1 24 165 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/2b3fa5f09b4156835828b8fe4bf5191a.pdf 34d2f51242594705edc97c3ebd441562 PDF Text Text Young Lords In Lincoln Park Interviewee: Aaron Dixon Interviewer: Jose Jimenez Location: Grand Valley State University Special Collections Date: 3/14/2013 Runtime: 01:17:46 Biography and Description Oral history of Aaron Dixon, interviewed by Jose “Cha-Cha” Jimenez on March 14, 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 AARON DIXON: Aaron Dixon. I was born January 2nd, 1949, Chicago, Illinois. JOSE JIMENEZ: Okay. (break in recording) JJ: Okay, could you give me your name, your date of birth and where you were born, Aaron? AD: Okay. All right. Give it to you again? JJ: Yeah, give it to me again. AD: Aaron Dixon. I was born January 2nd, 1949, in Chicago, Illinois. JJ: Okay. Where in Chicago, what part? AD: Oh, god, I used to know the hospital and -- damn, shit. JJ: Wait, was it North Side, South Side? AD: South Side. JJ: South Side, okay. AD: Mm-hmm. JJ: Okay. Do how do you know about the Young Lords? AD: I know about the Young Lords from being in the Black Panther Party when the Black Panther Party [00:01:00] began to -- in Chicago particularly, they started the coalition with the Young Lords and the White community, which became the first Rainbow Coalition. But that was my first time that I heard about the Young Lords was during that time period in 1968. JJ: In ’68? AD: Yes. 1 �JJ: Okay. And so, was your family from Chicago? AD: Yeah, yeah, both my parents were from Chicago, and they grew up in Chicago and all my relatives were in Chicago. And when we left Chicago when I was about eight years old, I was mad at my parents for about five years because that’s where all my grandparents were, that’s where my cousins were, that’s where all my family was and I [00:02:00] really didn’t want to be taken away from them. But we, our family came back every year, every summer, just about every summer we came back to Chicago. JJ: And your family stayed when you moved? Did you move to Oakland, is that where you moved? AD: No, we moved to Seattle, Washington. JJ: Oh, Seattle (overlapping dialogue; inaudible). AD: And my father got a job offer from Boeing because he worked at Chanute Air Force Base in Champaign and actually we lived in Champaign for the first, you know, seven years of my life, we lived in Champaign. JJ: Illinois? AD: Champaign, Illinois, yes. And so, he got that job offer and then in 1958 -- and that’s when we moved to Seattle, Washington. JJ: What was the reasoning for that? AD: Well because my father got a job offer and, you know, he went to the -- he graduated from Chicago Art Institute, he was a artist. [00:03:00] But he had four kids and he couldn’t raise four kids being a artist, so he became a technical illustrator at Chanute and then he got this job offer in Seattle, and so he moved 2 �his family there. And also, I think a lot of the reason is because, you know, the gangs were pretty heavy even then, you know, the Blackstone Rangers, I remember when we -- driving through Chicago and seeing Blackstones everywhere, Blackstone Rangers and the Rangerettes. And both my cousins eventually joined the Blackstone Rangers. So, I think my father, you know, wanted a different type of life for us. He had three sons and a daughter, and I think he wanted to get us outta Chicago, so we wouldn’t be tempted by [00:04:00] joining the gangs. JJ: Yeah, how many brothers and sisters at -- whatever you wanna -- AD: Okay, yeah. JJ: And I don’t know if you wanna give some names or anything. It’s up to you whether... AD: Okay. Yeah, I had two brothers and one sister. I had a brother that was a year younger than me, Elmer, and then I had another brother named Michael was three years younger than I was. My sister, Joanne, was two years older than I was, she was the oldest of the kids. JJ: Okay. And so, you went -- about how old were you? AD: I was about eight years old -- JJ: About eight years old. AD: -- when we hit Seattle. JJ: Okay, and then you went to Seattle. How was that, how was life growing up there? 3 �AD: You know, it was different, it was different compared to Chicago and especially the topography, you know, they had mountains and lakes, and it was a really beautiful topography [00:05:00] area compared to flat Chicago. And we moved about three or four times before we finally got settled in, my parents were able to buy a house in Madrona, which was a Black neighborhood. In Seattle, all the minorities, the Chinese, Filipino, and Japanese, and the Blacks were all confined to one area, that was the Central area. So, we grew up -- I grew up with a lot of Chinese, a lot of Japanese, Filipinos, we all went to school together and that was really nice. JJ: So, what kinda memories have you got of the school? [00:06:00] You were in a diverse area or whatever. AD: Yeah. Well, I know when I first got there, when I was in the fourth grade -- third grade then the fourth grade and fifth grade, I just remember fighting a lot, I just remember there was always fights, you know, and after school, there was always a fight. And I remember, you know, getting in my share of fights and all the way up into junior high school. And there was a neighborhood gang and I was part of that neighborhood gang and, you know... JJ: What was the name of the gang? AD: It was called The [Inkwells?]. JJ: Inkwells, (inaudible). AD: Yeah. And everybody had a knife, everybody had switchblades and push-button knives. I had about three knives. And then -- JJ: They were not a drug gang or (inaudible)? 4 �AD: No, it wasn’t a drug gang, it was just a bunch of young people. JJ: Just a neighborhood, neighborhood... AD: Just a neighborhood gang, yeah. JJ: And so, who did you fight? [00:07:00] AD: Everybody (laughs) (coughs) (inaudible) everybody. There was always a fight. We lived across the street from a park, and so at the park, that’s where everybody gathered and hung out, we played football, basketball, baseball. And so, you know, I played a lot of baseball, a lot of football and basketball, ping pong, eventually started playing tennis. And, you know, there was always fights that were breaking out, you know, that’s just the way it was back then. But it was always one on one, and it was never -- we all lived in the same neighborhood, so we weren’t trying to kill each other, we were just letting our anger out, you know, by fighting. And when I got into the eighth grade, they started a voluntary bussing program, you know, so an integration program and -- so this was a [00:08:00] chance for me, I decided to volunteer. ’Cause actually I got tired of fighting, I got tired of fighting, so I volunteered to go to school to an all-White neighborhood. And there was only one other Black student there. And I played on the football team. Then the following year, I went to a all-White high school, and that’s when I first really ran into racism, you know? The teachers gave me bad grades not because I didn’t do the work, because they just felt that that’s what I deserved. And there was a game -- JJ: So, the teachers were racist. AD: Yeah, the teachers were racist. 5 �JJ: Were being racist. AD: Teachers were racist, most of the students were racists. And I was on the football team and -- JJ: Okay, they gave you bad grades, what else [00:09:00] did you see, the racism, what kind of racism? AD: I broke my wrist playing football, I sprung it, I sprung it real bad and I was in a typing class and I couldn’t type because my wrist was damaged. But the teacher gave me a failing grade anyway. But the incident that really kind of decided that I needed to get back to the community, there was a basketball game between the main Black high school, Garfield High School and the Queen Anne School that I was going to, which was all White and there was this rivalry. And this is something that happened a lot back then was whenever there were sports events, Black athletes were always cheated in some way or another. And this was something we saw over and over and over again. But this particular game, they were playing for the championship. Garfield High School was a Black school was ahead by three points and then there was this mystery foul that [00:10:00] occurred, and the ball went to the White team, and they scored four points and they won the game by one point. It was obvious to everybody that it was -- you know, they had cheated, they had stolen the game. And so, the Black kids after the game, for the first time, they just erupted and they just went after the White kids and just, you know, a lot of White kids got beat up, some were chasing to other people’s houses. So, when I went to school the next day, the White kids looked at me like I had shit on my back, and they wouldn’t talk to me, 6 �they were calling me niggers and it was bad. And so that’s when I decided that that was my last year at the school, and then I went back to Garfield High School when I was a junior. And Garfield High School was -- so, that’s where Qunicy Jones went to [00:11:00] school, that’s where Jimi Hendrix went to school, Bruce Lee was always up there a lot ’cause there’s a lot of Asian kids up there. And it was really a -- it was a great place to be because if they -JJ: (overlapping dialogue, inaudible) was the real Bruce Lee then, that’s (overlapping dialogue, inaudible). AD: Oh, there was a Bruce Lee, yeah, there was a real Bruce Lee. But it was a great place because there was Chinese students, there was Black students, Filipinos, there were Blacks and there were White students and we all got along, you know, and it was just, it was a great place to be, it was a great school, and I had a great experience. When I was a senior, the counselor called me in, this Black woman and told me that I wasn’t gonna graduate ’cause I was skipping school a lot and doing a lot of different things. So, she told me I wasn’t college material and when she [00:12:00] told me that, it made me real mad, because my parents were always telling us that we’re gonna go to college. So, I decided to buckle down and I graduated barely, you know with two-point grade average with all the credits I needed. I continued to play sports. And then when I graduated, I actually started doing some acting, I got into some drama. There was this nonprofit that was doing skits about stereotypes, about racial stereotypes and I really got into it. And after we finished with that, I started getting into some other -- doing other theater work and also started writing a lot of poetry. And the Urban 7 �League started a program to help Black students get into the University of Washington. So, I got in that program and I found myself at the University [00:13:00] of Washington. There was only 30 Black students out there at the time. JJ: And Seattle has a large Black population (inaudible)? AD: Not a large one, but in 1968, Seattle had the largest Black home ownership per capita in the country. And so, you know, we all lived in the same neighborhood, but the neighborhood we lived in was in prime property, you know, on hills overlooking the lakes. But, you know, there was always racial things that were going on like Eddie Lincoln who got shot by an off-duty policeman and the police got off. And the Black woman who got raped by police officers and it was never anything done about it. And, you know, my father coming home from work, and the first [00:14:00] thing he would do is he’d have to have a drink because he was dealing with so much racism on his job out at Boeing. And my father was -he was the type of person that he didn’t take no shit from people, you know? And so, I remember when I was 13 years old saying that I wanted to join the police department, I was gonna be a policeman. My father, both my parents got very angry and said I wasn’t gonna join the police department. And I remember being 16 saying I was going to join the Marines and go to Vietnam. My father said, “No, ain’t no son of mine going to Vietnam, ’cause those people will call you a nigger.” So, my parents are very political. My father had joined the Communist Party when he came back from World War II ’cause he saw a lot of atrocities and he did a lot of stuff with Paul Robeson. And so, we were raised [00:15:00] pretty 8 �much in a very political environment. And when I was 13, I found myself marching with Martin Luther King and then I started getting involved in civil rights demonstrations in Seattle at a very young age. That’s one of the reasons why I kinda volunteered for the volunteer bussing program ’cause I felt like, “Okay, maybe this is what we should be doing, integrating.” And so, I got into the University of Washington, I started... JJ: The integrating came from the civil rights (overlapping dialogue, inaudible)? AD: Yeah, yeah. So, by that time I was doing a lot of writing, writing a lot of poetry and doing a lot of poetry readings in the Watts Writers Workshop which was a group of famous Black poets and out of LA. They used [00:16:00] to come to Seattle all the time, University of Washington. I was the only local poet that they asked to read with them. And I had also -- I had gotten a creative writing scholarship too from the Links Foundation. So, I started toying with the idea that I was going to be a playwright, I was gonna go to New York and become a famous playwright. I went to LaLa Leroy Jones’ place and that’s what I kinda had my mind set on at the time. But anyway, the BSU started doing a lot of work in the community and a lot of stuff on campus. And I remember when I was 17, 16 maybe, I had been out playing tennis ’cause I was -- we played a lot of tennis ’cause they had a tennis court. I was training myself to be the next Arthur Ashe I thought. And I came in the [00:17:00] house to eat dinner and I walked by the TV and I saw these Black men with guns demonstrating, protesting some gun laws in California, and they were the Black Panthers. I just remember thinking, “Wow, you know, wow, look at the -- never saw a Black man carrying a gun before on 9 �TV,” had these uniforms on. So, you know, I didn’t think much of it at that time, but we had -- the BSU decided to close down this high school, and we closed the high school down, we took the building over and then a week later we were -- I was arrested along with a couple of other people and charged with unlawful assembly. And while we were in jail, Martin Luther King was assassinated. And [00:18:00] so, it was very frustrating to not be out on the streets when that happened because all across the country, riots were breaking out all over America and we wanted to be out there too. So, when we finally got out of jail a couple of days later, there was a Black student union conference in San Francisco. So, we all got -- we got a bunch of cars and we, about 20 of us drove down there. And while we were down there, we heard that there was a funeral for this Panther named Little Bobby Hutton, that he had gotten killed in the shootout on the same day that Martin Luther King had got killed. And so, we decided to go over to the funeral. We went and bought some berets, so we’d fit in. And we drove on over there and went into this funeral and it was a very emotional and Little Bobby Hutton’s mother wailing and [00:19:00], the aunts were wailing, and we saw these Panthers standing on both sides of the walls looking really serious. And we walked the procession and looked at Little Bobby Hutton in the casket and we went back to San Franciso State. JJ: So, there were Panthers and then there was also his family was there? AD: Yeah, his family was there. Marlon Brando was there as well. JJ: Walking? AD: He was standing in front -- 10 �JJ: In front of (overlapping dialogue; inaudible)? AD: -- of the building with Bobby Seale with his black leather jacket on and black beret. And so, Bobby Seale was gonna be giving the keynote address at this conference. So, we went back to wait for him and we waited, we waited for like a hour and hours. And finally, the doors flew open and here comes Bobby Seale along with Kathleen Cleaver and along with about four or five other Panthers, Warren Wells who had been wounded in the shootout. So, Bobby Seale gave the [00:20:00] address, the keynote address and he was very emotional because Litle Bobby Hutton was the first Panther to join, he was a good friend of Bobby’s. Not only was Little Bobby Hutton killed, but also Eldrige Cleaver had been wounded and was in jail. Eighteen other Panthers were also arrested including David Hilliard. So, a large chunk of the membership of the Black Panther Party at that time was now in jail. So, Bobby Seale gave one of the most powerfully emotional speeches that I had ever heard. And during the speech, he stopped and said, “We’re gonna stay here all night. Anybody got anything to drink?” And I had bought my parents a big bottle of vodka ’cause it was cheaper in the Bay Area, and you could buy it at the store. In Seattle, you had to buy it at the liquor store. So, I bought this for my parents and I said, “Yeah, I got some.” And I ran and [00:21:00] got it and gave it Bobby and he took a swig, and he passed it around and some of the comrades took a swig and he really got animated then, he really got animated and he just -- he was just really portraying a lot of different things. It was really -- I wish that had have been taped ’cause it was very powerful. But when he finished, I made a beeline to where he was, my brother 11 �and Anthony Ware another brother we worked with, we all three of us converged on Bobby Seale and told him we wanted a chapter of the Black Panther Party in Seattle. So a week later, he came to Seattle along with George Murray, the Minister of Education and another Panther, Bill Jennings from San Diego. He stayed at my parents’ house for three days and there were about 20 other people from [00:22:00] the community that we had been working with and organizing with, students and non-students and we met with Bobby Seale and George Murray for over a three-day period and he told us what we needed to do to be members of the Black Panther Party. And then he asked me, he said he was going back east to open up more chapters and he asked me to go with him. But first of all, towards the end of the meeting, he said, “Who’s gonna be the captain?” And for some reason everybody pointed to me, everybody -- and I said this in the book, but I felt like I had been tricked into becoming the captain because I didn’t really raise my hand and say I wanted to be the captain. I was only 19 years old, there was plenty of guys there who were older than me. But anyway, I was named as the captain and Bobby asked me to go back to New York with him [00:23:00] and I told him that I wasn’t ready to go and I always kind of regretted that, but I didn’t feel like I was really ready to go ’cause it was changing, it was happening so fast, I wasn’t really ready to make that change. So, a week later, I got called and told to come to Oakland and I went down to Oakland, my first time ever flying. And when I got there, I was met at the airport by Robert Bay and Tommy Jones, they took me to the office on Grove Street and they took me around the corner where Robert Bay lived, they introduced me to 12 �Landon and Randy Williams. And there was a lot of things that transpired on that trip, I don’t know if you want me to go into all that. JJ: No, no, that’s fine, as long as (inaudible). AD: Okay. So, I remember the first thing I had to do was go see Huey in Alameda County Jail, that’s [00:24:00] one of the first things I had to do, I had to go out in the field and sell papers to some of the comrades. But when I went to Landon and Randy Williams’ house and Robert Bay’s house, the first thing they did was show me their armament, each one had their own stock of weapons, and they started showing me all their weapons and everything and they’re reloading equipment. So, a couple of days later, they introduced me to the Panther Drink, which in the street was called Bitter Dog, in the party was called Panther Piss, dark port wine and lemon juice, and they turned me onto some Brother Roogie, which is marijuana. And I remember, we were in the kitchen talking and Landon Williams was in the front room ’cause he didn’t smoke or drink. And we heard a large bang, a loud bam, we ran in there and Landon was sitting there with a .44 Magnum in his hand, he had [00:25:00] shot his TV out. He shot it out because he said, “Man, I got tired of watching the cowboys kill the Indians.” JJ: No. AD: So, he just shot his TV out. So later on that day, we... JJ: Did it have something to do with the wine or no? AD: No, ’cause he didn’t drink, he didn’t drink or smoke, you know, he didn’t get high, Landon did not get high. So, later on that night -- well, earlier in the day, Tommy Jones had asked me if I had a piece. I said, “Yeah, I gotta carbine.” He said, 13 �“No, I mean a handgun.” I said, “No.” So, he went out and got me a ninemillimeter llama with a holster on it and he gave it to me. So, I had put it on. And so, we decided to go down to West Oakland to get something to eat down on Seventh Street and there was another brother that was with us, Oleander Harrison, he had joined the party when he was 15 and 16 and he went to Sacramento [00:26:00], he’s in those films [of them being?], and so he’s got a cigar, a little stubby cigar in his mouth and a shotgun in his hand. JJ: So, what year was this (overlapping conversation; inaudible)? AD: This was ’68. JJ: So, ’68 -- AD: April of ’68. JJ: -- was up here when the Panthers were talking about weapons and that (inaudible). AD: Yeah, this is April, ’68. JJ: And where everybody was. AD: So, we went and got something to eat and me and Oleander went outside and we started smoking a cigarette and this was maybe two weeks after Little Bobby Hutton had been killed, so there was a lot of tension -- JJ: (overlapping conversation; inaudible) AD: -- between the party and the police. And so a police car drove up, Oleander being young, he started yelling, “Pig, you motherfuckin’ pig, you better stop at that stop sign.” So, I joined in, I just started yelling too, we’re yelling all kind of profanities. Pig goes around, comes around the corner, he calls for backup, and 14 �10, 15 [00:27:00] cars start showing up. And Robert Bay comes out and Landon and Randy and Tommy come out and all of a sudden, people are running, people are running home, people are saying, “Oh man, we gotta get outta here, there’s gonna be a shootout.” Shops are closing, the restaurants is closing. And within five minutes, the street is empty except for us and the police. The prostitutes were the only ones there, they said, “We ain’t goin’ nowhere, we’re gonna stay out here and help our brothers.” And so, then all the police were bunched up together and Robert Bay says, “Spread out,” he says, “Spread out.” So, we all spread out. And then there was a lieutenant that was in front of the police officers and he starts walking towards Landon and Landon -- at first I see this young brother with the McClymonds’ leather jacket on, he’s gotta bag of groceries in his hand, you know, and I’m, you I’m just -- all this stuff is happening so fast, I was just in college, I was just doing my homework, now I’m down [00:28:00] in West Oakland with a leather jacket on and gun on and getting ready to get killed. I see this young brother and I say to myself, I’m telling myself, “I wish this brother would stay and help.” And he looks me in the eyes and he says, “Man, I would stay and help, but I gotta get home.” And he’s gone. So, now things are real tense and I’m just feel like, “Okay, this is -- I’m not gonna go back to Seattle, I’m gonna die right here on this street.” And so, everybody’s got their hands on their guns, police got their hands on our guns -- on their gun, we have our hands on our guns. And this police officer, this lieutenant who was much more harder than the other ones, it appeared to be, he starts walking towards Landon and he says, “I’m gonna check you.” He’s got his hand on his 15 �gun. And Landon is backing up saying, “No, you’re not gonna check me.” And he keeps walking towards [00:29:00] Landon, Landon keeps backing up, they keep saying, “No, you’re not gonna check me.” And Landon slips on this garbage can top, it bounces right back up, but the garbage can top reverberates and it breaks the ice because the next thing that happened is the police stopped, they turned around and they got in their cars and they didn’t say a word and they drove off. So, that was my baptism into the Black Panther Party. The very next day, they had the meeting at Saint Augustine’s where Panthers came from all over the Bay Area to meet, must have been about 125, 130 comrades there from Palo Alto, San Francisco, Vallejo, Richmond, everywhere. And so, I get introduced and I’m just treated like a long lost cousin or something, you know? So anyway, the meeting ends and me, Robert [00:30:00] and Tommy Jones, we get in the car, we head back to the house. When we get to the house, the phone rings, Robert Bay grabs the phone and says, “Yeah.” And he slams the phone down, he runs into his bedroom, he grabs two rifles, and he hands me one of them and a box of ammo and we jump in the car. He said, “The pigs are vamping on the comrades at the church.” So, we’re speeding down Grove Street and he asked me, he said, “Dixon, you know how to load that weapon?” And I’ve never seen it before, it was a .44 magnum, but I told him, “Yeah,” and I figured out how to load it. And so, by the time we get down to the church, there’s nothing, there’s nobody there. And so, of course I’m relieved that nobody was there. And so those were my -- that was my baptism into the Black Panther Party. And a couple of days later, I was on my way back to Seattle. 16 �JJ: So, you go to Seattle and what kind of work were you doing, [00:31:00] what kind of (overlapping dialogue; inaudible)? AD: Well, we started looking for a place for the office and we find a place, the man won’t rent it to us, he’s a realtor, he has real estate offices next door, and he’s got this other office that’s empty and he won’t rent it to us. So, we said, “Okay.” So, the next night, his office is firebombed, and so we go back to him and he rents it to us. So, we opened our office up, get our phones turned on. And at that time, it was not illegal to carry weapons out in the open in Seattle. So, we’re carrying our weapons, everybody’s got their rifles and shotguns. So, we get the phones turned on and we start getting [00:32:00] calls from the community for all kinds of things, police brutality, rental issues, domestic problems and we start going out on these calls. And this one woman who had seven kids, the landlord had taken the door off her house because she didn’t pay the rent. So, we sent some Panthers to the landlord’s house, they got the door from the landlord, they carried it down the street and put it back on the hinges. And we got calls from women saying their boyfriend was beating ’em up, or the husband was beating ’em up. We sent five or six of our Panthers to the house and they straightened that out. And it was amazing because this was the first time the community had somebody that they could call, that they knew [00:33:00] was gonna take care of their business, and they didn’t have to call the police. But they started really taking advantage of it as they can often do in the community. And I remember, I was sending weekly reports down to Bobby Seale and talking to him over the phone and he told me, he said, “Dixon, you guys are going out on too many 17 �community calls, you gotta cut it down,” so we did. About a month later, we get a call -- maybe three weeks later, we get a call from this woman who said that her son who was going to an all-White high school got beaten up and that nobody at the school would do anything about it. So, I told her, you know, “Well, I’m sorry, we can’t come out there,” because Bobby Seale had mentioned to me that we need to cut -- stop going on all these calls. But she called back on Tuesday with the same problem, she called back Wednesday, same problem, called back on Thursday, same -- I just told her, “No, [00:34:00] I’m sorry, we can’t come.” She called back on Friday though and she was crying, she said the White kids had brought chains and bricks to school and they were beating up the Black students, nobody would do anything about it. And we got a couple of more calls from some Black mothers who said the same thing. So, it just so happened that there were about 12 or 13 Panthers in the office with rifles and shotguns and we decided, “Okay, it’s time to go on out there.” So, we drove out there, when we got out there, there were about 25 policemen out there, they were on the side of the building. By this time, you know, we didn’t care who was out there, it coulda been a army out there, but we were gonna go do what we had to do. And we crossed the street, there was fat sergeant who met us at the door, he said, “Dixon, you can’t take those loaded weapons in.” And we knew the gun laws, the gun law states that if you are carrying a weapon and a bullet is not in the chamber, then it’s considered unloaded. So, I told him, “It’s unloaded.” So, we went in [00:35:00] the school. Principal saw us, he took off running, comrades went and got him, we brought him back down and sat him down, we told him, if 18 �didn’t start protecting these kids that we were gonna protect them. And he promised us that from now on, he would protect them. So, we walked out of the school and we backed away across the street because when I went to see Huey, he said, “Never turn your back to the pigs ’cause they’re nothin’ but a bunch of back shooters.” So, we backed away across the street, we didn’t turn out backs to the pigs, we got in our cars, drove back to the Central area. The police followed us, and they were gonna try to indict us, but they couldn’t because we didn’t do anything illegal. It wasn’t illegal to carry weapons even into the school. Of course, eventually they did pass a law to make it illegal. And eventually they did pass a law to make it illegal for us to carry our guns. But that was the [00:36:00] defining moment in the Seattle chapter of the BPP. JJ: So those were some of the things that -- did you do a breakfast program too or -- AD: Yeah, then and by 1969, we got orders to start free breakfast programs, and we opened up our first breakfast program and then we began to open up more. And there were some people who didn’t see it as revolutionary, and they left the party. Then I got called down to Oakland in ’69 and while I was down there, I was down there for about two months, Bobby Seale gets arrested, or not arrested, but he actually got kidnapped. [00:37:00] And so then I was told to go back to Seattle to organize and help free the Chairman. So I go back to Seattle, we moved out of our office, and we opened up the community center because we had orders to move outta the store fronts and move into houses in the community ’cause the party was getting raided all across the country. JJ: And what year was this? 19 �AD: This was ’69. JJ: Sixty-nine (inaudible)? AD: Yeah. JJ: So, you opened up a service center, what was the difference between that and the office? AD: The community center was more accessible to people in the community, and we could do more things, we had more room. JJ: (inaudible) AD: And we opened up a free medical clinic as well, we opened up a free medical clinic. This Black guy from the Justice Department called and said he wanted to meet with my brother and I. [00:38:00] We didn’t wanna meet with him, but he said it was a matter of life and death. So, we did go finally meet with him, and he told us that the police were gonna raid our office and kill us. And so, we started fortifying our office and, you know, we heavily sandbagged our office, steel and everything. I mean, I could go on all night Cha-Cha. (laughs) I could go on, but -- JJ: Okay. Did you wanna (inaudible) now or -- AD: I mean, if you wanna jump ahead or something? JJ: Oh no, I wanted to -- well, I also want to talk more about the organizing, if you can -- AD: Okay. JJ: I mean, you can go ahead and then come (overlapping dialogue; inaudible). 20 �AD: Yeah, so anyway, we had a free medical clinic, and we opened up a legal aid program, and through our medical clinic, we did sickle cell anemia testing, we did mass sickle cell anemia testing and [00:39:00] we started a free legal aid program, free food program, liberation schools, and that was our main thing that we did. (break in audio) LINDA TURNER: -- this little suburban Evanston girl. F1: There you go. LT: Yeah. JJ: (inaudible) suburban what? LT: No. So, when are you starting? You gotta say, “Go,” or -- JJ: Okay. (break in audio) JJ: Okay Linda, if you wanna give me your name and maybe age and where you born and that. LT: My name is Linda Turner. I was born in 1941. You do the math. And I became an activist in 1965. I remember precisely because it turned out to be a very momentous moment (laughs) for a lot of northern people to get involved in the Civil Rights Movement that was going on down South. And that weas the first nationwide showing of the film, Judgment at Nuremberg. And when it ended and if you know the movie, it’s about the trial of Nazis who were responsible for exterminating millions of people in Germany, Austria, around, not only Jews, but gypsies and communists and political enemies and gay people, lots of folks. And 21 �at the end, you’re left with the message that if you care about people, you can’t just sit back and let it happen, you have to be like the few good Germans and do something about it. Right after the movie ends, on comes the news, and what’s on the news but Alabama state troopers clubbing demonstrators on the Pettus Bridge in, is it Alabama, was it -- now I’ve forgotten. Selma, they were on their way to Selma, Alabama. And that was my signal, I immediately connected, [00:41:00] if I feel upset about people sitting by and not doing anything about injustices to someone, I had to get involved in this. So, next morning I joined CORE and within a week we were at McCormick Place at the boat show that they -- the tourism show they held every year. And I think this was the old one before that one -- I think it’s the one that burned down eventually. And we chained ourselves in a circle in front of the Alabama booth with the state troopers standing there. We ran chain link through our coats, so you didn’t see the chain until we got there and padlocked ourselves. So the front page of The Tribune the next day was, “Cops carrying out --” ’cause we went limp -- carrying out these demonstrators, you know, like sacks from McCormick Place and we were jailed, got out the next day, we went back, did it again. No security there, they let us back in, we did it again. [00:42:00] And I remember the story because that night I ate Chinese food and got a fortune in my fortune cookie that said, “You feel refreshed after a relaxing weekend and ready to tackle the world.” So, my feeling was, I was active in CORE for a long time, from there it kept growing, the antiwar movement, from the Civil Rights Movement to the anti-war movement just 22 �like Dr. King and start making the connections between them. And I think once you’re an activist it’s hard to stop being one, you’re always -JJ: What kind of work did you do in CORE? LT: Oh, I did in the ’80s -- oh well, ’70s, I went to Cuba, I’ve been to Cuba five times. So, when they make a big fuss about Beyoncé and Jay-Z going to Cuba, anybody can really go to Cuba now, you can say, “I want to investigate the arts and culture of Cuba,” you can go. But I wish they would stop the blockade already. I’ve been involved in [00:43:00] various ways of trying to end the blockade against Cuba for all these years. I was part of the Chicago Cuba Committee, which did work on that, it was an educational organization. I went on the second Venceremos Brigade, there were 700 of us. We cut sugar cane and I still have a picture of Fidel with his machete talking in this big circle of people and that was the brigade that I was on. We left just after Fred Hampton had been murdered, December of ’69 and we returned after cutting sugar cane and touring the island just before May Day of 1970. And when we returned, we were confronted with the fact of Manuel Ramos’ death. I don’t remember all the details, he was killed and a gigantic May Day march, somewhere in my files of memorabilia, I have pictures of it, you know, with banners [00:44:00] and everything. It was really beautiful and we felt like we were -- that was a connection between the struggle of the Cuban people, the Puerta Rican people and all the press people in Chicago, everywhere. It was very moving. I went on to at that time a storefront community organization called The People’s Information Center opened and I became a part of that along with several other 23 �friends. And we did programs that other participants in the Rainbow Coalition did, the Young Lords also, breakfast for children program, worked on a free people’s health clinic, just all kinds of good things in the community. JJ: Where was it located? LT: Oh, this was in Lincoln Park, right on Holsted Street. On one side of us we had the People’s Law Office, which is a whole other story [00:45:00] and a few doors down, we had the Women’s Liberation’s -- Chicago Women’s Liberation Union Office. So, it was a very progressive block. And in fact, after urban renewal cleared the land between I think Dickens and Armitage, there was a People’s Park built and I remember specifically a 26th of July celebration where we roasted a pig. I won’t describe how the pig was attired. And it just went on, I came into an organization of activists that did a lot of work against U.S. intervention in Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala for many years called the U.S. Anti-Imperialist -- it was after -- there was initially many years ago an AntiImperialist League and that’s what it was named after. But we did a lot of film showings and sponsoring speakers, educating people. There were lots of demonstrations [00:46:00] at consulates, there was always something going on. I’m trying to follow this chronologically because for -- what else did I do during those years? I’ll probably remember later. I’m 71 years old, so you gotta cut me some slack, you know, every detail won’t be there in the right order. But about 12 years ago, I had to move to Las Vegas, actually I live in Henderson because my mother who at the time was almost 96 could no longer live alone. So, she moved from Florida and I moved from Chicago leaving my daughter and my little 24 �grandbaby behind and stayed with my mother. And she lived another five years, ’cause she finally had her family around her. My brother lived there already, so for the first time in many years, my brother and I and my mother were all together in the same [00:47:00] neighborhood. So, it was a very good five years for her, she almost made it 101. And now I find so many of my friends are taking care of their mothers, it’s usually the mothers. So, that’s another link I have with friends is the experience of the reversal of the mother becomes the daughter and the daughter becomes the mother. Anyway. And so that’s where I am now, I come to Chicago every year for a week to see my friends and family. But my skin has got -- my blood has gotten too thin to live here all year round especially in the winter, so that’s why I am where I am. And there, I work -- whenever MoveOn has a demonstration, whether it’s against gun violence or whatever legislation is coming up, I work on campaigns, work with OFA which has been -- had many incarnations [00:48:00], Obama for America, Organizing for America, now it’s Organizing for Action. So, I just keep doing that because I feel that if I stop doing that, I lose my connection with the world and it’s good exercise. Walking a picket line never hurt anybody, if you can put one leg in front of the other, so. JJ: So, you came from CORE -- LT: Yeah. JJ: -- in ’60 -- LT: Right, I joined CORE the next morning, it was headed by James Forman at the time. JJ: Was that located in Chicago? 25 �LT: In Chicago, yes. JJ: Okay. LT: And for a time, I was secretary of the organization and then there was North Side CORE, West Side, South Side, they had various branches. JJ: But I don’t understand, what was the difference between them and some of the other Civil Rights groups? LT: Well, Congress on Racial Equality, didn’t limit itself to students, it was for all ages, it was very integrated. [00:49:00] But there came a time, it was after the Black Power Movement when there was pressure for White people to especially step down from leadership positions, that it was time for Black people to lead their struggle and I had no problem with that, so I did. Other people took office, but it didn’t mean that we weren’t supportive White people who were no longer officers or whatever in CORE. I liked the organization, and I liked James Forman, and it was very active at the time. JJ: What was he like in -- LT: Well, I only met James Forman once very briefly. There’s actually a movie -- I should press my brain and try to remember, that talks about his youth. Denzel Washington played a union organizer in it, The Young Debaters. If you ever get a chance to see it, it’s great because there’s a kid there who’s the son of a minister who grows up to -- who was James Forman. And this kinda shows you [00:50:00] his introduction to things like the Labor Movement and debating. He was a very articulate and powerful speaker, and he was part of the Black 26 �Colleges debate team that ended up beating the Ivy League schools and winning a championship in debating. It’s a very good skill to have. JJ: You mentioned Manual Ramos and then you mentioned Fred Hampton. What do you recall of Fred Hampton? LT: Oh, because I knew him, I mean, I think it wasn’t even weeks -- not even a week before his death that I was the one that took a flyer that we had designed -- there had been an attack by the Chicago Police on the apartment that -- it wasn’t Fred Hampton’s apartment, it was an office or something and -- don’t make me [lose that train of thought?]. [00:51:00] And so there was a big rally planned on behalf of the people who had been injured and jailed from that raid, not the one that killed Fred. So, we designed a flyer to be passing out to mobilize people. JJ: The information center? LT: This is before the internet. JJ: The information center? LT: Yeah. Well, yes, it was and I took it over to the office on Madison and showed it to Fred and he’s the one who changed the location. It was gonna be a different location, I don’t remember which, but it ended up being at the church on Ashland where they had many events and a few minor little changes and took it back -- JJ: On Ashland and Madison? LT: Well, there was a church on Ashland near Adams I believe. It wasn’t far from the electric workers’ union hall, there was a trip there and that’s where the rally was scheduled to happen. So, went back, [00:52:00] made the changes, went to -this is maybe a day later, went to the printing press, Omega Press, progressive 27 �printers in Hyde Park and I spent the night waiting for the flyer to be done. And in the morning, about six in the morning, I got a phone call from [Sue Jan?] telling me what had happened, Chairman Fred had been murdered. So, needless to say, everything but the heading, the header came off, all the illustration, everything else stayed the same, the place, the time, and it was reprinted, and I waited for it and brought it back north. And yes, I remember that. JJ: How did that impact you and some of the other organizers? LT: Well, we were just to leave for Cuba and I remember one of the things that people decided that the brigadistas would do because we did various community service kinds of things in training before we left together, [00:53:00] was to stand guard, to stand witness at the Panther office on Madison. So, we’d stand up and down the stairways in case there was an attack or something, here’d be all these people standing there waiting, watching, you know. I remember that. And I knew a lot of the Panthers because I was one of the people like many of us at the Information Center who sold the Black Panther paper all the time, so I would be the one who would drive my little Toyota over there and would load it -- John Preston would load up the car with Panther papers, take ’em back north and sell ’em at L stops and everywhere. Good paper. And then as I say, between the -there was a Young Patriots organization, later there was Rising Up Angry, there was the [00:54:00] Panther Party, there was the Young Lords, People’s Information, all these groups that really showed an example of the Rainbow Coalition by our skin and by our politics, the solidarity among the peoples in the community and that was (overlapping dialogue; inaudible). 28 �JJ: How would you describe that, I mean -- LT: Well, I mean, because you could see organizations and individuals working together toward common goals, especially for White people following leadership of Third World people, or Black people, Puerto Rican, Mexican, whatever, Brown people, Black people that we followed their example. The Panther Party started the breakfast for children programs, the Serve the People Programs, STP. So, that I thin in itself sent a message in terms of leadership not being, you know, for people like me, formerly White suburban [00:55:00] kids at one time to come in and feel that somehow we could run it. And no, we couldn’t because we didn’t have that contact with the community, that understanding of what needed to be done. So, it was a great learning experience for a lot of people to work with the Panthers, the Young Lords no matter what it was about. JJ: You said contact with the community, what do you mean? LT: Well, like even in Lincoln Park, there were a lot of Puerta Rican people in Lincoln Park, the place where I lived was pretty White, it was like a merging of, you know, what they call the base now, a political base that that became everyone’s base, all the progressive factors in a community. So, I just thought it was important for people to see that when the politics are right, it can pull [00:56:00] people together to work together to accomplish good things. JJ: Geographically, what would be the base? LT: Well, when I talk about Lincoln Park, I talk about that area between -- because it had, oh I’d say between Armitage and Belden even, in terms of where people were located. Because the Young Lords Church was on Dayton and Armitage, 29 �the People’s Information Center, People’s Law Office, the Women’s Union were all on Halstead between them. So, those were some basic organizations, people lived in lots of places, you know. JJ: What were some of the demonstrations that (overlapping dialogue; inaudible)? LT: Well, I remember when, wasn’t it the Young Lords who helped take over McCormick Seminary, we were there too. And it was saying a lot in terms of what McCormick Seminary should give back to the community. [00:57:00] It got a lot of media coverage, and in fact, in the end McCormick Seminary did acquiesce to do -- I can’t remember exactly, but I know that in some way that sitin, that occupation was successful in that did rest some power from that institution in the community. JJ: Were you inside or not? LT: Well, I had been in -- I didn’t occupy, no, I didn’t live in there. The occupy came later, I was part of occupy in Las Vegas. Occupy Las Vegas, what better place to occupy? (laughs) Occupy a casino. But, that’s what I remember, and that was very important. And I think it kinda set an example that institutions in a community have an obligation to support the interests of the people in the community, not just like -- it was in fact walled off, it had this black wrought iron fence all the way [00:58:00] around it. Do you remember? And kinda like tried to be an isolated island in the community. And I think people showed that it couldn’t be, it had to relate to the community it existed in. JJ: And you mentioned Manuel Ramos, what do you remember of that? 30 �LT: Well, I was trying to rack my brain to understand. I think I must have met him at least. I didn’t know him well, but I know that when we returned from Cuba, just before May Day, that’s what we learned. In Cuba we heard nothing about what was going on back in the States, I mean, we didn’t have cell phones or the internet or anything like that. So, this is what we were told when we got back that he had been killed by police, was it a police -- I don’t remember the details, but I do remember the turnout, that it was just this very impressive -- there were pictures that showed people like six abreast walking down the middle [00:59:00] of the street, I don’t know if it was Division or what it was. But I remember that occasion because it seemed so apropos to come back from Cuba and see this massing of progressive people demonstrating against the kind of attacks that police were pulling off. In fact, later when I actually held a nine to five job, I worked on the Red Squad Spy suit, and a lot of the people who spied on activists in Lincoln Park and elsewhere were -- the lawyers got special permission to do not court reporters which were so expensive, but actually tape record the depositions of these spies and I was one of the people who transcribed -- that’s the first transcription job I ever -- transcribed those depositions. And I could see people walk through the office at the Better Government [01:00:00] Association to the conference room for their deposition and recognize me -- JJ: These are police? LT: -- and I would recognize them. JJ: These are police, undercover police? 31 �LT: Yeah. The Red Squad started I think in the ’30s and it initiated to spy on labor, labor unions, infiltrate them, report to the police. It went through the Peace Movement, the anti-war movement, the Civil Rights -- it was always there. And in fact, I think Michael Moore had a movie that talks about that kind of infiltration of cops going to meetings and everything. And people who -- when they’d walk through to that conference room and I looked at them and they knew who I was ’cause they’d spied on me and a lot of other people, it was just kind of this feeling like, “Well, we gotcha now. We know what you are. You’re not a progressive person, you were a spy for the cops all this time.” JJ: So, you actually saw your name in the [01:01:00] files or -- LT: Well, I was part -- oh yeah, I was part -- I have my file. Of course, when you get your file, did you ever get your file, it’s all redacted, big black lines through everything that would indicate who it was that was reporting this information about you. And there was a cop who every time I came out of Montana Street apartment, [Maury Daly?], he’d be sitting in an unmarked car, wave to me, follow me wherever I went, you know, that kind of intimidation, it was just kinda -- some of it was just silliness. JJ: So, you’re saying they were going to the meetings? What else would they do? LT: They came to meetings whether it was civil rights or community meetings or whatever as if they were ordinary people. I don’t wanna name names. JJ: No, (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) LT: And then once this -- JJ: But can you describe some of the things that they were -- 32 �LT: Pardon? JJ: Can you describe some of the things they were doing? LT: Well, when they came to meetings and demonstrations, they didn’t stand out from anybody else, you know, [01:02:00] it was a nice person, a teacher maybe who claimed to believe in something and came and showed up with a sign or whatever. But they were there to take names down, who was at the meeting, who said what, that kinda stuff. And it happened all over the country, but we’re familiar with it as the Red Squad suit. And back in the early ’80s, that was my job at the BGA, I was transcribing those things and working solely on the suit. And the files of people who were spied on and the spies were all stored there. So, I could walk into the file room with dozens of file cabinets in it and my file was in there, my Red Squad file. So, I was part of the class action. JJ: So, what about, is that COINTELPRO, is that the same thing or -- LT: Not exactly. I mean, in a way it was [01:03:00] because there were other suits at the same time. JJ: Can you describe COINTELPRO, what is that? LT: That was uncovered in the Percy Hearings I think, weren’t they, that it was a national, run by the FBI especially. COINTELPRO was Counterintelligence Program and they tracked the plot to kill Fred Hampton through COINTELPRO. The Red Squad thing was a different thing, I really have no idea or recollection how much of the local operation was influenced or mandated by national COINTELPRO. I only know what happened here. And at the same time, we also had a suit against military intelligence and the FBI, so different offices handled 33 �different aspects of the lawsuit. The Lawyers’ Committee to defend the Bill of Rights I believe had the suit against the FBI and another organization, I can’t remember which it was [01:04:00] that had the other part. So, I did a lot of the typing of the brief for it. I mean, being a secretary had its advantages. I was also the secretary in the Hampton civil suit and I still have the fly page from the notebook that the People’s Law Office gave me. This was before computers. I did it on my IBM Selectric typewriter, it was red. And they would come to my house every night and sit around my dining room table and edit pages and I’d have to go and cut and paste and put the document together. And the NACP gave them a grant only for secretarial help like that. And so, before the lawyers saw a penny, I was being paid, which I kinda felt bad about, but then again, I was earning a living, but they didn’t get paid till the settlement [01:05:00] happened, you know. JJ: And what were some of the things that came out in the trial, in the settlement? LT: Well, the documents were -- it was the complaint against the Chicago Red Squad and it was incident after incident of evidence of police spying on people exercising their constitutional rights, we hear a lot about constitutional rights today, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly and the police were harassing -many people lost jobs because they would go to your boss and say, “Did you know that your employee did this or that?” It was a big thick thing, don’t ask me to recite it. JJ: (inaudible) LT: (laughs) But it existed and I did that. 34 �JJ: But I heard they sent letters to different people -- LT: Pardon? JJ: -- to spouses, they sent letters or -- LT: There were a lot of -- [01:06:00] I don’t remember exact circumstances. JJ: So, they weren’t just collecting information, they were -- LT: No, they collected information, but they also caused problems for people, it was an intimidation. I mean, telling your boss that your employee is a -- I don’t wanna call names, you know, a communist or who the heck knows, that can get you fired. So, it was harmful, many people suffered direct injury from it. But most of the class were any people who were intimidated from participating by presence and knowledge that the Red Squad was afoot, spying on you even though we didn’t know exactly who it might be that was the spy. And not to build it up to sound like international spies, but some of them were people who were firmly against what we were doing, the [01:07:00] kind of causes we were involved in whether it was peace, civil rights, anti-war, whatever. And some of them might have been people who did it in exchange for cops dropping a charge that they mighta had, somebody gets caught doing something they shouldn’t and they said, “Are you willing to do this?” And they say, “Sure, I’ll do that. Just don’t arrest me for whatever I did wrong.” They came to it in a lot of ways. So, yeah. JJ: And was this brought up like in court, like some of the -- LT: Well, I actually never went to court, it was only the lawyers who went to court. JJ: No, but I mean this information that the Red Squad gathered, was it used against individuals? 