the lakefront. But the idea was to use the election as an organizing vehicle to A, tighten the 10 �coalition between Hispanics and poor white people, and continue to develop this model of trying to take over the political power of this particular area. One of the theories that Huey Newton had at the time -- who was head of the Black Panther Party -- was sort of modeled after Mao’s Long March. [00:21:00] In other words, the idea was to concentrate forces in particular areas. So like the 46th Ward in Uptown, this is an area if we could take over and be the political -- take over politically, that would give us a base to then move on into broader actions. And that was sort of the springboard, was the 46th Ward. And the first attempt was when we ran Cha-Cha for alderman. And that was one of the very active political campaigns where we would give a lot of actions related to drawing attention to urban renewal, and how the area’s being gentrified, and coalitions amongst various poor people -- Hispanics, and Whites, and Blacks, and Hispanics, and so on and so forth. So the idea was to continue to develop our programs [00:22:00] and get people involved in the political process. JJ: Continue to develop the health clinic and other programs that you had? JH: Yeah. Eventually we -- JJ: What programs did you have at that time? JH: Again, time sort of runs together here, but eventually we moved our office from Lawrence over to Wilson Avenue, and Wilson Avenue’s a real large facility. And there we had a legal aid clinic, we had -- help people get on public aid, welfare assistance, we had a health clinic, we had a prisoner visitation program, we had a magazine that was published on site there, Keep Strong Magazine, and I think we had -- well, all kinds of various food cooperatives. We used to have a 11 �monthly meeting at the hall for -- sort of replaced church, where people would come and we’d discuss the events of the day. [00:23:00] And sort of the springboard for various campaigns. The main thing going on in the city at the time was certain neighborhoods were being gentrified, and people were being moved out, and Uptown was one of them. And it was a fairly [insidious?] thing. There was a lot of arson, and places being burned down, and people being moved out, and them building new condos, and so on and so forth. JJ: I remember they had a -- 20/20 did a piece, arson for profit. So you’re saying there was a lot of arson, can you name -- JH: Well, for instance, Truman College is one example in Uptown. Truman College wasn’t there. That was all housing, same type of housing as the rest of Uptown which was -- and the buildings were one by one vacated. When the owners were resistant to selling to urban renewal, [00:24:00] they were burned down. They eventually took over the whole -- from Wilson to Sunnyside, Clifton to Magnolia, that whole area was wiped out and that’s where they built the college. And there was a lot of various low-income buildings that were closed down and either torn down or re-habed but not for the benefit of the people in the neighborhood, but a new class of people being moved in. JJ: So arson was one method to get rid of some of the buildings, but any other methods used by city? JH: You would get an owner who was in cahoots with them, and they wouldn’t fix up the building, and the city would come in and close it down. Or places would 12 �become so unlivable [00:25:00] that people would have to move. So eventually they cleared out the whole area. JJ: So now you got the Cha-Cha Jiménez campaign. How did you kind of restructure? How was that done? JH: Again, it was coalition -- JJ: I think that was a change, so I’m trying to see how it changed the group that you were working with (inaudible) Uptown? JH: We broadened our base, so to speak. In other words, the Heart of Uptown Coalition became a bigger organization, but we pulled in a lot of various affiliated groups. JJ: How did you do that? I mean what was the process? JH: Gee, I don’t know. (laughs) JJ: How did you directly do that? What (inaudible)? JH: Our main operation that we constantly were involved in was door to door. What we did was on a weekly basis [00:26:00] we would have a list of people who were either sympathetic or in the middle on every block in the community, and every week we would go to their house and we would bring them a Black Panther Party newspaper, and get into an argument with them over what was in there, A, and B, we would then ask them if they needed any kind of services, if they had any problems, if they had any legal problems, any other issues. And then the person who was (inaudible) would make what we called a follow-up list, and he would say, “These people need legal help,” and then we would send somebody else behind them to provide them with whatever legal -- hook them into the 13 �resources that we had developed to get them the assistance they needed. The idea being that people would then turn to us for assistance rather than the precinct captain, [00:27:00] that is you’re trying to change the focus of the politics. The same thing would be true for, say, if you had a [block club?], and they were interested in an issue on the block, say they needed a particular abandoned building torn down because it was a problem with drugs or something, then we would adopt that as one of our issues, and then pull all of the people who were involved in that into our umbrella group, and it just went on from that. I think the first thing was in ’73, ’74 when Cha-Cha ran for alderman, but I think he ended up getting 25 percent of the vote or something like that. And then I think in ’77, Helen Shiller -JJ: Thirty-eight percent. JH: Thirty-eight, okay. Thirty-eight percent. I don’t mean to sell you short. [00:28:00] (laughter) We had a good showing in our particular base areas, but if you took the ward as a whole, like I said, it was a more difficult proposition. I think we then ran again in ’77, Helen ran, lost that election. JJ: Helen Shiller. JH: Helen Shiller. Then in ’79 or something like that, we ran. We kept running in the elections, and, eventually -- and then as this particular movement which started in the 46th Ward and other places began to develop on a city-wide basis. So voter registration and trying to involve people more in the political process particularly in the poorer areas, that whole thing sort of culminated with the election of Harold Washington in 1983. 14 �JJ: So there was a direct link between -- JH: Oh, definitely. I mean maintain that without the [00:29:00] ground work that we did here that Harold Washington would’ve never been elected mayor. That was really the significance of it. I think when Harold ran for mayor -- I forget what year it was, ’82 or ’83 -- I mean we ended up registering that year something like 260,000 people to vote on a city-wide basis. At that time, in order to register to vote, you had to go downtown to register to vote. And they had one day, just like 30 days before the election, you could register to vote in your precinct; but other than that, the only way you could register to vote would be to actually go to city hall. So we used to bus people from all over the city every Saturday down to the city hall to register to vote. In that year leading up to Harold’s election, we registered I want to say about 250,000 people which [00:30:00] without those 250,000 people we never would have won that election. We started out going door to door in Uptown, and basically as you expand that, it eventually became a city-wide movement and that’s -- ended up electing Harold mayor. JJ: Now, what was your role back in the Jimenez campaign? What was your role? I mean what was your position and (inaudible)? JH: I mean it’s hard to remember. I was always the person who was in charge of the logistics of the organization. In other words, I was sort of like the administrative director. So all the people who worked for us basically went through me. I was the overall administrator of the organization. JJ: And you remained in this post all the way through -- up to [00:31:00] the Harold Washington election? 15 �JH: I mean in terms of the cadre of hardcore people then, I was always their director. In terms of the campaign, when Harold was -- (break in audio) JH: Just to backtrack a little bit -- again, the roots of this movement go back to 19691970. It actually probably goes back further than that, but it’s sort of the history of the [I don’t know if you want to call it?] revolutionary struggles, but -- so a lot of this came out of the civil rights/student protest movements of the late ’60s early ’70s. And people, at the time, are looking for [00:32:00] a meaningful way to take it to the next step. So in other words, the root of it is the civil rights movement, number one, and the Black Panther Party who was espousing the position that the Black -- the movement for civil rights was the vanguard struggle, but particularly Fred Hampton had the idea that this wasn’t really a Black -- a struggle just for Black nationalism, but it was a class struggle and should involve all oppressed peoples. So he made an effort to coalesce with other communitybased movements which had their basis in the civil rights movement, but were also involved in some kind of community struggles for control of the community. Back in the late ’60s in most major cities in the country it was true that most [00:33:00] Black and Hispanic people had very little political power, A, and B, were subject to fairly oppressive measures by the police and other people. So police brutality was a serious issue and -- (break in audio) JJ: Police brutality. 16 �JH: So there was various things going on, sort of like grassroots type movements. In Uptown, there was this group called the Young Patriots who were trying to organize poor whites. And at the time, I think the Young Lords who originally started out as sort of a street gang had begun to develop into more of a political organization patterned after the Black Panther Party. And so the Young Patriots sort of faded away, but the Young Lords and the [00:34:00] Intercommunal Survival Committee -- there was another group of white revolutionaries called Rising Up Angry -- they all sort of -- since they were doing pretty much the same things in their own community, it was sort of a natural coalition. There was a particularly a push by Fred Hampton that we should be -- I think he used to say, “Black people should be organizing Black people, and Brown people Brown people, and white people white people.” But we all have the same -- let me turn this damn thing off here. We all have the same goals. So it was sort of natural that we would work together. JJ: So you started working with the Young Lords in Lincoln Park? JH: Yeah. Again, it was on and off, but we were basically involved on a [00:35:00] consistent basis with anybody who was organizing the community along the same means that we were. So the Young Lords, the Black Panthers, and us, pretty much, in Chicago that were -- those were the three groups that spearheaded the whole movement. JJ: After Fred Hampton was murdered, and Mark Clark, was there like a vacuum or something? And did this movement kind of a take a leadership role at that time? 17 �JH: Bobby Rush who was the minister of defense for the Black -- he sort of stepped right in after Fred was -- so Fred was sort of a dynamic person. His murder actually did a lot to heighten people’s consciousness, so to speak. Whatever the powers that [00:36:00] be had intended -- they thought that that was going to wipe out the movement, and it actually had the opposite effect. JJ: So the movement grew? JH: Yeah. I mean, again, the whole impetus for the first foray into electoral politics in Chicago which eventually ended up in the election of Harold Washington was the murder of Fred Hampton, beyond a doubt. It was that movement of getting rid of Ed Hanrahan which was the first serious effort to challenge the actual political process. Prior to that, it was protest movements and marches. JJ: And was there also an Oakland election going on also? JH: Well, yeah, Bobby Seale who was head of the Black Panther Party was running for mayor of Oakland. Elaine Brown was running for councilwoman. That was part of what I call like the grand march theory. In other words, the idea was -what the Black Panther Party [00:37:00] did was they closed most of their chapters all over the country and moved everybody to Oakland. And the idea was to establish a base of operations in Oakland to eventually seize political power in the city and to use that as a model to show the rest of the country that this is what we can do as revolutionaries. This will be the difference in terms of how people control their own community. They had a ten-point platform and various things -- people have a right to food, and clothing, and shelter, things like that. The Intercommunal Survival, we adopted a similar strategy, the idea was to 18 �pull in all various people from all over the country who were involved in this struggle with the Black Panther Party to work in Chicago, in the community, in the 46th Ward, and then try to use that as a base [00:38:00] of power. You know, one of the things with the 46th Ward, again, in this community, was it was a very diverse community. You had a concentration of Appalachian whites, but you also had a concentration of Puerto Ricans in northern Lakeview. So it was sort of a natural -JJ: It was sort of segregated then. JH: Yeah. I mean the city was tremendously segregated, always has been. It still is to some extent, but even more so back then. Uptown was the white ghetto, and Lincoln Park, Lake View, West Town were Puerto Ricans, and Pilsen is where Mexicans lived, and Black people lived on the south and west side, you know, certain [00:39:00] defined areas. And people didn’t mix very well. So part of the thing was you would organize your own community, but it wouldn’t be an isolated thing. In other words, Puerto Ricans should order Puerto Ricans but they shouldn’t only stay amongst Puerto Ricans. We need a place where we can come together and coalesce because we share the same problems. (laughs) JJ: What were some of the events of that campaign that you recall? Any specific ones? JH: The Cha-Cha Jiménez campaign? JJ: Yeah. JH: It’s hard to remember, that’s 40 years ago, but I mean I remember we used to -the guy who was running against him was Chris Cohen, and he was sort of a 19 �victim of our -- he probably didn’t turn out to be such a bad guy in the end. His daddy was the head of HUD or something. [00:40:00] We used to follow him around. Anytime he had an appearance, we would show up with 200 people. We had the anti-arson thing, I think that was during that campaign. I don’t know, I can’t remember. I remember following Chris Cohen around. (laughs) The main thing, I think, was the voter registration thing. It doesn’t seem like that’s significant now, but, again, you got to go back 40 years and see that the whole voter registration process was completely controlled by the Democratic machine. This was the first attempt to break that. They made it real difficult for anybody to register to vote unless you went through them. I remember every [00:41:00] Saturday we would rent six vans and each load them up with 15 people and we’d bring 100 people downtown to register to vote. That was a big deal back then. JJ: So there was this campaign, the Jiménez campaign, and there were other -- the Shiller campaign came after that? JH: Yeah, a couple of Shiller campaigns. JJ: Did you see any impact of all these campaigns and all this organizing? JH: I mean, again, ’79 is when Jane Byrne got elected mayor, so that was first time someone other than Democratic machine got elected in Chicago. That was sort of a fluke because it was based on the weather and other things. [00:42:00] I mean I think the grassroots organizing that went on culminated in, again, the election of Harold Washington in ’83. That was a real candidate who was based in the community. In addition to that, we won a number of aldermanic races all over the city. Bobby Rush was elected alderman of the 2nd Ward, Helen Shiller 20 �was elected in the 46th Ward, and Luis Gutiérrez was elected in -- I can’t remember the name of the ward -- 29th, maybe. Dorothy Tillman was another one. These were all grassroots people who were elected outside of the power that had existed prior to that. And that election, we basically, [00:43:00] with Harold Washington, took over the city government. In 1983 when Harold was first elected, he didn’t have a majority so the fight between the -- I think it was the 29 and the 21 -- there was 21 alderman who were with Harold and 29 who were with right white wing, mostly white, mostly racist. Interestingly enough, most of the Puerto Rican alderman sided with Harold and the Mexican ones with the white people and the white power structure. In the subsequent election which was ’87 -- I think there was a special election in ’85 where we were actually able to gain a majority in the city council. And the city was beginning to change directions. The machine was being broken up and there was real [00:44:00] political power in city hall, the people had a real voice. Unfortunately, Harold died and then the whole thing sort of fell apart. There was a time that even the reactionary Black politicians who had sided for the machine for so long, they even sided with Harold because that’s where the power was rooted. His power was really rooted in the community. Again, the political organizing that started in 1971 was really the basis of it without a doubt. (break in audio) JH: You can edit this if you want. I guess what happened here is that the -- when Harold was elected -- 1983, 1984 the Black Panther Party and [00:45:00] similar organizations who had been victimized for a number of years by the FBI, and the 21 �COINTEL Program, and drugs in the community -- I mean this was a concerted effort to demonize certain persons who were the leaders of the movement. Fred Hampton was murdered, but Oakland, California and the base of the Black Panther Party was inundated with drugs. Crack cocaine made its appearance in the ghettos in the early ’80s. This was not an accident. One of the problems in our community, in particular amongst poor people, has always been we’re susceptible to certain vices. Part of it is because of the difficulty of living in poverty. Drugs, alcohol that’s a natural -- [00:46:00] I’m not trying to make excuses for people, but this is a natural phenomenon. It seems that certain powers that be -- I’m not a great conspiracy theorist, but to me it’s factual that these communities are inundated with drugs. A lot of the leaders of the Black Panther party and Young Lords, other organizations fell into the trap, and got addicted to drugs, or got involved in drugs, or the money was alluring, or the gangster lifestyle, or whatever it was. But at the same time that the political movements are becoming more successful to some extent, a lot of the leaders of these various -- are being picked off, and the organizations are having a difficult time sustaining themselves. The Black Panther Party -- basically Huey Newton was continually arrested, and [00:47:00] harassed, and fighting trial after trial. And all the resources of the organization are going into defending the leaders, and, eventually, the organization begins to fall apart. After the last round of arrests and murders of various Panthers, the organization just sort of disintegrated so that by ’83, ’84 the model of these cadre type organizations is -were beginning to fall apart. In some places where they were able to achieve 22 �some political power it continued on other levels. I say that because by 1984 when Harold was elected, I pretty much dropped out of the movement, so to speak, but took a job with the Washington Administration as, the way I saw it, payback for all the years that I spent [00:48:00] in the struggle. So I went to work in the housing department, and went back to school, and got a degree in finance. Seeing this as sort of a victory -- in other words, all these years of struggling on the streets culminated in us now being part of the government. So we worked for the government for five, six years. And a lot of the people I had worked with all these years were now -- you know, all got government jobs in the city administration at some level or other. When Harold died, the struggle again was sort of bought off to some extent, and there was really no leaders to sustain the movement, so it sort of faded away. Most of us who were active took jobs in [00:49:00] various types of fields that were still of benefit to the community, but we could make a living. So I’ve been basically involved in affordable housing partly because I worked for the city for five, six years under Harold, and worked in the housing department, and so it was sort of natural that I would -JJ: What was your perspective when you were in there? I mean you said you were in a different level now. You’re working as part of the government even though you -- of course, you’ve always been progressive, (laughs) you’re still progressive. (inaudible) see any other type of perspective? (inaudible) activist? JH: The idea was that the resource of the government can now be used to directly benefit the people rather than -- so in other words, we’re not fighting the government, we’re now the government who was going to dole out the resources 23 �and that we would be able to come up with a plan that would really have an effect on the [00:50:00] community, which would improve the lives of the people. Now, you know, we were a little bit naïve because we didn’t realize how entrenched the political power was. So even though you took over -- nominally you took over the government, you didn’t really because the people who actually run things on the underneath are still there and they’re going to fight you tooth and nail. But, see, that whole movement has a lot of significance. Because we were so close to achieving political power, and there was a cultural change developing in the country, that caused a backlash. So what’s happening today with the Republicans, and the whole Reagan revolution and all that, that was a direct result of the push from the left that caused the right to push back. [00:51:00] In other words, the rich actually felt threatened by these movements, these attempts for people to seize political power, to seize the means of production. So they determined not to let this happen, and so this is -- the whole Tea Party movement and the whole Republican entrenchment of the right is a direct result of these movements of the ’80s and ’90s. So I don’t think I’ve ever really lost my perspective on this. I think part of the problem is we were able to get a certain level of community control, but we weren’t able to get to the next step. Part of that is because of the way the system is set up. We’re still in a class struggle, and the rich still control the means of the production, and even probably more so than was true 15, 20 years ago. [00:52:00] But to a large extent it’s still the same struggle. It’s still a struggle for community control, it’s still a struggle for control of 24 �the resources, to use the resources to benefit the majority of people rather than the chosen one, two percent. JJ: There was this housing plan, right? And there was like a 50-year housing plan, a master plan, for the city? JH: Yeah, Plan 21. JJ: Plan 21 and all that. Looking at it from that perspective of being within the government, you kind of mentioned that we still didn’t have any control. We still didn’t have any power. It didn’t change at all, did it? JH: Well, it changed to some extent, but, again, you see, one of the problems was it was a very small window here. In other words, when Harold seized control of the city hall, [00:53:00] he died four years or five years later and we were never really able to effect the change that we had wanted to effect although it did -- see, the original thing was -- I mean you can go back to the ’60s and ’70s in Chicago, the idea was to concentrate resources in the inner city and make that -- that was Chicago, downtown. Well, the neighborhoods were suffering, and all the resources of the city were directed at the inner city, the downtown area and immediate areas around it at the expense of the neighborhood. I think what the movement for community control represented was an attempt to shift some of those resources back to the neighborhoods [00:54:00] although it probably didn’t go far enough. You can see the difference between Richie Daley Sr. and Richie Daley Jr. Richie Daley Sr. didn’t care, “Screw all you, we’ll do it my way.” Richie Daley Jr. was able to buy off most communities because he did see the need to distribute some of the city’s resources back to the neighborhoods. 25 �JJ: What do you mean he bought them? How did he do that? JH: For instance, every alderman was given a fund of, say, ten million dollars a year to use in the community. That would’ve never happened under Richie J. Daley. That was a result of the community organizing. There was a certain attempt to listen to some of the local representatives, and give that money for streets and sidewalks, and there was housing developed [00:55:00] in the communities, you know, not for profits, low-income housing, the tax credit program, there was various use of various federal housing programs, an attempt to rebuild public housing. It was more -- JJ: But did the plan change at all or (inaudible) -- a new revamped plan? JH: I mean the essence of it probably didn’t change. I mean I think we slowed down the process. We were able to strengthen the neighborhoods to some extent, we probably didn’t go far enough, but I think without that movement no telling what would have happened. JJ: (inaudible). JH: I think the city’s probably much more open. JJ: They slowed it down, but there’s still (inaudible) -- JH: I mean the money [00:56:00] is still there. JJ: More poor people on the lakefront. JH: Well, that’s true, but that has to do with the whole focus of the country to a large extent. The class thing has become more pronounced than it ever has been. But, again, you could argue that that’s a result of our movement, not them winning, but there’s a pushback to what -- like I said before, the campaign for 26 �community control hasn’t ended. I think the government in the city is much more responsive than it was 30 years ago, but did we succeed? Probably not. But did we have an effect? Yeah, definitely. JJ: What about like today there’s a whole thing about foreclosures and stuff like that. How does [00:57:00] the past relate to today -- today’s housing situation? JH: I have a hard time making the connections between the movements back then and what’s going on today, but the thing there was that -- the part of the pushback was to deregulate, to give the banks and other people more power. That was the whole Reagan revolution. Greed was good. Greed is good. That’s the American thing, and no one should be ostracized for that. [00:58:00] The big bankers and stuff saw a way to make a lot of money and they used the people as ploys in a game. It was only a matter of time before -- it was like you’re building a house of cards, well, eventually, it’s going to collapse. The fundamental question we’re faced with now is not that much different than it was forty years ago: are the majority of people going to have any control over the political process or the use of resources in the community or is everything going to be controlled by the top one or two percent? And that’s really the same struggle that we had back then. We probably lost ground to some extent because that one percent is more entrenched and they own more resources than they ever did. I mean I see this [00:59:00] presidential election as pry the most critical election we’ve ever had in this country. And to me, the election of Barack Obama was the result -- that’s like a direct extension of what happened in Chicago with the election of Harold Washington. The people are dissatisfied, they’re looking for an 27 �alternative, they elect the alternative, and then the powers that be do everything they can to attack everything that he does and make sure that nothing he does can be successful, and then they go around saying, “Everybody see? He can’t do this. You got to stick with us.” And that’s sort of what -- we need to take this to the next step. I think what happened here was that we got there but didn’t know what to do when we got there. (laughs) In other words, we got political power to some extent, but now that we’re sitting there in the seat, “Now what do we do?” Eventually, we were going to figure this out, but the other side [01:00:00] pushes back on this and they will use every opportunity to attack, attack, attack. And since they control the media and other things, we’re up against it. The problem today is that people are more easily manipulated because the media and everything is so much more invasive. They’re bombarded 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and a lot of the safeguards that were built in, protecting people from falsehoods and certain people controlling the media have all been removed. I mean you have Fox News, that has no journalistic value at all. They just say whatever the hell they want to say. You keep repeating the same thing over and over again, people will believe it. The whole idea of these super PACs where they can -- [01:01:00] one millionaire can put a billion dollars into Romney’s campaign and control the message. So we’ll see. We’ll see how gullible people are this year. Can people be manipulated to vote against their own self-interest or in the end will people -- we’ll see. (break in audio) 28 �JH: I guess the lesson here is that the campaign for community control was an important step. The problem was that maybe we didn’t take it far enough. And again, like I just said, I think where we’re at now is we’ll see what happens in this -- this presidential election will say a lot [01:02:00] as to whether or not we had any -- whether the movement was minimally successful, or are we going to continue to advance the rights of the people? Or are we going to go backwards? JJ: What you’re trying to say is that this presidential election is a result of all these (inaudible)? How is (inaudible)? JH: Well, I think it’s a culmination of where we started. In other words, this was a grassroot movement for people to seize political power, to allow people to have a voice in their own government, in their own communities, to make the institutions of government serve the people. I think we were able to get to a certain point and certain places in this country where that was successful. Because of the pushback by the right wing and other people, we basically regressed a little bit so people [01:03:00] had to retreat. People continue to have an effect through other means by being involved in housing, or healthcare, or other issues. I think on a national level, various progressive people that were put in place all over the country were able to elect a fairly progressive president, but, again, you can see the pushback over the last four years from the right wing trying to reverse that. So now we’ve come to the point -- are we going to step forward or are we going to allow ourselves to pushed all the way back into the pit again? Again, I’m sort of at the point where it’s sort of -- judgment is still -- the jury is still out on whether or not we were successful in what we were attempting to do back in the ’60s and 29 �’70s. [01:04:00] I know that one success was the -- I mean racism and the ability of people of different types of ethnic backgrounds to interact, a lot of doors were opened that weren’t open before, but, again, are we going to take that on to -- it really comes to the point are you going to wipe out the middle class in this country? Are you going to have a third world country where one percent of the people control everything and everybody else lives in crime and poverty? Or are you going to continue to build a movement where people have some control over their resources and are able to improve their lives? We’ll see. That’s sort of where we’re at. I think that’s where we started and we’re sort of back there again. If we can take the next step and continue to build a power base in the communities where people have [01:04:00] some control over their lives then we’ll be there, but maybe not. (laughter) END OF VIDEO FILE 30 � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/4fafc6bef264cec85a57843bfc1316a5.mp4 fd820427b039148751dd8f1378f322d6 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Young Lords in Lincoln Park Collection Subject The topic of the resource Young Lords (Organization) Puerto Ricans--United States Civil Rights--United States--History Lincoln Park (Chicago, Ill.) Personal narratives Social justice Community activists--Illinois--Chicago Description An account of the resource Collection of oral history interviews and digitized materials documenting the history of the Young Lords Organization in Lincoln Park, Chicago. Interviews were conducted by Young Lords' founder, José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez, and documents were digitized from Mr. Jiménez' archives. The Young Lords in Lincoln Park collection grows out of the ongoing struggle for fair housing, self-determination, and human rights that was launched by Mr. José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez, founder of the Young Lords Movement. This project is dedicated to documenting the history of the displacement of Puerto Ricans, Mejicanos, other Latinos, and the poor from Lincoln Park, as well as the history of the Young Lords nationwide. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Jiménez, José, 1948- Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/491">Young Lords in Lincoln Park collection (RHC-65)</a> Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-04-25 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Language A language of the resource eng spa Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-65 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 2012-2017 Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Título Spanish language Title entry Jack Hart vídeo entrevista y biografía Descripción Spanish language Description entry Jack Hart era el asistente de Walter “Slim” Coleman durante la campaña de Jiménez para Alderman en 1975. Señor Hart todavía vive y trabaja en el Distrito 46 de Chicago que ahora es una comunidad más nueva y elegante. En los 1907s Hart era un miembro de la Intercommunal Survival committee, un grupo de gente blanca que soportaba el Black Panther Party. Miembros de esa organización trabajaron con Cathy Archibald y Slim Coleman en la el Centro de Información del Vecindario en Lincoln Park. También ayudaron a Señor Jiménez hacer, publicar y financiar uno de los periódicos originales de los Young Lords, y trabajo cerca con Jiménez y los Young Lords hasta 1983 donde Helen Shiller fue elijada como Alderman y Harold Washington fue el primer Afroamericano alcalde de Chicago. Señor Hart junto con la administración de Alcalde Washington, como Asistente del Comisario. Durante este tiempo era responsable de administrar todos los programas de prestemos para la rehabilitación de la cuidad de Chicago. El también ayudo formular y lanchar la asociación de Chicago Housing, Low Housing Tax Credit, y el programa de calefacción de la cuidad de Chicago. Ahora es un agente de urbanización y también el principal Oficial de Financias en Affordable Property Management Specialists en Chicago. Sujetos Spanish language Subject terms Young Lords (Organización) Puertorriqueños--Estados Unidos Derechos civiles--Estados Unidos--Historia Lincoln Park (Chicago, Ill.) Narrativas personales Justicia social Activistas comunitarios--Illinois--Chicago Chicago (Ill.)--Política y gobierno--1951- Chicago (Ill.). Alcalde (1983-1987 : Washington) Discriminación en la vivienda--Illinois--Chicago Housing--Illinois--Chicago Source <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/491">Young Lords in Lincoln Park (RHC-65)</a> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-65_Hart_Jack Title A name given to the resource Jack Hart video interview and transcript Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Hart, Jack Description An account of the resource 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. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Jiménez, José, 1948- Subject The topic of the resource Young Lords (Organization) Puerto Ricans--United States Civil Rights--United States--History Lincoln Park (Chicago, Ill.) Personal narratives Social justice Community activists--Illinois--Chicago Chicago (Ill.)--Politics and government--1951- Chicago (Ill.). Mayor (1983-1987 : Washington) Discrimination in housing--Illinois--Chicago Housing--Illinois--Chicago Language A language of the resource eng Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2012-03-01 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/ec1148512920052e886fccd8e3dc1003.pdf 6dafd634447b5fa5dc5706130fa78578 PDF Text Text Young Lords In Lincoln Park Interviewee: Iberia Hampton Interviewers: José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez Location: Grand Valley State University Special Collections Date: 2/9/2012 Biography and Description English 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. She contributes time and money each year to organize a family reunion traveling to her southern birthplace to remember her son, husband, and other relatives that have passed at their gravesites. Along with Bill Hampton and the board, Mrs. Iberia Hampton is the primary organizer of the annual celebration of the Fred Hampton Scholarship Fund. Her keen and natural brilliance stands out in this interview, as well as how humble, friendly and kind she remains, even after the proven government corruption that led to the brutal loss of her son. Spanish Iberia Hampton es la madre de Fred Hamton, al vicepresidente quien fue asesinado, y también madre de Dee y Bill Hampton. Durante su vida fue dedicada en su iglesia y comunidad. Contribuye tiempo y dinero para organizar una reunión con su familia en que van a visitar en donde nació y donde esta enterrado su hijo, esposo, y otros familiares. Con su hijo, Bill, y otros miembros Señora Hampton organiza le celebración del Fred Hampton Scholarship fund. Su profunda y genialidad natural brilla en este �entrevista igual que como humilde y agradable ella todavía es, aunque la corrupción en el gobierno le tomo la vida de un hijo. �Transcript IBERIA HAMPTON: (inaudible) some of us don’t leave here to go back (inaudible), and we always stayed a extra week. [With the extra week, we have to?] clean the farm up and [stuff, fixing the house up. Something?] real nice. JOSE JIMENEZ: So, when you go there, you went to the cemetery to fix it up, you said? IH: Go to the cemetery? JJ: Is that what you said? IH: Mm-hmm, yeah. Go to the cemetery. JJ: I mean [when you would go there?]. Who were you talking -- you’re talking about Fred? IH: I got Fred down there. My husband’s down there too. JJ: Your husband’s down there now. IH: Mm-hmm. JJ: Okay. So, (inaudible). IH: Yeah. JJ: Your husband. IH: Mm-hmm. [Fred’s there?]. JJ: And this is done every year? IH: [Mm-hmm, I do every year?]. JJ: On Mother’s Day. IH: Mm-hmm. Go every year. 1 �JJ: That’s beautiful. Yeah. IH: When Fred was -- [you’ve got?] pictures of Fred there. When he was little, [00:01:00] he went every year too. [They’ve been?] going every year since they was little kids. They always got a vacation, all their life. JJ: And you made sure it was Mother’s Day. IH: Yeah. No. No. They got a vacation. It wasn’t Mother’s Day all the time. Sometimes, they got it for Easter. Whatever time. See, when he was working, we got it whatever time he got the days off. Then, we left (inaudible). He said, “We can take a week for Easter if you want to.” [We said?], “Okay, we’ll go.” (inaudible) for Easter. Then, after we got Bill, they didn’t want Easter. They wanted a different day. They wanted it to be later [so they had?] more time. The kids did. [And, see, at the start of?] that time, I wasn’t working. (inaudible). He’d take his time off. JJ: [00:02:00] That’s beautiful. I mean, I wish we could do that. I mean, we’re from the country too. We’re in Puerto Rico. IH: Yeah. JJ: [Same thing?]. But (inaudible). IH: [It’s a good time?] JJ: Are you ever planning to go back there just to stay, or you’re going to stay here? IH: (inaudible) [to live by?] my kids are here. JJ: You don’t want to go down there? IH: [I’d go down there to meet ’em?], but -- JJ: But not to live. 2 �IH: -- not to live. I won’t go there to live. My kids are here, and most of my people are scattered around. We just got -- there’s three houses now on the farm (inaudible) bad shape. We’re thinkin’ about how we’re gonna fix them. JJ: So, most of the kids and everybody’s here. In Maywood, or --? IH: My kids? JJ: Yeah. The two kids are here -- IH: [00:03:00] Uh-huh. JJ: -- but I’m saying -- IH: They’re both here. JJ: But the rest of the family is here, I mean? IH: Uh-huh, yeah. My -- JJ: I mean, how many brothers and sisters did you have? IH: My brothers and sisters? Oh, I don’t have any brother and sister. I’m an only child. JJ: Oh, you’re an only child? IH: Uh-huh. I had one sister and two brothers [before, but?] they’re all dead except me. I’m the only one living. JJ: Okay. And what about Francis? IH: [Frankie?]. His family’s [out in?] California. California, Arkansas, (pause) Texas, and -- [where was Libby?]? P1: [00:04:00] When she was living, she was living in Las Vegas. IH: Yeah. Yeah. P1: [She’s dead now?]. 3 �IH: Yeah. Las Vegas. [Yeah, she’s?] Las Vegas, Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana. I think [that’s all of it?]. (inaudible). California. Mm-hmm. My sister lived in Louisiana, and my brother lived here. My other brother was -- he was in -- he lived in all different places. [He was?] -- JJ: What about, like, Fred Jr.? I mean, you spent a little time with Fred Jr.? IH: [He would see me the night before last?] (inaudible). JJ: [A night before?] (inaudible). IH: Mm-hmm. JJ: [How did it happen?]? Did you enjoy [00:05:00] [him growing up?]? IH: Oh, I love him. JJ: You love him? IH: Yeah, I love him. JJ: Anything that you remember when he was a child, or --? IH: Mm-hmm. [I would?] take him outside with me all the time on vacation. [Yeah, he was?] right with me. (inaudible) [nothing for me to cook him or anything?]. JJ: What does he like? What does he like? IH: Huh? JJ: What does he like the best? IH: What do I make for him? JJ: Yeah. IH: Cabbage and fish. [He likes?] cabbage and fish. (inaudible) [I get it?] (inaudible) [came out?] (inaudible). He told me [he’ll be back Friday?]. 4 �JJ: Okay. All right. Well, let me -- I was gonna ask you a few questions, but -- so, let me -- [00:06:00] anything that we should add about Fred or yourself that you think we should add to this video? IH: Uh-uh. (inaudible). JJ: Okay. IH: Uh-uh. JJ: Well, I appreciate it. I just wanted to put that on because I’m going to interview your son, but I wanted to [put a few things out?]. Since I’m here, I wanted to make sure that I get something from you. IH: Okay. JJ: I appreciate that. IH: Mm-hmm. JJ: And happy birthday. IH: Thank you. END OF VIDEO FILE 5 � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/90d7cc40923a8bcde45056adeb44bbf2.mp4 c82010de81b44083d79bbd7044a86537 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Young Lords in Lincoln Park Collection Subject The topic of the resource Young Lords (Organization) Puerto Ricans--United States Civil Rights--United States--History Lincoln Park (Chicago, Ill.) Personal narratives Social justice Community activists--Illinois--Chicago Description An account of the resource Collection of oral history interviews and digitized materials documenting the history of the Young Lords Organization in Lincoln Park, Chicago. Interviews were conducted by Young Lords' founder, José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez, and documents were digitized from Mr. Jiménez' archives. The Young Lords in Lincoln Park collection grows out of the ongoing struggle for fair housing, self-determination, and human rights that was launched by Mr. José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez, founder of the Young Lords Movement. This project is dedicated to documenting the history of the displacement of Puerto Ricans, Mejicanos, other Latinos, and the poor from Lincoln Park, as well as the history of the Young Lords nationwide. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Jiménez, José, 1948- Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/491">Young Lords in Lincoln Park collection (RHC-65)</a> Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-04-25 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Language A language of the resource eng spa Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-65 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 2012-2017 Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Título Spanish language Title entry Iberia Hampton vídeo entrevista y biografía Descripción Spanish language Description entry Iberia Hampton es la madre de Fred Hamton, al vicepresidente quien fue asesinado, y también madre de Dee y Bill Hampton. Durante su vida fue dedicada en su iglesia y comunidad. Contribuye tiempo y dinero para organizar una reunión con su familia en que van a visitar en donde nació y donde esta enterrado su hijo, esposo, y otros familiares. Con su hijo, Bill, y otros miembros Señora Hampton organiza le celebración del Fred Hampton Scholarship fund. Su profunda y genialidad natural brilla en este entrevista igual que como humilde y agradable ella todavía es, aunque la corrupción en el gobierno le tomo la vida de un hijo. Sujetos Spanish language Subject terms Young Lords (Organización) Puertorriqueños--Estados Unidos Derechos civiles--Estados Unidos--Historia Lincoln Park (Chicago, Ill.) Afro-Americanos--Relatos personales Justicia social Activistas comunitarios--Illinois--Chicago Hampton, Fred, 1948-1969 Partido Pantera Negra. Illinois Capítulo Source <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/491">Young Lords in Lincoln Park (RHC-65)</a> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-65_Hampton_Iberia Title A name given to the resource Iberia Hampton video interview and transcript Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Hampton, Iberia Description An account of the resource 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. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Jiménez, José, 1948- Subject The topic of the resource Young Lords (Organization) Puerto Ricans--United States Civil Rights--United States--History Lincoln Park (Chicago, Ill.) African Americans--Personal narratives Social justice Community activists--Illinois--Chicago Hampton, Fred, 1948-1969 Black Panther Party. Illinois Chapter Language A language of the resource eng Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2012-02-09 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/530d79aa08dcd3257578e0c19c97f132.pdf f29def97a74abffa08c92759bd41dbb5 PDF Text Text Young Lords In Lincoln Park Interviewee: Bill Hampton Interviewers: José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez Location: Grand Valley State University Special Collections Date: 2/9/2012 Biography and Description English 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, usually attended by civic leaders and the community at large. Mr. Hampton has served as director of the Midwest Voter Alliance, as a field organizer for then-presidential candidate Barak Obama, and he also runs a traffic safety program in Maywood. Spanish Bill Hampton era un maestro en las escuelas de Chicago y también el hermano de Fred Hampton, quien fue el vicepresidente de la sección del Black Panther Party en Illinois. Fred Hampton fue asesinado en la mañana del 4 de Diciembre 1969 por un equipo especial de policía. Bill Hampton creció en Maywood, Illinois, donde organizo un a conmemoración anual en recuerdo de su hermano que fue atendido por líderes del cívico y la comunidad. En Maywood, Señor Hampton corre un programa de seguridad en el �tráfico y como director de Midwest Voter Aliance, organizo y coordino para Barak Obama durante su primera ves corriendo por presidente. �Transcript BILL HAMPTON: Glad to be here. (inaudible) JOSE JIMENEZ: Tell me about your family a little bit and your (inaudible) growin’ up. BH: My family migrated to Chicago from Louisiana and we were born here at Cook County Hospital. It’s me, Fred, my sister Delores, and we lived in Argo, Illinois for a while. We moved to Blue Island, Illinois. Stayed there about 7 years. Attended Bremen School, then we come to Maywood in ’58. JJ: What school was that? BH: Bremen? JJ: Bremen Elementary in Maywood -- in Blue Island. I don’t think it’s there anymore. And we come to Maywood in ’58 and attended Irving School. Then we left [out there?] and went to Proviso East. We liked sports. We always had a vacation every year. Family kept us close knit. We visited our relatives in the city and the South. JJ: Were you on the same team as Fred or...? BH: Well, we played Little League Baseball. We both liked baseball. JJ: And what school was this? BH: Little League [00:01:00] was in a community. We was on different teams, yeah. JJ: So what teams were you playin’ on? BH: Baseball teams. We played, both, baseball. He played first base and third base. I played first base, outfield, pitched. And then we got into high school, we played things like football and all that. Football and basketball. And we liked a lot of 1 �music concerts. In fact, Fred played saxophone. JJ: Oh, Fred played the saxophone? BH: And then I played trombone a little bit. And, you know, we kind of, like, my parents tried to keep us well rounded. My father was a painter and my mother and father both were in the union where they worked. CPC, both work in the union. So they always stressed education with us. And we would go to Louisiana. We would talk to our grandparents on both sides and they would tell us about how things were in the South, things that they had to go through here. [00:02:00] They didn’t want us to go through here. JJ: What kind of things? BH: Well, you know, segregation and racism and all that stuff. And so -- JJ: What were their names, your grandparents? BH: My grandparents on my mother’s side was [Eli?], that was her father Eli [Hugh?], and [Lizzy?] was her mother. My father’s dad was [Empsy?]. His mother was [Emma?]. They were both, you know, from Louisiana. JJ: So what was Eli’s [life?]? BH: He was a sharecropper raised on the 106-acre farm that his daddy, first generation out of slave, [Edmund?]. JJ: First generation out of slave? BH: No, he wasn’t, but his daddy was, Edmund. JJ: I mean, his daddy was a slave? BH: Yeah, Eli -- my mother’s granddaddy was first generation not a slave. Wasn’t a slave, he was first generation from slavery. But his daddy, which would have 2 �been my mother’s great grandfather, was a slave and his name was [Moses White?]