35 �LT: For it to be -- JJ: Or, if you know. LT: -- in their files, it meant that the whole police department could look up somebody and know what they were about. And whether they wanted to harass people individually like going to their bosses or spouses or whatever, [01:08:00] or whether they wanted to sabotage the work of organizations, sometimes there’d be agent provocateurs, they weren’t just reporting, they were suggesting things that might be illegal to try to get people to do things they shouldn’t, so they could be arrested. There was a whole array of dirty tricks that they did. And I only mention it because from being a victim myself, although not harmed as much as other people were, to being a person who could sit there and watch these spies kind of be called [to just?], they were outed, suddenly the whole movement knew who these people were. And just to be at that desk before the conference room as they walked in and looked at me, and I looked at them as if to say, “Now, I know who you really are.” [01:09:00] JJ: What about, did you hear anything about Reverend Bruce Johnson? LT: No. No. JJ: No? LT: I know I had met him when the Young Lords were in the church, but I knew nothing about what went on there. Yeah. JJ: I said that because it happened just about a month and a half before Fred Hampton’s death. LT: Really? Oh, it had happened before. 36 �JJ: (overlapping conversation; inaudible) LT: I remember that it happened, but I knew nothing about the details. JJ: (overlapping conversation; dialogue) September 29th. LT: Did they ever find who did it? JJ: No, it actually is still a cold case. LT: Still a cold case. JJ: They haven’t found out who did it or -- LT: No. JJ: -- I don’t think they want to find out. LT: Yeah. Were they trying to blame the Young Lords? JJ: The Young Lords were blamed, yes. I mean, they were at least insinuated. LT: Yeah. You know, through the years, you might have remembered the Lincoln Park, oh what was it? Remember Dick Vision. JJ: Same thing. LT: Yeah. I remember [01:10:00] his -- ’cause that struggle was against urban renewal in the community. And I was friends with Dick, in fact, I went up to -when my daughter was born, [Maya?], we took a trip up to British Columbia to visit him and his wife and little daughter Revy for revolution, Revolutionary Hope, it turns out her name was really Hope, but that’s what they called her, Revy. And we stayed up there, talk about cold, I’m never going back in February to British Columbia, but it was beautiful. Yeah, he was a good guy and then he went to China to teach English in China and the last I heard he married a Chinese woman, I think he’s still there. Yeah. 37 �JJ: (inaudible) recently (inaudible), but that’s another issue. LT: Have we covered everything? JJ: What else, what do you think (overlapping dialogue; inaudible). F2: I think it was pretty complete. JJ: It was pretty complete. [01:11:00] How about the People’s Law Office that you -whatever you called it? LT: Well, I worked with the People's Law Office on the Hampton suit. JJ: (inaudible) LT: I mean, I typed the complaint for it and it was the, as I said the NACP who paid for that. Yes, I was close, I mean Flint and Jeff and Jeff wrote a wonderful book, The Assassination of Fred Hampton which I have an autographed copy of. And I still sometimes check Chicago papers and Flint’s still involved in fighting for justice on all kinds of fronts. And now a big thing is the Innocence Projects, all over the country. When I worked at the BGA, the guy who started it at Northwestern, David Protess, I worked in the same office with him and then he went on to start the Innocence Project at Northwestern, and now they’re everywhere, there’s even an Innocence Project in Las Vegas. So, I think that’s a [01:12:00] great thing, trying to fight for freedom of people wrongly incarcerated. JJ: So, what do you think were the main -- the most important aspect of that era, that (inaudible)? LT: Of the era. I think it was always, there had to be the fight against racism because no matter where you turned, that was very central to a struggle, yeah. I remember later I worked with an organization that had a newspaper called 38 �Frontline, On the “Frontline Against War and Racism,” that those were the twin kind of anchors of the progressive movement and they really were. When you talk about U.S. military intervention in Central America, that’s the war aspect and as well as racism, the idea that the United States Government could dictate to other countries how they should govern their countries and things like that. [01:13:00] JJ: Now, you went in the church several time or -- LT: Oh yeah, I’d be in the church. JJ: What was it like, can you describe -- to you, what was it like to you? LT: Pardon? JJ: What was it like to you? LT: It was like a church. I don’t know. (laughs) I remember I was there when you had the clinic in the church, I remember visiting the clinic, I remember you had a breakfast for children program. Yeah, that’s the parts that I remember. But mostly I remember that it was just this -- in the community, the activists in the community. ’Cause at the People’s Information Center, we had a breakfast program, at the church on Diversey, there was the Fritzi Engelstein, Free People’s Health Clinic and the mural is still there on that church. And it just made the whole larger community [01:14:00] so much more -- these progressive aspects so visible whether you are an Armitage or a Diversey or Halsted or whatever, you got the impression that there were progressive people doing good stuff in this community. JJ: A base like (inaudible). 39 �LT: Yeah, it was a base. Of course, you know what urban renewal did to that. And when I would drive down Halsted and see the fancy expensive housing that was built on People’s Park or whatever, it almost makes you wonder, did all that other stuff really happen, you know, when you see it so transformed. But it was a special era, and I don’t see -- I haven’t seen anything like it since then. I think it was very unique, it was, people had a sense of power that they could do stuff and [01:15:00] I don’t see it that way now. There’s so much separateness between the environmental movement or the anti-war movement or the anti-nuke movement or whatever. Some activists circulate among all of them, but there’s no coming together, the kind of coalition that worked in Lincoln Park and around Chicago then. JJ: Now, in terms of the Women’s Movement, how did that fit in? LT: I was probably less active in the Women’s Movement than I was in any of the other stuff. And it’s ironic because a new movie’s coming out that -- did you ever know my friend Ethan Young? JJ: You know, I heard his name, yeah. LT: Yeah? He’s a writer, he’s in New York, he lives in Brooklyn and his wife Mary Dore has just collaborated with another filmmaker to make this wonderful movie about the Women’s Movement in the ’70s, which was really -- I mean the Women’s Movement didn’t just start then, it’s been going since before [01:16:00] suffragettes, you know. But it’s really great ’cause there are a lot of Chicago faces in it, I’ve seen the trailer for it. It’s called, She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry. And that’s the name of the film, and it should be out within a month. But I 40 �wasn’t as active in that as I was in whether it was Cuba or breakfast program or all the other stuff that was going on in the community. JJ: Was there any work being done at all? LT: Pardon? JJ: You said there was a women’s group. LT: Oh, there was, oh, yes, I just wasn’t as active in it myself personally. JJ: Okay. LT: Yeah. Oh, yes, they were very much, yeah. If you kinda keep a tabs on it and Google the movie, when it comes out, you watch it online and you’ll see, “Oh, there’s so and so.” You’ll know faces. It’s a good thing. JJ: Okay, we’re kinda tapering down, but any final thoughts? LT: Not really. I just think that there’s always something to be done, maybe -- it’s kinda like in an electoral campaign, not everybody can walk and knock doors, not everybody can cold call people in a phone bank. But people can write letters to the editor, people can make comments online articles, people can individually find a demonstration to go to or a forum to attend or a donation to make. There’s always something people can do to strengthen that movement and they should do it. JJ: All right. Thank you. LT: You’re welcome. End Of Audio File 41 � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/769d9e910cfdb5f53c521b40ccb6c7ed.mp4 aa655634ea06119f8c326fb3d3f2970a 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 Aaron Dixon vídeo entrevista y biografía Descripción Spanish language Description entry La historia oral de Aaron Dixon, entrevistado por Jose 'Cha-Cha' Jimenez el 3/14/2013 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_Dixon_Aaron Title A name given to the resource Aaron Dixon video interview and transcript Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Dixon, Aaron Description An account of the resource Oral history of Aaron Dixon, interviewed by Jose 'Cha-Cha' Jimenez, on 3/14/2013 about the Young Lords in Lincoln Park. This interview is incomplete. At approximately 39 minutes, the interview with Dixon cuts to another interview with Linda Turner and does not return to Dixon. 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 2013-03-14 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/6465aa4cb5294f7646827f875ec4e7db.pdf d432a7e358b4fc96317ac494cd5475a8 PDF Text Text Young Lords In Lincoln Park Interviewee: Ada Nivìa López Interviewers: José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez and Melanie Shell-Weiss Location: Grand Valley State University Special Collections Date: 8/24/2012 Biography and Description Ada Nivìa López was born in Puerto Rico and moved to Chicago with her family in 1956. She describes life in Lincoln Park in those early days, including her father’s leadership in Latino community and his run for alderman in the early 1960s. She became active in her community at an early age and describes how, shortly after starting college, she and a group of students approached the local ASPIRA Association office, to demand that they become more accountable to the local community. ASPIRA responded by offering her a job, which she accepted. Ms. López continued her activism throughout her college years, working closely the Young Lords. She ultimately earned a B.A., cum laude, and a master’s degree from the University of Illinois at Chicago, specializing in cross-cultural communication and bilingual education.Ms. López was a founding member and commissioner of the Mayor’s Advisory Commission on Latino Affairs, which was designed by the Young Lords and created in partnership with Mayor Harold Washington’s office. The group later became the Chicago Commission on Human Relations. She has served on the Chicago Board of Education. In 1992, Ms. López became the first Latina to win a statewide election to the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois where she was instrumental in positioning the university to play a prominent role in addressing urban issues. She is currently a liason between the National Conference on Puerto Rican Women and the National Hispanic Leadership Agenda, promoting policies on education, health, and employment. She is also a nationally and internationally renown �specialist on issues pertaining the Latino community and women.Ms. López’s current work, a significant photography collection and anthology entitled, …y así somos/who we are, focuses on Puerto Rican life both on and off the island. �Transcript MELANIE SHELL-WEISS: Okay. So my name, for the record, is Melanie Shell-Weiss. And I’m here today talking with Ada López at her office on LaSalle in Chicago, Illinois. It’s Friday, August 24, 2012. And Ada, for the record, would you mind spelling your full name? ADA NIVÍA LÓPEZ: Ada, A-D-A, Nivía, N-I-V-I-A, López, L-O-P-E-Z. MSW: Terrific. And tell me about where you were born and when, and where you grew up. AL: I was born in Arecibo, Puerto Rico. And do you want me to tell you about that, or just -- MSW: Please. AL: -- talk to you? And I lived with my mother and grandmother in her home as part [00:01:00] of an extended family. Nearby were a couple of uncles, and it was a community, on the north shore, you know, by the ocean. My -- during that time, during the time when I was a young girl, I knew that my father was abroad. Later, I understood that my father was serving in the US Army during Korea. And when he went back to Puerto Rico, he found unemployment, like many did. So he started -- he had been corresponding with a friend that -- a man that he befriended in the army, an Italian [00:02:00] American. And this Italian American was encouraging him to come to Chicago. At the same time, the recruitment for the steel mills was taking place in Puerto Rico. This was early ’50s. And I think - you know, I never spoke to my father specifically about this, but I think what 1 �happened is that he responded to the recruitment effort, and he came, and my uncle came with him. And it was in 1959. I was about seven, six and a half, when he sent for my mother and myself. But by that time, he was no longer living in Indiana and [00:03:00] working in the steel mills. By that time, he had, through his friend’s help, he had found an apartment in what is Ukrainian Village, at the border of the Italian neighborhood, and the Ukrainian neighborhood, and the Polish neighborhood. So that triangle there was still predominantly ethnic White, what we call now ethnic White. MSW: And this was in Chicago at this point? AL: This was in Chicago in the -- next to Division Street, except Division Street was the port of entry, and most Puerto Ricans were either coming to Division Street or that surrounding -- you know, surrounding Division Street, or if they were very Black, if they were dark, they sometimes were at Cabrini. You know, because [00:04:00] one of the things I think happened is that because of the different phenotypes, we had access to different neighborhoods. My mother, being very fair and European-looking, and the Italian helping my father broker the apartment, that gave us access to the neighborhood, where otherwise we wouldn’t have been able to move in. It was common for me to walk to school and walk in the neighborhood and see the rent signs, for rent signs, in the ethnicities of language, you know, mostly in Polish or Ukrainian. And that was a signal to us that we were not welcomed, not to even bother knocking [00:05:00] on the door. So it was a harsh reality in many ways, because the racism and the rejection of Puerto Ricans was very overt. You know, that’s not to say that there weren’t 2 �individuals who, as this Italian American, who did welcome people just based on their goodness, and maybe their past experiences, also, because at that time, the Italians were not seen as, you know, as the same as other ethnicities that were blonde or blue-eyed. I mean, that’s the whole history of race in the [00:06:00] U.S., how groups like Italians and Jews and others were not even considered Whites until a certain point in history. So that was my experience. And I came here at a very interesting time, because for one, Puerto Rico was more Latin American, and I say that in the sense that our culture -- we were conscious, aware, that our culture was Latin Americanist, that our roots were in Spain. It was also a time when you did not have access to the technology that you have today, the world wide web. We did not have the connection with Hollywood and the [00:07:00] media, the U.S. media, that you have today. Our Hollywood was Mexico City. And through Mexico City, we would be able to get the films. We would be able to see films, you know, Jorge Negrete, Pedro Infante, Libertad Lamarque, the Argentinian. And we saw these musicals of very Hispanic-looking people, by the way. You know? So the world for us was Hispanic, right? And culturally, we still dressed like they did in Spain. We still strolled in the plaza like they did in Spain. And as a family that had access to the city, [00:08:00] because we weren’t that far, we participated in that world. And I remember, on one hand, I had the rural experience, because my grandmother was a widow and had a small farm. My uncle had sugarcane and hired my other uncles who had nothing. So right there in our family, we had a difference. I have an aunt who had her own store. My mother was the youngest and the first one 3 �who worked outside the home in the needlework industry, which was award winning in Puerto Rico, the fine needlework of the women in Puerto Rico at that time. [00:09:00] So my mother was the one who had the opportunity to work in the industrialized, more urban industrialized. She was one of the first. So this was, you know -- so I had no television. I could walk to my uncle’s home, the one who had the store and the sugarcane, and look at television when it was available. We listened to the radio, and the family provided its own music and entertainment, you know, by playing instruments, and singing, and telling stories. And some of my favorite memories are of me standing [00:10:00] while my grandmother sat in her rocking chair at the end of a very long day that started at five o’clock, and I could -- and I remember standing and just looking at her head of hair, standing behind her, and then just looking at how the moon highlighted the silver strands of her very gray hair, and the silkiness of that. This might have been at six, six-thirty, when it’s dusk. And then she would tell me stories. That was my favorite time of the day. Sometimes she would send me up to the attic. It was an attic not like American atti-- not like the attics we know that are finished, but this was a cross-space between the wooden ceiling and the roof, and they used to hang tobacco. [00:11:00] And she would send me up the ladder to fetch her a tobacco leaf, so that she could smoke her only rolled cigarette after dinner. And of course, that was my greatest adventure, because sometimes you had bats up there, and I had to dodge the bats. MSW: (laughs) Right. AL: So, you know, this was life, and this was entertainment. And the extension of the 4 �home, you know, the outdoors was the extension of a home, and it was my playground. Of course, I had my pets, the hen that was my pet that no one could eat, and the other hens that I chased for dinner. This was my life. So when my father sends for us [00:12:00] in -- we -- I started first grade here. My mother had taught me enough of what she thought would be kindergarten, and then I started first grade. My first experience with the African American was a negative one, because it was a little first grader that would bully me. So my aunt had sent me an umbrella from Puerto Rico, a cute little girl’s umbrella from Puerto Rico, plastic, transparent plastic. And one day, I came home crying, and my father said, “You have to learn to stand up and defend yourself. You can’t come home [00:13:00] and cry like this. You have to learn. You have to remember that your name is Ana Nivía López. Do not be embarrassed. You have to go out there and be” -- you know, so he gave me a pep talk like that. So next morning, I beat her with the umbrella (laughter) when she bullied me. And that was the -- I skipped a part there, because that was the first time we came. Then we left to Puerto Rico. When I came back, that’s when I was a little older then, and we came back to the Ukrainian, Polish, and Italian area. MSW: Just let me interrupt you for one second just to clarify. So how old were you when you first came to Chicago? Was that 1959? AL: Six and a half. MSW: And that was about 1959? AL: No, that was -- MSW: Or earlier? 5 �AL: You know, I can’t remember really well. But I remember in -- [00:14:00] I think what happened is that we moved there first, and then we moved to the area I was telling you. MSW: And so where did you first -AL: So I was still like six, six and a half. MSW: Ok. AL: Yeah. And then by the time I -- then when I was a little older, like, I don’t know, seven or so -- I have to check with my mother, who has a great memory, better than mine -- then I moved into the Ukrainian Village area. So we went to what is now Uptown first, Lincoln Park. That’s where Lincoln Park comes in, because that was Uptown. And my sister was born there. And the neighbors were very nice people, and they were from Wisconsin. And I remember that I [00:15:00] didn’t know any English at all, and it was the first time I had seen a television with English in it, being spoken. And I thought, This is an interesting kind of radio, you know? Because you see the people, and they’re different. And I remember the cultural experiences. I remember that the little boy in the front door, the apartment in front across the hall, was -- a little boy was there, and I was little, too. And he signaled with his hand, you know? And I went running. And then he pushed the door in my face. And the reason was because he signaled with his hand in a way that means “come here” in Spanish and in Puerto Rico, [00:16:00] but here it means “bye-bye.” So these were my first -- so as a young girl -- I guess my point is that as a young girl, I arrived at a time when you had no exposure to English, so English was stranger and foreign as foreign can be to 6 �anyone. And I don’t even think that there’s any place now where you have those experiences, because in the most remote mountains, somebody will have a TV, a fax, a computer, and there’s an exposure to the world that did not exist for us at that time. So I come here, and it’s the first time I hear this foreign language, first time I see this, and that’s when my cultural -- my training in cross-cultural communication begins. MSW: Absolutely. AL: You know? [00:17:00] And I always felt more comfortable with the Italians, of course, than with the Polish or Ukrainian. I never understood why until I was older. But still, we had -- the majority of people in the school were Polish or Ukrainian, and some Italian, and we had to deal with that environment. There were only three girls in the school, three Latinas. This was Chopin School, which must be like a hundred percent Latino now. And there were three Latinas. Two were the daughters of another veteran that my father had met and had also been able to move into the neighborhood. And the other was me. And early on, I remember that [Rosa?] became [Rose?], and she kept insisting that I called her Rose. And I was experiencing all of this. But then when [00:18:00] I got home, my father would always help me pronounce my name correctly, and tell me not to be embarrassed of who I was, and my mother would teach me Spanish, written -and reading in Spanish. I was not allowed to speak English at home. And without knowing it, they were creating the greatest immersion Spanish-language program that you can have. But I didn’t understand most of this. I just obeyed, because it was a time when you just obeyed your parents. Otherwise you felt 7 �that the sky would open and you would be punished directly by God. So you just obeyed, you know, and you trusted them. You know? You trusted the parents. And what you didn’t understand, you looked upon with awe, but you didn’t [00:19:00] go any further. So this was my life. And then at one point, I remember my -- I hang onto memories, and I realize how important, and this goes back to what we were talking about, how important the environment is in the construction of one’s identity. I remember this Polish American teacher asking me to tell her my full name, how I pronounce it. And I did, you know, timidly. And she said, “Well, that’s a beautiful name, and it’s so different.” And I hung on that for the longest time, because usually it was just people struggling to say my name, you know? But I collected these memories, [00:20:00] and they end up serving as support, as lifesavers in the ocean as you hang on to these things. And I remember my experience of just not understanding anything, moving my head up and down and just going for trial and error. And without remembering how, I eventually learned English, you know, and the rest is history. But you know, later, when I was high school age or after high school, I was already an activist. And I think that came about through the civil rights, [00:21:00] because my father had -- during that time that he was here, my father was always looking to organize the community. So he was a respected community organizer. MSW: And what was your father’s name? AL: Graciano López, Graciano López. Graciano López Agosto, yeah. The mother from Utuado, and the father from Arecibo. So he had -- as I’m in school and I’m 8 �living this life of struggling to do the cultural brokering and find my way, he’s participating in the American Legion, the Boricua Post [00:22:00] of the American Legion. JOSÉ “CHA-CHA” JIMÉNEZ: AL: Expand on that. And the Boricua post served as a center of the community. It was also a cultural hub where the families would gather, and besides having the meetings, the American Legion meetings, they also used it to celebrate the family traditions. You know? They would do fundraising. They would help each other. People would walk down the street, and if they spotted someone that looked Puerto Rican that was freezing, they would make sure that person got a coat. They would -- got him a pair of shoes, [00:23:00] and they would just serve as a -- they would welcome and serve as a support group for others. We had -- we celebrated the birthdays, the Christmas parties. And it was our cultural centers, you know, in the community. MSW: Where was it located? AL: I don’t remember, but some of them were -- I don’t remember, but as a child, I remember that there were families around Polk and Western Avenue, and they were going -- the parish was Precious Blood, and [00:24:00] there was a community there. But because the leadership lived in different places, also, although not that far by today’s (laughter) standards, they also reached out across the communities. My father -- the Caballeros de San Juan had their first parade -- and this has always been debated, who was really the first, right? So the Caballeros de San Juan, I think, had their first parade on Madison Avenue, 9 �because that was a community. There was a Puerto Rican community there. And I remember I even went to Precious Blood at times, although we were from Holy Family -- [00:25:00] no, not Holy Family. Holy Rosary on Western and between Grand and Chicago. That was -- and then Saint Mark’s, they had -people were going -- Puerto Ricans were going to Saint Mark’s, but that was a very harsh experience, because initially, that was Polish and German, and whatever else, a little Irish. And originally, they were not allowed into the church. They had to -- they gathered in a tent outside the church. So, you know, it was a hard time with a lot of overt racism. The people like my father who -- I think they’re the ones that, kind of, landed on the beach [00:26:00] and took the beach, make sure that it was safe enough for the other troops to arrive, you know? But they confronted a lot of overt racism. Paradoxically -JJ: Talk about your father. Talk about him. AL: So my father was -- had a lot of leadership qualities, and my father was one of the ones that had the most formal education. Not that he was the smartest, you know, I’m, sure, but (laughs) that he had the most formal education. So people looked to him a lot to serve as a bridge between the community and what we would call today the grassroots, and the [00:27:00] city officials and other institutions. And they respected him a great deal. He also had friends who then went on to Waukegan, but still, they continued their relationship. And when the Caballeros de San Juan joined my father’s group, and they got together to continue with this Puerto Rican parade – and now I’m in the early ’60s, right? The people of Waukegan, like Sebastian Rivera, would come to Chicago and 10 �have meetings. [Edwin Montalvo?] would come to Chicago and have meetings, and together, they would work [00:28:00] on the Puerto Rican parade and also on developing their organization, Puerto Rican Association or something, in Waukegan. So, you know, when my father was in the hospital dying of -- you know, I asked him -- oh, he said, “You know, what I can’t understand is why, now that there are so many educated Puerto Ricans and people that are active, Puerto Ricans, and there are so many resources, it seems so much more difficult to organize,” he said. And all I could say was, you know, I said, “You know, I think it’s because [00:29:00] you had your own communities, and the dynamics was as it is for any –- you know, as human, right? You have your own families, your own community, your own ways of doing things.” But I said, “But it’s like a house with walls. And during your time, the walls were low, and you could still look across the way. The fences were low. And now they are of a greater magnitude.” And I think -- that was an interesting observation for me, because I thought it was so wise, and it was right on target, you know? And it caused me reflection. But they did a great deal. They created about -- I think I counted, on my father’s resumé, about, I don’t know, 15 or 20 [00:30:00] organizations, Puerto Rican organizations, because the reality was so harsh that it -- I think it was clear that if you didn’t organize and take care of others who were less fortunate or were having a harder time, there was no other institutions. You didn’t have the infrastructure. There were no institutions that would do it for you, so you had to take it upon yourself. And in the early days, the Catholic Church was very difficult to work with, but a lot of these people were people of a great 11 �faith who brought their Catholicism from the mountains of Puerto Rico. And they were people of great faith, [00:31:00] great strength, and I admire them, because they really made an impact and transformed those churches and made them more welcoming for everyone. And if you hear about Saint Mark’s story of how they started in the ’50s in outdoor tents because they weren’t welcomed, and how then through their efforts, they opened the door for themselves, and they transformed the culture of the church, and the church became richer and recognized it. Then later, Saint Mark’s was known for the cathedral [00:32:00] of the Puerto Rican people in Chicago, and that was where you knew you had to go to get baptized. You knew you -- everyone would come from all over to Saint Mark’s, and they called it the cathedral of the Puerto Rican community. And it’s to the credit of the people who came who were -- who came not because they rejected their culture, not because they rejected who they were -- not all of them. I’m sure there were some, right? But the leadership did not reject the culture. The leadership came because it was clear to them that they had to find economic opportunities. They had to find jobs. But that was their motive. It’s not that they were trying to discard their heritage or their culture. So this combination, then, [00:33:00] you know, gave them a great deal of resolve to not only find their way, but also not discard their culture and insist on being represented in other people’s agenda. You know? Not because they were assimilating passively, but because they also felt pride. So then now you -- well, from Saint Mark’s Cathedral, which it was called, to masses in Spanish, to then deacons, Puerto Rican deacons that came out of Saint Mark’s. So that’s just one example. If you 12 �use one institution, that’s one example. Now, the Puerto Rican parade in the ’60s, when my father was organizing it, going back to that, [00:34:00] you see the same kind of parallel, you know, in that institution, where my father and others see that there are parades, ethnic parades and others. And then they form a delegation. You know, they were not aldermen officially, but they form a delegation. They figure out how to organize the community and how to enlist the support of city hall and the other officials in organizing a parade that would highlight the pride and the -- what they considered the best of the Puerto Rican culture. And my father then became the first president of that parade. You know, people always say he was [00:35:00] the founder and first president of the first parade, but if you say it’s the first parade, then you find people that will say, “Well, no, there was one on Madison Avenue.” So you know. But I think that he represented an interesting juncture where you see the transformation of what was more spontaneous of a parade to a parade that bases -- that roots itself or bases or finds itself connected to the formal social political agencies and structure. MSW: The infrastructure. AL: The infrastructure. So they connect themselves that way. [00:36:00] That’s how I see that juncture. And there, too, you see how, again, it’s to be involved. Like my father used to say, to show our pride, the best of our culture, and be involved in the civic, social, and political life of the city. And that was the goal. But never denying one’s roots. You know? And then in 1975, he ran for -- he decided to run for office as alderman. What [00:37:00] I think -- well, after that, there were 13 �the Puerto Rican riots in 1966, and my father was -- I think my father was president of the parade. I’m not too sure. But if he wasn’t president, he was surely still the main player, one of the main players. During that time, I was going back to school to college. And I didn’t live near Division Street. MSW: And where did you go to college? AL: I started at University of Illinois at Chicago. And I remember I used to listen to the radio. And that evening [00:38:00] of the riots, I heard Elias Diaz y Perez -Elias? Yeah -- switch his program and start reporting spontaneously from -about the riots and all that. So I called my father. I called my father and said, “You know, there’s something happening,” and he went out there. Now, I didn’t go. I wasn’t out there. But he went out there. And then out of that came a different type of effort to -- that was intensified. I think that their awareness of and their desire to serve the community through social and civic activities, that meant doing dancing, and fundraising, and helping the church, and helping [00:39:00] through the American Legion, these efforts, again, moved to a different level. Now it moved to -- and the frustrations came to a head. And they knew they had to then work with the city in a different way. When I was -- you know, and I say this because if you look at it, it’s -- I don’t think it’s just my story, ’cause I talk to people my age, and a lot of ’em say, “Oh, yeah, my parents didn’t let me speak English in the house either, you know? And they kept their language, too, you know?” And I think it’s really -- if you see it, it’s a parallel, I mean, [00:40:00] between our individual experiences and what’s happening in the communities and in the city, and in the world. There’s an interesting parallel 14 �that one doesn’t really see. At the same time you’re living it, you don’t really understand it, but you look back and you say, “Oh, no wonder.” You know? And this is all interesting for me, because it’s -- when I was starting to study, I got a job -- this is in the ’70s, you know, ’70, ’71. I got a job at ASPIRA, and a parttime job as a club organizer. The way I got that job as a club organizer is that [00:41:00] we went to confront the ASPIRA office that was at Ogden and Chicago Avenue. And we went to confront them and ask them, what did they have in mind in terms of meeting the needs of the students, of the college students, you know? MSW: Now when you say we, who is we? AL: Well, it was a group of -- it was all part of what we were doing, I think. It was part of the -- you know, ’cause my generation -- see, now, I was talking to you about my father. But at that point, we’re -- well, let me finish with my father. So my father then -- [00:42:00] after the Puerto Rican parade, my father ran for alderman in 1975, right? Okay. So that -- before that, we were aware of the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War, the women’s movement, and then, of course, in Lincoln Park -- we had friends in Lincoln Park, and we knew that the Young Lords were in Lincoln Park, and that that was an effort for some of the same kind of social justice, to realize this idea of social justice that, for many of us, had started when we first came here and experienced the difficulties [00:43:00] with the language, the poverty, the -- and the struggle to make our way and to realize those ideas of having a job and providing for the family. And not all of it was as it was painted, because of course, in the recruitment of -- to the steelworkers and 15 �others, it was all painted very -- it was all made to -- the people were told that they would come and find all that infrastructure and all those jobs, and the good paying jobs, and all of that. And they found a very harsh reality. But anyway, so our generation, the first [00:44:00] generation here, sons and daughters of immigrants, we have this experience that shapes our worldview and our sense of what is right. And even today, there are people who may not even know Spanish, but if you talk to them, you know that they have that sense of pride, you know? And I say it’s because, you know, they came, but they didn’t come because they were -- they came to find a living, but they were not -- they didn’t buy into denying who they were. You know? Not all of them, of course. I’m just talking from my experience and the people I know. MSW: Sure. (laughter) AL: [00:45:00] This is really nonscientific. MSW: But can I ask you this for a minute? At what point did you realize -AL: Jump in and ask me questions, ’cause I’m just -- MSW: No, this is wonderful. AL: –- I’m reminiscing. (laughs) (inaudible) MSW: This is exactly what I want you to do. At what point did you realize that what your father was doing and what you were experiencing in your household, your worldview, was part of this larger generation? At what point for you did you make that connection and realize this was part of something that was not individual? Was there a moment or a series of moments that you can think of? AL: You know, I think that in those ’60s, I think it was a combination of -- you know, 16 �during this period leading up to the riots, but because of -- [00:46:00] and the civil rights movement, because the civil rights movement, you know -- I think for a lot of Latinos, the civil rights movement threw us into -- forced us to -- called us to reflect on our own reality as Puerto Ricans, and then -- and you start trying to understand the civil rights movement, which was on television, at the same time that we are, in our communities, also struggling for these kind of human rights. [00:47:00] But we begin tying it to a homeland, you know, Puerto Rico. And that’s where this idea of self-determination not only applies to the here and now, you know, and the communities, what Stokely Carmichael called the internal colonies of the U.S., and the activity in the Lincoln Park area, but also, it also throws in another dimension, which is the race question. You know? And it gets us to become more aware of that bigger picture. But of course, you know, all we have to do is then reflect. All I have to do is then remember [00:48:00] how difficult it was for my parents, for my mother. My mother got sick and invited a Puerto Rican friend to babysit us while she was in the hospital for two days. And the landlady chewed her out, because she was allowing Blacks to come into the apartment. We all looked at each other, and we said, “Blacks?” We didn’t know what she was talking about. And then I, as a young girl, I realized that she was talking about [Leti?], my mother’s friend. And we thought Leti was Puerto Rican, but now I learned that she’s Black. So we start -- this country has made our [00:49:00] consciousness of color more of a -MSW: A dichotomy, yeah. AL: -- dichotomy, Black and White. Whereas -- you know, I tell people it’s like falling 17 �in love with someone that’s ugly, you know? People see that they’re ugly, but you don’t. You know? And, it’s like, you’re blind. You’re blind, in that sense, because other attributes of the person is what you perceive first. But anyway. So, you know, the civil rights reminded me then of those experiences, too, you know? And made us more aware of the bigger picture in the United States, and the war in Vietnam, and how the Puerto Rican men were being drafted tied us to the war in [00:50:00] Vietnam, how people who had no idea of English, didn’t know any English, they were drafted, and there they were, you know, trying to understand English through those walkie-talkies. (laughter) So that tells you a little bit about me. I continued working at ASPIRA and studying. MSW: So I want to make you back up a little bit, though. So going back to how you got the job at ASPIRA. So you and others marched down to the offices. AL: Yeah, and said, “Here we are.” MSW: And these were classmates or other friends from the neighborhood? AL: No, these were students. At the time, we started at Loop Junior College, which is now Harold Washington Community College. [00:51:00] And while we were there, we organized a group called HOLAS, I believe it was, HOLA or something. JJ: Yeah, HOLAS. AL: HOLAS. And that group is the one that continued participating in the community and with community groups that were organizing, you know, like Young Lords, because at that time, you have to -- you know, you have to remember how the ’60s were. I mean, they were really quite different than now. And we saw -- we were the first generation that went into these -- that had this consciousness and 18 �went into the universities. And as our parents had gone -- just like our parents, we were breaking new ground in these universities, because it was really the civil rights [00:52:00] movement and all that effort, all those who participated in civil rights, and all the different groups that participated in human rights, civil rights, those were the ones that got the policies in place that then were transformed into programs. You know? Affirmative action programs. And the affirmative action programs opened the door, and there were monies allocated. So I was studying, and I wanted to be a lawyer, because my father wanted to be a lawyer, and I thought that -- and at home, they always said that I argued a lot and that I should be a lawyer. So I was convinced, you know, and I wanted to be a lawyer. And [00:53:00] I took a -- as a young student -- I mean, it’s amazing how young I was, right? As a young person -- I must have been in my early 20s, mid 20s -- I took a job translating for a lawyer at Cook County Jail, ’cause I wanted to get my first insights, right? And I saw so much brokering and so many 20-dollar bills being switched from one pocket to the other that I thought, This is not about justice, you know, social justice. This is not what I thought it would be, and I’m not sure I want to do this. You know? And not having any counterargument, you know, not having any -- like what we call today role models or lawyers that could give me a different perspective, I stayed with my doubt. And then when I was -- when we confronted [00:54:00] ASPIRA, that’s when my life started to change career-wise, because we were at the meeting with ASPIRA, and Sylvia Herrera [de] Fox was the first director. They hardly even had furniture yet. They had just opened the office. But we had heard about this new office that was opening, and that they 19 �were going to work with students. And we said, “Well, wait a minute. Here we are, and no one has contacted us. What kind of work are they prepared to do? It must not be so smart if they have not even (laughter) called us!” You know? ’Cause I don’t think we were even sophomores, so, you know, this is how you think when you’re a student, and it’s the ’60s, and you’re, you know, standing ready to change the world. [00:55:00] So we went, and she was very gracious and sat back with a big smile, and asked what she could do. And we started giving her our presentation. And she listened to all of us. And then she said, “Well, you know, what you describe as a program is exactly what our mission is.” And then she was very clever, because she offered me -- she offered us jobs. And she said, “And you’re welcome to work with us.” You know? And, you know, and just –- I guess not clever. Clever’s not the right word. Seriously, she was very sensitive to us, and of course, she understood her mission [00:56:00] as it came from our voice. You know? Which was the way it should have been. It was perfect. And again, it’s one of those times when you have people -- this time it was from New York -- and you had us in the schools, in the colleges, and then the Young Lords were still in the neighborhood, and we were all finding a new vehicle, a place to shape the same type of work. And I continued studying, and I took a job part time. And then one day -- as I worked part time, I was able to use my own experience with the -- [00:57:00] you know, I used the sensitivity that I had developed as a person not knowing the language, as a person here, and all the community activities, I was able to use that organizing the ASPIRA clubs. My favorite was Saint Michael’s, because they were an all-boys school, 20 �and they were always ready to, you know, start up a revolution against the nuns, (laughter) who they found were very oppressive and insulted them by saying things like maintaining that Puerto Rico did not speak standard Spanish, that we were a dialect. You know? Because these are the things that people thought. I mean, and it’s amazing. It wasn’t that long ago, and when you read those texts, it’s amazing what people were learning [00:58:00] in the universities. So one day, when I was working, Sylvia Herrera Fox sat me down, asked me to come into the office and said, “You know, I’ve been working with UIC, the federal government, and one of the nuns,” from the same school (laughs) or some person that she -- a friend. They had written a proposal to prepare a group of teachers. This group of teachers were to be the first teachers prepared in bilingual, bicultural education. And she said, “They’re going to give a merit scholarship, and this merit scholarship will also provide for a stipend [00:59:00] to live, and it’s a great opportunity.” And I said, “Yes, except I don’t want to be a teacher.” But she persuaded me, because she said, “Ada, as a teacher, you can influence and you can teach the people that you have been supporting and the students. You go in as a club organizer, but imagine what you can do as a teacher.” And I said, “I’ll think about it,” you know? And what really sold me, to tell you the truth, is that then she said, “And besides, Ada, you’re young. If you don’t like it, you could always come back, and you can be a lawyer.” And I said, “Okay, that” -- so I took back the two ideas, right? The difference I could make as a teacher with my sensitivity [01:00:00] and all my -- and my experience that I was bringing to the table, and this idea that, hey, I can discard it and do what I 21 �wanted to do, which was be a lawyer. Okay. So I thought about it, and I read up on it. And I thought -- and then one evening, I thought, My God, I’m interested in Puerto Rico and self-determination for Puerto Rico. I remember my father’s lessons well, even if he, in his later days, may have forgotten them a little bit and became more a part of -- (laughs) you know, and thought I was too radical. But I remember them, and my mother’s lessons well, too, and I could do that for others. And then I read some more, and I said, “Ah! I could help. [01:01:00] I could help the students to guard themselves against this cultural assimilation and domination (laughter) that is happening in the schools.” So I got this big idea, you know? And that really motivated me, because I said, “The decolonization of the mind,” I thought, (laughter) and granted, I had not even studied pedagogical anything or educational philosophy, but I thought of -- you know, I guess because I had teachers. You know, my parents, my extended family were my -- as, you know -- I mean, it sounds like a cliché, but it is true. They were my first teachers. And [01:02:00] they were the ones who provide that environment at home. No English. Learn the Spanish, and my mother teaching me. The trips to Puerto Rico all the time, the ties with the family. And of course, when I got to Puerto Rico, my aunts were so proud of me. You know, they would show me off. Like, “Look how she speaks Spanish,” you know? Not like others who come and are ashamed. You know? So I was encouraged a great deal, and this is what I wanted to give to my students. You know? And if they didn’t want to follow my path or feel the same way I did, because for whatever reason, I still wanted them to have an appreciation, and I wanted them to do it consciously, not just to forget 22 �of their cultural value, what is [01:03:00] of value, just because they were under pressure. You know? So I wanted them to have a teacher that would pronounce their name correctly and say, “That’s a beautiful name.” You know? Because that was an accident, but what a nice -- because she was, I think, Polish American, but she had the sensitivity to say that to me, that teacher when I was in, like, seventh grade. And she had the sensitivity to say that to me. And a lot of good teachers. There was no Latino anything at the time, but there were good people, and if they happened to say the right thing at the right moment, it would take you a long way. You know, great music teachers. I remember one teacher that really kept my idea of -- my passion for [01:04:00] social justice and doing -and she was Italian American. You know? And she was in love with Italy and her cultural roots, and would teach us Italian and Italian songs. And she would talk about her pride and about her -- but it was interesting, because what I understood from her -- I mean, was that what I felt was also valid, because that’s how I felt about Puerto Rico. So, you know, this thing is transferrable. This love of home and all that, these values are transferrable. So this was encouraging. And I did