. [00:03:00] And my father’s grandfather, you know, great grandfather, he was a slave. [Anderson?], out of Louisiana. JJ: So did Fred (inaudible) BH: (shakes head) JJ: No. (inaudible) So did Fred know this too? (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) BH: Oh yeah, no we all knew the parents were slaves like most Black people did. You know, yeah, we knew that, yeah. ’cause quite naturally they brought it up. JJ: So how did this affect you? I mean, did you...? BH: Yeah, you know, we wondered about it. We wondered about it. We just glad it wasn’t in our generation, you know. When you talk to people it’s closer than you think, you know. You hear about it, you read about it. Again, you talk to your grandparents tell you different things didn’t used -- you know, take an effect on you. So I guess that’s why things happened in the ’60s like they did. People felt that somethin’ shoulda been did about it. And, you know, [00:04:00] we’d hear about things, read about things, and see different things. In Louisiana we saw different things. Segregation and places where things happened at. You know, so it put a little psychological thing on you. And then things you face here, you know. JJ: Okay. When you say segregation, because I mean, I think people divided in neighborhoods. BH: Well yeah, when we’d go South you see colored signs and Black signs, you know, colored and white. You couldn’t use the washrooms or you couldn’t go to 3 �certain restaurants or somethin’. So we would see that. And after a period of time, when the movement got strong, we went back down there and one gas station we used to go to, we saw the sign was down. So me and my brother said, “Look, see it’s down. It’s not there no more.” So we’d go down there and sometimes we’d accidentally go in the wrong, and the guy said, “No, yours is over here.” You know? So it’s kind of like, [00:05:00] you go in that territory and it freak you out. You see those signs, would freak us out. JJ: So when -- BH: (inaudible) freak us out. JJ: So when you were growing up, you were just studying politics or you were just seeing things? BH: Well we were seeing things before we got started because of, you know, Fred’s ambition was to be a lawyer, and he was deep into that real heavy. And he got involved in things at the high school, Proviso, which was a mixed integrated school. So by him being good with students, it made him the head of the Interracial Cross-Section Committee. And he took the job. He took it and did it and did it well. As he did that, he got out of high school and went into college. And he, you know, started demonstration for open housing. He got elected to the Youth NACP [sic] and started doing things, demonstration for jobs, open housing, [00:06:00] recreation facilities, which was approved. And I guess he got into it deeper than he expected. And if he had gotten in so deep, he wasn’t the type to just get out of it. He just went all the way through it. As bad as he wanted to be a lawyer, he just kind of pushed that aside and decided, “Okay, I’m going to 4 �Youth NACP. Then he go from that to the Panthers.” Just felt he had a job to do. And he just made that commitment and he wanted people to be around him and be dedicated too because he didn’t want to feel like he was wasting his time. ’Cause he always said, “I could go back to being a lawyer. I don’t want to be with a bunch of people who’s wastin’ my time.” So this is what he got off into. And he just had that commitment that other people he grew up with had just as much charisma as he did. But they weren’t dedicated to struggle. Many people grew up with him had just as much ability but were opposite. Some of them were negative ways. But he was able to, through his upbringing, keep things [00:07:00] on the right path. JJ: So you’re saying negative ways? These were his friends? BH: Some of them. JJ: Or [worked?] with? BH: Some of ’em. Well, not his friends, some of ’em were people he grew up with. JJ: He grew up with? BH: Yeah. They had charisma -- JJ: (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) BH: -- and they had good things. JJ: So what did they do when you say negative things? BH: Well, some of them’d be doin’ drugs and different things like that. You know, negative ways. JJ: Okay, so that was a problem here too? Inside Chicago? BH: Oh, yeah. The drug thing hit the Black community even in rural areas. Right, so 5 �it wasn’t just -- quite naturally, when it was in bigger cities it got more attention. But I think drugs affected Black people all over, just like racism affected Black people all over. Even in the suburbs, even though they would move out of the city to the suburbs to do better, but it still was there. See, Fred realized that he was trying to show people that even though a lot of them moved to Maywood from neighborhoods in the city, that they still wasn’t living equal to the whites of [every night?]. That they were better off than they were, but [00:08:00] they still had problems. They didn’t even have a swimming pool in their neighborhood. They had to go other places to do it. That’s what he was trying to show people, that they still weren’t free and they still had problems to deal with. JJ: So he got into the NAACP after the swimming pool? BH: Before. Before. JJ: So that’s how he got into the NAACP? BH: Right. He was pushing the swimming pool, open housing, and all. JJ: (Spanish) [00:08:29] (break in audio) JJ: So we’re getting to the -- BH: Youth NAA-- JJ: The pools, the swimming -- BH: The Youth NACP, they would fight for open housing, jobs, and, you know, different discrimination in the area. And then one of their main objects was the swimming pool, were just cryin’ for years about the swimming pool in the area. You know demonstrations was led about that and all of that. And, you know, 6 �[00:09:00] Fred went to jail a couple times. But -JJ: He went to jail for the demon-- BH: Demonstration for the pool. JJ: Here in Maywood? BH: Uh-huh. JJ: For the pool. BH: So -- JJ: Okay. So he went to jail for the pool. BH: Uh- huh. So they were demonstrating for a while, that. And after he was in the youth in the NACP doing things for the youth in the NACP, he met people with SNCC like, you know, Stokely Carmichael. And he brought Stokely to Maywood to speak once. And then he got offered to go in the Panthers, and he didn’t make that decision right away. He didn’t want to do it right away. Then he finally, you know, got with them -- JJ: Did he talk to you about that or...? BH: Well, he talked to all the family about it and said that was a decision he wanted to make. JJ: Oh, he talked to the whole family? What did he -- BH: Different friends. JJ: What did he tell the family? BH: Well, he just said that was a decision he had made. You know, at first, he didn’t wanna really do it. But that was a decision he had made because he felt that they -- I guess he was gettin’ a little impatient, you know. That was the right track 7 �to make the movement go fast. He seen, like, they was movin’ faster [00:10:00] for freedom toward Blacks. That was one of the statements he made. And then he kind of liked it that they were really tellin’ the whole story about puttin’ all people together. Lettin’ people know that it was a little deeper than racism. It was really a class struggle. It was that these big forces were pitting the little people against each other. Well, I mean the poor people. That’s why he always said this is a Rainbow Coalition. He was talkin’ about Hispanics, Blacks, Native Americans, Asians, and poor whites. He was putting all that together. So I think that that inspired him to the party. And they weren’t just out there doing a cultural nationalist thing, just talking. They were feeding people, openin’ up health facilities, clothing programs, free bussing programs, and educatin’ people. ’Cause he used to always say, “If people are not educated, they don’t know why they doin’ what they doin’.” And they need to be educated, that they would send people to political orientation classes to let people know what’s happening. Because he said, “Some people may have an emotional [00:11:00] problem ’cause they poor. And once they get something they may exploit too.” And he used to always say, “Well we hate oppressors. Whether they -- who they may be, Black or white. We don’t want to be oppressed by nobody.” He used to always mention that. But I think growing up he always had a sensitivity for people. He was always sensitive. He was easy to get along with. He didn’t like to see nobody disrespected. He didn’t like to see nobody disrespected. He always demanded respect and tried to get other people to demand respect for each other. And he, at a very young age, he caught what was happening. He 8 �was taken by the Emmett Till thing you know. About Emett Till, ’cause Emmett Till was from Chicago. JJ: Okay, and the Emmett Till-- BH: We didn’t know Emmett Till. JJ: What was Emmet Till -- BH: My mother knew Emmett Till. JJ: Oh, she knew him personally? BH: Well, she grew up when he was growing up. But-- JJ: Okay. And what was the whole Emmett Till? BH: Well, Emmett Till, you know, he’s from Chicago. He -- JJ: Okay, but what happened there? [00:12:00] BH: Well he got killed with that -- [for?] whistlin’ at a white lady in Mississippi. He was down there on summer vacation, and some of his relatives still live in the area. One of them lives in countryside that wrote a book, and one of them’s (inaudible) out in Argo, Illinois, who was a part. So a lot of his relatives, you know, Emmett Till was older than either one of us, but he was always kind of a brave-like kid, you know, background. So that, since it was kind of close to home, that put a little, you know, Fred’s thing, you know. And so what we’ve tried to do through the years, we’ve, not only so much since we were a close-knit family, after Fred died, Reverend Ralph Abernathy of SCLC, as you know, and Jesse Jackson formed a Fred Hampton scholarship fund because Fred wanted to be a lawyer to give out scholarships. So the good thing about that is, me and my whole family and a lot of other friends got together on that, and every year we’ve had a 9 �[00:13:00] memorial for Fred along with giving out scholarships. And that started in ’71, we put that together. And this is now 2012. We’ve given out 125 scholarships. So we don’t just have the memorials and the scholarships. We also do things like registerin’ voters and try to put a conscious of people. Not just moralize it, but make people conscious of that there’s a struggle. You know? And keep Fred’s memory alive, because when we give the scholarships to people, we try to get people that’s going into it to bring it back to the community, and not just get into it for the fiscal part. But Fred would always say, “Bring your talent, what you know, back to the community.” And that’s what we’ve tried to do. And I’ve tried to do that. I’ve taught in the Chicago public system for a number of years. And after I did that, as a matter of fact, I’m workin’ on a program now, Real Men Read, to get more Black and Hispanic men to read more. And I’ve always done a lot of reading. I was readin’ [00:14:00] real heavy when I was six years old. My mother said I used to read to Sun-Times. And I’ve always been an avid reader, and my whole family has been a reader, you know, mother and father. And we were raised up that way. And they would always make us watch the news and give us a vacation every year. I didn’t have a lot, you know. But I guess they would consider my people, by Black standards, middle class. You know, because my father was a painter. And my parents worked for it. JJ: You said painter, regular house painter or...? BH: Yes p-- No well, he did some of that too, at the job. He did a lot of painting. He was a professional painter. He used to sometimes take me and my brother with 10 �him, you know. But me and my brother -JJ: You talkin’ about drawing artwork? BH: No, no. Just regular painting. JJ: Regular painting. Okay. BH: Yeah, he used to always tease me and my brother ’cause we weren’t mechanically inclined. We more or less was academic. He used to always tease us. Mm-hmm. He used always tease us. But you know, we’ve tried to keep that going, and we will. And [00:15:00] it hasn’t been easy, but we’re still trying to keep people goin’. Trying to, as much as we can, let the young people know what things are happenin’. And a young 13-year-old kid heard about Freddie, and we knew some of his relatives. So he interviewed us. And this is one of his things he put together. (points to tri-fold presentation board) By a 13-year-old kid, [Ryan Scott?]. And so we’ve had a lot of people come toward our -- me and Jeff went to a lot of book signins, and some of them we do separate, of people wantin’ to know. They like that book, Assassination of Fred Hampton. They like it. As a matter fact, I’ve got to order some more because we havin’ a big Black history symposium, February 24th. And this is Black history, when I just left school that, you know, one knows things about Fred and that information. So the book is even doing real well, that has helped the thing. And things like, you’re doing with the play. Hopefully that will bring out lotta things. And you know, you’ve been around, and [00:16:00] even Harold Washington admitted that Fred’s death helped him become the mayor. And wow, through those, don’t look like it, 40-some years, I think we did a pretty good job, all of us. Not just myself, 11 �but you and other people. I think we brought a lot of things out. You know, we probably still got a long ways to go, but I think you’ve brought a lot of things out there and keepin’ it going. And you’ve got this play comin’ up, so we need things like that. Yeah. JJ: Now, you were teaching, you said, for some time. BH: Yeah, right. In the Chicago public school system. JJ: And you were reading. Okay, so what were you teaching? I mean, what kind of- BH: Oh, reading special education. JJ: Reading special education. Okay. BH: Right. JJ: Okay, now you went to the same schools that Fred was? BH: Yeah, we all went to the same school, yeah. (laughs) JJ: Okay, and you’re not that far different in age, are you? BH: No, just a couple years. JJ: Okay, so -- BH: You know, we all went to the same grade school and high school. JJ: So what do you remember of you guys growing up? I mean, [00:17:00] any problems in school or anything like that or...? BH: No, the only problem we had in school was, you know, back in them days you had some racist teachers, you know. So you’d have little problems. And -- JJ: What do you mean? What did they do? BH: Well, a lot of things they would say then that people wouldn’t pay as much 12 �attention to. They would have, you know, you went to a mixed school. You had little race riots. You had teachers say little smart things and, you know, different things like that. And those silly things, you know, you weren’t, you know, just racism things. JJ: So it was mainly the teachers? You guys never got into any fights or anything like that? BH: Well, yeah, there were some fights. There were, you know, racist attitudes and we got in fights. Yes, we did. We not gonna lie about that. So that was just the sign of the times. You know, you had guys say things, so you’d get in fights with ’em, some of ’em. [00:18:00] JJ: But so there weren’t a lot of African Americans in your school? BH: No, we had a -- JJ: (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) BH: Well, when I went to Proviso, it was about 3,000 students. (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) JJ: You had (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) Puerto Ricans, right? You didn’t... BH: No, the Puerto-- JJ: (laughs) BH: Well, we had Hispanics there, but we didn’t really -- there wasn’t really no fight with them. Every now and then there might have been. But it was mostly fights with the -- it’s kind of strange. It was fightin’ with the whites and the Italians. Even though Italians had similar lifestyles of Black, they were caught up in a lot of races because whites would kind of play us against them, you know, they 13 �would kind of play us against them, and Fred had taken to that. So we had those kind of little scrimmages, you know. And, you know, when I grew up, Italians had attitudes like a lot of Black. They were the toughest things around, so we’d test each other. You know, we both thought we were bad, kinda. You know, even if you were [00:19:00] an easygoing Black, that was our syndrome, sports, and you weren’t really, as Michelle Obama used to say, “I was smart, when it wasn’t popular to be smart.” See, in sports, people were our biggest heroes, you know, ’cause we didn’t have a whole lot of people in commerce back then, so sports heroes was our biggest heroes. So we were, you know, [onto?] Jimmy Browns and Wilt Chamberlains and Floyd Patterson’s, and all that kind of stuff, you know. JJ: Okay, like the boxers. BH: Yeah, they were our heroes, you know. Blacks grew up talkin’ about Joe Louis and... And it’s just like how we use this term. We went from the heavyweight champion to the president of the United States. So those were our heroes and we were locked out of all other things. So it was lotta [00:20:00] people coming from the neighborhoods, they didn’t even know each other. We’d play football with the whites and basketball and talk at school, every now and then. But after school, we’d go our separate ways. See, we’d go our separate ways. Every now and then, you know, you might have a few that we get deeper into, you know, knowing you a little better. But overall, there was a lot of hidden racism and certain things would bring it out. JJ: So, you remember some of Fred’s friends, and when he was younger? What were some of their names? 14 �BH: There were a lotta friends we had, they’d all come here. but we had a lot of ’em, you know, guys, [Mickey Lacey?] and [Goose?], a lot of different people, you know. They’d all come around. JJ: Goose [Tereno?] (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) BH: Yeah, he grew up with us, yeah. JJ: Oh, he grew up with you? Okay. BH: Mm-hmm. Yeah. JJ: ‘Cause he became a Panther later. BH: Yeah, well he -- somethin’ like that, [00:21:00] yeah. Mm-hmm. JJ: It was somethin’ like that. BH: You know, I knew [Nathaniel O’Neil?], but they were living in another town but I knew them. [Robert Bruce?]. Remember him? JJ: Yeah. JJ: They would come around. He went to school with me and Fred. As a matter of fact, he was a basketball player, he was in my typing class. (laughter) Yeah. Teacher used to tell us our hands was too big to type. So, those kinds of racist things, you know. Making it look like African Americans are somethin’ different. Little silly things like that. Yeah. JJ: So those sort of things kept building up inside you, right? BH: Yeah, we would hear all those things. Me and Fred would come home, we’d talk about different things they would say because you didn’t have that many Black teachers up there then. So they, you know, boy there was a lot of challenges. JJ: So when did you become more political? 15 �BH: Well -- JJ: ‘Bout how old were you then? [00:22:00] BH: My mind was always into it, I guess I got -- I didn’t join the Panthers, but I got political, mainly, when I was in college because I was in college durin’ the time of the Black movement, and I got, you know, political then. I saw a lot of things. My thing then, when I grew up, was just like any other teenager. If you call somethin’, fight ’em back and all that. It wasn’t, you know, thinkin’ about running for anything then. It was just keep ’em off your back. You know, keep the white folks off your back and all of that. If they want to be your friend, good. If they go too far, kick the you-know-what. But as I got in college, my, like, maybe junior year things began to turn for college life for Black students, and people got more political and that. And we got more political. And a lot of guys that I knew, even though they weren’t Panthers, they were still close to the Panthers. JJ: Like, and would -- BH: They were close to ’em. [00:23:00] JJ: Well did the studies department help them at all or...? BH: Well no, we had Black student unions and they would invite a lot of -- who would invite the Panthers and different things up. And so I think that movement of ’60 got a lot of people involved in some way, and I think that’s why I hate -- I really believe the drug thing came to kind of wipe it out because you had a lot of people who were getting political in some kind of way, older people. And it was really a good movement. Probably was some mistakes made. JJ: But then the drug thing came? 16 �BH: Yeah, I think so. I think that came like [off-loop?] thing. JJ: What do you mean? How can the drug -- what do you mean? BH: Well, you had a lot of people say that. I think drugs was put into the Black community to slow the movement down. And I really believe that, and they had it on the movie Panther. They kind of was indicatin’ that. So I really think that. I think that the movement was going real strong. JJ: You saw that here? BH: Yeah, I was seeing drugs [00:24:00] being [distribudated?] and people getting into it. You know, people who -- students, not just people on the streets, just professional people, getting high and smokin’ a little somethin’. JJ: So it wasn’t just that 60’s revolution, or...? So you think it was somethin’ that was done intentional? BH: I think it was done intentionally, in some cases. JJ: What’s your basis -- BH: I think it was a case of both. JJ: What’s your basis for that? That sayin’ that it was done intentionally? You said it was a basis for both? BH: Yeah, because I think that it was done, more or less, to keep the Black sleep. To keep them sleep because you know you go way back to the reservations, they would get the Indians drunk and stuff. And so when you really think about it, alcohol and all of that stuff is really somethin’ used to, even though you got -- well we all know we got white people drink too. But in a lot of ways that stuff has been thrown in the Black community in a lot of negative ways. You know, you 17 �got [00:25:00] different things that are thrown as people go forward, you got things that are thrown, that way to off track things. And I think that even though you had a drug revolution, you had different entertainers using it, different people. Also, I really think that it was done in the Black community to off throw things, I really do. (pause) Because if you notice during the middle of the ’70s a lot of movement waves were dyin’ off. You know, it was like dyin’ off and people were more anxious over getting high than they were doing something. And, you know, Fred’s thing was, even though he had friends got high, that was never his thing. You know, that was never his thing. I mean, you had a lot of good people that had good ways to do things, but yet they were getting’ -- I seen people like that, that -- you’d know some of them, they had good qualities, could have been good, as you might want to say, revolutionaries or good [00:26:00] soldiers, and they couldn’t really do what they wanted to do. They was too busy getting’ high. You know? JJ: Yeah, yeah. BH: And Fred was trying to keep these people off it. He was tryin’ to keep people, that, you know, these people, that go, to say “Hey you got brains to go the right way.” Some of these guys couldn’t stay away from that weed. You know, they couldn’t stay away from that weed. So you can’t -- it’s kind of hard to have -- put militancy and drugs didn’t mix. Lotta people tried it, but it didn’t mix. JJ: So Fred and yourself, you didn’t any weed or anything like that? BH: No, abso -- JJ: Not a lot-- 18 �BH: Smoked a little just to check it out. JJ: Not a lot. Just to check it out. BH: But not to really use it, no. Because I didn’t see anything -- I said, “What is this doing?” You know what I mean? Didn’t -- it wasn’t, you know, because I said, “Why do I need that to make a speech? Why I need that to pep me up?” And the guys that end up did it, ended up getting hooked, not doing nothing. Everything went apart, they didn’t do nothing [00:27:00] with it. So it had to be something that stopped things. I really believe that. JJ: Which wasn’t with us. (laughs) We did have problems with that. (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) BH: Well yeah, that’s just, you know -- JJ: But he understood that. He was able to understand and try to work with us. BH: Mm-hmm. Oh yeah, he knew that. Yeah, right. JJ: (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) BH: What Fred was trying to do, he was takin’ people that he knew had ability to use your abilities to get our freedom, get out here and fight for our freedom. He was saying all the time, “You can go overseas and fight for people you don’t know, why not get on the battlefield for your own people here?” And that same thing he was doing with people that were gangbangers, drug dealers. To say, “Hey, there’s a better way that you can...” Course he couldn’t convince all of them, but, “There’s a better way that you can serve, you know, and serve your community.” [00:28:00] JJ: After Fred’s death, you said a lot of the things kind of dwindled, died out. 19 �BH: Yeah. JJ: One of the problems was the drug problem. BH: That was one. JJ: But the other problem was just the leadership, the vacuum. BH: Yeah I think people -- JJ: What do you think -- BH: I think people hadn’t gotten used to -- certainly I think the Black movement itself had a lot of charismatic leaders that were taken out. And I think a lot of African Americans and maybe other people too got attached to that, and they weren’t able to build from that. ’Cause that’s why Fred used to have different people speaking and lettin’ people know that, what did they say, that there’s other revolutionaries out there. They didn’t really get that. They got so hung up on one person that they didn’t, you know, Black people are kinda sensitive people so it’d take ’em a while to overcome things. [00:29:00] Whereas white America, even though Kennedy was charismatic, they were able to put our country in Johnson’s hands and keep it moving. So I think a lot of people became stagnant with the Panther Party, even on Martin Luther King’s side. Malcolm X’s movement became kind of stagnant in some ways, and it took a little while to kinda get things moving. Right? JJ: ‘Cause that was in 1969, but then there was a killing also of Reverend Bruce Johnson at the Young Lords church. Were you aware of that at all? BH: Yeah, Bruce Johnson. Yeah, I heard of that. Sure. JJ: Did you know that that happened three weeks before Fred Hampton? 20 �BH: Think around the same time, that and the Soto brothers. JJ: The Soto brothers. BH: There was another one, well, wasn’t long before Jake Winters -- JJ: Jake Winters. BH: -- was killed too. JJ: So was there a connection with that? BH: Oh, yeah. JJ: Did you see a connection or...? BH: I saw a big connection. I saw a big connection with that. Looked like the [00:30:00] police just said, “Hey, we gonna get you back for that, Fred.” I think there was a lot of retaliation by the Chicago police. I’m not saying all of ’em, but a great number. Big retaliation. I really believe that, always will believe that. JJ: Now, you had that trial that lasted for several years. Was it established at that time that this was an action by the police at the trial or was that never established? BH: Well, I think it was. I think our lawyers did that, but I think that we had a judge that wouldn’t allow it to be -- He didn’t want -- (break in audio) BH: I think that was known and I think we got it out enough to the public to make a lot of people who didn’t know, know it. Because this is why Hanrahan was defeated. The first time the Black community ever really rosed up and defeated him. See, they realized that when they left that apartment, hopin’ that people see for themselves. [00:31:00] That was a big mistake they made. But I think during 21 �that trial, all those long months we was in trial, they were able to put out a lot of things, you know. And we just had the judge, Judge Perry, that did not accept it. And I think that a lot of things were bein’ -- tryin’ to block up. That’s the reason they gave the lawyers so much problems in court. But I think that a lot of things come out. Hey, you know, people are still talking about Fred. They got a book out. They’re talking about movies. They got plays. The name hasn’t gone, or well, the name’s still out there. Every time you look up, something’s coming up about Fred and the Panthers. So I think that they failed in a lot of ways, even though it’s been kind of rough for us to keep things going, I think that in a lot of ways we won. Sure, I’m not saying this to flatter nobody, but I really do because it’s still out there. It’s still out there. All these memorials and the way the book [00:32:00] is just selling, just different things. And people proved that when they went to the polls against Henry. So I don’t think that things that the Panthers did and Fred’s death is in vain. Even though we see a lot of negative stuff out here, but I think overall it’s not in vain. JJ: There was a Rainbow Coalition that you mentioned. BH: Mm-hmm. JJ: First original one was the Young Lords, the Black Panthers -- BH: Young Patriots, AIM, I guess was one of them. JJ: The first one were the Young Lords, the Black Panthers, and the Patriots. BH: Brown Beret? Wasn’t the group called the Brown -- JJ: They came later. BH: Oh, okay. Okay. 22 �JJ: But did he talk to you at all about that and his reasoning for that or...? BH: Yeah, because he just felt that they were being pitted against each other, and they took ’em all to come together to wipe out this oppression. And he believed that even though he was a proud Black man, he just felt that [00:33:00] all these people that’s been oppressed, like we were, Native Americans, Hispanics, must come together and not be pitted against each other, but must come together and wipe them out. That was really his name. He’d talk to me about that. We would talk about that. JJ: So he was proud to be a Black man. BH: Yeah. But at the same time, he knew that Hispanic people, poor white people, Asian people, and Native Americans, what have you, all were being oppressed and used against each other. He was able to see that whole thing, that whole thing, synopsis. And then he just tried to put it all together. And I think that’s why that they came so strong on him because he was waking people up, different, you know, different races up. That would have been a powerful thing, you know. JJ: Why [00:34:00] didn’t you ever join the Panthers then? Did you have a problem with some of their philosophy...? BH: No, somethin’ I just didn’t ever do. I just never joined them. I thought about it when I was workin’ so closely. I just didn’t really get into it. That’s a good question. I never even -- I probably don’t even know that myself. I thought about it, but I just never, you know, never got into it. I felt like I was ’cause I’d be at some of they programs and different things, you know. Yeah. JJ: Were you active at that time or...? 23 �BH: Yeah, I was real active at the Black Student Union, and I was doing a lot of programs with the party. Like, folks would come around. It’s how I met you. (inaudible) was joining it and all that. Nothing against it. I just, you know, not really, no. I had chances to. I thought about it, but I just... I don’t know. And he never pushed me to join. His attitude was always, [00:35:00] he had a lot of friends was what he was just saying. Everybody didn’t probably wanna be in it. He was a kinda funny person. He never did push people to really join it. His main thing was keeping people active because he was always -- he had a lot of friends who -- he was really trying to set up somethin’. He had a lot of people who weren’t Panthers that had watchin’ his back, doin’ different things. You know, Fred had so many things going on. He had people who weren’t in the party doing things for him, you know, ’cause had that type of personality that he’d go to schools and speak when he wanted to and all that. Course, when he got killed, you had a lot of Black students, kids from colleges, comin’ to his aid. JJ: So where was he goin’ to school? BH: Yeah, didn’t he have a good rapport with a lot ministers and stuff? Well, he started off at Triton College. Then he went to Wright, for a little while. Then he went to Malcolm X. He went to about four and [00:36:00] then U of I, he’d went to Illinois. JJ: Did he go to Roosevelt when you were younger? BH: No, he’d be up there a lot speaking. JJ: Speaking. BH: To Roosevelt. 24 �JJ: But his last school was where? BH: I’m trying to think. Was it Malcolm X or U of I? That’s a good question, because he was at Malcolm X. It was Crane when they changed the name. He was instrumental in that, when they changed the name from Crane Junior College to Malcolm X. I’m tryin’ to think. Was he at Malcolm X or U of I? It was around the same time. Maybe Malcolm X could have been later, maybe U of I was before. But he was at the University of Illinois at some point. And he was also close with a lot of labor people, because he worked at Harvester. So he was active with a lot of union people. JJ: He worked at Harvester? What did he do there? [00:37:00] BH: It was just regular labor. He was just workin’ his way through school workin’ there. And me and him used to work at Corn Products, where my parents worked because they got both jobs. We were both working our way through college. JJ: What was Corn Products like? Any -- BH: Was a lotta people worked there. It was interesting. A lot of young people working there for the summer like we was. You know, we’d talk, meet a lotta people. JJ: It was kind of fun going to college because we was at different colleges. We would be changing clothes, you know. We would wear some one place and he would wear some other places. It was kind of strange, you know. Kind of strange. But we were at Corn Products, yeah we was workin’ our way through school there. 25 �JJ: Did you guys ever fight or anything like that, physical or...? BH: No, we wrestled a lot together. JJ: Wrestling? BH: Yeah, we wrestled a lot. Tusslin’. My father would find out we were tusslin’, say he didn’t want no more tusslin’. If he ever caught us, it’d [be too bad], better do it outside. Because we would -- you know parents, we didn’t have a carpet on the floor. We had it like this. We just took these out where the carpet. [00:38:00] We were growin’ up, we’d be tusslin’. And friends come over and me and him’d be tusslin’. He’d say, “Well, no. I better not catch you wrestlin’ over here.” Well he was the type of guy what he said, he meant. (laughs) JJ: So you guys never really got into (inaudible) argument or anything? BH: (inaudible) Not a whole lot. No, not a whole lot really. JJ: Your mother said he demanded, kind of, respect from different people or...? BH: Yeah. JJ: And he looked out for the -- JJ: He wasn’t the type of guy to pick the fight or nothin’. He didn’t pick any fights. He was the type of guy that had attitude, we didn’t talk. And if he didn’t wanna talk, we could go another way. That was the type of attitude he had. ’Cause he didn’t get really popular maybe till his last years in school ’cause he was just an ordinary little guy. Then he just jumped up. JJ: What do you mean, ordinary little guy? BH: Well, he was just ordinary. Just a little -- see, everybody thought he was gonna be [00:39:00] short, but he ended up growing up real big, you know. He just 26 �kinda got popular in his last year. JJ: Popular in what way? BH: Well, in sports just, you know, I guess. JJ: Was he good at sports or...? BH: He was kinda laid back at first, but he was pretty good. He kind of got more, I guess, developed a way of getting’ more noticed or something. JJ: Growing up, I know he had a lot of conviction at the end, but growing up -- you know what I’m sayin’? How was his conviction? What I mean by conviction, when he believed in something, was it firmly or...? BH: Yeah. JJ: I mean what would expect -- BH: Mm-hmm, yeah. He was deep in his convictions ’cause used to say he wanted to be a lawyer, not just to make money, but to help people. So he had deep, [00:40:00] deep convictions, you know. Even though he became a popular person in school, he always shared with the less fortunate. He always had a kinda feeling for people, kinda felt sorry for people. I mean, he’d laugh and joke and play, but he was always -- like to read. And he would take part in things that most people wouldn’t, that wasn’t interesting to most Blacks and Hispanics. But they didn’t bother him because he was into sports and had a certain strong nature. I mean, he wasn’t one of these kids that just read all the time, so nobody could just say he was a sissy because he was into sports and did things that other people did. Dance, signified, you know, he was kind of, like, well-rounded, he could do either one. But he didn’t stop what he wanted to do because of his 27 �friends. Because sometimes, junior achievement back then, you couldn’t get many Blacks into that, but he’d go by hisself. He wouldn’t let nobody stop his [00:41:00] advancement in life. He was that type. He wanted to do something, he did. And he wouldn’t wait around, but he tried to encourage people to get into it with him. If they didn’t, he just, you know... He was definitely the lead. He was definitely a man that thought of on his own. JJ: You say he was kind of well-rounded, he liked to dance and everything? Was he an average dancer? BH: No, he was a good dancer. JJ: A pretty good dancer? BH: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm. JJ: What kind of moves, I mean what kinda...? BH: Good, he was good at it. He was good at it. He -- JJ: What was that period? What kind of dancing? BH: Let me see, what was that, Watusi -- JJ: Oh, the Watusi? BH: -- mashed potatoes, all that stuff. Yeah, he was good at it, he didn’t... As he got older, he got more intellectual. But he was always able to communicate because he did things that most people do. [00:42:00] See like you had some people, if they were into being intellectual, they were that alone. By him being in sports and different things, people were able to relate to him because he did more of that, you know, like they did. JJ: And that school that he was going to here, that’s the school that we’re talking 28 �about, right? The one in Maywood? BH: Yeah, we all went to same schools. JJ: Which was Proviso? BH: Yeah, that’s the high school. JJ: Okay, that’s a big high school and so everybody knows each other. BH: Well, it was a big high school, everybody didn’t know each other. I guess most of the Blacks knew each other. JJ: But most of -- BH: But everybody didn’t know each other. JJ: Bue most of the Blacks knew each other BH: Yeah, I guess out of the first -- JJ: So, it was, like, segregated? BH: I guess out of the -- JJ: So it was segregated? BH: Well-- JJ: They didn’t know each other yet. BH: No, the whites knew some of the whites but there were so many because it was segregated in the sense that even though you were going to school with the whites, the Blacks were still in their own world, in their own area. You know what I mean? Blacks were still -- you didn’t read and party with the whites on the weekends. They’d be a little different now. You’d go to basketball games, [00:43:00] the Blacks kind of be with each other, the whites be with each other, you know. They did some things together. You know, like if they would give a 29 �thing at school, sometimes they’d mix but it wasn’t -- No, Blacks mostly stayed because some of the parents, I guess, didn’t want it. So, the Blacks kinda stayed in their own area. So I guess some of the parents didn’t allow -- later on you start seeing couples. Mm-hmm. M1: Yeah, they were slick. BH: Mm-hmm. JJ: Okay. So -- F1: Excuse me. JJ: That’s all right. F1: Thank you. JJ: So, they started (inaudible) BH: Overall, they did. JJ: Were there any brawls? Any fights at all? (inaudible) BH: Yes. Every night there was a brawl. That’s why they started the cross-section committee. Yeah, the brawls. JJ: The cross-section committee was to what, to...? BH: Stop the riots and [00:44:00] pull students together more. JJ: Because there were riots in the school? BH: Yeah. Every night there were riots. Like most schools back then, you know, you’d have riots, you know, mixed schools. JJ: What year was this? BH: We’re talkin’ about the ’60s, middle ’60s. JJ: Middle ’60s? 30 �BH: Mm-hmm. JJ: Okay. So there was riots at the school? BH: Lotta schools, you know. Like, you know, schools like not just Proviso. You hear about schools that were mixed in the city. Like Lane Tech would be bussin’ Blacks from different parts of the city. That’s why they had good sports team because Lane Tech was all boys once, but you had people from all over the city goin’ to Lane Tech. And there was in another school in the city, that was Chicago Vocational. They would have riots there because it was mixed. Marshall, when I was going there, turned mostly all Black. But, before me, they tell me it was all Jewish, they tell me. And Farragut was kind of mixed, [00:45:00] so they’d have they little problems. Tilden was kind of mixed. It was all boys when I was around. So yeah, certain schools in the city that they had little problems where they were mixed. You’d hear stories. Lindblom, comin’ to whites and Blacks going through certain areas to go to school. They’d have their little problems. You’d hear about it. JJ: Getting back because we’re gonna kinda of finish up pretty soon. Trying to make a connection in terms of the Young Lords and the Black Panthers -- BH: Mm-hmm. JJ: What do you remember about that? And what was your first contact? BH: My first contact was that you had Blacks and Puerto Ricans coming together. When I used to hear talk about, I guess when the Puerto Rican community started comin’ in Chicago, when I was a kid, they were mostly on the West Side, I think. And I used to hear problems Blacks and Puerto Ricans havin’. [00:46:00] 31 �Fightin’ every night, and I’d hear a lot of that. And I met some Puerto Ricans when I was in college. JJ: You said West Side. Where, around Madison? BH: You know, I don’t know. I just hear Blacks talk about Puerto Ricans and things like that. JJ: What year was this? BH: No, they were Puerto Ricans fighting with knives and you know, different little things. Same thing I hear up in New York. The same things going on up there. They killing one another. Stokely Carmichael talked about that. And I would hear a lot about that. I met some Black Cubans and different things like that. And I found later, was some Black Puerto Ricans. But as I got to know, mingled with Puerto Ricans, they were better than the Mexicans. I got along with them a little better. But like I said, a lot of things, I’d hear. So I’d hear Blacks, they have conflicts over the West Side. Then the Puerto Rican community started moving more, what, north-west or...? [00:47:00] JJ: North-west, yeah. BH: Mm-hmm. I guess the Puerto Rican community started coming to Chicago, that was maybe in the ’50s, maybe. JJ: In the ’50s, they were in the West Side. BH: Yes, they were. I heard a lotta talk about that. JJ: They were around Madison. BH: That’s what I heard a lotta talk about. JJ: Madison kids. 32 �BH: Oh, was it? Yeah, I heard a lot of talk about it. There were a lot of conflicts with Blacks and Puerto Ricans. JJ: Right, right. BH: And my brother, you see, I had, like I said, when I went to college, I got a different perspective. We used to go to Duncan Y, and I met a lot of Puerto Rican guys. And, you know, they were similar to Blacks, if I got to meet ’em, The Mexicans were, if I got to meet them, they were different, too. But Puerto Ricans seemed to be a little more -- I got along with them a lot better. They seemed to be a lot more like us. And a lot of that was just through, you know, looked like everybody was after Blacks. And I’m sure that this sort of kept a lot of people at our throats, you know. Though some of the Black Cubans, you know, it took time to get with them, you know. So [00:48:00] the Black Cubans, they was kinda weird. JJ: But what -- your connection to the Young Lords, specifically? (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) BH: Well, when I met the Young Lords, they were okay with me. I was good, you know. I met you and I always thought you were, you know. We always got along. I see you at the office, you know. We’d go up on the roof. JJ: At the office, there... BH: On Madison. JJ: On Madison. BH: Yeah. JJ: Panther office. 33 �BH: Yeah, so okay, you know, I always hear name Cha-cha, and my brother used to always tease and they always said we passed. And they said he could pass because he looked more white than Puerto Ricans. So I would say that, you know, it was okay, but at that time I learned more about different people. I learned more about the Puerto Ricans, you know. And so that was that. Chicago was a funny city because it got all these ethnics, you know. That created a lot of weirdness, you know. Got your Chinese community, Chinatown, your Greektown, Little Italy. And you see [00:49:00] it’s kind of strange because some places I went, Italians felt close to Black people. Some places I went, they didn’t like ’em. And it was kind of, it was all crazy stuff. I met hillbillies with money that didn’t like poor hillbillies in Uptown. I met Hispanics with money that didn’t like, that didn’t care for, Hispanics. You know, Blacks that had a little somethin’ but they lived way south, they didn’t like the West Side Blacks. You know, once a lot of Blacks come here from the South, once they get on their feet and get something, then they kind of look down on the other ones. And I’ve seen that with other nationalities too. So it was kind of strange, you know. So when they put the coalition together, that was really a good thing. Some people didn’t really wanna accept it, you know. But that’s either here or there. Well, I thought Young Lords was a real good thing, you know, because [00:50:00] they suffered. I thought that the coalition was real good. I didn’t have no problem with them. It was kinda hard for me to get used to some of the young patrons because you think about hillbillies, you think about things that happened in the South. But, you know, most of them I got along with that I met. Slim Coleman, I always got along 34 �with him, you know. He was alright, I guess. Some of the Native Americans I met, they were okay ’cause I got a little Native American in me, Cherokee Indian in me. My great-grandmother was Native American. So, you know, after I got there, I thought the coalition was a good thing. I thought it was good. I thought that’s why the system didn’t really want that. That’s something they didn’t really want. They really didn’t want that, you know. And I think that’s what Dr. King [00:51:00] was talkin’ about the poor people’s march in Washington. All those things that they didn’t really want. I thought it was good, but I saw the Young Lords as a positive thing, you know. I know they came out of a gang and into doin’ something political. I heard that they were a gang, but I didn’t know -- I used to hear about the Vice Lords, the Taylor Street Dukes. You heard of them? Used to be an Italian gang and Polish playboys. But I never heard much about the Young Lords as a gang. I knew they were Puerto Rican gangs, but I didn’t. And then the Young Lords they’ve made today, you know. I’m kind of interested. So they were a gang at first. JJ: Yeah. BH: (laughs) I had a cousin that was a midget Vice Lord, you know. So what, did the Young Lords start over on the West Side? Or they started...? JJ: No, no. Lincoln Park. Lincoln Park. BH: Oh, ok. JJ: Lincoln Park in Old Town. [00:52:00] BH: So when the Puerto Rican population come here, when they were running wild over there on the West Side, did they have Puerto Rican gangs over there? 35 �JJ: There was a Puerto Rican population on [Lisle?] and Chicago, everything. BH: I think I heard that. I remember that. JJ: And then that moved to Lincoln Park. BH: Oh, ok. JJ: It went to -- BH: But when the -- JJ: (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) BH: -- but when the Puerto Ricans on the West Side, did they have any gangs? JJ: Oh, yeah, there were gangs all the time because we were right in front -- BH: But not no known gangs really, huh? JJ: We were right in front of the Italians and Irish, so we were fighting them too. You know, at that same time. BH: Talkin’ about when you on the West Side? JJ: Yeah, no. As the neighborhood was changing, we were fighting the newcomers. BH: Oh, ok. Oh. JJ: They were the newcomers. BH: So you were fighting the Italians too and all that, yeah. JJ: Yeah, we were fighting them too. BH: Hmm. JJ: And they were probably fighting other people too, and it just an -- (break in audio) BH: They were battling, huh. JJ: Yeah, everybody was battling, you know, the youth. If you’re from Chicago, 36 �you’re in the gang, I guess. BH: Uh-huh. JJ: But then over here, [00:53:00] Freddy’s in the NAACP and he’s doing a lot of political stuff already at that age. What got you into the political stuff? I mean, were your parents involved or...? BH: Not a whole lot, they just was union workers. JJ: And they were union workers. BH: Right. And then they would always keep up with things that were goin’ on. JJ: In the union? BH: No, just keep up with things in the world. We always was interested in what was going on, so it wasn’t no surprise that we got into it. My brother made a big step with the Panthers, had to make the big step like he did. We were always interested in what King was doing and things like that. We were followin’ it. Lotta people did, but a lotta people really didn’t get into it that deep. Because a lot of people weren’t in that nonviolent kick. And then some people thought that Malcolm X was going too fast. So yeah, it was always on how am I, the political thing. It was always [00:54:00] ’cause I kept up with everything and knew who was doing what, you know. And then finally I just felt that I had to get out there with ’em because you’d go to school and people talk about what would happen. You know, you hear things about Selma, you’d experience different things. And some people had saw this stuff for so long, they just looked at it as a way of everyday life. They got captivated, “Well okay, I don’t like what they -- you know, I went downtown, and I went in this neighborhood and they did that.” But they 37 �get in their own neighborhood and I guess they felt safe and just said, “Well, it ain’t gonna change. Just give up.” So I think that’s, what, after I saw the Stokely Carmichaels and the Kings and all of that. Say well hey, I better not just talk about how bad they’re doing, just be a part of it in some kind of way. [00:55:00] And since I got involved with it, I like it. I like it. I guess it’s in my blood now. JJ: What are some of your plans for the scholarship? BH: To keep giving them out and maybe to extend it to other fields. We gotta get the money, you know, because with this Bush administration, a lot of our funds got cut. So we get funds but it’s nothing like we used to. So we just want to keep giving funds and build it even bigger. JJ: Was the bust of Fred Hampton, was that part of the scholarship fund? BH: No, I raised some money myself, but the community State Rep Karen Yarbrough was able to allocate the money, and the village of Maywood gave some so they were able to, the committee, people of [00:56:00] Maywood voted on it, the council that helped some of the money. They would give money to do that. JJ: So you got the whole council of Maywood working on renaming the pool Fred Hampton. BH: Yeah, they voted on it. Matter fact, when they named the pool after Fred, we had a white mayor. And it was three white -- it was six trustees. Three whites voted against it, three Blacks voted for it. Then the mayor come in and break the tie. He caught hell for it too. (laughs) They didn’t reelect him either. I felt sorry for him. We stayed close, but he caught hell for that. ’Cause he knew Fred and he had a good... So that was just right. You weren’t out here that night. You had a 38 �lot of ex-Panthers out here. It was all jammed when they made this, oh boy, whites on one side and Blacks, oh boy, it was something else. It was really something. You know, it was some [00:57:00] kind of night. That was not long after Fred got killed in the ’70s, they named the pool. M1: Yep, they did it. JJ: When did people start again being active? For a while they were not active. I think we tried to do something up north with the aldermanic campaign. I don’t know if you remember it from that time during ’75 or...? BH: I remember that, yeah. I think when people become active again, it might have been like the late ’70s when the Reagan thing start comin’ in. It kind of forced people to kinda get a little bit active. Then Harold Washington, he not only won the mayor, he sorta, like -- a movement was built around him. Brought a movement back to life a little bit, I think. Don’t you think so? JJ: Oh yeah. BH: You know, it kinda came back to movement days beginnin’ to come back. It’s just [00:58:00] that people weren’t working as close as they used to. ’Cause I remember when that was a problem, a crazy killing or something in the community, even though they didn’t agree, I remember the NAACP and Panthers and [CORE?] and everybody all on the same stage. Well, Young Lords, you know, gangs, ’cause everybody wanted to get together and do something about it. Now it’s this kinda like, you don’t have that now. Maybe tryin’ to get back there, but you don’t have that enthusiasm then. JJ: Okay, we’ll kind of finish it up a little bit. What do you think we missed that we 39 �need to kinda bring out? Fred Hampton, in terms of his legacy and that, that you wanted to bring out. BH: If I may, if people wanna keep Fred’s legacy alive, that people have to, [00:59:00] just in simple form, remember his dedication, remember to be real men and women, to stand up, and not be sold out. ’Cause I think that’s what Fred -- Fred didn’t sell out. I think you couldn’t buy him, and I think what people have to realize is that, you know, they can just stand up as men and women, don’t have to be bought out. I think a lot of people are using excuses to be bought out. I think that that’s just something that Fred wouldn’t go for ’cause I think that people gotta realize if they got to be bought out to become of a certain political position, they don’t need it. Because if you gonna do one thing one way, then you hypocritical. You’re not gonna do it another way. So we need to make our leaders, as Fred would have did, more accountable. We need to make ’em more accountable. JJ: Okay. BH: I think [01:00:00] people should keep the work that Fred, the Panthers, the Young Lords did, I’m serious, they need to keep it alive, is not let it die. Keep it alive. You know, do something every year to bring the focus out, to keep the young people from running around. And some old people who got the wrong information, give them the right information. I think they need to keep it going. JJ: Okay. END OF VIDEO FILE 40 � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/d4a2c06746311c6c22a76294e12422d5.mp4 105f75a73ce83e1b67afe0f56f8ad76f Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Young Lords in Lincoln Park Collection Subject The topic of the resource Young Lords (Organization) Puerto Ricans--United States Civil Rights--United States--History Lincoln Park (Chicago, Ill.) Personal narratives Social justice Community activists--Illinois--Chicago Description An account of the resource Collection of oral history interviews and digitized materials documenting the history of the Young Lords Organization in Lincoln Park, Chicago. Interviews were conducted by Young Lords' founder, José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez, and documents were digitized from Mr. Jiménez' archives. The Young Lords in Lincoln Park collection grows out of the ongoing struggle for fair housing, self-determination, and human rights that was launched by Mr. José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez, founder of the Young Lords Movement. This project is dedicated to documenting the history of the displacement of Puerto Ricans, Mejicanos, other Latinos, and the poor from Lincoln Park, as well as the history of the Young Lords nationwide. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Jiménez, José, 1948- Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/491">Young Lords in Lincoln Park collection (RHC-65)</a> Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-04-25 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Language A language of the resource eng spa Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-65 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 2012-2017 Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Título Spanish language Title entry Bill Hampton vídeo entrevista y biografía Descripción Spanish language Description entry Bill Hampton era un maestro en las escuelas de Chicago y también el hermano de Fred Hampton, quien fue el vicepresidente de la sección del Black Panther Party en Illinois. Fred Hampton fue asesinado en la mañana del 4 de Diciembre 1969 por un equipo especial de policía. Bill Hampton creció en Maywood, Illinois, donde organizo un a conmemoración anual en recuerdo de su hermano que fue atendido por líderes del cívico y la comunidad. En Maywood, Señor Hampton corre un programa de seguridad en el tráfico y como director de Midwest Voter Aliance, organizo y coordino para Barak Obama durante su primera ves corriendo por presidente. Sujetos Spanish language Subject terms Young Lords (Organización) Puertorriqueños--Estados Unidos Derechos civiles--Estados Unidos--Historia Lincoln Park (Chicago, Ill.) Afro-Americanos--Relatos personales Justicia social Activistas comunitarios--Illinois--Chicago Hampton, Fred, 1948-1969 Partido Pantera Negra. Illinois Capítulo Relaciones raciales Source <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/491">Young Lords in Lincoln Park (RHC-65)</a> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-65_Hampton_Bill Title A name given to the resource Bill Hampton video interview and transcript Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Hampton, Bill Description An account of the resource 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. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Jiménez, José, 1948- Subject The topic of the resource Young Lords (Organization) Puerto Ricans--United States Civil Rights--United States--History Lincoln Park (Chicago, Ill.) African Americans--Personal narratives Social justice Community activists--Illinois--Chicago Hampton, Fred, 1948-1969 Black Panther Party. Illinois Chapter Race relations Language A language of the resource eng Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2012-02-09 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/9ee5090284814523ac0d0cf5c97cd83c.pdf fda19d8c8ffd700d0569e254113f4f23 PDF Text Text Young   L ords   In  Lincoln  Park   Interviewee:  Dennis  Cunningham   Interviewers:  Jose  Jimenez   Location:  Grand  Valley  State  University  Special  Collections   Date:  10/4/2016   Runtime:  01:16:40         Biography  and  Description   Oral  history  of  Dennis  Cunningham,  interviewed  by  Jose  “Cha-­‐Cha”  Jimenez  on  October  04,  2016  about   the  Young  Lords  in  Lincoln  Park.   Dennis  co-­‐founded  the  People’s  Law  Office  originally  located  in  Lincoln  Park,,  Chicago  at  2156   North  Halsted  Street.  These  were  movement  lawyers  who  began  working  with  the  Lawyer’s  Guild   at  the  1968  Democratic  convention  protests.  Later  they  took  on  court  cases  of  the  Panthers,  Young   Lords  and  New  Left.  In  1969,  the  People’s  Law  Offices  negotiated  for  the  Young  Lords  during  their   McCormick  Theological  Seminary  take-­‐over  and  received  $25,000  in  seed  money  after  the  Young   Lords  won  all  of  their  demands.  It  included  $650,000  for  low  income  housing  investment  and   $50,000  to  open  up  two  free  health  clinics  In  1973  Dennis  moved  to  New  York  to  work  on  the  Attica   Prison  Riot  cases..  Here  he  discusses  a  major  case  of  the  People’s  Law  Office:  the  assassination  trial   of  Chairman  Fred  Hampton  of  the  Black  Panther  Party.   �Dennis  was  born  in  Chicago  in  the  suburbs.  At  age  15  he  studied  at  the  University  of  Chicago  and   went  to  work  as  a  journalist  and  then  a  bartender  for  Second  City  where  he  met  and  married  his   actress  wife,  Mona.  By  the  age  of  27  he  considered  himself  a  drop  out  from  society  and  went  with   Filmmaker  Howard  Alk  to  the  march  on  Washington  just  to  observe.  He  then  entered  law  School  at   Loyola  and  began  working  at  city  hall  for  Mayor  Richard  J.  Daley  in  human  relations,  on  Panic   Pedaling  cases.  Black  and  White  realtors  would  frighten  White  homeowners  into  selling  by  telling   them  that  Blacks  were  moving  in  and  it  would  lower  their  property  values.  He  soon  left  because  it   was  planned  and  a  smoke  screen  with  few  convictions.  When  the  riots  occurred  after  Martin  Luther   King  was  murdered,  Dennis  recalls  going  to  the  courthouse  and  jail  at  26th  and  California  and   witnessing,  “another  world.”  He  said  that  it  was  chaotic  with  inmates  living  outside  in  the  yard  and   that  it  literally  took  him  three  days  to  locate  a  prisoner  who  he  was  trying  to  bond  out.  The  police   were  “vindictive  and  dangerous,”  he  said.   He  remembers  marching  down  Division  with  Chairman  Fred  Hampton,  in  the  Young  Lords  Manuel   Ramos  March.  Manuel  was  killed  by  an  off  duty  policeman  and  the  march  was  10,000  strong.  An   unmarked  police  car  u-­‐turned  and  drove  on  top  of  the  sidewalk,  staring  both  he  and  Fred  Hampton   down.  The  rest  of  the  oral  history  focuses  on  the  Hampton  Trial.   �Transcript DENNIS CUNNINGHAM: And I remember the Manuel Ramos March. I remember going to Church, but I don’t know which of those came first. You know? (break in audio) JOSE JIMENEZ: Your name and where you were born and then how you came to be connected to the Young Lords. DC: Okay. All right? JJ: Yeah. DC: My name is Dennis Cunningham. I come from Chicago. I was born there in 1936. I grew up more in the suburbs than the city, but I left when I was, like, 15 to go to school at the University of Chicago. They had this program to get in there early. That took me out of the suburbs altogether. Up here, too. And, you know, I got [00:01:00] out of college, and I had a job. I got a job as a journalist ’cause that was sort of what I always thought I was gonna do. But I didn’t like it much at all, you know? And I was -- I had this girlfriend. She had gone to France. I went to France. I stayed a year -- for a couple years. And I came back -- I was, like, this was -- we’re talking about the middle of the ’50s. And I was like what you would call a dropout, really, then. And I came back, and I worked on Rush Street, you know, [where I was a?] bartender. And I got involved with Second City. And at first, I was a bartender there. Then I was in the company. And my friend, Howard Alk, and I decided we should go to the March on Washington to see it, you know, for the spectacle. [So I we rode in on those trains?]. [00:02:00] I told this in one of the workshops that, you know, on 1 �the way back, he says, we get should get involved in this stuff. And I was kind of thunderstruck by that notion, you know? Because the whole point of being a dropout is you ain’t involved in anything, you know? But that really was like a revelation, you know? ’Cause I didn’t know -- by that time, I’m 27 years old. I’m married. I got a new baby. I didn’t -- and I was kind of done at the Second City. They were downsizing, and I was fringe, and there wasn’t [really?] too much future there. And so I got this idea to be a lawyer. I said if I was a lawyer, I could be involved, but I could still make a living, you know, and I could be connected and have something to give more than my body. I can’t go out there and lay in the street ’cause I got a wife and kid, I got to deal with all that. JJ: [00:03:00] [And you were married? Was it for a long time?]? DC: No, we had only been married a year. And then the baby came, and -- JJ: [What was her name?]? DC: Mona Mellis. JJ: And the baby’s name? DC: And the baby, Delia. She came in June of ’63. And then we went, August, on the March, and September, I’d gotten my way into Loyola Law School. JJ: And she’s an attorney, too? DC: Huh? JJ: She’s an attorney, too? DC: No, she’s not an attorney. She was an actress at Second City. JJ: (inaudible) __: (inaudible) 2 �DC: And -- __: [I think they’re working on the --?] DC: You know, then -- __: (inaudible) DC: -- I went to law school for four years. I went at night. I’d work in the daytime. I had -- and got another kid and another kid. And by the time I got out, you know, I wasn’t that political, even, then. I mean, I had [00:04:00] this notion, this general notion, but I wasn’t tuned in to the politics of what was going on that much. I tell you what happened. I worked for a couple of years there while I was in school. I worked for the city of Chicago. I was working for Mayor Daley, and I was in the Commission on Human Relations. And I was a human relations officer on ’54, ’55, ’56. JJ: (inaudible) [office?]. DC: Yeah. And I -- __: It’s okay. DC: You know, we would go out and investigate complaints of discrimination by real estate brokers or by hospitals and stuff like that, ’cause there was an ordinance. And we’d work up the cases as investigators and bring it to the human relations commission. They’d white wash it. But the only time they didn’t white wash it was when that was against a Black real estate agent or broker for panic [00:05:00] pedaling, you know, trying to get the white people to move out so the Black people could move in to -- block by block on the south side. It was happening like crazy. I mean, it was the main thing they were concerned about, 3 �what they call panic pedaling, because people would go to the white neighborhoods on the fringe of the ghetto, which was just expanding and expanding, and they’d say, you’d better sell now because the Black people -- two more Black people move in your block, your property value is gonna go right down, and they went for it in mass hordes, you know? And white real estate brokers would sort of get away with it, give ’em a slap on the wrist. The Black ones, they’d really -- they’d fine ’em. I think there was one guy lost his license. JJ: And Daley was doing it. DC: Daley was doing -- JJ: [He was fining them?]. DC: Yeah, yeah. JJ: [But it was his plan?]. DC: Yeah, well, the commission did it, and the commission was sort of independent, and they had [00:06:00] liberals on it, a couple. But they would always find a reason to let people off the hook, you know? And then all that Ben Willis stuff started to happen. Ben Willis was the superintendent of the schools. He started taking money outta the Black schools, and people started in -- and for a while, they were demonstrating every day. There’d be a big march every day. It started Navy Pier, I think. I can’t remember. Al Raby was the organizer of that. And I would get a sign, a lot of times, to go and just monitor the march. I remember [I did?] a whole march through Cabrini-Green, me and Dick Gregory. And he was - he would march, you know, and I got started talking to him. And, you know, he had all these comments about what’s going on. But, you know -- and then Martin 4 �Luther King came to Chicago with the campaign to end slums there. And he [00:07:00] marched in Gage Park, and he got hit with a brick, you know? JJ: [Did you march with him?]? DC: No, I wasn’t there. No, that -- I wanted to go, but they had another division in the office of the guys -- couple of Black guys they had on the staff that would go to those things. But that was in ’66, and by that time, I really had enough. [There’s our books?]. Can we stop for a sec? JJ: Sure. DC: Jeff. (break in audio) JJ: We were talking about -- DC: It was ’66. King left, you know? He had a sit-down, and Mayor Daley talked stuff. And they took the opportunity to get the hell outta there, the whole SCLC because it was -- I mean, they’d bitten of more than they could chew in Chicago. They didn’t know what they were getting into, I think, [00:08:00] in the whole -- I mean, no blame, because it came out like an eruption, the racism in those communities, and the anger. And it was astounding, you know, in that sense that it was so virulent and so nasty. JJ: So how many years were you there? DC: I was there two -- about two full years. And then I said I’m not -- you know, I can’t be a part of this no more, you know? And I walked -- JJ: [Why did you feel that way]? 5 �DC: Just because it was too much suppressing the movement, you know? And it was too hypocritical, and it was too -- JJ: [Well, how were they suppressing the movement? By whitewashing it, or?] -- DC: No, no, they’d kind of -- if they would march, the cops wouldn’t give ’em the protection. If they would [00:09:00] sit in some place -- I mean, I don’t really remember the details. It was just they couldn’t get any place, and they couldn’t get any rhythm trying to talk to people about let’s do this or let’s do that about the slums here. No, they said, “Let’s do this about the outside agitators. You know, let’s get ’em outta here.” And they did. They got the message, and they’d be beating their heads against the wall there, or worse, because the environment -the atmosphere was so hostile, you know? And because, I think, they couldn’t see a way through it, you know? They couldn’t see a strategic approach that would actually pay off, as opposed to just get ’em in deeper and deeper repression. And, I mean, I’m saying that, [00:10:00] and I really don’t know. I mean, that’s just my recollection of the sense I had of what was happening. And I don’t know if anybody’s really written that much about it, but I -- when I think about it, and I think I’d like to see if anybody has, you know? And see what people said that were on the inside of the movement. Anyway, you know, then I went to work as a clerk for a lawyer that I knew. And -- JJ: What lawyer? DC: His name was Mitchell Edelson. JJ: (inaudible) 6 �DC: Junior. And he showed me a lot of the stuff, which came in handy. And then when I graduated -- well, I graduated in the spring, and I got sworn in in the fall, like November of ’67. And -- JJ: [As a student of a university?]? DC: Loyola. [00:11:00] JJ: Loyola. That’s right. DC: Loyola, yeah, which was not the fancy skyscrapers that you see today. It was this crappy, three-story building on the same corner, there at Pearson and Wabash. And it also was not the kind of public interest stuff that has developed there since then. They’ve got a lot of stuff going on. And the school has grown, and they have international practice, and they have all these clinics, and they have all this stuff, you know? They got a lot of money. I don’t know where. But, you know, I had a sign on my house. And I had one guy, a neighbor, you know, and he had some problem buying his house. And I was -- oh my God, what am I getting myself into here, you know? And I worked with Neighborhood Commons. Remember them? [00:12:00] JJ: [Explain what you mean by Neighborhood Commons?]. DC: Richard Brown and them. JJ: [They kind?] (inaudible) -- DC: That was a -- JJ: [They were?] divide and conquer. [They were?] (inaudible) -- DC: They were -- JJ: Neighborhood Commons was against -- 7 �DC: Was against urban renewal and stuff, yeah. They were trying to hold the mixture in that territory from north of North Avenue, mainly, you know, coming up the Armitage. And they bought some buildings, and then different people could move in, different mixed families and stuff like that. And, yeah, Richard was their go-to guy. And he -- JJ: (inaudible) -- no, not (inaudible). Richard -- DC: Dick Brown. JJ: Dick Brown. DC: Yeah, yeah. And there was a couple reverends, [Neal Scheidel?]. He lived right down the street from me. I mean, we lived just right down Dayton from the Church. [00:13:00] And that was -- we were, like, on the borderline, you know? There were Black people beyond us, and there was white people short of us. But what they wanted to do -- we’d been involved in that, like, as residents of the community when they were pushing the urban renewal along North Avenue. And the Commons got involved in it, and they said, you know, they finally changed it all, and the Neighborhood Commons built a bunch of the -- or sponsored with the city. JJ: (inaudible) DC: They’d built the whole raft of townhouses and stuff there, two- or three-story apartment buildings and with mixed residencies. But it was also still a border. The ghetto wasn’t gonna go any further north, you know? And Puerto Rican people that were living in Lincoln Park were already getting squeezed out, you 8 �know, because it was already -- people were [00:14:00] -- you know, the -- what’d they call, the flight from the suburbs? JJ: (inaudible) DC: People want to live in the city. They want to live near downtown, and -- JJ: [They made an inner city suburb?]. DC: Yeah, yeah, exactly. That’s exactly -- JJ: To bring them back to the [burb?]. DC: -- what they did. They’d bring them back. And so then I was just there those couple of months. And then Martin Luther King was murdered. And then there were all these sweeps, those huge National Guard sweeps and shit in streets. They locked up, like, 8,000 or 9,000 people in two or three days. They had them in the yard -- JJ: (inaudible) DC: -- at the Cook County jail, just people -- just in the yard. And they didn’t know who they had. They didn’t know nothing except they had, you know, swept -done sweeps on different blocks and took everybody that they found. [00:15:00] And most of them, they would arrest them in the street, but then they would say that they had arrested them inside a building and charge ’em with burglary. So they had all these thousands of Black people -- JJ: Change the complaint? Or -- DC: They just said it from the beginning. “This is a burglary. This guy was in there.” “I wasn’t ever in that building.” “Yes, you were.” And so they had probably 3,000, 4,000 people charged with felonies coming outta that thing. And then they -- over 9 �the course of the next few months, they made deals with all of ’em. We’ll give you probation. You can get out of jail. But now you got a felony on your record. And people went for it, you know? They had to get out. They had been walking - going to the store, everything. And there was a guy from the neighborhood that had been mixed up with Neighborhood Commons, [Ed Brownell?]. [00:16:00] And had been caught in a sweep, and nobody knew where he was, and nobody could find him. And I went to the county jail, and I said -- you know, they said, well, we got him here somewhere. And I sat in that jail for two, three days waiting for them to find this guy so I could bond him out. I’m getting a red-hot introduction, you know, to how it really works. I had been in the criminal court of 26th Street one time when I was still clerking for this dude. And he had a guy -- a Black guy that worked for him, [did runs?] -- serve subpoenas and shit like that that got busted in some kind of stupid shit. And he couldn’t go to court one day, so he sent me out there, you know? And I didn’t know what the hell to do. I’m just sitting there watching. Gets all the way to the end of the call. They finally call this guy’s case. And I think -- I had talked to the prosecutor. He said, [00:17:00] “We ain’t gonna do nothing with that guy, you know? We’re gonna just postpone the case.” So I told him he could go home. So I come up front [of Judge Ryan?]. He says, “Well, where’s the defendant?” I said, “Well, Judge, I told him he could go home.” He said, “You sent him home?” I said, “Well, yeah. You’re gonna give a continuum.” He said, “I’mma lock you up back there.” (laughs) So, I mean, that’s like another world, 26th Street, you know? But I got started going there. I went a lot more after that, but then the next thing that happened was that the 10 �Lawyers Guild came to Chicago to recruit people, lawyers, to deal with the convention because they knew that everybody was gonna come and sit in and shit. And they -- so they were looking for lawyers to line them up in advance to do that. [00:18:00] Bernardine Dohrn was the delegate for the operative from the guild that came out to organize that. So I said, “I’ll do it.” And we had a committee. And I said this in the workshop, you know? Two weeks after the convention, me and Ted Stein are sitting in this office. We got 300 cases, and nobody is there anymore, you know? All the defendants are gone, and all the lawyers are gone, and we don’t, either of us, know a damn thing, you know? We’re just as green as the grass. And we’re gonna -- what are we gonna do with all these cases? And I started going to trial in a bunch of cases that they wouldn’t postpone, but they were all infractions, so you don’t get a jury. So they were quick, but what you do get to do is cross-examine the cop about the circumstances of the election. So I got all this experience. [00:19:00] I must’ve tried 20, 25 cases in -- from, you know, September -JJ: (inaudible) [with infractions, there’s no trial?]? DC: Right. It’s like a petty offense, and the most you can get is six months in jail. And the Supreme Court says if that’s the worst that can happen to you, you’re not entitled to a lawyer, you know, an appointed lawyer or anything. Different ones had lawyers. And then we became lawyers for a lot of ’em. And so that was like a training ground for me. And then, you know, right toward the end of ’68, Howard Alk, again, had -- he had met the Panthers and asked if they didn’t want 11 �to make a movie about themselves. And they said, “Yeah, we do.” And so he and -- him and Mike Gray had started just following ’em around, filming. And -JJ: [00:20:00] (inaudible) DC: Huh? JJ: Mike who? DC: Mike Gray. JJ: Oh, Mike Gray. DC: Yeah. And they said -- and then Howard -- I ran into Howard, and he says, “Man, I met the Black Panthers, you know?” He said, “They need lawyers.” I said, ”No kidding, you know?” I said. So he took me to meet ’em. I went to the office. I met Fred. I met Bobby Rush. I met some of the guys. And they said, “Yeah, that’s -- you know, we’re getting hassled all the time. Guys are getting locked up. People who we’re trying to work with in the community are getting locked up for hanging around us. We need lawyers.” So I said, “Well, I’ll help you. And I got some friends I think might be able to help. Just let me know what’s happening.” And I told the story today, too, the other -- no, it was today. JJ: (inaudible) DC: All of a sudden I get a phone call at the end of January, start of February. I get a phone call one day, [00:21:00] and it’s this big voice [on it?], says, “Mr. Cunningham?” I said, “Yeah?” “This is Judge Connely.” He says, “You represent Fred Hampton?” And I said, “Well, yeah. I guess I do.” And he said, “Well, you’ll be here at nine o’clock in the morning because you’re going to trial.” I said, “Okay.” I showed up, and we did go to trial. And it was a case of them doing a 12 �demonstration in Maywood about the swimming pool. And there were two other people arrested with him. One of them was, like, a local -- a Black guy who was a dentist or something, well-established citizen, but who had, you know, supported the protest. And they had had this march to the city council meeting in Maywood. And a few of them went inside. They wouldn’t let the rest of ’em inside, [00:22:00] so crowd got a little bit unruly outside, and they shot out a bunch of tear gas. The tear gas went inside the council chambers, and all the people were weeping. They had to can the meeting. I think it came in while Fred was speaking to them about the swimming pool. And so they charged him with mob action. And this dentist, Ivory, Dr. Ivory, he was in the case, and some other dude. And so then, when I got to the trial, it turned out Jim Montgomery was representing Dr. Ivory, who was an upstanding citizen and could pay a fee. And he was plenty experienced, so all I had to do was just kinda lay and copy him, you know? ’Cause I -- from the very start of the voir dire, I’d never been through any of it. I mean, like I say, I’d tried all these no-jury cases. [00:23:00] They’re very different things. And somehow we got through it. I just -- you know, I would literally -- I mean, you’d change the questions a little bit, but he would examine a guy, and then I would examine him. And then the public defender had the third guy, and he would just kinda lay it out. And it was a lot of stumping through it. Took a couple of days. But then in the closing arguments, I got all carried away, and I’m saying, “They got tear gas in the city council chambers. You know they gotta hold somebody responsible and make somebody the scapegoat, and that’s the scapegoat right there, and you can’t let them, blah, blah, blah.” And he was 13 �acquitted. And so that was really great, you know? And that’s --[00:24:00] and he felt good. I felt good. Everybody felt good. But the next thing I knew, a couple of months later, all of a sudden, he was on trial on that ice cream case. And I hadn’t even known about that. He hadn’t said anything to me about that. And in fact, I think there had been a -- at least one incident with the cops in between, like one of those raids on the office or some other thing, a confrontation in the street, so that there was -JJ: Well he was arrested(inaudible) DC: Yeah. JJ: (inaudible) DC: Yeah, but I think that was later in the year. JJ: [Was it later?]? DC: That was more -- JJ: (inaudible) DC: There -- JJ: The month between February and March. (inaudible) February 12. DC: In ’69. JJ: Yeah. DC: Yeah, okay. JJ: (inaudible) DC: Well, that was right around that time, yeah. Well, so then he had that case, too, you know? And -- JJ: (inaudible) [00:25:00] 14 �DC: But then he was in this ice cream case with this other lawyer -- JJ: (inaudible) DC: -- and it was kinda weak, you know? Yeah. JJ: (laughs) DC: She -- anyway, he went down in that case. And what happened right in the middle of the case, they realized who they were dealing with, so they brought in some senior guy, and he just went off about Fred. And then they got Fred on the witness stand. They asked him, was he a revolutionary communist? He said, “Yeah. You know it.” And did he believe in the violent overthrow -- “Yeah.” JJ: (laughs) DC: And the judge -- I knew the judge. I had this other case with him. And he told me during the trial, he’s -- “Ah, this case is horse shit. I’ll give him probation if (inaudible).” But after they sent the big dogs in there, he wound up giving him two to five. And then he went off to Menard. [00:26:00] And then we worked and worked for a couple of months and finally got him out. But the quid pro quo for getting him out was that they would have an accelerated schedule for the appeal, so we had to write the brief immediately -- I mean, usually, appeal would take a year and a half, two years. This one took three months, two months. Had a -- he said, “You get the brief in here in a couple of weeks,” and da, da, da, and boom. So he was going back to prison. He had, I think, I don’t know, 8 or 10 more days before he was -- the mandate said he had to report. And that was over the time when he was murdered. But also, during that time, I had got appendicitis, and was in the hospital, and then I was home. I couldn’t move. They cut me down 15 �the middle instead of just going in there by your hip, you know? He said, “Oh, it might [00:27:00] be your gallbladder, so we’ll just go --” you know, guy -- he’s got 12 interns that are watching him, and he’s one of these big -JJ: [Training them?]? DC: -- barrel-chested, white-haired assholes, jaw coming out to here. But I was really laid up, you know? And I was still laid out on the night he was killed. I couldn’t really -- I got up outta bed and went to the funeral. It was, like, a week later. And I had to go back and stay in bed all the way through the holidays. Or maybe not that long because we started having meetings, and they were going to court, and they started that coroner’s inquest, I think, after the first of the year. And by that time, I was back, and I was part of that. And then all that stuff happened, you know, [00:28:00] that spring of 1970, when there was all this behind-the-scenes stuff happening with Hanrahan and the FBI or the US Attorney’s office because they had a federal grand jury. And they were really trying to look into it. But they made a deal, you know? Okay, which we later found out about in a document, that the Panthers case -- the charges against the Panthers would be dismissed, and no cops would be indicted. Then they had a special prosecutor in the state system later, Barney Sears, but that was, like, another year or two before that all happened because a bunch of the cops did get indicted, but it was for, like, lying on a police report, and it was obstruction of justice [00:29:00] and nothing about the murder. JJ: And so nobody went to jail for (inaudible)? 16 �DC: No, no. The survivors of the raid were freed, and those charges were dropped. And the grand jury, instead of indicting the cops, issued this special report saying how fucked up the police procedures had been used in the raid and this and that, and everything was wrong with it, but we’re not gonna charge anybody individual ’cause it’s just, like, the system malfunctioning. If you can think of anything more insincere. JJ: [If you can kind of? How did] (inaudible)? DC: Well, we -- right in that period, we were representing most of the survivors. We had some of our pals, Jo-anne Wolfson, Warren Wolfson. They took one or two of the people. Montgomery had [Deborah?]. [00:30:00] I forget who else, but we had three or four of ’em. And then we decided we had to start a civil suit about the raid and about the killing. And we did that, but we -- again, we were so green, we really didn’t know how to do it. And we got some help from the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York. We knew those people a little bit. JJ: (inaudible) DC: You know, here’s what you gotta put in the complaint, and here’s what you gotta do. And it wasn’t only them. Kermit Coleman helped us. He was the ACLU guy. And we got the complaint filed. And I forget how quick it was, but it wasn’t too long before the judge threw it out. So now we’re in the appeals court. And the people -- again, [00:31:00] the New York people were helping us. And we got that reversed and got the complaint reinstated. In the meantime, we’re dealing with all these other Panther cases. But now him and me and a couple other guys -- Skip Andrew. You remember him? 17 �JJ: (inaudible) DC: And we were starting to go to 26th Street a lot, and we were getting other cases, and we were trying to support ourselves with the bond slips. And that sorta just went on. And then the stuff happened at Attica. And we had a big fight in the office. By that time, we had opened the office. We opened the office in August of ’69. JJ: (inaudible) DC: [00:32:00] Do what? JJ: [Go ahead and tell them about the office?]? DC: The office -- after I met Fred and Bobby, I came back -- we had started, ’cause -I need to go back. When we were the Chicago Legal Defense Committee, dealing with all the busts from the convention, is when me and Ted Stein -- and Ted says one day, “Well, I heard about these people in New York. They started a firm just to represent the movement.” I said -- it’s like another light bulb you know? And so we started having meetings. I remember him, ’cause me and him had met Jeff Haas about the -- around the Martin Luther King stuff. We had both had this same idea, you know? We’d go down to the 11th and State in the evening and help the people who had got busted during the day, you know? And they weren’t [00:33:00] giving ’em too much play, you know? I got a sign [I think?] I was -- you know, we went and found whoever was there, the lawyers that were -already knew anything. And he said, “Just go here, go there, da, da, da.” And I wound up in a stairwell at 11th and State where they pulled the desk in there, and they put the judge in there. And they started bringing the juveniles through. And 18 �it was the state’s attorney and me and the judge and cops. And they’d keep bringing these kids. And if the kids’ parents were there, he’d tell ’em to go home with the parents. If they weren’t, lock ’em up, and it didn’t matter what the hell I said, you know? I was like a potted plant in here. And they took a break at some point, and I started wandering around. I went into a court room, and there he was, and he was standing up in a real court room. He was standing up at the podium, and he was waving his arms and hollering at the judge. I said, [00:34:00] “Whoa,” you know? So then when this idea of having an office, that’s the first guy I thought of. So we started having these meetings, and that’s when I met Fred and Bobby. JJ: You and Ted Stein? DC: Me, Ted, Jeff -- JJ: Well, I mean, you had [Ted with you?]. DC: Yeah, yeah. And I don’t remember -- he might not’ve been at the first couple of meetings. And Skip Andrew and Don Stang. I don’t think there was anybody else. Kadish was involved in it, but that was later. JJ: (inaudible) DC: Later -- you know, months later on. And then after I met Fred and Bobby and they said, “We need lawyers,” I went back the next meeting. I said, “Well, if we do go ahead and start an office, we get the Black Panther party as our clients, you know?” And he said, “All right. Let’s go.” [00:35:00] So by -- pretty much by January, we had decided we would do it. And we started seeing what we can -what we were gonna do, how we were gonna work it out. But in the meantime, 19 �we started representing the Panthers. And they were getting busted, and I remember almost the first case, beside that one where the judge called me up, was two guys that they had just met. And they were just starting to talk to him about the Panthers, and they got busted on some bullshit, and they were locked up. And two, three people went to work to try and get ’em out, you know, and work on their cases and stuff. And we’re like, okay. How we were ever gonna get paid, we just -- in some miraculous way, we -- all those guys -- and it was all guys at that point -- all white guys. One way or another [00:36:00] -- I mean, two or three were working -- he was working for legal aid. They were working in some program, Skip and Don, at -- I think at Northwestern University. But they were lawyers. And somehow, we kept tabling the issue of how we were gonna support ourselves. We got the store in the summer and got it fixed up, put in a concrete gun emplacement. JJ: [When was this]? DC: The store, I think we opened it in August. JJ: [When was it?]? DC: Sixty-nine -- 2156 North Halsted, right on the corner of Webster, right next to Glascott’s Bar, there. JJ: And it was in October of ’69 or ’68? DC: August, we opened it, ’69. JJ: Sixty-nine. DC: Sixty-nine. JJ: And then -- 20 �DC: I mean, Fred was already -- JJ: (inaudible) before that -- DC: -- convicted -- no, we were -- JJ: [You were?] meeting there -- DC: Yeah, we were meeting, and [00:37:00] we were gonna do it. JJ: You were meeting [in private?]. DC: Yeah, yeah. And we were going to court. JJ: (inaudible) DC: Maybe. JJ: Just kinda takes -- DC: ’Cause your stuff started to come in about that time, right? JJ: [About the same time, yeah?]. DC: And we didn’t have a problem thinking, well, this is more of the same, you know? We were just gonna deal with it. I don’t know, you know? Looking back from different perspectives of the time since then, it really was extraordinary that it all came together the way it did and that we launched ourselves into that without having any idea of how we were gonna support ourselves, you know? Just some kind of way. I had -- after the King riots, through the Neighborhood Commons, [then Meister Brau?] come -- he came around, said, “Gee, [00:38:00], you know, we like to be felt like we’re part of the community. What can we do to help you folks?” They said, “Well, we got this lawyer. He’s helping us, and don’t have any income, so why don’t you give him a stipend?” So he came to me and said, “Well, how much should we tell ’em to give you?” I’m like, what do I need, or what do I 21 �believe they’ll agree to, you know? So I went low, like a fool. But at least it was a little something, you know? And me and Mona had bought this house on Dayton Street. And the mortgage was about half of it. It was $300 a month I was getting, and the mortgage, I think, was $147 a month. Phew. But then -- so we went through all that stuff, and we went through the appeal [00:39:00] and the civil case about Fred. And we were doing more criminal work. And then, when the Attica stuff happened, before it happened, we had gone to a -- all of us or many of us had been at a Lawyers Guild convention in Boulder, Colorado, which was an occasion where there was a big struggle in the organization about letting law students become members or letting legal workers become members. There had been -- at the previous convention, there was a struggle about law students, and the youth outvoted the older people, who said, “Oh, you can’t do that, you know? You’ll invalidate all our credibility as a bar association. Can’t have students be members.” So now, this time, it was about having legal workers, and never mind that bar association shit. [00:40:00] We’re a political organization, and we won that, too. And so it was like a time -- there was a lot of stuff on the rise. It was on the rise in Chicago. And then when the Attica stuff started to happen, I mean, we had been in Stateville. We had a case there. I think the Panthers -- some Panthers were involved in the shootout with cops in Carbondale. JJ: [Right?]. DC: And Jeff and Mike and Flint all went down there and had a trial and won. And I’m pretty sure that was before -- that was in ’70, but I’m not -- I can’t exactly 22 �remember. Could’ve been later. But anyway, got in this big argument about whether we could afford or whether we had any kinda where-with-all to try to send some people to Attica to help with what was ever gonna happen, ’cause it was -- they were still -- it was before the assault, [00:41:00] the [retake?]. And Jeff -- I lost the argument ’cause I said some stupid shit and some sexist shit. But -- I lost that -- I won the argument, we’ll go, but you can’t go. Somebody else gonna go. So he went. But then we became really involved in that. By the time -- by Christmastime, I was up there for two, three weeks at a time, going to prison every day, meeting all these guys, all the brothers, and waiting to see what was gonna happen, what the state was gonna do in the aftermath of the rebellion. And what they finally did, by the end of ’72, was indict 62 brothers -- or -- yeah. [00:42:00] And there was 42 indictments, 1,400 felony counts, half of which were life sentences for kidnapping and stuff for taking the hostages. So now, that was a really big involvement, commitment. And I was going back and forth, spending time up there, come back to Chicago, and they were going through it. And that’s probably when the appeal in the Hampton case was finished, and it was reinstated. They started to litigate that. And, you know, we had some -- had [these scenes?] in Buffalo. In the Erie County Jail, they brought -- they indicted prisoners there. And we had -- you know, they did different stuff. We had actions in the federal court. We had lawyers from all over. There were [00:43:00] a bunch of lawyers from Detroit. There were lawyers from Cleveland. There were lawyers from New York City. There were some lawyers from Virginia. And at some point after the brothers were indicted, the judge -- they had a special judge 23 �to handle those cases. And he said, “Well, I think every one of these defendants needs his own lawyer.” So now we had to recruit 60 lawyers and get ’em to do this case. And there were a couple of lawyers in Buffalo that were doing it, and that was it. So we did. And, I mean, that was a huge project, political project. I finally wound up going up there to live in ’73. I lived up there for a couple of years. But during that time, then, it all came out that they were totally manipulating the investigation. They were indicting only -- they didn’t indict any cops, even though they had all this cold-blooded murder that had gone on in the yard, and including [00:44:00] -- they killed 10 of -- 9 of their own, the hostages. They just shot ’em up. And so then the stuff kinda died down behind the scandal, and there was an investigation of the investigation, and there was an investigation of that investigation, and there was a lot of stuff. And so I went back to Chicago. And at that point, they had been doing depositions and going through, Flint and Jeff, mainly, the pretrial stuff for the Hampton case on the remand after the appeal. And we’re fighting the judge to get him to tell them to give us documents. And the Church committee had started, and so they were getting documents and bringing out [00:45:00] this stuff. And we finally had the contact with the guy who was working on the Church committee staff. And we were getting a trickle of documents. And so we were -- they were trading documents, okay? (break in audio) 24 �DC: Time the Attica event was in September of ’71, and we already had cases with two guys. And a lot of that -- the stuff -- I mean, you already had the Church, right? JJ: Yeah, we had the Church back then. DC: You had the Church still in ’69, or was it -- JJ: Yeah, ’69. DC: -- in ’70? In ’69 you had the Church. JJ: Then they flooded the neighborhood with drugs, (inaudible) but they did that [intentionally?]. DC: Yeah. Yeah, well, we’re thinking that they could -- they had a vulnerable prey. JJ: They might, because people were (inaudible) instead of correcting the situation like they used to, [00:46:00] let it (inaudible) and they would put ’em in (inaudible) I mean, the people in the neighborhood knew that. DC: But there was -- gentrification was going on, right? People were getting displaced big time, pushed outta Lincoln Park. JJ: It was unstable, the whole neighborhood, because, you know, you’re talking about Rush Street, and that’s where we started as a community. That’s Chicago and State. That was Lincoln Park, before and then in the early ’50s, we went to Lincoln Park. And by the time the people (inaudible) with all the different groups came, it was towards the tail end of the community. (inaudible). DC: Of -- right, of the displacement. JJ: (inaudible) DC: Yeah, yeah. And they all were moving to West Town. 25 �JJ: So -- DC: So then -- well, I mean, I don’t -- I remember, like I said, the -- JJ: (inaudible) that you remember -- DC: Yeah, I remember that. Yeah, I remember that. I hadn’t remembered it until you mentioned it the [00:47:00] other day. But yeah, that was a big deal. That was terrific, you know? And that was dealing with people who were potential allies, right? They were sympathetic, and they -- same thing with the takeover of the Church, right? There was not that much resistance. JJ: No, no, Reverend Gaskin was with us. He was with us. The congregation (inaudible) DC: Uh-huh. JJ: But then they tried to blame it on us, on the Young Lords. At least that was insinuated [by them?]. DC: Yeah, yeah. And when was Manuel killed? JJ: It was just before the (inaudible), May 4. DC: In September of ’70? JJ: May 4, ’69. DC: Of ’69? It was way in ’69? Oh, yeah, well, it had to be, because I remember -- I remember on a march. I was with Fred. And we were staying -- [00:48:00] I remember we were staying -- JJ: Oh, Fred was in the march? Okay, [I didn’t know when Fred was?]. 26 �DC: No, he was there. He was in the march. I was with him. It was some other people. And at some point, I think it was going west on Division Street. I think it was Division Street. Could’ve been North Avenue, maybe. JJ: I went to the march that day, and (inaudible) DC: But going west on Division, right? JJ: It was. DC: And we had kinda dropped off the march, and we were on a side street, just 50 feet from the corner. I don’t know why. We were talking about something or something. And the end of the march, and here comes the Bureau car, right? And they turned around. They made a left turn right onto the street in front of where we were standing on the parkway. And a cop had the window open. You know, it was plainclothes. And Fred looks down [00:49:00] at the guy. And he’s just kinda crawling by. And he says, “Mm, gang intelligence.” He says, “I can’t wait till the guerrilla warfare starts.” I says, “Holy shit. What the fuck?” You know, oh, that came back to me so many times. That’s a whole, enormous hidden subject, especially in an event like this. You know, it was the -- I don’t want to call it the dark side, but the hyper-active side, that more extreme side, of the Panthers’ operations, in those days, was the urge to provoke them, to challenge the cops. JJ: [War on gangs?]. DC: [00:50:00] Yeah. JJ: [War on gangs?]. 27 �DC: Yeah. And ’cause Hanrahan had gotten elected in ’68 on the war on gangs, and he was talking about the P. Stones and them, and you guys. And that’s how he got that group, [Gloves?] and them, assigned to his office, ’cause they had used to have -- they always had a police detail in the state’s attorney’s office, but they were old guys, fat guys that were near retirement, and they would go out, serve subpoenas, you know, or bring a witness to court. They didn’t do shit. And all of a sudden, he’s got all these red-hot, nasty, younger cops, [there were?] 14 cops in the raiding party, I think. And they were not old, fat cops, you know. They were young, like Gloves, [00:51:00] not green. Very experienced from kicking ass in the neighborhoods, in the minority neighborhoods. And those were the guys that he sent on the raids. Well, anyway, by ’75, we’re -- the Church committee is going. We’re going on the Hampton stuff and the discovery. They’re coming in saying, “We got no more documents.” We had this one US attorney who had kinda a conscience. He got kicked off the case around then, but before that the whole thing had come out about O’Neal being in -- the spy. And we told ’em, “Okay, give us O’Neal’s deposition.” [00:52:00] And they said, “All right, but it’s gonna be secret, you know? So you show up at the airport on such-and-such morning, and you’ll go with us, and we’ll go to where O’Neal is, and you can take his deposition and then come back.” So we did. Me, him, Flint, and [Bill Bender?], this guy from the CCR. And we went. And that was still this conscience guy in the US attorney’s office, was the only one they had there. We went to Detroit. We went to the federal building there. We got in a room. And we sat him down, started questioning him, questioned him all day. And this guy 28 �just let us. And he really -- he told us whatever we asked of him, you know? And one of the things he told us was, you know, the pretext for the raid was, oh, they’ve got illegal weapons in there, in the apartment, and that was what was in the search warrant, that they [00:53:00] pretended to be going to serve. And so I asked ’em, you know, we’ve been dealing with the FBI all this time, and you always go and meet your guy and you tell him what’s going on with the Panthers, and he questions you and you give him information about whatever you’re asking about, about whatever they’re doing. And he -- O’Neal was right in the middle of the chapter. You know, he was Fred’s bodyguard for a while. JJ: He came to(inaudible) at Church, [helped to?] train the Young Lords in security, so he would come and -- DC: He was very enterprising as an agent, you know? And as a Panther. And he said they never gave a shit about the guns, illegal, legal, whatever. But now they got this search warrant, says they got illegal weapons in the apartment, so now we got a pretext to go and raid it. Anyway, that had come at such a shock, that he was [00:54:00] an agent. And then we understood why the [Harold?] and [Truelock?] -- remember Truelock? Did you know him? JJ: I remember Truelock DC: They were from the Panthers. He was somebody Fred had met in jail that came out and joined up. And when they heard the cops coming up the stairs, they woke up and ran to the back to try to get Fred up to get ready for what was gonna happen. They couldn’t wake him. They couldn’t wake him, ’cause he was drugged. And so then all that stuff had happened, and we had this case, and 29 �now we’re dealing with the Church committee and trading documents. And this guy gave us some documents, including the floor plan, and another one about -JJ: [So they gave you that?]? DC: [00:55:00] No, the US attorney gave it to us. JJ: (inaudible) DC: You know, ’cause -- JJ: They had to give it to you. DC: Yeah, but they were supposed to turn over everything, and we had these comprehensive discovery requests, and they would just dole out a little bit, a little bit to make us try and satisfy us. But the more we got, the more we wanted, you know? And you could tell from the documents that there was more. You could tell from serial numbers and all that kinda stuff. And plus, we were getting information from this guy that worked for the Church committee, and we were giving him our stuff. And we made this one motion -- me and Flint worked out this long motion where we accused the judge of pretending that he didn’t think there were any documents, even though there’d been all these indications that we listed there were more. And he still denies it. [00:56:00] “You’ve had wonderful cooperation. You’ve had all these documents.” By that time, we did have several hundred pages, but nothing that said anything about COINTELPRO, which -- they were only -- had really only begun to really out it, you know, after they started -- ’cause the Church committee couldn’t get what they wanted, you know? JJ: And then -- 30 �DC: So -- okay. (inaudible) so by the time the trial -- the trial started in January ’76, they started picking the jury. And we had maybe, I think, a generous estimate -- I don’t really remember exactly, but maybe a thousand pages of FBI documents about the Panthers. And they were mostly -- almost all of ’em [00:57:00] were the kind of documents that they prepared to turn over in cases, you know? Later, we found when you read the real documents, then you compare it with the -what they call the 302, which is the form that they use for a statement about a police report, like, that they’re gonna turn over to the defense. And there’s all kind of variations, you know? I mean, they would just clean stuff up and hide stuff. But he insisted that the trial had to start, the judge, and we started. We started picking the jury. And in January -- we were still picking it in February. And all of a sudden in February, I get a call. Well, they’re gonna start the shit in Buffalo again. They’re gonna start up with these hearings and those indictments, even though there’d been all this scandal. So I had to leave and go back. And I was gone for three or four months. By the time I came back, you know, we were full in the middle of the trial. [00:58:00] And right about the time I came back, or even just before -- right -- no, the time I came back, they had this main agent on the witness stand who had been the one who ran O’Neal as his control, and who he would always meet with and tell him stuff and stuff, and who he gave the floor plan to, and who had given the floor plan to the cops, because they were saying you gotta raid the Panthers because they got all these illegal guns in there, which, in fact, when they -- JJ: [Who was saying that?]? 31 �DC: The FBI was saying that to the cops. JJ: (inaudible) they had the -- DC: Because, yeah, yeah, ’cause they were watching the whole time. I mean, and they sent those -- the fake letters to Jeff Ford, trying to make him think the Panthers were gonna -- out to get him, and that he should strike first. I mean, it was a bunch of stuff had happened, but it was sub rosa, you know? It was them doing [00:59:00] their thing. And in the trial, then, they were cross-examining this agent, Mitchell. And he referred to something that -- and we said, “Well, is that written up in a document?” And, he said, “Well, it should be, but I don’t know.” I said, “Well, why don’t you find that document?” And the judge said, “Yeah, you should find that document.” And Mitchell was on the stand for about a week, a week and a half, you know? End of the day, every day, we’d say, “Did you find the document?” “No, still looking.” And he was done with his testimony, was gonna leave the witness stand and be excused. And so Jeff and Montgomery, I think, [01:00:00] who was in the trial off and on, said, “Well, what about this document? Before he’s excused as a witness, we gotta--” he said, “Yeah, well, I did find it, you know? I found --” Go, “Okay, well, where’d you find it?” Da, da, da, da. And then he says, “Well, it was in a file about one of the Panthers named so-and-so, Lincoln.” You had a file about a Panther named Lincoln? Did you have a file about a Panther named Fred Hampton? “Well, you know --” And then everybody started arguing, and all the lawyers are shouting at each other, you know? And the judge finally bangs the gavel, and he says, “We’re gonna strike this out.” He says, “You just bring all these files up here tomorrow morning, and 32 �we’ll get to the bottom of this and make sure that they got everything.” So he came to court the next day. I’m just coming to watch, you know? And here come these [01:01:00] interns, whoever they were, with, like, shopping carts, three or four shopping carts, piled high with these files. JJ: The documents. DC: Files, yeah. JJ: (inaudible) documents. DC: Yeah, but COINTELPRO files. They had a file on every member of the Panthers. I mean, there was -- in the end, it was, like, 250,000 page of documents. A lot of them were total duplicates, you know? They’d write the same memo and put it in 12 files, you know, of 12 different Panthers. They had all -- collateral, other files. __: (inaudible) DC: Okay. I’ll be here. __: (inaudible)? JJ: [What’d he say?]? DC: Cubs are up 2 to nothing. JJ: Oh, yeah. DC: (laughs) __: [First inning, two runs?]. DC: Oh! JJ: [It’s permanent?]. __: Huh? JJ: It’s permanent in the video. 33 �__: In the video? (laughter) DC: Yeah, right? __: We’ll remember this day [01:02:00] [if they win?]. DC: Let’s hope it goes okay. JJ: Yeah. __: I’m gonna go to the bathroom, and -- JJ: Yeah, we’re almost done. __: -- [come back?]. DC: Okay. We’re almost through, so come back, and we’ll -- __: (inaudible) kick you outta here, but -- DC: Okay. JJ: Okay. (inaudible) DC: So he says he -- they come in with all these documents. He says, “Well, what are those?” He says, “Well, these are files on the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther party.” “Well, you better turn ’em over.” And we said, “Judge, we gotta stop the case here and let us read these files.” I mean, in the first day there was, like, 100,000 pages. Oh, no, we’re not stopping the trial. He told the jury, “Blame me that there’s a problem with these documents. It’s my fault.” JJ: Which judge was this? DC: Judge Perry. JJ: Judge Perry. 34 �DC: Judge Joe Sam Perry, a man from Alabama who had moved up here and got a job as a lawyer and been made a judge, a federal judge, [01:03:00] and he’d been a judge a long time. He was old and cranky and forgetful and, you know, although he’d been good to me a couple of times in some weird way. One time -oh, I won’t even tell that. JJ: (laughs) DC: Anyway, you know, so then he made the trial keep going, and we’re reading. They turned over copies of the documents, and we’re reading them at night and then using ’em to cross-examine the witnesses and the -- and like I say, in the end, it was something like, yeah, a round number was -- concluded it was 250,000 pages of files that they had that they said that they didn’t have and that these lawyers from Washington had stood up and swore didn’t exist. Judge says, “Blame me. I’m not gonna be bothered with that.” So the trial went on for another year [01:04:00] after that, after which the jury indicated they were pretty well hung, and so the judge dismissed the case. You know, he said, “Well, there was never enough evidence here to even go to the jury. We’ll throw it out.” Which was a boon to us because it made the standard really low on appeal, that just to show there was evidence, you know? But he had held Jeff and Flint in contempt a couple of times, and we were appealing that, and we were appealing the hiding of the documents, and we were appealing everything we could think of. I mean, me and Flint spent six months writing a brief, you know? It was that thick. And we got the right panel, and we got a reversal, a strong reversal. And then we got -- and I was back and forth. Finally, they threw everything out at Attica 35 �[01:05:00], so I was done for then. We had a civil suit we had started, but we weren’t directly involved in that. Michael and I had been up there in criminal cases a lot, and like I said, those two -- couple of two years, I stayed up there. And so then it was time to appeal the Hampton case. And we wrote this brief. And we had -- he had -- the judge assessed, like, $100,000 in costs against us and set $100,000 appeal bond. And they suspended that, court of appeals. And then we argued it, finally, in ’79. And the trial finished in June of ’77. I think it was in summer of ’79 we finally [01:06:00] argued the case. One of the judges had been an FBI agent, and he was a leading member of the society of exagents. JJ: (laughs) DC: And left it off his resume in the court. You couldn’t find it out. We only found it out -- JJ: (inaudible) DC: Judge Wilbur Pell. And in the government brief, US government brief, the guy had written something to the effect that said, these charges against these officers are insolent. They’re outrageous. You shouldn’t be allowed to come in a court and say things like that about sworn peace officers. So we put in the brief -- I put in the brief that there was this fascist-minded -- fascist-minded approach to the -- JJ: (inaudible) DC: -- prosecution [01:07:00] or to the government defense of the case, that it couldn’t be allowed to be heard because the accusations were so scandalous. And Jeff and Flint both argued for a while, and the government argued. And at 36 �the end of the government’s argument, the guy said, you know, “They called me a fascist in their brief. I’ve never been insulted like that before the judge in my whole” -- and Judge Pell turns around -- and he goes to sit down. And he turns around. I’m gonna get up to give the rebuttal argument. He says, “What about that, Mr. Cunningham? If we decide against you, are we fascists, too?” JJ: (laughs) DC: And I go, “No, judge, not exactly, but --” and I tried. Oh, I was so nonplussed. I didn’t know -- you know, it’s one of those times you think, oh, if only I’d thought of the right stuff to say, I’d’ve burned his ass up, but I gave ground, you know? Jeff listened to it when he was writing the book, and he said, [01:08:00] “It doesn’t sound as bad as you think,” you know? But it’s -- I still -- it’s something that mortified me afterwards when I realized I hadn’t just said yes, you know? You would be because that’s a fascist idea, that you can’t go to court when the cops abuse your rights. And if you said that that was okay, then you’d be subscribing to that. But that would’ve been simple enough if it had only occurred to me, you know? That’s always what happens. JJ: (inaudible) they’d challenge the thing about not having representation on the jury. DC: Yes. JJ: (inaudible) DC: Yes, we did that in the Days of Rage case. JJ: (inaudible) DC: That it was mostly -- it wasn’t so much the jury as the grand jury. And they proved that there hadn’t been any Black people on a grand jury for years. 37 �JJ: (inaudible) DC: Yeah, there were three or four cases, [01:09:00] including -- you remember the case of Brian Flanagan, that was accused of messing up Elrod, the city attorney, who chased him down the street and dove to try and tackle him and rammed his head into a wall and was crippled for the rest of his life based on that, but they tried to hang it all on Brian. And Warren, and it was Jeff, I think, and Warren Wolfson represent him, got an acquittal. And then Brian goes out and says, “Oh, we fucked ’em up, man. We got out. I was guilty as shit,” and on and on. You know, whoa, buddy. (inaudible) Come on, dude, you know? Who do you think you’re dealing with? Which was the same kinda feeling -- I mean, you had that feeling about a lot of stuff that happened, frankly, especially me, ’cause I was older. I had these kids. I thought [01:10:00] you know, it’s too dangerous. These cops are too vindictive, you know? And they hate it. And that had been shown in the different raids. You know that picture of the door of their office with shotgun holes in it? And that time -- the one time they raided the office, and somebody was talking about that yesterday. JJ: (inaudible)I have a picture. DC: And pissed in the cereal that was for the breakfast program and set fire to it one time. JJ: (inaudible) DC: Ugh. I mean, you know, not that that kind of racism in cops doesn’t still exist and get promoted by their work as cops, but there, they had an excuse against the Panthers and you guys [01:11:00] to insist on it as part of the cop philosophy. 38 �And then, you know, when Gilhooly and Rappaport were killed, and Jake Winters was killed, that was all the motivation they needed, you know? As much as it was instigated by the FBI and enabled by the FBI with the floor plan and the -and drugging Fred and all the stuff that O’Neal had done -JJ: Do you remember anything about Reverend Jackson’s case at all? Was that mentioned? DC: I remember -- I only remember -- JJ: I don’t know what happened -- DC: I don’t, either. And I don’t think anything ever really did. JJ: Nobody (inaudible) DC: They never knew -- whatever they knew [01:12:00] they kept to themselves. JJ: (inaudible) and they lost the file -- DC: Was that -- JJ: -- at Garrett seminary. DC: Yeah? JJ: [The files there -- they lost ’em?]. And that was recent, a couple of years ago. DC: That probably -- JJ: And one of the professors from the university -- and he had set up the appointment and everything. DC: And they -- JJ: (inaudible) we have a file. When they went there, there were no files. DC: Wow. JJ: At the Garrett -- 39 �DC: They would still have agents watching for (inaudible)? The file might’ve been gone for a long time. JJ: Yeah, right. DC: You know? JJ: They just didn’t -- DC: Going back to the time when it was -- all that stuff was more active, you know? JJ: Right, right. DC: You never know. JJ: But we had (inaudible) family (inaudible) investigated, they opened all the files where the police had investigated us. (laughs) DC: Yeah. Yeah, well, it was that kind of thing. They could say, well, it was probably them, you know? JJ: But we opened up the Church -- that was the first time we let ’em come in [01:13:00] and look at the files and everything. DC: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. That was really an unbelievable mystery, an unbelievable trauma, that that happened to those people. And you could see it coming from a lot of different places, possibly, you know? Just no way to really understand it. JJ: Right. Well, they took advantage of anything. They took advantage of the Young Lords that were just coming from a gang into a political movement, and they took advantage of that community. DC: Well, do you remember the date they were killed? JJ: The date was September 29. Of Reverend Johnson? DC: Yeah. 40 �JJ: September 29. It was only two months before Fred Hampton. Two months before Fred Hampton. And then there was also other things going on, [lynching?] (inaudible). DC: Yes. JJ: (inaudible) DC: Yeah, there was. (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) DC: Yeah, yeah. [01:14:00] And they had that attack in LA right after Fred was killed. And the whole community came out then and made them stop. Somebody said that yesterday, one of those things that they had heard -- they had learned at some point afterwards that Gates had ordered a tank. The cops had a tank. They were gonna bring the tank down there ’cause Geronimo had made them fortify the office. They had all these sandbags inside, you know? So they were really kind of safe in here. Phew. But then that’s the same kind of thing, is the level of hostility on the part of the cops, that they would bring a tank, let alone that they would make the attack at 4:00 in the morning, just like they did in Chicago. JJ: Any final thoughts? DC: The final word? My final thought is, you know, [01:15:00] -- we -- when the Hampton case was remanded by the court of appeals, it went to the Supreme Court, then too. They tried to get it in the Supreme Court. And the appeals court had awarded us fees for winning the appeal, but the Supreme Court said, oh, no, they didn’t win anything. All they did was go back to square one, no fees. And 41 �they did it without hearing arguments or briefs or anything. They just said on the face of it, you can’t have this money. Thurgood Marshall dissented and said, no, we should at least have this question briefed and have them come and argue and have it dealt with as a real case. But the others all voted against him. And again, you know, ’cause that Judge [01:16:00] Pell had written this really vituperative dissent in the appeal, and now, Judge Lewis Powell on the Supreme Court wrote the same kind of appeal -- yeah, we can go. JJ: [Sure?]. DC: And that was -- So I say that to say, and finish up on that note, that the hostility was in the courts as well. It wasn’t so pervasive, but it was real. [We’re getting?] -- JJ: Is that it? DC: Yeah. JJ: Thank you. DC: I mean, you know, I’ll think about it. I’ll send you another line. All right? END OF VIDEO FILE 42 � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/b88019b589ea3605e77e9d46f4da055f.mp4 8ed129e7e11525731983ff463e3f64ad Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Young Lords in Lincoln Park Collection Subject The topic of the resource Young Lords (Organization) Puerto Ricans--United States Civil Rights--United States--History Lincoln Park (Chicago, Ill.) Personal narratives Social justice Community activists--Illinois--Chicago Description An account of the resource Collection of oral history interviews and digitized materials documenting the history of the Young Lords Organization in Lincoln Park, Chicago. Interviews were conducted by Young Lords' founder, José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez, and documents were digitized from Mr. Jiménez' archives. The Young Lords in Lincoln Park collection grows out of the ongoing struggle for fair housing, self-determination, and human rights that was launched by Mr. José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez, founder of the Young Lords Movement. This project is dedicated to documenting the history of the displacement of Puerto Ricans, Mejicanos, other Latinos, and the poor from Lincoln Park, as well as the history of the Young Lords nationwide. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Jiménez, José, 1948- Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/491">Young Lords in Lincoln Park collection (RHC-65)</a> Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-04-25 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Language A language of the resource eng spa Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-65 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 2012-2017 Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Título Spanish language Title entry Dennis Cunningham vídeo entrevista y biografía Descripción Spanish language Description entry Historia oral de Dennis Cunningham, entrevistado por José 'Cha-Cha' Jimenez el 23/10/2016 acerca de los Young Lords en Lincoln Park. Sujetos Spanish language Subject terms Young Lords (Organización) Puertorriqueños--Estados Unidos Derechos civiles--Estados Unidos--Historia Lincoln Park (Chicago, Ill.) Narrativas personales Justicia social Activistas comunitarios--Illinois--Chicago Source <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/491">Young Lords in Lincoln Park (RHC-65)</a> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-65_Cunningham_Dennis Title A name given to the resource Dennis Cunningham video interview and transcript Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Cunningham, Dennis Description An account of the resource Oral history of Dennis Cunningham, interviewed by Jose 'Cha-Cha' Jimenez on 10/23/2016 about the Young Lords in Lincoln Park. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Jiménez, José, 1948- Subject The topic of the resource Young Lords (Organization) Puerto Ricans--United States Civil Rights--United States--History Lincoln Park (Chicago, Ill.) Personal narratives Social justice Community activists--Illinois--Chicago Language A language of the resource eng Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2016-10-23 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/b7883962d04b67c808a59ab07010dbca.pdf 2d33aede6c52d6f99e56bc36101cb538 PDF Text Text Young Lords In Lincoln Park Interviewee: Gregorio Gómez Interviewers: José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez Location: Grand Valley State University Special Collections Date: 8/23/2012 Biography and Description 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.” �Transcript JOSE JIMENEZ: Okay Gregorio, if you can give me your name, your date of birth, and where you were born? GREGORIO GOMEZ: Okay. My name is Gregorio Gómez, I was born in Tierra Blanca, Veracruz in the year of 1951 October 23rd. JJ: Where’s Tierra Blanca, Veracruz where is that? GG: (laughs) JJ: Veracruz is on the east coast, right? GG: Yes, on the east coast. We are, you know, several miles from Cuba, Puerto Rico. Veracruz, in contrast to the rest of Mexico, is very Caribbean. Guayaberas, arroz blanco, frijol negro, [zapateado en estilo?], [España?] a little bit ’cause of, you know, Veracruz is a state where the conquest of [00:01:00] Mexico came in. The Spañoles arrived in Veracruz, and from there they went into Tenochtitlan. But it’s very Caribbean, I mean, I think that we have, at least in my view, more of our connection to the Caribbean side of the Gulf of Mexico and all of that than more towards the west coast in regards to culture. We fit more in the Caribbean area. From there, we moved -- my father was a railroad man and he travelled a lot. You know, he started laying rail, he moved on from layin’ rail to, well, used to call them (Spanish) [00:01:56] which is those big blocks of wood [00:02:00] where the rails lay down. What do they call ’em? I don’t even know what they call ’em here. But he travelled, and throughout his travels -- of course everybody was in those days, the late ’40s, you know, that were coming the 1 �Bracero Program and (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) JJ: What is the Bracero Program (inaudible)? GG: The Bracero Program, bracero comes from the word brazo, labor, where the United States started recruiting Mexican labor because of the United States was at war. And so all of the manpower or power of the United States, male manpower of the United States, was in Europe and in other what they call Europe, you know, the theaters of war. And so they started recruiting Mexicans, even though there’s already a lot of Mexicans here. You know, the whole question of the southwest of California and all of that [00:03:00] from the Mexican-American War and the theft of the southwest. They still were bringing in labor promising that white picket fence and the nice little white cottage somewhere and that kind of stuff, and instead they get -- JJ: This was in the mid-’40s? GG: Yeah, the late ’40s. JJ: Late ’40s, okay. GG: And so he crossed undocumented and got sent back, and then he crossed again, but the second time he crossed -- (Spanish) [00:03:37] (break in audio) JJ: Okay, so we were talkin’ about the Bracero Program. GG: Well, you know, the Bracero Program was a big thing in the ’40s to bring Mexican labor in. So my father tried to get into that and he was able to do that. But then, somewhere down the line, he was [00:04:00] sent back, then he came back again. Typical thing, came back, got deported, and finally -- 2 �JJ: So’s he was comin’ without any papers? GG: Yeah, I think the second time he came without any papers and so he gets deported. And finally, through whatever finagling, negotiating he did it -- I do remember one quick story that he had a gold watch that he used in the railroad that was an heirloom to him, and that he sold that watch in order to make it back to the US, but this time he wanted to come back documented. So he finally did. And that was the beginning of his thought about bringing the rest of the family to [00:05:00] the United States. JJ: And he came straight to Chicago or...? GG: He came straight to Chicago -- he did a little stuff here and there, but there was an uncle, my mother’s younger brother, was already here in Chicago. So he says, “Come on down.” And so he ended up Chicago, which I’m kinda glad that he did, in a sense, ’cause Chicago provided many different opportunities for us as his children versus being in the southwest where the mixture of mexicano, Chicano that was left over from the 1848 Mexican-American War. There’s a whole different dynamic, you know, of Chicano, mexicano from the Southwest. And here, even though we’re right in Chicago, [and there was a?] tremendous amount of discrimination it was -- JJ: And now what neighborhood were you -- GG: We ended up in the far South Side neighborhood called Roseland, [00:06:00] working class community. JJ: About what street? GG: Well, our first address was 11940 South Parnell, that was the first place that we 3 �lived in. The second one was 100 -JJ: Those are the big houses that was (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) -- GG: (laughs) No these was the -- I’ll get to that but we were living in the first floor of this two-flat. My sisters were living in the -- they had the bed, was in the dining room. Myself and my brothers were in one room in bunkbeds that my father built. And so we were tight. And it was (inaudible) after that, later on. And it was from Veracruz we -- at that time, the only place to get your documents was Monterrey, Nuevo León, which is a northern part of Mexico. [00:07:00] For me, I believe that was part of the preparation of being uprooted and learning how to deal with new places. When we arrived in -- JJ: Wait, with what? GG: With new places. JJ: New places, new places. GG: ’Cause when we arrived in Monterrey, we were foreigners. We spoke funny, we had an accent de Veracruz, we had a different, you know, sonsonete, a different way of talking and the beautiful Monterrey del Norteños. Yeah, they were just -they listened to different music and so that was the first time that -- JJ: So what is your music? I mean what did you (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) GG: Well, I mean -- JJ: Veracruz. GG: -- there’s sonnets in Veracruz. There’s sonnets (Spanish) [00:07:49] What else? A lot of sonnets -- you know, marimba, we use a lot of marimba, arpa. And in Monterrey, [00:08:00] it’s what’s now called banda music, polka. (sings) You 4 �know, that kind of stuff which is very popular even here in Chicago. It’s very, very popular. And these big -- I mean, it’s okay. It’s danceable. But it’s a northern part of Mexico now and it’s, again, a totally different place. We came from a rural small town, very homey, Tierra Blanca to an industrial, urban, bustling huge metropolis like Monterrey. JJ: And how old were you then? GG: I was about seven, eight years old. JJ: And I didn’t get your father’s name or mother’s -- GG: [Hipólito?] Gómez is my father’s name. My mother’s name is [Tomasita?] Gómez. [00:09:00] I’m gonna get to that too, that’s an interesting connection with her. And so we end up in Monterrey. Being in Monterrey -- we had a lot of family, but from my mother’s side. Unfortunately, on my father’s side, all of his family disappeared during the various revolutions in Mexico. And I’m not gonna give you details on that ’cause he never really was fond of talkin’ about that. So he ended up with his mother and grandfather, who was killed later on. And he hated the caciques?] with rancheros, the landowners, ’cause he lived in one of those and, you know, those are the style of fiefdom where you’re a serf. JJ: These are, like, haciendas? [00:10:00] GG: (inaudible) the haciendas and they gave you a plot of land and you work for the hacienda, but then you come home and then you toil your own piece of land. But then you have to give part of your fruits to the hacienda as part of the payment, the rent. But then you’d have to buy the seed from the ranchero. I mean, it’s a racket, you know. The railroads used to do that here in the United States, where 5 �-- or the miners as well, where the mine owned the store, you know, there’s a famous song that deals with that. Tennessee Ernie Ford used to sing it, “16 tons and what do you get? One day older and deeper in debt.” You know, that kind of thing. And so he always hated that, so that’s when he finally’d make his move to join the railroad, to get away from that lifestyle. He didn’t know how to read [00:11:00] or write until he was 19 years old when his grandfather or somebody started teaching him. And he was always pushing ahead to get away from that kind of Mexican oppression. You know, government oppression, right. Capital oppression. JJ: So you call that Mexican oppression? GG: There’s Mexican oppression man. It’s goin’ on, now, you know. And so he -well, in Mexico, the oppression is the rich versus the poor, not necessarily color. The rich is always screwing the poor no matter what. And so he’s always tryin’ to get away from that. Comin’ to the United States was his dream come true. You know, that was his golden apple. That was his way of believing that he arrived at the promised land, but [00:12:00] he had to bring us all in order for him to be -- JJ: So when you say he brought us all, what are your siblings? GG: I have five brothers and two sisters. JJ: And can you give me their names or...? GG: Okay. My older sister is [Carmen Senco?], she’s the oldest, second oldest is [Marisela Ruben?], my older brother [Abram Gómez], myself, and then my younger brother [Guillermo?], and then [José Louise?], and [Raul?]. And Raul is born here, though and he was the last one of the family of eight. But so he 6 �brings us to Monterrey, you know, there’s where we went to to get the documentation. We lived there for six years. That was a process of time to get your documents and particularly for a large family. And then, of course, it’s all that money you have to be dishing out. As a matter of fact, a couple of years ago I found some documents [00:13:00] that my father had saved. Letters, written by hand, from people giving my dad, my pops, references and that he was a good man, that he was a hard worker, very trustworthy, and things like that, that he was sending to Monterrey as proof that he was working and proof of character and, you know, those kinds of things that they’re still very valid today. I mean, what’s the first things that someone wants to know about you? Are you good person? Are you employed? You know, do you have personal good character? Those kinds of things. So but we lived in Monterrey, and in Monterrey I learned that life was not gonna be easy. JJ: Okay, so what was Monterrey like? GG: Monterrey was a rough, rough -- we lived in a very rough neighborhood. It looked middle class, it looked -- or, actually it was kinda lower-middle class if you can call it. Again, another [00:14:00] working-class neighborhood, but surrounded by the rest of the world, you know, life. People who were living from day to day, that kinda thing. I ended up at a school called [Meliton de Arrel?]. It was an all-boy school. It was an all-grade school from first grade to high school and it was a school that was a state school, but it was managed by the Catholic Church. There’s another form of repression right there. So at this boy’s school, there was a lot of tension. 7 �JJ: The Catholic Church was a form of repression? Do you think that? GG: Haven’t you noticed? (laughter) Oh, you want me to answer. Right? No, it was [00:15:00] because they needed to, you know -- the student population came from the lower parts of society’s neighborhood. Very rough kids, you know, fights would break out, and I’m very light, I’m very light. So kids would come up to me and they’d look at me like, “Hey, pinche güero, man.” You know, “Where you from?” That kind of stuff. And I got beat up a couple of times, and finally I started to -- I had to fight back. And that also seems to me that it was a form of training for my arrival in the United States, my arrival in Chicago. The years in Monterrey, though, it was really wonderful. JJ: But they’re callin’ you güero because, could it be, that you were from Monter-from Veracruz? GG: From Veracruz? No, they were [00:16:00] callin’ me güero ’cause I was güero [00:16:01] JJ: Just ’cause you were -- GG: Yeah, I was just -- I mean that -- JJ: And they just didn’t like -- GG: Well, you know -- JJ: -- Americano (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) GG: They didn’t think I was a gringo, but they just -- I was so, so blatantly white, you know. Blondish hair, my eyebrows were yellowish, I was white, white, white. Even though I come from Veracruz where it’s a very tropical region, but then it has to do with my mother’s background. Her father was Spanish, an español, 8 �you know, so she has very light skin, blue eyes, where my father on the other side, he’s a Huichol out of Jalisco. And he’s a dark-skinned man -JJ: A Huichol? GG: It’s a tribu. It’s an Indian nation that’s out of Jalisco. He was born in a little [00:17:00] town called Ayo el Chico and that area was all Huichols at one time -and other tribes, of course, but he was and, you know, my grandmother was a Huichol. And I have brothers who are brown. (laughs) You know, you look at them and you look me, it’s like, “How the hell you guys, you know, same family?” But, like, no that’s typical, I think, too of many families, including in the boricua brothers and sisters. I’ve some that are [prietos, prietos?] and on the other side they’re, you know, lighter skin. As a matter of fact, I met a person from Guatemala -- no, no Ecuador? One of the two, whose brother is very dark and whose sister is very light. But I thought that Monterrey also was a training ground. As I got older and began to be analytical of this wayward North, [00:18:00] it made me think that Monterrey was a good thing. ’Cause when we arrived in Chicago in 1963, we didn’t know any word of English. We were put in an all-white neighborhood, primarily Eastern European, and I learned racism. JJ: This was on the South Side? GG: On the South Side, Roseland. JJ: Roseland, okay. GG: Which is gonna start ser-- JJ: But what do you mean you were put there? What put you there? GG: Well, that’s where my father was living. 9 �JJ: Oh, he put you there. GG: 112 Street. Yeah, he put me there. (laughter) This is where we arrived, this is where we landed. 112 Street -- no 11920. I’ll never forget that address, right across the street from West Pullman School. And that’s ’63 in late August. Week later, we were in school, September, [00:19:00] and my name went from Gregorio Gómez to Greg Gomez. And everybody’s name, the rest of my brothers and sisters, their names was changed. So I didn’t understand a word, so the teach would go, “Hey, Greg Gomez.” I didn’t know who the hell she was talkin’ to. (laughter) I would sit there, who knows. I never responded to that name until I began to get punished for behavioral problems at West Pullman School in 1963, but I was already used to that. I went to Militum de Arrel in Monterrey. You know, West Pullman school didn’t hold a candle to that school, ’cause that was, you know, (laughter) that was a rough school. In Militum de Arrel we went from -- we had to be there at 8:30 in the morning to 4:00 in the afternoon. All day long. They [00:20:00] closed the gates. If you were late, they wouldn’t let you in. They closed the gates, and the gates would stay closed until they opened them up at four o’clock for you to go home. So this punishment here, it was not (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) JJ: Today -- was that more for security reasons or...? GG: No, it was just the way it was. Just the way it was. Well, security reasons, I’m not sure to be honest with you. But it was because of, again, the clientele that came in there. A lot of juvenile delinquencies, a lot of -- not everybody because I didn’t think I was, or maybe I was. (laughter) I just, you’d know it. You know 10 �what I mean? So those things began to balance in my head later on, but that first shock. It was a shock to arrive in Monterrey and be put in this urban [00:21:00] setting, even though I understood the language. And then, it was a bigger shock to arrive in Chicago f-- we were awakened around midnight. We were then taken to the bus stop. We packed all our stuff. I was half asleep. Everything was already packed. We were taken to the bus stop. From the bus stop, we drove all night long to Nuevo Laredo, Texas, crossed the border, and landed in a roach motel. ’Cause we had to wait for the train the next day to bring us to Chicago. I think it took two days or something like that. JJ: So you landed in a roach motel? GG: And I seriously mean a roach motel, and the roaches were about this big in Texas. You know, they smoked cigarettes down there. (laughter) [00:22:00] But that was my first cultural shock. And what made it even worse as a cultural shock was at the train station, you see the cowboys, you know, with their big cowboy boots and all of that and big sombreros, you know. And I’m talking about the white cowboys, not you know... Had these huge.... And then you see the contrast, which I thought was tremendously schizophrenic, the Blacks. Then I saw the Blacks who were -- they were like, Black, Black, Black. For some reason, to me, that was the first shock again. They were Black, and it tripped me out because I’ve seen Blacks in Veracruz, but they didn’t have the same physicality. These seem to be definitely much more [00:23:00] Afro-Black than the Mexican Black. And I’m not gonna go ahead and try to explain the difference. It was just a kid’s, you know, shocking vision from one day to the 11 �other. ’Cause from at night to the morning, I was in a different country with a whole different... And I was still not too freaked out yet ’cause there were still people who spoke Spanish in Texas, broken as it was. My mom was able to communicate. We understood a little bit. You know, we went and had huevo rancheros. And I looked at these huevos rancheros like, “What the hell is this?” It was not the huevos rancheros that I remembered from the night, from week before. And so that was one cultural shock. And then we came by train to Chicago, which was a beautiful ride too. You see all this countryside, you’re traveling. [00:24:00] And I love trains, because I used to ride trains with my old man. And in Mexico, there’s a lot of usage of trains to travel. And so I thought it was a really beautiful ride. Come to Chicago, don’t know anyone. A week later, I’m in school, Sept-- you know, right after Labor Day. And I’m sitting in a classroom full of white kids, and they’re talking gibberish. Not a word. The teacher I recall, her name was Mrs. [Hefferman?], put me in the back. She didn’t want to deal with me. I was in the back, gave me a book and I remember this, because later on, I remember that. She gave me one of them Dick and Jane, see the dog Spot run, those books. Put it in front of me, and to me, it looked like children’s book, which [00:25:00] I didn’t pay attention to in the first place. It’s a children’s book, you know. And I didn’t know what to do with it. So, I looked at it, sat there. And all day long, I went -- you know, they moved us from class to class. And now here’s a new kid, his name is Greg Gomez. Sit him down, I sit in the back, and I sat there. JJ: Now, you had gone to school in Mexico already? 12 �GG: Yeah. Yeah. JJ: How far had you gone? GG: I got to sixth grade in Mexico. JJ: And then this grade was what? GG: They put me in sixth grade again. JJ: Oh, sixth grade again. GG: And then they put me in sixth grade again. They flunked me. I came here, they put me in sixth grade. No, I was actually I was on my way to what -- (break in audio) GG: -- first year in high school in Monterrey ’cause there’s no seventh grade in Monterrey. You go from sixth grade, you graduate, and then you go to high school, which is what they call here -- [00:26:00] no, I don’t even know what the hell they call it. JJ: Middle school, I think. GG: Middle school. Yeah, that’s it. Thank you. Middle school. But over there it’s already high school. So I get here, and they put me in sixth grade, I don’t know the damn language, nobody talks to me. And the year goes by, and I get held back. So I did two -- I did three sixth grades. So I just want to begin to go, “Okay, this is fucked up, man. This is --” Again, in retrospect after analyzing, there was no support systems, of course, and I was not expecting any support systems ’cause they didn’t exist in those days. Nothing, no such things as bilingual, no such things by biculturalism, no such thing. It was just Gringolandia [00:27:00] period, which is where the country is going back to, you know. You’re 13 �not a gringo, you know, get the hell out of town. So those were the years that began to mold a political, cultural -- before it became political, it became a cultural ideology. I began to hold on to my Mexicanism. I began to hold on to things that I thought I was beginning to lose. I ended up going to night school. My pops, my sisters, my older brother, other Mexicans, took advantage of a program, English as a Second Language, at Fenger High School at night. So I-JJ: Is Fenger in Roseland? GG: Yes, in Roseland. Fenger High School is on 112th Street and Wallace, [00:28:00] and just, you know, eight blocks away from the house. And so I would tag along and go to class with them. And the teachers there taught you English, basics. But basic enough for you to be able to make that transition, therefore, English as a Second Language, which is still being taught today, you know. JJ: And what was that area like, what type of population was...? GG: The population was primarily Eastern European. Very white, if you want to call it, very European. JJ: I thought it was by 95th became a Mexican community later. GG: Well, 95th, even today, is not, you know, I mean, it was 95th Street -- If you’re talking about a Mexican community -- JJ: 95th and Commercial, around there somewhere? GG: The what? JJ: Is it 95th and Commercial? GG: Nah, you talkin’ ’bout South Chicago. JJ: Oh that’s South Chicago. 14 �GG: We can go there. That has all -- that was -- JJ: Oh, this is not South Chicago. GG: No, this is not South Chicago. South Chicago [00:29:00] is east of us. JJ: This is more like around Harvey or something or...? GG: North of Harvey. JJ: North of Harvey. GG: Roseland is the furthest most south neighborhood in Chicago as it is. It begins south of 95th Street, goes all the way down to 127th Street. It goes from Western on the West Side to Michigan Avenue on the East Side. I mean, it’s a huge neighborhood. And it was a very -- JJ: So it was mostly white. GG: It was all white, not mostly JJ: It was all white. GG: It was all white. The Mexicans that lived there prior to our arrival were white. You know, they became white. Even if they spoke with a heavy Mexican accent, they were white. You ask them what their name was and it was not [Margarita?], it was [Marguerite?]. And it wasn’t [00:30:00] José, it was Joe. There was this one guy, his name was José... He even changed his last name to an English pronunciation. JJ: So they had been well trained then? GG: Yeah. JJ: They had been -- GG: (mimics a whip crack) (laughter) 15 �JJ: In the school system, maybe. GG: Yeah. And so because they had been the -- from before me, and I took the name Greg by force ’cause I couldn’t do anything about it. I was too young to protest. But little by little, I got into playing soccer. I was very athletic, so I played soccer. So I played soccer with a Mexican team, with a Mexican community. So the Spanish that I was beginning to lose, I began to retain. And then one day, when I was about 19 [00:31:00] years old, one of my coaches says to me, he says, “Hey, (Spanish) [00:31:04].” He started reprimanding me because I was beginning to stutter my Spanish as I was stuttering the English. When I learned English, I began to stutter d--d--d--d--d--. ’Cause you know how your brain wants to make your mouth talk and say the words, but your mouth doesn’t have the facility to say it? And so I began to stutter d--d--d--d--w--w--. ’Cause I wanted to say things and I just couldn’t. Where in Spanish, I would (snaps) and then I began to lose that language too. So that was a shock again. And then I began to, “Okay, I have to retain the language. I have to retain some things.” By the time I got to high school, I changed my name again, and I promised everybody that my name was Gregorio [00:32:00] and if you don’t call me Gregorio, there was an ass-kicking coming behind it. JJ: Okay. What made you so proud of -- bring out that pride in your -- GG: What did it -- JJ: -- all of a sudden? Was it all of a sudden, or what...? GG: No, no. It built. It built. The first signs of my rebellion in regards to -- That’s why I say it was cultural. When I began to read the history that the United States has 16 �put forth in regards to the mexicano, [00:32:35] in regards to the rip-off of the Southwest via the 1848 War, in regards to how they made the mexicano look like a bandido. How they made us constantly look like some sort of lower-class nation. Poor, yeah, of course, Mexico is still poor. [00:33:00] I mean, there’s a lot of things about Mexico that’s fucked up to think. The whole droga thing, you know, the narcotraficantes, the narcogobiernos that have been established, you know, the killings in Juárez, the murders in Monterrey, the kidnappings in Mexico City, or -- I mean, there’s a lotta, like -- our government is fucked up. Okay? But that doesn’t mean that this government isn’t, and that this country hasn’t had its, you know, their Ku Klux Klans, their slavery, their lynchings in the South, all of those things. So you cannot tell me we’re a democratic country, and then throw rocks somewhere else and say, “No, we’re this.” But that’s where I began to develop a resentment towards the United States. And it was not this resentment, [00:34:00] “I hate this.” It’s a resentment of how we were being pictured. And how the other gringo -- how the little güeritos around me would turn around and look at me and say, “Well, he looks like me.” Because I look so white, “But he’s Mexican, he doesn’t speak English, and when he speaks English, he talks funny.” And so, you know, they used to call me taco bender and beaner and things like that. They learned real fast that insulting me was going to get them an ass-whipping, which I did. I beat up a lotta kids. That established me as a person not to fuck with. There was this one guy, his name was Stanley, something real -- Polish kid. They called him The Skull. His head actually looked like a skull, and he was a tough kid. So he comes messing around with 17 �me, I beat the shit out of him. So then he brings his cousin, [00:35:00] a fat kid. They called him Catman. Those are the scary names, you know, the scary nicknames (inaudible) Skull and Catman. So he wants to beat me up, too, so I beat him up. But here’s the interesting thing about those days, just real quick, then come back to the other thing. When Stanley, Skull, challenged me to the fight, he says -- and half of it I’m understanding, and the other half is being translated by this other guy who knew English a little better than I did. He said, “No kicking, no biting, no spitting, no scratching.” You know, so I’m thinkin’, “Well, what kind of fight this is gonna be?” So the first thing I did, I spit in his face, I kicked him in the shins, I drop him to the ground, and beat the hell out of him. I don’t know if you’re supposed to be proud of that or not, but I learned that [00:36:00] fighting was a way of salvation. It was a way of salvation for me because then the other white kids wouldn’t mess with me. And then tougher kids, instead of trying to fight me, well they became friends. You know, the whole the strong goes with the strong kinda thing. And then I began to learn the language at night school. And I resented other things, like the teachers I resented (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) JJ: So you started going to night school, or...? GG: I started going to night school with my pops and my sisters and my older brother. JJ: He wanted you to go to night school or...? GG: No, that’s for English as a Second Language. You know, that was, I think, by ’64. JJ: Okay, they had the program? 18 �GG: Yeah, they had the pro-- ’64, something like that. There were some enlightened teachers that somehow -- How did that program get started? I don’t know, I never studied it. But there were some people who were enlightened. They said, “Hey, you know, these people don’t know English. Well, let’s have this...” [00:37:00] And it was a government funded program. ESL was a government funded program. JJ: And you must have felt better because you were around more Latinos at that time, no? GG: Well, yeah. I mean, I was learning English with -- There were not just Mexicans, you know, there are mexicanos, there were a couple of other... I remember seeing a couple of turbans, which could have been Hindu, could have been Arabic, could have been whatever, but they had the headdress. I saw this who were white but couldn’t speak English, they could have been another, Polish, you know, Eastern European. So I would begin to look at this thing, at this eclectic group of students, mostly adults, because the classes were for adults. But being a young kid, I was able to pick up the language (snaps) fairly quickly. Within a year, I was speaking English. Within two, I was speaking it and writing it well. Within three, I was submerging myself. [00:38:00] Within four, I was beginning to look like I was a gringo, man, you know? And so there was this whole transition that happened to me as well, that I submerged myself into the hippie movement. And my hair started growing long, I started going to protest marches. JJ: Okay so, before we get there, now this -- are you still on the South Side? GG: I live in the South Side right now. Just enough -- 19 �JJ: Oh, you have never moved from there? GG: No, no, I did. I did. When I came back from college, I actually ended up moving to Logan Square, a neighborhood that I never lived in my whole life. I went from the South Side to the university in Whitewater, and when I came back, I spent a little time at my folks’ house, but I was driving all the way to Palatine, Illinois, [00:39:00] to go to work, which was a crazy drive. You know from whi-- JJ: What kind of work was it? GG: I came back working as a community organizer at a place called The Bridge Youth Services, and they put me -- my job was to organize students -- well, not students, youth and parents at a Section 8 housing, which I can get to that as well. I was going to go that way as well. Anyways, getting away from all of that - JJ: Okay, so you became, you said, like a hippie or something? You said -- GG: Yeah, I went from this kind of rough kind of character - JJ: This is before you went to the college? GG: Yeah, yeah. In high school -- JJ: What year was this? GG: This was from 1967 through 1971. JJ: Okay, so you became a (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) GG: The thing about it is that [00:40:00] I started getting into music and the Beatles and the Stones and that kind of rock and that kind of, you know, the long hairs and things like that. And I liked that. I thought that was better than hanging out with the guys who were more -- Well, I never got into it with the jocks because 20 �they were too wide, straight, none of it. In my neighborhood, there were divisions. There was the jocks, which usually were the athletes, the baseball players, the football players, and that kind of stuff and their girlfriends, the cheerleaders, and all of that. And then there were the greasers, and the greasers were, if you remember the 1950s, those guys with the white T-shirts and the cigarette rolled up and the sleeve and the hair combed back, the Elvis Presleys, you know. And then there’s always the, like, the smart kids. They were always somewhere else. [00:41:00] And then there are those of us who are left out. We didn’t fit there, we didn’t fit here, we didn’t fit there. And little by little this group of mexicanos and gringos, we began to mix together, started hanging out at the park, drinking Boone’s Farm, listening to music. JJ: What park was that? GG: West Pullman Park on 123rd Street and Wallace. JJ: Drinking Boone’s Farm? JJ: Boone’s Farm, Ripple, Little Wild Eyes, you know it’s like that, Wild Irish Rose, smoking a little weed. You can edit that. (laughter) Nah, just -- JJ: No way. GG: You know, and just getting into this strange, excellent music. Listening to this music, sitting, just kicking back and relaxing. Not losing the toughness, but not wanting to be there anymore. I didn’t want to fight people anymore. I didn’t feel like doing that. [00:42:00] I changed my name from Greg to Gregorio. I let my hair grow long. I started being more anti-war, anti-Vietnam. My older brother, Abram, who had a wonderful job at ComEd, decided, “Before they draft me, well, 21 �I’m gonna join.” Everybody told him, “If you join, they will send you to Vietnam.” And sure enough, you know, he joined, they didn’t send him to Vietnam. They sent him to Germany. And then, who was it? I think it was Nixon, who said, “I’m pulling out 70,000 troops from Vietnam. I’m pulling them out.” He pulls them out. A week later, he sends 70,000 troops back again. But he pulls out 70,000, but he took soldiers from the Philippines, Germany. My brother calls up and says, “I’m going to Germ-- I’m going to Vietnam.” [00:43:00] And it’s just, it was a shock. So I started getting involved in that kinda stuff. I started going to marches and protests. JJ: What groups? GG: No group in particular. Just, “Hey, there’s going to be a march, you know, a peace rally march.” JJ: In that community or...? GG: In the community and then downtown, and we’ll come downtown. You know, I was not in any group as a kid, except for the group that I hang out with, which they called us the pot smokers and wine drinkers, and, you know, that. The hippies, we’re the this, that. And I liked it. It kept me from being crazy. It kept me from... well, I was not smart enough, according to the teachers, to be in the [00:44:00] right classes. And I didn’t like mechanics. So I didn’t want to be an auto mechanic. I didn’t like that. My pops, he was an excellent carpenter, but I didn’t want to be a carpenter. You know? I didn’t have an idea as to what the hell I wanted to do. I just knew that what I didn’t want to do. But I didn’t -- so I breezed through high school at d’s and c’s. It was okay with me. I didn’t give a 22 �shit. I didn’t have to study. And I would walk into a class, I would look at a test. I got a D, fine. I took another test. And then I found something interesting called architecture, drafting. My brother was a draftsman. And then I said, “What good are the draftsmen?” So I took drafting, and I liked it. But I never got into that, you know. [00:45:00] That was not my calling either. And so I just started to work, I figured I’m going to be at my father, my pops. In the summers, he would take me to work with him. He was a truck driver. He used to -- we would go to stores, empty stores, and dismantle all this stuff that was there. We’d throw ’em in a truck. We took ’em somewhere, and we got paid. I had no idea what the hell job that was. He was a truck driver, and I was his helper, and we went into places, we took it apart, and we would go home. I worked at a place called the [Goodman?] store one time, and then I graduated. My pops says, “Hey, you’re not going to do anything with your life. Why don’t you come and work with me?” Second time. JJ: Graduating from college now? GG: No, from high school. [00:46:00] This high school. Seventy-one, nowhere to go. Literally nowhere to go. I didn’t have the grades for any kind of college institution. I didn’t have the drive for a college institution. I was never encouraged by anybody in high school to be college-oriented. And I don’t remember seeing a college counselor -- I mean a high school counselor, in high school. I used to hear all these other kids, “Oh, did you see your counselor today?” “Oh, yeah. My counselor said this, and my counselor said this.” I said, “Who the hell is a counselor?” You know who I met? The vice principal. You 23 �know who he was? The disciplinarian. That’s who I met. (claps) Out the door. I got caught talking Spanish in my sophomore year [00:47:00] at Fenger. And the teacher reported me to Mr. [Kelly?], that was his name. Hated that son-of-abitch. JJ: So you got reported for talking Spanish? GG: For talking Spanish. Got 30 days suspension. JJ: For talking Spanish? GG: For talking Spanish. 