well. I did well in school. But I always knew that doing well did not mean that I could -- [01:05:00] that I needed to discard, you know, what my family valued and what I considered beautiful of my homeland and of my history. So that’s -- and I became a bilingual teacher, bicultural teacher. It was one of the most -- and I think -- and between all this time, though, I’m participating in the neighborhood with the Young Lords, and not -- but because I’m so busy, you know, I wasn’t -- I didn’t dedicate a lot of time, but I would be supportive. I would 23 �be supportive in different ways. And at the time, it was -MSW: Can I ask how you would provide support? AL: Yeah. It’s -- well, Cha-Cha would -- we would -- [01:06:00] I would rely on ChaCha to pull me into certain activities. And he would draw me into activities that had to do with children and with food, and culture things of that nature. And I remember the meetings we had, and participating in the meetings. But as I said, I wasn’t in charge of any one program or committee, because I was studying, and I -- MSW: I’m sure doing student teaching at some point too. AL: And I had -- yeah, and my daughter, Deborah, was small. And I was managing all that. MSW: That’s a lot. AL: And I was organizing on campus too. So -- but at that time, during this period, [01:07:00] all over the world, you saw that the students on campus would spill over into the neighborhood, because we did not see ourselves disconnected from the community. We were aware from the get-go that the reason we had been able to enter the university, being -- well, anyway, that we were able to enter because of the movements that had taken place. So when we go into the university, we go with a social consciousness, and a sense of fairness, and a commitment to give back that was not there with -- let’s say your foreign students who came from Latin America, or [01:08:00] Puerto Rican upper middle class, or other Latinos in the US who had been totally assimilated into the American way of thinking, and that they had bought into being White Anglo-Saxon Protestant, 24 �and took pride in not remembering how to speak Spanish, and took pride in not remembering where their parents were from. And of course, there were people who encouraged that, because it was their way of survival. And, you know, all over the world immigrants take two routes, you know? Either one where they want to keep some of their ties to the homeland -- hopefully now with globalization, there will be more -- [01:09:00] and others who want to just assimilate and forget. And sometimes they leave realities that are so harsh that that’s the only way they could survive. But anyway, so I became a teacher. So I’ve always had this parallel, three-tier life: my personal growth, the professional and the community. And I’ve always worked them together, parallel. So it’s very difficult for me to talk, because I’ve always done the three. Like, you know, three-layer chess games, you know, like three chess games at the same time. So it’s been very rich. [01:10:00] So I become a teacher. It was the most controversial thing at the time, because bilingual education was seen as unAmerican by the mainstream. It was seen as a way of -- people said it would balkanize the communities. And it went against the heart of the American individualism. It also went against, unknowingly, it went against what the African American community was doing, because they wanted to -- it was Brown v. the Board of Ed. And they were looking to integrate, and we were talking about creating classrooms [01:11:00] where our children could speak Spanish together, so they sometimes saw it as segregation, because they were going into the other spot, you know. It’s like when people think we should be a state, because they think that’s the maximum, most ultimate, wonderful thing you could do for a 25 �country, and we say, “Well, wait a minute. There’s more.” You know? “There’s more. Stop, there’s more.” And this is the same thing. They saw it as, if we can assimilate and get into these schools. And of course, that was part of the history, and that’s what they felt was needed. And I admire their struggle. But we were looking for our own answers. Again, that idea of succeeding, but not forgetting the language and knowing our history, and all that. So that was very controversial. So I became an activist, you know, for [01:12:00] bilingual education, and on my own time, after teaching. MSW: And where did you teach, if I could press you on some of those details? AL: In Humboldt Park, in the Humboldt Park area. MSW: What was your first school? AL: I organized my first school. MSW: Yeah? AL: Yeah. It was Lakeview Community School, because it was a storefront we found in Lakeview. And again, these were ideas that were prevalent in the ’60s, to organize your own school, and that again, the Young Lords, in one way or another, supported, because it was about self-determination. It was teaching one’s self to counteract the negative, the -- [01:13:00] to resist being defined, you know, by a culture that was antagonistic to all that was home to us. It was, you know, a struggle for maintaining our self-esteem and for being part of constructing our own identity, and not just being labeled and categorized and put on a shelf, in a book by someone else that is antagonistic. These were the days when scientists were studying how we were incapable of abstract thinking. What 26 �was that guy in California? Jensen, I think, was his name, who became a failure later on [01:14:00] in life. And the guy who he sued, the Black person who he sued, became an extraordinary doctor. And then this was -- and check all this when I say, because I don’t remember very well the names. But it was also a time when I sat in the classroom, in the university, and we were -- and we studied these culturally deprived groups of people. MSW: So even as you’re studying to be a bilingual, bicultural educator, you’re being taught something that would really run against this. (laughs) AL: I’m learning to become this bilingual, bicultural educator, because the federal government is responding to the social forces. [01:15:00] And ASPIRA has this vision and grabs on to this money, and then this is housed at a university, who wants the grant. And we’re housed there, right? And then they brought an anthropologist from Mexico, a mathematician from Canada, a historian from Puerto Rico, an American Indian from the Southwest, a Black woman from the South Side of Chicago, and they formed an interdisciplinary cohort group of professors to teach us. Right? Because no one knew what this was about. The world knew about bilingual education, but the U.S. did not know that much about bilingual education. And this [01:16:00] was going to be a model. So I really loved the way I studied with all these incredible scholars and people who had a really wonderful worldview, open mind. And what was your question? You asked if I had -- MSW: My question was about -- exactly that. AL: Oh, yeah. I was talking about this, how hurtful that was, how hurtful that was. So 27 �here I am with only one other Latina in a classroom of 150 or so, and we’re sitting there feeling odd, as if all eyes are on us. My friend from Texas, Maria Mangual, who went on to found and lead the Mujeres Latinas en Accion, she was the only [01:17:00] other Latina. And we both had dark hair, but she was more than look-she was darker, you know, and had a black head of hair. And I could just pick her from far, and I knew it was -- and then I looked at her, and we became friends, you know, like two children in school looking for each other, because there was nothing. And there were walls around the university, you know, brick, keeping everyone -- the city out. The university was an enclave, mostly of downstate Republicans. But it was a great -- it’s always been a great university. But anyway, so then this becomes part of -- so again, there’s a duality. There’s a dual consciousness that is always there. There’s a duality. You know you have to [01:18:00] work hard and succeed in this environment, which constitutes your concrete reality and all that. But then at the same time, you know you have to sift through what is being taught, because what’s coming out of the books and out of -- is not your -- does not represent your reality. You know? It’s something that is being done by others from the outside. And I worked as a teacher for many years. I was part of the union. I was active in the teachers’ union, so I was prolabor. And then I became a bilingual coordinator, you know, went up -- I studied epistemology, because I was rejecting the idea that our [01:19:00] students could not learn, and so I wanted to understand how man learns, you know, and I wanted -- I was always interested in the big questions. Why do people drop out of school? You know, all that stuff. So I enjoyed my teaching years a great deal. 28 �I really enjoyed it. Many times, many times I thought how lucky I was that I did not go back to ASPIRA and ask for help to become a lawyer, because I was really happy with teaching, and I recommend it now to everyone. It’s the only place you can close the door. You close the door, and you’re the CEO instantly, you know? MSW: (laughs) That’s true. AL: So -- my work, my professional work as an educator, has been very rich, and not because the opportunities were there all the time, but because [01:20:00] I made them. And as a professional, I gave up salary, and I gave up opportunities that would lead to more salary, because I had to feel that I had the balance of -- that I had to have the space for being creative and interjecting some of my thinking and my worldview, and making a difference. So my work has been creative and avant-garde, and I’ve really enjoyed it. Now, in 19-- MSW: Just to ask you for a second real quickly now. Your work has not only been creative and avant-garde, but you’ve been a renowned leader in the field of education in so many ways, as well, right, including serving on the school board? AL: [01:21:00] Well, yeah. Now we’re getting closer. MSW: And other positions, so... AL: We’re getting closer to Cha-Cha. You have to bear with me, but I did -- MSW: Not at all. This is perfect. AL: -- (laughs) I did -- and then -- MSW: No, this is exactly right. This is about you. JJ: [You’re doing well. This is?] (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) 29 �AL: Yeah, and then please edit -- JJ: (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) AL: -- almost everything except the good stuff. (laughs) JJ: (Spanish). MSW: But this is about you. This is exactly what -JJ: Yeah, [this is what we want?]. AL: So this -- so then I -- in 19-- let’s see. In the 1980s, early ’80s, then there’s -- we hear of this man who -- a Black man who, the rumor is, is interested or could be mayor. And I knew a little bit through my [01:22:00] work in bilingual education, through my civil rights work in the community, with the Black community a little bit, through the -- well, following the women’s issues and the union and all that, I knew that this congressman was -- had supported the same causes. You know? So I thought that was a really good, interesting proposition. I was very skeptical. I really didn’t -- at that time, I really didn’t see that it would happen. But it didn’t matter, because I never participated in electoral politics. You know, we often -we saw. We saw what happened in the electoral politics, the gerrymandering, the exclu-- you know, [01:23:00] the manipulation of the ballot boxes, and we didn’t -- and it wasn’t -- it wasn’t something that we saw -- I mean, that I saw as -electoral politics at that time didn’t seem to be a vehicle for making a difference. You know? I mean, this was civil rights. Right? Blacks weren’t voting, and Puerto Ricans were voting sometimes. So I wasn’t that keen on electoral politics. But when this man -- when the talk started, then I thought, Well, I don’t know. It doesn’t seem -- it’s a long shot, but on the other hand, it’s still an interesting 30 �[01:24:00] thing to do, because it’s an exercise in democracy, you know, in trying to expose. I thought it would be interesting. And then one evening, one night -then I started hearing that Cha-Cha Jiménez, José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez, was back and was looking to become alderman, and that he also was involved with Harold Washington. And then Reverendo Morales at San Lucas. And it started to -- the groundswell began. And to make [01:25:00] these stories shorter, I -MSW: You don’t need to. AL: No? (laughs) Okay. MSW: No. AL: I went to -- one evening, I was called to a meeting. And I don’t know if you called directly or I got word. I don’t remember that exactly, but I know it was the evening. And I went to a meeting that Cha-Cha had convened. You know, typically -- I mean, in his typical style, I don’t remember him saying much, but he had, like, a big idea. He had a big idea. And you knew he had a big idea. And you knew that he was gonna say something simple, but it was a big idea, and it was profound, and it was well thought through [01:26:00] someplace in his mind, ’cause we -- and you kinda trusted that, you know? You trusted that, because he wasn’t one to waste your time. That’s my experiences. So I remember him saying, “Ada, there’s talk about a commission. I’m participating in talks. And there’s a commission that may be formed to work with Harold Washington. And I thought of you to represent us. You have the background. You know how to work at that level. And I think [01:27:00] it would be really good,” or something like that, and just kinda wrapped it up like that. So I said, “Okay.” And I started. 31 �You know, and I started. I attended meetings on Pilsen, Little Village, on 18th Street. And this was different community leaders. Rudy Lozano was one of the leaders within that group. And we started developing the idea of a commission, how the commission would -- how we would represent the different issues; at the same time, represent the different ethnicities within the Latino community, [01:28:00] and the different areas of the city. And we wanted the people at the table to have that capacity to be polyfaceted, multifaceted, and to be able to do this in the different layers. So of course, I was representing Puerto Ricans. I was representing the area, the general area of the Northwest, you know, Lincoln Park, as much as we could, and education, and woman, gender. So, you know, we tried to get people that could do all of those, who had all those voices. And we -- and it was [01:29:00] difficult, because at the same time, there were Latinos who had already gotten in on board with the -- because I think -- well, Harold had been elected. I know you were active in mobilizing in your area, and he was elected in ’83. And then we were working the idea of the commission. But there were other Hispanics that were -- other forces that were already trying to work as brokering, as bridging, Latinos like us with the mayor. And of course, we rejected that type of process, because [01:30:00] we wanted to have a meeting with Harold himself, because we felt we were empowering -- you know, we were offering him something very unique and extremely powerful at a time when we only had one alderman, Miguel Santiago, and that alderman had become alderman through a different historical process that did not include the empowerment of the Latino community. So we wanted to get Harold to meet 32 �with us. And we developed an idea for a commission, which was and still is very unique, because our idea was to democratize [01:31:00] policymaking. And the way we envisioned ourselves democratizing policymaking was to have town hall meetings in the different communities with a facilitator. That input from the different grassroots and also what they call grasstops, you know, leaders, the more professional agency types -- we would take their input, their voice, give it to another person, and that person would translate it into policy recommendations for the mayor. And the mayor [01:32:00] then would have his commissioners meet with committees that came out of those town hall meetings. We would form committees right there, and then those commissioners would meet with those committees and our facilitator. So we were not only gathering the input of the community leadership, translating -- formulating the policy recommendations, giving it to the mayor, but then the facilitator would meet with the community group and go before the commissioners to have a say on the execution. Okay? So if you look [01:33:00] at all the mayoral commissions in the country at that time, there’s nothing like it. MSW: No, that’s right. This is really [unique?]. AL: And there’s still nothing like it, I don’t think. And it was just pure genius that came out of this group. And then what happened is that that commission then created opportunities for others to see themselves working in city government. So some of the commissioners, like Jesús Garcia, the former senator who is now Cook County commissioner, he became commissioner of the water department. And [01:34:00] Miguel del Valle became a senator. Now, a lot of this was done 33 �by the guys. The women did not participate as fully as they did. You know? So when they were talking about Miguel del Valle being senator, that was done in the meetings, and then we would hear about it, but we were not, like, there all the time, you know? But anyway, that’s the gender question. MSW: Why was that? Why the difference in what men and women were doing? AL: Well, that’s just your typical gender, you know, phenomena. There’s -- [01:35:00] you know, it’s the cultural spillover, if I can just sum it up that way. It’s the cultural spillover. I think that if you look at the times, if you look at it in terms of the times, some of us had more participation than our mothers did. Our mothers cooked for the activities, and they did a lot of things that were tied to their role in the home. You know, and others were more entrepreneurial and had sales ability, so they would sell things, too, to fundraise. You know, the women also had a lot of talent, and it was diverse, but in terms [01:36:00] of the hardcore strategies, I think we had less participation than men, but more than our mothers, I’d say. But I say that because, you know, if you ask me more than what I’ve told you, I won’t know. That’s why I said that. (laughter) MSW: So it’s a disclaimer, is that the -AL: Yeah, that’s why I said that, ’cause I kinda wanted to tell you more of how that happened, but no, I can’t. I wasn’t there. But it was a very exciting time. We not only -- our commission -- oh. So the way this commission was established was that one evening, we called the mayor and said, “We’re ready with our plan,” and he said, “Well, we’re going to send So-and-so over.” And we said, “Oh, no, we need to meet with you.” And he says, “Well, let me see.” And then other people 34 �became involved and started [01:37:00] trying to persuade us differently. And they came to Pilsen, where we used to meet, and it was a long, long meeting. We were there under some kind of rainstorm. There used to be -- I remember snowstorms and rainstorms while meeting at night, and a picket, also, from the opposition of Harold Washington. Someone picketed, and we were being picketed. So it was significant, you know, and people knew it was significant. So then we said -- we caucused, and the guy waited outside, and we caucused. He came back in, and we said, “Here’s the deal. We’re going to be on the second floor of City Hall at ten o’clock Tuesday. And we’re calling a press conference. Let [01:38:00] the mayor know that he can be there or not, but we’ve got to go through with this, because it will also discredit him if we don’t go through with this, because he’s enjoyed our support, and this is something that we know is important for our community, and it goes along with what he promised.” So we did do that, and the mayor came in with a big smile, because, you know, there’s one thing about Mayor Harold Washington. You knew that he was mayor, and he couldn’t speak openly -- he couldn’t speak as if he were a community organizer. He was a mayor. He was a statesman. [01:39:00] But you always knew that he admired the people when they came together and when they spoke, as he used to say. He used to say, “Ada,” when I consulted with him because I had some concern or didn’t know how to go about something, he said, “Ada, let your people speak.” And, you know, he was not afraid of knowing that the community, the Puerto Rican community, was organizing, that the Puerto Rican community had demands. He treated us with respect, and he knew it was 35 �the -- like the right thing to do, because -- he didn’t say this, but you sort of knew that he was sensitive to it, and that he saw himself in that other chair once upon a time. (laughter) [01:40:00] And we had difficulty. I mean, it wasn’t easy for us sometimes, because we admired the mayor and his intelligence, and the way he was bringing the different groups together in the city, but -- and people were just more comfortable with being differently -- different ethnicity was being comfortable with each other. And the African community would be more open and ask me about the difference between one Latino group, another Latino group, and there was a more open -- I would ask them about, “Tell me about the South Side history versus the West Side,” and there was an openness that his leadership allowed for. [01:41:00] Once in a while, I would call Cha-Cha. Once in a rare while, I would call him or see him somewhere, and give him a little report on what I was doing. I’d say, “You know, that was really” -- I think once I went to your office, right? I said, “You know, I’m working on that, and it’s really important. And this was wonderful that we did that.” And so we follow like that. Right? But it kinda -- I knew he knew I was doing my work, and I knew he was doing his thing, and thinking about another big idea. So my role as a commissioner of the Mayor’s Commission on Latino Affairs is another, in a way, [01:42:00] consequence of all the leadership that was developed in the Lincoln Park area and in the -- because I think it was through the Lincoln Park and the Young Lords that we had the space to ask the questions that had to do with community self-determination, empowerment, the status of Puerto Rico. And these were the harder questions and the more controversial questions that the 36 �other groups that were working at the same time in a parallel fashion, that the other groups shun away from, because for whatever reason, either they had committed to the agenda of the church that they belonged to and they [01:43:00] were -- and their activity was framed by that agenda, like the Caballeros de San Juan, although they did very similar things. You know? They visited people in the hospitals. They dealt -- you know, the food was a concern, the health care, people not having translations to go here or there, referrals, serving as a bridge for people with agencies. The groups did a lot of similar things. But I believe that it’s only the Young Lords that puts the big questions, and at the time the more controversial questions, on the map for the Puerto Rican people, and reflects more of what was happening in the ’60s in terms of -- [01:44:00] I should say I saw -- I remember seeing it as parallel. The work was parallel to a lot of the other groups that were also active in organizing at that time. So there was this ethos in the city and in the country that allowed for, again, moving forward historically even to a greater degree of consciousness, you know, of who we are. And, you know, we become more aware of diaspora, that word that is being used so much, the diaspora. We started becoming more aware [01:45:00] of this, because then the people from New York came to Chicago, and they created a Young Lords in Chicago and in other cities, and now we see how we can -- the same way as the Chicanos in the Southwest and others, we see how we the Puerto Ricans can take a point of view and some guiding principles and extend them in the United States. You know? At the same time that you’re positioning some of the people that share this worldview in key positions. So later, when -- 37 �after the mayor died, [01:46:00] the board of education -- well, just to sum it up, as a member -- to be a member of the board of education, I had to resign my job, ’cause I was a teacher and I was a bilingual coordinator. I had a nice administrative position. And I took a risk, you know? I took a chance, and I resigned my position. That’s why earlier I said, some of these -- we have to sacrifice in some of these things. It costs you money. And the reason I resigned is because I went through a selection process that the mayor had created, where you went before [01:47:00] a committee of mainstream leaders. And I thought I did a great job at the interview, because I prepared well. And I had made the decision to take a leave of absence, because others had done it that way, and I had researched it. So I went. I did an interview. I thought it was fine. And I didn’t go through. I was not selected. And I couldn’t figure out why. So they opened the process again, so I resubmitted, and I thought, I’ll do a better interview. And I gathered letters of support from the League of Women Voters to the women in trades, to everyone that felt they had not [01:48:00] had a voice. You know? I got a letter from them. I mean, all walks of life, all ethnicities, all kinds of leaders and organizations. I had the most letters that anyone ever had had of support. And it took -- and one evening -- the second time, I [didn’t?] go through. So then I called around. And someone said, “Well, you have some opposition from an organization, a Latino organization, not a Puerto Rican organization but a Latino organization.” And I said, “Really? Well, are you guys meeting?” This was a political meeting. This was at Raymond [01:49:00] Figueroa’s office on Pulaski and North Avenue. So, you know, I turned to my 38 �husband, Otto Pikaza, who was a founder of Latin Americans studies at the University of Illinois and a history professor, Latin Americanist. I turned to him, and I said, “You know, don’t worry about me. I’m gonna take the car. I’m gonna go west on North Avenue to Pulaski. I’m gonna make a right. And Raymond’s office is right there.” This was the days of no cell phone, right? “So Raymond’s office is right there, and I’m going to go in there, because I want to know what’s going on, ’cause so many people want me, and then I can’t get through.” [01:50:00] Oh, ’cause the mayor also kept throwing back names, too, you know? He -- every -- so then I found out at that meeting -- so I bogart the meeting. I sat at the table. I said, “I’m not moving until I get an explanation. I gotta know what’s going on.” So I did get the explanation. And then I got angry. This is to tell you why. In the next time I went, the third time before the committee, you know, someone looked at me sinist-- someone looked from across the table and said, “Well, you know, I think we can -- I don’t have any problem selecting -- you know, voting for you, but we talked, and we need you to resign from your [01:51:00] position, because this could be embarrassing for the mayor, that you are still an employee.” And I said, “Yeah, but Alderman Eisendrath didn’t have to resign. He took a leave of absence.” He says, “No, but we have to.” And as I argued the point, I saw that the guy was feeling relaxed and happy, and I then looked at him straight in the eyes, and I said, “No problem. I’m happily married. My husband will be happy to support me.” And he almost fell off that chair. And I -- you know? So I had a good tenure. I had seven schools built. I rolled up my sleeves, ’cause [01:52:00] I wasn’t working, right? (laughs) So I worked. I rolled 39 �up my sleeves. I had seven schools built. I worked with youth guidance, and we got Pritzker, the father, to -- and the CEO of the old Bell and Howell company, and we went to work. And we established the culinary arts program at Clemente High School. And that was the first, most wonderful partnership, three-way partnership, that was done, and it’s a partnership that is the way they should be, you know, where the people aren’t [01:53:00] subsidizing anyone, but it’s truly a partnership for the good of the school. And things like that occurred. Partnership with the park district. And I like to think that -- and this was before the talk of partnerships, because now, I mean -MSW: Now it’s everywhere. (laughs) AL: Yeah. In ’99, I mean, I don’t know. Under Bill Clinton, I remember, it was made into a movement. But this wasn’t a partnership of just PR, you know? This was real. And, you know, again, these are ideas and things that seemed so natural to do, because of our experience in the community, because if you look at them, it’s really essentially the same thing, the same ideas, right, of collaboration, because [01:54:00] I don’t -- despite the tensions that sometimes ensued and the direct action and demonstrations of the times, there was a lot of negotiation, there was a lot of collaboration that existed, that perhaps is not highlighted as much, because of course -- but there were -- otherwise, you know, things wouldn’t have been -- programs wouldn’t have been established, or the influence wouldn’t have been there. So that was -- I had a great opportunity serving as a board -- first of all, being a commissioner, and then later on the board of education. And then in 1992, [01:55:00] through that same community work and those same 40 �relationships, I learned that there was going to be an election for trustees of the University of Illinois. It was a statewide election. And I consulted both with Puerto Rican community, others, you know, that I -- at that time, I was more involved in a city, in citywide -- and with the African American community. And then I decided to run for office. To my surprise, because after the worst strikes in history on the board of education, [01:56:00] and the mayor dying, and my taking from an incredible fall, I said to myself, “My gosh, you know, I must be nuts. I can’t do this again.” You know? But then I started thinking, Wow, to be a trustee of the university, a university that I studied in, that became part of my identity, and that still has a long ways to go, I thought, I could do so much to support the programs like LARES, Latin American Recruitment and Educational Programs [Services], the Black Studies programs, all these programs that were created on campus. So I thought of an opportunity. My husband was founder of the Latin American studies program, and [01:57:00] so there was always that connection and that familiarity with the campus, and the professors, and the issues, and all that, because he was an activist, too, a professor slash ac-- and this was a great time, you know. A great deal has been contributed. And I did what I set out to do. Not all of it, you know, because I did want to transform the curriculum for teacher preparation to make it more multidisciplinary, because I thought the way I studied was the way that this globalization, this global world, this world needs to prepare teachers. Anyway, and I think teachers are --[01:58:00] poor communities not only need wonderful doctors and homes, but they need the best teachers -- 41 �MSW: Absolutely. AL: -- that a country can provide, you know? So I didn’t do that, but I did -- I was able to give real support to all those programs. And in light of the movements to do away with ethnic programs and affirmative action and all that -- MSW: Right. AL: -- they were -- they’re still there. We no longer talk about affirmative action on campus, but -- and sure, I think that ground has been lost, because we know that diversity does not mean the same thing. MSW: Right. AL: But I think that, you know, the voices are still there. We’re still vigilant. [01:59:00] And there is a lot of programs that exist to help the communities. I think those linkages between the people in the institutions and the community, and that camaraderie or mutual respect that existed between those who organized and those who were part of institutions -- I don’t think that exists in the same way. There are efforts, you know. But I still see them more traditional, where professors come and do the research, and then -- and the proposals are written. But there’s leadership in [02:00:00] the community that is not free, you know, free to organize in the same way, don’t feel free to organize in the same way. I think the system has become more centralized in many ways. You know, not necessarily better or worse, because if we compare social injustice now and social injustice then, I’m not sure how that compares. You know, I haven’t done that. But just through our daily living, when you want to find someone who can serve as the voice of a community or provide the consensus, and who do not 42 �have any ties to the institutions’ or the foundations’ limitations, [02:01:00] you know? They’re not limited by those -- for me, it seems harder to find that now. And before, it was a wonderful time when it was happening. It was bubbling from the bottom up, and it was -- and we were searching for creative ways of dealing with this. Whether it was institutions or outside, we were all part of a process where we had to find the answers we didn’t know. It wasn’t about, “Go talk to this bilingual teacher.” It was about, like, Bilingualism? What’s that? And then the courts, you know, the cases going into court and the Supreme Court, Lau v. Nichols. You have to teach the children in a language they can understand. And it’s been -- and all that was happening. [02:02:00] Recently, I saw a documentary where John [sic] Marshall speaks of how the couple, the Latino couple in California -- Westminster, or something like that? MSW: That’s right, yeah. AL: Yeah, were the ones who, thanks to them, a Puerto Rican woman, Mexican husband, how they were the ones who created the foundation for the African Americans to integrate the schools. MSW: It was Thurgood Marshall’s first desegregation case, and it was the foundation for Brown v. Board of Ed. Right. AL: Yeah, yeah. And as we grow and we go from the more specific to -- and take [02:03:00] a long view and a wide view, we can see how program initiatives and movements that start pretty much spontaneous in a community like Lincoln Park, how that has ramifications and manifests itself in so many ways later on, as people grow and occupy different places in the society. But, you know, you have 43 �those experiences. I mean, I think those experiences in the Lincoln Park community were very transformational. I was at a point in my life where I thought, you know, [02:04:00] boiling, frying, and mashing beans was something quite strange. You know? And then you go to Lincoln Park, and there, there’s Cha-Cha Jiménez, and there’s Free Puerto Rico, and the self-determination of the Puerto Rican people, and all this is happening. But you have a mix, you know? You have a mix of ethnicities. And wow, what -- how awesome is that, you know, to be a young Puerto Rican and see that a Puerto Rican, another young Puerto Rican, is a leader and is moving an agenda that is both [02:05:00] local and attracts different ethnicities and races, but is also committed to Puerto Rico, the homeland, and how the Puerto Ricans can be leaders that can move the agenda of what is best for their homeland and have others join in that movement. So I think those times were transformational. You know? I think they were transformational. And I think that the work that we do to -- whether it’s in teaching, to make sure that students have a clear consciousness, that they can make choices, not to allow themselves to be indoctrinated, [02:06:00] ideas about democratic classrooms. We didn’t invent those things, but certainly we were thinking in the same lines. You know? And health care. The Mayor’s Commission on Latino Affairs created the position for the first Hispanic top executive to work parallel, to work hand in hand with the commissioner on health in the city. You know? So there’s a lot of -- the history is with us. History is with us. And the gentrification. You know, there are [02:07:00] still -- that’s still something that communities are having to deal with, and the Young Lords serves 44 �as a point of reference for the first struggle. For many years, they were the first point of reference. You know, remember the corner of Halsted and Armitage, what was to be a tennis court. And sure, you know, when you struggle against big business and government forces, sure, you lose many times, [02:08:00] but that doesn’t make your struggle any less worthy or admirable. So that was a point of reference, you know? And then later -- now later in history, we see it on Division Street, where people are working with Paseo Boricua, but we know it well, because it started in the ’60s. And when we see it in Puerto Rico, you know, over there by Canteras, Santurce, in that prime land, when we see it in Loíza, it’s still -- you know, has it really changed? Has it really changed? It has, [02:09:00] in a lot of ways, in form, but essentially, has it really changed? You know? And I hope that others take -- I hope that others, when they look at the history, they take away some inspiration, and they look at the models, not because we can repeat them, you know, because it’s a different world, but that they take the essence, and they understand, and they can look at one essence, another essence, and then find their own way of continuing to struggle for social justice and for making sure that we have a homeland that is -- [02:10:00] where people have a clear sense of their identity, and that it’s an identity rooted in the history of Puerto Rico going back more than 500 years, and that they don’t allow -- just like the Young Lords did not allow, when they raised questions -- that they do not allow for the media or the big business or the marketing people to define what is their identity and who they work for, and who they should work for. And when they get up in the morning, what is their purpose? That they’re not defined 45 �by [02:11:00] others, but they say, You know, how far does my heritage go? Who am I, and what is the value of having my language? And what can I contribute to the world as a Puerto Rican? And if I want to be bilingual, and if I want to be bilingual bicultural, how are other countries doing it, like Italy? How is Italy being bilingual? How is it that they learn English but have no problems being Italian? You know? So I -- this is why I feel, you know -- that I regret that I didn’t have time enough to work on [02:12:00] those teachers, because the teachers are very, very important. (laughter) How teachers are prepared, you know? And the theories that drive the elite schools of the country, you know, the Latin School here in Chicago, the Montessori schools, the schools founded at the University of Chicago by John Dewey’s philosophy, those were all meant for everybody. You know? MSW: That was supposed to be the promise of American public education. (laughs) AL: That was the promise of American public education. That’s right. And I hope that in Puerto Rico, the promise -- you know, that there are some that can point to that. And is education going to be to democratize, are our institutions going to be to democratize, or are we going to have, you know, more and more [02:13:00] centralized government? And do Puerto Ricans start emulating the elite schools and turn their back on the others? What are we going to do? And it’s good. It’s good that we have a history, you know, that we can reflect on. It tells us that it’s not impossible, that things aren’t impossible. It tells us that we can do great things when we organize, when we come to a consensus, and when we have coordinated action, whatever that action is in that particular moment. I mean, the 46 �saving of Saint Francis -- I was gonna tell you about that. Well, I was -- as a trustee -- [02:14:00] you know, as a trustee, I worked hard to be fair with everyone, because as a trustee, that’s what you have to do, right? So I took my charge very, very seriously. I wasn’t a Latina and I wasn’t just a Puerto Rican. I was a trustee. But because I’m Hispanic, first of all, I ran for office statewide. The Democratic Party arranged for me to go around the state of Illinois campaigning. I had the opportunity to campaign with all the -- many of the people that were campaigning at the time, because it was a presidential election. So Bill -MSW: And what year was this? AL: Ninety-two. MSW: Ninety-two. AL: [02:15:00] So Hillary Clinton was Bill Clinton’s surrogate, and she was the one that campaigned with us in Illinois. But Dawn Clark Netsch and other leaders of the Democratic Party. During my campaign, I would speak to the advance people, and I would ask them -- and I just asked them -- I would just suggest that since I was going to a certain place and there were Latinos there, that if they could please arrange for having Hispanics there, too. You know? So I -- so speaking about accessing people and democratizing, that’s the first thing. First thing in campaigns, I would go, and I’d see one group or another group. And I said, “Wait a minute. I want to campaign with different community -- [02:16:00] go be for different communities.” Right? So I even went before the women’s group at the East-West Corridor, which is a Republican area. You know, but out 47 �of respect, I went before that group, and I campaigned. And some of the women came to me afterwards and said, “You know, I’m going to vote for you.” So -MSW: Marvelous. AL: Yeah, you know? Because people really need to hear. So I really enjoyed campaigning. It was very hard, and sometimes I wondered if it was sane, what I was doing, because it’s volunte-- there’s no salary attached to that, and you do kind of risk your life on the airplanes. But I campaigned. And then the first issue was getting -- addressing [02:17:00] an issue that followed me. It was -- because the students had protested against what they considered racism on campus in Urbana. And they were very angry, and they protested. It was a student protest that included Asian and Blacks. I didn’t follow. All I knew is that it had been very -- how do I say -- confrontational, and that the students were protesting for things in Urbana that we already had on the Chicago campus. And I thought, Well, that’s not that hard. It’s 1992. (laughter) It’s not that hard. There must be a misunderstanding or something. [02:18:00] And I didn’t want to deal with it on the campaign trail, because I didn’t know enough. But then when I was elected, I did. And then I had the discipline procedures reviewed, and their records were expunged so that they would not have a record. And then the other thing -- and then there are many ways that I think I contributed. Affirmative action, more women and more Latinos in faculty, strengthening programs at a time when the university was under a lot of pressure to do away with all programs. So it was -but one of the things that I will always remember is the controversy around Saint Francis. Saint Francis is a Catholic church that had landmark status. It was the 48 �first church in Chicago that gave [02:19:00] mass in Spanish. And this was a church that had a large Puerto Rican congregation, because these were the Puerto Ricans that I talked to you about that were, like, around Madison Avenue and Roosevelt, and many of them had worked their way up into Chicago from the steel mills, also. And then the church was, before that, Italian; before that, it was -- it had other groups that had gone there. But a beautiful little church, you know, that served as a point of reference. Four thousand parishioners. They have to take turns. They start mass on Fridays, because they don’t fit, and there’s so many people that come. So this is a thriving -- this was a thriving church, unlike others in the area. And [02:20:00] when the University of Illinois decided to have its master plan for expansion, part of the plan was to level -- to take away Maxwell Street, and this church is right there, you know, between the university and Maxwell Street. So that was part of the plan. The parishioners began to contact the Latino elected officials, and they also contacted me. So as a trustee, I took this very seriously, and I started looking into it. And it seemed that the university, the city mayor, and the archdiocese had all agreed to close this church, level the [02:21:00] property, so that the development could start there on Roosevelt instead of starting half a block inward. Well, it got the point that -where the parishioners started protesting. Well, one of the roles I played was to have the parishioners come before -- now, I was elected with almost three million votes statewide, so it was a political process, although I believe it was more of a democratic process than it is now, ’cause now you get a phone call from the governor. They changed the law, you know. And now you get a phone call from 49 �the governor, and before, you had to really work at it, you know, and put yourself out there, your position out there. But anyway, but because it was a political process, [02:22:00] I was able to get support during another election on the board of trustees so that we could review that process. Speaking again about democratizing the process, you know, from those past experiences, I had meetings with the parishioners, and I had to explain to them what the board did, the board of trustees did; what our role, our responsibilities were; what we could, what we could not do. And they learned a great -- I mean, they learned how the meetings worked, and they got a petition of [02:23:00] four thousand people and brought it to the board. That’s part of what they did. And then the dynamics changed, and the archdiocese abandoned the property, and there was an opportunity for the university to buy it. So I said to the congregation, “As a trustee, I don’t feel comfortable going against the idea of purchasing land for the university and allowing a developer to buy it.” And they said, “Okay. We’ll have to think of what to do.” And that was my role in it. But what happened next is that they occupied the church for about -- speaking about occupations of churches -- they occupied [02:24:00] the church for about thirteen days in the coldest winter. This church had no heat nor benches nor windows. It was stripped of all that. The bulldoze-- they were in the church. They had a committee come. They had different committees come and give them water, electric, heat, and all that. And then the bulldozers came. In this coldness of dark and winter, you know, in January, the bulldozers came, and the people stood. The congregation came. They stood. They held hands. They prayed. 50 �And they stood there in the cold until the bulldozers withdrew. And then I helped the group. I connected the group -- [02:25:00] you know, I facilitated the early meetings so that the committee that was working with the community -- a committee of more sophisticated parishioners then started meeting with the university, and they did a land swap. And they built a little more. By that time, I was off the -- I was no longer a trustee, because I was a trustee for six years. MSW: Okay. And this was what years? AL: This must have been like 1996 or something like that. So that would be, like, when that master plan -- but this was very difficult for me, because what happened is that the Latino groups who had an interest in that expansion and were working with the developers [02:26:00] organized against me, and went to City Hall and had a press conference denouncing me for being against affirmative action, which was silly, because I was the chair of affirmative action, ’cause nobody wanted to do it. (laughter) Yeah. No, and people appreciated, because I didn’t -- I wasn’t angry about affirmative action. I was working within the paradigm of the institution and their mission, and I knew how to work on this, because we had done it so often before, you know, with the mayor of the city, with the board of education. I mean, I had experience. So I had no difficulties in the committee. But I did know the law. And when they wanted me to come out and promise [02:27:00] jobs, I knew that was not the law of the land at the time, and I knew that the university couldn’t deliver either, so whoever promised them that, you know, was not correct. So it was very difficult during that time. But the church people prevailed, and the church is still there. And that’s the story of 51 �Saint Francis. It’s another example of how, in another -- it’s another example of what happens when you can work in a coordinated fashion, you know, and with the community, with communities. And it’s the way [02:28:00] that institutions can be democratized, by allowing the voices of the people they serve to translate into policy. And sure, it has to be rational, and you can’t satisfy everyone, and there are conflicting goods, so you can’t do it all, but it’s better than the alternative, which is making decisions in an alienated fashion and playing one community against the other by pointing the finger and saying, “Well, you don’t have anything because the other community has everything.” You know? So it might benefit others, but it doesn’t benefit us. So those are some of my stories. MSW: Those are wonderful. AL: You’re hungry? You want to go downstairs? JJ: (Spanish) -- if we have anything else to add, we’ll add it, any further [thoughts?]. AL: Yeah, or you could call me on the phone. JJ: No, no, no. No, no. MSW: [We could?]. AL: Oh, you can come back? JJ: [02:29:00] Should we eat? AL: Let’s go downstairs. JJ: Should we eat, or...? MSW: Absolutely (overlapping dialogue; inaudible). AL: Let’s go downstairs. JJ: Because we still gotta get the -- we still got some stuff we gotta -- 52 �MSW: Okay. END OF AUDIO FILE 53 � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/cca2d9f509895905ba0d3537df7edb0f.mp3 dbe971bb6026c45c0a85d9a112e33bad 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 Ada Nivía López vídeo entrevista y trancripción 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 Educación--Illinois--Chicago Chicago (Ill.)--Política y gobierno--1951- 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_Lopez_Ada Title A name given to the resource Ada Nivía López audio interview and transcript Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource López, Ada Description An account of the resource Ada Nivía López was born in Puerto Rico and moved to Chicago with her family in 1956. She describes life in Lincoln Park in those early days, including her Father´s leadership in Latino community and his run for alderman in the early 1960s. She became active in her community at an early age and continued her activism throughout her college years, working closely the Young Lords. Ms. López was a founding member and commissioner of the Mayor´s Advisory Commission on Latino Affairs, which was designed by the Young Lords and created in partnership with Mayor Harold Washington´s office. Ms. López became the first Latina to win a statewide election to the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois where she was instrumental in positioning the university to play a prominent role in addressing urban issues. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Jiménez, José, 1948- Shell-Weiss, Melanie 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 Education--Illinois--Chicago Chicago (Ill.)--Politics and government--1951- 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 Sound Text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 application/pdf Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2012-08-24 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/1d25988b78112f383b782a9c0d3fa7d5.pdf 86e8d15230b019482198d0841fc064b5 PDF Text Text Young Lords In Lincoln Park Interviewee: Alfredo Calixto Interviewers: José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez Location: Grand Valley State University Special Collections Date: 2/8/2012 Biography and Description English Alfredo “Freddy” Calixto belongs to a family who were among the first Puerto Rican families to move to Chicago in the early 1950s. Born in Caguas, Puerto Rico, Mr. Calixto lived through the displacement of Puerto Rican families from La Clark to the Lincoln Park Neighborhood where he grew up. Both of his parents and several of his many siblings became involved in the Caballeros de San Juan and Damas de María. His father also spent time with the Hacha Viejas (Old Hatchets), a social club that was active in the neighborhood. Mr. Calixto describes struggling with discrimination in Lincoln Park and how these early experiences inspired him to commit himself to advocating for Latino youth. He has served as the Executive Director for Broader Urban Involvement and Leadership Development (BUILD), a non-profit community organization in Chicago that was founded in 1969. He is currently the Vice President for Institutional Advancement at St. Augustine College, the only bilingual institution of higher education in the Midwest. Spanish Alfredo “Freddy: Calixto es parte de la familia quien fueron unos de los primeras familias que se movieron a Chicago en el principio de los 1950s. Nacido en Caguas Puerto Rico, Señor Calixto vivió por el �desplazamiento de las familias Puertorriqueñas de La Clark hacia Lincoln Park, donde creció. Sus padres y la mayoría de sus hermanos fueron parte de la Caballeros de San Juan y Damas de María. Su padre también trabajo con Hacha Viejas, una organización social que era activa en el vecindario. Señor Calixto describe su pelea contra discriminación en Lincoln Park y como esas experiencias lo inspiro a dedicarse a la lucha para los jóvenes Latinos. También a sido parte de la Executive Director for Broader Urban Involvement and Leadership Development (BUILD), una organización sin lucrativa en Chicago que fue creada en 1969. Hoy, Señor Calixto, es el vicepresidente por la Instiutional Advancement en St. Augustine College, que es la única institución bilingüe en el medio oeste de educación mayor. �yl_Calixto_Alfredo ALFREDO CALIXTO: Freddy. Okay, my name is Alfredo Calixto. I go by So, everybody knows me as Freddy Calixto. born in Caguas, Puerto Rico on February 28, 1956. I was And my dad took myself, my older sister, and my mother to the States probably before the end of 1956. brother. [Huiso?]. His name is José Luis Calixto. I had an older We call him And he, for some reason, my dad -- I don’t know if he couldn’t afford everybody, but he left him in Puerto Rico, in Caguas, in Barrio San Salvador. And he ended up staying there, getting raised my grandparents. He never made it with us back to Chicago, where we came from -where we went to, Chicago. The family, as I mentioned, I was [00:01:00] not even one years old before I even landed in Chicago, and my family moved. We lived -- the first place we lived when we were in Chicago -JOSE JIMENEZ: AC: What was your dad and mom’s name? My dad is Luis Calixto Cruz. Jiménez. My mother is Juana [Roldán?] They’re both from Caguas; both born in Caguas, Puerto Rico, from the Barrio San Salvador in Caguas, in Borinquen, Puerto Rico. Anyways, well when we came to Chicago, we went to live in what’s known as Chicago South Side -- currently today, the University of Chicago 1 �property. They -- we used to live on 63rd and Ellis, and that was a primary Puerto Rican community back in those days. A lot of people were living there. I remember living in a very big building with a lot of apartments. [00:02:00] It was like what you would consider a courtyard apartment building. And they were all -- everybody was Puerto Rican there. And there was buildings there. Woodlawn; it was all the way 63rd and Woodlawn. Was That was all where my aunt, we were always there and that was the -all Puerto Rican, the whole community back then. I was there probably till I was about five, maybe five years old. And by the time I was five, we moved, My father moved us, our family, to the north side into what’s known today as Lincoln Park. We moved to Halsted Street. Halsted and Armitage -- Halsted and Willow. We were on And we lived on Halsted Street between North Avenue and Armitage for, I don’t know how many years we lived there. different apartments on that block. We moved to From 1960 till 19-- probably 1970, or ’69 [00:03:00] or ’70, when we moved from that pocket of the neighborhood to another area, in Old Town; to North Avenue and Mohawk there. What I remember, you know, growing up in Lincoln Park, one of the first things was that, you know, being raised in a Puerto Rican home, you know, we spoke Spanish. My parents were, you 2 �know, spoke Spanish. They didn’t know English. And us, as children growing up in the household, we all spoke Spanish ’cause that’s all we knew, you know, till we went to school. My first experience with school in Chicago public schools was Newberry School on Willow, and -- between Orchard and Burling. And I remember slightly, you know, I was six years old when my parents put me in school. didn’t do the five-year-old thing. Commented [SC1]: Spelling corrected They So I was already six years old when I went to Newberry and they put me in first grade. Commented [SC2]: This was spelled wrong And because I was six, I went to first grade and not kindergarten. And to me [00:04:00] it was -- I was traumatized ’cause that’s the first time I heard English. And I was like, “Oh my God, what is this?” You know, I was very, s-- I was crying and scared and all that. But eventually, you know, in the school system, I eventually adopted fairly quickly, I’m assuming. I don’t -- you know, ’cause I know that I stayed in first grade for another year because of the English. I didn’t know English, and so they kept me in first grade for another year till, you know. And I think whatever they did that second year, first grade, it did whatever they wanted to do. ’Cause that’s -- by that time, I started to adapt to the American lifestyle, and then English, and all that. And I went to -- from first grade, I remember goin’ to third grade, not second, 3 �’cause I stayed there twice. And then from third grade, I went to fifth because by third grade, that’s when they had already taken all the Spanish out of me. ’Cause, you know, they -- at Newberury School, they said that it was bad. Spanish was bad, so that’s how we were taught. And so we were, you know, doin’ our [00:05:00] best to get rid of the language in our lives, you know. Not -- my parents, I had still came home and had to talk Spanish to my mom and my dad. But outside the home and the neighborhood -- when I was hangin’ out with the fellas -- the neighborhood or back in school, it was always English. And by the time I got to fifth grade, it was totally English, you know, and I went home and talked English. happen, you know. And that’s what started to When we came from Puerto Rico, it was me and my sister and, as I mentioned, we left a brother in Puerto Rico; so there were three of us. My family is total of 11, so all the other ones were born here in Chicago from -- after me. They were all born in Chicago. And all of ’em -- I think, ex-- yeah, I think most all of ’em. I think my sister, [Migdalia?] was probably born in the South Side -- and Victor -- were at the South Side Cook County Hospital, was the place that my mother went to give birth. All the other ones were born in St. Joseph Hospital [00:06:00] when it used to be on Belden, over there on 4 �Halsted. Hospital. That used to be St. Joseph -- the old St. Joseph That’s where all the other ones were born at. So living in the community -JJ: How was the culture thing between your parents and you, now you’re speaking mainly English and [they’re?] speaking -- AC: Well, I think what it was, it gave us as young -- as kids, we were able to, you know, try to hide things from the parents by using the English language. And the, you know, the parents responded, you know, with their Spanish. And then eventually, you know, throughout the years, they would start to pick up the English language and they start responding in their English -- Spanglish, you know, to us. And the, you know, and they would just say, you know, get upset and all that. So it was a little, I think we used it as a way of getting around certain things in the house. And eventually when you needed to talk English or Spanish, you would have to, you know, they would force it on you. But, what I saw happening to me and a lot of people -[00:07:00] with my friends, and of course all my siblings, ’cause they came after me -- and so they were all English only. They didn’t have Spanish ’cause by the time they came around, they were just speakin’ a lotta English already. My mom was -- and dad were adapting to the English language, so they had more -- or less experience -5 �of exposure to Spanish than I did. So that’s what I think was happening in the household, you know, the... Whenever you wanted to hide something from mom and dad, you used English. knows.” Until finally you started realizing, “Oh man, she You know, ’cause she knew -- then she started getting, you know, becoming aware of things. Our parents started to say, “Well I better learn a little bit.” And they started pickin’ up certain things here and there, so that when you told us -- talked about something, they knew what you were talking about. But not everything, so they - - you were able to get around a lot of the things. And a lot of the culture that was outside the house was completely different, you know. Growing up in the Lincoln Park community, when I lived on Halsted, when I [00:08:00] got to -- I finally -- we moved to Willow, right in front of Newberury School. We used to live at 711 West Willow, right in front of the school. of years. Commented [SC3]: Delete? So we lived there for a lot There was a family that lived up -- we lived in the first floor. Upstairs was the Martinez family, Herbie and his family, you know. And so, that’s when I started to experience the gang culture in the community ’cause, you know, Herbie used to be a Trojan. the Trojans. He was the President of And so his brother and I -- Harry -- we wanted to be junior Trojans and, you know, we were in fifth 6 �grade I think at the time. So we picked up the name and we were, you know, junior Trojans, but not really, you know, not really into the gang [cult?] thing, you know. Just doing it ’cause, you know, we saw it there with them and people in the other blocks, you know. We lived between Burling and Orchard and there were Trojans and there were other gangs in the other areas. And then as you grow, you know I went to -- shortly after that, after s-- I was in Newberry. From Newberry fifth grade, you graduated [00:09:00] from Newberry -- or not graduated, you passed. From fifth grade, you went to sixth. And back then, it was -- you had to go to Arnold Upper Grade Center, which was in Armitage, in Burling. And there, you went for sixth, seventh, and eighth grade before you graduated and went on to high school. So I passed from fifth grade at Newberry and went up to Arnold. cultural shock. And then Arnold was another Because now, you know, growing up in the little pocket neighborhood, you’re meeting other people from other parts of the neighborhood: from Armitage and Sheffield, from Bissell and Armitage, and from Dickens, all meeting up at Arnold. different people. And so there we met a lot of The same kind of thing happened. started picking, you know, everybody picked a group. became somebody. We We We -- I remember we were the Little Red 7 �Devils. Then that’s when I started to see the -- notice the real gang beginnings there. of the neighborhood there. The Latin Kings were part The older guys like the Young Lords, and the Paragons, the Black Eagles were there, [00:10:00] but they were way older there than me. not part of that till later on in years. So I was And then my father moved the family from Willow -JJ: You’re talking about when they were a gang, when the Young Lords were a gang? AC: Right, this was early on, right. 1969. So when I -- we moved in We moved over to North Avenue in the Old Town neighborhood out of the what, you know, we call the Lincoln Park into the Old Town neighborhood by St. Michael’s Church. All through those years, we were members of that church, St. Michael’s. Caballeros San Juan. church. My father was a member of the My mother wasn’t really much into the Think she used to go to the church, but she didn’t join the group because she was always dealing with all the kids, all her own children. But my aunt was real big with the Grupo de María -- I forgot what they called them. JJ: (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) de María. AC: And so my mother -- my father was a Caballero San Juan and [00:11:00] Tía [Canda?] was with the Grupo de María. And they were both, the two, what we would call a little 8 �fanatic about the religion thing -- the Catholic Church there. And they were always going to retiros and things like that. And the retiros were like reunions for all Puerto Ricans, like from the South Side. ’Cause when we left the South Side, a whole community stayed there. It just moved from 63rd Street to 55th -- 55th and Halsted. And they were there for a lot of years. And my aunt, my father’s sister, she -- I guess she liked the South Side. ’Cause she stayed on the South Side, and eventually moved to 53rd and stayed there for a long time, until finally that whole community changed. And the same thing happened in 63rd, it evolved from Puerto Rican to African American to Black. The same thing happened in 53rd -- on 55th. then eventually, she didn’t come north. Pilsen. She went to She ended up on Western and 22nd Street. was like saying, “Tía, what’s up? And (Spanish).” And I She didn’t wanna move to the North Side and after that move, finally she [00:12:00] ended up in Humboldt Park. You know, but our family was there for a long time, and he was part of the church scene. That seemed to me as a reunion for them, from all over Chicago. They would see each other at these retiros that they would go to and -- so they stayed connected. Another thing that I saw that connect the families from -- and friends from Puerto Rico was the 9 �credit union. They established the Caballeros San Juan as a religious organization of the Catholic Church, but they also, in the ’60s, established a credit union. I think that happened on 55th Street, when they were the community on 55th Street. And, you know, developed an outlet for the Puerto Ricans to be able to go to a bank, try to get loans. Some of them were able to. Some of them were more successful, quicker than others, and so they were able to buy homes and things like that. And start businesses. So there were some Puerto Rican families who owned businesses in our [00:13:00] neighborhood. remember. Mario Rivera had Del Campos, a grocer on Willow and Halsted. Arroyo. The Rivera family, I And then there was another one on Armitage, The Arroyo family, they used to have a restaurant and a liquor store that I remember. businesses were American-owned. Most of the other I don’t think we -- I’m trying to remember -- I don’t know if there were any Blackowned businesses in the neighborhood at the time. don’t remember any. ’Cause I I know we had some Puerto Rican-owned and most the other ones were white-owned. JJ: You mentioned the Arroyo family, the Rivera family. there other families in Lincoln Park? Were Was it a family situation or how do you describe it? AC: Well yeah, I mean... 10 �__: [Your extended?] family? AC: They were families and people you grew up with, you know. Everybody was a different family. As I mentioned earlier, we had a lot of Puerto Ricans there, but in Lincoln Park, me growin’ up, [00:14:00] it was like a -- what you would see -- like a melting pot. Like what they were calling Uptown, the melting pot of Chicago, well we and my -- where I grew up and I went to school in Newberry. school with Puerto Ricans, back then was few. I went to There were, Puerto Ricans the majority as far as the Latinos. And then some other Latinos from Mexico and other Latin American countries, but very few of ’em. Rican -- from Puerto Rico. The majority was Puerto And then there were the white, you know, from Appalachia, like what we would call the hillbilly families around, gypsies they used to be around the neighborhood, and the African American, the Black. had some Asian people. So we had like a mix. We You look at my old pictures from the different grades in St. Michael’s, it was always a mixture. And that was cool for me growin’ up in that area. And having the different exposure to different races. We, you know, you kinda stuck to your own [00:15:00] and that’s the way it flowed, you know. You joined up with whoev-- Puerto Ricans and Blacks with Blacks and whites with whites. And that’s the kinda thing, the 11 �way the neighborhood separated itself later in -- at the later days. JJ: So it kind of separated, like were people mixed or were they kind of sticking together to a few Blacks at at time or how -- AC: Well -- JJ: -- how did you stick? AC: -- it was -- when we were younger, didn’t matter ’cause we were just kids at school. But when we got become teenagers, that’s when you starts choosing sides. And so you -- that’s when I was, you know, talkin’ about getting involved more with the gang culture of the neighborhood. We had gangs in every block. (coughs) Excuse me. had Black gangs. So you Back then, you had Stones and you had Disciples and mostly coming from the Projects, which were right down the street from us, on the Cabrini-Green. On Orchard, we had a guy that was a leader of the Stones living across the street from the Boys Club, but he was good -- cool with all of us. [00:16:00] And then eventually, you know, I was recruited into a gang called the Latin Saints. And that started in eighth grade. You know, from eighth grade on to I think my sophomore year in high school. But there were King-- there were Harrison Gents on Burley. And there were -- and then the rest of 12 �the neighborhoods back going -- Halsted and west of that was Latin Kings, which is the largest gang in the area at the time. JJ: So you were recruited, what do you mean? AC: Well, as I mentioned to you, I had moved from Willow to North Avenue. But I used to come to the -- I consider that my neighborhood -- I used to come to my neighborhood everyday. I used to walk from North Avenue and Mohawk by Larrabee -- walk all the way down back to Orchard and Willow. That’s where I hung out, that was my neighborhood around the Boys and Girls Club in Burling. And I had a friend on Burling, so I would always go to his house. And eventually, I would cross, you know, [00:17:00] the white gang that everybody on that -- on our side that I lived on, was always fighting against, was the CORP. white group that was west of Larrabee. And it was a And so I would go through that, come through the neighborhood, cross Orchard -- which was Latin Saints -- and then into Burley, which was Harrison Gents. And so every time you walk by there, they would always try to find out, you know, were you in a gang? Do you want to be in a gang? And I’d always would say no, you know, just do my thing and go back. And eventually, friends of mine -- they were friends, people that I went to school with in Newberry -- were Latin 13 �Saints. And so they were just -- kept talkin’ to me about joining up with them. And eventually I did. So I decided okay, you know, I told them I didn’t wanna get beat up, you know, how you get initiated. up.” I said, “I ain’t getting beat And they said, “Oh, you don’t have to. that to you.” So they didn’t. We won’t do So I joined them. This was like around 1969. JJ: Okay, and [00:18:00] the Caballeros de San Juan and Damas de María, what were some of the activities that they were doing at that time? AC: Kinda going back. Well for us, and this I didn’t realize this until years later, of course, was we were members of St. Michael’s as I mentioned earlier. church. But our masses were never in the main You know, I didn’t realize that till later on I said, “Good Lord.” They had a little hall on the side of the main church, and that’s where we used to have, like, we, you know, it’s like fun for us as little kids. We would go there the activities -- the hall had a bowling alley and things like that. But, you know, as you -- as I grew up and thought about I said, “Oh my God.” You know, they really discriminated against us ’cause they didn’t even give us the opportunity to have mass in the chapel in the main church. They said, no you guys the -- you Latinos have to have mass in El Hall, we used to call it “El Hall” 14 �-- the little hall next to the main church. where all the activities were there. mass. And that’s You know, you go to The Puerto Rican masses were you had some -- a mass [00:19:00] and afterwards you socialized. And so that was the thing they did it all at El Hall, the hall. And then the group, the Caballeros San Juan, they would, you know, they had the deacons. They’d go to -- they would start recruiting for people to go to the schools, whatever. I don’t know what they call it, school theology, whatever. But to go to school to become a deacon. So they were starting to recruit ’cause, you know, very few priests were from Latin American countries. They were always American priests that learned Spanish as they became priests. And so we always had a priest that wasn’t Latino, of course, that gave mass. And you had the assistance of a person of a Puerto Rican background. JJ: And the mass was in the hall. AC: The masses were always held for us -- were always in the hall -- the small little hall inside. But the activities of the Caballeros San Juan was they were do, you know. Their activities, I remember dances -- a lot of dances, a lot of parties that they would throw in the [00:20:00] hall there. And they would, I’m assuming, raising money for the church, ’cause I didn’t think they would doing anything 15 �particularly for themselves. But they had -- and they would sell, you know, we would have dances regularly and there would be charges -- they would charge for the dance. You had to buy your beverages and everything there. And the money would go to St. Michael’s. You know, so throughout the years, they did that. I mean, all the years I remember, they were always -- the masses were always held in the little room -- the little hall. And they were in Commented [SC4]: Should this be cleaned up? the main church throughout the years. JJ: And you were also into the school. You were going to the school? AC: Well, by the time I started going to the school, that was the changing of the neighborhood there, you know, the gentrification of the neighborhood. You know, I went to St. Michael’s in ’69 in eighth grade. So, by the time I graduated high school, ’73, we had gentrification in the whole Lincoln Park area. And so, I believe -- [00:21:00] JJ: You’re talking about three- or four-year time period, or? AC: Well, the four years of me graduating from high school, you know, goin’ to high school in ’69. I think I started high school in September ’69, and I graduated in May of ’73. And so there was a complete change goin’ on in the whole area. Not just there, ’cause St. Michael’s was in Old Town so it’s a little different than the old neighborhood on 16 �Halsted and Armitage and Willow where I grew up at. So there was a shift in the whole community there. JJ: What kind -- I mean, can you describe what-- how that kind of started and what kind of shift was going on, or? AC: Well, people were -- one of the things that I noticed, you know, was a lot of us were not homeowners. renting. Everybody was And so that’s how they would -- you would decide where to live: where you could afford to pay the rent. And so families were moving around ’cause of the landlord said, “Okay, I’m raising the rent [00:22:00] (audio cuts out) find another place.” And I mentioned earlier for my family, we were a big family: my mother, my dad and they had 11 -- or 10 children here, then one that stayed in PR. So every time they moved, they had a big group that they had to move to. And so they had to find big apartment buildings, that’s why we were on North Avenue. On North Avenue we had a real big apartment that everybody fit -- we all fit there. And that was on a big building as well, multi-unit, but everybody there was a Puerto Rican family as well, living there. family upstairs. The Peña family was there, the Roya So we had, you know, that was still the neighborhood there, part of North Avenue, probably from Sedgwick down to Halsted. You know, all Latinos up -- mainly Puerto Ricans, up there. But that was the thing 17 �that I saw, when growing up and experiencing the gentrification. They called it urban renewal. And then in -- I went through my high school years not -- I wasn’t into any of [00:23:00] that stuff. ’Cause I was mainly into, you know, just goin’ to school and messin’ around and, you know, hangin’ out, doing things that we did. that people were moving. But I noticed You know, people were moving, we were getting -- on the block that I hung out the most on was Orchard by Willow between North and Willow. (coughs) Excuse me. And by ’73, the Boys Club was the anchor building on the corner, and it was empty from there all the way to North Avenue. you know. They knocked down all the buildings, We were like, “Oh my God.” They were, you know, we used to do things -- crazy things in those buildings when they were emptied and still around, but eventually they started knockin’ ’em down, so they had all this vacant land on that one side of Orchard. intact. The other side stayed All the three-story buildings were still there and eventually what happened. lot of that property. made some big bucks. The Boys and Girls club owned a They sold it, you know, some people It was [00:24:00] kinda illegal because they were on the board of the Boys Club and just couldn’t have do-- it was illegal for them to do that. But they did make some dollars in the sales of that property. 18 �And that eventually turned out to be townhomes. Which today they’re still townhomes in that whole area from where the Boys Club building is at, all the way south to North Avenue. All townhomes. that I saw. So those were the kind of changes A lot of empty buildings, a lot of families moving west, you know. I didn’t learn about the west neighborhoods -- West Side to, you know, I graduated from high school. Well there in my high school years, we used to get in our car and drive up to Humboldt Park, you know. We used to, when we had friends that moved out there, so we’d come visit them. And so we were doing that a lot. Driving around Clemente High School. neighborhoods on Rockwell. Going into My family had family on Rockwell and North Avenue you know. So they were there the Jiménez and Luis Jiménez had owned the property there. [00:25:00] The Valdez family owned a building there on Rockwell. TAnd so we -- they were like anchored there for a lot of years. them. And so we would always come and visit So that was my back-and-forth tracking from Lincoln Park to Humboldt Park and so forth there during that time. Well, I mentioned I went to St. Michael’s I graduated in ’73. So in ’73, I was already a father, you know. My girlfriend was pregnant, we had our son and he was born in March of 1974. And, so of course, the thing was, you know, 19 �you gotta get married, you gotta get a job, that kind of thing. You gotta support your family now, right? wasn’t into that. So, I I was into hangin’ out with the guys and doin’ my thing, you know. (coughs) Excuse me. And so I didn’t take it serious for a while, you know, we would go out as a group. All the guys would go out lookin’ for work and we end up spending the day getting, you know, getting high, drinking, and come back later at night, in the evening. We didn’t find any work. And so eventually you got, you know her family started [00:26:00] getting, you know laying the law down. Well you need to find a job, you gotta support, you’re gonna have a child, this and that. And so they found me a job. They got me a job at Greyhound and that lasted for a little while. JJ: I lost that job. Your family got you a job? (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) AC: No her family. My girlfriend’s family ended up getting me a job. JJ: What kind of work did you finally do when you s--? AC: Well that, Greyhound was unloading the bus. You know, so I did that for a little while, but I, you know, I didn’t last long. So I kept goin’ around with friends lookin’ for jobs. And back then, I went to St. Michael’s [a lot?]. Most of -- all my friends went to Waller. And Waller had a 20 �program where after your junior year, you went to school only half the day. Half the day in this classroom, the other half you went to work in the factory. ’Cause back then Lincoln Park all through Clybourn was all factories. So there were plenty of factories all around there, places to work. So everybody went to work after 12 o’clock. went to school, and then you shot to your job. You And it was part of your credits for school, but it was [00:27:00] labor for the companies that were all around Lincoln Park. It And it went -- it extended into Lakeview, those factories. And a friend of mine’s, Herc Nelson, he used to work at this big plant on Diversey and Wolcott, that -Stewart-Warner. Was humongous, big old plant. And they made the gaskets that they use in a lot of automobiles. And so he used to work there during the two years of his junior and senior year. And so when we were looking for work, he said let’s go back there. And then since they saw that he used to work there, they said, “Oh yeah.” hired him right away. They They didn’t wanna hire me ’cause they -- you know, I had never worked in anywhere. I did a lot -- my jobs were in shoe stores during high school. Throughout high school, I worked in shoe stores and clothing stores, but never in a factory. So when they hired Nelson, you know, they didn’t say -- they weren’t 21 �gonna hire me. And then, you know, Nelson -- we called him Herc ’cause he was, you know, a [00:28:00] big guy. The Rosario -- Nelson Rosario fam-- the Rosario mem-- Eddie Commented [SC5]: Delete? Rosario, you know, they were all -- all of them were big, stocky guys, so. He told ’em, “Hey, what about my friend?” You know, with his deep voice, and the lady said, “Okay, we’ll hire him, too.” You know. So they gave me a job, so that was my first experience of workin’ in a factory. I said, you know, they gave me a broom. And And stewar-- as I mentioned, they made a press that just presses a gasket, and the remainders of the gasket fall to the floor. My job was to keep sweeping’ that access [sic]] part that can fall into the floor. “What? And I said, “What?” Sweepin’ this eight hours?” was in August. I thought to myself, And, you know, this The summer of ’74 in August. And -- no, the summer of ’73 ’cause I had just graduated from high school. And I started, you know, I said, “My God,” you know, I kept thinking to myself, “I can’t do this. can’t, you know, I can’t do this.” You know. remembered about a organization called ASPIRA. I And I had [00:29:00] And they -- I knew that they told me they help people get into school -- to college. ’Cause I know back in high school, we tried to get college into the counselor’s head, and they would tell us, “Oh, no, you directly to the 22 �factories on Clybourn. You know. You can’t go to college. No way.” So that wasn’t even our radar, but I had it in my mind that I did want to do that. So as I was sweepin’ around, I kept thinkin’ about it, thinkin’ about it. Then two hours later, I threw the broom out and said, “Hell, I can’t do this.” And I left. Milwaukee Avenue. school.” So I went and found ASPIRA on And I just told ’em, “Hey I wanna go to And so that same day, I think it was the last day of registration at Northeastern. They got me to Northeastern, they helped me with financial aid papers, and I started school probably the next day or two days later. Classes started at Northeastern so I began college at Northeastern in the fall of ’73. well. And that was a shock as You know, ’cause wanting to go to school and [00:30:00] being prepared to go to school is two different things. And I couldn’t, you know, I wasn’t prepared through all my grade school and high school years. was educated for college. factories, you know. I never I was educated to go work in the And so, when I wa-- we were at Northeastern, we the same thing that we did everywhere else. We clicked. out and we partied. studying. All the Puerto Ricans clicked. We hung You know, we did that, we did a little So we were there for a couple years, we were collecting our financial aid checks. I had a wife and a 23 �son, you know, so that covered expenses and everything. And every summer I did a job. and I would not work. I would not get work-study Should -- I wouldn’t go to school in the summer so I would get a job as a college student summer job. So I did a couple different things throughout those summers. I went to factories on Clybourn. summer in the factory at Clybourn. Grant Hospital buffing floors. CTA bus. I worked one One summer, I worked at And then one summer I drove And then, you know, I remember [00:31:00] getting a college work-study grant and seeing BUILD -- an organization called BUILD on the sheet. And I remember that brought me back my memories to back when I was, you know, like eighth grade, sixth, seventh, eighth, freshman. Hanging out on Orchard and Willow a guy named Lacey Smith. He was a BUILD worker that used to come around and, you know, I didn’t know what he was doing. curious about it. I was always But he would get us together, the guys from Orchard and Willow, and he would take us to CabriniGreen to play baseball or basketball. We’d go to the YMCA on Larrabee and North and play basketball. They would -- he would bring those guys to the Boys Club to play ball there. And we would do field trips. We would go different places - the racetracks, Soldiers Field [sic], things like that. But I was always wondering, “Why, what was he 24 �doing?” I remember going to St. Michael’s and we did some basketball at St. Michael’s and sitting in the bleachers, they’re watching it from far. ’Cause I would say, “Wow what’s this guy up to, [00:32:00] man? He’s got Stones over here, Kings over here, Saints over here. doin’?” What’s he You know, I was always curious about that. So anyways, I remembered it really well when I saw it on the work-study list. And I told him I wanted to work there. And so they said okay, but that wasn’t my first job. gave me -- assigned me Big Brothers Big Sisters. They I did that, and then I had a friend that was working at BUILD so I told him, “Hey, I wanna work at BUILD, let them know.” And eventually I did get a phone call from a guy, Hank Bach, one of the founders of BUILD. Called me up and said, “Hey, I hear you wanna work for us.” So he said, “Come on over, we could start this weekend.” know, the weekend was camp. And I was like, you They were goin’ to Camp Channing, Michigan. And I said, I told him, “Whoa, whoa, this weekend camp?. Wait, no I’m married, I got a son. wife and a son.” He said, “Bring ’em with you.” was my first experience with BUILD. Channing for the weekend, and it baptized by fire. A So that I went to Camp I was like -- I would call ’Cause we went to camp where they had brought like 75 different gang members from [00:33:00] all 25 �over the North Side. You know, Cabrini-Green, the Latin Eagles from Addison, all the guys from Armitage and Halsted around there, and all of the Orchard and Will-- everybody was there. And it was pretty wild, you know. Wild experience ’cause it was -- everybody wanted to goof off and have fun, of course. So they did their own thing, but eventually that weekend I learned what BUILD was all about. You know, bringing people together to get to know each other on a different level, so that they didn’t have to beat each other up, or kill each other, or whatever it would be. And so that was my first beginnings with the organization. That was in ’76. I started working during my school semesters, like fall and spring. there and then get -- and then when I didn’t have work- study I would get a summer job. in the fall again. You know, then come back And I did that for a while until ’79. Then ’79 they hired me full time. years. I would work And I stayed there 30 From ’79 to 2009 did a lot of [00:34:00] diff-- all the different opportunities that they had there for me. worked on the prevention program. I I think I began working as a prevention staff, working with the -- doing drug awareness in schools. with kids after school. And then doin’ sports activities work with gang youths. And did that. Did intervention Same thing, sports, jobs, things 26 �like that, GED programs, and reportings. You know, did a lot of the administration work, then became supervi-- you know did all the positions at BUILD. Executive Director. Till ’94 became the And I was there for 15 years at the Executive Director till I left in 2009. So that’s my experience with work-JJ: Where are you at now? AC: I’m at St. Augustine College. I came here in September of 2009 and the transition for me was educational. ’Cause, as I mentioned, 30 years at the organization doing street intervention and [00:35:00] prevention work with kids; high risk youth and gang-involved and not gang-involved, and working with parents a lot. That exposed me to community work ’cause I [had done?] a lot of work with parents. And it reminded me, ’cause, you know, my goal -- our goal was to go back to your own neighborhood and work with the young people coming up behind you, so that they didn’t have to experience the things that you went through, and avoid some of the negative things that you did or that was around ’em. And so when I went back to the neighborhood and started working with the short-- younger guys in the neighborhood you know, gettin’ them into sports and things like that. And, you know, I remember I said, “My God.” You know, this was like in the late ’70s and early ’80s, and there was a 27 �major gang -- spike in gang violence. And throughout, you know, the whole area of Lincoln Park there, was -- we had a lot of that goin’ on. Not as, you know -- my years were not involved in that situation. banging. We didn’t do a lot of gang There was no guns pulled out on people like that, you know, I had a [00:36:00] couple experiences, but not much. And then when I, you know, the first shooting on Orchard and Willow was one of the [Velez?] family. Which is another large, Puerto Rican family that grew up in the neighborhood. But one of the Velez kids got lit up on -- he shot on right in front of the Boys Club on Orchard and Willow. And that was like our first experience of anybody getting shot there -- from our group, that was growing up from the Latin Saints there. On -- the Harrison Gents had some issues because they were -- they used to fight the Kings. And they had a couple shootings between them on there. But that was, you know, not compared to other neighborhoods, like what was happening in Humboldt Park and West Town at the time. But it reminded me, ’cause, you know, in the media, what you started to see was, where are the parents of these kids? putting -- blaming fingers. Everybody you know, kept And I was saying, “Wait, my mother,” as I mentioned, we talked about the cultural differences. When I left my house, it was -- I was a 28 �different person. I walked different, you know. It was like, you know, Freddy Calixto from the streets, [00:37:00] you know, walked right out the door. door, you were somebody else. When you went out the When you came into the house, you were, you know, Freddy Calixto, el hijo de Luis y de Juana. And you had to, you know, to act like that. you know, you had So they never knew anything about the gang [involvement?], because that wasn’t part of their culture. You know, they -- my father worked, and then his thing was, you know, la familia. You know, hangin’ out with his -- with the family that would visit, or he would go visit. And my mother was at home all the time, you know, taking care of kids. And from the -- and for dad was the church, like a lot of the Caballeros de San Juan stuff that -- back and forth. exposure. But never -- they never had Lot of the Puerto Rican families never had the exposure to how we grew up in the streets, and what we were doing the streets, until, for a lot of people, was too late. So my mom never knew. never knew.” I realized that, I said, “Mom I remember goin’ to -- comin’ out of school at St. Michael’s and I had a Saints sweater on. My -- three of us, David, and Wilfred all had Saints sweaters on. We walked into the house during lunch, you know, [00:38:00] and then my mother said, “Hey, what’s that?” And, you 29 �know, I looked at her and I said, “Ah, it’s from school. My school sweater.” She goes, “Oh.” another question about it. that. You know, never And you know, so I remember And I said to, you know, “Wait a minute.” “Where are the parents?” this stuff. They don’t know anything about And so I, you know, I started developing an awareness program. parents. You know, Eventually became gang awareness for And we started teaching the -- goin’ into schools and talking to parents of the children and saying, “Look, this is -- you guys need to learn this. on the streets.” This what’s going And we started teachin’ them about all this: the gang structures, and colors, and who’s out there, and where they hang out. know that. And the idea was so that they can And if they saw their kids wearing, you know, black and gold, or black and red, black and green, they would know, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, that’s -- let’s stop this right now.” ’Cause some kids were asking their parents to buy them these clothes, and they were doing it, you know. And back then, allowing them to put the laces in the shoes, and the parents were buying it for the kids, ’cause they didn’t know. So this educational [00:39:00] program was very helpful for a lot of parents. And it helped them, ’cause you could -- the way we presented it was, you could stop the young kid from joining and getting in too deep 30 �into the gang. But it would be a lot harder to get ’em out, once they were in. And so idea was to get them before and -- with the prevention program -- and with the parent education program. JJ: So you had a lot of parents involved, or (inaudible)? AC: Parents from all over. It started out in the neighborhood, so we were working with parents in the neighborhoods that we worked in, like in Lincoln Park. Lakeview. We were also in We were back in West Town and Humboldt Park. So we started going into all the schools, ’cause that’s where, you know, parents were at. And we would develop workshops for parents at -- through schools, churches, ’cause a lot of church groups, block clubs, you know, where everybody started; once they found out about it, everybody was looking for it. wasn’t available. They needed that information ’cause it It wasn’t nowhere. putting it out there. it. So we started The police department picked up on They started doing their own prevention program. [00:40:00] And they started, -- they had it, they -- we partnered with them, because they had the graphics, you know. Because of crime scenes, there was always a photograph taken, so they had graphic scenes. The States Attorney’s Office did their own presentation for gang awareness for parents. But they had, you know, graphic 31 �scenes of people being shot, laying in the streets. And they had statistics that they could talk -- give us about, how many shootings, how many murders, how many arrests, and all that stuff that we incorporated to our workshops. And our workshops were from the social work perspective on how we could help you, or your son, or your daughter. For them, it was, you know, lettin’ ’em know, this the problem. We come out here, we’re gonna lock you up, that kind of thing. So a little different perspective. But it was, we were part of them ’cause they had the good information that we could use for our our presentations. So, yeah, we had a lot of groups, a lot of parents. JJ: Now talkin’ about perspectives, right around that same time the Young Lords are [00:41:00] transforming through the gang. You knew them when they were a gang. AC: Right. JJ: And they kinda just jumped [in it?] from the gang into like a political type of group and that. AC: How did you see that? Well, my exposure was the church, you know. The church and the park on Armitage and Halsted -- the People’s Park, and the church on Dayton, you know, ’cause that was the Latin Kings, that was their turf. And we used to walk by there and hang out with them once in a while. something would happen. Every so often, And, you know, it’s -- at Waller 32 �would -- between them, and there would be beefs and -- but, you know, once in a while we were hang out -- go out on Armitage and hang out. then the church. And I remember hanging out there, And you know what was really -- didn’t know much what’s going on here. And that’s why like when I first realized, “Oh, this is somethin’ going on with the Young Lords, and they took over this church, and this is People’s Park.” And I said, “Oh, wow.” interesting, you know. know. It was very This is goin’ on, and then, you So it was like, for me, was like, [00:42:00] just see the beginnings of the exposure to it. Later on, I was older. JJ: How old were you at that time? AC: This -- I was still in high school, you know. And then when I got out of high school, when I, you know, learned more about it and got a little more involved, I remember getting (pauses) the, I don’t know what year it was on Wilton. You had the office on Wilton. That’s where I got -- I came -- I volunteered when you were running for all the men in the area. volunteered. And we were, you know, so I I worked in there, in the office for a while. And hangin’ out with the guys from the neighborhood, they had Eagles there hangin’ out with them for a while, so I did that and so forth. But my years at Northeastern was 33 �like an awakening for me, because I learned about the Puerto Rican culture. You know, as I mentioned to you very early on in this discussion, they took the Spanish out of me by third grade. So for me, when I went to you know, I didn’t know about Puerto Rico, I didn’t know about, you know, nothing about my culture, my history. [00:43:00] knew was that it was bad. thing to be speaking. All I Spanish was a bad wanted to be American. You didn’t want to do that. You But I never felt American, you know, ’cause we always had somebody that told us we weren’t Americans, you know. But when I went to Northeastern, we - - I was exposed to, you know, protests. Puerto Ricans were protesting. Rican studies. You know, the They didn’t have Puerto We wanted -- they, you know, so I joined the Union for Puerto Rican Students. So I was a member of the Union for Puerto Rican Students. And we, you know, we did our thing. We partied a lot, but we go to meetings and hear from some of the leaders, and we were present whenever they said, “Let’s take over this and that.” And so we did a lot of sit-ins, and we took over the President’s office a few times. And we demanded, you know, we wanted Puerto Rican studies. We wanted José López come and become a professor, and so forth, and we wanted El Centro to be established for the Latino community. And all those things 34 �took sitting in their office and not moving until they decided to make it happen. So I got my exposure to the political [00:44:00] (audio cuts out) and then learning more about the Young Lords through that. And that’s when I went out and did some volunteer work in the Wilton office, things like that. JJ: Okay. (pauses) __: AC: Pause it, yeah. So, one of the things that -- when you go back to the urban renewal or urban removal, however you want to call it. It had effect on a lot of things, on the family that lived in the different apartments there. And as I mentioned earlier, there were very few owners. The ones that did own, they really, you know, were ripped off -- basically ripped off because they were selling their homes for eight thousand dollars. You know, this is a community where, you know, you can go that same home that they bought for 8,000 dollars, they probably sold it for 500,000 later on, you know. But these people were getting great deals. If they got eight or 10 grand for a home, they felt like they were millionaires and moving off to Logan Square. [00:45:00] And becoming the first home homeowners in the West neighborhood -- Logan Square, Humboldt Park -- buying little two flats and things like that. But in the 35 �neighborhoods, what was happening was they were, you know, you saw that they, you know, people moving away and they, you know, the gang structure that was, that was there. what was happening, it was being exported. that it stopped. But So it wasn’t You know, the gangs didn’t ended because they changed the neighborhood. They just moved them, and they moved them from the area to area. went, that’s where the gangs were. So wherever they So you saw the spike. There was a lot of gang activity in Lincoln Park. Then you saw a spike of gang activity in West Town, Wicker Park. Because that’s where a lot of families moved to. And then you saw a lotta spike in gang activity in Humboldt Park, ’cause a lot of families moved there. move was west, west, west, west. Lincoln Park. ’Cause the whole And they cleaned out No more gangs in Lincoln Park, you know, ’cause they moved everybody out. But the gangs didn’t stop, they just moved [00:46:00] into another neighborhood, wherever there was a low-income community, where people paid low rents, the gangs were a subculture of that. You know for us, it was band together to defend your neighborhood against other people, other groups. The same thing started happening when people -- when Latinos were moving west. They were confronted with the, you know, the 36 �white guys -- the white gangs: the Gaylords, the PVCs. And they had to -JJ: To banding together to fight other white gangs or Latino gangs or what(inaudible)? AC: Yeah, mainly it was other la-- first, it was the other Commented [SC6]: Delete? white gangs, because they didn’t, you know, it was a racial thing. They didn’t like spics, they just said it straight out, you know, they would come and tell you, you know, “F you, spic.” You know, so you have to be -- either you have to run or you have to defend it. And what started happening, people were saying, “No, we’re gonna click -- “ whoever was there, you know, if it was the Gents, or whoever it was, if it was Latin Kings. You joined up and you you said, “No. numbers.” You got to get it. Now, you know, we’re [00:47:00] And that’s what started happening. You know, the Latinos started outnumbering the other gangs. And so they were no longer, after so many years, there were no longer white gangs to fight against, and they started turning on each other. And all the Latino gangs started fighting with one another, and that’s what we still have today, you know. Latino gangs, fighting Latino gangs. And then the mixture of people that -- it didn’t matter, you know, Lat-- if you were Black, Latin, if you join, you 37 �join. Whatever gang you join. Then it wasn’t so much more racial breakdowns of what gang you joined. JJ: So you’re saying that a lot of these gangs that were pushed out of Lincoln Park went into other neighborhoods. And did they join up with other gangs, start new gangs, how did that work? AC: Well, the Latin Kings, it was really easy for them, because there was Latin Kings already in the West Side. Latin Kings had already started in Humboldt Park, and they -- so they were just Kings moving from neighborhood to neighborhood. Just -- and they, you know, they knew [00:48:00] each other, they hung out. deal. So it was no big Latin Saints, for us, that was the end of them. There were no more Latin Saints. I didn’t even realize -- we didn’t even realize that there was an old Latin Saint gang on the South Side, and I didn’t know that till I used to visit my cousins on 55th Street. At 56th and Peoria. And there were some Latin Souls around there, and they would all say, “I’m gonna tell them you’re a Latin Saint.” You know, that what my cousins used to threaten me with. And I said, you know, “They don’t know me from the Latin Saints.” ’Cause I thought they were talkin’ about us. I didn’t realize that on 47th Street there was Latin Saints there from the ’60s. So there, they were there. They’re 38 �still around. But the Latin Saints from Lincoln Park, they just stopped existing after the move. Everybody moved out of there. The older guys went to Vietnam. Our group graduate. I went You know, we to high s-- to college. all went our own ways, and that was it for that. Younger guys [00:49:00] that were in that neighborhood, moved west and they joined other gangs. You know, that’s what they did. JJ: You mentioned Vietnam. Did that do anything to the gangs when a lot of the soldiers came back to the -AC: Well, from what I saw, the people that I knew that got involved in that, it was a way out. You know, a lotta people went there because they were facing the judge, and the judge told ’em it’s either army or jail. them, of course, chose the army. And a lot of So that’s how a lot of people took off, you know, went to the army. ’Cause they were getting caught up and goin’ in front of a judge and getting the choice. So a lot of them did do that. for a lot of people, it worked. It helped them. I think Because they went there, they got their GEDs, they came back, and they came back to work. Those were the first guys you saw working at Peoples Gas, at Commonwealth Edison, and things like that. But for a lot of guys that went to Vietnam, they got stuck. They got stuck on the heroin. I saw my 39 �brother-in-law, his cousin, friends, everybody that was out there. They all came back with habits. [00:50:00] You know, so they all came back with heroin habits, and they just festered in the neighborhood. Then for us, in our neighborhood around Armitage and Halsted, were a lot of people strung out on heroin. And that whole area, man, that whole neighborhood, they all -- the AIDS virus hit real hard. A lot of brothers died of AIDS ’cause they, you know, they didn’t know any different. They were sharing needles, and a lot of them caught AIDS, and a lot of ’em died. And I would, you know, I would get phone calls every so often and every -- this one guy would call me. time I got a call from him, I knew what it was. telling me so-and-so just died. just droppin’. Every He was And one by one they were And a lot of brothers from our -- that area just died of AIDS. JJ: What happened to a lot of the adults? I mean, what did they move to or what happened? AC: Well, as I mentioned earlier, it was a westward move. So from Lincoln Park -- from, you know, anywhere from Larrabee, Orchard, Halsted, Bissell, Armitage, in all that area. If you were one of the lucky ones that were -- that [00:51:00] owned a home and sold it, you bought -- you were one of the first families that were homeowners in Humboldt 40 �Park and Logan Square, or even Wicker Park, West Town. most families, as I said, rent. But So they move in to a places where they could rent apartments and so that’s what happened. They moved in, I said they first moved into Wicker Park. That was the first area west, and then further west to -- a little further west on the other side of Western to Humboldt Park, and then that’s where people... One of the things I did notice that the urban removal process started -- kinda stopped in Humboldt Park. It took a lotta years before it picked up any momentum. And I noticed, because I was at Northeastern at the time, and I did a project on the whole urban removal, you know, for one of my classes. And I was shooting film of Cabrini- Green, seeing the changes that was happening in Cabrini. I was going back to Lincoln Park and showing all the changes and [00:52:00] the new neighborhoods, the new buildings, the new neighbors. And then coming -- driving into Humboldt Park and showing what I mentioned, that I saw on Orchard, empty lots well on Rockwell. From Rockwell, North Avenue all the way down, they were empty lots ’cause they were burning buildings every night. There was a building on fire, and they were knocking ’em down. And there was plants, the same plants that they did on Lincoln Park were there in Humboldt Park. They were planning to do some 41 �building, you know, high-end buildings there, but they had resistance. The community banded together and resisted that whole move. There was an, or there is an organization there called Bickerdike Redevelopment Corporation, and they came together, and they worked on it, and they stopped it. They said, “No, this ain’t gonna be, you know, high-end living here.” housing. You know, we -- they fought for low-income And they were able to build all low-income housing in all those empty lots. And so that’s what stopped the urban removal process there in Humboldt Park. [00:53:00] It didn’t stop it in Wicker Park. Park, they took over. skyrocketed. rent. In Wicker They, you know, the rent The buildings you couldn’t buy, you couldn’t Unless, you know, you were a white-collar worker making big bucks. And if you didn’t own a home, and you know, people that own homes that had to give -- move out because of taxes. The ones that were able to stay and pay the taxes, they stayed and they kept their homes. was like, I count ’em on one hand. But that You know, some of the families that I know that lived on Bell Street, you know they had two, three houses on the block. else, I don’t think there were any. stopped it. It stopped there. And then anywhere But Humboldt Park And that’s why the Puerto Rican community was there for so long in Humboldt Park for 42 �many, many years, until the ’90s. seeing the change again. started to happen. west again. And so you started The whole new gentrification And, you know, people started moving And then you look at the numbers, the between 10 years, and 10 years, and 10 years later. Everything kept shifting, what further, further west from Humboldt Park. It had stopped for 20 years, [00:54:00] and all of a sudden, it started to see the shift. People were moving out of Humboldt Park and ending up in Belmont Cragin now, where there’s a whole new population of Latinos. The thing -- another big change was the influx of Latin American countries. People from Latin American countries, not -- Puerto Ricans were no longer the majority of Latinos. the numbers of Latinos, they were the minority. the numbers of Puerto Ricans went down. And So then You know, families moving away, a lot of families moving to Florida, moving out to suburbs, moving further west to other communities. So we still have the Puerto Rican community Humboldt Park, but the numbers are very low. The majority of the Latinos that live in Humboldt Park are not Puerto Rican, you know. JJ: (inaudible) AC: They’re Mexicanos. So, and then we had an increase of Latinos from different Latin American countries, you know. So that’s what we have currently and further west. 43 �JJ: Now, what about (pauses) because Bickerdike has done a lot of good work in terms of [00:55:00] getting low-income housing in Humboldt Park. Definitely fought well, [resisted?] well, but the Young Lords also resisted in Lincoln Park, probably because of their status. you see that? How did I mean, did you see that they were just completely defeated, or did they help to bring out any type of awareness, or how did you (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) that whole movement? AC: Well, the movement-- JJ: Did you agree with it, or maybe you didn’t agree with it? AC: -- well, as I mentioned to you earlier, it was early -- I was younger at the time, so I didn’t know a lot of the -what was happening when it was happening. My exposure and my education came later, after I got into Northeastern and started learning about the political agenda that was out there for the Puerto Rican community. But I saw it as an people that didn’t live it, ’cause I could have shared the experience of living it. I learn-- even though I didn’t know at the time, was living it, I could share the experience. I said, “Oh, I saw this. I remember this.” And it was an awareness that, [00:56:00] like any other movement that threatens the, you know, the normal -- what they consider normal, like the city hall considered normal, 44 �you know, there was a threat to that. You know, they saw that, and I saw -- they used their tactics to break it up. You know, to create chaos among the group. Because, you know, I saw the chaos that was happening among the group, within the people. The Latino brothers that were organizing around the Young Lords organization as the political group. You know, they were -- they had a good -- they said, “Alright, we got a -- we got something to, you know, that we want to be part of, and everything.” And eventually, because of that, you know, they were, you know, things started to happen with -- and that started to, you know. For the community, it was good. JJ: What do you mean things were happening? (inaudible). AC: Well, you know, things started happening. They started seeing, you know, the conflict within the group itself, you know, people breaking off. disagreed. They didn’t, disagr-- they just [00:57:00] The drug festered. A lot of those guys that I talked about dying on heroin, they were all part of it. And they started, you know, they got hit with the heroin. Heroin came out of nowhere, just -- it became available to everybody. And a lot of people chose it. They got involved and got hooked on heroin. So we, you know, a lotta... 