30 days. Me and this other guy. JJ: Are you sure that was the only reason? I mean, not that I’m questioning that. GG: No, no. I mean -- JJ: Sometimes you might forget, but that’s your understanding? GG: No, no, no, no. (inaudible) If I was misbehaving, I’ll remember. I never got kicked out for misbehavior. ’Cause I would -- I never did. I didn’t have to misbehave. I have one goal and one goal only to please my father, my pops. Graduate from high school and get a job. Don’t -- (break in audio) GG: -- others and ass-kicking. Simple life. (laughter) It was a simple life. All I had to do was stay out of -- here was the other thing, too. [00:48:00] He says, “You get into trouble, don’t bring it home.” JJ: What was his feeling that you got suspended? GG: I never told him. He never knew. I get up in the morning, acted like I go school, instead of going to school, I would get together with a couple of friends, we would go to 103rd Street Beach, hang out all day at 103rd Street beach, you know, which 24 �is the South Side, [Kennedy Hill Park?]. It’s the furthest south part of Lake Michigan. And we would hang out there by the rocks, swimming, jumping in the water, kicking back, drinking beers, and then going home. Go home, drop your books off, change, go to work. In high school is when I started working at that Goodman store. Before -- Well no that’s a -- I don’t know if I want to get into that. It’s another crazy story about my first job. But my father once told me -- I wanted to buy these shoes that have [00:49:00] little -- they used to be known as beetle boots. It was similar to this, but they -- but they used to call it Cuban tacón, the Cuban heel. And I wanted one of those. It was 11 dollars and 50 cents. The shoes that my father bought me were 6 dollars and 50 cents. I didn’t like ’em. And he says, “You don’t like ’em? Get a job. You get a job, you can buy anything you want.” Okay. So I got a job delivering groceries for 50 cents an hour. And I made $11.50 plus taxes and bought the damn shoes. He hated it, but he knew that what I -- plus, I gave some money to the house. That was the other part of the deal. [00:50:00] “Now you’re working, you have to contribute to the house.” And so that became a routine for all of us. If we’re not working, we have to cut the grass, do the dishes, do the chores. That was our lot to living in his house and not get in trouble. He told me one day, says, “You know what? I know you gonna in trouble. I know it. I don’t want to see the police in my house. I don’t want the police coming back in my house.” Is what he told me, and they never did. The cops never -- I got arrested a couple of times. JJ: For what? Or, I mean... GG: Well, you know, curfews, drinking kinda stuff. You know, “We’re gonna call...” 25 �They would take me to the local police station, which was Kensington at the time, 115th Street and Indiana. [00:51:00] Would put me in there. Nobody’d come pick me up. They would let me go in the morning. That was it. You know? Those were the days where you really didn’t get in trouble. You know, not like today, where everything is an assault on society. In those days the cops would be coming by. There would be -- ’cause a lot of the kids that I grew up with were sons or nephews or knew the father of a copper from the neighborhood. And the coppers would come by, it was in the early ’60s -- no, not early. Middle ’60s to, you know, ’70s, something like that. The cop car would come by. He would bang on the door. He would call one of the guys. Come on over. He’ll whisper something in his ear. The cop would go. The kid would come back, say, “Let’s put all that shit away.” [00:52:00] Let’s leave a couple of beers. The paddy wagon would come by then. They would call us over. They would go, grab that beer that was there and whatever that was open. In front of the neighborhood, they would spill the booze on the ground. They would slap us around a little bit. They would put us in the paddy wagon, drive us away, and drop us down. And let us go a block away. You know? That was their way of keeping the neighbors from getting crazy. It was a way of letting us know that if they really wanted to bust us, they could. But we were, you know, we’re hanging out with this guy who was the nephew or the son of that cop and so we’re friends. But when they wanted to arrest us, they did. You know, when they got tired of our stuff, they did come down, they put us in handcuffs, and took us to the police station and write us up and... (snaps) [00:53:00] But I never took the problems home. That was, 26 �like, the one thing. The other thing is to graduate from high school no matter what. So I was ready to say, “Shh, I’m done. I’m done with this thing.” So I never studied. I never really, really studied. I never put the brain to work. I never put in effort to school. And therefore, I never heard from the counselors ’cause when they talked to me, and I rem-- (inaudible) they would say, “You know what? You’re not college material man, so you don’t have to see me. You know, you’re not this and you’re not that.” And by my senior year, there were all these kids that were preparing themselves to go to college, and they were all excited. Some of them were goin’ over here and some were goin’ over there. I never knew what those places were ’cause they seemed so vague. They were like a fog [00:54:00] to me, those places they were talking about going to school. They were fogs, you know, ’cause I never knew them. I was not familiar with them. My world was here. That’s it. And out of that circle, I was never gonna come out. But in ’72, my brother Guillermo graduates from Fenger. He went through the same problems I did except a year after me. And he says to me one day, “Hey, man. Take me to Thorton Community College. I’m gonna go apply there.” I looked at him with such an idiotic and stupid thought, me. “You’re gonna go where? You’re my brother. You’re not smart enough to go to college.” That was my -- and actually, [00:55:00] my brother is tremendously intellect, has a tremendous intellect. So I take him to Thorton Community College, and the lady there says to me, “He’s going to take the entrance exam to your college.” You know (inaudible). So the lady says to me, “You know what? You’re already here. Why don’t you take the test? If you don’t make it, you don’t make it. 27 �There’s nothing gained, nothing lost. I took it, and lo and behold, Cha-Cha, I passed the damn thing. Mathematics, English, science, and whatever else was in that test, I think a little bit of an essay. And then he goes -- A couple of weeks later, I get a letter of acceptance from this college and I go, “Come and see your college counselor. [00:56:00] Talk about your classes.” That is where my life changed. I think that was a pivotal place in my life that began to bring me to this place. I don’t think that -- there’s been other places, other flags, other places where I’ve changed life, but that was the beginning of my life, truly began from a conscious perspective. When my eyes were awake, where I was not this young kid, still kind of balancing life between stupidity and nowhere to go. You know what I mean? I was 19 years old. Those two years at Thorton Community College gave me -JJ: What was that? On the North Side or...? [00:57:00] GG: That was -- No, I lived in the South Side all my life. I’m not a North Sider. I was never a North Sider until 1980. You know never a North Sider. I never went to a Cubs game. JJ: Sox? GG: I’m still a White Sox fan. I’m not a fanatic, but they’re in first place. What the hell? So I’m a White Sacks fan today. (laughter) We used to sneak into the old Cominsky Park. There was a way for us to sneak in the old Cominsky Park. I think they thought, if you know where it’s at and you snuck in, we’re gonna let you stay. You know, it was one of those deals. But it was in 1972 when I talked to that counselor and I was actually in the present versus, like, in that fog. What 28 �the hell? You know, I was just working. [00:58:00] I was working for my pops, with my pops, as a welder in that time. That was gonna be my job. I actually thought I was gonna be a welder for the rest of my life, and the money was good. Being a welder at a young age, making almost seventeen dollars an hour, you’re a wealthy kid. You makin’ $17 an hour today. You’re doing pretty well, I would say, if you’re an unskilled worker. And I was learning a skill, welding. And I probably would have stayed if it wasn’t for the steel strike that threw everything out the window. And so that steel strike, in combination with taking that test, getting that acceptance letter, and talking to this counselor that [00:59:00] opened and unfogged my mind. Clear. Now, I didn’t know what the path was, but it definitely became clearer. By this time, I was already be -- you know, because of being in the whole hippie movement and all of that, I was already reading books. I was getting a personal education in sociopolitics. I was aware what was happening in Mexico. The whole craziness with the Tlatelolco Square where all the kids got killed during the olimpiadas of ’68. The raised glove from the Black boxers showing that kind of solidarity of Black power. My first remnances of talking about the Black Panthers and [01:00:00] the Brown Berets. I was still not familiar with the Young Lords yet until about maybe ’74, ’75 I think, when I first read my first article. And I think it was on -- I don’t remember exactly. I’m not sure if it was the taking of the church when that was, but it was not there. That’s foggy because I was still not clear, you know, still not paying attention to things. And so then I found out that I placed quite highly in my entrance exam. I always thought I was, kind of, not very smart. My intellect, I always thought of it 29 �as being not way up there. Taking those two years of college in Thorton Community College [01:01:00] really opened up my mind. My reading level raised. My writing skills raised. I took speech classes. I took all kinds of philosophy classes. I took film appreciation, theater appreciation. My grades rose to as and bs. And then what? An associate’s degree? What the hell is that? By this time, I was no longer, “Ah, who cares about school?” By this time, I’m saying, what’s after that? What’s gonna make it? So one day, I was stuck into a couple of Black veterans. At the student union of Thornton, it was like an L. It was the student union, like an L. And then one part of the L, the long part of the L, is where all the other students hung out. In the little part of the L is where the African Americans hung out, mostly vets. They played chess. [01:02:00] So I used to play chess with them. And they talked about -- there was another learning lesson, they talked about Vietnam and they talked about the politics and they talked about how the Blacks were put out front, along with the other Latinos and Mexicans. How they would arrive in Vietnam, and they would be at the front, they would be at point. So all these things about Vietnam, and how Vietnam was affecting them, and how, now that they were veterans, they come back, and they were nothing but niggers again. And I’m not going to excuse myself for using the word, because that’s a fact of 1972. People go, “Oh, the n-word.” Well, you know what? They were niggers. That’s what they were, as I was a spic, you know, and that kind of stuff. People sometimes get so dislocated with reality -with one reality versus another, that, [01:03:00] you know, they would say, “Yeah, they dress like niggers, man. You know, we’re veterans, we fought. I have a 30 �purple heart, I have this, I have...” They would come to school with an army shirt, with the medals, just to show that, you know, they were men of honor, and they were still being treated like second class. And one of those guys, so it was him and this guy named [John Sherrods?], coming from the Ada S. McKinley Agency. I think it still exists today, primarily doing services to the Black community. They spoke about monies in Wisconsin, monies for minorities, lots of money. Abundant, I mean, they were throwing monies up in the air, and that kind of stuff. I went to the workshop, took it, made my applications. I applied at places like Madison, Wisconsin, La Crosse, Green Bay, [01:04:00] and this little town called Whitewater, Wisconsin. Whitewater there’s a Chicano recruiter who comes and says, “I can get you guys in. You’re older --” By this time I was already in my early 20s. And he says, “I want you and your brother to come up here. And, you know, can you send us a reason why you want to?” By this time it was much more political. We ended up in Whitewater, Cha-cha, and we become really political. That’s where we started talking about the Chicano movement and the politics. And really started looking towards a Chicano Studies Department and a Chicano recruitment program, making connections with California and Colorado and Texas. JJ: With Chicano groups there or movements? GG: There was a small Chicano group that was really [01:05:00] lost. They were all young. They had really no leadership qualities. That’s why -- what’s his name? Oh, man. I had his name in my head and I just lost -- it’ll come back to me. JJ: But is Chicano meant the -- a person born here or...? What is the-- 31 �GG: Well, the Chicano terminology -- JJ: (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) ok GG: -- has a lot of different, you know places. But the way that I like to interpret it is a person of Mexican descent, born primarily in the Southwest, who has grown -who comes from that fruit of the descent franchise because of the 1848 war, that [01:06:00] has family, relatives, and the whole thing that happened during the Zoot Suit Riots. That’s where all the whole Chicano movement, you know, has its base, has its roots, has its -- the sense of power. But the thing that makes this kind of interesting is that it was in Crystal, in Texas, when the first high school students started to walk out, started to demand bilingual education, started to demand multiculturalism, started to demand a lot of things versus California. California ended up with the bigger piece of the pie, along with Colorado, because they had people who were willing, from the upper echelons, such as professors and teachers and social workers [01:07:00] and other activists, you know, out of California. Of course, there was Rodolfo Acuña who wrote Occupied America. And out of Colorado, you know, you had Jorge Gonzalez and the whole Brown Beret movement, that kind of stuff. So we get there and there’s Chicanos from California, there’s Chicanos from Texas, and there’s Chicanos from Colorado. And there was [Donald Salazar?] from Colorado, it was [José de Paz?] from Northwest California, and I don’t remember the guy from Texas, but he was outta Crystal, not a very active character. Maybe that’s why I don’t remember him. And then of course, out of California also came out this Gilbert Cano, who was also a strong activist, out of California. So this guy 32 �started recruiting all these older characters, and we got to Whitewater, and in Whitewater [01:08:00] is when we get the whole Chicano -- Their name was Estudiantes de Aguas Blancas, Students of Whitewater. They translate Whitewater to aguas blancas. [01:08:11] And they says, you know, that “We’re the Latino, the Mexican, you know, Latinos de Aguas Blancas.” And we changed that to MEChA, Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán. So we became MEChistas. Then they gave us a title to California. JJ: Was this the original group or was there a tag to another...? GG: Well, MEChA came out of California. And different campuses created their own organization, but we used the same bylaws and mission statements so that we all were part of this. Now, we were affiliated only by [01:09:00] our drive to be affiliated to something bigger than. So when we used to say we’re MEChA out of Whitewater, which was about 30 to 50 students, we’re not talking about 30, 50 students. We were talking about several thousand students because we were tied to California, Colorado. So we always say, “Well, you know, we’re MEChA. We are --” So we made ourselves be part of a national movement. And the reason that we did it is because by the time the guys from the Southwest arrived in this little town of Whitewater, they brought in all these ideas, all these crazy ideas about what -- (break in audio) GG: -- better. And it was at that -- JJ: (inaudible) thinkin’ Whitewater’s way up north in Wisconsin? GG: Whitewater is [01:10:00] 250 miles from here. It’s a little bitty school. Now it’s 33 �actually a very well-recognized school, even though small. Big on education, big on social work, business. Now it’s big on the arts. It was one of the first schools (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) JJ: Is it by Milwaukee or something or...? GG: It’s west of Milwaukee and southeast of Madison. And it became the seed of the Chicano movement in Wisconsin. And as a matter of fact, we were ahead of even Chicago. The students in Chicago were still [LAMAS?] you know, Latin American Student Association. LASO, not LAMAS, Latin American Student Organization. You know, there was still using Latin American wording where we said, “No, we’re gonna be --” We planted the [01:11:00] word Chicano into our organization, into everything we did.” We created the first Chicano recruitment program. There was a minority recruitment program, but minority, for us, was Blacks, you know. It was all Black-run. Most of the recruitment was done within the Black neighborhoods. Hey, it’s okay. You know, we said, “It’s fine with us. We don’t want their pie. We want a piece of our pie, but not from their pie. We want a piece of pie but from your pie, from the university.” You know, we didn’t want money from the minority programs because they already were there. And so all they were going to do is split that and we’re going to anger the brothers. So we [01:12:00] demanded our own, which we did. And we started having conferences, Chicano conferences, and Rudy Acuña would come, and others come. And then the leadership from Chicago came to one of our conferences. Chuy García came, Rudy Lozano came. A few others, you know, started coming. So we saw that now our little Chicano movement in Whitewater began 34 �to really take root with the leadership in Chicago. And even though the difference is -- and even though we said we were saying, “Chicago -- Chicanos, we’re Chicanos,” and this and that, the majority of us from this area were Mexican. We really didn’t fit the criteria of the Chicano as it is defined. [01:13:00] But we were becoming very political. We were demanding things. We were marching. Our connection to Chicago became very strong in that we began to meet people that spread our wings. And in, I think it was 1978, my brother Guillermo came to Chicago. There was a huge march, and I believe it was in protest of the killing of a couple of young Boricuas. And as members of the Chicano movement, we wanted to show solidarity. So we came from Whitewater to be part of that. I was not able to come for some reason. Later, or before that-JJ: What year was this? GG: I think it was 1978. [01:14:00] Maybe ’79, but could be-- I’m not sure. But I know it was a huge march that they started in Humboldt Park and they marched downtown. And they had ’em going through these very tight streets, man. They had a very controlled-- my brother was telling me -- Oh, I was working. That’s why I couldn’t go, I had to... And also there was this guy named [Felipe?]. He was the brother of a woman that was doing her master’s degree in Whitewater. And he was hooked up with Roberto Caldero, Luis Gutiérrez, who else was part of that? And that was when that whole -- the FALN and, you know, things were getting hot with the FALN. And, you know, your name came up. So we came looking for Felipe. It was a nasty, nasty January storm. [01:15:00] I think it was in January. And we found ’em all up in the North Side, which was my first 35 �experience. And they were not necessarily hiding, but they were kind of keeping low, keeping a low profile in this apartment in the north side. And Felipe was -and I can’t -- Felipe [González?], was it? No, no, no. Felipe something. As a matter of fact, he was involved for a long time in the North Side with the Puerto Rican community. So those were my first connections to Chicago. I already knew about you by this time. JJ: You’re talking about David -- not [David Hernández?] or...? GG: David Hernandez, I met later. Yeah, no. David Hernandez and [Eliud?] and [Victor González?] and a few others, but that was more in the education side. [01:16:00] When I came back -- by this time, I was aware of the Young Lords. I was aware of the takeover in the church. I was aware of a lot of things, but we’ve never -- I knew who you were. JJ: Were you reading about it or did you -- how did you hear --how were you -- GG: I had read about it and it was oral his-- you know, and people talking about, you know, “Oh man.” About the Young Lords and about you. JJ: So while it was taking place, you didn’t hear about it, you didn’t pay attention? I mean -- GG: No, no. I know -- JJ: -- ’cause you were in Chicago in ’69. GG: Yeah. JJ: But you weren’t there? GG: In ’69, I wasn’t paying a lot of attention. I heard about it through the news, but I wasn’t payin’ a lot of attention. My attention span in ’69 and ’70 was survival, just 36 �survival. I think I read an article in a newspaper called Rising Up Angry [01:17:00] ’cause I used to read that newspaper a lot. I think there’s where it was one of my first places where I read about the Young Lords and about you and the arrests and all of that stuff, but I was still not there yet. My thing is, “I’m on the South Side. Who gives a shit about the North Side? We’re surviving over there.” But by mid-’70s -- actually, by ’78, that’s when we were already fully committed to political activism. We’re meeting people from all over the place. I mentioned that I met Reies López Tijerina here in the South Side at Governor’s State -- which is now Governor’s State University. JJ: And who is he, Reyes Lopez Tijerina? GG: Reyes Lopez Tijerina is from New Mexico. His claim to fame was the lands. He had deeds [01:18:00] that he, either through his own family and/or through families that he knew, you know, in Mexico that said that they had the original deeds to these lands, and so he was fighting for them. There was a point in time where he was arrested and thrown in jail. There were rumors that he was tortured, that they used electroshock on him ’cause when he was in jail and when he came out, he was two different people. When I met him, he was a little slower. His fiery speeches were not as -- ’cause he used to be a very prolific and vibrant speaker. And a lot of things were already in his head, all these things. He knew about the land grants really well. [01:19:00] I had learned and read about him when he took a group of revolucionarios, as he called them, to take over -- no, to release a prisoner from one of the police stations. They got arrested without cause. They wanted to go to this police station. So that got my 37 �-- when he came to speak at Governor State, I wanted to go and check it out. So I went and checked it out and I met him. We talked. I used to have photographs, but they got destroyed in a fire, unfortunately. I had a lot of photographs from the ’70s and early ’80s with all kinds of people and it just like, (mimics flames) fire can really destroy shit. But another turn in 1979 -- [01:20:00] by 1979, I was the last director of the Chicano Studies Department that we created in Whitewater. And by 1979, I was getting disillusioned with Whitewater. JJ: Now how did you do that? I mean, how did you get that? GG: The Chicano Studies Department? JJ: Yeah. GG: Well first of all, we hooked up with activists in the local community. A lot of them were ex-migrant workers. A lot of them were people working in the local farms, but their kids were going to high school, they were going to school, and they wanna get ’em out of there. So in Whitewater, we started pushing for Chicano studies and Chicano studies that we demanded our own, and so we brought in Rudy Acuña from California to deal with the chancellor, and we brought in [01:21:00] documentation. And before you know it the -- and we marched. We used to call them the silent marches and we would march silently, in single file, five feet from one another so we could make the line look long. But it also was very powerful in that silently, with our placards -- No, you know, it was no Chicago power -- Chicano power, there was no down with the state. There was no -- all of it was said in our signs, and we marched silently. And we marched silently around the school. And the newspaper, Royal Purple started writing 38 �stories. The African organizations started joining us, you know, started supporting, because we got Chicano studies. They’d been wanting Black studies for years, and they were not getting anything. [01:22:00] We were getting the socalled minority studies by white teachers who learned about minorities in their sociology class. That was their extent, and so we said, “No, we want--” We demanded our own teachers, we demanded our own... So finally, the Chancellor, Chancellor [Connor?] acquiesced. And he sent a report to Madison, Wisconsin, which was the mothership, the big university. They said, “Yeah, do what you want. We gotta --” And we had our Chicano studies department. Our first director, our first chair was José de Paz from California, who was a student at the time. (inaudible) he was just graduating, just getting his master’s degree. And then we brought in two more [01:23:00] professors. They left, and I was left behind. And I said, “Okay, I’m gonna take it for one year, from ’70 -- or a year and a half.” Middle of ’78 through ’79. But I was also getting ready, I’d been there for six years already. It’s time for me to get the heck out of there. And so I did. I started applying for jobs. I applied at a place called The Bridge Youth Services, as a community organizer. And I met two people. One of them is named [Oved Lopez?], and the other one, [Elva Vazquez?]. I met -- and I remember them, there were also (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) JJ: What year was this? GG: It was already ’80. January, February of ’80, or maybe fall of ’79. But it was in that -- ’cause I got the job in ’80. [01:24:00] And I saw Elva and I saw Oved. They were both applying for the job. And when I -- and we’d say hello, that was 39 �it. And then they both said, “Hey, if you get the job, give us a call. Give us a call.” I got the job. Couple of months later, I called Elva ’cause Oved had talked about having this little -- he talked about LADO and he talked about what they did and he talked about there was a free clinic and education and all of this, and Elva used to teach there, and all these little programs that they were doing to serve the community around Oakley and North Avenue. So I came and met Elva. We talked a little bit. [01:25:00] She agreed to help me out to bring services to Rand Grove Village, which is where I was now going to be working as a community organizer with a Section 8 community in the -- it’s called Unincorporated Palatine. And so, there was nothing there. Run by, you know, Appalachian white couple who were a bit on the racist side, mostly black and Puerto Rican, some Mexican. Some of them were out of Humboldt Park, unfortunately, ’cause -- or Lincoln Park. ’Cause by this time, I already knew the whole history of the Puerto Rican community being moved out from that area. The whole -JJ: How did you find out? GG: Well, through the news, through reading. I mean, by this time, I was pretty [01:26:00] much aware. I was keeping aware of what was happening in Lincoln Park. The whole -- what they used to call the urban pioneers, you know, that then became the yuppies, and how the Puerto Rican community was being displaced and being moved towards Humboldt Park and further west and wherever they could go. And then, when I met Elva and Oved, and I started coming down to their storefront, is when your name really popped. When he started talking about all of that history, Omar, I met Omar, and how he was a 40 �member of the Young Lords, being one of the non-Puerto Ricans. “I’m Mexican, a member of the Young Lords.” [01:27:00] He was like your secretary of communication or something. JJ: Minister of information. GG: Minister of information. And so, I saw photographs of your protests. I saw photographs of Oved [head?], at his disposal. And it just seemed quite easily that we just blended in. Me coming from Whitewater, looking for a place to get involved again. I got more involved in the North Side as a Mexican, as a Chicano, than I did in Pilsen. You know, in Pilsen there was Rudy Lozano and [Juan Velasquez?] and, you know, Chuy García and all these [01:28:00] other characters. There was really no place for me. And my brother Guillermo was making inroads into that community. But it was not really -- I really didn’t fit in for some reason. Or I didn’t, it was not that -- I just -- it was just not my time. I ended up marrying Elva, as you know. But it was really interesting ’cause then, the more they talked about what was happening on the North Side, the more I felt like I thought I had a place for me to bring the skills and the experiences that I had learned out of the university setting, and out of a -- JJ: How long did you do the Latino studies? I mean the Chi-- (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) GG: The Chicano studies? [01:29:00] Yeah, yeah. No, no the -- JJ: Chicano Studies. GG: Well, I went through the program. I took Chicano studies myself. And then in ’79, when we -- 41 �JJ: That’s a couple of years, then. Chicano (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) GG: Oh, yeah. A couple of years, definitely. JJ: Of taking the program. GG: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. And then when I took over -- so I continued, you know. I mean, we’re teaching history, we’re teaching politics, we’re teaching sociology, we’re teaching literature. Of course, one of the biggest, in literature we’re using, of course, Jorge González, José Joaquin. We’re using No Se Lo Tragó La Tierra, Tomás Rivera. We’re using Bless Mi, Ultima by -- (snaps) No, no. No Se Lo Tragó La Tierra. Bless Mi, Ultima is the one I can’t remember the -- Rodolfo Anaya [01:30:00] is the author of tremendous books which are now banned, by the way, in Arizona and New Mexico because of the anti-Chicano movement, anti-Mexicanism that Arizona and the southwest is carrying, which is tremendously messed up that in the year 2012 we have such blatant racism that people see it as patriotism, as Americanism, which continues to add fuel to my fire in regards to the United States and its non-democratic -- or its democratic hypocrisy. A connection that I have with you is that when you got out of jail, and I think it was 1981. JJ: That was for the -- GG: After the FALN -- JJ: -- FALN case. GG: -- thing. [01:31:00] You were getting out, I think it was ’81, and we were going to meet you at a bar on North Avenue, which is now a Pizza Hut, I think. We were gonna meet you there and I walked in there. I had a brown beret, and I walked in 42 �first. I was gonna meet Elva and Oved and Omar, and you were late. (laughter) You were late. And I came in first because Elva and those guys -- so I (inaudible) is there were some Kings in there, and they were going, “That’s Chacha Jiménez.” Said, “Nah, that’s not Cha-cha.” Finally, one of the bartenders comes up and says, “Hey man, are you Cha-cha Jiménez?” I go, “No, but I’m waiting for him.” And he says, “Well, you know, those are Kings over there. Be careful, ’cause they think--” (knocking) (break in audio) GG: Actually, so, I mean, that was my first -- JJ: So go back. So the first time was about right after the FALN case? GG: Yeah. [01:32:00] That, I mean -- JJ: And the thing was late and you said the Kings. GG: There was a couple of Kings in there, and for some reason, they did not like the fact that you were gonna be there. What that reason is, to tell you the truth, I had -- to this day, I don’t know. The good thing is that Oved showed up with Elva, finally. He knew those guys. He went and talked to them. They relaxed. He didn’t say you were coming. Then you show up a little while later. We met, and I don’t know where the hell we went from there, to be honest with you. All we did was meet there, and then we left there little while afterwards. But that was the first time that we were face to face, and we looked at each other. And either Elva or Oved, because I had told ’em the story, said how similar we actually did look because we were both, you know, kind of [01:33:00] white and just similarities in features and stuff like that. And of course, you walk in and you got a beret on, 43 �too. And I took mine off, but I had longer hair. You know, I used to have long hair. From then on, little by little, we began to cross paths. When Harold Washington started to run, we were very -- Elva and I -- well, and off course, the whole Latino side of the progressive movement, you know, the independent politics, went right after Washington. We fell behind them. We had just done some really strong things in Pilsen with the election of [01:34:00] Juan Soliz at the time, not only from state representative, definitely to alderman. There was push from this side. You know, Luis Gutiérrez was beginning to develop. And then you came out -JJ: We had that coalition, you know. GG: The co-- right. JJ: (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) those agreements. GG: And then you decided that you were going to launch a -- JJ: That was before that. That was alderman campaign? GG: Yeah. What was that -- JJ: 1975. That was 1975. GG: Yeah, but in 19-- JJ: The timeline, I think, we got it a little mixed (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) GG: No, no, no. It was another time. Then it had to be the Harold Washington thing. ’Cause we met at our house. I was living now in Washington and Fullerton on the second floor. You came, it was you, definitely Oved, maybe even [Carlos Pérez?], maybe, you know, [Marla?] for sure, that were talking about an election. And part of that election, of course, [01:35:00] was Harold Washington. But the 44 �other one, for some reason, I always thought that you wanted to run for alderman as well. JJ: I ran in 1975. GG: I know that, but I don’t know why I thought you wanted to run again at that time. I don’t know why I have that bird in my -- (inaudible) about birds. JJ: (laughs) Well, during the Harold Washington campaign we had a coalition -- GG: Yeah. JJ: -- with Soliz -- GG: Yeah. JJ: -- and Rudy Lozano, you know, Reverend Jorge Morales, and... GG: Right. Right, right, right, right. JJ: You know, (inaudible) that coalition of like five people at that time. GG: At the time. JJ: And then we had the rally at North West Fall and that -- GG: Right. JJ: I don’t know if you went -- GG: Yeah, the second floor. JJ: Did you go to that? GG: Yeah, yeah, the second floor. JJ: And what was that like? Can you describe that? GG: Well, I think at that rally, I began to see what appeared to me was the beginning divisions of our communities. [01:36:00] In that, Reverend Morales was a very strong character with a very passionate Puerto Rican ideology. And he seemed, 45 �to me, to skew the issue of being a coalition of progressives, Latinos, Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, with a progressive black community. But I think -- I began to talk with a couple of people about that, that Reverend Morales definitely wanted a controlling factor. As he being a leader, as he wanted to do things. And he began to [01:37:00] push people out. And I always thought that you were one of those people that he wanted out. I thought he didn’t want y-- and he also definitely didn’t want the Mexicans in there. He felt that the Puerto Ricans being citizens, being a voting Black, being this and that, that that would be his way of growing in stature and in status. That’s what I remember out of it. We all came out shaking hands, we all came out hugging and kissing, but I don’t think there was another rally like that after that. I don’t think there was. There was a lot of little groupings, I think, a lot of meetings in different places, meetings in Pilsen, meetings in Little Village, and meetings up here. [01:38:00] But the West Town coalition, I, you know, wanted to take control, I thought. And the West Town Coalition was not really a coalition that I -- and I think [Peter Earl?] was part of that at one time. And you always talk to Young Lords. You always said the Young Lords. You always said, you know, “The Young Lords can do this.” You always tried to rally the community to be a Young Lord affiliate, where the Reverend Morales was more of a West Town coalition organization. And to me, even though in the end Washington was elected, people were elected to city council, there were people who were left out. And yeah, I thought you were one of those that was left out. And I thought that was one of the biggest shames. That’s why I thought you were running [01:39:00] for alderman. I think that that’s 46 �why I thought, I thought you should have been one of the people that should have been in that city council at that time when everybody -- when all the Latinos were coming in that -- and maybe we talked about it, or maybe somewhere along the line, but I believe that you were iced out from that time on. And we’re all, I think the Mexicans got iced out. It just seemed -- and then when Harold Washington was in office, it just seemed that some people elbowed their way into being part of the inside clique that really didn’t belong. And the ones -- a lot of the workhorses like the Cha-cha Jiménez was not there. Or if you were there, you were on the [01:40:00] outskirts of it. You know ’cause you were not even invited to that, what was that, the Latino committee, Hispanic committee or something that was formed? JJ: No, we actually helped form that. GG: Yeah, but you were not in it. JJ: No, no. We were not in it because my record became an issue, so we kind of quieted down. But it was an issue during the campaign. GG: Right, right. No. JJ: When we got the votes, it wasn’t an issue. But it was an issue later, but the media was after a few people. So, I mean, we understood that. But you know, we were being -- we were new. We were novices. And, you know, our passion was to get Harold elected. GG: No, I -- absolutely. JJ: He did -- we were able to introduce him at Humboldt Park. GG: Yes, yes. 47 �JJ: Were you there at that event or...? GG: Yes. I was. [01:41:00] Well, you know, I -- JJ: (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) Can you describe (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) GG: Well, you know what I -- JJ: When they first came to the neighborhood festivals. Do you remember that? GG: Well, I think when he came the Puerto Rican-- JJ: After he won. After he won. GG: Yeah, when he came to the Puerto Rican fe-- the Humboldt Park festival I think that he came in -- JJ: ’Cause I was the only one on stage in terms of -- GG: He’d be a -- like, yeah. JJ: -- members of the community. GG: ’Cause you know he was -- that’s right. (inaudible) JJ: (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) GG: You were the only one up there. You were the one they -- JJ: That his way of saying thank you. GG: Yeah. Yeah. JJ: I was the only on stage and there was a crowd of 100,000 people. I mean that we had buttons, 30,000 people wearin’ buttons. GG: (laughs) JJ: I mean what -- GG: Yeah, don’t -- 48 �JJ: I mean, what -- GG: What -- JJ: What do you remember? GG: No, when I think of that -- what I think, that was his payback to the Humboldt Park community, to the Puerto Rican community it was his payback. And I think that he, [01:42:00] to me, he was one of the most genuine political figures who really tried to bring into an agenda a whole bunch of ideas. The unfortunate thing, and I don’t say that negatively it’s only the unfortunate thing, is that we were all too headstrong. We demanded too many things and we refuse to be nonpartisan at things. You know, the Mexicans demanded things, the Puerto Ricans demanded things, the Blacks demanded things, and he was trying to appease us all. And we, you know, we kinda, as you said we’re new and all of those things that would be. I think we kinda tripped over each other a little bit and we stepped on some toes and we broke some eggs. And instead of walking on eggshells, we were just [01:43:00] crushin’ them. And so I think that that’s where the evil cabal realized that Harold was not that strong. JJ: And who were the evil cabal? GG: Well that was Vrdolyak, that Alderman Mell, Alderman Burke. But to me, those were the three main characters and everybody else was -- think there was like seven of them, you know (inaudible) But those were the th-- JJ: And what did they do? I mean what...? GG: Well they did, as a matter of fact, they did to Harold Washington blocking everything, halting, filibustering, embarrassing him. They did everything they 49 �could to keep him from developing any kind of positive programming, which is what the Republican Party’s doing to President Obama today. The same kind of thing. You know, the evil cabal of [01:44:00] Mitt Romney and now Paul Ryan and all those other idiots. I’m not even gonna deal with that. But I think that the white political aristocracy of the daily regime that Jane Byrne tried to deal with, but they left her pretty much -- you know, she was a woman “Eh.” You know, they let her slide because she was a woman and, you know, Irish. They did not do that with Harold Washington. They saw him as being too anti-machine and so they just stopped it. You know, they just put a stop to everything. [01:45:00] Standing on tables yelling, it’s Alderman Mell standing on a table yelling at top of his lungs as to... You know what? That was a circus. Mike Royko had a great time with it, another columnist of the time (pause) saying, you know, pointing out the obvious that they would not have done it to anybody else but Harold. When you don’t let a leader propose programming and council acting upon those proposals and being, of course, dealing and talking about it, you know, trying to negotiate, whatever, there was none of that with Harold. And that also became our own [01:46:00] falling because then we begin to bicker, I think. I think that we as a community will begin to bicker and that’s unfortunate. Even our own leadership began to bicker once Juan Soliz fucked up. I mean, I was a strong supporter. JJ: What do you mean he messed up? GG: When he became alderman -- he was really good when he was when he was a state rep. When he came back, when we brought him back and to put him, you 50 �know, and have him be our political leader. The murder of Rudy Lozano. JJ: Which was actually two days after the event in Humboldt Park. GG: Oh sh-- yes. Yeah. JJ: Is that n-- (laughs) GG: That is ironic, isn’t it? JJ: It’s ironic and I remember that well. GG: Yeah. JJ: So we have a rally in Humboldt Park with 100,000 Puerto Ricans -- GG: Right, right. JJ: And now Rudy Lozano’s planning the same thing in the [01:47:00] Mexican community -- GG: In Little Village. JJ: --and exactly two days after Humboldt Park he’s killed. GG: He’s murdered. Yep. JJ: And how was -- how did -- they said it was local gang. GG: Well, like, supposedly a local gangbanger came in that he knew, let him into his kitchen to use the bathroom, got glass of water, the stories go all over the place. And as he came out, he put a couple of bullets into Rudy’s body. I’ve always thought it was a hit for hire. I think if anybody says different, you know, it’s so what. JJ: And who was Rudy Lozano? GG: Well, Rudy Lozano actually had been an organizer in the textile area and then coming out of there developing a very strong voice for the for [01:48:00] the 51 �Mexican community of Little Village. He began to emerge as a bigger voice than Juan Soliz who actually was a natural leader. But he began to -- this is what I also think, when he became alderman, he started finagling other things later. And so I think they even tried to blame it on Juan that that you know, Juan that but that’s so far-fetched. He was actually bringing a strong union presence in the Mexican community, in the Mexican political movement that -- he was a person to reckon with, who was also on certain circles in -- not yet even an alderman, [01:49:00] was him possibly talking about running for the mayorship of the city. You know, after Harold, which was quite interesting. A lot of people would say, “You know what after Harold, when he’s done with this, you know, we can groom Rudy Lozano to that.” And I think somebody, whether it was, you know -- yeah, I’m going into trouble on this one. It could mean that, you know, some of the some of the entrenched, longtime Mexican Mafia that was within the within the daily regime could have had a handle on this, as well. It could have been just the Irish Mafia itself, you know, dealing with it. Instead of killing the mayor, well they do something different. It is an issue that can be [01:50:00] analyzed and studied from 380 [sic] degrees, and you happen to be part of all of that. I think that’s quite interesting. And the only thing -JJ: We helped lead the funeral procession. Remember? We had [lunch?]. GG: Yes, we did. JJ: And it was a Young Lords (inaudible) -- GG: Yeah. JJ: that helped lead that. 52 �GG: Yep. JJ: With, you know, of course with Chuy Garcia in the leadership -- GG: Uh-huh JJ: -- role, but it was -- GG: Yes. Yeah. JJ: -- Young Lords and Slim Coleman and Marion (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) GG: Not one of my favorite characters, to tell the truth. JJ: And Marion Stamps. GG: Yeah. JJ: Marion Stamps and -- GG: Yeah or [Mary?] Stamps. Yeah, I was a (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) JJ: -- his name was [Al Sampson?], I think, from the South Side. GG: Yeah, yeah. JJ: From... GG: From South Chicago. JJ: But that group, we put that together the first memorial march. GG: You know what, I think that that was one of the largest processions for a Mexican leader who was still [01:51:00] flourishing, you know, he was not an old guy who had done all these things. He was, you know, he was just an activist who -- JJ: But you recall that march. Were you there or...? GG: Yeah, of course. But, like I said, I was (laughter) JJ: The South Side. GG: Yeah, I was in the far back. No, but I think that Rudy was -- 53 �JJ: But you were aware that we were part -- GG: We were, like -- JJ: -- of our gang. GG: Yes, of course, of course. I mean, I was good friends with Rudy, you know, I was -- as a matter of fact when our IPO which was Rudy, Chuy, Juan Soliz, split, we stayed with Soliz ’cause, you know, we had been working with it for a long time and... But at the same time we didn’t want to break ties with either Chuy or Rudy and so where some people broke ties, I kept friendships with. And I would go to the rallies and things like that. I would go to the fundraisers, you know. [01:52:00] So I didn’t want to break it. And, ironically, when Juan Soliz pissed me off was when he gave a bigger role to one of his lower helpers than my brother Guillermo who was his campaign manager and the one who (overlapping dialogue; inaudible)-- JJ: So your brother was his campaign manager? GG: Yeah, for both of those wins, you know, for state rep and then for alderman, he was his campaign manager. JJ: Oh, okay. Your brother Guillermo was the campaign manager. Yeah. And so when and when Juan began to isolate him because other people with money and that kind of thing were st-- you know, he began to develop his own little leadership over here of people with cash, and being twice old as my brother, I told Juan Soliz to go fuck himself, you know. And I told him I would never work with him. And I told my brother, says, “Sooner or later, man. He’s [01:53:00] gonna screw you. You better get ready to get the hell out of there.” And he did. 54 �And after all that those little things, Juan Soliz became a clown. You know, getting drunk at bars, his wife [Lete?], walking around in the summer with a fur coat on. You know, they thought they were the royalty of Pilsen unfortunately and she was beautiful, wonderful person and I don’t know what happened to her. And, you know, Juan Soliz, today, is an ambulance chaser. I have very little respect for that guy, where I continue a good friendship with Chuy, I continue a good friendship with, you know, Rudy’s wife, I have a good friendship with Rudy Junior. You know what I mean? That’s the irony of things. When Rudy Junior was running and I supported. Not necessarily a lot in being there physically but definitely -(break in audio) GG: --port him financially and by [01:54:00] going to events and things like that. You know, who knew kind of thing. You know, who knew that all of these things came to pass and they’re going around in a circle. I think that what you’re doing with this documentary, these oral histories and how we are tied into you it’s very interesting and very important ’cause it shows that all the people that, through one way or another, you know, cross your paths and how we participated, little or a lot, in the struggles that you have gone through in regards to the Young Lords. And it’s also quite interesting and beautiful, I think, how the Young Lords transformed themselves back then, but how you kept it the Young Lords and now [01:55:00] transformed them to such a point where the respect that is being received because of your work and the works that you’ve done from those days [of the ’80s?] this way. Still an activist, is still a person with a voice in regards to 55 �justice, in regards to not just a Puerto Rican community, but now, you know, you’re -- we cannot just say Puerto Rican community in 2012. You know what I mean? We have to -- sometimes I get pissed off Luis Gutiérrez ’cause, you know, he’s more Mexican than Puerto Rican nowadays. (laughs) Let us be, you know. But I respect that. I think that we have to cross those -- I think those boundaries between our communities have to be -- or, you know, the bridge has to be built in such a way that there’s gonna be a 2044. You know what I mean? [01:56:00] (pause) The United States as it is, or as it was in the ’50s, it will no longer exist 25,30 years from now. Our communities are growing and the more anti-Mexicanism, the more anti-Latino, the more anti- this, you know, the more that we get together, the more that we’re going to create a hell of a -(break in audio) GG: Anyway, so tying all of these things up in regards to the coalition between the Puerto Rican and all of the Latinos that are coming to United States would change in the United States. Myself, I believe that I’ve helped participate. By participate, I’ve held those changes as well, through education. I used to be a youth worker back in the back in the ’80s. [01:57:00] I’ve always been an activist in one way or another. And I was the executive director of one of Chicago’s prominent theater companies called Latino Chicago Theatre Company. We used to own a beautiful theater called The Firehouse on North Avenue and Damen, which was a firehouse. And within that time, I was also getting involved in poetry. I found my calling as an artist, which is -- I’m a poet. I today I can say I’m a poet without feeling like I’m lying or that I’m -- I practice what I do and 56 �there’s a place in the Near North Side called Weeds. It’s a little bar called Weeds where I’ve been hosting a poetry venue for the past 27 years, and Cha-cha has been graceful enough to come down and see [01:58:00] us on Monday nights. Through the theater and through the poetry venue we have had people like Guillermo Gómez-Peña who have come through. Bacha, another excellent, excellent poet. Patricia Smith, who is a wonderful African-American poet. Luis Rodriguez, who is the founder of Tia Chucha Press and he was a great activist right now throughout the Southwest in regards to the people’s struggles. So Weeds, it has been a portal for many poets to do their work and move on. I like to think of myself as the doorkeeper, you know, (laughter) as a host [01:59:00] and so... JJ: Talking about hosts, you also hosted our 40th anniversary. GG: Oh yeah, I was gonna mention that. Just to kind of conclude with this, actually, Cha-cha asked me to be the host and master of ceremonies for the 40th anniversary of the Young Lords. And that was one beautiful and hectic, you know, six-and-a-half-hour day, I think it was. Black Panther leadership, Young Lords leadership from New York, from Chicago, from Miami, from -- it was one of the most wonderful experiences, and I’m still waiting for a for a tape. (laughter) And I thank Cha-cha for asking me to do to be that host. It was a tremendous, tremendous day in which music, words, leaders from all over the place [02:00:00] congregated and celebrated the Young Lords and Cha-cha Jiménez. (Spanish) [02:00:09] JJ: (Spanish) [02:00:11] I appreciate -- 57 �END OF VIDEO FILE 58 � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/2f8d1f1935fa89cc42ac39fde2b815f2.mp4 a2b97d9f1acc210e3dd11075f18c7f87 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Young Lords in Lincoln Park Collection Subject The topic of the resource Young Lords (Organization) Puerto Ricans--United States Civil Rights--United States--History Lincoln Park (Chicago, Ill.) Personal narratives Social justice Community activists--Illinois--Chicago Description An account of the resource Collection of oral history interviews and digitized materials documenting the history of the Young Lords Organization in Lincoln Park, Chicago. Interviews were conducted by Young Lords' founder, José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez, and documents were digitized from Mr. Jiménez' archives. The Young Lords in Lincoln Park collection grows out of the ongoing struggle for fair housing, self-determination, and human rights that was launched by Mr. José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez, founder of the Young Lords Movement. This project is dedicated to documenting the history of the displacement of Puerto Ricans, Mejicanos, other Latinos, and the poor from Lincoln Park, as well as the history of the Young Lords nationwide. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Jiménez, José, 1948- Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/491">Young Lords in Lincoln Park collection (RHC-65)</a> Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-04-25 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Language A language of the resource eng spa Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-65 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 2012-2017 Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Título Spanish language Title entry Gregorio Gómez vídeo entrevista y biografía Sujetos Spanish language Subject terms Young Lords (Organización) Puertorriqueños--Estados Unidos Derechos civiles--Estados Unidos--Historia Lincoln Park (Chicago, Ill.) Puertorriqueños--Relatos personales Justicia social Activistas comunitarios--Illinois--Chicago Source <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/491">Young Lords in Lincoln Park (RHC-65)</a> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-65_Gomez_Gregorio Title A name given to the resource Gregorio Gómez video interview and transcript Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Gómez, Gregorio Description An account of the resource 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.” Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Jiménez, José, 1948- Subject The topic of the resource Young Lords (Organization) Puerto Ricans--United States Civil Rights--United States--History Lincoln Park (Chicago, Ill.) Personal narratives Social justice Community activists--Illinois--Chicago Language A language of the resource eng Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2012-08-23 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/efd329056a2d621fe299fa4b31f687d6.pdf 63ecfa7a9093025250a1168931aa2e80 PDF Text Text Young Lords In Lincoln Park Interviewee: Laura Garcia Interviewers: Jose “Cha Cha” Jimenez Location: Grand Valley State University Special Collections Date: 8/25/2012 Biography and Description 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. Ms. Garcia’s work as a journalist has gained international acclaim. She has reported on poverty and women’s conferences and electoral campaigns in Mexico, China, Brazil, the Dominican Republic, and the United States, among others. She currently edits the Tribuno del Pueblo, a bilingual newspaper that is distributed to readers across the United States. The paper focuses on giving voice to the poor and on a range of immigrants’s issues. A strong advocate for women’s rights, Ms. Garcia has also authored a bilingual pamphlet, “Who is Killing the Women of Juárez?” It raises awareness about the disappearances and murders of hundreds of women in Mexico’s Ciudad Juárez which is just across the Rio Grande River, from El Paso, Texas and is home to a number of American drug manufacturers. She reports on the �failure of Mexican and U.S. authorities to investigate the crimes and stop the killings. In 2004, Ms. Garcia was part of a delegation which visited Ciudad Juárez to report on the crisis. �Transcript JOSE JIMENEZ: So, if you can give me your full name, your date of birth, when you were born, and where you were born. LAURA GARCIA: Okay. My name is Laura [Elena Cortez?] Garcia. And I was born in Mexico -- I’m from Mazatlán, Sinaloa -- in the year 1953. But my family -- I’m talking about the whole family. They have been in the United States since the 1920s. But like every Mexican family, we go back and forth between the United States and Mexico. So, I would say half of my family were born here and half of my family was born in Mexico. My mother happened to be born in Yuma, Arizona in the 1920s. And then, they were deported, you know, the great repatriation that they call it when the -JJ: Even though she was born -- LG: Yeah, because her parents were undocumented. [00:01:00] So, the parents were undocumented but the children were U.S. citizens. But at that time, there was a witchhunt to get rid of all the communists and all the labor unions and also because the economic crisis, the Great Depression and so forth, they deported the family even though the kids were U.S. citizens. It’s similar to what’s happening today where the children are U.S. citizens but the parents are not. And then, you have the option of leaving the children alone in this country or taking them with you to Mexico or to whatever country they are. So, that happened to my parents. And then, my -- we were very poor. Agricultural people working the land. And so, after my mother [00:02:00] separated from my 1 �husband [sic] and after I was born and my sister was born, she came back to the U.S. in the 1950s. And she ended up in Brawley, which happens to be were Felicitas is. And Brawley is an agricultural town in southern California. And there, my mother was a housemaid for about 13, 14 years. And eventually she was able to bring my sister and myself to the U.S. in the 1960s. But it took her about 11, 12 years to save enough money and to fix the papers even though when she started fixing the papers there was nothing to fix because her being a U.S. citizen, we automatically get the U.S. citizenship. So, had she known that then, she [00:03:00] probably would have brought us sooner. I lived in -JJ: What was your mom’s name? LG: My mother’s name is [Marrubio?]. But she lived in this house, and it easier to say [Nelly?] than Marrubio. So, her name was changed to Nelly, officially too. My mother, up until the day she side, she signed with Nelly, even though her name was Marrubio. JJ: And your dad? What was his name? LG: My dad’s name is -- JJ: Did you call him dad? LG: Yeah no, my dad’s -- I don’t call him dad. JJ: Okay. What do you call him? LG: He’s my -- my paternal family comes from China, and they migrated in about 1980s. There was a great famine in China. And my grandfather migrated. He was a kid. He was about 15, 16 years old. And everyone was coming to the Americas. It didn’t matter -- [00:04:00] not everybody ended up in San 2 �Francisco. My grandfather ended up in Baja, California and worked in Santa Rosalia in the copper mines. But eventually he crossed the Sea of Cortez into Sonora and then eventually -JJ: What was his name? Do you know? LG: My Chinese name is [Lian?]. JJ: And your father’s name was -- what? LG: My father’s name is [Raul Leon?] because he Mexicanized his name. So, the last name is Lian, and then, Leon as closest as far as the Spanish. So, his name is Raul Leon. But I -- JJ: What type of work was he doing? LG: I think he did a lot of number of jobs. He worked in Sonora in the railroads, building the railroads. JJ: Oh, so, he’s in Mexico. LG: In Mexico. He never came to the U.S. He was born in Mexico. And he [00:05:00] -- that’s where he died. But he worked in the railroad. What he told me is that he was the leader of the communist unit. And because of the political work that he was doing, he was blackballed and he wasn’t able to get any more. And he was fired. So, he was practically ran out of the town and the state of Sonora. And Sinaloa is south of Sonora. So, he ended up in Sinaloa. But in Sinaloa, he was a tailor by profession. In fact, that’s how my mother and he met. My mother started working with him because my mother was 23 years old. And she was an old maid. So, she could no longer stay with her parents because she had to survive, make her own living. So, she -- from the time until she went to 3 �that town and found work -- and she found [00:06:00] work with my father, and then, it all became. I’m a flower child or a love child. JJ: And were there any other children? LG: He had five others from another woman, I guess, wife. And he had two with my mother. JJ: Do you know their names? LG: No. I never wanted to find out. JJ: What about the ones that he had with your mom? LG: Oh, yeah. My sister. It’s only two. (Spanish) [00:06:31] JJ: (Spanish) [00:06:33] LG: (Spanish) [00:06:35] She looks more Chinese than me. But that’s our feud, our fight. Carmen says I look more Chinese. And I say, “No, you look more Chinese.” Being Chinese in Mexico was not a very popular thing or whatever. There was a lot of prejudism [sic] against the Chinese [00:07:00] in Mexico. And so, we grew up, I guess, used to but not liking it, the fact that we were different than other people. And it was always pointed out, no matter -- when we went to the mercado or we went to -- wherever we were with my grandfather. It always happened that someone stopped us or stopped him and asked him, “Oh, what are they? Chinitas or japonesas?” And my grandfather, being such a Mexican nationalist, he would always say, “Son Mexicanas. Don’t forget that. Son Mexicanas.” Of course, Carmen and I would say, “Why does he get so mad? Of course we’re Mexican. What else can we be?” We actually didn’t know that my father was Chinese until much later because people kept asking us and we 4 �started asking. And then, my mother told us, “Yeah, [00:08:00] your father is half Chinese, half Mexican.” JJ: Is this after you grew up? LG: Yeah. My mother and him didn’t separate on very good terms. So, I did not see - my mother has never -- my mother came to the U.S. and she never went back to her hometown in Mexico. And she never wanted to. I think her memories are not very good, for whatever reason. I don’t know if it’s the relationship with my father or whatever. But she never went back. But she remarried. And after my stepfather died -- his name is [Salome?]. He’s from Durango. After my -- the best, the greatest person I’ve ever met in my life. He was the kindest -- JJ: Your stepfather? LG: Yeah, my stepfather. He was just an outstanding human being. So, after he passed away, that’s when my sister and I decided to go back to Mexico and hook up with my father and find out more of our history because we didn’t know [00:09:00] where we were -- I mean, one side of us, we knew where we were, Mexican side. But the Chinese side, we didn’t have any idea. So, after my stepfather passed away, then we went back and looked for -- well, we didn’t look for him. We knew where he was. And we had a little short meeting. And he told us. JJ: What did you find out? LG: That he was a motherfucker. (laughter) I’m sorry. You can erase it. No, he -- no, I shouldn’t say that. I think he was a man of his times. And in Mexico, you always have a casa grande and a casa chica. Casa grande is where you have 5 �your marriage, your legal family, you know, your children and your legitimate children. Casa chica is where you have your other woman and the children, illegitimate children. I happen to be from [00:10:00] casa chica. So, when I asked my father why -JJ: We called her coteja. LG: Pardon me? JJ: Did he have a coteja, another woman on the side that you have to raise. LG: Yes. JJ: Yeah, they still take care of her but -- LG: Yeah. And they -- JJ: And that doesn’t exist as much now. But used to exist there. LG: And the -- JJ: So, what do you call it there? LG: Casa chica. And the rule is that if a man has enough money, he could have as many casa chicas as he wants to because he can provide for them. So, I know I was one of the casa chicas. I don’t know if he had other casa chicas. So, my mother was advised but her godmother that, especially after we were born, it was best for her to leave. It wasn’t so much for her [00:11:00] but it was for Carmen and I because we really did not have any future in my town. It was very small. And either we were either going to be always (Spanish) [00:11:11], illegitimate children and we’re always going to be singled out, pointed at, and so forth. So, she didn’t think there was much future for us if we stayed in Mexico. So, that’s why my mother left. And because my mother left -- he was about 27 years old. It 6 �took a lot of courage for her to do that. But when my mother left, my father was mad. He got very upset because -- I asked him, “Why have a casa chica? Why have a casa grande.” He says, “Because I had the money.” So, that shut me up. And then, I said, “Well, after my mother left, why didn’t you look for us or take care of us and provide for us,” not that we needed it or anything. But we certainly needed, I think, [00:12:00] his affection. He said, “Because once your mother left, I had no responsibility whatsoever towards you, towards her or the children because she had everything here. I had a house for her. You guys were well taken care of.” So, that’s what he said. So, that’s why I say -- I didn’t want to say he was an MF. But it was just he was a man of his times. JJ: So, a man of his time -- you meant -- so, he was disowning you because -- LG: Disowning us, yeah. JJ: Your mom left. LG: So, once my mother left -- JJ: And he thought he was correct in what he was doing. LG: Oh, yeah. JJ: He was a man of his times. LG: That was the surprise and astonishment that when I’m asking him questions, he’s (Spanish) [00:12:53], you know, straight and not ashamed or anything. It was like he was just telling things as a matter of fact. That’s the way things [00:13:00] -- in fact, he did tell me, “Oh, this is the way things are in Mexico.” So, I happened to find out later that it was not just in Mexico but in almost all -- every country, many places. But anyway, coming back to the United States, we -- I had 7 �the opportunity when I -- one of the things that happens when you immigrate her and you start -- want to go to school is at that time -- they don’t do it anymore. But the school system -- they put you three or four years behind because you don’t know the language. So, I was supposed to be in sixth grade, and they put me back in third grade. So, that was like three years behind. And so, as I went through school, I started realizing [00:14:00] when I went into my high school, my freshman year, that I was going to graduate when I was 20 years old. And the thought of being that old -- and also, I was 11 years old. I had my period. And there I was with kids that were seven years old or eight years old. And it was embarrassing, the whole experience and very humiliating to be able to go to school at that age. JJ: What school was this? LG: Brawley. And what was the name of the school? [Ruth?]? FELICITAS NUÑEZ:(inaudible) LG: No, I went to Ruth -- (Spanish) [00:14:43] I can’t remember. But it was in the borderline of the Mexican side and the other side, the white side or [dónde vivían los rancheros]. And that’s because of the kind of work my mother did. She cleaned houses. JJ: Are you talking about the country of Mexico? LG: No, I’m talking about Brawley, the town [00:15:00] of Brawley here in the United States. JJ: Okay. So, there was a dividing line in Brawley? LG: Yeah. 8 �JJ: So, it was segregated. LG: Yeah. It wasn’t legal segregation. But there was a Mexican side of town and then there was the other side. JJ: A white side. Okay. So, like (overlapping dialogue; inaudible). LG: And it was because of the line of work that my mother did too that we lived kind of in the border, in the edge of both. JJ: Because she was not in the fields. LG: She was cleaning. Yeah. She wasn’t working in the fields. Mostly everyone that lived in the Mexican side of town worked in the fields, did agricultural work. My mother was cleaning houses. So, she was closer to the houses that she was cleaning or to that señoras so that we happened to go to that school. But anyway, just the other thing -- and it’s just -- they really don’t want you to speak Spanish or they didn’t. You had to speak English. JJ: In Brawley? LG: Yeah. Well, that [00:16:00] was in any school in that time. You were punished when you spoke Spanish. And I happened to be punished. One time I couldn’t play one recess because they overheard me speak Spanish. JJ: You couldn’t play what? LG: I couldn’t go and play during recess because they overheard me speak Spanish. So, the teacher punished me. They told me to stand by a tree while other kids were playing. But I have to tell you that I had a great teacher. My third-grade teacher was the first teacher here in the U.S. And her name is [Mrs. Satin?]. And she was so kind and a real teacher in the sense of she knew that I didn’t 9 �speak Spanish. I think I was the only one in the classroom. But she made sure that everything -- I would understand everything that was going on. She had an - there was [00:17:00] a classmate. Her name was [Lourdes?]. And she was my translator, my interpreter. And she would -- after she would explain what we have to do, then Mrs. Satin says, “You come to where my desk is and then Lourdes will come to me.” And then, she would explain to me what the lesson was and so forth. So, she was really, really good. I mean, I think because of that experience -JJ: And you said you didn’t speaking. What did you mean -- LG: I mean, I didn’t speak English. I’m sorry. I didn’t speak English. But because of the experience that I had with Mrs. Satin, I think that’s why I loved school. I mean, was a very good student with very high grades. Anyway, then I -- at 17, that was my freshman year, I decided -- JJ: Freshman year where? LG: High school, Brawley -- FN: Union High School. LG: Brawley Union High School. We all went to the same high school. Different years. [00:18:00] I decided I couldn’t wait to graduate until I was 20 years old. So, there was a program that I found out. It was a high school equivalency program. And it was a program for high school dropouts that work in the field, in the campo, for children of the farm workers in California. And so, the program was in San Diego State. And so, I applied for it. JJ: This is before you left school? You were already thinking of dropping out? 10 �LG: I was already of thinking of dropping out. JJ: But you had a plan. LG: And I was still in school. In fact, I left on a Sunday, and my last day in school was Friday. But I was already thinking that I was going to drop out anyway. But I wasn’t going to drop out into nothing. I was going to continue with my education. And that was the only reason I could leave the house at 17 because I was going somewhere. [00:19:00] So, my mother -- there was problems about me leaving, not so bad, but my mother wanted me to go. She thought that I should continue my education. She felt that she didn’t want us to end up cleaning toilets like she did. I mean, it’s an honorable job. But she aspired for us to do more. I mean, that’s the reason she was here in the United States. So, she really was backing me up to go. My stepfather was not. He was very scared. He was very scared because I was 17. To him, I was very naïve. He had a (Spanish) [00:19:46] kind of -- didn’t know where things were. And so, it was 1969, and it was the -- the schools were up in arms in the campuses. There was the Black Panthers on TV. [00:20:00] There was the peace movement against the Vietnam War. And the country wasn’t that stable for him to send his daughter to college away even though it was only like 90 miles from Brawley. JJ: But did he mention this or you’re just recollecting? LG: Yeah. JJ: But he specifically mentioned Black Panthers and all those - LG: My stepfather was an atheist and also -- JJ: What’s his name? Did we get his name? 11 �LG: [Salome Coral?]. He was an atheist. And also, he -- I found out later -- oh, one time when I came from school, he were doing a report on the Soviet Union. And he always checked our work and discussed our homework with us which was very strange [00:21:00] for that time too because -- that’s why I’m saying he was a wonderful man. So, I had written this whole report about the Soviet Union, how awful it was because there was no democracy and how great the United States was and I loved it and this and that. And he said, “Well, how do you know that they don’t have democracy in the Soviet Union?” And I go, “My teacher told me. It’s in the books.” And he says, “You read one book and you heard one person say that. And you’re just going to believe them?” And I go, “Well, why not? It’s my teacher.” And he says, “No, you have to ask, you have to think, you have to read. And then, you make your opinion.” And I was saying, “Are you a communist or what?” And he said, “No, but I want you to be a thinker and not just take for granted what people are saying as the truth.” And he says, “Find out for yourself.” And I think that was the best [00:22:00] advice he gave me. Find out. Don’t just swallow all the stuff (inaudible) and just do whatever. JJ: So, he was familiar with all these schools? LG: So, he was -- yeah, we watched the -- if there was something I didn’t like about my stepfather it was that he watched the news. He watched the five o’clock news, the seven o’clock news, and the ten o’clock news. No matter what programs there were, whatever, we had -- and he made us watch the news. And I would get so mad at him because I would tell him, “It’s the same news. What they said at five o’clock, it’s the same thing they’re saying at seven, and it’s the 12 �same thing they’re saying at 10.” Of course there was no Internet, no nothing. Right? So, it was the same news. And he kept saying, “Things might change in a couple of hours. You don’t know. You have to be informed.” And so, that’s how he knew about what was going on in the world, watching TV. [00:23:00] He always read the paper every day. I mean, even though the Brawley news didn’t have much. But he did with the paper -- and so, he forced us to watch the news. So, we were aware of what was going on. And so, he was afraid for us or for me that here I was, going into this world, and someone was going to influence me into doing something that was not the best for me. Of course, it didn’t happen the way he said it. But being in San Diego away from home in the height of the Chicano movement, of course I was going to be influenced by what was happening there, the movement for civil rights for Mexicanos and Chicanos. And even though at first I didn’t see myself as a Chicana because I was born in Mexico, it was later that I called myself as a Chicana because being a Chicana [00:24:00] meant that you were for the rights of your people, of Mexican Americans and people that were living here in the United States. And so, of course I was for those rights. So, I called myself as a Chicana. And everybody around me -- I lived in San Diego and every Chicano or Chicano that you saw -they were involved in they movement. They talked about the movement. And they always wanted the HEP students -- it was 40 of us that were going through that program. JJ: Everybody is -- oh, in the program. You were all taking about -- 13 �LG: Well, we were from that ranchitos from around California. And then, the students -- there were already students going to San Diego that were also from the ranchitos. But they were already politicized. And so, they were talking about the movement. And introducing [00:25:00] the new ones like us from HEP into the Chicano movement. JJ: They HEP? So, what do you mean the HEP? LG: It’s high school equivalency program. We were HEP students. JJ: You were ahead of the time. LG: And the Chicano students were [hepeada?], la hepeada, you know? JJ: Okay. Hepeana now from (overlapping dialogue; inaudible). LG: No, no, no, HEP, from the initials of the program. And so, whenever there was going to be march that the MECha students were organizing or the Chicanas wanted to do this or whatever, they always said, “For this, ask the hepeada,” because there were 40 of us that we can go in the bus and we could make a big rally and scream with our posters and whatever. So, that’s how I was introduced into the Chicano movement, not intellectually but mainly through the people that I knew, the students that I knew in San Diego State at the university and [00:26:00] talking to them, dialoguing. And little bit little -- and going to the marches, you know, going to the marches for -- at the border of Tijuana and San Isidro. JJ: Oh, there were marches right at the border? LG: Yeah, yeah. JJ: What was that representing? What were they trying to do? 14 �LG: The marches at the border were for the better treatment of indocumentados, people that were here in the border. JJ: At that time. LG: Yeah. Or that were -- better working conditions. Yeah, at that time. So, there were a couple in there. And then, we also -- the governor -- Reagan was the governor at that time, around that time. There were always demonstrations against him, that the students -- that we had for what he represented. JJ: They didn’t like him then? (laughter) LG: Oh gosh, no. They hated him. Well, not everyone in California because he won two terms. No? [00:27:00] But certainly the students did not like him at all. And then, there were just conferences that we had to go to. There were student conferences MECha would organize to introduce high school students into a college environment. JJ: So, this group of about 40 was always active in something, in some kind of a -- LG: Yes. Some of them joined the Brown Berets. Some of them joined the Chicanas, like I did, and the Teatro. Some of the guy -- some of the other guys joined Teatro Mestizo. We were very active. And a group of us, after we got our high school diploma -- then we enrolled into San Diego state and started going to San Diego State. JJ: Okay. So, this wasn’t San Diego State. This was the high school or -- LG: No, it was San Diego State University. They called it San Diego State University. JJ: Oh, but you studied even before you went to San Diego State University. [00:28:00] 15 �LG: Yeah. But the HEB program was in San Diego State, was part of that campus. JJ: I see. So, part of it was to try to get students into -- LG: Yeah, interested into high education. So, it wasn’t -- I think I met Felicitas in 1970s, I think. It was before the Chicana organized the tea for our mothers. So, 1970. I would hear about this woman Felicitas that was real -- JJ: What did you hear about her? LG: (Spanish) [00:28:37]. (laughs) A very brave and courageous woman that all the women, all the Chicanas loved and respected and all the guys fears. (laughter) So, she was a very militant person. [00:29:00] JJ: What would the guys fear her? LG: Because there was a lot of machismo in our student organization. And she did not stand for that kind of ideology that said that men were better than the women. And so, in a way -- well, it was fighting for women’s rights and that equality in the movement, in the Chicano movement. And that’s sort of what inspired the forming of Teatro de las Chicanas in 1971 by both Felicitas and Delia Ravelo that we -- I mean, we started -- they started out by doing a skit for the mothers, for their mothers to come into the campus so that they could relate to them what it was to go to college, the problems that they were facing, the issues [00:30:00] of drugs, sex, and the machismo so that they could be that kind of understanding between mothers and daughters. I was not a student at San Diego State at that time. I was at HEB getting my high school diploma. But as a HEB student -some of the HEB students attended that. And it was at that time at that conference that I realized that I kind of changed by thinking about being 16 �Mexicana and being a Chicana. I think the conference, that gathering was very educational for the mothers but also for the new students that were coming into San Diego State and into the Chicano movement to understand what we were all about. So, after that skit that they did [00:31:00] -- what was the name of the skit? “Chicano Goes to College.” That the Teatro stayed. Delia and Felicitas -that the Teatro stayed. And the recruit women students and Chicanas into the Teatro. And the main focus of the Teatro, of the skits at the beginning back in ’71, ’72 was fighting against the ideology of the machismo, the male supremacy and all of that. All of our skits were against that. And that was sort of our continuity from -JJ: So then, what did you show on your skit? I mean, what (overlapping dialogue; inaudible)? LG: [Speaking 00:31:44 Pues, te voy a decir.] We had a very famous skit (Spanish) [00:31:50]. JJ: Yeah. Tell me about that. I don’t know remember. LG: But you say, “Bronca, bronca, bronca, bronca.” So say it like that and it really ends up being cabron. [00:32:00] And so, cabron is -- what -- FN: It’s like a goat. LG: It’s like an asshole. Cabron, he’s being an asshole. And so, that’s what -- I think people remember us more for that skit that was like five minutes long than all the stuff that we did. I mean, we did actos that were half an hour or longer. FN: Right. “La Madre.” 17 �LG: “The Mother” was almost an hour. But everyone remembers “Bronca.” Everyone remembers “Bronca” because -- and it wasn’t very popular with the men or with the women. The women that that we were too much -- you know, too blunt and that there were better ways of talking to the guys about their male supremacy. And then, the guys -- of course, they didn’t like [00:33:00] us. They didn’t like iot because we were calling them assholes in public. So, it was like calling them out to fight with us or that we were ready to fight them. And one of the -- some of the lines are, “Why do you think (Spanish) [00:33:16]?” You know, do you see pots and pans hanging from me? Every time we’re discussing the conference and who’s going to take care of the food, all the guys look at the women to see who’s going to volunteer. You know, it’s not just the job of women but of men. And then, we would say “bronca.” It’s like, “Come on.” Let’s duke it out. And of course, they didn’t like it. The funny thing -- and I think it’s very funny because in politics and the movement, there’s always love, relationships. There was the Teatro de Chicanas, all women, and then there was Teatro Mestizo, which was men and women. [00:34:00] And Felicitas and myself -- were we the only ones? There were other women, but they were not part of the Teatro de Chicanas. Felicitas and I belonged to both teatros. So, we toured together. There was a spot they would get -- or if there was a spot that we would get at a university, the two teatros would go together. And so, the Teatro Mestizo would perform and then the Teatro de Chicanas would perform. JJ: What was the difference? 18 �LG: Teatro Mestizo did all the plays that were written by Teatro Campesino, by Luis Valdez or that supposedly were written by Luis Valdez. And there was a organization Teatros Nacionales de Aztlan. And it was a grouping of all the teatros in all the universities throughout the Southwest. It was a very important organization at one time. And the ones that were [00:35:00] heading that organization was Teatro Campesino, Luis Valdez. And so, most of the actos and the skits that were performed in the Chicano movement in the different universities were written by Teatro Campesino and Luis Valdez, like “No Saco Nada de la Escuela,” I don’t get anything from school -- I don’t know -- Soldado Razo, which was an acto against the Vietnam War. But one of the -- so, that was -- the actos -- and they were good. I don’t have any complaint about the message. But there was one thing that they were at fault, and that was the way they portrayed women because women were either virgins not to be touched only to be looked at or prostitutes. FN: Or mothers. LG: Yeah. And that -- loose women [00:36:00] that should not be respected. And that’s not the Chicanas. I mean, we are that, but we’re not. But we’re also a bunch of other stuff. There’s different grades of who the Chicanas are. And for the most part not a recognition that we’re equal just like they were. So, because of that, we wrote our own skits, our own actos that portrayed women as strong women, that dealt with issues of the women such of pregnancies and so forth and looked for solutions that we were looking at at that time not a solution that someone else was telling us to do, whether it be religious institutions or 19 �government or just the culture, our culture, of what we should do. So, the plays were written by the Teatro. It was a collective process in the -JJ: What issues did you [00:37:00] write? LG: We would deal with pregnancy, with -- the one I was telling you, “Bronca,” male supremacy. We dealt with drugs. And we also started dealing with labor issues because it was Teatro de Chicanas, 1971. And after that it became Teatro Laboral. And then, we ended up -- and at the end it was Teatro Raices, which ended up 1985. So, as our thinking changed, our ideology -- we started out with women’s rights, but then it became workers’ rights and it became being inclusive of everyone. And seeing that some of the issues affected everyone whether they were Black or white or Brown. I mean, the issue of drugs is an industry, and it affects everyone. The issue of [00:38:00] working conditions affects everyone. So, we started dealing with that, with working conditions. And the thing that Teatro is known for among us is that something’s happening somewhere where one of the Teatro members is -- one of the stories in the book is [Sandra Gutierrez?] is in Coachella working or living there -- well, she’s from there. And then, she happens to -- the community starts organizing against this teacher that slapped one of the students. And they’re really riled up in the UFW because it was very strong there in Coachella. And they also started also being part -- they organized the community against that. So, Sandra calls the -- I believe Felicitas or Delia and says, “This is what’s happening in Coachella. [00:39:00] They’re having a big meeting tomorrow. Can you guys come down and perform?” (laughs) And that was like (inaudible). So, as they’re driving -- I was not part of 20 �that -- as they’re driving over there, they’re writing the skit. “You’re going to be so-and-so. You’re going to be the teacher. You’re going to be the student. You’re going to be the mother and everything.” And then, everybody’s trying to -we didn’t really write lines at first. It was just this is sort of what you’re supposed to say, like the theme and the message. And then, we would ad lib it. So, that’s how. And then -JJ: What about practice? When would you practice? LG: Forget practice. (laughs) JJ: You didn’t practice. LG: That was one of the things that Teatro Campesino did. They would -- all the time they would criticize our form. And I think it was really -- they were not happy with the content either because they were very cultural and nationalistic and so forth. [00:40:00] And we were like working class. You know? But they always -- they couldn’t say that -- or they never did say it, but they did say, “It’s their form. They don’t know how to act. They’re so embarrassing to see them out there.” But maybe the form wasn’t great, but the message was good. And the audience’s reaction was that they loved it. Then we had a question and answer after each acto. And we would stand there. And whatever questions people wanted to know, we would answer. So, it was part of the educational process, not just doing the skit or the acto but then the Q&A. And then, we’d further the ideas and so forth. So, the Teatro was very effective. I mean, ask me. (laughter) Don’t ask anybody else. 21 �JJ: But it just looks natural. You also involved audience, right? [00:41:00] Or you didn’t. When you did a dinner -- LG: Yes, (Spanish) [00:41:06]. Yeah. We always involved audiences because we never had enough people. Like I said, that trip to Coachella was whoever could take off from work, get a babysitter, or drag the kids with us that were -- if people had kids by then. Well, I mean, we all started having kids kind of young. So, it was that. So, then, if we need someone to play a certain role and we see someone or if (Spanish) [00:41:33], if they come close to us and they’re friendly, we say, “Oh, we need you to do this.” And then, before you know it, she’s acting or he’s acting or whatever. So, yeah, we do try to involve the audience. And in fact now that -- when we started touring about our book Teatro de las Chicanas, we -- people -- some of the woman gravitated to us [00:42:00] from the conference and some of them because part of the Teatro and did perform with us. We have a skit called -- we did one on -- as a tribute to Las Mujeres de Juarez. And then, some of the women that were not in the Teatro back then were performing this time. But going back to 1971 -- I have to tell you a story. Because all of the sudden Nefelez was gone. We were in school. We were in the university. (Spanish) [00:42:34] Nobody knew. But then, a few months later, there she comes. And she comes dressed in her militant -- her uniform after that. It was her jeans, her boots, and the army jacket that you later told me that it was your brother’s from the Vietnam War. And she always wore that and (Spanish) [00:42:55]. So, we asked -- I asked, [00:43:00] “Where were you?” And she started talking about -- she had come to Chicago because she was near. She 22 �had met someone from the Young Lords. And she had come to spend the summer or a few months here in Chicago to help. While she was here she did the murals. She did some murals and stuff like that. But it was the first time that I had heard of the Young Lords. And the first time like, “Oh, okay.” And it was kind of neat because one of the things about the Teatro -- I don’t want to speak for the Chicano movement because it wouldn’t be right because it’s not true -- but the Teatro is that we always looked to connect with different people. No importa what nationality they were and so forth. And that was one of the things that I think in the ’70s that I think [00:44:00] it hurt the movements was the separation of the different movements, the Chicano movement over here, the African Americans over here, the Native Americans, the women’s movement and so forth. Even though there were (inaudible) there was also a lot of efforts to separate us. And I think it was because of the money. There was so much money given to MECha, so much money given to the student body, so much money given to that organization. So, whether we wanted to or not, we were scrambling for the crumbs among ourselves. But one of the things about the Teatro de las Chicanas that I really liked was the internationalism of especially Felicitas and Delia, that openness about it that, “Yeah, we can go and talk to people and share ideas and learn about their struggles and so forth.” [00:45:00] So, that was the first time that I had heard of the Young Lords. And then -- when was it? Here in -JJ: You mentioned a little bit about Delia. LG: Delia? Delia was a beautiful sister that -- (phone ringing) 23 �(break in audio) LG: About Delia Ravelo -- I don’t even know when I met Delia. But I know I met Delia after Felicitas because first I met Felicitas and [Chiba?], [Celia Romero?]. And then, afterwards I met Delia. but Delia -- what can I say about Delia? Delia was just a beautiful soul, beautiful soul, but always had words of encouragement. And I think that’s [00:46:00] one of the things that we needed at that time. You’re 17, you’re 18. You’re doing different things that are out of the norm. You’re breaking with your culture, your -- everything that you’ve been taught. And so, as you step into these new waters, you do need reinforcement. And that’s one of the things that Delia did. “Come on Chinita, (Spanish) [00:46:27], you can do it, Chinita. (Spanish) [00:46:29],” this and that and whatever. And it was -- I kind of really liked that the leadership between -- that both Felicitas and Delia provided because Delia was softspoken with a lot of encouragement. And Felicitas was a little bit more fuerte. And I think you need that. When you’re like, “I don’t know. I’m scared. What are people going to say? I don’t know if I can do it.” You need the soft [00:47:00] voice or leadership that says, “Yes, you can do it.” And then, you need then other one, “Andale,” you know? Because I remember several times that Felicitas had to almost physically push me on the stage (laughs) because I said, “I can’t do it. I have to go to the bathroom. I have to go number two.” And it was like boing, there I am on stage. And then, that happiness that you get, that saying, “Oh my gosh. I really can do it.” And that was what -- Delia 24 �provided that encouragement and so did Felicitas. I remember when I did “Chicana Goes to College,” it wasn’t for our mothers. It was a different time. And [Teresa Oyo?] -- she’s in our book. And she was my mother, and I was a daughter. And I was like shaking because I was talking and saying my lines. And I whispered to Teresa. (Spanish) [00:47:57] You know, my hands are shaking. And she says, “Don’t worry about it. I’m going to told them really tight [00:48:00] so no one can know.” And that was really good. That’s what I needed, you know, someone to hold me (laughter) real tight as I’m talking. But that’s the kind of courage that it took of the women back then and the kind of reassurance that we needed from our sisters to be there when we get weak, for someone to encourage us and to push us forward. And Delia and Felicitas certainly did that. I think her dying in ’95 was really something -- I don’t want to say sad -- but she certainly is missed. She’s a person that filled up the whole room with her personality. And she was -- she had a really good sense of humor. She was always cracking jokes or, “Come on. Let’s do this and let’s do that,” or whatever. [00:49:00] And I also remember that she was -- one of the things I liked about her is that she didn’t care how she looked. This is when I first met her. I think later she might have, or maybe she did -- whatever. But (Spanish) [00:49:16 00:49:27]. And the way I was raised it I had to dress nice like a señorita. When I went to college -- I guess all of us Chicanas (Spanish) [00:49:35] with our little dresses and our -- well, they weren’t using pantyhose -- but our stockings and the garter belt and everything. And it was so stiff. And when you get there and you see this person like -- se va -- there goes the bra. (laughter) And it was great. 25 �It was just really great to be part of that time and having the sisters like Delia around. And not only [00:50:00] Delia, all of the women of Teatro de -- they helped mold us. And we helped mold them and they helped us mold -- it was real reciprocal of encouragement. And (Spanish) [00:50:18] but that’s one of the things. (Spanish) [00:50:21] but then we’ve got to perform. And then, we got to take care of the babies. and then, it’s your turn to take care of the babies. Or I’ll hold the baby while you go and say your line (Spanish) [00:50:32] We were always exchanging and helping each other out. But I left San Diego in ’78 and then moved to San Francisco. JJ: Did you go to school there in San Diego? LG: You know, I’m one of those chicas -- I went to San Diego State up until my third year, and I didn’t graduate. I’m one of the Chicanas that was pregnant. [00:51:00] And I advise everyone to use contraceptives so that doen’t happen. Please. Because you always think (Spanish) [00:51:07] And I think Latinas -well, at that time -- I don’t know now. But I think it’s always worth it to say -- JJ: What was your child’s name? LG: My son -- my first son is [Emilio?]. But then, so, there I was pregnant. And so, my husband and I -- he was 19. I was 20. And so, we decided -- JJ: What was his name? LG: [Jose?]. He’s still my husband. (laughs) So then, we want to have the baby. (Spanish) [00:51:45] And so, there we go. We get into this little car from San Diego State to Yuma -- my parents lived in Yuma -- to tell them that, no, “You’re going to be grandparents, but no wedding.” Of course, little did I know. 26 �[00:52:00] Of course, we get to the house. I tell my mother while my stepfather is talking to Jose. And then, my mother starts screaming, “No.” You know, (Spanish) [00:52:13]. And then, Jose tells me -- he said, “Oh, when I heard your mom screen, the TV went like this. I thought I was going to faint. And then, your stepfather said, (Spanish) [00:52:25]. So then, he came to the bedroom and (Spanish) [00:52:30] -- with the alcohol -- (laughter) [00:52:33] (Spanish) to remind people -- (Spanish) [00:52:37] And then, he says -- my mom revives. He said, (Spanish) [00:52:43]. And she said, [00:52:45] (Spanish). And then, my father says, “Oh well, we knew that was going to happen, being away from home. She’s young and so forth. So, that’s not a big deal. (Spanish) [00:52:56] my mom says, (Spanish) [00:52:58] And then, my father says, “Oh no. She’s going to get married, and she’s not leaving here until she gets married.” I go, “What?” And he says, “Yeah.” And he got the local pages and he got the hospital or something -- clinic to do the blood test because at that time they had to have the blood test. And then, we went to Winter Haven where people go and have short marriages or whatever. And there we walk in barefooted with our jeans and tshirt, going -- walking down the aisle to get married that night. JJ: Jeans and t-shirt, barefooted, hippie style? LG: Yes. (laughs) JJ: Okay. You guys (inaudible). LG: With the hair like this. I don’t know why I thought it was so cool to be barefooted. I think it’s also -- JJ: (laughter) And pregnant. 27 �LG: And pregnant, you know? (Spanish) [00:53:55] You know, that way you didn’t have to buy shoes or something. [00:54:00] But anyway, yes, I can say that I had a shotgun wedding. And yes, tradition still -- I was very liberated. My parents were not. (laughs) And so, I left the house. I got there at four o’clock. I left the house at eight o’clock after I was married to San Diego. So, (Spanish) [00:54:27]. But I don’t know why I was saying that. FN: I think he asked your husband’s name. But you were going to talk a little bit about the reunion of the Young Lords in Grand Rapids. LG: Oh, I know why I talked about that. Because after college we all went different ways. And I happened to go to San Francisco. And then, eventually I ended up here in Chicago in 1981. JJ: Had you been there in Chicago before? [00:55:00] LG: No. Well, I had come in 1974 because (Spanish) [00:55:02] Felicitas got us politically involved and awakened, I joined a -- I became a member of -- JJ: What does that mean? Politically -- LG: Politically awakened. JJ: But I thought you were already political awakened. LG: Yeah. But I took the next step in 1974 to commit myself to an organization. I joined a political party. I joined the Communist Labor Party in ’74. JJ: The Communist Labor Party in San Diego? LG: (Spanish) [00:55:34] in a church that was on Ashland, big church there around Van Buren or whatever. 28 �JJ: Right, right. Panthers -- and we used to have political education classes there at that church. LG: (Spanish) [00:55:48] JJ: That’s where the Communist Labor Party started? LG: In 1974 there was a big meeting. JJ: Nineteen seventy-four? But did you commit to that (inaudible)? LG: Yes. I came to that meeting. [00:56:00] JJ: From San Diego? LG: From San Diego, yeah. JJ: So, how did you get started in San Diego thinking about (overlapping dialogue; inaudible)? LG: I started in San Diego because one of the things -- first, it was getting involved in the Chicano movement for our people’s rights, women’s rights. But then, my vision started expanding to include the working class regardless of color and so forth. JJ: How did your vision start expanding? LG: I think a lot of it -- even though your conditions don’t make you -- don’t change you, they certainly help you. I mentioned before -- I come from a very, very, very poor beginnings (Spanish) [00:56:46] sometimes we would go hungry. And just living in the -- I lived in -- it’s a funny thing. In Sinaloa, I was a healthy child up until seven. Then in order to be closer to my parents, we moved to Mexicali, a border town because California and Mexicali, Baja California. That way my mom could just come over on weekends and see us, her being Hispanic. And so, in 29 �Mexicali, we were very poor. We didn’t have running water. So, I think seeing that poverty and seeing that other people have too much and don’t want to share -- even as a child, even as a young person, you start questioning things. So, I think that -- seeing the injustices, not only socially but economically -JJ: Did you read something? Did you bump into somebody? LG: Well, in Teatro, in Teatro de las Chicanas, we started reading one of the -- and just in study groups. [00:58:00] JJ: The (overlapping dialogues; inaudible) question in study groups? LG: Yes. We read The Women Question. The other thing was in order thing is in order to be part of writing the Teatro, the skits, the actos, we had to read. We had to read the news. We had to read other books about it, some classics on Marx on Engels. JJ: You know, we actually had a Young Lords group in Los Angeles that the Communist Labor Party took over. LG: A Communist Labor Party took over? JJ: They were (inaudible) Labor Party that -- I think it was the group that -- were you in -- did they have a chapter in Los Angeles? LG: Oh yeah, yeah. JJ: They started working with the Young Lords after I left there. LG: Oh, it could be. JJ: And a lot of them became members of that group. And I had also been to San Diego at that time too. 30 �LG: And then, we had a chapter there in San Diego. And then, we also had a chapter in New York. And the chapter in New York was mainly Puerto Rican. [00:59:00] FN: The connection between the Young Lords was [Izzy Chavez?]. Izzy Chavez had joined the chapter you were creating in San Diego. JJ: That’s right. Izzy Chavez -- I’m looking for him. FN: Oh, we know where he’s at. JJ: Oh great (overlapping dialogue; inaudible). FN: So then, what happens is he --- JJ: Izzy Chavez -- I remember him. FN: He’s in Chicago making copies of a newspaper -- I don’t know -- something about some connection to the Young Lords. And he meets Nelson. LG: Oh my gosh. Yeah. Nelson Peery JJ: So, who’s Nelson? LG: Nelson was one of the founders of the Communist Labor Party. JJ: I was underground when they organized that chapter. I was looking for people like Izzy Chavez and then I remembered him. LG: Oh my gosh. Well, we were part of it. JJ: So, that’s what I mean. I thought it was the Communist Labor Party that took over it after I left. LG: Yeah, yeah, most likely, yeah, because they were a grouping of different (Spanish) [00:59:55] and there were different groupings in LA that came together. [01:00:00] JJ: So, he became a member of the Communist -- 31 �LG: What was his name? Do you remember? JJ: Well, you said Izzy Chavez. LG: Oh, Izzy. Oh, (Spanish) [01:00:06]. JJ: Yeah. LG: Oh, okay. Oh, oh, okay. JJ: It’s a small world. FN: And [Mundo Ruiz?]? JJ: Mundo Ruiz. Oh, yeah. (Spanish) [01:00:19] -- I was under when I was organizing the Young Lords chapter. And we were trying to find these people to include them in this project. LG: Oh yeah. We know where Izzy is. We know. And Mundo, I don’t know. FN: I saw him last week. JJ: So, I definitely (overlapping dialogue; inaudible). LG: And then, Nelson lives here in Chicago. JJ: Explain a little bit about Izzy. You know anything (inaudible)? LG: Israel, Izzy. (Spanish) [01:00:41] I have to pronounce the zetas, and it’s hard for me. Izzy, Izzy. (Spanish) [01:00:51] (laughter) So, he used to tell me, “Israel.” I met Israel [01:01:00] back in 1975. He came back from Chicago. He was here in Chicago with his with [Marta?]. And they came back to San Diego to organize a chapter of the Communist Labor Party in San Diego and that’s how I met Izzy because he was in charge of that chapter in San Diego. And his wife -- that’s how I started with the Tribuno del Pueblo. The Tribuno del Pueblo was a publication of the CLP, the Communist Labor Party. It was the bilingual -- or the 32 �Spanish newspaper. And Marta, Israel’s wife, was the editor of the Tribuno de Pueblo. And so, when I joined the party, I left Teatro and Felicitas still mad about that. I left Teatro and I joined the editorial board of Tribuno del Pueblo. And that’s where -- I’ve been working on it since then. Now, the [01:02:00] Tribuno has gone -- okay, the Communist Labor Party is not -- it’s gone. Then out of whatever was left of the Communist Labor Party -- in the ’90s it was dissolved -then there was a national organizing party that was formed to rebuild another organization. And that organization is the Legal Revolutionaries for a New America. And the chair of that organization is [General Baker?]. He’s an auto worker in Detroit. In fact, the Communist Labor Party -- one of the foundations or the backbone of the Communist Labor Party was the auto workers in Detroit. They were -- because they had the League of Revolutionary Black Workers. And the League of Revolutionary Black Workers joined the Communist Labor Party and provided the members and the money because auto workers earn a lot of money [01:03:00] and financed it for a long time. But now it’s a League of Revolutionaries for a New America, and General Baker is the chair. And then, the Tribuno is independent now. It’s not sponsored or published by any organization. It’s independent. It’s based on donations. People get a bundle. They sell it or give them or get donations. And then, we gather enough money. And when we have enough money, then we publish an issue. And it’s actually -the Tribuno del Pueblo became revived after the 2006 marches because -JJ: What were those? Can you -- the 2006 marches? 33 �LG: The 2006 marches was an outcome of a bill, H.B. 4437 that wanted [01:04:00] -that bill was a proposal. It had passed in the House in December of 2005, and it was going into the Senate in 2006. And what it really said -- that anyone that either housed or gave a ride to an undocumented, that aided that person in any way -- that they were going to be arrested and it was going to be a felony. So, the fact that you were going to become a felon just for helping another human being with a ride or social service -- and it was going to include unions and social services. Anyway, that kind of fired the movement and then exploded into the 2006 marches. And it’s the new immigrant rights movement right now. In fact, [Omar?] -- Omar used to be in the Young Lords. [01:05:00] JJ: He was a minister of (inaudible). LG: Omar was one of the founders of the March 10th Movement. That’s what it’s called here in Chicago. JJ: It was part of the same movement? LG: Yeah, because the March 10th Movement did a march -- the 2006 marches -they were mainly around (Spanish) [01:05:20] (laughs) Chicago did their march -thousands of people came out -- in March 10th of 2006, so a couple of days later. Then we did have a primero de mayo marcha. And we had -- I know the official figure said that it wasn’t that many. But I think there was like 500,000 people on the street if not more. It was a beautiful sight. It was just -- JJ: It was here? LG: It was here in Chicago. But then in -- JJ: Five hundred thousand? 34 �LG: In LA, it was a million. [01:06:00] I mean, it was a historic thing of how many Latinos got out into the streets and (Spanish) [01:06:11] and that, pushing the baby carts. That was a symbol of the marches. It’s not one person that you get to a march. It’s like the whole family and la abuelita, los nietos, and everybody just taking the streets and just marching. So, Omar was part of -- is part of that. And it’s still a continuing effort right now. So, that’s how that Tribuno revived after the 2006 marches because -- JJ: Does it come every day? Does it come out -- LG: It comes out, like I said -- depends on the money. Sometimes we get enough to publish it every two months. Sometimes it’s every three months. We’re hoping to publish it at least once a month. [01:07:00] JJ: Do you mail it out or -- LG: Well, we do -- it’s bundles. In 2006 I went to a conference and met with a lot of grassroots organizations on a one-to-one basis, got their information, introduced the paper to them, and then they order bundles. So, we run about a thousand every time and half of those are (audio cut) two thirds of them are distributed by small organizations, grassroot organizations, not the traditional model for [Mapalo?] or LULAC, but the little small organizations, little (Spanish) [01:07:46] and it’s distributed in Rhode Island, Texas, Dallas, California, here, Detroit. But it’s in that way. You might get a bundle of [01:08:00] 500 and then you get it out wherever you go, in your meetings, the restaurants. So, that’s the way it gets distributed. And then, hopefully we’re going to advance to having a listserv. We’re coming up. That way -- this young man is going to help us. We rely a lot 35 �on young people because they have the knowledge to do it. Back to -- I want to say something about -- so, I came in 1981. But I want to talk about a very exciting time in Chicago and that is the Harold Washington campaign. He was running for mayor. He did what no one could and that was unite, unite all of us into a movement. And he always said it was a movement. It was a movement of the people to try to get the city back. [01:09:00] And Harold Washington had the charisma, the spirit, and the love for the people that he wanted to represent. It was amazing being here in Chicago when he was brought in because I would walk down Humboldt Park and it was like we all had our little buttons with the sun, (Spanish) [01:09:23] Harold Washington. And then, we wouldn’t even know each other. But then, they would see my button and I would see their button. And we would go, “Oh, right on.” You know? So, it was like we became -- the city or the people here in Humboldt Park, which is where I live -- everyone was their friends. Everyone was happy to see you. We had something in common. I remember the rally on North Avenue and Western where thousands of Latinos were there to receive him. And it was the -JJ: And it was organized by the Young Lords. [01:10:00] LG: That was organized by the Young Lords. And you were in the podium or on the platform and stuff like that. And I just remembered him walking in, Harold Washington, when he walked in before he got on the stage. And I mean, just hands trying to touch him, trying to shake his hand and it wasn’t because (Spanish) [01:10:24] or anything like that. It was because here was a person that 36 �wanted to represent the interests of our communities (Spanish) [01:10:35]. And then, once he became mayor -JJ: And that was -- wasn’t that one of the first Latino -- LG: Yes, oh yeah. Big one. JJ: It was the first Latino rally for -- LG: Yeah. JJ: And it was organized by the Young Lords. LG: And it was -- I think -- I don’t remember very clearly. But I think it was kind of like kicking off like -- JJ: Kick off. LG: Kick off of his campaign here in [01:11:00] this area and in the Latino community, Humboldt Park, Wicker Park, and also in Pilsen. And also, when I -- Fiesta del Sol, he was already mayor (Spanish) [01:11:14]. You were telling me that he wore a hat that you guys gave him. JJ: (inaudible) LG: Well, in Pilsen, he had a big mariachi hat. And he talked to the people because he was under a lot of attack. Even though he was mayor, he was under a lot of attack. LIAM: (inaudible) LG: Hello, sweetie. Come here. Come here. Want to be on TV? (Spanish) JJ: What’s his name? 37 �LG: His name is [Liam?] and he’s one of my grandsons. I have two granddaughters. Their names are [Katelyn?] and [Gwenyth?]. Say hi. [01:12:00] Say hi. No? You want to go with grandpa now? L: No. LG: No? Okay. Well, you can sit here and write. JJ: So, that was (inaudible) at that time. LG: Yeah. JJ: And it actually was on -- what floor was it? LG: Yeah because he had to go up the stairs. JJ: No elevator. LG: Of course I was young then so I could -- JJ: But it was bad. LG: Yeah. It was. It was like standing. JJ: Did you pay to get in? LG: No, (Spanish) [01:12:28]. (laughter) JJ: Everybody thought (inaudible) but they had tickets. LG: Yeah, yeah. And it was organized (Spanish) [01:12:41], no? I mean, I remember because I remember -- it was like -- I didn’t expect that many people to be there from that community (Spanish) [01:12:52]. But that’s -- he was a great man. JJ: And did you go to the other rally in [Algo?] Park or no, the big one? [01:13:00] LG: I don’t remember. JJ: Like a parade. 38 �LG: No, I don’t remember that. I remember that we certainly organized to get the vote for him. That was the first time that I was -- I became involved in politics, electoral politics because it was very important for people to come out and vote for Harold. And so, I -- knocking on doors, telling them the information and so forth and then that day of the election going to get the people to come, help them and remind them so forth. JJ: So, how did you feel when he won? I mean, because we’re used to picketing, right? But now we got a mayor. So, how did you feel? LG: Great. I felt like I owned the city, like the city was mine, that it was the people’s, the city, and full of hope that things were going to change, that there was a person that really [01:14:00] wanted to fight for our interests. And it was a fight. I mean, that was one of the things he would tell us even after he became mayor and he would talk in different places. He would say, “I’m fighting. But I can’t fight alone. I need you. You represent the movement. You’ve got to be behind me and fighting for your program.” He had a program. JOSE: (Spanish) [01:14:27] LG: I’m videotaping, Jose. JJ: [Overlapping dialogue; inaudible] LG: I know. JJ: I got [inaudible]. J: Come on. Let’s change your diaper. (laughter) LG: Bye. J: Say bye. 39 �LG: It was hot outside. Okay. (Spanish) [01:14:51] So, anyway -- so, yeah. [01:15:00] Now going back to Lincoln Park. But it was a great experience. It was a good way of getting introduced to Chicago. I became a judge, I mean, a judge in the elections. During the elections, the election day they needed people to be judges. They have -- you know, to make sure that everything is legal, that people that come in to vote, they are in the roster, that it’s the right address and everything. And that’s how we did. The Harold Washington campaign had people there, and I was one of them. I played a very small role. I was more like whatever they needed when they could and stuff like that. There were other people that worked hard. JJ: But the election was in the precinct. There was one. [01:16:00] So, it was an important one. LG: At that point I lived in Homan and Potomac. He had a good support there. JJ: And did he win in the Latino area? LG: Yeah. (Spanish) [01:16:16] that machine was very strong in Wicker Park, the Democratic Party machine. I mean, it’s years of them -- the precinct captain going around, telling people who to vote for, and giving them jobs and whatever. That’s the machine. And it was hard to break. JJ: But we broke them. LG: Yes, yes, remember that shock. JJ: That’s what I understand the (inaudible) we broke the machine here. LG: Exactly, the machine was broken. It was broken already. But that was the blow that -- and it was a great time to be involved in politics. 40 �JJ: So, at least we know -- even though we’re [01:17:00] far from it right now, we know what has to be done. LG: Yes, yes (inaudible). We got to have a program of what people need. JJ: What do you think we have to do? What were the lessons? LG: (Spanish) [01:17:19], what I learned from it was that Harold Washington was not - had a program, had a program based on what people needed in the communities, education, housing, fighting the question of issues of drugs and so forth. And he would tell the people, “This is what I’m going to do. This is my platform. This is my program.” And when he was elected mayor, he set out to do that. It’s not like other candidates that say, “(Spanish [01:17:52].” Once they become whatever office they win, then (Spanish). [01:18:00] So, I think to me it’s -- JJ: Well, what happened? You set out to do it. But what happened? LG: What happened to him? JJ: After he got elected. LG: He told the people to fight for the program. JJ: What about you (inaudible) were they supportive? LG: Oh yeah. [01:18:14] (Spanish) and the Black unity of -- at that time, it was really [Losano?]. [Chuy?] was not an alderman, Chuy Garcia. But he was with [Rudy?]. They worked together. And then, [Rush, Bobby Rush?]. (Spanish) [01:18:36]. And [Soliz?] wasn’t there. [Gutierrez?] was not an alderman. JJ: No, he wasn’t. In fact, he was a -- LG: He was a state -- 41 �JJ: He was a precinct member, precinct (inaudible) (laughs) at that time. LG: At that time? JJ: And then, he ran for alderman and we supported him. LG: Yeah, yeah, yeah. JJ: But he was [01:19:00] one of our precinct candidates (inaudible). LG: It opened things up, I think, for -- JJ: Because there were two main offices, [West Town Coalition?] and the one we had on Fullerton, those two main offices on the north side. LG: It was a great time. But I think as far as lessons, it’s to find out what are the needs of people. And based on the needs of people -- I mean, not people -- then you do that. You know? You set out to do that because after all, it’s our tax money. It’s not like they’re going to get money from somewhere else. It’s the taxes that we pay. So, therefore, they should go for what we need, whether it be better schools, more schools, lower classrooms, parks, whatever. And I think sometimes new mayors come in and they think the money’s theirs to do what they want or their [01:20:00] groupings, their friends. And it’s not. So, the money has to go back to the people because it’s the people that put that money there through our taxes. And I think that’s certainly what Harold Washington was trying to do. It was sad that he died. JJ: So, after that you kept working with the -- LG: I kept working with the Tribuno. And also, I became a little bit more -- after the election, I didn’t keep being active in the electoral politics that much except for 42 �certain people that would come around. Like right now, I’m a little bit active with Rudy Lozano, Jr., with his campaign and stuff like that. JJ: Who was Rudy Lozano, Sr.? LG: Rudy Lozano, Sr. was the first Latino alderman and from Pilsen. And he was [01:21:00] a trade unionist, and he was a very progressive person that was killed. And even though they say it was just a criminal act with no reasons -- there was no politics behind -- I tend to think that someone wanted him dead because of what he did in the community and who he represented. He certainly was an advocate for the rights of the undocumented. And at the time that he died, he was organizing undocumented workers. And that’s something that his son, Rudy Lozano, Jr. has also continued and who’s very dear to him as far as the Latino community and the needs and stuff like that. JJ: And you’re working with him right now? [01:22:00] LG: No, just through his campaign, the last campaign that he had. Whatever I can do, I do that. So, that’s someone that I think has a good vision of where Chicago needs to go. I mean, of course, you start small. But eventually, who knows? We might have a Latino president. (laughs) JJ: And you went also to a reunion. LG: Yes. I would publish and our book and everything the Teatro de las Chicanas book in 2008. And then, we -- the Chicanas started getting together again more frequently. But one of the times that we did get together was in -- (Spanish) [01:22:45], 2000 and -- JJ: Two thousand. 43 �LG: Two thousand. But two years ago. Jose said three years. But 2000. FN: Delia Ravelo was still alive. LG: But she didn’t come, did she? FN: No, no, she didn’t. She was in Europe. LG: Yeah. [01:23:00] The Young Lords were having a reunion in Grand Rapids and [Feliz?] -- I guess she got a message from someone that they were going to have a reunion. And so, she organized -- Feliz is a good organizer. She organized -about six of us -- well, I’m here already -- to come to Chicago and to perform. JJ: (inaudible) LG: First they came to Chicago. They stayed in my house, six of them in one room. (laughter) (inaudible) Actually, we stayed up all night. We went to [Rosa’s?] to listen to blues and to another place. FN: Golden something. LG: Gold Mines or Mines something to listen. We stayed up until four or five o’clock in the morning. Now, we’re middle-aged women. (laughter) But we could still kick it. And Jose was our chauffer. He drove us around all over the place. He even took us to Grand Rapids. [01:24:00] Anyway, so, after that, at eight o’clock in the morning, we jump into the van and go to Grand Rapids to meet the Young Lords because we have heard a lot of stories of the Young Lords. And we were very excited to meet them, as a group, and to be part of this celebration and this reunion. It was someone -- a group that we heard about when -- like I was saying before -- back in the ’70s. And now, to actually meet them was really an honor for a lot of us. I know [Inda?] was so excited and [Peggy?] and [Margie?] 44 �and [Gloria?] and myself. And so, as a way of contributing to this celebration, to this reunion, Felicitas wrote an acto on the Lincoln Park gentrification, that whole process that had happened. JJ: It was called “Madre de Corazon.” FN: Oh, yeah. LG: Yeah, “Madre de Corazon.” [01:25:00] JJ: Because we had -- (Spanish) [01:25:02] was our symbol. LG: Oh, okay. Yeah. And it was fun doing it. (Spanish) [01:25:10] JJ: That was the reason. Was that the reasoning? FN: Yeah. [“A La Brava”?]. I think the women got the lines when they boarded the plane. And in the four hours from California to here, they had to learn them. And then, I decided I was not going to act. I was too shy. I wasn’t going to do nothing anymore, no acting for me. But then, I got so excited about it that I told Feliz, “Okay. I can be in the play, but I won’t say nothing. Don’t give me any lines.” So, I was in the -- I think one of the skits that we were driving this car and we’re looking -- we’re being shown how gentrified Lincoln Park was. And they were telling us what it used to be and how many Puerto Ricans lived in there and how they were pushed [01:26:00] into Humboldt Park and so forth. And so, I was in (inaudible). (laughter) And then, of course, we got Omar to do the husband of Inda. And he -- JJ: And you had Angie. LG: And Angie too. And then, we -- JJ: And you had the (inaudible) was in. 45 �LG: Yeah, [Obed?] también and then, we -- JJ: And the kids. LG: And then we got two women from Palm Springs or (inaudible). They had never done anything. And then, one was just going through the sign. And then, we had two little kids because they were part of -- they were in the woods and were trying to learn the history and so forth. It was really fun. It was really nice and -- JJ: You were just trying to get some groups back together. LG: Yeah. JJ: So, it was real grassroots because everyone was just trying to get back together. LG: And it was really good because -- JJ: We actually had two more camps after that. LG: Oh really? JJ: That were (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) yeah. LG: That’s great. [01:27:00] [“Dalichon?”] was great. (laughs) JJ: (inaudible) We got it from the Amish too. LG: Oh really? JJ: So, it wasn’t greatly expected. We went and got a real live pig and they killed it, you know, typical Puerto Rican -- Latino style, whatever. LG: Latino style, yeah. You know what was really important for me was to listen to the testimonials because I knew they were being taped. But to listen to your story, to Omar, to [Ben?], some of the women that were there and even Felicitas got up. And it was really good the way it was done because it wasn’t you talking about it but it was someone else. 46 �JJ: They took over the mic. They took over the mic. They wanted it so bad that they took over the mic. It lasted about five hours. LG: Oh my gosh. It was all day. But it was great. It was really great. It was [01:28:00] a good experience. JJ: Our 40th anniversary was the same way. They take over the mic and (overlapping dialogue; inaudible). LG: Well, we went -- for some reason, you were in town, or did you come for that, Felicitas? FN: What’s that? JJ: The 40th anniversary. LG: Over at [The Paul?]? JJ: No, no -- yeah, that’s where -- FN: Yes, yeah. They were really crowded (overlapping dialogue; inaudible). JJ: That’s where [Cindy?] had her famous -- (laughs) LG: Oh, at the church. FN: At the church. Yeah, in the church. JJ: In the church. You remember that, right? FN: Yeah. LG: Yes, I remember that. Pobrecito [Chacho?]. (laughter) JJ: What happened? What happened? LG: (Spanish) [01:28:34] revolutionary love. (laughs) JJ: What did Felicitas do? She definitely got me by surprise. 47 �LG: Really? Oh, you don’t want me to say it again what she said? (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) JJ: Well, you don’t have to say that but if you could describe what happened. What do you remember? LG: What I remember from -- well, one of the things -- JJ: Because actually did you speak after that? You were singing. FN: Yeah. [01:29:00] She did. JJ: Yeah, because you were good. You were singing. FN: (inaudible). LG: (Spanish) [01:29:03] JJ: Yeah, but you spoke very serious. LG: Oh, I didn’t talk about my -- JJ: And the other person -- I don’t know who the other was. He was laughing at me. But it’s alright. FN: Oh, [Liz Manuelas?]. (Spanish) [01:29:15] JJ: Oh, that’s right. Yeah. And Liz stood next to Felicitas and was laughing at me, (laughter) enjoying the whole scene. But you came afterwards and was serious. It was good. LG: Well, I had to after half and hour of “Ese Amor.” (laughter) But I think it was really good. JJ: Well, that happened? What happened? (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) LG: I think that was the first I had met in person. JJ: I’m still trying to organize the darn thing. 48 �LG: I love [Edith Morales?]. JJ: I said, “What did she just say?” LG: I know. It was a pleasure and an honor meeting Edith Morales. And thanks to you, the Chicanas made contact with her. And when we go to New York, we try to see her every time. We were just there this year. Earlier this year she got an [01:30:00] award and we went to be part of the celebration. JJ: Oh, okay, good. LG: You know what I learned from what she said? It’s like you meet someone and you (Spanish) [01:30:19]. JJ: Did I say that in there? LG: No, no, no. FN: Another time. LG: (Spanish) [01:30:36]. But anyway, no, no, you didn’t say anything. You couldn’t even talk. (laughs) After that, you -- but what I learned is that things happen. We fall in love. But some of us are of a different mold (Spanish) [01:30:54] that, yes, love is [01:31:00] important but also our vision of what we want, of the world we want is stronger or if not as strong as that. And so, we fail at certain things, but we keep on going. Because it would have been easy. Felicitas was -- what -21? I mean, you’re not old at all. She was a young girl. She could have just gotten mad and left. And had she left, she would have missed all that experience of meeting all of you guys, of working with you, of doing the murals, of meeting other people and then being able to bring it to San Diego to us, the Chicanas. So, in a way, it’s like yeah, (Spanish) [01:31:44] life continues and your vision and 49 �your mission -- you continue in that path. (Spanish) [01:31:53] That’s what I learned [01:32:00] from what you said. JJ: You enjoyed it (inaudible). LG: Oh my gosh. I didn’t know she was going to do it. I didn’t know she was going to do it. I was shocked, surprised. JJ: But my mind is -- I got this (inaudible) all these people are taking over. What am I going to do? LG: (Spanish) [01:32:18] (laughter) It wasn’t just like -- JJ: And I wanted her to speak because a respect for the work that she did. I mean, and of putting together -- I mean, he helped to unite the movement or Puertorriqueno Chicanos. So, that was important. LG: I remember -- JJ: And it’s -- my part of the responsibility is head of the group. I get attacked every day. I mean, I have to maintain the group unity all the time. LG: Well, I think you do very well. JJ: I have to [01:33:00] erase -- get away from the personal sometimes. LG: The other thing we came -- but (overlapping dialogue; inaudible). Yeah, (Spanish) [01:33:06] -- remember they were doing something about the murals. They had taken pictures or something at DePaul? JJ: Right, right. LG: That was the other time we went. We were there. JJ: Yeah. You went to the DePaul. LG: I went to the DePaul. 50 �JJ: At the 40th anniversary. That was the -- LG: Yeah. JJ: Because we had two rallies. We had one at DePaul and then we wanted to have another one in the community. LG: Okay, so we went to both. JJ: So, you went to both. LG: Yes. But the one at DePaul -- (Spanish) [01:33:34]. JJ: Right, (Spanish) [01:33:40]. Well, the other thing -- we had a lot of people too because it was a bigger space, more (overlapping dialogue; inaudible). LG: Oh, yes, yes. (Spanish) [01:33:46] JJ: And the more community (inaudible) LG: (Spanish) [01:33:50] (laughter) JJ: People didn’t bring it up. [01:34:00] LG: But it was good. It was good. So, I really thank Felicitas for bringing -- for putting me in touch with you and through you the Young Lords and whatever. It’s been a very valuable -- JJ: I appreciate the Teatro and what they did for us. I mean, they helped us each time. So, I appreciate that. You’re hoping it’s enough. What else? What’s your final thoughts? LG: Right now? JJ: Yeah. LG: I was saying cut. (laughter) (Spanish) [01:34:31] -- now I’m going to speak Spanish, but no, I’m going to say it in English. I think our lives -- I was telling 51 �Feliz, we must be getting old, very old because a couple of people want us to -you know, videotape us through what experiences (inaudible) or whatever. But it’s good to at this age and to have lived through the things I have lived through. [01:35:00] The Chicano movement was certainly an eye opener. The peace movement, the women’s movement -- and to have continued working towards a better society, a better world, a better human-ness that we need -- I think that’s so important. I have friends from back then that say -- that have told me, “Don’t you get tired? Why don’t you give up? Things are never going to change.” And I think I have to say that Chicanas don’t give up. (laughs) If anything that you have to learn from us is that the Chicanas don’t give up and the people from the movement -- that if you really, really, really believe in what you fought back when you were young, those ideals are like -- they continue. They make you go through a certain path. [01:36:00] And I have never, never, never regretted the path that I have taken of seeing something that’s wrong and wanting to make it right. I’ve been happy. I’ve found my husband in the movement. I’ve been married 40 years. I have two kids, or two young men. And I try to instill in them the same passion that I have for humanity. JJ: What’s your other son’s name? LG: My sons -- well, the oldest one is [Emilio Nicholas?] and the younger one is [Adrian Cortez?]. And they’re both in the movement in their own way, not the way I did it, but the way they did it. My oldest son designs the Tribuno. He’s a professional designer. I don’t pay him anything. But this is the paper that we publish every two months. And he designs. [01:37:00] And then, my younger son 52 �takes pictures, and I always use his pictures. And then, (Spanish) [01:37:08] that I can find that can proof it in English because my English is not that good, then I get my husband to do it. (laughter) I get Jose and he starts proofing the English. So, it’s a family effort. But I do -- am involved in my sons and everything. It's for them to know that there is something else besides material things. (Spanish) [01:37:36] and that our -- it’s a privilege to be part of change. And I think we owe our responsibility to this present -- for my generation, this present generation, and the future generation to leave a better world for them and not to leave it in the hands [01:38:00] of the wealthy, the capitalists, the corporations that we know which direction they’re taking. I mean, (Spanish) [01:38:09] money, money, money (Spanish) [01:38:10] the schools are being closed, the -- everything that we gained back in the ’70s, our rights, are being taken away. I mean, I was talking to Felicitas last night. I mean, I am astonished of what this guy, you know, the Republican said about the -- well, it’s -- what is it? If you get pregnant after a rape, then it’s not a real rape. I mean, this is the 21st century and someone has those thoughts and that mentality in relation to women and stuff like that. So, we cannot go back to where we were before the ’70s and before the ’60s. We’ve got to go forward. And that kind of mentality in this world [01:39:00] is not -- it cannot be accepted but neither can it be accepted that you spend more money -- that you don’t want to spend money on healthcare, that you don’t want -- for everyone. A person is sick and needs healthcare -- homelessness is growing in this country when there are so many empty homes. And what do they do with the homes? It’s cheaper to -- the banks can’t sell them, so it’s cheaper to destroy 53 �them. So, there has to be a better society where we really put human needs first and stop doing what they’re doing. One last thing. I support for this presidential elections -- I support the Green Party’s candidate, Jill Stein. And in one of the interviews that she did, she said [01:40:00] -- they asked, “Well, what if you don’t win this election?” And she says, “But you have to begin in order to win. You have to start.” And I really agree with her. We’re so used to choosing the lesser of two evils because we’re going to lose. But if we don’t lose -- if we don’t get a Republican -- I mean, a Democrat, then we’re going to have a Republican. But they both represent the same capitalist interests, the rich and the wealthy. They’re not representing any of us. I don’t care if Obama is Black. I think we’ve got to look beyond color and beyond gender. We’ve got to look at -- like what we did in Harold Washington’s campaign -- what is the program and then holding them responsible to do it. But I fear for the youth. I work as an interpreter. I go to the Cook County jail. We have about [01:41:00] 11,000 inmates. They’re young. They’re like -- the majority are 17 to 25. The women’s population is growing. I can’t -- then there’s no jobs. And the say, “Okay, well high school diploma is not good enough.” But maybe college -- go to college. But you go to college. It’s not enough. Something is wrong. I think we need to take responsibility and really fight to change it. So, that’s all I want to say. JJ: I appreciate that. Thank you very much. 54 � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/e9a150b5c2035ccf0ef72296a93f1186.mp4 817012c74525812bb41a6dbfc5c6c937 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Young Lords in Lincoln Park Collection Subject The topic of the resource Young Lords (Organization) Puerto Ricans--United States Civil Rights--United States--History Lincoln Park (Chicago, Ill.) Personal narratives Social justice Community activists--Illinois--Chicago Description An account of the resource Collection of oral history interviews and digitized materials documenting the history of the Young Lords Organization in Lincoln Park, Chicago. Interviews were conducted by Young Lords' founder, José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez, and documents were digitized from Mr. Jiménez' archives. The Young Lords in Lincoln Park collection grows out of the ongoing struggle for fair housing, self-determination, and human rights that was launched by Mr. José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez, founder of the Young Lords Movement. This project is dedicated to documenting the history of the displacement of Puerto Ricans, Mejicanos, other Latinos, and the poor from Lincoln Park, as well as the history of the Young Lords nationwide. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Jiménez, José, 1948- Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/491">Young Lords in Lincoln Park collection (RHC-65)</a> Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-04-25 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Language A language of the resource eng spa Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-65 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 2012-2017 Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Título Spanish language Title entry Larua Garcia vídeo entresvista y biografía Sujetos Spanish language Subject terms Young Lords (Organización) Puertorriqueños--Estados Unidos Derechos civiles--Estados Unidos--Historia Lincoln Park (Chicago, Ill.) Narrativas personales Justicia social Activistas comunitarios--Illinois--Chicago Source <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/491">Young Lords in Lincoln Park (RHC-65)</a> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-65_Garcia_Laura Title A name given to the resource Laura Garcia video interview and transcript Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Garcia, Laura Description An account of the resource 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. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Jiménez, José, 1948- Subject The topic of the resource Young Lords (Organization) Puerto Ricans--United States Civil Rights--United States--History Lincoln Park (Chicago, Ill.) Personal narratives Social justice Community activists--Illinois--Chicago Language A language of the resource eng Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2012-08-25 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/e87275e168bfd60ea900edbe367447af.pdf 9b5802dddc4798eaefb9be298b3c4f9f PDF Text Text Young Lords In Lincoln Park Interviewee: Carmen Garcia Interviewer: Jose Jimenez Location: Grand Valley State University Special Collections Date: 11/16/2012 Runtime: 02:07:23 Biography and Description Oral history of Carmen Garcia, interviewed by Jose “Cha-Cha” Jimenez on November 16, 2012 about the Young Lords in Lincoln Park. "The Young Lords in Lincoln Park" collection grows out of decades of work to more fully document the history of Chicago's Puerto Rican community which gave birth to the Young Lords Organization and later, the Young Lords Party. Founded by Mr. José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez, the Young Lords became one of the premier struggles for international human rights. Where thriving church congregations, social and �political clubs, restaurants, groceries, and family residences once flourished, successive waves of urban renewal and gentrification forcibly displaced most of those Puerto Ricans, Mejicanos, other Latinos, working-class and impoverished families, and their children in the 1950s and 1960s. Today these same families and activists also risk losing their history. � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/b5bdfe2b6addf5fb9d2fc92d3aa98794.mp4 a9403062059ac2345b1158bcae31a1a6 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Young Lords in Lincoln Park Collection Subject The topic of the resource Young Lords (Organization) Puerto Ricans--United States Civil Rights--United States--History Lincoln Park (Chicago, Ill.) Personal narratives Social justice Community activists--Illinois--Chicago Description An account of the resource Collection of oral history interviews and digitized materials documenting the history of the Young Lords Organization in Lincoln Park, Chicago. Interviews were conducted by Young Lords' founder, José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez, and documents were digitized from Mr. Jiménez' archives. The Young Lords in Lincoln Park collection grows out of the ongoing struggle for fair housing, self-determination, and human rights that was launched by Mr. José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez, founder of the Young Lords Movement. This project is dedicated to documenting the history of the displacement of Puerto Ricans, Mejicanos, other Latinos, and the poor from Lincoln Park, as well as the history of the Young Lords nationwide. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Jiménez, José, 1948- Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/491">Young Lords in Lincoln Park collection (RHC-65)</a> Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-04-25 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Language A language of the resource eng spa Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-65 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 2012-2017 Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Título Spanish language Title entry Carmen Garcia vídeo entrevista y biografía Descripción Spanish language Description entry La historia oral de Carmen Garcia, entrevistado por Jose 'Cha-Cha' Jimenez el 11/16/2012 acerca de los Young Lords en Lincoln Park. Sujetos Spanish language Subject terms Young Lords (Organización) Puertorriqueños--Estados Unidos Derechos civiles--Estados Unidos--Historia Lincoln Park (Chicago, Ill.) Mexicano-Americanos--Relatos personales Justicia social Activistas comunitarios--Illinois--Chicago Mexico-Americanos--Illinois--Chicago--Condiciones sociales Relaciones raciales Conflicto social Identitad cultural Partido Pantera Negra. Illinois Capí­tulo Source <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/491">Young Lords in Lincoln Park (RHC-65)</a> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-65_Garcia_Carmen Title A name given to the resource Carmen Garcia video interview and biography Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Garcia, Carmen Description An account of the resource Oral history of Carmen Garcia, interviewed by Jose 'Cha-Cha' Jimenez, on 11/16/2012 about the Young Lords in Lincoln Park. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Jimenez, Jose, 1948- Subject The topic of the resource Young Lords (Organization) Puerto Ricans--United States Civil Rights--United States--History Lincoln Park (Chicago, Ill.) Mexican Americans--Personal narratives Social justice Community activists--Illinois--Chicago Mexican Americans--Illinois--Chicago--Social conditions Race relations Social conflict Cultural identity Black Panther Party. Illinois Chapter Language A language of the resource spa Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2012-11-16 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/9f1362d71c184266b9c59952baded68b.pdf 5d1434f15e7fbbfc7248237a10e4029e PDF Text Text Young Lords In Lincoln Park Interviewee: Hilda E. Frontany Interviewers: José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez Location: Grand Valley State University Special Collections Date: 3/30/2012 Biography and Description 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. To Puerto Ricans living in the area at that time, the neighborhood boundaries made no difference; to them, this was the same Puerto Rican barrio where families were being evicted by a 50-year master plan carried out by city hall. As a member of the Lakeview Citizens Council, Ms. Frontany argued and fought within the organization, using Saul Alinsky’s strategies to ensure that Latino voices were being heard, and ultimately forming the Lakeview Latin American Citizens Council. Ms. Frontany’s work with the Council was many-fold. In addition to providing a public voice for Latinos and helping to support homeowners who targeted by building inspectors, the Council ran a food pantry and taught G.E.D. and E.S.L. (English as a Second Language) classes. Today, she attends services at the San Lucas United Church of Christ and remains a prominent leader within Chicago’s Puerto Rican community. �Transcript JOSE JIMENEZ: So, go ahead and start [with your name?] HILDA FRONTANY: Okay. My name is Hilda Frontany. I was born June 16, 1943 in Arecibo, Puerto Rico. My father was born in San Sebastián, [Los Pepinos?]. My mom was born in Arecibo, Barrio Esperanza. JJ: What do you mean Los Pepinos? What is that? HF: That’s a little town up in the mountains. My mother was born in Esperanza. For a description of where that is in Puerto Rico, that’s where Cornell University built the world’s largest radar unit. Arecibo, Puerto Rico. I came to the United States around 1953, I believe. I was around 10 years old. It was myself and three younger brothers. My father had come earlier, and [00:01:00] he worked in the butcher yards, and then he sent for us. We settled around the area of -- JJ: You said butcher yards. Where was that? HF: That was the butcher yards on 47th and Ashland, where they used to do all the hog butchering, et cetera, yeah. The yards. JJ: So, he was working there [what time of the year?]? HF: That must have been in the ’50s or so. Yeah, ’cause we came in ’53. Yeah. JJ: Can you tell me his name and --? HF: My father’s name was [Leonor Diaz Roman?]. My mother was [Blanca López Ruiz?]. My mother was the person that was like the person that kind of got me involved in seeing community, working in community, but, back then, it was through the church. Where [00:02:00] we settled was around the area -- 1 �JJ: Wait, so, you said she was involved with the church. Now, what church and where? HF: We settled around Erie, LaSalle, Chicago and state area, and the church that was there was Holy Name Cathedral, the mother of all Roman Catholic churches back then. And so -- JJ: So, your mother was active in (overlapping dialogue; inaudible). HF: My mother was very active there. The group that was there, they started out with the Caballeros de San Juan, [my dad?], which was the Knights of St. John, which -- later on, they formed many councils throughout Chicago, and they created a credit union for all their members. My mother was very involved in terms of making certain that we had a Spanish Mass, and ministering to the people in the community who were newcomers, and getting [00:03:00] the church involved in assisting them. JJ: So, were there a lot of Spanish-speaking people in that area? HF: There were quite a few Spanish-speaking people. JJ: And this is in ’53. HF: This is in 1953. That Italian community there didn’t want us there, but we survived it. JJ: In what ways did they not want you there? I mean, why do you say that? HF: Because, when my father used to go to the [Keyman’s Club?] and all of that with other Puerto Ricans, they would ask them to leave, so that was a sign that they didn’t want you there. When we were all living on Erie and LaSalle, they came after the group of men that used to live in that building, and the men had to 2 �actually go up on top of the roof with blocks of ice from Bowman Dairy Company, and they used the blocks of ice to throw down at the Italians to defend themselves. So, those were signs that we weren’t wanted in that neighborhood initially. JJ: [00:04:00] And so, because the neighborhood was [firstly?] Italian, and then it was changed over. HF: Yes, and then it was changing. Yes. We’re talking about, you know, crossing the bridge and being downtown. Yeah. JJ: At that time. Okay. Was it a housing program that changed in the community, or was it more natural at that time? HF: At that time, the community there began to change in terms of the development that began to cause our families to move further north or northwest. Many families had to move north on Clark towards Armitage, towards Halsted. Others ended up living further west, but, yeah, it was a high displacement of families through development. JJ: What were some of the boundaries, I mean, that you recall? What were some of the streets? HF: That I recall? Well, I remember that, you know -- JJ: ’Cause I believe they called it La Clark, that neighborhood. Is that correct, or am I --? HF: Now, they call it Near North. JJ: [00:05:00] Near North. (inaudible) [puertorriqueños?] 3 �HF: For the Puerto Ricans. We were -- let’s see -- north of the Chicago River, all the way up to Armitage. Then, east -- I mean west of Michigan Avenue, all the way towards Orleans. And so, many of the people that left the Catholic Church Holy Name in protest because we weren’t being given the main church for the Spanish Mass -- we were in the basement. We migrated to a church on Orleans and Division Street. JJ: I’ve heard that in other churches, like St. Michael’s [and that?]. So, was this by choice? Did the Latinos want their own space in the basement, or this -- why was this? HF: No, it was not by choice. That’s all that they were willing to give us for our Spanish Mass. And so, with my mother’s leadership and the leadership of [00:06:00] many of the other men that were involved in the Caballeros de San Juan, they moved the congregation to St. Joseph’s Church on Orleans, near Division. JJ: Okay. How old were you at that time? You were still young. HF: I was still young, but -- JJ: Do you recall (overlapping dialogue; inaudible)? HF: -- as that was happening, I remember my mother -- because a lot of the stuff was -- a lot of the work that was being done and a lot of the way that the families used to network and try to survive the shock of coming into Chicago from Puerto Rico, not knowing the language, was through the church at that time. And so, I remember my mother -- they formed a group for the older women called the Women of the Sacred Heart, Las Damas del Sagrado Corazón. For the younger 4 �girls like myself, we were Hijas de María, Daughters of Mary. The men had their own organization called [00:07:00] the Knights of St. John, Caballeros de San Juan. And so, it was all related to the church and to the religious practices, but, through that, there was some organizing being done in terms of the families. There was some work being done with the -- at that time, I remember that it was the Puerto Rican Mutual Aid Society that had come in, and many Puerto Ricans needed assistance with social services. So, the church groups would send them to Puerto Rican Mutual Aid Society to try to get assistance for them. JJ: And where were they located, the Puerto Rican Mutual Aid Society? HF: They were located around the area of Chicago, Ashland, Ohio. Carlos “Caribe” Ruiz later on was one of the -- JJ: Oh, [Casa Central?] -- HF: -- [movers?]. Yes. JJ: -- (inaudible) at that time. Carlos “Caribe” Ruiz. Okay. HF: Yeah. JJ: Well, Carlos “Caribe” Ruiz [00:08:00] was also on (inaudible) and North Avenue. HF: That’s correct, yeah. JJ: Okay. Okay. So, now, you’re at St. Joseph’s. Did you go to the elementary school there, or what school were you going to? HF: First, I started out at William B. Ogden School, where I did a lot of crying because I didn’t understand the language, and -- JJ: Crying? [What do you?] --? 5 �HF: Well, yes, because I didn’t know what the kids were saying to me, so I would go home crying, say, “I don’t want to go back there.” JJ: Oh, crying. Crying. Crying. HF: Crying. Actually cried. I didn’t understand the language, you know? I couldn’t keep up, and I didn’t want to be there, but, eventually, you make up your mind that you’re going to dominate the language. And so, we were taken out of William B. Ogden, and then put into Holy Name Cathedral, and that’s where I went to grade school. JJ: So, you were crying because you wanted to very bad [00:09:00] to understand -- HF: Understand what was going on, understand what was happening. JJ: [You weren’t being put down or anything?]? HF: I didn’t know what they were saying to me, so I didn’t know if they were put downs or being invited to join in the play groups or whatever. JJ: But you were in the first and second grade or -- HF: Yes. JJ: -- something like that (overlapping dialogue; inaudible). HF: Right. Yes. JJ: And you said you were living on Erie? HF: We were living on Erie Street, yes. JJ: Okay. By LaSalle? HF: Erie near LaSalle. Yes. Yes. And then, we moved to Superior and State, and then we lived on Ontario and State. So, we were kind of in the same circle. JJ: (inaudible). What was the housing stock at that time? What --? 6 �HF: It was all rental units. A building with maybe 20 units, the first one that we moved into. The second one, it was about -- two, four -- six or eight units. So, it was that kind of rental property. JJ: Okay. Because some people, they lived in, like, hotels [00:10:00] and (overlapping dialogue; inaudible). HF: Well, yes. There were a couple of -- what we now call the transient motels, uhhuh, that -- like the Wacker Hotel. A lot of young, single, Puerto Rican males lived at the Wacker Hotel. Yeah. JJ: Okay. Did your family just come by itself, or were there other relatives near you? HF: First, my father came with a couple of his nephews, and then we came, and then, after that, it seemed that more family came over. And then, my father, who was in Puerto Rico, he used to be a barber, and he also used to work in the sugar cane crops. When he came over here, I remember he would serve like the cook for a group of men that would come in the evenings and pick up their fiambreras or their containers full of food, [00:11:00] and he also would cut their hair. So, you know, that was the type of situation that we had. JJ: So, he was self-employed (overlapping dialogue; inaudible). HF: Self-employment too. JJ: But this was in his apartment -- HF: This was in our apartment, yes. Yes. JJ: -- that he would cut hair. HF: Yeah. Yeah. JJ: Okay. Where did some of the other people work at that time? 7 �HF: They were at -- I think it was called the Holloway Candy Company that they worked at. Some other people worked at some of the factories where they made those plastic gloves. JJ: Were there factories nearby? HF: There were some factories nearby, yeah. There was the Continental Coffee Company that was there on LaSalle. Right next to it, practically, was the Bowman Dairy Company, so they were employed there. So, the glove-making company ’cause my mom worked at it for a while -- but a lot of them were working in the [00:12:00] hotels that were in the nearby area. Like, south on Michigan and on State, et cetera. Mm-hmm. JJ: Okay. Some of the hotels were -- like the Palmer House, was that one? HF: Palmer House. I can’t remember the one my uncle worked at, but hotels primarily, yeah. JJ: Okay. So, now, you’re at St. Joseph. Were you attending school there? HF: No. I was still attending school. St. Joseph became the place to go to church on Sundays and do some activities with the groups that we had formed, but I was still attending Holy Name Cathedral, the school. JJ: So, [there was no longer?] Spanish Mass at Holy Name Cathedral? HF: No. No. JJ: So, now, it’s at St. Joseph’s. HF: At St. Joseph’s. JJ: So, the whole Mass moved (overlapping dialogue; inaudible). HF: Practically the whole Mass moved with the community, yeah. 8 �JJ: So, the community was moved at that time, basically. HF: Yes. JJ: And do you recall anything regarding the Masses at St. Joseph, or -- I mean, were there a lot of people attending, or --? HF: There was [00:13:00] a lot of people attending, and I think the attract-- JJ: A hundred, two hundred? HF: I couldn’t tell you numbers, but I do know that we were -- you know, it was a smaller church, full to capacity, and there was a lot of celebrating happening. As you know, Puerto Ricans, we’re all very celebratory in terms of -- El Día de Los Reyes, we throw a party for the children, the Three Kings Day. We would throw parties using the facility at the church to bring families together in celebration, and that’s what I remember. Mm-hmm. JJ: Okay. So, where was Mass celebrated there? HF: On the main floor. JJ: So, there was more -- HF: In the main church. JJ: -- sensitivity there. HF: Yes, in the main church. JJ: At St. Joseph’s. HF: Yeah. JJ: Okay. Were there any priests at all that you recall that were instrumental at that time? 9 �HF: Back in those days, [00:14:00] I vividly remember a priest, Father [Jordan?]. He was one of the Spanish-speaking priests that did touch members of the community. JJ: At St. Joseph’s? HF: St. Joseph and even at other churches. JJ: (inaudible). HF: That’s the only name of priests that stand out for me. Yeah. Yeah. JJ: [Father Jordan, okay?]