45 �JJ: So did you see that as a way of somebody trying to stop (inaudible)? AC: That was exactly it, ’cause they infiltrated. You know, you had people that were, you know, saying they were part of this group, but they were part of -- they weren’t part of the group. YThey were -- you could tell they were in there for another purpose. firsthand there. the heroin. And I don’t know, I wasn’t I wasn’t there that I saw the bring in But you know, out of nowhere, the community became a heroin haven. There was so much heroin. Everybody -- so many people were on it, and that’s why, I said earlier, so many died. of AIDS epidemic. saw. Because they were, you know, But that was a [00:58:00] tactic that I And everybody realized, how do we, you know, how do we stop this movement? Because the Young Lords were a movement that created a movement, and that’s what happened. They were able to, what I think was something that was able to happen in Humboldt Park. If it would have been for the Young Lord movement that occurred in Lincoln Park and continue to struggle throughout the years in Humboldt Park, would have been pretty difficult to do what they did. You know, they were not able -- they were able to do that because they saw the experience that occurred in Lincoln Park. They saw the experience that occurred in Wicker 46 �Park, and they had the example to look back to the Young Lord movement and say, “Wait a minute. Bottom line, it was resistance. We got to resist.” “We have to resist. just can’t sit here and let this happen.” happened. We And that’s what You know, they were able to put a stop to the gentrification in Humboldt Park for, like I said, almost two decades, until it started to fester again, to where it’s at today. JJ: Okay, anything -- [00:59:00] that was good (inaudible; laughter). Anything else that maybe we need to add, that you think that we need to -- hold on one second. (adjusts camera) AC: Well, going back to the BUILD organization and my involvement, as I mentioned to you, I kinda saw as a youngster, you know, somebody out there working. But, you know, that history goes way back to the Young Lords and other all the older groups. ’Cause they had some street workers that were part of another program before BUILD, called the Detached Workers Program, that was out of the YMCA. There was a -- on Division and [Action?]. There used to be a Division Street Y, and they they got funding from the federal government. And this was something happening throughout the city of Chicago. ’Cause on the South Side, it was happening with the Blackstone Rangers, 47 �social service organizations getting funding to work with them. And in our neighborhood, it was the YMCA got the funding to do a program, and they called it the Detached Workers ’cause it was on the streets. Streetwork, not in the building. ’em to the building. streets.” [01:00:00] They said, “Don’t bring Just work with them out in the So they had workers out there in Lincoln Park. They were working with Lords, the Black Eagles, and the different groups there. And, like most programs, the Detached Workers, because it was a solely federal funded program, whenever the people sitting around the desk in Washington said, “Eh, we don’t want to fund that anymore, you know. Gangs is not a big issue for us anymore in our - - in those neighborhoods, we don’t wanna. something else.” Let’s do So they pulled the funding. said, “No more funding, no more program.” The YMCA And that’s how Bill got started, because Bob Jemilo and Hank Bach were running the Detached Workers Program out of the Division Street Y. And they said, “Wait a minute, we got a good thing going.” They knew what that program was working. It was getting a lot of the guys -- primarily guys and but it was women as well -- out of the violence and gangs and putting them into college. ’Cause they had a connection with the city college that was right down -- back then it 48 �was right down the street on Milwaukee Avenue, Mayfair College. [01:01:00] And they were just putting guys through GED, through BUILD, and right into city colleges. And, you know, getting -- that’s how people were, you know, movin’ away from the poverty and the things they had going, that gang structure was all about. “Hey, I got some college in me. And they were able to say, Now I can get a job. can go to ComEd, I can go to Peoples Gas. I I can get some - - I can get a job that can I can support my family with.” So that’s how the BUILD model came out. They took it from the Y. They started it. They got funding from the Board of Directors of the YMCA, the people -- the CEOs of ComEd, Marshall Field, Signal Corporation. They, you know, Bob Jemilo was pretty, you know, sharp guy. So he kinda, you know, maintained a good relationship with those kind of people there. And he went to directly to them, said, “I need you to give me money to start to keep this program going. I’m gonna start my own organization. call it BUILD.” I’m gonna You know, they, they came up with the name in a process, but that’s how they started BUILD. JJ: Do you remember similar tactics that they used to get to the street [01:02:00] gang members? AC: It was the same model. The same model it was, you know, you put somebody out in the neighborhood where they grew 49 �up, you know. So the detached workers had guys like Lacey and [Mingo?] that were part of the, you know, they grew up in that, in the neighborhood of Lincoln Park, so they were the ones out there. They started, you know, [droppin’ center?] on Halsted Street. earlier? The one that you mentioned Street. That was on that -- Mingo was running on Halsted I didn’t hang out there. You know, I was born Orchard at that time. JJ: The Concerned Puerto Rican -- AC: The Concerned Puerto Rican Youth Program there. But it was, you know, through the Detached Workers Program that he was able to do that. And then they all became staff of BUILD after ’69 you know. I that I learned. But it was the same tactics that Was, you know, you go out through the neighborhood where you grew up, and you work with the guys, ’cause they know you. They know oh, Freddy used to be a Saint here, before that. So, you know, I’m able to go and say okay, I want to, you know, you use sports as a tool. It’s always -- the tool was sports. softball league. together. I’m gonna run a I need you guys to get [01:03:00] And then you will get somebody in leadership to say, “Okay, I need you to be the team captain and get me all the names.” develop a roster. And you start getting the names, and you So that roster becomes your membership 50 �list, and you start developing on the list. need to tackle? leader here? Who do you You know, I gotta -- let’s see. Who’s the I gotta make sure I get this guy on my side. And you go, you start workin’ with that individual, and you get that guy into school, or you get that guy a job. everybody else wants to do the same thing. And And that’s the tactic that you use, and that’s the model that we used. that was the approach through the Detached Workers. So It was the model that was used at BUILD in -- throughout the years. It’s changed throughout the years, but that’s, you know, the main idea was that. JJ: Did you guys do (inaudible) take ’em all out in the city at all, or? AC: Every fall was a camp. when I first started. The one I told you about where, My first day at BUILD was, you know, Friday, take off on a bus and go to camp couple hours away to Michigan, Camp Channing. year. That was the model. They had it same place every You take ’em out because, you know, you take ’em [01:04:00] to the woods, they’re not the same people there on the streets. different person. Then it was a completely And so they are experiencing that. And then they’re, you know, they don’t have to front, you know. That, you know, they could get along with, you know, Latin Kings can get along with Latin Eagles. You know, but in 51 �the neighborhoods they can’t. could. But in Camp Channing, they They could sleep together in the same bunk room. They could get up and eat breakfast in the same bunk room. And those kind of things develop relationships that I saw firsthand how they saved lives. You know, ’cause you get caught in the streets, and I know I seen people get caught. Like Robert Gonzalez was one of my staff at BUILD, would always tell a story, says, “Man.” ’Cause he went to Lakeview High School, and they -- he was a Latin Eagle. The Latin Kings were their rival. on Ashland by Irving Park. were about to do him in. him from camp. And the Kings caught him And they were, you know, they And then they said -- they knew They knew him from softball. They said, “Oh, that’s Robert Gonzalez, that’s Bulldog. He’s cool. Let him go.” stuff. [01:05:00] They let him go and that kind of That’s the way, that kind of thing. see how that worked, because they weren’t. People didn’t They weren’t really there to see how that kinda, you know, how that saved the person’s life or from a beating or something. But being able to mix gangs and guys together in sports or in trips like a weekend at camp. The weekend at camp is one of the best, ’cause they -- you got 48 hours with these guys together. They get to know each other for real. So when they come back to the streets, you know, they think 52 �twice before they gonna, you know, get on jump on each other, shoot at each other, anything like that. So that does help a little bit. JJ: (inaudible) is there anything else? Otherwise [this?] should (inaudible). AC: That’s it. I think that’s good. END OF VIDEO FILE 53 � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/b965189f21db9beb38c4d4b0ad06ba4c.mp4 410ac00d330e9fe49872194892e3ab83 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 Alfredo Calixto vídeo entrevista y trancripción Descripción Spanish language Description entry Alfredo “Freddy: Calixto es parte de la familia quien fueron unos de los primeras familias que se movieron a Chicago en el principio de los 1950s. Nacido en Caguas Puerto Rico, Señor Calixto vivió por el desplazamiento de las familias Puertorriqueñas de La Clark hacia Lincoln Park, donde creció. Sus padres y la mayoría de sus hermanos fueron parte de la Caballeros de San Juan y Damas de María. Su padre también trabajo con Hacha Viejas, una organización social que era activa en el vecindario. Señor Calixto describe su pelea contra discriminación en Lincoln Park y como esas experiencias lo inspiro a dedicarse a la lucha para los jóvenes Latinos. También a sido parte de la Executive Director for Broader Urban Involvement and Leadership Development (BUILD), una organización sin lucrativa en Chicago que fue creada en 1969. Hoy, Señor Calixto, es el vicepresidente por la Instiutional Advancement en St. Augustine College, que es la única institución bilingüe en el medio oeste de educación mayor. 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 Renovación urbana--Illinois--Chicago Juventud--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_Calixto_Alfredo Title A name given to the resource Alfredo Calixto video interview and transcript Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Calixto, Alfredo Description An account of the resource Alfredo “Freddy” Calixto and his family were among the first Puerto Rican families to move to Chicago in the early 1950s. Born in Caguas, Puerto Rico, Mr. Calixto lived through the displacement of Puerto Rican families from La Clark to the Lincoln Park Neighborhood where he grew up. Mr. Calixto describes struggling with discrimination in Lincoln Park and how these early experiences inspired him to commit himself to advocating for Latino youth. 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 Urban renewal--Illinois--Chicago Youth--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 2012-02-08 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/33ef2b1e68c85db842e4f8b88ccf1e68.pdf bd745abbdd8273bb0fe03f22ce453166 PDF Text Text Young Lords In Lincoln Park Interviewee: Alfredo Matias Interviewers: José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez Location: Grand Valley State University Special Collections Date: 4/2/2012 Biography and Description Alfredo Matias is the happy son of Doña Carmen García and a Young Lord going back to the mid-1960s. Mr. Matias joined the Young Lords during the Month of Soul Dances at St. Michael’s Church Gymnasium in Lincoln Park. Those neighborhood dances were held for four consecutive Saturdays and the Young Lords purchased 40, 30-minute advertising slots on the radio to announce the dances. The affairs were so well attended they were overfilled each night. Monies from the dances were used by the Young Lords to purchase their club sweaters, which were to be all black with a violet stripe along each shoulder – colors chosen from the film, “West Side Story.” The film had special significance for young Puerto Ricans at the time because it was the only public movie of its day that portrayed Puerto Ricans living in the United States, however problematically. A white, armor shield patch was sewn near one of the side pockets. The letters “YL” in old English font were marked on the patch as well. Mr. Matias lived in Lincoln Park and also in Wicker Park for many years. He saw both communities evict their primarily Puerto Rican residents. For years, one could see Alfredo sitting in the park at Schiller and Damen Ave. or walking along North Avenue, Milwaukee, Damen, and Division Streets. He would always be humble, respectful and friendly, and his favorite past time was not whistling but “throwing flowers or compliments at the ladies.” Mr. Matias has always been dedicated to his heros Don Pedro Albizu Campos and Lolita Lebrón, and has performed his many poems at the nightclub “Weeds” and several �other venues for free. A few of his poems include, “El Coquí,” “ El Grillo y La Luna,” “Sin Titulo,” “Characters of my Poetry,” “Ponle Titulo,” and “Just a Poem.” Mr. Matias says that he was expelled from school at 13 years of age, from Puerto Rico at age 15, and from the U.S. military at 17. He was forced from the military because he refused to accept an order that would have sent him to Cuba to fight alongside other Puerto Ricans in the Bay of Pigs invasion, against the sovereignty of Cuba. He said then “that he was not going to ever fight in a war against a Latino nation.” The expulsion from the military has caused him much suffering, including being denied any veteran’s benefits. Mr. Matias grew up in Sabana Seca, Puerto Rico. SabanaSeca is a barrio of Tao Baja, 14 miles west of San Juan. It used to house primarily a pineapple and grapefruit plantation called the “Stephenson Place,” but the 2250 acres were acquired by the U.S. Navy during World War II. After the war, the property was turned over to the U.S. Army and then back to the U.S. Navy. Since the 1898 military occupation of Puerto Rico by the United States, six military installations have been established in Puerto Rico: one in the offshore island of Culebra, another in the island of Vieques, and four others including Roosevelt Roads, Salinas, Fort Allen, and Fort Buchanon. Today Mr. Matias is home in Puerto Rico, content to be by his mother’s side, and still writing his poetry, “proud to be a Puerto Rican and a Young Lord to the bone.” �Transcript JOSE JIMENEZ: Okay -- ALFREDO MATIAS: My name -JJ: Alfredo Matias, okay. AM: My name is Alfredo Matias. I was born in el barrio Sabana Seca de Toa Baja, Puerto Rico. (Spanish) [00:00:11 - 00:00:25]. JJ: (Spanish) [00:00:25]. AM: Yeah, uh-huh. My name is Alfredo Matias. I am a bilingual, bicultural, but not bisexual Puerto Rican, [today with?] Ricky Martin. You know, the first time I heard Ricky Martin singing that song, “Livin’ la Vida Loca,” I said to myself, “[He’s a maricón?].” As soon as I saw it, I said, you know, he was -- anyway, I’m here in Chicago. I’ve been in Chicago since 1963. I came here ’cause I was -- [Is?] --? (break in video) JJ: Okay, whenever you want to start. AM: Okay, my name [00:01:00] is Alfredo Matias. I am Afro Puerto Rican. I came to Chicago in 1963. Uh, prior to going to Chicago, I was in Puerto Rico, you know, in, uh, uh, my youth. I wa-- I was born and raised in Puerto Rico. Um, when I w- when I came to Chicago, I came to live at [5302 South Michigan?]. From there, I went to the South Side, went back to the West Side. I came to the North Side around 1967 when I met Cha-Cha Jiménez, and they had a little get-together, you know, in some church, and I was playing with a band called the [Afro Souls?]. It was an Afro American band. You know, we had a couple projects, me 1 �and another [Black working?] guy named [Coco?]. We went to play at the St. Michael. We went to play (inaudible), and that was Cha-Cha, and [the guy was there?], you know, and I met him through a guy named [Rafael Fajaldo?], also known as Coco. [00:02:00] First of all, you know, before I go any further, I have to explain that when I was in Puerto Rico, you know, my stepfather was a policeman, and when I was in the eighth grade, this one teacher, you know, a Black Puerto Rican teacher, he had the habit of saying, “Eh?” Like, “Eh, Matias?” You know, (Spanish) [00:02:23]. And I said to him, “(Spanish) [00:02:26]?” And he just kept, you know, going around, giving the class. Then he stood next to me (inaudible), he hit me so hard, man. (mimics slapping face) He hit me like you hit a man, you know? He did it because he was more like a -- he was a [sidekick?] to some [white?] Puerto Rican that (inaudible) [in the town?], and they were using -- they were kind of telling him that I was [big into him?] (inaudible), and I was stronger, so, you know, telling, you know, enticing him into, you know, [going up on?] me. And he [would look for?] -- he used to hit me. Since I knew he was the teacher and I was the student, I would try to be cool, you know, and then one day, [00:03:00] he said to me, “Hey, Matias, (inaudible),” when the guy that was the next to me and the girl, they were talking to each other, and they weren’t talking loud because I didn’t even hear them. But he said to me, “Matias, (Spanish) [00:03:09],” and just kept giving the class, going around. Then when he hit me so -- that was a Friday. That Monday, my stepfather was going to school to talk to him, ’cause he didn’t even know that my father was a policeman. When Monday morning came, you know, I came to school, and when it was time 2 �for me to go into the classroom, you know, came in, I walk in, kind of thinking that my stepfather would be coming there soon, so as soon I walked through the door the teacher grabbed me again by my neck and pulled me out of the classroom, and I went nuts, you know? And, again, we fight. Anyway, then I was expelled from school. Then, in those days, there were no jobs for [grown?] Puerto Ricans in my town; most jobs for a kid, you know? So I was hanging around [my town?] with some friends, and since I didn’t know what to do, one day, you know, they were going to go induct -- [00:04:00] they had inducted into the army. Puerto Rico, you know, we don’t have an army, but the American Army over there, you know. Different -- they went to take the test, and so the lady just asked for the name and address. I told her that same day I was 17, and I wanted to, you know, join the Army. I was only -- I wasn’t even 16 yet, but you know, she told me that I had to have some signature from my parents, you know, like that they agreed I could go into the Army. JJ: Why did you want to join the Army? AM: Because (inaudible), you know, there were no jobs for grown people. Most of the jobs for young people. We were hanging around, you know, [bumming?] up and down the street, you know? So I went with friends just for a ride, and when I saw that the lady just asked them for their name and address, I told that day I was 17, so I went, you know, in two weeks, and they called us to go take the test, and when we went to take the test -- there were six of us -- and the only one that passed the test was me. So the guys (inaudible), they flunked the test, 3 �[00:05:00] and [I was there for a ride?], and I wound up going to the Army. Anyway, when I went to the Army I was only 16 years of age. JJ: And where did you go? Where --? AM: After taking basic training in Buchanan, they sent me to Fort Jackson, South Carolina. In South Carolina, you know, everything was two: two NCO club, two beer garden, two barbershops. Everything was two: Black people go to one; white people go to the other. They sleep in the barrack, but never talk to each other. We just had, like, two different worlds. Anyway, Puerto Rican, you know, for them to be able to go downtown to the Black area, they used me as a key to walk into the Black neighborhood. Every time we would go into the neighborhood they would say, “Oh, here comes (inaudible) Matias,” and he let us through, because I [look?] Puerto Rican; they were with me. I was the only Black Puerto Rican in Fort Jackson, South Carolina. Anyway, when Kennedy wanted to invade Cuba in the Bay of Pigs invasion, they took all the Puerto Ricans aside, (inaudible). They took us, fed us, gave us food, and gave us (inaudible), and then told us that they had [00:06:00] to talk to us, to only Puerto Ricans. There was a number of Puerto Ricans in the Army at that time. They took us aside and then they said they want to volunteer for this mission, to see (inaudible) [discharge?]. They want (inaudible) to see [on the other side?]. And I was the only Black Puerto Rican. Everybody looked at me, because, you know, that’s (inaudible), as a leader or something, so everybody followed my idea. So when they said that, (inaudible) volunteer to [sit on one side?], they wanted to [sit on the other side?], other side looked at me, I got up. I went to the side, the one that 4 �they want to go. Everybody followed me. In the Army, they branded me like I was unloyal. Yeah, I was in the Army for 14 months. I never got to be private first class. In the Army in America, you don’t make private first class within nine months, they’re supposed to give you discharge. I was in the Army 14 months. I never got, you know, to be [00:07:00] private first class. So I was an E1; I came out E1 at 14 months. JJ: So why do you think that was? AM: What? JJ: That you were not private first class. AM: Racism, you know. I never saw -- I only saw two Puerto Rican commissioned officers when I was in the Army, and they were in Puerto Rico. For us, (inaudible) whites [all there?]. Whites, they run the game, you know? It was, you know, two: Black would go to one, and the Black would go to the other, but then Puerto Rican, they had no place to go. So people kind of saw me as a leader, because I was, you know, I was [always?] a bunch of people following me. See, not for me, the United States would have been in Cuba with Puerto Rican soldiers. (inaudible) [social?] leader, you know, they even have a highway named after him, but (inaudible) to make the [00:08:00] [alpha CTC?], and he wanted for us to go with him, you know, into Cuba in the Bay of Pig invasion. See, [it wasn’t?] for me, saying, you know, that I wasn’t going, [and a little political dissention?], we would not be in Cuba. When I came back from the Army to Puerto Rico -- I was only there for three months -- no job, no nothing, so my family -- [I credit it for my?] grandfather (inaudible) Army base, and I used to go there, throw stones at 5 �the soldiers and [share?] with my cousins. When I was in the Army, you know, I wanted (inaudible) to let me be (inaudible) [protocol?]. I didn’t want to go overseas, you know, because (inaudible) from my grandpa, and they have a Naval base, you know. When I came out of South Carolina, I was (inaudible), every time I would see any of the soldiers (inaudible) the base, we’d throw stone on them. I lived right across the street. It was about maybe 90 feet away from my parents, the gate to the Army base. When I came back one night, me and [00:09:00] my [cousin?], we were throwing stones at the soldiers, and I didn’t see my grandma. She was looking through the window. And then, you know, she saw me throwing the stones. She told my mom that they should send me to New York or to Chicago [with one of my friends?] before I got killed. And I think that (inaudible) happened, because, you know, I was [full of hate?], you know. (Spanish) [00:09:18]. Anyway, my family, they gave me a choice to either go to Chicago or to New York. Since I had a couple uncles in Chicago, I came to live with them. I came to live at 5302 South Michigan. It was all Black and Latino around there. There were no whites around. From there, I went to 94th and (inaudible). From there, I went to the West Side, and then when I was in the West Side I got married, and I had the one Puerto Rican friend named Coco. You know, we were both musicians, so we were playing gigs here and there. Anyway, one Friday night Coco told me that they were going to play for some Puerto Rican group called the Youth Lords. I said -- I wasn’t going to play -- “I’ll go with you.” So I [00:10:00] went there, and the first thing I see -- that was when I first met you. Coco said to me, “See that little blonde guy right there, that Cha- 6 �Cha? He’s the president of the organization.” So [they were going to?] introduce us, you know, when I met you. Like, I don’t believe in gangs, you know? To me, when I went (inaudible), I saw, you know, they had a legit grief with the city for the racism and what have you. I got so involved into the scene because, you know, to me, I had gone through the process of the racism in the Army, you know, coming to Chicago. I came to live in a Black neighborhood, and I didn’t know any Latinos until I met Cha-Cha -- I mean Coco and the other, and then he introduced me to you. And then most of the people I knew, they were Black. I didn’t have no white friends at all. JJ: Now, did you ever live in Lincoln Park at all, or --? AM: Yeah. I live on -- I live right across from the church, the funeral home. I live over there. I live on 1945 North Dayton. I live on Fremont and Armitage. I live on [Beso?] -- not Beso -- yeah, Fremont and Armitage, then Beso. Then I live on Burling Street. I live through there, like -- JJ: So how was that neighborhood at that time, I mean, when you were living there? I mean, what do you remember? AM: It was a bunch of Puerto Ricans, you know, helping each other, and the city was using the gang -- you know, other things to scare people here, (inaudible), but [there were many people?] Puerto Rican neighborhood. When I came to live there, that was the biggest population of Puerto Ricans (inaudible). JJ: And about what time was that? What year was that? AM: Oh, 1967, ’68, ’68. 7 �JJ: Sixty-eight. Okay, what were some of the activities that, when you -- you know, after you started hanging around [00:12:00] with the Young Lords, what were some of the activities that you remember? AM: The churches were kind of (inaudible) rundown, so we all got together, started fixing it little by little, and I used to spend most of my time over there. JJ: Okay. And so you were there after the church was taken over? AM: Yeah, I was there for the taking of the church. JJ: And so what happened during those days? AM: The Lincoln Park [Reservation?], Association, whatever, they were (inaudible) this project in the neighborhood, and they were using the kind of tactics like harassing the businessmen, giving them citation for failing to -- it was just to get out people out of the neighborhood. Lincoln Park Association, they had a few people from [Windy City?] (inaudible) [removal?]. [00:13:00] That’s what they were doing. [They were just following?] Puerto Ricans in the neighborhood. And [I said to him?], like, [they didn’t understand?] -- we had to pack our [gang bangers?], our rice and beans, our [Puerto Rican?] men, and take off. Puerto Rican, we are the worst nationality in this country. We don’t have a selfcontrolled monetary system. Like, everybody has a system except us. Any particular country to Puerto Rico, anywhere in the world, bring money from the country, trade it for American money, and what you and I cannot buy, they can buy. I mean, my impression of Luis Gutiérrez, I was one of the first -- you know, when he won the first time, he won by ten votes. I was there with him. [That’s crazy?]. I got locked up, you know, right after he became alderman. But anyway, 8 �in those days, I was going to Northwestern University. I got locked up three times in those years, going to school, bullshit like drugs, you know, for marijuana. Cigarettes [00:14:00] kill more people than the drugs combined, but [didn’t see that?]. Anyway, they used that as an excuse, you know, to keep us down. I have a 3.54 grade point average from Northwestern University. When I was in the school -- really, when I went to jail, I was asking the people at the prison, you know, if I could finish my schooling, and they said yes, and I tried to get from Northwestern my transfer, and they said that when you are six months from getting a degree they will not transfer your transcript to no place. They gave me that kind of hassle, and they were -- all I need is three hours of Earth science, and the English language test, and the Constitution test, and I got a bachelor. But I know so many people that had more hours than me and they don’t have a bachelor, because when Governor Thompson was governor, he passed a law that said for you to [00:15:00] get a degree in Illinois you had to take and pass the English language test and the Constitution test. That [whole system?], they used that to keep minorities, like Latinos, Blacks, Oriental, out of [the degree?] program. (inaudible). I know lots of people that have enough hours to have a bachelor, but they don’t have it because the racist English language test, you know. Me, I have a 3.54 grade point average. What the hell I got to prove somebody that I speak English? If I had that kind of average, that means I can speak enough, so they use only to keep minority out of degree program. JJ: So what is that English language test? I mean, I’ve never heard of that. AM: Well, right now, in Illinois since nineteen seventy -- 9 �JJ: In Illinois [that is?] -- AM: -- seven -- uh-huh. I mean, (inaudible) pass a law that you had to take the English language test, which is a test of your knowledge of the English language. [00:16:00] It’s like a lawyer: you know, for you to become a lawyer you have to take the Bar Association test; otherwise, you’re not a lawyer. That’s essentially used to -- that’s a racist tactic. That’s what it was. JJ: And is that for everyone, or --? AM: Everyone has to take and pass the English language test. See, white people ain’t got a problem, ’cause that’s their language, you know? So that’s just used to keep poor and Latinos out of degree. JJ: Okay, going back to the Young Lords, okay, were you in any of the marches or anything like that? AM: Yeah, yeah. JJ: Can you describe one of the --? Which march were you in? AM: When [Jason?] (inaudible) killed (inaudible) -- JJ: What was that about? What happened there? AM: That day, we was (inaudible) [outside?], remember? JJ: Okay, but what happened? AM: That day, there was a party in either [Rough?] or [Spaghetti Thursday?] in the South Side -- it was in Bridgeport, you know, that real rich neighborhood -- and supposedly sometime [00:17:00] that policeman, he was dressed in plainclothes. He was, you know, painting a building across the street from where the party was, and the party was for Puerto Rican and Latino. It was English-language 10 �music. The cop didn’t like it. They came and knocked on the door and told them to put the music down because it was too loud. He went back across the street and about 20 minutes later the music went up again. He came, opened the door, and started shooting into the building, into the house, and he killed (inaudible) and wounded Spaghetti. JJ: And then what happened? Then what happened after that? Were you there that day or no? AM: No, no, we were here on (inaudible). In fact, what I was saying to you [yesterday?], we were here with the [girl?], which would be up there, you know -- JJ: (inaudible) party? AM: -- with a group, yeah. JJ: So what happened after that, after you heard about that? AM: After that, you know, we had these -- We were able to [launch?], you know, [for us to?] indict that policeman. I don’t think he would have ever got indicted, but we went to protest [00:18:00] to the Chicago Police station. We went from here to there. I don’t know, what was the guy, the Black guy that was in -- that (inaudible)? JJ: The [Culverstones?]? AM: Right, right, right. (inaudible) we got through, and we went to the march, and I have been to a lot of the marches for welfare recipients’ rights, and Latino neighborhood organizations. JJ: So that was a march against police brutality, but your father is a policeman, so -- AM: My stepfather was a policeman in Puerto Rico. 11 �JJ: Okay, so how did you feel about that, that we’re marching against the police? AM: Well, police, [it’s different?]. First of all, [if there’s?] justice and equality, [there’s no need?] for the police, you know? If everybody gets equal treatment, there’s no need for police. Police are -- in the [past?], policemen were to clean, doing all the -- but none of them have the authority to arrest people, [00:19:00] which -- for me, I never had a good relationship with policemen, you know. My stepfather, he was a policeman, you know, but he was a womanizer, and, like, at the time I got into that fight, you know, instead of going to see [how I’m?] (inaudible), he went to see a woman that he had. He didn’t come to school. That’s why I almost got beat up by that [street gang?]. But I didn’t see them as a needed thing, you know? I mean, here, you have to have (inaudible), otherwise people will [lead?] each other, but that come from the injustices that have been, you know, [productive otherwise?]. He had to get test to be a policeman. I took a test to be a case worker, to be a bilingual translator in court. All those jobs were denied to me because when I was in the Army, the Army gave me (inaudible) discharge. I ran that through my U.S. (inaudible) number. It’s a dash, and then the worst, [28B?]. [It was?] 28B; 28B means involved in [frequent?] incident of [disability?] to military and civilian authorities, unloyal soldier. That was the discharge [00:20:00] the Army gave me. And not only me, but a lot of the other soldiers that were there, because they were Black and Latino, they would get less than honorable discharge so that when they come to civilian life they cannot compete with, again, the whites. Simple as that. Racism. Now, going to over to Korea, the bill had they’re going to allow the Germans to reunite, and they’re going to 12 �give them the keys to the Vatican, you know? But we have a German Pope. Out of all the places in the world, the Germans, they had the worst record on civil rights, human rights, (inaudible) [lately?], but now for them to [reunite again?], (inaudible) had done this on purpose, you know. They have allowed them to reunite, being the racist rationality that it was. That was done on purpose to keep the white race together. Korea, North Korea and South Korea is the same country, same people, but they’re still divided, and they don’t have the kind of human rights record that the Germans had, [00:21:00] but they had the key -anyway, whoever gets the key for the Vatican runs the show. For the past [hundred?] years, the Pope was always Italian, from over there, then all of a sudden the first non-Italian Pope was the Polish Pope that just died. The Pope that was before him, he was only Pope for one month because he died. When Popes die and they cannot do an autopsy on them -- that’s against the law. So anyway, that Pope, in one month he made so many changes in the Catholic Church that they say he was a rebel. He was an Italian -- he was against a lot of (inaudible), but anyway, they wipe him off and they put the first non-Italian Pope in power that have [power?] (inaudible). That was done in cahoots with the people of Poland, you know, [Lech Wałęsa?], the Pope, and they got together [00:22:00] with [Reagan?], and they [determined their civil union?]. That was a [workplace job?]. You know, that was [planned for him?]. That Pope, he only went to Cuba when he no other choice but to go visit Castro, and the first thing he went [up there?]. Same way the Pope was [a racist like he was?], this [one?] 13 �is the same way. This Pope -- [Last good?] Pope was the one that died after 21 days, 31 days. JJ: So I take it you’re not too religious? AM: Oh, I don’t believe -- I’m not that religious. You know, I believe in God. I believe in the creator of creation, but [these have?] a white Jesus Christ and a Black devil, and, you know, [nothing?]. If Jesus ever lived, he was Black. If he was born where he was born, he couldn’t have been a white man, you know? Right now you have the white people in Israel claiming to be Israeli Jews. Bullshit. Those are people from Europe that were shipped up there during [00:23:00] Hitler’s raising hell. In 1948, they get the people’s land that was not theirs, and right now they are seen as the true Jews. Here in America, through America and the Navy, the so-called [Indians?], those are the Americans. They (inaudible) come from other places, they come here, and [out of the clear blue?] they call American. I mean, I’m a Puerto Rican. How in the hell can I be Puerto Rican and be American? How can Puerto Rico be a commonwealth, Estado libre asociado? How can you be associated and free at the same time? That’s all bullshit. Religion’s the same way. You know, [they paint?] white Jesus when Jesus was Black; they paint a Black devil when the devil was white. Lucifer, [Bluebeard?] was white. He was a white fellow. He got kicked out of heaven, and then he started -- religion is a way to control people’s feelings [and them?]. But I believe in God, the creator of creation. [00:24:00] In other words, I don’t believe in institutions (break in audio) religions. To me, religion is the same way: 14 �it’s only one God, the God that created creation. There are lesser gods and what have you, but one God. JJ: And, [again?], the Young Lords took over McCormick Theological Seminary. AM: Hmm? JJ: They took over McCormick Theological Seminary. Were you there during the takeover? AM: Yeah. JJ: And what do you remember about that? AM: That day -- it was ten o’clock in the morning -- me and [later?] Louis Chavez, we went to Armitage -- not Armitage -- [North?] (inaudible) to sell a newspaper, but they came and arrested us over there. JJ: To sell what newspaper? AM: The Young Lords paper. JJ: So [North?] (inaudible) [Walls?]? AM: Right. JJ: And so this was the day of the takeover? AM: Right. We were there for about a week (inaudible). JJ: Right. AM: Yeah, [at that old buildout?], [00:25:00] you know, I came back to the place, and it was already, you know, all going. JJ: It was already all going? So when you say it was all going, can you describe what you saw? AM: I mean, you know -- 15 �JJ: What would you see? AM: We went out there on Thursday morning. You know, certain rights that the neighborhood had, they had been taken away from us by that (inaudible) [Bank?], DePaul University, all those. They had a plan of wiping out [the neighborhood?], which they did. They wanted us there, and they used any kind of tactics they could, but they kicked us out. JJ: So how many days were you in the --? It lasted a week, so how many days were you there? AM: I was there [practically all the time?]. JJ: So, okay, what did you see? I mean, what was going on? AM: A lot of -- JJ: (Spanish) [00:25:48] -- AM: Yeah, (inaudible) -- JJ: -- (Spanish) [00:25:51]. AM: (Spanish) [00:25:56 - 00:26:03] -- I couldn’t define, you know, [a certain thing?], but I know I was (inaudible) in the neighborhood, we had to do what we had to do. [But here?], Reverend Bruce Johnson, that was a political murder, you know? They wanted him out of the neighborhood because he was the only white person that was openly there supporting us and giving us everything we need. So you’re not going to go and kill the hen that lays the golden eggs. You know, [to us?], he was a golden egg, and they [were criminals?]. They carried him out of there just to make us lose power, because there were lot of white people coming to help us. When (inaudible) killed, everybody took off, because they 16 �thought we did it, and we were blamed on the [organization?] for the sole purpose of cleaning up the neighborhood, you know? They wanted us out of the neighborhood. JJ: So they blamed the [00:27:00] Young Lords for the killing of Reverend Bruce Johnson. AM: Yes, Bruce Johnson and Eugenia Johnson. JJ: And so how did you feel about that? You were a Young Lord, [I mean, that?] -- AM: But that was -- I knew from the beginning that they found fingerprints, the cup, on the bottle of wine, and his pipe. Why has no one done anything about it? Because they wanted to make it look [unclear?] a case so that people would blame us. That’s how I see it. And the newspaper, it says they found fingerprints in his cup, and the cup of wine, and on his smoking pipe they found some fingerprints. They could have [cleared?] the case. They wanted, you know, to put the blame on the (inaudible), but that was only to get us out of the neighborhood. It was a very powerful little group [with some good?] issues. You know, people don’t understand that we, Puerto Ricans, we are [the poorest?] nationality. That way, we don’t have -- [00:28:00] Like, a white kid, when he [gang?], he get in his car and go right around and come back [and cool off?]. And us, you know, we’re [the poorest?] nationality. That’s why Luis Gutiérrez, instead of helping the Puerto Rican community [with acts?] in the Congress, he could have been there [dealing with?] (inaudible) -- you cannot transfer your SSI to Puerto Rico. [You see what?] like that, we weren’t allowed to do that. Only Puerto Ricans out here living [in the street?], they would be [leaving?] back 17 �home, but [they’re doing things?] because we are the poorest nationality. We need [secondary monetary assistance?], we need [secondary laws?], and [instead?] we have people like Luis Gutiérrez [throwing jabs?] in our face, ’cause that’s what he’s doing. Anytime one of these illegal guys becomes a citizen, or he got [a little?] family, they can send money to the bank, you know, wire, and what you cannot buy, they can buy. That’s why you don’t see people here, too many people in the streets [like that?], the Dominican Republican, Dominican -they all have a way to [00:29:00] make the money work. We have no money, so therefore we are the poorest nationality. That’s why we have all the gangbanging, all these, like -- (Spanish) [00:29:10], which means unity there’s strength. (inaudible) they have nothing to [defend?], they have to, you know -the same thing (inaudible) for day before, when they came out to go this land, [they wiped the Indians away?], but our young kids, you know, they have no other way to make it but just, you know, [you’re now in a gang?] to survive. We’re not gangbanger by nature, you know? In Puerto Rico, when I was a kid, you didn’t like somebody, somebody didn’t like you, you got into it, boom, like two men, [all away?]. Now, you got to go through all this, you know, [gang thing?], because to survive in this world we’ve got to do it. JJ: Now, you made a little poetry or something? How did that start? How did you start on that? AM: Ah, [that’s the one?] about -- I read a lot of poetry since I was about 16, but [00:30:00] I decided to become a poet June 29, 1969, when the astronaut landed on the moon. I was [staying there?] with [Chicano’s?] ID. But anyway, there, 18 �when I took a test to be a policeman, the lady that signed my papers, you know, for the American Legion, for him to change my discharge, her mother became a patient at the -- I was then helping out, when I was there, and when that lady walked in and she saw my face, she couldn’t [forget me?]. [She should remember me?]. And she was bringing her mom there to be a patient. Anyway, June 29th, her mom said to me, [about two o’clock?] in the afternoon, “Young man, can you take me to the balcony so I can see the landing in the moon?” And I thought, sure, yeah. I took her to the balcony. Two or three hours later, she was dead. And that’s when I said, you know, here people dying, you know, [incurable?] disease, and here she wanted to see the landing in the moon. I said, she died peacefully. Anyway, that day I wrote a poem titled “The Rape of the Moon.” [00:31:00] It goes like this: “Once upon a times, the [stars?] start to make love to the moon with [affair?]. Even Jupiter, Pluto, and the rest of the planets try to (inaudible), but the moon was too strong. She (inaudible) until one day the U.S.A. took poor people’s money and sent three men to rape Miss Moon. Now the moon is not a virgin anymore. It’s known all over the world. People (inaudible) in the blue sky, but the moon stood naked in front of three strangers and (inaudible) [take her?] secrets. [You have?] secrets (inaudible). She [cared for the lowest with peace.” I wrote that poem about -- I went through a metamorphosis. I went through a change. That day, after this lady dying, to me, that was [welfare?] (inaudible) to me. Until he died on my birthday, December 27th, ’77, to me, [that’s the world?], because, you know, (inaudible) them (inaudible) [to me?]. When I took a test [00:32:00] to be a policeman, Alderman 19 �[Biggs?], his nephew, (inaudible), he was about to have a meeting with a Puerto Rican at ten o’clock in the morning. We got there about 9:55 or so, and I walk into the office. He look over my shoulder, you know, looking for the Puerto Rican. And (inaudible) [to Mr. Daley?], “This is Alfredo Matias, the Puerto Rican kid that took a test to be a policeman.” And he wasn’t even mumbling. He kept looking. Then Mr. Biggs told him again, “This is Mr. Matias, the Puerto Rican.” He said, “Oh, you’re a Puerto Rican?” First time [ever since I was a kid?] -- you know, like, (inaudible) first and only time (inaudible) was that day. He said, “You’re a Puerto Rican?” And he didn’t know a Black man can be a Puerto Rican. People don’t know that before there was Black slavery in America there was Black slavery in that part of the world. They didn’t know. I mean, he was sitting in a big chair, you know, (inaudible) [looking at the Puerto Rican guy?]. (laughs) You know, man, by nature, [00:33:00] we are a territorial animal. We believe in locks and keys and fences, and this is mine, that’s yours. That’s why I (inaudible) like that. Even [political?], (inaudible) because by nature we are a territorial animal. We believe in my people, you know, who it is. Like, for instance, they think that crack cocaine is, they said, a Black invention or something like that. [No more?] sophisticated than that. Racism is same way. Things like that, where we go to here, we don’t understand. You look like my son. Yeah. JJ: So, okay, we’re going to kind of finish it up, but you’ve been a Young Lord for many years. What is it that keeps you --? You know, ’cause I see that you get angry with different things? 20 �AM: The need for (inaudible) -- when the country got into [00:34:00] Puerto Rico in June 25, 1898, when they came to Puerto Rico, Puerto Rico was a republic. You know, we were just like you are there. We were independent, with our own [monetary?] system. [That’s just?] about the war that they had back in Spain. You know, it began in Havana Harbor. It was a boat called, a shipped called the Maine. When that ship was blown away, apart, it was blown away by Americans. You know, they did that (inaudible) their own boat because the soldiers that they had there in those days, they had a Black Army and a white Army. The Black [unit?], they were called [mate shipmen?]. They were not called soldiers. Anyway, the people that then [is advertising?] Havana Harbor, they were [Afro?] American. They were not Hawaiian, [Negro?], and that was done -- they were getting right to go against Spain, and Spain had no business, you know, in selling, giving us to them. You know, that was bullshit. They came there [00:35:00] just (inaudible) find with guns drawn, and this is a stick-up. Same with here in Iraq, you know, weapons of mass destruction. Unless you consider oil a weapon of mass destruction, they were [selling the?] country. For the past 16 years, then they could make all the oil they wanted. They could [only sell certain amount of oil?], or whatever they were allowed to sell, the rest they were storing, and for 16 years they kept storing oil [back?]. They had the second biggest oil surplus in the world, Iraq had, you know? When (inaudible), they were selling that oil, they were (inaudible) that system, and (inaudible) the country, you want to stick ’em up, you know? Here we are. [Injustice?] American style, you know? JJ: Okay, what’s the -- anything else that you would like to add to this at this point? 21 �AM: (inaudible) -- [00:36:00] Uh -- I guess I would -- JJ: (Spanish) [00:36:04]? AM: (Spanish) [00:36:05]. JJ: (Spanish) [00:36:07]. AM: (Spanish) [00:36:07]. No, no, [Chicago Rican first?]. JJ: Okay. AM: (inaudible) had two titles. The first title is “I Ain’t Got Nothing Against Italians and [Dominican?] or Chicago Rican.” Rican, or Chicago Rican. He’s not a happy American because, you know, he’s not an American; he’s just a Rican. Dominican or Chicago Rican -- (inaudible) -- Dominican or Chicago Rican, he’s not a happy American because he know he’s a Rican, not American but just Rican, as much an immigrant as the rest of the Latin (inaudible) American, but (inaudible) history and experience (inaudible) [very happy?] Rican. You see, [the only character?] (inaudible) that we are allowed to portray is Al Capone. To me, Al Capone [was not a?] Rican. Yeah. [00:37:00] (Spanish) [00:37:02 - 00:37:18]. JJ: (Spanish) [00:37:21]. AM: Uh-huh. (Spanish) [00:37:23 - 00:37:42]. (pause) (Spanish) [00:37:51]. JJ: [Any questions?] -- END OF VIDEO FILE 22 � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/e91315b64b93feb316f1fbb1a4ba8623.mp4 9cf0338c08ee47bf8a93d7435f280b22 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 Alfredo Matias 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 Veteranos--Relatos personales Artes, Puertorriqueños--Illinois--Chicago Puertorriqueños--Illinois--Chicago--Vida social y costumbres Religión Iglesia Católica Racismo--Estados Unidos 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_Matias_Alfredo Title A name given to the resource Alfredo Matias video interview and transcript Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Matias, Alfredo Description An account of the resource Alfredo Matias is the son of Doña Carmen García and a Young Lord going back to the mid-1960s. Mr. Matias joined the Young Lords during the Month of Soul Dances at St. Michael’s Church Gymnasium in Lincoln Park. Mr. Matias lived in Lincoln Park and also in Wicker Park for many years. He was forced from the military because he refused to accept an order that would have sent him to Cuba to fight alongside other Puerto Ricans in the Bay of Pigs invasion, against the sovereignty of Cuba. Mr. Matias grew up in Sabana Seca, Puerto Rico. Today Mr. Matias is home in Puerto Rico, content to be by his mother’s side, and still writing his poetry. 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 Veterans--Personal narratives Arts, Puerto Rican--Illinois--Chicago Puerto Ricans--Illinois--Chicago--Social life and customs Religion Catholic Church Racism--United States 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 2012-04-02 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/3eefb6142111ef5dd1a68f645cb6ca8b.pdf 91ff164be9571e2bee4aebb1221bb5d4 PDF Text Text Young Lords In Lincoln Park Interviewee: America “Mecca” Sorrentini Interviewers: José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez Location: Grand Valley State University Special Collections Date: 5/11/2012 Biography and Description America Sorrentini was born in Puerto Rico. She moved first to Boston and then to Chicago, arriving in the 1970s. Ms. Sorentini’s parents were prominent organizers and activists in the struggle for Puerto Rican self-determination, working primarily in and around Santurce, Puerto Rico. Ms. Sorrentini, or “Mecca” as she is known, began her own community activism in Boston working on a variety of issues including housing. She became active with Movimiento Pro Independencia and FUPI (Federación Universitaria Pro-Independencia), the student university equivalent, in the late 1960s. These groups that was proactive in occupations and strikes especially at the Rio Piedras branch of the University of Puerto Rico. By the time Ms. Sorrentini arrived in Chicago she was already aware of the work of the Young Lords, as word of their actions in Chicago had spread throughout cities along the east coast and into Puerto Rico. In Puerto Rico there were jealousies among some pro-independence groups but in Chicago the movement was young and groups sought unity with each other. José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez met with her and she describes witnessing how the Young Lords developed and grew without minimal funds, were constantly fighting city hall, and how they remained firm in their commitment to Latinos and the poor, as well as to their principles. Ms. Sorrentini organized a Chicago branch of the Puerto Rican Socialist Party. They joined up with Rev. Jorge Morales and Rev. María Lourdes Porrata of the West Town Concerned Citizens Coalition and organized in Wicker Park and in Humboldt Park. One of their �primary locations was San Lucas United Church of Christ that was across the street from Humboldt Park. Ms. Sorrentini always remained in solid contact with the Young Lords. She, and the Chicago Puerto Rican Socialist Party, assisted with the Jiménez aldermanic campaign and later the Harold Washington campaign. When the Young Lords celebrated their official founding date, which is September 23rd the same day as the Grito de Lares or Puerto Rican Independence Day, they selected Ms. Sorrentini to be their keynote speaker. More recently, Ms. Sorrentini has fought with city inspectors who want to tear down the house in Santurce, Puerto Rico where she and her parents grew up. She has converted it into a museum that has continuous exhibitions by artists displaying their works. She lives in Puerto Rico but continues to maintain contact with Chicago. In 2000, she was a featured speaking at the Lincoln Park Camp in Lakeview, Michigan – a meeting organized to support the displaced Puerto Ricans and poor of Lincoln Park, bring attention to the displacement of families from Humboldt Park, and in support of protesters who wanted to evict the U.S. Navy from Vieques. �Transcript AMERICA SORRENTINI: -- Casa Sofia de Puerto Rico. This is in honor of my mother because this is the house she left us. When my father died, she struggled to keep the house. And as part of -JOSE JIMENEZ: What was her name? Was her name Sofia? Was her name -- AS: -- the old tradition, right. Sofia, yes. JJ: Sofia, okay. What was his name? What was his name? AS: Benigno, Benigno Sorrentini. He was the founder of the old Puerto Rico Socialist Party which wanted Puerto Rico to be a socialist state of the United States. JJ: Okay, okay. AS: Of course, he was very romantic. He really thought that could be done. (laughs) But that was the old Socialist Party of Puerto Rico had a pro-statehood platform. So my mother -- JJ: They were pro-statehood, the socialists. AS: Yes, yes. JJ: They wanted to become a state of the United States? AS: Right, right. JJ: But socialist. AS: But socialist, right. JJ: A socialist state of the United -- AS: A socialist state, that’s right. JJ: Oh, okay. All right. 1 �AS: With Santiago Iglesias [00:01:00] Pantín and my father and many other founded the Puerto Rico Socialist Party so -- JJ: And so when was his party? What years? AS: This is in the early 1930s. JJ: Nineteen thirties, okay. AS: Yes, uh-huh. JJ: That’s when they started? They started at that time? AS: That’s right, yes. JJ: And he started then? Before me. AS: Yes, yes. Uh-huh. I can give you a clipping -- JJ: Okay. Okay, good. AS: -- and so on so you clip it for your records -- JJ: We can put it on the interview, on the interview -- AS: -- because I know -- yes. Okay. JJ: -- depending on what you want. AS: Right, so you can clip it. I also have a documentary which -- JJ: (Spanish) [00:01:35]? (laughs) AS: -- this is portrait. I don’t know about that. You’ll have to ask them. JJ: (laughs) For their permission. AS: This is for the University of Arizona. JJ: Oh, the University of -- oh. AS: It is [QUAD Productions?], okay? JJ: Okay. No, but if you put it in, we can put it as part of your (overlapping dialogue; 2 �inaudible) -AS: Oh, okay. Right. Yes. Well, this is Puerto Rico balcón. The balcony is very important. In all traditional households, the balcón [00:02:00] is very important because it’s the part of the house that you interact with the people and you talk to everybody and is the plaza de mercado. How would you call plaza de mercado? JJ: The center, center -- AS: Market center? JJ: -- market center, market center. AS: Okay, the market center for fresh products and so on is right down there. And the Puerto Rican tradition was that you would walk every day to the plaza de mercado to get the -- JJ: The farmers market, the farmers market. AS: -- fresh vegetables at the farmers market. JJ: Farmers market, yeah. AS: It’s more like a farmers market so the balcony is very important. And this side entrance from the old house -- JJ: So every day, every day, people walk to the farmers market? AS: Oh yes. JJ: Okay. AS: Uh-huh, yes. JJ: Fantastic. Get their fresh fruits and vegetables? AS: Fresh fruits and vegetables and all that. JJ: Because this is what we’re -- 3 �AS: Yeah. JJ: -- this is San Juan, Santurce where we’re at. AS: This is called Santurce which is like the new San Juan [00:03:00] area of the old, old San Juan. So the Santurce only was established here by the cimarrónes. The cimarrónes were the Puerto Rican slaves who escape slavery and then they became on their own, the free -- JJ: And they established Santurce? AS: -- free men and women. And they use all this area because this was not -- JJ: Of Santurce. AS: -- was not settled yet. And then later on, it became a settlement. So really, that’s why my mother was called cimarróna. She called herself a cimarróna. That’s why I want to keep this house as part of the symbol of freedom. So that’s why we’re still struggling to keep this house [00:04:00] as a free space center. But the municipality of San Juan has made it impossible. As a matter of fact, this was declared a estorbo público? How you call that? A, it’s -- JJ: A public -- AS: -- nuisance? How you say that in English? There is a special terminology that says when a property has been abandon, you declare it public nuisance? JJ: Nuisance, public nuisance, yeah. AS: Public nuisance. And then you become part of that list. And then the municipality -- so if you cannot show -- JJ: So they declared that house a -- AS: Yes because -- 4 �JJ: -- a public nuisance. AS: -- and if you cannot prove that you have the money to comply with the municipality codes, then they take the house. See, I was in Chicago and I had to fly over here. It’s because they to [00:05:00] remove the house. JJ: So that’s a way of trying to demoralize, demoralize people and they can -- AS: Well, they are -- the thing is that you cannot -- JJ: They’re going to take your house, they’re trying to take your house. AS: Right. If you cannot prove that you have the money to comply with the codes of the municipio de San Juan, then they take the house. JJ: So you’re being harassed by the building inspectors and the city and -- AS: All that stuff. JJ: -- people like that. AS: Yes, and we had to, I had to -- JJ: They don’t call it harassment. AS: -- even I had to -- yes. I had to make compliance -- JJ: Compliance. AS: -- compliance. JJ: Well, they call it compliance, exactly. AS: Right. So I had to make a loan, then I found out that they don’t give loans to people who are over a certain age because you see, I’m 75 years old. So -- JJ: (Spanish) [00:05:50] teenager, (Spanish) [00:05:052] teenager. AS: Oh yeah, right. JJ: (laughs) 5 �AS: But the municipality of San Juan didn’t accept my teenage -- JJ: (inaudible) [00:06:00] (laughter) -- AS: But so I had to come, I had to come and prove to them, I had to try to make a loan. I couldn’t make it and then I’m on the family. We put in all the money in the bank to say that we were able to comply with the codes because part of the code was, for example, to remove the electric meter from there to here and that cost us 20,000 dollars. JJ: So they just -- AS: To move the meter like -- JJ: From that part of the house to the other part of the house. AS: Right, because in the old times -- JJ: But what was the reason? AS: -- people would go, would just go in and read the meter and we have the old meter there. But in order to put it out there on the column outside so they wouldn’t have to come in, it cost us close to 20,000 dollars because we had to do it through the basement underground. It was a big, big thing. Like that, every municipality code -- [00:07:00] as a matter of fact, we have put in now 250,000 dollars. JJ: But it sounds like what, 250,000 dollars? AS: Yes. So anyway, the balcón is very important. JJ: Okay, but let me -- before we -- AS: Yes. JJ: -- get to the balcón, it sounds like you’re feeling that maybe there was a little 6 �harassment going on that -- because of your background. AS: Well, I think -- JJ: I mean, you’re feeling that we can’t prove it but you’ve -- AS: There are many different reasons. One is the age. There is an age discrimination because if you cannot prove you cannot have the money in the bank -- JJ: Yes. AS: -- to comply with the municipality, you have to go to the public hearing in order to show that you can’t comply with the violations they accuse your house [00:08:00] in order for them to justify putting you in that list of estorbo público or the public nuisance. JJ: Okay. Was the house abandoned? Did it look abandoned? AS: No, we just, I just didn’t have anybody living in the house. JJ: Okay, so it was just vacant. AS: Vacant, vacant. JJ: So it wasn’t abandoned, it was vacant. AS: Right. But the people around, they took care of it like in the old times. (laughs) They would look out for it and so on. So we had to -- JJ: So the neighbors, because you’re close to the neighbors. AS: Right. JJ: You’re close to the neighbors. AS: Yeah. Right in front and the other ones. These are people that we’ve known forever. We moved here on 1944, (Spanish) [00:08:43]. 7 �JJ: (Spanish) [00:08:45]. AS: (Spanish) [00:08:46]. And this is, this house has been in the old sociological tradition of extended family in which my brother, his [00:09:00] wife, his kids live here. My sister, her kid, like Jim-- JJ: Yeah, Jim. AS: -- they also lived here. So these extended family and other people, other than my mother (Spanish) [00:09:13]? JJ: (Spanish) [00:09:18]. AS: How do you say that? (Spanish) [00:09:19]. JJ: Stepchildren or --? AS: Not stepchildren. Is that you -- JJ: Okay. Children you raise, yeah. AS: -- you bring them in your family and you raise them. JJ: Yeah, that’s a -- AS: You call them foster? No. JJ: Foster child. AS: But they don’t pay -- you know. JJ: But they’re not foster, they’re -- AS: You don’t -- you volunteer. They are not foster. JJ: Yeah, they’re not volunteer. AS: We call it crianza -- JJ: That’s part of the extended, extended family. AS: -- extended family. 8 �JJ: Extended family. AS: You know, it’s -- we had like -- JJ: That you just kind of you raised. That’s just part of the culture. AS: -- 15 people here. JJ: It’s part of the culture to raise other -- AS: Right, raise other kids. JJ: -- help people raise their children. AS: Yes, so we had the other children that living here, too. JJ: Okay, living in this house, okay. AS: So this house, [00:10:00] the old transportation system were coaches and that’s why you have that big, huge step over there because the coach was high. And then from the coach, you would just step out there. JJ: So the coche was what? Was a car? AS: Coche, the car? It was the car. JJ: Right, the car. Okay. AS: El carro de -- the old car. JJ: But it was the older type of cars that had the -- AS: The older car -- JJ: -- the thing on the side where you step on. AS: -- that were, yeah, by horses. (laughs) JJ: By horses. AS: Coche. (laughs) JJ: Oh, it was a coach run by horse. 9 �AS: Sí, el coche. JJ: The car, oh the motor was a horse. AS: How you call a car -- JJ: The motor was a horse. AS: -- run by horses? A coach? JJ: A coach, yeah. Stage coach. AS: Stage coach. JJ: Not a coach, it was a coach, it was a coach. MALE SPEAKER 2: Horse-drawn carriage. JJ: Horse-drawn carriage. AS: He tells me the wrong word and I use it. JJ: I make a muck, I make a muck. AS: (laughs) Right, right. JJ: But horse-drawn carriage. That’s what it is, a horse-drawn carriage. AS: So then the coach would come out there but in the old tradition, the balcóns are always important because many balcóns would go all around the house. So here, [00:11:00] we have an entrance over there. It’s another entrance over here. This is for this house, some little pictures and so on -- JJ: You want to get some pictures over there? AS: -- of Casa de Puerto Rico -- JJ: (Spanish) [00:11:14]. AS: -- in 1964. Yeah. JJ: (Spanish) [00:11:17]. 10 �AS: Yeah, right. Yeah, okay. This another entrance. JJ: Do you want to take some pictures -- those pictures? Can you get that? M2: Yeah. (b-roll; no dialogue) [00:11:26 - 00:12:16] AS: Okay. And these are, these are my father’s books. M2: Do you want to go ahead and repeat that real quick? JJ: Do you want to repeat that again? AS: What? JJ: What this is called? AS: Recibidor. JJ: Say that again? AS: This is a recibidor, a very important part of the house because this is -- JJ: So people kind of come in the front here then this is -- AS: -- this is the informal greeting of people who visit you. The formal greeting is the salon. JJ: This is where you first make sure they don’t have any guns on them or anything? (laughter) AS: Yeah. M2: Go ahead. Say that again. AS: So this is the recibidor. [00:13:00] This is part of the house, too. All this was in in this house. We just have kept it. And these are my father’s books. My father is a self-taught man. He just finish up the second grade and he kept on studying on his own. These are his law books and then he was elected to the House of 11 �Representatives on two consecutive running for the Socialist Party of Puerto Rico. And we’ve been very proud because he really was a self-taught man and he had a lot of harassment from the, from the bourgeoisie, from the Puerto Rican bourgeoisie. Of course -JJ: Now where did, where did the Puerto Rican bourgeoisie live? AS: Well, they were Republicans. JJ: They were Republicans. (laughter) Okay, so they were always Republican the majority? AS: The Puerto Rican [00:14:00] Republicans and he suffered a lot of harassment and physical and abuse and all that. And they organized armed groups which were called in Puerto Rico Turbas, t-u-r-b-a-s, Turbas, which were like I don’t know how you call it. But these were organized with the machetes and so on to counteract the Puerto Rican efforts to unionize. JJ: To unionize. AS: And the Socialist Party to -- JJ: To unionize in factories or --? AS: -- who work with the, with the, with the American Federation of Labor. JJ: Okay. AS: And so they were, these were the Republicans who counteracted that. JJ: So the turbas were armed with machetes. AS: So the Turbas, yes. They were armed with -- yes, yes. JJ: [00:15:00] So they were killing people, they were killing people at that time. AS: Yes, they were really, they were really aggressive, let’s say. 12 �JJ: They were very aggressive. AS: Uh-huh, putting it mildly. JJ: So they were like the Ku Klux Klan or something like that, like a little, like something. AS: Very much so. JJ: Very much so. AS: So and so on, yes. JJ: And this is what year? Is it ‘30s or --? AS: This was early ‘30s. The Turbas were really organized even before that because the, they also were against a Socialist Party being formed in Puerto Rico. JJ: Okay. AS: So if I’m talking too much -- JJ: No, that’s okay. AS: -- you just ask me questions whatever you want to, okay? JJ: (inaudible) AS: Pues, as part of this house, and this is very important because this, this is, this is handmade and this is the, this is the very proud [00:16:00] statement of Puerto Rican artist craft. Because this is 100 years old and it -- you just, you just refresh it and keep it and it lasts forever. And this is made out of a very, very special (inaudible), a very special formula of sand and oil that comes from the rabbit’s tail which is the strongest oil there is. But it’s a lot of work. But still, it’s a very, it’s a very good example of the ingenuity of in the tropics and being close to the sea, how to be artistic as much as possible within the circumstances. So this is called 13 �argamasa. JJ: [00:17:00] Argamasa. AS: Argamasa. So we spend a lot of time restoring it. So we have a, an artist, a contemporary artist called Celia Sanchez. She’s exhibiting in this part of the house. JJ: So you’re using the house now and then for artists and --? AS: We’re trying to, yes. We’re using the house to facilitate to artists space so that they can exhibit and so on. These are from Augusto Marín and so on. So we have other areas. So basically, this -- (Spanish) [00:17:46] (laughs) -- JJ: (Spanish) [00:17:50]? AS: (Spanish) [00:17:51]. This one, this one. JJ: (Spanish) [00:17:51]? AS: Yeah, these were there -- this was my father’s and [00:18:00] mother’s. If it wasn’t open, you can see a different kind of life, right? Because this is, this was my parents’ bedroom. JJ: Bedroom, this is the bedroom. AS: So that is -- so because they want, they like the entrance to the, to the balcón and then -- JJ: Okay, so they’ve got an entrance to the balcony. AS: Yeah, right. So Cha Cha, I wish you had time (inaudible) -- JJ: (inaudible) AS: (inaudible) JJ: (inaudible) 14 �AS: Yeah. No, but I want you to see, to see the documentary [The Hidden Group?]. We go to (inaudible). JJ: [00:19:00] Oh, yeah. AS: We call it (inaudible) and so on. JJ: (Spanish) [00:19:03 - 00:19:00] -- AS: (Spanish) [00:19:10]? JJ: (Spanish) [00:19:10 - 00:19:16]. AS: Okay, okay. All right. So -- JJ: (inaudible) AS: -- right. (Spanish) [00:19:21]. JJ: (Spanish) [00:19:23]. AS: That’s right. (inaudible) [00:19:32 - 00:19:40]. JJ: (inaudible) AS: Right. M2: No. AS: No. What is your name again? M2: Tim. AS: Tim? M2: Yeah. AS: Wow, that’s easy. M2: That is easy. AS: This is the bathroom. JJ: Why is there’s two of them? 15 �AS: This is the bath. JJ: Why do you got two of them? AS: Oh, this is the bidet. JJ: [00:20:00] What’s that? AS: It’s a bidet. It -- JJ: (Spanish) [00:20:04]. AS: It’s a hygiene for women. JJ: For women. Okay. AS: This water spreads up. JJ: Spreads up, okay. AS: Yeah. JJ: That’s more modern. AS: No, this has been here forever. JJ: Oh, it’s been here forever? AS: Yeah, yeah. This old, old bidet. JJ: So did you get it with the bidet? AS: Bidet, yeah. JJ: Did you get that, Tim? Have you ever seen these before or am I the only one that --? M1: I’ve heard of them, yeah. AS: Yeah, right. JJ: Because they’ve had this for years, I guess, the -- AS: Yeah, it’s probably 100 years old, the bidet. (inaudible) 16 �JJ: (inaudible) AS: It’s other room. JJ: (inaudible) AS: Oh. JJ: A bidet or --? AS: Yes. JJ: Okay. We want to get this. AS: Ah. JJ: (Spanish) [00:20:55]? AS: (Spanish) [00:20:57]. JJ: Let’s get the light -- AS: [00:21:00] Yeah. JJ: Okay, now closer. (inaudible) today. And then this (inaudible) [00:21:16 00:21:27]. (Spanish) [00:21:28 - 00:21:34]. AS: (Spanish) [00:21:35]. JJ: (Spanish) [00:21:36 - 00:21:58]. AS: Sí. JJ: (Spanish) [00:21:58 - 00:22:00]. (laughs) AS: (Spanish) [00:22:02 - 00:22:05]. JJ: Sí. AS: (Spanish) [00:22:08 -- 00:22:13]. JJ: (Spanish) [00:22:08] -- AS: (Spanish) [00:22:14 -- 00:22:25]. 17 �JJ: Sí. AS: (Spanish) [00:22:26 - 00:22:31]. JJ: (Spanish) [00:22:31]. AS: (Spanish) [00:22:32 - 00:22:34]. JJ: Sí. AS: (Spanish) [00:22:35]. JJ: (Spanish) [00:22:37 - 00:22:41]. AS: No. JJ: (Spanish) [00:22:42 -- 00:22:45]. AS: Sí. JJ: Sí. AS: Sí. JJ: (Spanish) [00:22:48 - 00:22:52]. AS: (Spanish) [00:22:53 - 00:22:56]. JJ: There’s more rooms over here and stuff. AS: Yeah. Sorry. (inaudible). This [00:23:00] has been restored, this bathroom. JJ: Did you put on the restore. Is there a new fan in here? AS: Yeah, sí. JJ: A new light? AS: Yeah, there’s a light. JJ: (inaudible) the new part of your house. Is somebody here? AS: (laughs) JJ: (inaudible) (laughs) Crazy. 18 �(break in audio) [00:23:38] JJ: Okay. (break in audio) [00:23:56] JJ: Yeah. AS: This, [00:24:00] can you take -- can you zoom in here? This is -- (break in audio) [00:24:11] AS: -- Professor Juan and Griffith. They made all of the efforts we have, we have made here to restore this house as an example of economic development, how it should not be done. Because economic development here like in many other capitalist countries is development at the expense of displacing the (inaudible) people. So there is a movement here, too, of displacement. So this documentary takes the example [00:25:00] of the struggle we have had on order to even get loans, the little monies, and so on to preserve this house as an example of many other efforts that are being done. And it also takes the example of Puerto Ricans in Chicago; Very small but it does it. So this documentary is an effort of these professors that they were able to put it together for this like onehour documentary. And it was shown at the Interamerican University. We have a copy and since Cha Cha is so important to the Puerto Rican liberation movement, we make it available [00:26:00] as long as we give the recognition to the professors, Dr. Juan and Dr. Griffith. They are professors at the university, the State University of Arizona. They also did that with their very own resources and so on and we admire the work they did. They really did a tremendous effort because it’s not easy to convey and to be able to convey the message of the 19 �Puerto Rican diaspora, the problem of Puerto Ricans here and there. And the uprootedness and so on and it’s not very easy to document that. It’s very easy to talk about it. But in order to document [00:27:00] it visually, it’s, it took a lot of efforts. Because they had to go and film over there and so on so that’s it. (break in audio) [00:27:15] JJ: You just started with your full name, when you were born, where you were born. AS: Right. JJ: Okay. AS: Yes. Well, first of all, Cha Cha, my dearest friend that I admire so much, thank you so much for this interview. My name is America, America Sorrentini, and people call me Meca, M-e-c-a. I was born in a small, little town called Cabo Rojo, a small, little town in the southwest coast of Puerto Rico. And on October 1937 I was born. [00:28:00] Cabo Rojo is a very traditional town of Puerto Rico but still -- JJ: Traditional meaning -- AS: Traditional in the sense that really, Cabo Rojo is called the town of freedom because Ramón Emeterio Betances, the father of the independence movement of Puerto Rico, was born. And in that sense, it’s called -- am I right or something is -- M2: I was actually just hoping I could have you move forward and to your left just slightly. (break in audio) [00;28:47] AS: From Cabo Rojo, my father work, work [00:29:00] all his emotions into the 20 �Socialist Party of Puerto Rico. Like I was telling you when we were seeing the, my mother’s house. We call it my mother’s house, Casa Sofia. JJ: If I can have you -- what about your grandparents, his parents? Were they involved in the socialist movement or --? AS: Well, my grandparents on my father’s side came from Italy from Sorrento and they were bricklayers. As a matter of fact, he built the, he built the farmers market of Cabo Rojo. And then on my -- JJ: What was his name? Do you remember? AS: [Cayetano?]. JJ: Cayetano. AS: Cayetano. My father’s name is Benigno. He died in 1984 and on my mother’s [00:30:00] side, she was mix of Spanish, African, and who knows what else. (laughs) because Puerto Ricans, we are all very, very mixed and so on. So on my mother’s side, she was, she had to work what we called [ajuste?] which is that they would bring in American companies would bring in gloves and she would, she would sew them by hand by a commission and they would pay her by the dozen. And the gloves are, each one of the gloves, they were handmade and so on. JJ: This was in Cabo Rojo. AS: This was in Cabo Rojo on the -- [00:31:00] and then she worked making the handmade artisanal hats, very famous hats from Cabo Rojo. Los sombreros [pra?] they were called. So my father got involved in political movement and he founded the Puerto Rico Socialist -- 21 �JJ: Your grandfather was not involved in that. AS: Was not involved in that, no. JJ: So your bloodline -- AS: Much, much later on, yes. JJ: In Cabo Rojo or somewhere else? AS: In Cabo Rojo, yes. As a matter of fact, he’s a self-taught man like I told you before and he ran for the legislature. He won on two consecutive years and so on but he had a lot of difficulties and was not very well accepted, let’s put it this way. That he had a lot of [00:32:00] violent encounters with the Republican Turbas which were armed Republican brigades I could say. And so when he came to the Puerto Rico legislature here in the metropolitan area -- JJ: Of Santurce. AS: -- of Santurce and San Juan, the capital of Puerto Rico is in old San Juan. So he decided to move the family over here and then we rented and then we came to live here at, here at Casa Sofia in Santurce. We lived, we rented in another place because we bought this house like the old, traditional way which is by handshake. [00:33:00] My father agreed with the owner of this house which was also a self-taught man from the, from Mayagüez which is very, is a town, is a city close to Cabo Rojo. This man had -- the dream of his life was that his daughter would celebrate her 15th birthday in this house and so my father waited -- JJ: Quinceañera (inaudible) -- AS: Quinceañeras which is the equivalent of happy, sweet 16 in the United States. So he waited for those. For two years, he waited in order to move into this 22 �house. I had a lot of difficulty as you can imagine because I came from, I came from a slum in Cabo [00:34:00] Rojo which was called La Pileta. (laughs) And -JJ: What was it like there? AS: La Pileta? JJ: What do you remember there? Because you said it was a slum. AS: Well, I have very fond memories of La Pileta. JJ: What are some, what are some of the memories? (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) -- AS: Well, there was a big, there was a water running through and because (laughs) once then you grow older and so on. But we thought it was really neat and (laughs) wonderful. Other people thought it was not nice at all. JJ: (overlapping dialogue; inaudible)? AS: That you had water running in front of the house because this was open like in the, in the water that running through the town would come through La Pileta. JJ: The sewer system or the river? AS: [00:35:00] Was like a river but it was -- JJ: Okay, like a river. AS: -- it was not protected. JJ: Okay. AS: Yes. So from La Pileta -- JJ: You said you had fond memories. What kind? AS: Fine memories -- JJ: (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) -- 23 �AS: A lot of bondage with the kids and so on and it was very open and you could walk. JJ: You went to school there, you went to school there. AS: No because I was still four or five years old. JJ: Four -- okay. Okay, so now you said -- AS: But I have these very fond memories, very romantic memories of La Pileta because there was always a lot of rhythm and singing and sound, very wonderful sounds of La Pileta. JJ: The people were singing all the time or --? AS: All the time, yes. Uh-huh. JJ: What type of music? AS: Oh, musica romantica, boleros. JJ: [00:36:00] Boleros. AS: Uh-huh, yes. Bomba, plena, because there has always been an argument among the bomba and plena. Which is was it born in Ponce or la plena was born in Mayagüez? The Cabo Rojo and Mayagüez people are very regional and they say no, it was born in Mayagüez. So it was that big -- JJ: Okay, so there was a little -- AS: -- that little -- JJ: -- competition (inaudible) -- AS: -- that little competition, yes. JJ: And that bomba y plena. AS: Where was the bomba and plena born? So obviously, here, in, when I moved 24 �into this neighborhood which is, it was a very, very upscale neighborhood -- so I had a, I had a -JJ: So what, how was the, how was the, how was the -- AS: Yes. JJ: -- because you were more living in a slum in Cabo Rojo and then now, you moved to an upscale neighborhood. [00:37:00] (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) -- AS: Well, I move -- there was an intermediary because I move in Cabo Rojo in another, in another [barriada?], in another barrio which is a little upscale than the La Pileta. JJ: So in Cabo Rojo, (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) a little upscale neighborhood in -- okay. AS: A little in regard to La Pileta. JJ: (inaudible) AS: Don’t get confused. (laughs) JJ: No, I’m not trying to get confused -- AS: It’s a little, a little upscale than La Pileta. JJ: I’m only, I was just, I’m just trying to understand the differences. AS: Yes, right. JJ: (inaudible) AS: Yeah. JJ: I’m not trying to -- AS: Yeah, so there, from there, I had a, I had a pet. I mention this because this 25 �brought me a lot of difficulties into this neighborhood because my pet was a goat. JJ: (laughs) AS: So it was not becoming at all to have a -- JJ: A goat in a city. AS: -- a goat as a pet. [00:38:00] Then we were close to the farmers market and the goat loved the farmers market. I would have to run up to Pepa to bring her in from, in from the market. JJ: Oh, you did bring the goat there. AS: Yeah, I brought her in, yeah. No, my parents let me have a goat. There is no way that as a pet, she can have her pet. And so but later on, the neighbors really understood and they embrace and they all loved the Pepa. JJ: Pepa is the name. AS: Yes. So here we are in Santurce and I say that -- JJ: What year was this? Do you know? What year? AS: This was from 1944 to 1948 was a period of Pepa. JJ: What was that like, ’44 to ’48? Because a lot of people [00:39:00] came to the United States around that time. That was right after the war. AS: Yes. JJ: So what was it like here in Puerto Rico at that time? AS: Here. Well, very, very difficult times economically and that’s why my father introduce a law in which the monies from the salt industry, salinas from Cabo Rojo, so that it sent would be used for educational purposes and so on. Because really, the economic situation was very, very difficult. 26 �JJ: Was it a big area? A big town at that time in Santurce or was it a big section or -? AS: Santurce? Yeah, it was, yeah, it was beginning, it was beginning to the sprawl of the urban development [00:40:00] was the beginning of taking place in this because this street was very traditional. They didn’t have any of these buildings. JJ: It was still country like. AS: It was country like, like this house. They had a lot of big yards and so on. They built this building over here and all these buildings and they were just houses and so on. JJ: Wooden houses or --? AS: Wooden with sink and so on. This was -- JJ: You (inaudible) fast. You got a sink -- AS: Yes. This was one of the most modern houses that were built in the area, uhhuh. As a matter of fact, the number eight that is in front of the house, it was the old Spanish demarcation of the house. [00:41:00] That’s why I still have the eight over there. And the new demarcation is 264. JJ: Okay, and what about the policies? I mean, how was it at that time, I mean, in the late ‘40s and that here considering or in Puerto Rico? AS: Yes. Well, here the Popular Democratic Party was really making a -- organizing and making an appeal to the poor conditions of Puerto Ricans. The Popular Democratic Party adopted the slogan of Pan, Tierra y Libertad. JJ: Mm-hmm. Libertad, what was that? AS: Bread, land, and liberty. 27 �JJ: What was liberty? AS: Well, because the Popular Democratic Party [00:42:00] ran with the, with its founder, Luis Muñoz Marín, promising the liberty for Puerto Rico, you see? The Popular Democratic Party was going to be a transition -- JJ: So when they say liberty -- AS: -- was going to be a party that would bring in the liberty for Puerto Rico independence party. JJ: Independence, so they actually were for independence. AS: They were for independence, yes. JJ: The Popular Democratic Party. AS: Yeah, the Popular Democratic Party. JJ: (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) AS: That’s why Pan, Tierra, and Libertad. So it had a tremendous appeal on the political forces then had the Puerto Rican Independence Party. It was a very -- it was a strong, a strong force. JJ: At that time. AS: [00:43:00] At that time, yes, uh-huh. Which was under the leadership of Concepción de Gracia, Gilberto Concepción de Gracia which founded the Puerto Rican Independence Party that still exist and still is an electoral party. And still is inscribe and so on, (Spanish) [00:43:24]. Mm-hmm. So the -- JJ: So they didn’t depend on -- this is before there -- AS: I think -- JJ: -- was a governor, though. This was before there was a governor. 28 �AS: Before they was a Puerto Rican governor. JJ: And so who were the governors before? I mean -- AS: Piñero. JJ: Piñero. That was like the first -- was he the first elected or first appointed? AS: The first appointed. JJ: Puerto Rican. AS: Yes, Puerto Rican but before we got Piñero. JJ: So before that, who do we have? Who do we have? AS: Oh, we had a lot of other governors appointed by the Congress [00:44:00] and the president of the United States. JJ: But none of them were Puerto Rican. AS: None of them -- they were -- yeah. JJ: In fact, we had some generals. AS: Generals, yes. Since the 1898 and so on, we had General Miles, Tugwell, and so on. But the Popular Democratic Party really had a, had many laws that would appeal and they were really, they were really very avant-garde laws because for example, one of the laws was that there was no child without a father. In other words, that was that men had to recognize their offspring, give them names and so on, because there were a lot of rich people that [00:45:00] would procreate. Would have children, so on, and would not, would not leave their names to the children. So this was (laughs) very -- at that time, it was a very advanced law which would force the father to give the name to the children. JJ: And support -- 29 �AS: And family name, family name. JJ: Oh, family name. AS: Yes. Because they would support them but would not give the-- JJ: Wouldn’t give them their -- AS: -- their family name because the family name was very, very guarded by the fathers. JJ: By the rich, by the rich -- okay. AS: Yeah, yes. So that was one of the law. The other one was the 500 acres law which [00:46:00] is that the law would penalize if you would apply on more than 500 acres. If you would buy more than 500 acres of land and so on in order to protect the agriculture. And to also abolish the tradition in Puerto Rico of having hired help in which they would leave a new land and you have that hired help by paying very meager salaries. Because you would provide, you would provide them housing and so on. So it’s that kind of arrangement of the plantation arrangement [00:47:00] as in dollars, plantain [sic] arrangement. There was a lot of opposition to that, to the law of the quinientos acres, of the 500 acres of land, the ownership of land and so on. JJ: Mm-hmm. So let me understand it. So people were -- there was a law that you could not have more than 500 acres? AS: The Popular Democratic Party ran with that -- JJ: Oh. AS: -- those advanced laws to abolish -- JJ: To abolish that. 30 �AS: -- to abolish that, yes. Then they would also offer the land which was the parcelas to the campesinos, to the, or to the rural dwellers and so on. JJ: Whose land was this? The government has owned it? AS: Well, it was going to be [00:48:00] taken away by the law of the 500 acres. JJ: (phone rings) Okay. Hold on a second. (break in audio) [00:48:03] JJ: So you said I made it out of the 500 acres. AS: Sí. JJ: Okay. AS: (Spanish) [00:48:10]? JJ: (Spanish) [00:48:13]. AS: Uh-huh. JJ: (Spanish) [00:48:15] the (inaudible), the time, the people (inaudible). AS: Sí, mm-hmm. JJ: Okay, (Spanish) [00:48:21 - 00:48:25]? AS: (Spanish) [00:48:26] this was -- we were on that, on the development of the platform of the Popular Democratic Party. Why it really, it really grew and so on. Remember that my father was in the Socialist Party and the Socialist Party wanted, was for statehood, wanted Puerto Rico to be a state of the United States. But we didn’t [00:49:00] -- the concept of a really, of a workers’, of a workers’ state and so on. And my father initiated and with the labor movement and so on, and the federation of labor and so on, had relationships, had relationships with the United States. And the Popular Democratic Party felt that it 31 �had to -- there was no possibilities. That the Constitution of the United States would allow a socialist state. That it was a really uphill battle in order to, in order to make it. To make [00:50:00] it the proposal that the Congress of the United States would embrace. So the Popular Democratic Party called for the, for Puerto Rican election of a Puerto Rican governor with a platform of to end the plantation system, for ownership of you land, for home ownership of the land in which it developed the program of parcelas, which is very well-known in Puerto Rico. Parcelas was a very small plot of land given to the rural communities and so on. It is then franchised the (inaudible). JJ: So you’re related to the peasants, what they call peasants, los jibaros, the campos. AS: Yes, los jibaros, the campos, yes. That [00:51:00] was the strongest base of the Popular Democratic Pary was the rural areas -- JJ: Okay. AS: -- of Puerto Rico, los jibaros. So the recognition of the, of abolition all the (inaudible) benefits of a patriarchal, of a patriarchal heritage and so on in which the father had to recognize other children. So all this, all this -- JJ: So you’re taking the land, you’re taking the land with about 100 acres land law. You would take the land from the rich? AS: No, because there were landowners with huge, huge amounts of land. JJ: So the government didn’t take their land. AS: The [00:52:00] government decided this was not possible in an island was, which was 100 by 35. 32 �JJ: But then there was protests -- AS: For very few, for very few owners to own basically, own the land in Puerto Rico. So -- JJ: And at that time, they were owning a lot of land. It was very, very -- AS: Yes. Very, yes. Uh-huh. JJ: So they didn’t (inaudible) resistance or --? AS: Oh yes, yes. It took the Popular Democratic Party a lot of organizing and to develop, to develop the base. And so much so that really, they knocked out all the other oppositions. The Popular Democratic Party became the predominant force, the electoral politics. JJ: This was in the late ‘40s, it was in the late ‘40s. AS: [00:53:00] Yes, in the late ‘40s. Then in 1952, the Constitution, the Constitution of the Puerto Rican Constitution is developed and so on. JJ: So why do you think that people were -- a lot of -- (Spanish) [00:37:16], from the country, were moving then to Chicago and the Midwest and this was like that in the late ‘40s. Was it after or before? AS: Yes. JJ: So some were being exposed to those areas but they were getting land here. Why wouldn’t they stay? AS: Because they -- these were the laws. They weren’t being implemented because they are not being passed yet. There still was opposition even by mention it. They was not, it was not yet -- had not taken hold because there was [00:54:00] the 500 acres law. But then they would, they would go around the law and then 33 �another relative and so on would buy another 500 acres and so on. So it wasn’t a very straightforward victory because the ruling class of Puerto Rico, there is such a thing which is an infamous because there is really not such a thing. Because not only do we have ruling class, you have to have the political power to make -JJ: To control the (inaudible) -- AS: -- self-determination for your own. But so within that concept of being intermediaries of the capital from the United States and in Puerto Rico. [00:55:00] Still, those forces were against the 500-acre law. So we have the constitution of Puerto Rico which was under law 600 which still was opposed by the independence forces, okay? So you have developing the what we now know and identify as statehood forces, the estado libre asociado de -- JJ: So you’re identifying them as statehood forces? AS: Status quo traditional forces -- JJ: Okay. AS: -- which is the estado libre asociado [00:56:00] of the independent forces. Different concepts but within the independence. JJ: So they were really part of the independence movement but they were -- had a different concept is what you’re saying or --? AS: They were the Popular Democratic Party at the beginning runs for independence. Yeah. But they change, they change and they say -- remember, this is when Pedro Albizu Campos was struggling for the independence of Puerto Rico. And he calls on the, on Puerto Ricans to arm themselves if the [00:57:00] -- your right 34 �to become free is opposed. So this was a very confrontation, a big confrontation. And Muñoz Marín which was the first elected governor of Puerto Rico, he won by at least -- tu sabes. JJ: Landslide, landslide, slam dunk. It was a slam dunk. AS: (Spanish) [00:57:27 - 00:57:32] so because he ran with a platform of everything. Independence, freedom, social justice, you name it. So and he did a lot of work and so on. But somehow, somewhere along [00:58:00] the line, he changes and he says that that’s, that he doesn’t see it’s possible, that independence in Puerto Rico. That we should put that aside and take care of the social justice issues. And this is a very famous phrase that says que, “El estatus politico no es dying issue,” you know? The political status is not an issue in his reasoning. JJ: Oh, okay. And his reasoning? What was his reasoning? AS: That we really have to take care first about our economic development and so on and that the relationship with the United States could develop and then the estado libre asociado which is the political status of Puerto Rico. Which by the name itself is problematic because you cannot be three things at the same [00:59:00] time (laughs) to be a state libre. JJ: And libre. AS: And free and then associated so estado libre asociado is the actual recognized political status of Puerto Rico. But he promised his party, the Popular Democratic Party, he promised that the estado libre asociado would be enhanced. There would be more, that the Congress of the United States would give more powers to Puerto Rico because right now, Puerto Rico is under the Congress of the 35 �United States and it’s a special clause. So that is called [01:00:00] is a territorial clause so that Puerto Rico is not part of the United States. It’s a special clause. You can -JJ: Territory. AS: You can check it in the Congress of the United States, Puerto Rico territorial clause which is that Puerto Rico is a territory of the United States. JJ: That it’s part of (inaudible) -- AS: So that is because at the international, at the United Nations -- JJ: It’s like (inaudible) or something. (laughter) Embassy. AS: No. What happens is that at international law, Puerto Rico instead of saying it’s a colony because at international level, all colonies should have been abolished. So 19- [01:01:00] -- the United States in 1963 decides then that Puerto Rico is a territory so as not to be labeled is a colony. Because if you have a colonial status, you have to submit to the United Nations a yearly improvement of the economic status. JJ: Of the colony. AS: Of the colony. In order to abolish that, the United States said and won that international let’s say struggle until later on, we were able to publish all the independent forces. I forgot to tell you that I support independence for Puerto Rico. I forgot to tell you that; I am so sorry. JJ: Oh, we know. We know it. We know it. AS: You notice it, (laughs) yes. JJ: (laughs) (inaudible) But okay, that’ll be the expression. 36 �AS: So, we -- right. [01:02:00] But I think is the solution for Puerto Rico. JJ: And did you (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) like the decolonization, for example. AS: The decolonization of Puerto Rico. Well -- JJ: I mean, in terms of the United Nations. AS: The United Nations. Well, because I was just telling you the electoral forces you were talking about because there were other non-electoral forces. The Movimiento para Independencia and the Nationalist Party of Puerto Rico who didn’t agree with the electoral process then. JJ: Yeah, what was the Nationalist Party of Puerto Rico doing then in (inaudible)? AS: Yes. JJ: When -- during the election. AS: During this, right. When all this is going on with the Popular Democratic Party, the, [01:03:00] remember Albizu Campos was studying at Harvard University. When he comes from Harvard University -- anyway, Albizu Campos, let me tell you who was the first president of the Irish Student Movement to declare -- JJ: I heard that they (overlapping dialogue; inaudible). AS: -- to vote for the Irish, for the Irish, for the Irish, for one Ireland struggles. JJ: So he was president. He was president of the movement? AS: And the students name an honorary president because he really struggled for the, for the freedom of the Irish and this was at Harvard University. JJ: Albizu Campos was a leader of the Nationalist Party then at the time. AS: He was not the president, no. Because [01:04:00] he finish his study. He was 37 �studying law at Harvard University. So when he comes back to Puerto Rico, the Nationalist Party was participating in the electorate process in Puerto Rico. Yes. (break in audio) [01:04:23] JJ: -- hold onto the Albizu Campos. M2: (inaudible) AS: Albizu Campos, right. Yes. So he becomes aware that although the Nationalist Party was trying to deal with the whole electoral process in Puerto Rico. So when he comes to Puerto Rico, he says that it was [01:05:00] impossible to be able to gain in the public trust under the colonial educational system in which we had to use the textbooks from the United States and everything that would be free democratic elections. Therefore, he calls for abstention. He calls to counteract that there was not possible and a democratic election process in Puerto Rico without supervision of the United Nations and so on so -- JJ: Now, how did, how does it do this? He comes from the United States and university to Puerto Rico and then -- AS: He comes -- JJ: -- does he have a press conference in -- AS: -- and he militates [sic], he militates [01:06:00] in the Nationalist Party of Puerto Rico. JJ: So he’s -- AS: And then he is elected president. JJ: So he militates, he -- all right. He is saying this at the rallies and the (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) -- 38 �AS: And rallies and meetings and so on and he calls -- JJ: And then they’re, are they having public meetings but I mean -- AS: Public meetings, yes. JJ: -- the Nationalist Party, where they’re with him in media all the time or --? AS: Yes and they have the following and so on, a strong following and -- JJ: They have a strong following. (overlapping dialogue; inaudible). So they were on the news all the time. AS: Excuse me? JJ: They were on the news, in the news all the time. AS: Oh, yes. Of course, yes. Uh-huh, right. Because he is -- first, he -- JJ: But he’s been in public places now. AS: First, he wasn’t really very prominent and even when he came to study at the, at Harvard University, I remember that he graduated magna cum laude from Harvard. And he also had several [01:07:00] titles. He not only of law, of international law and so on. But he really studied; He was a brilliant student in chemistry and so on. He was very (inaudible). So he had a lot of respect among many different sectors. Even popularism and people in the Popular Democratic Part were Albizuistas. JJ: Albizuistas? AS: Albizuistas meaning they were for Albizu. JJ: They were for Albizu. AS: That they really supported -- JJ: So there was a (inaudible) -- 39 �AS: Yes, that there was -- JJ: Then the Popular Democratic (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) -- AS: Oh yes, and there were Albizuistas and so on. And Albizuistas would really [01:08:00] -- people even from the Puerto Rican Independence Party would call themselves Albizuistas. Meaning that -- JJ: So you had him in all the parties. He was the well organizer. (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) -- AS: Yes. Well-organize as though he was also in the Nationalist Party. But he had a following also among many other organized sectors and within those organized sectors, there were caucuses and so on. It was really very widespread the sentiment of Albizu and calling yourself Albizuista meant that you really supported and you self-determination for the Puerto Rican people. That’s really the source of it. And he was able to, he was able to come through [01:09:00] with this sentiment and for people to wear buttons and so on with Albizu. So -- JJ: He was very dangerous to their government at that time. (inaudible) United States and (inaudible) independence and -- AS: Well, what happens is that he’s called by all means necessary was misunderstood because he was following the liberation movement of all the world. You see that you had the right, that this was the right, and that you had to defend that right by all means. Well, what happens is that it’s not the same thing to believe that when you are dealing with the United [01:10:00] States because the United States is a very, very powerful country. So you might not think so (laughs) but it’s so powerful that even though you are saying that you believe in 40 �self-determination meaning by all means necessary meaning that it’s a matter of principle, then the United States takes it literally as if you are going to immediately take a gun and start shooting. So what happens is that when Lolita Lebrón goes to the Congress of the United States, since the American people -JJ: (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) -- AS: -- don’t have the information of what’s going on in Puerto Rico, they think this is something where [01:11:00] did it come from? It’s like now even the presidential electoral process going on now in the United States, they don’t mention that the United States has a colony or what is a colony or why are there has, there is a need for a plebiscite because if you are organizing a plebiscite, it’s because it’s a colony. But then they don’t want to accept it’s a colony. Do you see what I mean? But then the American people don’t know nothing about this. So the same thing with law 600 in Puerto Rico. Now, what is law 600? You could say, “Well, Meca, why take time to explain the law 600?” But it’s important because this explains that the United [01:12:00] States wanted to present to the United Nations that it had abolished the colony, that it had been, it had been successful with the economic development model of the estado libre asociado. And that this was so successful that it became a law which is law 600 which is what allows the status of Puerto Rico to be recognized by the United Nations according to the United States. You see what I mean? So -- JJ: Okay. So then now, it’s -- AS: -- what happens is the Nationalist Party figures that we had to -- JJ: So the United Nations is okay with that. It’s okay with it is what you’re saying, the 41 �law 600. AS: [01:13:00] According to the United States. JJ: According to the United States. AS: Right. So then the Nationalist Party feels it was, felt it was really a, had to do something dramatic to bring to the people of the world that this was not so. JJ: So what did they do? What did they do? So (inaudible) -- AS: People inspired by the Albizu like I was telling you that there were many Albizuistas so in the Nationalist Party and other sectors. So Lolita Lebrón, Cancel Miranda, and so on, they went to the Congress of the United States and well, the United States do not accept that delegation because they themselves went [01:14:00] over there to bring about, to bring about the case of Puerto Rico to the world. And they did it with guns and shooting -- JJ: So they went inside the warehouse? Was it the warehouse or the --? AS: They went to the Congress of the United States. JJ: To the Congress and they started shooting. AS: And they started shooting. JJ: Did anyone get injured or --? AS: There was one American -- JJ: Congressmen (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) -- AS: -- Congress people injured and so on. JJ: I understand that Lolita Lebrón was a threat or so? AS: And Lolita Lebrón ruptured herself in the -- first, they bought only one-way ticket because they figure they would die over there. 42 �JJ: So they knew that they would probably die. AS: Die over there. JJ: But they wanted -- it was a dramatic thing that -- AS: It was a dramatic thing to -- JJ: -- against this law 600. AS: -- against this law 600. JJ: Because they wanted to show they wanted independence? AS: That the United States [01:15:00] had not really solved the problem of the political status of Puerto Rico and that still, Puerto Rico was a colony of the United States. And that the Congress was on the jurisdiction of the Congress of the United States because all the federal laws applied to Puerto Rico. In other words, in other words, the coin, the migration, the Federal Communications Commission. Everything, you see. Even the TV in Puerto Rico have to play the American [indonacional Americano?]. JJ: (inaudible) AS: The American hymn and the Puerto Rican hymn and all the Federal Communications Commissions, all the federal laws. We also have to use the [01:16:00] United States marine trade and so on. We cannot do international trade and so on although we are in terms of -- JJ: You can only trade, you can only trade with the United States is what you’re saying. AS: -- we are the seventh-largest market of US-produced goods because that’s what we can, we have to, we buy. So it was a problem because when they do this 43 �shooting, since the American people didn’t have all the information, although there were Americans that were members of the Nationalist Party of Puerto Rico because Ruth Reynolds also was one of the pacifist, an American pacifist who understood the struggle and so on. [01:17:00] And defended the Albizu -JJ: So there were many Americans. AS: Yeah, Albizu Campos. JJ: Right there in the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party. What were you doing there? Where were you at? AS: I hadn’t been born yet. JJ: Oh, you weren’t born yet. AS: Nineteen thirty-seven because I was born in 1977. Yes. JJ: No but when they went to Washington, it was in the ‘50s. AS: Oh, in the ‘50s. JJ: Yeah, so what were you doing then? I mean, how did you feel about it then? How old were you then about? AS: I was like 9 years old, 9 or 10 years, yes. JJ: Okay, so you weren’t thinking (inaudible). AS: Yeah. Well, all I know is that we had to, we -- our father told us we have to hide. JJ: Your father said you have to hide? AS: Yeah, because he understood repression, first of all. (laughs) He knew what repression was and so on. JJ: And there was a conflict so he understood it. [01:18:00] So you talked to him about repression. 44 �AS: Oh yes. He talked about repression and -- JJ: What did he say? What did he say? AS: -- then he said, now, we are again going to have the Turbas like I told you before so this was going on, the Turbas. And he said that we have to protect ourselves and so on. Because you didn’t know how this was going to play in Puerto Rico and so on and our friends that were arrested and so on in Puerto Rico and -- JJ: They were your fathers’ friends? AS: My fathers’ friends die everywhere. You think -- you could not -- JJ: So they were arresting people all throughout (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) -- AS: Yes. Also out. Also out. You didn’t -- JJ: Were there a lot of them? AS: You didn’t know who would, they would get arrested because the Nationalist Party, for example, if you be wearing black and white [01:19:00] which was the color of the Nationalist Party, you could get harassed and so on by the police and given tickets and all that kind of stuff. A lot of big, huge harassment and so forth. JJ: So did that cause you to move? Or you stayed here, you stayed in this house right here? AS: No, it didn’t cause us to move. JJ: Okay, but okay. They weren’t impacting (inaudible) your father’s side? AS: That’s right. Yes. (laughs) JJ: (overlapping dialogue; inaudible). Okay, so we’re looking in the ‘50s. You’re like nine years old and you’re living in Santurce? AS: In the ‘50s, I was already now like 13. 45 �JJ: Thirteen. AS: Thirteen. Thirteen, 14. JJ: Okay, you were in school and that? AS: So uh-huh. JJ: Is your consciousness being [01:20:00] raised? Now you began to think more like your father or --? AS: Dramatically. Yes, yes. JJ: (overlapping dialogue) [01:20:04] so you were close to your father or --? AS: Yes, thinking that I was agreeing more with my siblings because they understood that statehood and socialist was not possible. And this was -- JJ: That’s right. AS: -- including the American within the United States Constitution, this was not going to be an easy struggle to accept. To accept a state that would be Spanishspeaking and then socialist. JJ: And for the workers. AS: This was really uphill and that this was not possible. JJ: So your sib- AS: And [01:21:00] my siblings were -- JJ: -- were older than you? Were older? AS: -- were older, much older. And they were for the, they decided for independence and this was and then when the most -- JJ: How many siblings did you have? We won’t even go into that. AS: The older ones were two. Two older siblings I had to make the decision of -- 46 �JJ: Boys? Girls? Hombre. AS: Uh-huh. Male and female, hombre y mujer, yeah. JJ: Male and female. Okay. And they were already with your father, or against your father, changing (inaudible) -- AS: They were for independence. They figured that that would be the best for Puerto Rico were to become independent. JJ: Were they members? Were they members of the -- AS: Of the Puerto Rican Independence Party, yes. JJ: Oh, so you were (overlapping dialogue; inaudible). AS: Yes, uh-huh. Right. But when Muñoz Marín who was embracing independence and calls for this [01:22:00] social justice platform and independence, then they went with the Popular Democratic Party. And then I was forming my own opinion and so on and I was leaning toward the movimiento para independencia forces, the 1959 with Juan Mari Brás -- JJ: (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) Juan Mari Brás. AS: Yes, developed. JJ: And were you at school at that time? Is that why you were doing -- were they in school? What was their base? AS: All over Puerto Rico. Yes, yes, uh-huh. JJ: So they were all over Puerto Rico. Okay, okay. AS: Although he initiated in Mayagüez. JJ: In Mayagüez. AS: Mayagüez. 47 �JJ: Oh, that’s where (overlapping dialogue; inaudible)? AS: Uh-huh, with Eugenio María de Hostos and so on. Yes, in Mayagüez. JJ: Eugenio María de Hostos. AS: de Hostos, de Hostos. JJ: Oh, they all went at the same time? AS: Hostos, it’s a patriotic [01:23:00] feel or in Puerto Rico but -- JJ: But he was alive at that time, he was alive at that time. AS: No, he was not alive. JJ: Oh no, but he -- he inspired. AS: But he was an inspire -- they were inspired by him, by yeah. JJ: (Spanish) [01:23:14]. AS: Yeah, Betances, Hostos. JJ: Okay. AS: Yeah. And so the movimiento para -- JJ: So what did you, what did you find out about it? I mean, you know. AS: Through everywhere you would come in because they, because they -- JJ: So were okay with the movement. AS: -- they were, that they figure that what Puerto Rico needed was a movement instead of a party. That was the (Spanish) [01:23:47 - 01:23:51]. JJ: Why was that? Because were kind of -- the Young Lords went over the same side of the movimiento [01:24:00] para independencia pero -- AS: Yes. JJ: So why did, was did they look at it as more of a movement instead of a party at 48 �that time? AS: Yes, because the repressive forces, the contention of the MPI, of the movimiento para independencia, was that you would gain strength by not being disciplined to one specific party platform. And so the Nationalist Party of Puerto Rico was, had a very specific platform and also was anti-electorate who called for the abstention of the elector, elections. The movimiento para independencia said that it would embrace all forms of struggle, [01:25:00] even elections. And I’m struggle too. So the fact that it had in its platform all forms of struggle as legitimate for Puerto Ri-, for the liberation movement. That gave them a lot of broadness and it captivated a lot of young forces. The FUPI, the Federacion Universitaria para Independencia, the FUPI, it also embraced the movimiento para independencia. So -- JJ: It became a pretty broad base. AS: Very, very, very. JJ: Very all over the island, you said. AS: Yes, 1959. JJ: In the news all the time, in the media all the time. AS: In the media, uh-huh, in 1959 [01:26:00] and so on. Then it also organized in the United States. Then -- JJ: That’s right (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) -- AS: -- the 1970s, right, yes. JJ: The stadium in New York and -- AS: Yes. But remember that since I was, I -- in 1964, I leave Puerto Rico and I got to 49 �different countries in the Caribbean. So in 1966, I moved to Worcester, Massachusetts, and there I (audio cuts out)) and I embrace, and I embrace the organizing model of your people. (laughs) JJ: (inaudible) AS: Yeah. JJ: But so now, you joined the movimiento para independencia when? When did you join? AS: Well, [01:27:00] movimiento para independencia was 1960s. JJ: Wait is that -- did you join there? AS: It was at the -- because I was at the University of Puerto Rico which was the FUPI. JJ: Right, so you were a member of FUPI first. AS: I was involved with the FUPI. JJ: Okay. And so this automatically (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) into them. AS: No, not automatically. Not automatically because after the FUPI, I graduate in 1950-, I graduate in 1959. JJ: No, but I mean you joined FUPI automatically when you got in there so because I mean of your father’s background. AS: Not because of my father’s background because this was very controversial, my father’s background was very controversial. Wherever I was, I had to explain it over and over and over again. How would he think that United State, what was he thinking? (laughs) JJ: Yeah, exactly. [01:28:00] The people you hung around with, you had to explain 50 �about your father. AS: Yes, uh-huh. JJ: How can you (overlapping dialogue; inaudible)? AS: But even though it was in the books and all, they say, “What was he thinking? How could he believe -- JJ: Absolutely. AS: -- that the United States would allow this?” JJ: I understand, yeah. AS: You know, what was in the -- what was -- were -- they pick that inspiration of the federal, of the federate labor movement inspired them to think that the United States would embrace Puerto Rico as a state, as a socialist state. So this was a big, huge controversy because there are very -- JJ: So he was one of those -- AS: -- prominent figures like Santiago Iglesias, Santiago Iglesias Pantín and so on. Other people [01:29:00] who really thought that the, that the, that the movement, that the labor movement from the United States was moving toward embracing more of a social democrat and from a social democrat to a socialist state that they thought it was, it was feasible. JJ: (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) -- AS: But I had to, I had to really -- JJ: Explain it. AS: -- really explain it and so on. But it was, it was positive because this was, we were young, we were young idealist who wanted to embrace also the American, 51 �the American youth movement of equality [01:30:00] in the United States. JJ: For civil rights. AS: And we were for the civil rights. JJ: The civil rights movement at the time. AS: All of these positive -- JJ: This is the civil rights era, this is the civil rights era. AS: Yeah, you see, all these positive things going on in the United States, we did embrace it and we thought it was very heroic of the American people although -- JJ: So against the war. This was about the time against the war in Vietnam and that sort of -- AS: Yes. So it was like two different, like conflicting messages of a movement and of the American people making very vanguard statements and abolishing really backward like slavery and all aspects, negative aspects [01:31:00] of slavery and discrimination and rectifying historical blunders. We thought this was very, very positive and we wanted to embrace and be part of that movement in the United States. JJ: So the university was at, was the civil rights era, the Vietnam war, protesting. AS: Yes. JJ: So the university was having protests almost every day or --? Would you say that or I mean, were there a lot --? AS: Protests? This was open confrontation. This was shooting. JJ: There were shooting. AS: Oh my God, these were -- yes. This was because the National Guard of Puerto 52 �Rico which is called National Guard of Puerto Rico but it follows [01:32:00] all the structures of the -JJ: United States. AS: -- United States military. They had recruiting and huge recruiting offices right inside the university of Puerto Rico. Remember, this was, how you say, forced? Forced recruitment. JJ: Right it was the beginning -- AS: It was the time when there was -- JJ: It was -- yeah, mandatory military. Mandatory military service. AS: (Spanish) [01:32:30]. JJ: Yeah. AS: So we were against that. So there were real big, huge confrontations and really open shootings and so on -- JJ: At the university. AS: -- at the university and students -- [01:33:00] yes. JJ: Anybody got killed because of this? AS: Yes, yes. Students got killed and so on. So that on the early 1960s, I was going to Santo Domingo and to Venezuela. I was doing some research about -- JJ: For the university? Or for -- AS: We were attached to a diplomatic core to the United Nations in which they were studying the fertility of the nun and we were doing this research on a project in the Dominican Republic [01:34:00] and in Venezuela in Guyana for the Agriculture Department of the United Nations. So this was very interesting in 53 �order to, for those countries to develop their own agriculture. Because you have to prove that your land is very fertile and so on and that it should be protected. So since my husband was an expert on soils so we went to those countries for that. JJ: And your husband’s name at that time was what? AS: James Blaut. JJ: James Blaut. AS: James Blaut. He did research. And then in, then in, later on, we went to Venezuela because we [01:35:00] were involved with the project because he was, he develop, with some grants, develop a project in which we would counteract the Piaget [-lo?] of development, of child development. Because Piaget says that there are developmental stages of children and that children cannot be introduced to aerial photography until they are seven and eight years old and so on. We got involved and very excited with that kind of research of perception that children at that very age can read maps and when they are three years old and so on. Since I was trained as a psychologist, I did the research and so on to provide that the children can read maps at a very early age. [01:36:00] So that took me to 19- -- we were at the College of the Virgin Islands [sic] in 1964, 1960-, until 1966. Then I got to Worcester, Massachusetts. JJ: Did you go through work or right, straight to the Worcester? AS: Worcester. JJ: Worcester? AS: Worcester from the Virgin Islands. 54 �JJ: And so that was a university, too, there or you went to the --? AS: From the -- excuse me? JJ: From the Virgin Islands you go to (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) -- AS: From the Virgin Islands to Clark University -- JJ: Clark University? AS: -- because they ask my husband, yeah. Then I, we decided to go to Worcester. JJ: Okay. And he was -- was he teach, was he teaching there or --? AS: He was a director of the research at the -- he was a professor. He was a director of Caribbean research, yes. We have some encounters there with Rockefeller. And [01:37:00] whenever you have encounters with Rockefeller, you basically lose. (laughs) JJ: Okay, so which Rockefeller is it? AS: Nelson. JJ: Nelson Rockefeller. Okay, the direct confrontation. AS: Yes because he had a concept of conservation different than ours. He owns a lot of land in the Virgin Islands and his concept of conservation, we didn’t agree with it. JJ: What was his? What was yours? AS: His concept of conservation is you acquire the title of the property and then you do the conservation. And we thought that it’s, it doesn’t work with us. The land has to be owned by the people, it has to be public owned and the -- JJ: Public domain, public land. AS: Yeah. Then [01:38:00] that -- 55 �JJ: I see, so he wants to make money (inaudible). AS: That public, the fact that you own the land, you should conserve it. It’s your land, it’s your resources. But it’s a different concept of private ownership. It’s a very difficult although he had some wonderful, beautiful ideas for the conservation, for all the, for everything. But these are gigantic people have a lot of money and resources. It was -- JJ: So anyway, you said that when you were faced with Rockefeller, you’d lose. AS: Well, because you have to publish reports and then they force, they want your reports to be private. My husband would not allow that. JJ: To gain way. AS: Because if you are an academic and you [01:39:00] do some research, let’s say you do this and then you go to the university and they say that belongs to us, that’s it. If you agree with it, you give it to them. But if you have the concept that -- JJ: Right. (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) -- AS: -- no, no, no, this is my copyright, this is mine. And the people gave me this information because they trusted me. It is the same thing. So then the report, you make it public -- JJ: Right, it should be public. AS: -- because you owe it to the public that gave you the information. It’s a different concept. They figure that since they believe that the whole thing is private but then you are like a slave to them -- JJ: So we’re going to make sure that Grand Valley is not a Rockefeller. (laughs) 56 �Grand Valley State University, [01:40:00] technical university. (laughter) AS: It’s true, it becomes, it’s everywhere. JJ: We got to make sure, we got to make sure -- AS: Some places, the more sophisticated than others and so on. JJ: That’s a good point. AS: So when I signed this, I signed it to Cha Cha because I’m giving this, all this effort and information because Cha Cha has sacrificed himself and has given everything to the people so I am giving it back. The little I have contributed, I’m giving it back to you. So -- JJ: That’s right, I got to make sure I keep it with the people. AS: (laughs) JJ: I appreciate it. AS: Right? It’s very humble but it’s all we can do. JJ: No, I appreciate that it’s your neck, it’s your neck. It’s your right. AS: Yes, right, so -- JJ: I appreciate that. Making it clear. AS: (laughs) Just in case, right. So when you [01:41:00] have difficulties with them, we ended up, we said, “Well, this is as far as -- we are taking the report. We are publishing.” JJ: And I appreciate it because this is my first research project so I got to learn how it goes. (inaudible) AS: Yes. Well, that’s how it really works and it really -- we had problems in the Dominican Republic because they, the same thing. They wanted the reports to 57 �be private and we said no way, no way. Because you are using us to get information from the people to trust us and the confidentiality and they are trusting you something that you don’t know what is the use of that. Then later on, we found out that we were doing this and that [01:42:00] the Heinz company that produces, that they were producing the tomatoes, ketchup -JJ: (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) -- AS: -- it’s wonderful. These are wonderful people, okay, but they have their own agenda. Therefore, you have to from the beginning, you have to be honest about it and straightforward. It’s public domain. It belongs to the people. Therefore, you are an academician, you are this and you are that but hey. I’m the property of the intellectual production of the people. JJ: Okay. Now, you said you went, you were looking into the Young Lords. AS: Right, Worcester. JJ: What got you into the Young Lords? I mean, how did you start? AS: Yes. Well, I [01:43:00] started organizing in Worcester. The Puerto Rican community was very close to the Clark University and Clark University like most urban American universities, they outgrow their main buildings and they outgrow and they keep on growing and then they displace the neighborhood around them. Usually, it’s poor people. And in this case, were Puerto Ricans they were displacing at Clark University. I organized the Puerto Rican community. It didn’t go well with Clark University (laughs) but I started organizing the Puerto Rican community. JJ: Was it a housing question at that time? Well, [01:44:00] it was displacement at 58 �that time. AS: Well, the university wanted to acquire some buildings and so on and -- JJ: And the community was fighting it? AS: -- and then the community was struggling to say not fighting it but struggling with the university to with a new concept of interaction because we feel that if you’re going to be talking about sociology, you don’t have to displace the people that you are teaching your students to study. I mean, this is ridiculous. We think. We think that if they, if Puerto Ricans were living among them, then the students can learn why are Puerto Ricans coming here? I mean this is migration, this is international law, this is all kinds and this is something that the students should be interested. Why are there Puerto Ricans still coming here and they get from the bus [01:45:00] and they can’t vote? The university should teach them and say something is going on because these are people who speak a different language and all that and they come in right away from the airport and they can’t vote. Hey, something going on, right? So I organized the Puerto Rican community and over there, I found some very wonderful organizers, women organizers. JJ: Who were some of the women organizers? AS: Lydia, Lydia Reyes. She and her husband, Edwin Reyes, Edwin Reyes. Edwin Reyes was, he still is, he is still organizing. He is the brother of Edwin Reyes and Edwin Reyes, there is a documentary [01:46:00] about him, a tremendous poet and organizer. He organized the people of Loíza. He was very, very well-known organizing effort in Loíza because the government went with tractors and really 59 �wiped out the whole community and their houses and everything because these were the, these were the -- oh, it was a, it was a village they built on the wrong how do you call that? JJ: You mean a company village? AS: Like a little (Spanish) [01:46:50] they organized. JJ: A (Spanish) [01:46:51]. (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) AS: They rescued the land and everything. JJ: Oh, yeah. [01:47:00] AS: Rescatadores they call it. JJ: Is that kind of set in -- AS: Settlers? You say? Settlers? JJ: Settlers, yeah. Homestead or something. Homestead. AS: Settlers? Yes. JJ: They settled that area. They took it from the people. AS: These were settlers of land that hadn’t been used for 50 or 60 years and there was a little community who settled there. JJ: They reclaimed the land, basically. AS: Yes. JJ: Okay. (inaudible) AS: They bulldozed, they bulldozed that area and so on so and Reyes was very famous of that area, yeah. JJ: (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) AS: So Edwin Reyes -- 60 �JJ: Squatters, they were squatters. AS: Oh. JJ: They were squatters in the land and then they came and bulldozed it and took them out. AS: We call it rescatadores. JJ: Rescatadores. AS: Which is better. (laughs) JJ: Rescatadores is better? It’s got a little ring to it. AS: Yeah, rescatadores, uh-huh. And so -- JJ: So Edwin Reyes was part of it and he -- AS: Yes. JJ: -- and he comes from -- AS: -- from [01:48:00] Worcester. Yes. And the children of Lydia were, eran Lords. JJ: Oh, they were? AS: Lords, eran Lords, Young Lords. JJ: Young Lords. So then (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) -- AS: They were, uh-huh, Young Lords. And -- JJ: And we got in and then we were connected or husband and wife? AS: Yes. They were husband and wife. JJ: Okay, so this was the Young Lords. AS: Then we were, we were then organizing and they were, when they came in, they really look like you, Cha Cha. JJ: Yeah. 61 �AS: These kids. (laughs) JJ: Like me? Yeah, no, (inaudible. AS: Yeah, and everything. JJ: (laughs) AS: They said, “Well,” in a meeting, they said -- JJ: (Spanish) [01:48:42] -- AS: They said, they said, “Well,” in the meeting, they said -- JJ: (Spanish) [01:48:42] -- AS: They said, in the first meeting we were having, I am there. I am really from the old school. [break in audio] And then when they see me and they see me, [01:49:00] “Is this your organizer?” (laughter) They see me with blue eyes and blond and all that and then they come here. But they were really, they were really about to take the whole world. And then I come over there and then they say, “Is that it? Is that it? Is she the one we’re going to talk to?” Yeah. (Spanish) [01:49:32]. Yeah. It’s, “Well --” “Well, I recommend the first thing we’re going to do is that we’re going to take over the building where your husband work. You want to do it?” “Let’s do it.” And he says, “Not so bad at all,” (laughs) and he said, “But we’re going to do it the way I say.” (laughs) So we started there the story, [01:50:00] the Young Lords. JJ: Did you take over the building? Did you take over -- AS: Oh, we took it over. Yes. JJ: This was a school building. AS: A school building. 62 �JJ: Oh, so you took over a school building? Okay. AS: Yeah. But -- JJ: You were taking the spirit of the Young Lords. AS: Oh, yes. JJ: (laughs) AS: We said, “Hey.” JJ: They were from Worcester, Worcester, Massachusetts. AS: Worcester, Massachusetts. You won’t believe the influence you had, you see? Because when one is in the struggle, one doesn’t, one cannot figure out one, how far -- JJ: But we were getting, we were getting influenced by the movimiento para independencia. AS: Para independencia, right. JJ: So we were getting influenced by each other. AS: By each other, right. JJ: So it was good. AS: But the tactics were very good because here in Puerto Rico, there are certain big no-nos that you don’t do. But Young Lords had no no-nos. (laughter) You see what I mean? They said no, no, no, no. And I said, “Well,” and I said, “Well, [01:51:00] we go halfway, okay?” Said, “We go halfway.” First, we’re going to do it this way. I love my husband. And nothing can happen to him. Do you understand? We understand each other. But he can take care of himself. He is 6’-something. I said, “No, no, no. I don’t want anything to happen to him, but I 63 �don’t want anything to happen to anybody here. That’s impossible.” He said, “No. We won’t go any farther unless we (inaudible).” And they say, “Whatever, we are -- nothing happens to anybody.” I’ll tell you what, and then they would come out. We have these, we have this structure and so on. And that’s how I learn -JJ: And that’s the spirit of the Young Lords. We’ve always done that. AS: That’s right. JJ: We never jumped on people. AS: That’s right. But you see, I will challenge them in public because if I don’t do that, then the other people won’t come with me. Then they would listen [01:52:00] to them, to the -- JJ: So you were doing an insider job. AS: Yes. JJ: (laughs) AS: Because this was very young kids, very young. But they had been trampled, they knew what discrimination was, they have been spitted up. They really knew what repression was about, you see? They really knew how the American system worked and they had the skills and hey had the know-how and they had the special, the special flavor for the other youngsters. For the other Puerto Rican youngsters that were coming. They were like the rich because I was very formal. (inaudible) Cha Cha, [01:53:00] you see? (laughs) And my husband was professor over there. I would come and tell him. I said, “Hey, we have to -- we’ll go up to here.” But I’m going to do that make them believe. You do the rest. 64 �Okay. But who knows? You never see my embrace, all of us. And then they would tell me, “You poor thing. You don’t know. I’ll teach you.” That these people do not really believe that all people are really equal. I would say, “These people are principled. These people in academia are principled. I’m going to prove it to you.” They would tell me, “I will prove it to you that they are not.” JJ: At the university? AS: This [01:54:00] struggle, this struggle, and it took over the building. It was like they said because we knew better, right? But it was like they said. But we still gave the universities a space to correct themselves, to rectify. Correct, I don’t know. That’s not the right word. To rectify. Because they said they didn’t discriminated against Black or Latinos but then they didn’t want to make any allowances in order to bring in and to open the enrollment. We call, it says, “Well, we have to have open enrollment. No way.” So each issue, they proved they were right. So and the [01:55:00] people, hey, the people said they know what they’re talking about. The university, they took over the building and the people were still inside and we would take food. Inside and all that and we put in the demands that they had to take more Latinos and Blacks and so on and we were against the Vietnam War and the right we had to protest. Everything. But what happens? They called the police, the whole thing, the whole bit. What happened? Even though my husband was the one that had published the most, an academically outstanding scholar and all that, they finish his contract. He had no tender. Then we would discuss this in the community and then the people, [01:56:00] the Young Lords would say, “(Spanish) [01:56:02 - 01:56:06].” 65 �(laughter) Say yeah, he’s going to be kicked out. Did we say so? Did we say that the university was so arrogant that they won’t allow for, they won’t allow for the enrollment to change it? They would have a, they didn’t change the admissions? It had to be straightforward by test? They didn’t even accept that test were biased against gender and poor. They didn’t accept that. They didn’t accept none [01:57:00] of those things. So this was, this was a real schooling about what really academia is about. And that this was a very wonderful experience for all of us. Still, we opened the university among the artists and so on. The university open and embrace the community but this were sectors within the university. The administration and all that -JJ: Remained the same. AS: -- bureaucracy, they remained the same. JJ: They did open some sectors, right? AS: We did open. The theater open to the and we made the, we organized the presentations and everything and the student really loved it and so on. So in Worcester, then we came to, we came to [01:58:00] the University of Illinois because my husband really think like Ivy school universities. Although he taught in Yale and he did like it. He did like the Ivy school -- JJ: The Ivy League, right. AS: -- the Ivy League schooling. JJ: Right. AS: So -- JJ: And you went to the University of Illinois. 66 �AS: We went to the University -- uh-huh, state university. JJ: Circle campus. AS: Circle campus. JJ: But you didn’t, you weren’t aware that that university had a, the Italian community and the Mexican community. AS: We were. JJ: You were aware? AS: We were aware, yes. JJ: Oh, okay. All right. AS: Yes, we were aware and we immediately started organizing the minute we went over there. JJ: So you hit the floor running -- AS: Yeah. (laughter) JJ: -- like they say about it. AS: Yes. JJ: So you were aware. That’s pretty great. (inaudible) AS: Uh-huh, right. JJ: A lot of people there, we were trying to make people aware of that -- AS: Yes. JJ: -- [01:59:00] and so that they learn, recognize. AS: Yes. JJ: But so he was teaching there? And what, he was teaching research studies or -? 67 �AS: He was geography and anthropology. JJ: Geography and -- AS: He had a PhD in geography and anthropology from Louisianna State University. JJ: But then you started working in the community, too, there, right? AS: Right, yes. JJ: As a Puerto Rican Socialist Party or no? AS: Well, we -- I found, yeah, I was one of the founding members -- JJ: In Chicago. AS: -- in Chicago. JJ: Connected to Puerto Rico? AS: Yes. Uh-huh, yes. JJ: Okay. Were you a member in Puerto Rico? Well, that’s -- AS: No because I was in Worcester. I was organizing in Worcester. JJ: But you decided to do the Socialist Party but this time, it wasn’t like your father’s or --? AS: Puerto Rican Socialist Party is -- JJ: Is different? AS: -- pro-independence. JJ: Is pro-independence. AS: Independence, yes. JJ: But was it similar to your father’s or no? AS: In terms of social justice, yes. JJ: Okay, but it wasn’t the same party, it wasn’t the same -- 68 �AS: No, no, not at all. JJ: So it was another party. AS: Yes. Uh-huh. JJ: Because I remember you had -- AS: The Puerto Rican Socialist Party [02:00:00] is a, the movimiento para independencia -- JJ: Oh, turn -- AS: -- decides, decides that it should become a -- JJ: A smaller bank area. AS: -- a Marxist/Leninist party. JJ: Right, at that time. At that time. AS: Then in 1970s, in 1971, it’s the Puerto Rican Socialist Party adopts -- JJ: So okay, so it wasn’t the movimiento para independencia first and then -- AS: Yes. JJ: -- in 1971. AS: Yes. Then the movimiento para independencia keeps on organizing. In 1959 in Puerto Rico. Then in the ‘70s, they start a -- they got influenced by the internationalist movement and then -- JJ: They become more Marxist/Leninist? AS: -- then yes. JJ: [02:01:00] Publicly, publicly. AS: Yes. That was -- JJ: Everyone was kind of reading those things at the same time. 69 �AS: Yes. (laughs) JJ: But publicly, they didn’t (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) -- AS: But publicly then they, yes, it becomes with the whole structure of the Marxist/Leninist party. And then -- JJ: But not, not, all of a sudden, but it was a little different because it was -- AS: Independent, we had independent -- JJ: The Young Lords came, the Young Lords looked at Mao Zedong or -- AS: Yes. JJ: -- and you were a little bit more what? AS: An independent. We had an independent -- JJ: An independent -- AS: -- international line. JJ: Independence (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) -- AS: Independent and not (inaudible), not Maoist and so on. JJ: I don’t remember the independent. Okay, so it was more, more -- AS: Yes, because the Cold Wars that in a colonial -- JJ: And actually, we became (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) -- AS: -- that in a colonial -- JJ: But we didn’t go that deep into it. AS: Yeah. JJ: Except our leaders. Some leaders that belonged to it. AS: Yeah, uh-huh. Yeah, no, the movimiento para independencia studied, [02:02:00] studied the -- 70 �JJ: We were more, we were more -- AS: -- movement and so on and MPI really visited the China and Vietnam and many other places as someone who was -- JJ: So they were more abroad than -- AS: It was studied and so on and that. Then on the ‘70s, and then it’s founded that -- JJ: Because everybody kind of divided in different ways and it was better to. Because MPI was better at (inaudible). Because it was abroad. It didn’t go everywhere. AS: Everywhere, yes. JJ: Whereas (inaudible) every time. AS: Because in Puerto Rico, it was decided it was the best because it was also an anti-colonial movement. Because we had to gain the independence of Puerto Rico. JJ: Well, that’s what we have now, it’s anti-colonial. AS: Yes. JJ: It’s anti-colonial (inaudible). AS: Yes, uh-huh and we are -- JJ: Not that I’m a (inaudible), I’m not (overlapping dialogue; inaudible). AS: Yeah. JJ: (laughs) AS: Yeah, [02:03:00] we got involved with the American Left because the American Left had, was influenced highly by a traditional Marxist/Leninist party and -- JJ: It was from the ‘30s kind of. It was like a fight against the ‘30s, wasn’t it, in some 71 �way. AS: Well, because they followed the line that liberation movement was anti-worker and that it was more important the workers’ movement versus the liberation movement. We thought that it was wrong first to put it that way that there was no such thing as one thing or the other because we did research and we did publish why [02:04:00] you would be in the best interest of workers, of Puerto Rican workers, to gain the political status first. JJ: Because what I remember is there was a lot of flags and stuff I remember. Red flags. Was it red flags or --? AS: Yeah. JJ: But they had a lot of rallies in Chicago at that time and that’s when we started working together. (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) to be closer to that because we just felt that anybody that was for independence was (inaudible) so we wanted to work with them there. AS: Well, what happened is because I came from the Young Lords -- JJ: (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) -- AS: -- in Worcester how -- JJ: -- (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) -- AS: -- it helped us a lot to understand what we were going through. JJ: Chicago was a new area for the Puerto Ricans. AS: Right. JJ: It was a new -- we weren’t -- we weren’t active as a people. That was the first -[02:05:00] we were in a gang before. You know what I mean? So we were just 72 �becoming activists and so the movement was small. We made less compared to the West Coast and East Coast. It grew, it grew -AS: But it’s important, it’s important because what you did in Chicago, you really had tremendous repercussions in Chicago. What happens is that the anti-liberation forces in the United States was always bringing in the wrong information because you don’t control the news communication system. So although there were many, there [02:06:00] were a lot of Americans who would support the anticolonial movement of Puerto Rico as a matter of principle, the news media was never able to project that. But the fact that you put in the, in your demands independence for Puerto Rico and you tie it in with the social justice for Puerto Ricans in the United States and the liberation of the Puerto Rican political prisoners, believe me, this was very, very important. It was so important that the Congress of the United States, Congress of the United States allotted 37 different lines in the budget to counteract it. [02:07:00] Imagine if it was important. JJ: Thirty-seven different lines. I didn’t look into that. That’s pretty good. AS: Yes, it’s pretty good, you see what I mean? JJ: (laughs) AS: Why is that? Why is that? Because this is very powerful. For Puerto Ricans in the United States to adopt the fact that part of their civil rights struggle is the liberation of their homeland, this is powerful and the United States government knows that. (laughs) So at any cost, they had to eliminate -- JJ: I don’t know if I should be content or worried (laughs) that they had 37 pieces of 73 �their budget. I don’t know if I should be happy or worried by that -AS: You should be happy and worried. JJ: (laughs) At the same time. [02:08:00] (laughter) AS: Happy and worried. But not worried but concerned, the fact that it’s -- you have to figure out that something is going on where there is so much struggle going on in Puerto Rico and nothing is mentioned. As a matter of fact -- JJ: I think it was because we were hanging out with Meca and we were -- AS: (laughter) Obama, as a matter of fact, even Obama, he let in all those people come over here. And the electoral process in the United States doesn’t get mentioned at all basically, you know? So it’s amazing. So this powerful formula when you people call for that, there were a lot of forces trying to interfere so [02:09:00] that you and our forces would not get together at all cost, Cha Cha, at all cost. They placed agents in, at the PSP headquarters, they placed agents, you name it. I mean, this was amazing. They killed one of our comrades, Cintrón, Cintrón Ortiz. Not only knew how but he -- JJ: What year was this? AS: -- was a professor at the University of Illinois, Rafael Cintrón Ortiz. What did the political forces and the police say when he was killed? They said, “Oh, this is a faction between the PSP. One that support struggles and the other one that doesn’t support struggles within the PSP.” Imagine how. [02:10:00] The American students don’t have an idea, Cha Cha. They don’t have idea that this things are going on. They just go to school and they go along with the books they assign to them and reading. But they don’t have, they don’t have access 74 �and these are public documents. You can read them. They can access it. They can go to the internet and access all these intelligence community politics. You’ll see those intelligence, the intelligence police other things. You read and they tell you this day is a Puerto Rican commemoration day. Everybody on the lookout, “Hey, you’re a student. You’re brilliant. You know what that means, right?” [02:11:00] (laughs) If you give to all the police departments a memo and they say Puerto Rican [break in audio] pro-independence holidays, “Hey, what’s that? Is that love? What’s that?” That has a meaning, you see what I mean? So Rafael Cintrón Ortiz was a very unitary figure and was giving on a volunteer basis and through the university and independent courses about the Puerto Rican family and importance of the Puerto Rican family to be able to decide the political status of Puerto Rico. He was finishing writing the thesis for New York University. I mean, and he was found [02:12:00] bound with an electric cable on his apartment. The director of the Latin American Studies program, when he didn’t show up, he went over there and found him with another colleague of his, found him dead there. The police, what was the police, Chicago police, saying? You perhaps are not aware of the Chicago police. Are you aware of how the Chicago police works? I’m going to tell you. JJ: A little bit, a little understanding. (laughs) AS: A little bit? I’ll tell you. We, Cha Cha, had to, we had to hide ourselves. We have to what it’s called sumergirse, how would you say that? We had to submerge? JJ: You went underground. 75 �AS: I mean, we had to because this was a guy who had been killed and then the police was saying -- JJ: You went underground in Chicago. You were not with the group. AS: Everywhere we went. JJ: I mean [02:13:00] you went underground. AS: We, yes. JJ: (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) -- AS: We have to sumergirno, we had to submerge, yes. JJ: The Young Lords went underground, too. AS: Yes, because it was impossible. We didn’t know what was going on and with this, with this announcement, radio announcements, of a sector of the PSP being for arms struggle and this was -- JJ: That they were treating you, asking people. AS: It was an inside, it was an inside job. The one was killing the other, you know? JJ: Yeah, right. Yeah, they were asking people with (overlapping dialogue; inaudible), yeah. AS: So this was -- JJ: So they were creating divisions (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) also like -- AS: Sure, claro. JJ: -- (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) between the Chicago Young Lords and the New York Young Lords. AS: Right, and they were successful. JJ: And the Panthers, the (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) -- 76 �AS: And the Panthers. JJ: -- Panthers and the New York Panthers. AS: Same tactic. JJ: Same tactic. AS: Same tactic. JJ: SDS was divided -- AS: Divided. JJ: The Yippies were divided. The Yippies were divided. AS: Divided, right. JJ: So they’d infiltrate [02:14:00] the housing. That was their tool. AS: Yeah. What happened then to us here? The same thing so -- JJ: So it wasn’t their intent to -- AS: Yes, right. Now, of course, one can always keep on organizing. What we did is we said, “Hey, we are going to,” when we found out what was happening, then we came and gave our statements and so on. But what happens is that the parents, Puerto Rican parents are very traditional. If something happens to you, they go to your mother. Your poor mother, what is she going to say? The mother of Rafael Cintrón Ortiz, they went to her and the poor, then they told her that he was homosexual. That then, that’s what happened. Then they changed. JJ: And (inaudible), and [02:15:00] that was a part of the discreditation campaign anyway. And that they were trying -- and that homosexuality is a -- it sounds like they’re being more concerned that they’re straight but they’re trying to find out ways to discredit and then gay was used. 77 �AS: Right. First it was like announced like a struggle between -- JJ: Two forces. AS: -- two forces between the PSP. But then -- JJ: But now they’re homosexual and maybe he’s into drugs or something else. AS: Then is that the, he was hanging around with the wrong crowd and this were a passion, a passion crime. Then the poor, the -- she accepted that she wasn’t going to do anything. She wasn’t going to do research. You know, let’s say that you haven’t done your papers and say, let’s say you haven’t written anything in your papers, all right? Well, then if your legal wife is the [02:16:00] one that decides for you. That’s why you should write down what, if anything happens to you, what you should do. You should give it to somebody that you trust and you should leave it in writing what to do. What happened with her? Since he didn’t write that down, he didn’t write anything down. So when the mother comes, she decided. She decided not to have any investigation because she was suffering so much and she accepted the version of the police. JJ: Right. We’re having the same, we had the same problem with Reverend I think it was Johnson, when he was murdered. The family, they respected the family. They didn’t want to do anything about it. They just wanted to forget about it and that was it. AS: That was it. JJ: Here, he was stabbed 17 times and his wife 9 times. He’s the [02:17:00] reverend of the United Methodist Church and so it’s a similar situation. AS: Similar, yes. 78 �JJ: Because other people were not political and don’t understand the repression, that’s what happened. AS: Do you have your written statement? JJ: (laughs) AS: Huh? JJ: (inaudible) I’m going to have to write it down. AS: Write it down because one has to write it down. I always say because -- JJ: We’ll we’re writing it down now. AS: -- with this experience, with this experience, believe me. Then later on, the police, they apprehended two kids: one adult and then a youngster. The adult, they said he was crazy and the youngster was a youngster. He could not testify. That’s how they dealt with a crime. You know Chicago police, right? That’s how they dealt with a crime. So it’s the repression [02:18:00] is there. JJ: So they still haven’t found out what happened to him. AS: No. Nothing but then -- JJ: They said they would throw sentences -- AS: -- with the adult, with the adult, he was crazy. JJ: They were saying he was crazy. AS: And the youngster were, he couldn’t testify. He was young and so -- JJ: What other forms of repression were they using at that time with movimiento para independencia of Puerto Rico? You said that they infiltrated, they infiltrated the -- AS: All kinds. Shootings through the Claridad, they went to Claridad, they bomb the newspaper Claridad and they went, the director Figeroa, Domingo Figeroa, who 79 �was there, he even had to defend himself and he was shooting at them and they put bombs under his car. I mean, all kinds of repression. They killed [02:19:00] other the leadership in the labor movement that were the, for independence. They bombed the, a little school, Montessori school we had for kids. I mean, they really went all out on a very, on a repression at all levels. They visited the work, workplace of militants of the movimiento para independencia y, and PSP and -JJ: Puerto Rican Socialist Party. AS: Sí, Puerto Rican Socialist Party and so on. We then embrace, the Puerto Rican Socialist Party [02:20:00] embraces the electoral and participates in the electoral process. We registered the top leadership that Juan Mari Brás will run as governor and so on. We did that in order to open up another, another space. It was really very confrontational and so but we were able to move to register the party and all that. It was a very, it was a very good experience and so on. But like the organizations, we had a lot of Cubans anti-revolutionary forces. Cuba said their name because the Department of [02:21:00] State that moves in Puerto Rico. The United States Department of State decides who gets visas, who comes in Puerto Rico. (laughs) JJ: They’re using immigration now as a tool. AS: So they have always used it. Then they, and then there were all of a sudden, in Puerto Rico were thousands and thousands and thousands of anti-revolutionary forces. At the same time that we were the organizing the MRCCS party and this was, it was a big confrontation. They had the, the Cuban forces had here very 80 �well organized, very well organized people. [02:22:00] With right wing to the -- I mean, they were the Alpha here, the Omega. I mean, they were here planting bombs and everything so it was a big, huge, big, big, big confrontation so -JJ: Bombs against the independence movement? AS: Well, they said there were, they were against communist takeover of Puerto Rico you could say. JJ: Even though they were Cuban and this was a Puerto Rican movement. AS: Yes, uh-huh. That they have come a long way here to embrace the American system and they weren’t going [02:23:00] to allow this to be independent. (laughs) So it’s, so they had to struggle a lot to come to a place where they would have United States citizenship. JJ: It’s interesting. The government is using displacement and they’re using manipulation and they’re using a lot of these things to destroy aggressive movement. Is that what they’re saying? Or -- AS: What happens is -- JJ: -- I don’t want to put words in your mouth. (laughs) AS: Yes. Uh-huh. No, you have a way of phrasing things very simple, straightforward and I go around, right. (laughter) Well, these are well-organized, right-wing Cuban forces who anyway really came here because they wanted the American dream and they wanted [02:24:00] the American citizenship. This is a country that has US citizenship and speaks Spanish. It allows them a privilege status which is the status Cubans have which is political. So the fact that they have this status of a people, a people looking for political freedom, they have a 81 �special status. That special status allows them to get welfare and work at the same time. That political status allows them to get scholarships and work at the same time. That political status brings a lot of benefits. That’s why they still want it. [02:25:00] They don’t want the economic status like other immigrants have; They want the -- then they are escaping a dictatorial regime that their life is at stake. Therefore, they’re given that privilege of political status but that privilege means a lot of money because if you are getting welfare, let’s say, for six years, a decent time. You’re taking (inaudible) aid and all those benefits at the same time, you can also work making a lot, making incomes and monies. It’s really very beneficial for that community so that’s why there are other communities fighting for that status, too. They [02:26:00] haven’t got it but they are still struggling to be. The American student is really up in the air. They don’t understand what’s going on. They think they are being very nice. Do you see what I mean? They feel that wow, we have all these Cubans still in here, we have all these Latinos except they don’t differentiate. (laughs) Do you see what I mean? They say, “Oh, wow, we have these Latinos who are living in all these scholarships. Wow.” They figure they are doing the right thing. But they don’t on the other hand what it is that they are doing. JJ: I just want to finish it up more or less but I want to make sure that we get this because you did some work with the Young Lords in Chicago [02:27:00] and you also, I didn’t go into Lincoln Park camp. But you also, before that, that did you go to some of the demonstrations? And also if you can talk a little bit about Westtown Concerned Citizens, the work that you told me earlier. Then which of it 82 �is ours? AS: Well, in Chicago, Chicago is a very, very, very exciting city in the United States and it’s really has brought about changes all over the world starting from the Haymarket. So that we admire Chicago long before we (laughs) went over there and we really celebrate the heroic stand of the eight hours. I don’t know why isn’t [02:28:00] studied more in Chicago because this was truly heroic stand and that the workers all over the world commemorate May 1st, Dia de Trabajador, and the United States have a way of putting things. I don’t understand it. El Dia de Trabajador, Workers’ Day, and then they come in and put Labor Day. JJ: Labor Day is the workers’ day, yeah. It changes. It changes. AS: It changes from workers’ day to Labor Day. (Spanish) [02:28:34], I said oh my God, this is amazing but they managed to do it. So when we went there, we organized the community. The first thing I did was to counteract the census [02:29:00] terminology. The United States Census classified Puerto Ricans as stock and when I saw that -- JJ: Stock? AS: Stock. In other words, when you would choose the denominations and then for Puerto Ricans, they had Puerto Rican stock and you could -- JJ: Oh, we’re stock? AS: Stock. JJ: Okay. AS: You can check this through the US Census and different forms they have and so on. So this was the first thing that stuck (laughter) when I went over there. 83 �Because we always studied the census because it gives you an idea, right? Of the census, what the population is and so on. So I got the form and immediately that I got this form, I said, “What? Jesus.” I thought Worcester [02:30:00] was backwards (laughs) but Chicago, that was -JJ: It was very bad. (inaudible) (laughs) -- AS: That was something else. So we developed there with other Puerto Ricans a first census, a first census. Yeah, I got involved with that and so on. From there, when we, we decided that we had to develop our own grassroots, communitybased grassroots organization of empowerment and we created the Westtown Concerned Citizens Coalition. Other organizations reach out which is for housing and so on. I founded many other organizations like the freedom [02:31:00] of the Nicaraguan people and El Salvador and solidarity with other Latin Americans. JJ: So you were part of that development or --? AS: Yes, uh-huh. We organize with the Chicanos, the Casa, la El Mandal General de Trabajadores with the undocumented workers. With Casa, with Julio Sano and so on. JJ: Julio Sano. AS: Yes, yes. So it was very, it was, it was very, very good organizing but we were not able to bring in the Young Lords as an organization. We didn’t understand what was happening. We were never able to understand it. There was (inaudible) and there was the uptown people’s clinic and law center and [02:32:00] obviously (inaudible) and so on. So we made the decision, perhaps it was the wrong decision, that we would, we only had resources for Westtown. 84 �We said, “Well, maybe we can just be effective here in Westtown and we should not organize.” All the other ones, we would give solidarity and so on. But it was so overwhelming in Chicago. It was so, and it was so difficult to organize in Chicago because it’s so segregated, Chicago. It was amazing. We had to fight the federal laws of housing. We were [02:33:00] involved in laws right and left, Cha Cha. This is something that community organizing, well, I think it’s a tactic also of sectors, of the right wing because they always [break in audio] us. Then they want to impose their federal guidelines so this was the problem for Puerto Ricans. Because they wanted to, they wanted to impose the laws that say, that might work for team. See? Then they want to approach those laws to us and they said, “You have to have Blacks.” Then there is me with blue eyes and then you know, next to me is [Landor?] who is more Black than Obama and he’s a Puerto Rican. Then [02:34:00] so these federal guidelines were very difficult for implementation. But it took a lot of energy for us to counteract and with the public housing. We charged them and they would discriminate and they would not take Puerto Ricans into public housing. It was a real big, huge mess to drain us out of a lot of energy. But we did march in your marches and in the whole thing, I was taking the park. We really said, “Well, we’re going to do something here. I want to do something.” But what happens is that we had a base that was a little bit more bourgeoisie would you say, [02:35:00] Cha Cha? JJ: A little more bourgeoisie? AS: Yeah. JJ: You got a page? 85 �AS: A base, our base. JJ: Our base was a little -- AS: We adopted some tactic (Spanish) [02:35:11] how we said. JJ: You’re saying Westtown Coalition or is it another coalition? AS: Westtown Coalition. JJ: Okay. AS: It said. JJ: It was a different, it was a different role. You did play a different role than me. AS: See, the -- yeah. This is good. So that space, they have it, they want it, let’s leave it out there. We’re going to do something else. JJ: No, that -- AS: That’s from me and we would complement each other. And that’s, we talked about it and we said what is the way we are going to do it? Do you see the building? I want to take it over. We are going to go with the proposal already how to rehab the building. You see, right? JJ: [02:36:00] Oh, I see what you’re saying. AS: You see? Then there was this building, it has like 40 units right there on Potomac and we took over this. We got architects, engineers, the whole bit, and thing and we got the people to do the planning. Then we said, then we went too far, he said. “This building we’re taking over. Will you give it to us or this going to be bloody?” “It’s going to be bloody.” He said, “Well, wow, give me a second.” I will use the word, Cha Cha, like you won’t believe it. I said, “Well, I just talked to Cha Cha,” and I hadn’t talked to you in years. (laughter) 86 �JJ: Threatening, threatening. AS: Just [02:37:00] talked to the Cha Cha people because I’m careful about that. I talked to the Cha Cha people and they said that the best way to really have this building is for us to own it. For us to own it, you cannot own it so that’s it. Then we will get the thing running and he took the building so that was -- JJ: That was [Antwon’s?], that was [Antwon’s?]. AS: It was -- no, it was this a question of force, of force. JJ: Okay. So it was a united front. AS: Of course. This environment, said hey -- JJ: It’s a united front. AS: So we agree in the same thing, we offer the same. They have to go in this extreme because in this neighborhood, the right is at this level. We’re going to try this. We cannot. [02:38:00] If we can get the building by just doing this minimum, that’s what we’ll do. But if we have to go to the extreme, we will do it, too. But if not, we’ll go up to this level. JJ: (inaudible) AS: And that’s it. JJ: (inaudible) if that was wrong, you know, got some skills from (inaudible). AS: Yeah, sure. JJ: So that was good, it was (inaudible) -- AS: Sure. Mm-hmm. That’s how we were able to get the Harold Washington and base and all that. JJ: Right, you’re a Harold Washington campaign, you’re, you guys wanted an office, 87 �the members had another office and we would main Puerto Rican culture and were organizing for Harold Washington at that time. Then we did the rally in Humboldt Park at that time. There were a bunch of others. We were right here in our focus together. AS: Yes, we do it. Right. JJ: In fact, our (inaudible), they would give out at Humboldt Park at breaking the chains which was probably PSP and the Young Lords together. So it was part of it -- AS: They change -- JJ: -- was Young Lords and part of it was PSP. [02:39:00] AS: PSP, that’s right. JJ: So that was great. We gave 45, 30,000 buttons. AS: It was -- JJ: There was 100,000 people. AS: Yes. It was very, very good. Very. JJ: Then we opened a lot of doors because of the fall. AS: That’s right. Yes, uh-huh. JJ: We (inaudible) Rudy Lozano was killed two days later. AS: Right. JJ: I won’t forget that. He was murdered two days later. AS: Cha Cha, it was, it was so powerful. JJ: (overlapping dialogue) two days later -- AS: Unity is very powerful. You can see how this, how these things are so powerful 88 �that when one is involved in it, one doesn’t notice it but it is powerful. This gave the base for the Obama because these are the same forces that were -JJ: They elected Obama later. AS: -- that was elected Obama later. JJ: They just (inaudible). Any final thoughts? [02:40:00] Any final thoughts? AS: I hope that the independentistas and the Puerto Rican Liberation Movement is able to embrace Puerto Ricans in the United States as one movement and that the American people would really join in solidarity and consider the independence of Puerto Rico is also a responsibility they have. Because when they invaded Puerto Rico in 1898, they came here with guns. They didn’t come. They didn’t come here with ballots. They came here [02:41:00] with guns. That has consequences. You have to correct your mistakes. I think this is an opportunity for the American people to embrace the Puerto Rican liberation forces in a movement that will benefit both the Puerto Ricans but also the American people because the American people are subsidizing their -- I’m trying to say this in the nicest way possible. The fraud, the corruption of Puerto Rican governments, [02:42:00] they are subsidizing with the taxes all those, all those frauds that are occurring in Puerto Rico because they are embracing the forces of the negative forces that want to continue dependency instead of an independent Puerto Rico. So I hope we are joined together in this beautiful movement of people to people for freedom. Thank you. JJ: Thank you. AS: Thank you, Cha Cha. 89 �JJ: No, no, thank you. AS: Muchas gracias. JJ: (Spanish) [02:42:45 - 02:42:49] -- (b-roll; no dialogue) [02:42:49 - 02:44:56] END OF VIDEO FILE 90 � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/66065eb46de59a730b2c0d3fbeb611d5.mp4 95fff37b9575a9056f642f47c724314a 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 America Sorrentini 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 Puerto Rico--Autonomía y movimientos independentistas Chicago (Ill.)--Política y gobierno--1951- Puerto Rico--Política y gobierno 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_Sorrentini_America Title A name given to the resource America “Mecca” Sorrentini interview and transcript Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sorrentini, America Description An account of the resource America Sorrentini was born in Puerto Rico. She moved first to Boston and then to Chicago, arriving in the 1970s. Ms. Sorentini's parents were prominent organizers and activists in the struggle for Puerto Rican self-determination, working primarily in and around Santurce, Puerto Rico. Ms. Sorrentini, or “Mecca” as she is known, began her own community activism in Boston working on a variety of issues including housing. By the time Ms. Sorrentini arrived in Chicago she was already aware of the work of the Young Lords and remained in solid contact with the Young Lords. She, and the Chicago Puerto Rican Socialist Party, assisted with the Jiménez aldermanic campaign and later the Harold Washington campaign. When the Young Lords celebrated their official founding date, which is September 23rd the same day as the Grito de Lares or Puerto Rican Independence Day, they selected Ms. Sorrentini to be their keynote speaker. 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 Rico--Autonomy and independence movements Chicago (Ill.)--Politics and government--1951- Puerto Rico--Politics and government Puerto Ricans--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 2012-05-11 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/ec6630156570208f588c41f260363b08.pdf 9e70cd417bb7b0d4c04ab83418826312 PDF Text Text Young Lords In Lincoln Park Interviewee: Ana Encarnación Interviewers: José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez Location: Grand Valley State University Special Collections Date: 7/10/2012 Biography and Description Ana Encarnación is from the San Juan metropolitan area of Puerto Rico and describes growing up there in the late 1930s and 1940s. She arrived in Chicago in the 1950s, settling in Old Town, along the border dividing Old Town from neighboring Lincoln Park. She lived on the south side of North Avenue, at the corner of Sedgewick. This is significant to note because it was the same barrio on either side of North Avenue, and on either side of Interstate 94. It was demonstrated later by community activists that the city used some areas of this highway to divide neighborhoods. The Puerto Rican barrio of the early 1960s stretched all the way from La Clark into Lincoln Park, and then west into Wicker Park and into Humboldt Park. For sure, then it was never called by those official names, as those were only the official city neighborhood boundaries which common folk Puerto Ricans were unaware existed. Their neighborhood was only one, as they shopped at the same stores, went to the same theatres, churches, restaurants, entertaining themselves at the same parks, beaches, and social eventsMs. Encarnación recalls that the early 1950s in Puerto Rico were rough for someone like her who sympathized with the Nationalist Party of Don Pedro Albizu Campos. She was never a member of the Party, but she loves Puerto Rico and has always wanted Puerto Rico to belong to the Puerto Ricans and to break from under the control of the United States or anyone else. When the Young Lords decided in 1968 to start to defend the Puerto Ricans and the poor from being displaced, it was her dream come true to join the �Young Lords Movement. She saw it as a way to help her people. Although Ms. Encarnación would hear the negative things that the police and the media were saying about the Young Lords, she says she did not believe any of it. She had already experienced a similar kind of repression in Puerto Rico in the 1950s as she herself was persecuted, and so she watched only for what she believed to be true. She was determined at all costs to not let the authorities prevent her from becoming politically engaged in the Lincoln Park community. Ms. Encarnación was in nursing and so she began to work in the Young Lords’ Emeterio Betances Free Health Clinic. The clinic was directed by Martha and Alberto Chavarria; Mr. Chavarria was the Young Lords’ Minister of Health. The Chavarrias are of Mexican descent and arrived at the Young Lords’ People’s Church on Armitage Avenue and Dayton Street via their membership in the Medical Committee for Human Rights. This committee was founded by Dr. Quentin Young. Dr. Young also helped to set up neighborhood clinics for the Black Panthers, providing his own personal funds when necessary and helping to secure used equipment and other hospital resources. Doctors, medical and nursing students were recruited to volunteer in the clinics. Dr. Quentin Young and the Medical Committee for Human Rights had a progressive history that included providing emergency medical care for the protesters at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in 1968. Dr. Jack Johns was the doctor on duty at the Betances Clinic. He and a committee that Ms. Encarnación was a member of directed the clinic for many years, long after the Young Lords left the People’s Church. The clinic was later transferred to St. Teresa’s Church. Ms. Encarnación describes how the volunteer staff, including herself, not only provided many long hours of free services to the Puerto Ricans and poor of Lincoln Park but when money was low, they also donated from their own personal savings to keep the clinic afloat. � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/98e4f3b06c2d7bbd26a975e399e7c70e.mp4 f81fa79d6bd7ccddb6da097c91e8a05a 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 Ana Encarnación 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--Vida social y costumbres Centros médicos--Illinois--Chicago Puertorriqueños--Illinois--Chicago--Condiciones sociales Renovación urbana--Illinois--Chicago Puerto Rico--Autonomía y movimientos independentistas 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_Encarnacion_Ana Title A name given to the resource Ana Encarnación video interview and biography Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Encarnación, Ana Description An account of the resource Ana Encarnación is from the San Juan metropolitan area of Puerto Rico and describes growing up there in the late 1930s and 1940s. She arrived in Chicago in the 1950s, settling in Old Town, along the border dividing Old Town from neighboring Lincoln Park. She lived on the south side of North Avenue, at the corner of Sedgewick. When the Young Lords decided in 1968 to start to defend the Puerto Ricans and the poor from being displaced, it was her dream come true to join the Young Lords Movement. She saw it as a way to help her people. Ms. Encarnación was in nursing and so she began to work in the Young Lords’ Emeterio Betances Free Health Clinic. Ms. Encarnación describes how the volunteer staff, including herself, not only provided many long hours of free services to the Puerto Ricans and poor of Lincoln Park but when money was low, they also donated from their own personal savings to keep the clinic afloat. 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 life and customs Medical care--Illinois--Chicago Puerto Ricans--Illinois--Chicago--Social conditions Urban renewal--Illinois--Chicago Puerto Rico--Autonomy and independence movements 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 2012-07-10 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/7539201754518feac03e3764db193467.pdf 516a6a11a0bfcd218d7b1e9b8310e41d PDF Text Text Young Lords In Lincoln Park Interviewee: Angel “Sal” del Rivero Interviewers: José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez Location: Grand Valley State University Special Collections Date: 7/11/2012 Biography and Description Angel “Sal” Del Rivero was born in Mexico. In the late 1950s and early 1960s he lived in Lincoln Park on Dayton Street. Later his family moved to the Lakeview Neighborhood near Wrigley Field, but he never left Lincoln Park as he traveled to it daily. Mr. Rivero became one of the original members of the Young Lords in 1959. The other original members of the Young Lords were all Puerto Rican, including Santos Guzman who moved to Lincoln Park from Philadelphia, Benny Pérez who lived on Halsted, Fermin Pérez (no relation to Benny), and David “Chicken Killer” Rivera whose regular job later was at a meat market. Mr. Rivero’s father was the neighborhood barber who cut hair from their home on Fremont and Bissell Streets, which then crossed each other where they both ended. Mr. Rivero’s brothers improvised a roller coaster ride made from wooden fruit crates that slid down the railing of their back porch stairway, racing down into the backyard until the crates finally hit ground on the cement pavement would glide it on their own. It was exhilarating until the ride ended at the fence. All the neighborhood kids enjoyed it and the Rivero kids made a mint from the nickles they charged for the rides.The first president of the Young Lords was Joe Vicente, who had Italian features. Mr. Jiménez became the last president of several because he was always in and out of jail. Mr. Vicente also lived in the Italian section of Lincoln Park, by De Paul University, on Sheffield and Belden. His cousin, Johnny Trinidad had moved from New York, to Indiana Harbor’s Steel Mill area, and then moved onto 95th and Halsted Streets. Mr. Trinidad always �was free with his opinions, especially before, after, and when he briefly popped into meetings to watch, but he rarely attended any full meeting, saying that he could not because he lived out of the neighborhood. Mr. Rivero recalls these early days, noting that the fact that ethnic youth groups lived in segregated blocks in these early days also played a big difference in their organizing. In 1959, Puerto Ricans were still scattered throughout Lincoln Park and so the Young Lords did not begin from a concentrated hangout but were spread out, trying to carve out their own place within Lincoln Park. For many this meant being targeted by white ethnic youth because they had darker skin, were Puerto Rican, or spoke Spanish. Mr. Rivero recalls the numerous stands the Young Lords made in their early days. As more Latinos and African Americans moved into Lincoln Park, Humbolt Park, Wicker Park, and parts of Lakeview through the 1950s and 1960s, youth began to unite more around national origins. Mr. Rivero describes an encounter where the Young Lords, Latin Eagles, and a whole range of northside Puerto Ricans gangs became involved. The Aristocrats were an established white gang that was led by their only Puerto Rican member, Dulio. They had argued with a Puerto Rican family and had entered into a primarily Puerto Rican housing project called California Terrace, located by Halsted and Barry near Clark Streets and threw bricks through all the windows. A war involving about 400 people began and the white Town Hall policemen hid from view. It lasted an entire week. On one of the days, the Puerto Ricans walked down Barry Street and broke out all the car windows, from Halsted to Sheffield looking for and challenging the Aristocrats in their own territory. On another occasion, a stuffed figure of a person hung by the neck from electrical wires high up in the middle of the street, resembling a lynching. The war ended when both groups met on their own and agreed to stop fighting, to avoid being arrested by the police. Mr. Rivero recalls being one of the war counselors with Mr. Jiménez and helping to resolve the conflict. While the Young Lords were transforming themselves into a human rights movement, Mr. Rivero was serving in the U.S. military. When he came out most Young Lords were opposed to the Vietnam War, although many Young Lords also served on the front lines in that war. Mr. Rivero at first resented those who opposed the war. But after Young Lord Manuel Ramos was killed by an off duty policeman, the entire Young Lords group reunited themselves for human rights. �Transcript JOSE JIMENEZ: -- you were born? ANGEL DEL RIVERO: JJ: My name is Angel. (inaudible) [professional]. ADR: Angel del Rivero. JJ: Angel del Rivero. Okay. ADR: I was born on June 9, 1948. JJ: Like everybody else, right? Everybody’s from 1948. Okay. If you can (inaudible) sound, give me your name, your date of birth, and where you were born. ADR: Okay. I was born on June the ninth, 1948. I was born in Mexico City, but I was brought to the United States as a baby, basically as a young child. JJ: Any certain part of Mexico City or is that any barrio? ADR: What part of Mexico City? The capital. JJ: Was there a neighborhood or something or --? ADR: I believe it was a place called, the translation would be the three-star [00:01:00] suburb. JJ: The three-star suburb. Okay. ADR: Which was near the famous, that place where the Indian with the Mexican Revolution that got--Hidalgo. This is where the Indian, supposedly the appearance of the Virgin Mary that came up on his cape. That wasn’t really, I don’t know, it wasn’t really that far from that particular community, which is not 1 �like a main boulevard. It goes down to that particular church. The only significance about that was that it was near where I was born. JJ: Okay. Now is your -- what was your father’s name and mother’s name? ADR: What was what now? JJ: Your father and mother’s name? What are their names? ADR: What are they? My father was [00:02:00] by trade, he had become a cabinet maker and he was working. My understanding is that he was one of the, at that time, a foreman working for Zenith Corporation and the people from the Zenith supposedly liked his work that he did and asked him to come to the United States. So he came by himself first, then sent for the rest of the family. JJ: So what year did he come? ADR: Excuse me? JJ: What year did he come? ADR: Geez, that would’ve been 1949 to 1950. JJ: About 1950. Now his name is Angel also? Is his name the same as yours? ADR: No, [00:03:00] his name is Carlos, was Carlos. He passed away. JJ: Okay. And your mom? ADR: Susanna. JJ: Anna? ADR: Excuse me? JJ: Susanna. ADR: Susanna. JJ: Susanna. Okay. And what about siblings? How many brothers and sisters? 2 �ADR: Well, I have-- my father, prior to being married to my mother, had been previously married-- must have gotten a divorce or I don’t know what occurred. I have a stepsister from that marriage. And then when he married my mother, two children were born of her: myself, and my sister. My mother had also been married. Her husband was killed. He was a doctor, [00:04:00] from what I understand, and there was also a daughter that was born to her. So, I have two stepsisters older than myself. One from my mother’s side and one from my father’s side. JJ: Do you know their names? ADR: Huh? JJ: Do you know their names or? ADR: Yeah, from my father’s side, Yolanda, still alive, lives in Mexico, and from my mother’s side, Aida, which she lives here in the United States, presently lives in the Belvidere, Illinois area. And my sister married. JJ: You grew up with her? ADR: Yeah. JJ: Okay. ADR: From my mother’s side, my sister stayed, was part of our family, my stepsister was, part of the family. We grew up together. Yolanda stayed with her mother, so she came to be part, when she was older, [00:05:00] she came to the United States to be with us as part of the family, but she really didn’t like living here, so she went back to Mexico. So that was many, many years ago. She has family. JJ: Did you mention Rosa or --? 3 �ADR: Huh? JJ: Did you mention Rosa? Is there a Rosa or did you have another sister or no? ADR: I said I have three sisters. JJ: Okay. Did you mention, I believe-- ADR: One from my father, one from my mother, and well, for my mother, two girls, because my younger sister, Mary. JJ: Was one of them called Rosa? ADR: Rosa? JJ: Yeah. ADR: (shakes head no) JJ: You don’t have a sister. Okay. ADR: I don’t know. JJ: There’s no Rosa. ADR: Okay. The three of them are Yolanda from my father’s side. Aida from my mother’s side, and again, from my mother, Mary, and myself. JJ: Okay. Thank you. All right. [00:06:00] Okay. So now you came at, what year did you come? ADR: That would’ve been, oh God, I’m not sure. Either it was 1957, I think. JJ: Mid-fifties? ADR: Yeah. I mean, it would’ve been around, but I’m not quite. JJ: Now, when you came, what was the first place that you lived at? ADR: Okay, the first place I lived at was at the Lincoln Park, what is now known as the Lincoln Park area, on Fullerton Avenue close to Clark. 4 �JJ: Oh, Fullerton by Clark. You lived there? ADR: Geneva Terrace is the street. Not Fullerton. Geneva Terrace. JJ: Oh, Geneva Terrace. I’m familiar with that. ADR: Right next to, right off of Fullerton Avenue. JJ: And your parents were living there? [00:07:00] ADR: Yes. JJ: At that time? ADR: Then we moved for some time. We moved over to an area again, I like want to say Arlington Street near Pulaski. We weren’t there too long and my father had moved over there. And then we moved into, I don’t know how long that lasted. I don’t think that lasted too long. And then we moved into the Halsted area, Halsted-Armitage area on Fremont. JJ: On Fremont. ADR: And that’s basically where the area that I ended up going was when we lived on Fremont as a young kid. JJ: Okay. Now, when you lived on Fremont, is that when you went to Mulligan or --? ADR: The what now? JJ: You were going to Mulligan School at that time? ADR: Right, that would have been grammar that I was attending at that point. I mean attending [00:08:00] Mulligan. JJ: Okay. So, was this south of Armitage or north of Armitage? ADR: South of Armitage on Fremont. JJ: On Fremont. Okay. 5 �ADR: It was 19-- I still remember the address going back. It was 1928. The address, the house is still standing. It’s a red, Victorian type house. JJ: Okay, 1928 Fremont. ADR: Right. It’s still standing there. JJ: Okay. And so that’s when you first came from Mexico, you moved there. ADR: Right when we were attending Mulligan. JJ: Now how old were you then? ADR: Must have been around eight, nine years old, or I would’ve to be, no, 10 years old. JJ: About 10 years old. ADR: Yeah. JJ: So, what do you remember of that neighborhood then? ADR: Well, the area was mostly, predominantly it was a white area with few [00:09:00] Hispanics of mix. I mean, the majority I would’ve said at that time, larger group would’ve been Puerto Ricans in that neighborhood, was a little bit larger group than the Mexicans. We really, not that many Mexicans around that area. Predominantly was white, Irish and Italian. Some Italians around the neighborhood. JJ: And this was around 1957, 1956. ADR: Right. That was a time that almost every corner you had just about every corner, there was always some kind of a candy shop or candy store. Specific to the area that I recall from that era would’ve been that the neighborhood community, you 6 �had the Boys Clubs that you tended to have [00:10:00] a storefront place and almost-JJ: You had a Boys Club? ADR: -- just about every corner. JJ: Around Fremont? Oh, you had a little-- ADR: Well, some were in Fremont. They were located within the neighborhood. I remember there was a Boys Club on Fremont, south of where we lived. I mean, it would’ve been about a block south of Armitage. JJ: This was a Boys Club or a --? ADR: Boy’s Club. JJ: I mean like the type that we have now, or you mean a club of kids? This was a Boys Club, a regular athletic organization? ADR: In part, it was an athletic type thing, but also for socializing. This was the time and period where there was a lot of, that came from the area of, I want to say [00:11:00] part of a movement, and it’s not the right word to in describing the type, but not so much like a movement as it’s just traditionally known. But more of, there was a lot of people in terms of creating careers that were becoming social workers. So, it was kind of creating a social services. You had the YMCA, you had the Boys Club, you had that type of thing with the idea of helping out -not helping (inaudible)-- to interact with the youths of the area. I know, and I’ve been going (inaudible) what I’ve come to learn is the idea of the existence that (inaudible)existed in Chicago, but it was sugarcoated that gangs existed during that time. So, the social programs that existed with the idea to overcome 7 �[00:12:00] the bad results from what they would’ve considered gang activity. And so that by having baseball games, basketball, a place where kids could go was supposedly to overcome creating a hardcore gang members. JJ: So, you’re saying there was a large gang population in the area? Is that what you-- ADR: Well, there always has, I mean, they always existed. They didn’t call them -instead of recognize them as what they were, that they were gangs, they would refer to as clubs. JJ: So, this is what you mean that there were Boys Clubs everywhere? ADR: Huh? JJ: This is what you mean that there were Boys Clubs because they had clubhouses, or --? ADR: Let me explain this way. The biggest, getting down to it, I mean, in growing older [00:13:00] learning things, your biggest supporter of gang activity, not because they wanted to, they thought they were doing something good -- not a good example -- I mean, what was occurring during that time was the YMCA. YMCA allowed the gangs to call themselves clubs, either provided to the extent that each so-called club would’ve had a social worker working with them, sort of like a counselor. And in reality, the counselor was there to keep an eye on the activities of that particular group, and allowing this outlet, and instead of being called a gang, again, repeating that they were called clubs, and it in fact never did away with any of the gang activity that existed during those times because of the way they implemented the programs. Part of the problem [00:14:00] that 8 �existed from doing the implementation of those particular programs was that they’re thinking that they could suppress the fights. (telephone interruption) I was saying the problem with their mentality was that by having these tournaments between the clubs. JJ: You’re talking about the YMCA? ADR: Exactly. I’m referring to coming back to the YMCA. Actually was a bad thing because instead of calming down the rivalry between the clubs or the gangs, it intensified the hatred between the groups. Because if you had a basketball tournament, for example, it would be like Young Lords against the Playboys. Well, you’re having a game, you’re going to lose. I mean, somebody’s got to lose, whether it was the Playboys [00:15:00] or it was the Young. So obviously if the Young lost, we’re pissed off at the Playboys because we lost to the Playboys. I mean, and in the pretense to geting into a fight it created that animosity and got even bigger. So instead of bringing them together, it wasn’t bringing groups together. It was just making the animosity grow much stronger between the different gangs that existed at the time. JJ: So, the YMCA was-- ADR: It was feeding into the fighting. So, the fighting never really, the gang fights never really stopped in any way because of the way they did it. I mean. JJ: So, what you’re saying is before that there were gang fights? ADR: Right, well, regardless what I’m saying is YMCA and its mentality and its wisdom of the way they were looking at things, the way they see them. This is an era that they were looking at the social programs, sociologists [00:16:00] and all 9 �these studies that were being done. I mean, I can look back that I can’t think of all the names of all the people that did some of these studies, and I might be even confused right now on one name that comes to mind is Skinner. And I’m not sure Skinner is the one that did this was whether on prisons or on the area of gangs or the socialized, the socializing of the societies or the groups, the socializing of the different groups, how they interacted with each other. The point is that the YMCA thought it was doing something good. They thought by, okay, we’re going to provide a place where they can meet. They want to have a counselor, in other words, a sponsor with each group to help them overcome the issues. We’re going to provide them tournaments for basketball, for baseball, thinking that all these things were great. When in effect, it was feeding into the animosity between [00:17:00] the different groups. They even provided a newspaper at that time where the clubs would write articles about each other from the members saying things. But all of these things, instead of doing what they thought they were getting accomplished, only intensified the hatred between the groups much stronger. JJ: So what way would you have done it? ADR: Huh? JJ: What way would you have done it? Because-- ADR: What would I have done different? JJ: Yeah, what you would’ve done? ADR: What I would’ve done and what I come from that lesson, I mean have in fact I used that is instead of separating them into their own branches, is to mix them 10 �and mixing them together within groups and bringing different people from different-- in other words, if we were going to have a tournament is break the Young Lords group. In other words, create new teams. That way, the identity of the Young Lords, the identity of the Playboys, the identity of the Gaylords is obscured. Now you had a team in there now the difference becomes the rival [00:18:00] is nonexistent. It’s between different groups. So, the co-mixing-- the breaking them up and co-mixing them-- you take all that away and in fact you end up creating new friendships that evolve out of that, would’ve evolved differently had they done that in that particular way. JJ: So, this new team would have a new name also? The new team would’ve had a new name? ADR: You remember, I got a hearing problem. JJ: Yeah. So, you’re mixing them up. ADR: By mixing them up. JJ: Would you also give them a new name? Would you give the team a new name too? ADR: I’m having-JJ: Okay, you got the Playboys and the Young Lords, you mix them up. ADR: Right. JJ: For a ball team. ADR: Right. JJ: Do you give the name a new name to the ball team? 11 �ADR: That would be-- that’s something that would’ve been to the choosing of the group. I mean, in doing that, you don’t have to be so precise to honor it. In other words, if instead [00:19:00] by simply when you mix the groups up, it really doesn’t matter. I mean, if you could say to them, call yourselves whatever you want to call yourselves. It really doesn’t matter. It gives them a new identity. I mean, sure, that they’re going to pick more than the end result is that it could be a mix of two. I mean, in some instances, some group is going to insist, we want to be called this, or someone says, we don’t give a damn, you know, name us whatever it is. The bottom line is that the ones that takes place, (audio cuts out) the point is that whatever the group wanted, whether they wanted to be called it or not, the end result is that when you have that kind of in there, the interaction becomes differently. Because a team is a team. So, in that sense, it creates a-[00:20:00] One of the things it does, it takes away the identity of the gangs. I mean, that’s a given. So, it’s very difficult for that rivalry to continue to exist between the gangs. And as I said, it creates new friendship. It becomes more difficult for fights to get started. And moving fast forward, knowing that a good example is what I did with the Young Lords when, for example, the Black Eagles from the north side dealing with the Latin Kings from Armitage and Halsted. This is where I used it successfully by bringing them together, instead of having them in there to the point that there were a number of instances where the Latin Kings from Armitage and Halsted found themselves protecting the Latin Eagles in places where they were been invited [00:21:00] by the Halsted Latin Kings to 12 �events. That would’ve been Saint Andrew’s -- I don’t-- I forgot Saint Teresa -- the school you attended St. Teresa’s? JJ: Saint Teresa. Yeah. ADR: All right, I remember being at a dance and there were other Latin Kings from other branches from the city, and they knew who I was, obviously as from the Young Lords and shit like that. JJ: So, one of your jobs in the Young Lords, was to work with the gang? ADR: Well, what I’m saying is that in particular, there were other instances. One of them that at this moment that I’m remembering is the one in St. Teresa. There was a party, a dance, and as I said, the Latin Eagles had been invited to come to the particular, then they showed up and they were talking. There was no (inaudible), but the other branches, other members from other branches from the Latin Kings were there and they wanted to, obviously as soon as they found out that the Latin Eagles were there, wanted to jump them. [00:22:00] And the ones from Halsted, if you recall, oh God, I can’t, one of Andre’s brothers-JJ: Richie? ADR: --was there. JJ: Richie? ADR: Richie. But there were others too. The one that used to be the leader, I can’t remember at the moment-JJ: (inaudible) [Papo?] ADR: (inaudible) Papo. The point was that they stopped him and one of the other leaders from the Latin Eagles, Watusi, got pissed off and they basically told him, 13 �you’re not touching them. That didn’t set well with Watusi, that’s why I never got along well with that asshole. But that proved my point. When you bring people together, it creates a friendship and even [transcended?]. It was like, no, we’re not going to let that happen. One of the things that we’re trying to teach is that the fighting among ourselves had to stop. And that was, [00:23:00] I mean, to me, I took that lesson from how the YMCA had operated and twisted it around, in other words, did the opposite of what they were doing. And it works. And I used it in other, in my experience, I have used it that in order to get people, that’s how you get it. It helps also done it in organizing activities where ironically enough, sometimes you find people coming from different areas that come into a centralized point. I mean, in the labor movement, you might have workers coming from-JJ: You’re a labor organizer today. ADR: Right. And those were in that kind of a situation of bringing people together because people always want to be with their own groups, regardless of even within the particular nationality. I mean, if you got [00:24:00] Irish people coming and you got from a particular town and you got other Irish from another town, on the surface, we might think they’re Irish, okay? To us, they’re not going to be (inaudible). But in fact, there might be rivalry between the groups we are not aware of. Same thing with Hispanics. I mean, if you bring Mexicans from the state of Jalisco and you got another place, Madero and different areas, they don’t get along. In part, if you take a look at it, again, sports plays a big deal on that. They got the sports teams and everything else. So, if one state beat the other 14 �state, they’re going to hate each other. I mean, take a look at football, you stop and think, I’m carrying it to another level. Internationally, people have been killed when they’re playing soccer games because they’re so emotional about whether the French beat the Germans or the Germans beat the English. You heard about that rivalry that existed, that they go into riots sometimes in some [00:25:00] of these games. And there has been at times people that have been bystanders that have been killed. So, my point of that is that you avoid that kind of a thing by co-mixing the groups. JJ: And you learned this because there was a gang problem in Lincoln Park in the late 1950s – ADR: Yes. JJ: -- and the YMCA detached worker program was working heavily in Lincoln Park. ADR: Right. They were heavily into that. JJ: Lincoln Park was flooded with gangs. ADR: Yes, it was filled with different-JJ: What were some of the gangs? ADR: As I said, they didn’t call them gangs. They called them clubs. JJ: Okay. What were some of the clubs in Lincoln Park? ADR: But they were gangs. JJ: Okay. What were some of the clubs called? ADR: You had the Black Eagles, the Paragons, you had the Flamingos, you had the -- I take that Flamingos back. I take that back. The Flaming Arrows. The Flaming Arrows were the ones. [00:26:00] The Flaming Arrows were the ones, which at 15 �that time we call the Hispanic Collegians because they dressed sort of like the collegian style, as I remember. They’re your Collegians. Your Black Eagles were the one that we all inspired to depart-JJ: Like college. Like college. ADR: The what? JJ: Collegians, you mean like college kids? ADR: Sort of like they dress like college students. JJ: This was the Flaming Arrows. ADR: Right. And we refer to them as such. We kind of, in other words, in other were to describe the Flaming Eagles were your preppies. JJ: Okay. Oh, because they were more like preppies. So, what about the Paragons? How did they dress? ADR: Paragons and the Black Eagles were the rivals. Obviously, the Black Eagles were there first. Paragons came in second. So, there was a rivalry between both groups. So, they commingled with each other. There was a definite rivalry between [00:27:00] both groups. JJ: So how did this rivalry play out? ADR: The rivalry was not to the point that they would, I mean, not in an open warfare between them, but certainly there were fights among the members themselves. But they conducted in at that time with the mentality in the fairness. In other words, if a member fought in, nobody would jumped in. And if your member lost, in other words, get somebody else to take, to pick up on a fight. In other words, if a Paragon and an Eagle got into a fight, and let’s say that the Paragon won the 16 �fight, all right, the only thing the Eagles could do is put up another member to fight that particular Paragon. They would not jump the guy. They would not do anything what we would consider ungentlemanly kind of thing. Another point is there was no point we’re going to jump that guy, get him by himself or whatever. They never did that. So, they accepted a defeat as such. And then they said the only way they could conquer that [00:28:00] by getting another member to come back and take the place of the member that had been defeated. JJ: So, there’s a different style of fighting then. ADR: Right. JJ: (inaudible). ADR: It was more-JJ: There was a different style of gang-- ADR: More of an honor type thing that recognized. JJ: And this was because they were mostly of the same nationality? ADR: In part because they were the same nationality. Predominantly Puerto Rican, though both the Black Eagles and the Paragons had a couple of Mexican guys that existed on them, but they were predominantly Puerto Rican. The majority of the people -- when I say people I’m referring to the males -- wanted to become Black Eagles. But in the end, such as ourselves, the Young Lords were created because of the same mentality about gang activity that existed. The Black Eagles were not about to have younger members. [00:29:00] They didn’t believe in that. You had to be of certain age to be part. In other words, you had to be, as I recall, 16 or 17 years old to be part of the group otherwise you would not be 17 �accepted. If you’re younger than that, you were out. You were not allowed to come in. So that led to some degree, that helped (inaudible), it helped the creation of how the Young Lords came to be in part. But if you asked, going back to the particular -JJ: The Young Lords were younger than the Black Eagles, right? ADR: Were younger than both in age. All of them were younger in age than the Black Eagles or the Paragons. But the creation of the Young Lords came from myself and Orlando. In telling the story is that I was, [00:30:00] my best buddy was really Orlando’s younger brother, Lupe. And I was the captain of all the patrol boys in Malaga. So obviously Lupe, he had this little titles. I was the captain of the patrol boys, and I had two lieutenants, one for what we call the north side of the school and one for the south side of the school. Obviously, I had Lupe being my best friend, I had him as one of my lieutenants. But what so happens is that he got into, somebody had gotten into a fight with one of the other guys enforcing the rules that we had. And being young kids we sometimes took things a little bit further than needed to be. I mean, we used physical force when we did things. Somehow Lupe had gotten into argument with one of the other patrol boys and not following what he was supposed to be doing, [00:31:00] and the guy wanted to jump Lupe. So, what I did at that point, when this came in, I jumped into the fight and ended up beating the crap out of the other guy. My other patrol boy. That led to Orlando saying -- me and Orlando did not get along. People were not part of this. Okay. Matter of fact, I had a fight. JJ: He fought a lot of other people too. 18 �ADR: Yeah, I fought Orlando. When I first met him we had a fight. Sometimes I think that happens -JJ: I think everybody fought. ADR: Huh? JJ: I think everybody fought Orlando. ADR: I did. JJ: That’s the way-- ADR: First time within meeting him. JJ: To be his friend, you had to fight him. Would you agree or no? What do you think? ADR: Well, I’m not following your-JJ: Okay. To be Orlando’s friend, that you had to fight him for him to-- ADR: When I first met him. JJ: To trust you. For him to trust you. ADR: The very [00:32:00] first meeting I had with him, or when I got to know him, I can’t remember. I mean, you’re asking (inaudible), but it was a week or a month. I had a fight with him. That’