. Okay. HF: Yeah. JJ: So, how long did you -- and where did you live when you were going to St. Joseph’s? Were you still living --? HF: We were still living around the area of Ontario, State -- yes. Yes. JJ: (overlapping dialogue; inaudible). And so, from there, where did you go? HF: After we left that area, I went to live in Lake View community. JJ: Okay, so you went straight [to Lake View?]. HF: I went straight into Lake View on 2835 North Clark, [00:15:00] which is the area bounded by Clark, Broadway, Diversey, a very close walk to the lake and to the park. JJ: [That’s the?] dividing line between Lincoln Park and [Lake View?]. HF: Yes. Yes. The dividing line was Diversey, so -- JJ: (overlapping dialogue; inaudible). HF: -- if I went south of Diversey, I would be in Lincoln Park. 10 �JJ: But, at that time, for the Puerto Ricans, it was just one community, would you say, or no? [Or it was pockets?]? HF: There were pockets, but the majority of us were in the area bounded by Halsted and Racine. Mm-hmm. That’s why Lake View had one study that was done. It was called the layer cake community. You remember? Where they said that the majority of the Jewish community was living between Lake Shore Drive and Broadway, and then from Broadway onto Halsted were the four plus one units that had been newly built. And then, from [00:16:00] Halsted to Racine was what they called the poverty belt. Well, we were in that poverty belt. And then, from Racine on was the older German Americans that had been kind of hanging onto their properties. JJ: Okay. So, west of Racine. HF: Right. JJ: That’s where you were. HF: Right. JJ: So, now, you’re talking between Halsted and Racine, but what about the southern boundary? Where did that begin? HF: Mostly Diversey, and then we would go -- JJ: This is for Lake View. HF: For us, yes. Our boundaries. Up to Irving Park because many of the programs that were going on and all of that, it included those boundaries, Diversey up to Irving Park. 11 �JJ: Okay. What do you call growing up in that area? What percentage of the population was Puerto Rican in that area? [Section?]? HF: It was primarily Puerto Rican in that area, and I think it was also due to the fact that, in that [00:17:00] area, there was an agreement by US Department of Agriculture when they first brought in the first 300 Puerto Ricans to do domestic work. That’s where they mostly settled. JJ: Well, can you explain that agreement? I’m not familiar with [that?]. HF: The US Department of Labor and US Department of Agriculture used to go into Puerto Rico to recruit labor. JJ: Around what years? HF: ’50s, ’60s. Around those times. And so, in history, there were 300 primarily women that were brought into the Lakeview area, and -- JJ: Now, you’re talking about a government agency, right? HF: Yes, I’m talking about a government agency. JJ: (overlapping dialogue; inaudible). HF: And they were brought into the Lake View community, and they came in to do a lot of domestic labor, and with that group came Carlos “Caribe” Ruiz. Yes. And so, Carlos “Caribe” Ruiz, back in those days in order to supply the typical Puerto Rican foods [00:18:00] to people and all of that, he would drive all the way to New York, and that’s when he then started El Congreso Puertorriqueño, the Puerto Rican Congress, and he was a big-time in terms of making sure that youth who wanted to be in the field of music, that he could set them up in the field of music, but the rule was, “You must do well in school.” And so, he began 12 �something that many other church groups or organizations that were just beginning to pop up weren’t doing. JJ: And this was the Puerto Rican Congress. At that time, [was?] created on Larrabee -- HF: Yes. JJ: -- and North Avenue? HF: Right. Right. JJ: And so, there were a lot of bands that he (inaudible)? HF: Oh, he created quite a few. I mean, quite a few bands, yeah. Quite a few bands. JJ: Do you recall any of their names, or --? HF: The Fania All-Stars is the only one that comes to mind. He created an allwomen’s group, but I can’t remember the name of [00:19:00] it now. But, mostly, he was based around the area of Clement-- where Clemente High School is right now, and concentrated there. Yeah. JJ: Okay. (inaudible). HF: Yeah. JJ: So, you’re growing up in Lake View. How old were you at that time? HF: Oh, my goodness. By now, I married, and I started, then, getting involved in, again, organizing through the small groups in the church. I joined up with St. Sebastian Church, and, at St. Sebastian Church, that’s where I met a priest that became a very heavy community organizer himself. JJ: Do you recall his name? 13 �HF: Yes. Father Charlie Kyle. We used to call him [Carlitos?]. And [00:20:00] that’s where I also met [Reverendo Fineas Flores?] from the United Methodist Church. JJ: Charlie Kyle -- is he married now? (inaudible) -- HF: Charlie Kyle left the priesthood -- JJ: (overlapping dialogue; inaudible). HF: -- and he married a young woman by the name of Diana Eiranova, who used to be a journalist. JJ: Okay, (overlapping dialogue; inaudible). HF: And, if you remember, Diana Eiranova, was the one that fought for the rights of the young men that had been accused of killing and molesting the young girl, and she wrote a book also. JJ: [Oh, Diana Eiranova?]. HF: Yeah. Yeah. And now, Charlie Kyle is a principal at Stowe School, I believe it is, but, if you remember, Charlie Kyle was one of the primary persons that begin the Lake View Latin American Coalition. JJ: Okay, now, if you could then explain that (inaudible). HF: Okay. Charlie Kyle, being a member of the St. Sebastian [00:21:00] Church clergy, started working in the community with Reverend Fineas Flores from the United Methodist Church and other individuals. There were four small groups created. There was a group based out of St. Sebastian Church of Latinos. There was another one based around the elementary school that was on Broadway near Belmont. So, there was four small groups, and each one had their own name, and each one was trying to tackle a different issue or concern. 14 �And so, Father Charlie Kyle and a couple of others said, “You know, we should band together. We should create a coalition.” And out of that was created the Lake View Latin American Coalition because he believed that there was more power -JJ: What year was this? HF: This was around ’69, ’70. Around that time. [00:22:00] And so, one of the groups that was based around St. Sebastian, they were fighting for the bilingual education program at the elementary school near there. (audio cuts out) remember the name right now, but the other group was fighting for bilingual education rights at another school. JJ: In Lake View? HF: In Lake View. Another small group was fighting because the landlords, you know, were either criminal housing mismanagement landlords, slumlords, absentee landlords. And so, they were trying to educate the tenants about their rights. And so, we said, “Wait. Let’s put it all together,” and Charlie was one of the main individuals in creating the Lake View Latin American Coalition. JJ: Now, did he come out of the Caballeros? Was there a chapter of the Caballeros, a branch, or --? HF: No. It didn’t come out of the Caballeros de San Juan. No. JJ: But it came out of the [00:23:00] Spanish Masses? HF: It came out of the Spanish Masses and groupings that were in that area. If you also remember, Charlie Kyle, former priest -- there was a doctor, Isidro Lucas. Dr. Isidro Lucas went and did a study on Puerto Rican dropouts, and no one paid 15 �attention to it, and Charlie Kyle said, “Let me take over that study.” And Charlie Kyle, almost the same exact study, but his name to it and released it, and it became the main issue for the board of education and for everybody else. Okay? So, he made a point. He proved a point, and he helped us to move that agenda forward, about looking at, you know, the dropout rates in the Puerto Rican community and what were the solutions. That’s the Charlie Kyle that I [00:24:00] know. JJ: And you said he helped us. What was your role by that time? HF: I was a member of the group that was formed at St. Sebastian. Myself and about seven others. Small groups. [Gloria Pérez?], [Sally?]. So, I was part of the St. Sebastian group. And then, eventually, when the Lake View Latin American Coalition was formed and we were able to get our first few dollars from the Campaign for Human Development and from other sources, then I became the organizer for the organization. JJ: For the organization itself? HF: Yeah. JJ: I remember that. You mentioned some of the issues with housing in that -- HF: Right. JJ: When you became the organizer, [what happened there?]? HF: Well, one of the main things that we did was we made certain that we [00:25:00] did work with the tenants that were being so abused in that area there. Some of the people that bought entire blocks, like [Phil Farley?] and [Don Smith?] -- at that time, it was like live on a street or be your own kind of concept. Elaine 16 �Place, where they bought all the way from Cornelia to another point -- let’s say 18 buildings -- again, it was like gated little communities live on a street of your own. And so, all these families were being displaced, and I remember that, at Elaine Place, what we tried to do was try to get a -JJ: Is Elaine Place still there, or --? HF: Elaine Place is still there. JJ: Where is that located? HF: It’s on [00:26:00] Elaine Street, which is one block east of Halsted Street, and Cornelia, south about three blocks of that. Uh-huh. Where we started organizing those families to let them know what their rights were in terms of the process for them to leave. If these people were going to gut out, and we have all of those buildings, then they needed to know that you need to be given so much notice, and we had worked out a promise with Senator Simon and the Federal Department of Housing that some of the could return to 10 percent subsidized housing once Elaine Place was finished. So, community organizers and people to make sure the trucks didn’t come in there overnight to start gutting. What they did was they planted people in [00:27:00] some of the buildings, like [Ralph Volun?], I remember, so that we would show a presence still with tenants, and they blocked the trucks while we got enough time to be able to speak with the powers that be to mobilize other things on behalf of the tenants. With Phil Farley and Don Smith, that was the area around Belmont, Barry, Wellington, to George Street, from Halsted on, and, again, they were gutting out building after building after building where all the families lived, and the prices for rent became so 17 �exorbitant, the families just couldn’t afford to return. But many of the buildings that they had bought, they weren’t going to gut out, they were gonna keep as they were, and I remember [00:28:00] that we would organize, not -- we wouldn’t call it a protest. We didn’t call it a march because we were organizing members of the church, so we would call it a procession. So, we had this procession from building to building with guitars and candles lit, singing the hymns, and, as we got to a building where we knew that the electric cords were exposed, the water wasn’t running properly, et cetera, then, we would say prayer for the owner of that building, and the tenants would join us, and then we would go to the next building. And then, at the end, we would end up in the basement of St. Sebastian Church, meeting with the landlords. Okay? One of the things that I remember that our group was good at was -- that, before these landlords or anybody, while we were doing the procession, [00:29:00] could call police, we would call police on ourselves ’cause we had built a good relationship with the 14th District by then. JJ: So, these were skills that you had learned from where? Were you trained in organizing, or --? HF: Charlie Kyle, the priest, again, insisted that the main organizing group, as many of us that could, that we would go to the Saul Alinsky Institute. Back then, it was the Industrial Areas Foundation. So, I was one of the privileged ones that went there. JJ: And what were some of the techniques that you learned there with organizing? 18 �HF: Well, there are some tactics that you just can’t use in every community because it depends on the culture of the person. Especially if you’re doing organizing with older people in a Catholic church, there’s things you don’t ask them to [00:30:00] do, but there are things that you can say, like, when we invited them to a procession, it was very natural, but, in fact, it was a protest. Mm-hmm. JJ: Now, you were saying you had a procession versus a protest and that you were looking this way, but were there -- the Young Lords were also doing some things at that time, and [apparently?] you were not in agreement, or -- their tactics, or -- HF: No, because the Young Lords -- I mean, as I remember, from the history that came from New York, the tactics that were being used or the strategies, et cetera, they were fitting for the group that you were working with. Okay? But, if I am trying to get a group of 50 plus-year-olds, newcomers to the church, to be involved in picketing a landlord, and I say to them, “[Vente?], let’s picket this landlord,” they’re not [00:31:00] gonna join me, but, if I say, “Come and join me because we’re gonna pray for a landlord that is keeping our people in conditions that are unbearable in that building and charging them high rent, and, eventually, they’re going to oust them because they’re going to gut that building out,” they will join. JJ: I was referring more like the takeover of McCormick Seminary, [and the church?], and all that. How did you feel about that? HF: Well, at that time, it was like, “Hooray,” and, as you remember, it was many of our own families that used to go to bring the food to where they Young Lords were at. 19 �JJ: To the McCormick and -- HF: To the McCormick Seminary, right at DePaul University on Fullerton and Halsted, where, Fullerton, Halsted, and -- what’s that other street that meet there? JJ: Lincoln. HF: Lincoln Avenue. That’s correct. JJ: So, you were bringing food, but -- so, you were supporting them, the takeover, in a way. HF: That’s correct. [00:32:00] And then, when -- JJ: You didn’t see it as a terror attack or -- HF: I didn’t see it as a terror attack. My family didn’t see it as a terror attack because we were also doing the same thing in Lake View too, you know? But in a different way to get the involvement of people. We were trying to stop the heavy development that was taking place. We wanted our people to live in decent conditions, but we didn’t like the way that they were being ousted. Okay? JJ: Now, you mentioned New York, the tactics of New York. Are you familiar that the Young Lords originated in Chicago and then spread to other cities [around?]? Or you thought that they had come from New York? HF: At that time, we thought that the Young Lords had come from New York. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. JJ: They actually originated [in Chicago?]. HF: In Chicago. Mm-hmm. JJ: Okay. So, your -- [00:33:00] Reverend Kyle, did they call him, or --? HF: Charlie Kyle. 20 �JJ: Charlie Kyle. And you have a Latin American citizens council (overlapping dialogue; inaudible). HF: The Lake View community had a Lake View Citizens’ Council, and we formed our own Lake View Latin American Coalition because we already had those four groups. JJ: (inaudible). HF: And that issues that we were dealing with weren’t issues that were of particular interest to the Lake View Citizens’ Council. I mean, we were talking about the bilingual education programs and how they were being run in those schools. We were talking about landlords that expose people to criminal acts, as we called them back then. Okay? We were talking about the police brutality that existed back then. Okay? And [00:34:00] so, we wanted to bring solutions to some of those. Okay? We were talking about the high unemployment of Latinos. Okay? So, in terms of the Lake View Latin American Coalition, one of the things that we did was we created quite a few babies of our own, like, to take care of the issue of unemployment. Then, we created an organization or a service, a program, called Una Puerta Abierta, the Open Door, and the Open Door was based on Broadway, and that Open Door, with a few staff members and lots of volunteers, were supposed to look for employment opportunities for the Latino community. Once they started to work with them, then they find out, “Wait a minute. Many of the people that we’re referring to these jobs, because they don’t [00:35:00] speak English, they’re refusing to give them the job because of -- they don’t even know safety English.” And so, then, we’re like, “Okay. So, what do we do now?” We 21 �couldn’t teach one by one, so the Lake View Latin American Coalition, one of the committees, they came up with the idea of, “Let’s do something that would be like English as a survival language.” Okay? And so, we created what now is known as Universidad Popular. Now, we started out -JJ: Is it still in existence? HF: It is still in existence and growing. It’s going to be celebrating its fortieth year April 14. JJ: In Lake View (inaudible)? HF: No. They’ve moved now to 2801 South on Hamlin. So, we created Universidad Popular, and people would question, “Well, why are you calling it a [00:36:00] university, a popular university, when you’ve got a basement with one teacher and fourteen students?” You had to create a type of a mentality that, you know, we’re all good enough to be at that university level if we work -- and, again, that was because Charlie Kyle and the members of the coalition made certain that individuals that were just coming into leadership position met great people like Paulo Freire, read the books of Paulo Freire. Okay? And had discussion groups about -- you know, it’s all about raising a conscience here. And so, we were great to have church people involved because they were the ones that told us all about the theologies of the Americas, where they were using that to liberate people, people’s [00:37:00] minds. Mm-hmm. JJ: So, there was like an international scope in thinking -- HF: Yes. JJ: -- at that time. 22 �HF: It began to [build up?] because -- JJ: Were local communities looking international also, or --? HF: Well, no. First, there [was not?] -- a local community coming to the realization that, “Okay, we’re here in Lake View, but there’s a lot of things happening outside of Lake View that impact what happens here. And so, we need to look outside of Lake View too and develop partnerships.” And so, that’s where the Puerto Rican Organization for Political Action -- we developed the partnership with the Puerto Rican Organization for Political Action. JJ: PROPA. HF: PROPA, which was headed by Hector Franco back then. And we realized, wait a minute. Puerto Ricans are citizens by birth. Maybe not by choice, but by birth, and, when we go to vote, even though we come here as citizens and [00:38:00] don’t know English, we’re forced to take the oath in English. So, that was enough to go into the courtroom. And so, you know, we went into the courtrooms, and we sued, and Judge Philip Tone, I believe it was, he ruled in our favor, and, after that, it wasn’t just Puerto Ricans that benefited from taking the oath in Spanish and having election materials in Spanish. Many others, okay? Who were not Puerto Rican benefited from that lawsuit. The newspapers, Spanish newspapers, benefited from that because the lawsuit said that the board of elections had to print announcements in Spanish in those newspapers. Okay? And, today, we look back, and, lo and behold, the ballot is printed in many other languages, and that was because of our [00:39:00] organizing. 23 �JJ: Okay. So, you made a coalition of the different groups (overlapping dialogue; inaudible). HF: Right, like unemployment. Unemployment. When the Una Puerta Abierta was working with that, we worked very closely with other groups that were working with employment. And so, what we were doing, actually, was creating special interest groups across the city. I remember that one of the groups that we joined with was Zeferino Ochoa and the Cardinal’s Committee that he used to work at, and he had a radio program, and that was very beneficial ’cause we could get news out through that. JJ: So, you worked -- okay, with Zeferino Ochoa. [I recall?] hearing that name and the Cardinal’s Committee. What did they do (inaudible)? HF: They used to serve [00:40:00] the Latino community in terms of providing information on services that was available to churches or whatever, discussion of issues on his radio program and all of that. So, that’s how I remember Zeferino. Okay? JJ: So, you continued the -- HF: Yeah. JJ: -- Latin American Coalition continued to work with the -- HF: Well, whenever we -- JJ: -- churches? HF: Yes, if there was a church group that was working on a particular issue of employment. We were just looking at -- it wasn’t necessarily that we would seek out a church group, but we knew that group was working on the issue we were 24 �interested in. Like, when we wanted to open doors at [Jewel?] Food Stores, as an example, it was a coalition of about 17 groups, including PROPA, ABC, remember? Allies for a Better Community, headed up by Sally Johnson. [Carlos Castro’s?] [00:41:00] group, which used to be [PRUF?], Puerto Rican United Front. Uh-huh. JJ: (inaudible). HF: There, we also had the Puerto Rican Office of Cultural Affairs back then, too, assisting to open doors at Jewel Food Stores, to open doors -- back then, it was with -- what was the company? AT&T. Okay? And so, we banded together to open those doors for employment. JJ: So, you wanted open doors in what way? You visited with these groups, or --? HF: Well, some were actual, coordinated visits. Some had to be pickets in order to get attention. Whatever it took that the groups would decide how they would mobilize. Yeah. JJ: Okay. And then, what was going on in the community then? [00:42:00] Was housing a big issue at that time? HF: Housing was a big issue, and one of the things that, at the Lake View Latin American Coalition, a small group tried it, and we did it -- I think it was 13 or 14 of us. We decided that we were going to show people that we could stabilize that community by going into the home purchasing program. And so, I was one of the ones that decided, you know, I’m going to purchase. We knew that some of the people that were being encouraged to purchase didn’t have all the money, but, if -- the way it was worked out, a couple of people would lend some money to that 25 �person. That person would buy, and, now, that person was responsible for making sure some of that money now came back for the next person to purchase. When I went in to try to purchase, the house was [00:43:00] at 929 West Wolfram. Back then, it was, like, 28,500. Because I was divorced and not remarried, I was having a terrible time, so attorneys like [Miguel Velazquez?] and [Hector Guzman?] came into the picture, because then they were gonna use that as a case of, “Hey, you can’t discriminate having a woman just because they’re divorced and not remarried. You’ve got to show proof that that person is not financially stable to keep up with the payments of that home.” So, I was able to buy, and [Mendieta?] was able to buy. [Mario de Juan?] had bought. [Ramos?] bought. Some of them even bought right in front of where Wrigley Field is, and, later on, they were able to [00:44:00] sell for quite a bit. JJ: Okay. HF: Yeah. JJ: You kind of grew up there. Lake View was your community (overlapping dialogue; inaudible)? HF: Lake View was my community since 19-- oh, God. When was it? ’64 or something. Yeah. Yeah. JJ: And so, when you came there, it was changing (inaudible) changing to (inaudible) -- HF: It was beginning to change into Puerto Rican -- we had people from Mexico, and we had, north of us, some people from South and Central America, and still kind 26 �of the same situation. The Central Americans have remained north of that area. Yeah. JJ: And so, you saw it developing and then becoming more Latino. HF: And then, all of a sudden, you know, Latinos having to leave [00:45:00] because we were being displaced by the wholesale gutting out of -- JJ: But it -- HF: -- the rental properties. JJ: But you fought that. HF: We fought it. We fought it. We fought it, and we thought that we would make headways by encouraging people to purchase, but, by that time, you know, a building had changed hands three times, and they would cap out so that, if the building had been sold for 70,000, now, somebody came in, and bought it, and resells it for 130,000. By the time I come and try to get it, I’m gonna have to come up with the 200,000. So, you know, it became very hard to try to stabilize it through the purchase of the rental properties. Mm-hmm. The few that were able to purchase were purchasing single-family homes. JJ: So, do you feel your efforts were in vain, or was it a loss, or --? HF: [00:46:00] I personally don’t look at it that it was in vain ’cause there was a lot of leadership development that was going on, and that leadership migrated and took all their skills, that energy, that commitment, that dedication, into other communities to work on issues. Myself, for instance, I’ve dedicated practically my entire life to working in the Humboldt Park community, whereas I’ve always lived in Lake View, and now, I live in Portage Park. I only sleep in Portage Park. 27 �Okay? All my work is being done on behalf of the Humboldt Park community, practically. JJ: So, many people that came from there became leaders or were involved in the community (overlapping dialogue; inaudible). HF: In the communities, that’s right. Yes. Yes. JJ: Okay. And so, what is some of the work that you’re doing today (inaudible) in Humboldt Park? HF: [00:47:00] In the Humboldt Park community, one of the things -- we created a group called the Puerto Rican Agenda, and the Puerto Rican Agenda is a consortium of about 40 organizations and agencies, and some of the work that has been done -- number one was we have the Institute of Puerto Rican Arts, which used to be the old [horse stadium?] inside of Humboldt Park on Division and Sacramento, 3015 West Division, and, now, it is not an Institute of Puerto Rican Arts and Culture. Now, we have museum status, and that’s because of the hard work of the Puerto Rican Agenda, making sure that they stayed on top of that. It’s been completely gutted. Lots of exhibitions going on there right now. JJ: What are some of the other groups that (inaudible)? HF: Some of the other groups that belonged there are -- like, the [00:48:00] Ruiz Belvis Cultural Center belongs to that. The Puerto Rican Cultural Center with José López belongs to that. Vida/SIDA with Juan Calderón belongs to that. The Division Street Small Business Development with Eduardo Arocho, they’re there at the table. We have some agencies like [Boca?] advertising agency at the table. [NNN?], neighborhood organizing organization under [Eliud Medina?]. We 28 �had members of Lucha, Association Houses represented. National Conference of Puerto Rican Women is at the table. Rincon Community Services is at the table. And so, it’s a whole -- Humboldt Park Social Services is at the table. JJ: [I can see it’s?] broadly based. (inaudible) -- HF: It’s a broad base, and -- JJ: -- more (inaudible), [00:49:00] [but it looks like?] (inaudible). HF: Yes, and it’s not structured. To say we have a president, that we have a vice president, that we have a secretary, we have a treasurer -- no. We have two individuals that co-chair the meetings. One of the things that we recently did was that, through the efforts of the Agenda, there was a grant that was given, and it was a grant to do a major study on the Puerto Rican community. And so, we’ve been doing the focus groups, and it’s been really a blessing to be able to do that because, when many of these agencies have to do the proposals, either for the state, or for foundations, or for the federal government, they need backup data. It’s not like in the old days, where you could say, “We need this because of that.” [00:50:00] Now, you have to show proof that the population is there and that the need is there. So, with this grant, we hope to be able to provide not only the agencies that are part of the consortium. Anyone else who wants to use the data, you know. So, I’m really proud of that. That was done by the Puerto Rican Agenda. But, you know, back to some of the stuff that we’ve done in the Lake View community, many of the small agencies that used to exist there -- it was like they couldn’t provide services because a lot of the people, as you remember in Lincoln Park and in there, the newcomers -- newcomers who couldn’t speak the 29 �language. And so, [00:51:00] the churches -- all they could offer was the Mass. Okay? So, we were forced, then, to look outside of Lake View, and, when we started looking outside of Lake View, the only things that we could find were the organizations that were being created in the West Town, Humboldt Park area. And so, those were the agencies that we tried to send our people to to get the services. Okay? Other than when we began forming our own babies, like Universidad Popular, like Una Puerta Abierta, like Servicios de Orientación that we created also in Lake View. All right? Once the families arrived and they [were going through?] the cultural shock, and people would say, “Oh, tan loco, tan loco,” you know, it wasn’t that they were crazy. They were suffering the depression from separation. [00:52:00] If it was a man that came alone and left the family, and now, he’s making low wages and can’t keep the promise that he made to bring the wife and children right away -- and so, we needed to find a way to get those individuals to come in, but you couldn’t bring them in if you were calling it “Lake View Mental Health Services.” All right? So, what we did was work with people like [Emperatriz Pumarejo?], [Gustavo Espinosa?], and others, and we named it Servicios de Orientación. So, everything was done with a purpose and a major thought behind it that this is the only way we’re going to be able to serve this grouping of individuals, who had that need at that time. JJ: It was like a mental -- not a sickness, but something -- a mental [00:53:00] problem at that time. HF: Yeah, it wasn’t that they had a mental health sickness, as people would see it. JJ: It was a temporary (overlapping dialogue; inaudible). 30 �HF: Yeah. It was just, you know -- JJ: Destabilization [in the mind, right?]. HF: Yes, in the mind. I mean -- JJ: (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) -- HF: -- you come in, and you’re really depressed. JJ: Depressed because you’ve lost your whole -- HF: Right. JJ: -- [nation?], your whole country. HF: I remember one gentleman that -- he came in, and, I mean, when he was just talking, and -- what had happened to him was he went grocery shopping, and he saw this box that had the pictures of the chicken on it. Okay? And so, he bought three or four boxes, thinking that he was going to be able to just take this, heat it up, and eat it. Well, it was that Shake ’n Bake. There’s no chicken there. It’s the stuff to layer the chicken with. And so, all those things are enough to make you think, “Yo necesito ayuda, [00:54:00] I really need help here,” you know? And so, basic things. So, when we noticed that there was something that we could not take care of through organizing of people, then, we had to create an entity, okay? To take care of that, and that was when we had to come up with Servicios de Orientación, which is the mental health services to the Latino community, primarily Puerto Ricans coming in in that area. I mean, we did a lot of stuff that had to do with organizing in terms of -- you remember many of the police brutality cases. I mean, cases still exist today, but they’re mostly on profiling, as happened recently with -- 31 �JJ: But, at that time, what were the cases like? HF: People [00:55:00] just being arrested. I remember the group of four gentlemen that were arrested for being in a public way playing dominoes. Well, in Puerto Rico, everybody plays dominoes outdoors. They didn’t know they were in violation [in?] any ordinances, so they took their little table, and they set it up outside, and they were having a grand time playing dominoes. And so, we had to try to explain to the police department, and you know who was great at doing that on our behalf? May she rest in peace. Trina Davila. Trina Davila was one of the people that dealt very directly with the police department. JJ: Who was Trina Davila? There was a center named after her. Who was she? HF: Trina Davila was an older woman that was very involved in the [00:56:00] Puerto Rican community in Lake View. Okay? And, in the days when we were having so many issues with the Chicago Police Department, it was primarily that time -it was the 14th District on Addison and Halsted, where José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez turned himself in to Hanrahan. She was one of the people that opened the door so that we could have a decent dialogue with the police department because, back then, if they didn’t know the culture of the people that were moving into the area, of course there were going to be arrests. “Oh, you’re in violation of the ordinance.” “What ordinance?” You know, “Setting up a domino table outdoors.” On Barry Street, I remember the young men that were arrested simply because they didn’t realize that there [00:57:00] were ordinances on noise levels, so they’d be blaring their music, and police get called. Others were just blatant -like what’s happening around Washington and Division, as you remember, that a 32 �family would call a police officer because their son was uncontrollable due to a medical problem, and the police use excessive force. Okay? So, it was Trina Davila who opened the doors for dialogue with the department so that we could say, “Wait a minute. It’s not that they’re truly in violation. This is a cultural thing.” JJ: But why was she able to do that? I mean, was she in a position to do that? Why --? HF: At that time, she had joined up with one of the advisory groups to the department. And so, she was able to open [00:58:00] that door. JJ: To the police department? HF: Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. JJ: Okay. Now, in Lincoln Park, one of the groups that we had to fight against was the Lincoln Park Neighborhood Association, but you had the Lake View Citizens’ Council. HF: Correct. JJ: So, in Lincoln Park, there actually were no Latino members of that Lincoln Park Neighborhood Association, but you were a separate group within the Lake View Citizens’ Council. HF: We were -- JJ: (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) -- HF: Lake View Citizens’ Council was a separate group, and the Lake View Latin American Coalition was a separate group. JJ: But you didn’t have a neighborhood association. HF: No. That was against us. 33 �JJ: That was promoting -- HF: No. JJ: -- housing [renovations?]. HF: No. No. JJ: See, we had the Lincoln Park Neighborhood Association. HF: Yes. Right. JJ: So, the Lincoln Park Citizens’ Council was trying to stabilize the community also? HF: Also. Right. Right. I mean, I remember [00:59:00] [Sheila Atkins?] working very hard on all of that. Some of the other organizers that came through that. But, as I said, we were even sharing space, so we didn’t have a relationship of animosity. We were sharing space. There were times when, you know, they [just couldn’t join?] on the issue that we were dealing with, but there were times -like, I remember when we decided to take on Jewel. Well, they were getting some funding from Jewel, so we couldn’t put up the boycott signs or anything on the window because half of the window was theirs. Half of it was ours. But we came to agreements, but we had somewhat of a collaborative relationship once we got going, but, again, that has to do with the skills of the people that were involved with founding the organization, you know. Mm-hmm. JJ: [01:00:00] ’Cause you had already organizing skills at that time. HF: At that time, yeah. Well, you had Charlie, Fineas Flores, and Hector, and many others that came in. We had people from the Latin American -- I can’t remember the -- like Fernando Prieto, who was with the business organization that had just 34 �been created in the Lake View community. And so, they came to the table and worked on stuff with us. Mm-hmm. JJ: Okay. Okay. And Lincoln Park was a different -- HF: Mm-hmm. JJ: -- situation, basically. Okay. [Miguel Chevere?]. Did he work with you at all, or -? HF: Miguel Chevere worked very closely with the St. John council that used to be in the Lake View community on Newport and Sheffield on the second [01:01:00] floor, and -- JJ: (inaudible) his name. He also comes from St. Michael’s. HF: Yes. JJ: [Michael’s part?]. HF: St. Michael’s, doing a lot of work there. JJ: So, he worked with the Caballeros de San Juan [here in Lake?] --? HF: He worked with the Caballeros de San Juan in Lake View. JJ: Do you remember the council number? HF: I can’t remember [for council what?], but it was on the second floor on Newport and Sheffield, Clark, and we worked very hard to try to get everybody involved in making certain that the credit union, you know -- a group. I became one of the credit union members back then, one of the first few. JJ: Oh. I mean, so, they were located in Lake View also, the credit union, or --? HF: No. The credit union, remember, was located near Fullerton, California, around that area. 35 �JJ: Okay. But that council was (overlapping dialogue; inaudible). HF: Yeah. Right. Right. Right. That council was working with us. Then, the other council that was working with us was providing a lot of the -- [01:02:00] how would you say? Entertainment -- was the council that was near Oak Street and LaSalle. There was another council that operated out of there, and they did social nights. Okay? JJ: Even in the ’60s, you mean? HF: Yeah, they used to do the social nights too. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. JJ: Okay. Anything else that -- I guess we’re gonna try to finalize it. What’s important that you think (inaudible) the Lake View community (inaudible)? HF: I think that what really proved to be important out of Lake View community was, number one, that we had that ability to build those special interest groups across the city, and that many of them continue to exist today and continue to work, and that a lot of leadership was created [01:03:00] out of what was happening in the Lake View community, and that many of those individuals felt that they owed something in coming back to other communities in need. I mean, like, the Hector Francos and all of those. Once some work stopped work in Lake View community, they continued, like the business association out of Lake View. They continued doing stuff, but then, at a different level. The Latin American Chamber of Commerce, they merged into that. So, I think that we were able, in the Lake View community, through our work, to do some formation of leaders. Okay? And very dedicated ones at that. [And my?] admiration for many of them. [01:04:00] Young leadership today, they remember some of the work that was 36 �done because of the coalition building that took place. I mean, when we looked at what was happening with the Chicago Police Department, which, as you know, we also sued the Chicago Police Department. See, some things -- if organizing didn’t take care of it, then we would use the judicial system. So -JJ: So, you sued them for what? What was it? HF: We sued the Chicago Police Department for discriminatory practices in hiring and promotion of minorities and women. And so, the test -- they had to redo the test, and then the test was given, and, you know, challenge of height requirements and everything took place back then, and the judge ruled in our favor, [01:05:00] so the test had to be redone. Then, the testing was open. Some of us didn’t believe that the testing would assist the minority communities, so some of the organizers went in and took the test. I took the test. Okay? I went through the physical. But, when it came to, you know, going any further, I said, “No, that’s not going to be for me. I’ve taken it this far.” So, then, we went after the way the psychological exams were done, and we challenged that, and, by this time, when we were doing this kind of work, we had some organizations that could back all of that up because we had, like, the Latin American Police Association. The Puerto Rican Police Association came about, et cetera. And then, we said, “Well, now, we need to organize because the possibility opened up for [01:06:00] Chicago to have a Latino as a superintendent.” So, many of the individuals that had been involved with all the other stuff in terms of organizing joined up with that effort, and we did get Matt Rodriguez as the first Latino superintendent in the city of Chicago. After two tries, but it was done. But that encouraged some of 37 �the young officers that had gone in through the door because of the lawsuit that they, themselves, could go up for promotions. Okay? I then became very politically involved in terms of organizing. JJ: What do you mean by that? HF: I joined up with the Independent Voters-Independent Precinct Organization, which had been formed in 1943, and, when I was in the Lake View community, [01:07:00] two of the individuals that I worked very hard with through the Lake View Latin American Coalition, organizing with them, were Dick Simpson, who became one of the first progressive aldermen in the City Council of Chicago, and [Bill Singer?], from Lincoln Park Also, 43rd Ward. 43rd. I was in Lake View 44th Ward. So, we worked very closely, mostly with Dick Simpson, who is now a professor at University of Illinois, and what we did was the door to door organizing, and he features the Lake View Latin American Coalition from Lake View in his book called Winning Elections for our abilities to go out there and get Latinos involved in that type of organizing to have representation, and we created the neighborhood [01:08:00] assemblies, where Latinos and everybody else could come in, and sit with the alderman, and tell him what things they wanted done through his presence in the city council. So, that was part of the organizing that I’m proud of that was done in Lake View, Lincoln Park area. JJ: And they also developed later into the Harold -- were you involved with that? HF: Oh, with the Harold Washington campaign. Of course we got involved with that. The people that -- again, same young people that came up through the ranks of organizing in Lincoln Park, in Humboldt Park, et cetera, like [Francisco DuPrey 38 �and that?] were part of the Harold Washington campaign. [Peter Earl?] from San Lucas Church, United Church of Christ, Reverendo Morales from United Church of Christ, you know. Yeah. JJ: Okay. Anything else that [you want to?] [01:09:00] touch on, or --? HF: As -- JJ: How do you feel -- well, we already talked about that in terms of -- you felt it was a victory, or skills were learned -- HF: Right. JJ: -- in those areas. HF: Mm-hmm. Well, if you look back in history, in any community, if you’re in organizing, we looked at it as creating soldiers for our communities. Okay? When we were building Universidad Popular, we were saying, “The adults that are coming through Universidad Popular, they have knowledge. All we need to do is help them transfer that knowledge into something else so that they can feel that they can participate.” Okay? I’ll give you one example. I was leading a class, [01:10:00] a thing, a discussion, at Universidad Popular in its early, early, early stages, and what I asked the students to do was either to come up to the board voluntarily or throw out a word or words that they had heard from their employer, their supervisor at work. Okay? And the whole board, whether they could spell the word correctly or not, got filled up with the worst words you can call a human being, and this is how they were being treated at those job sites. Okay? With the worst words that you could call anyone. I mean, they were being called wetbacks. They were being called MF. They were being called 39 �assholes. Anything you -- it went up on that board. So, now, [01:11:00] we knew that we had an organizing job to do with those employers. Okay? And, today, Universidad Popular continues to exist. It doesn’t continue to exist in the Lake View community because the community kind of disintegrated, and moved, and migrated elsewhere due to what was happening there. They ended up coming into the Humboldt Park community. And then, they saw that the greatest need was in the little village community, so they’re now housed at 2801 South on Hamlin. It’s a great model because the model that they’ve been using is people teaching themselves to become more independent. JJ: Now, Hamlin, that’s the west part of Humboldt Park? HF: [01:12:00] No, on Hamlin -- JJ: (overlapping dialogue; inaudible). HF: -- and 28th Street. Near Pulaski and 28th Street. That’s now where they’re housed. JJ: Oh. HF: And so, they run the whole gamut of programs. They’re becoming self selfsufficient. You know, once you learn some English as a survival language, now, you’re better off to be able to get better employment opportunities. They’ve been teaching people there -- they got a grant, and they put up a kitchen, teaching the culinary arts so that people can now move into employment in hotels, et cetera, as assistant chefs. And so, self-sufficiency is the main goal [right at that?]. JJ: Okay. Now, when the Young Lords began, we kind of came right out of [the gang?] and into a neighborhood group, and without any skills of organizing or 40 �anything like that, and I see that [01:13:00] the Latin American Lake View Citizens’ Council -- [is that the correct?] -- they learned skills. You got training for skills, but, both ways, we still -- I mean, we made a dent. HF: That’s right. JJ: We got a lot of skills -- HF: Yeah. JJ: -- out of it and a lot of leadership in other areas, but we still lost our community there because this was a master plan planned way ahead of time. HF: Yeah. JJ: But what do you feel are some ways that we can stabilize the community today? I mean, because, now, it’s happening in Humboldt Park. HF: It’s happening in Humboldt Park. I mean, if you look at -- JJ: What can we do to try to put a halt on it? HF: Yeah. At Humboldt Park right now, it is the high level of foreclosures happening, and you’ve got the Spanish Coalition for Housing trying to work on [01:14:00] that to make certain that, you know, people latch onto some of the programs that are coming into being to assist them. Then, you’ve got, bless his soul, Hipolito Roldán, [Hippo?], working with the Hispanic Housing Development Corporation, where he takes over all these buildings, and he guts them out, and then he’s able to either rent or sell them at a cost that families can afford. You’ve got Bickerdike also working there to bring about some housing stability, but I remember, in the days of the Young Lord, well, what we had was [sleazy life realty?], what we used to call. You know, injecting fear into people so that they would just move 41 �out and sell out. Now, it’s the high level of foreclosure due to the fact that people cannot continue to keep up with their mortgage, and that’s a harder one to tackle. So, I don’t [01:15:00] know if we’ll completely, completely lose all of Humboldt Park, but, certainly, a major effort is being made to -- you’ve got the Puerto Rican Cultural Center doing the Muévete campaign, the come back to Humboldt Park campaign, where they advertise all the availability of buildings where there’s rental for them. Okay? Who else is working hard? But, yeah, we did lose it in Lake View in terms of the development that took place there, constantly moving us further west or northwest. Same thing happened there in Lincoln Park, and we’ve seen it, now, happening -- if you look all the way from Ashland on Division to Damen, all the way [01:16:00] from -- what? Chicago to Armitage. It’s not the high level of Puerto Rican population that we used to have. I mean, just by taking a drive through Division in that area there, Bucktown, okay? You see the sidewalk cafe. You see the neat little boutiques, you know? And so, that became some of the signs of the times. When the Chicago Park District built the tennis court inside of Humboldt Park, many of us [used to say?], “Okay. Pack up. Leave. We’re being asked to leave.” You know, tennis courts? The tennis courts remain there, but the community is still trying to hold strong to that area, called De Bandera a Bandera. So, [01:17:00] the Paseo Boricua group is also working to stabilize the community. So, De Bandera a Bandera is from Western and Division, where the giant flag was erected, all the way over to -- I think it’s Richmond and Division, one block west of California. So, that’s the boundary 42 �that most of us work with (inaudible) and say, “That’s the spot that we want to stabilize.” JJ: Okay. (inaudible). HF: Pardon me? JJ: (inaudible). HF: Well, yes. Yeah. And then, that’s why the Puerto Rican Agenda is key. It’s why Paul Roldán’s Hispanic Housing Development Corporation is key. That’s why Spanish Coalition for Housing is key, ’cause they’re working with landlords, and then they’re also working [01:18:00] with the landowners and the tenants to assist them so that we could try to lay claim forever to Humboldt Park. JJ: Anything else that you want to add? HF: No. Anyone that is going through this material, just remember that change can only happen if you engage yourself totally to bringing it about, that, if you stand by the sidelines, you’re not going to make the change or reap the benefits either. JJ: Thank you. END OF AUDIO FILE 43 � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/75051e2d37e47683630b7e08561b3600.mp4 22cdceb5c93f0d7c8f4e8741c961f25d Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Young Lords in Lincoln Park Collection Subject The topic of the resource Young Lords (Organization) Puerto Ricans--United States Civil Rights--United States--History Lincoln Park (Chicago, Ill.) Personal narratives Social justice Community activists--Illinois--Chicago Description An account of the resource Collection of oral history interviews and digitized materials documenting the history of the Young Lords Organization in Lincoln Park, Chicago. Interviews were conducted by Young Lords' founder, José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez, and documents were digitized from Mr. Jiménez' archives. The Young Lords in Lincoln Park collection grows out of the ongoing struggle for fair housing, self-determination, and human rights that was launched by Mr. José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez, founder of the Young Lords Movement. This project is dedicated to documenting the history of the displacement of Puerto Ricans, Mejicanos, other Latinos, and the poor from Lincoln Park, as well as the history of the Young Lords nationwide. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Jiménez, José, 1948- Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/491">Young Lords in Lincoln Park collection (RHC-65)</a> Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-04-25 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Language A language of the resource eng spa Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-65 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 2012-2017 Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Título Spanish language Title entry Hilda Frontany vídeo entrevista y biografía Sujetos Spanish language Subject terms Young Lords (Organización) Puertorriqueños--Estados Unidos Derechos civiles--Estados Unidos--Historia Lincoln Park (Chicago, Ill.) Puertorriqueños--Relatos personales Idioma español--Relatos personales Justicia social Activistas comunitarios--Illinois--Chicago Renovación urbana--Illinois--Chicago Housing--Illinois--Chicago Puertorriqueños--Illinois--Chicago--Condiciones sociales Source <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/491">Young Lords in Lincoln Park (RHC-65)</a> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-65_Frontany_Hilda Title A name given to the resource Hilda E. Frontany video interview and transcript Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Frontany, Hilda Description An account of the resource 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. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Jiménez, José, 1948- Subject The topic of the resource Young Lords (Organization) Puerto Ricans--United States Civil Rights--United States--History Lincoln Park (Chicago, Ill.) Puerto Ricans--Personal narratives Personal narratives Social justice Community activists--Illinois--Chicago Urban renewal--Illinois--Chicago Housing--Illinois--Chicago Puerto Ricans--Illinois--Chicago--Social conditions Language A language of the resource eng Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2012-03-30 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives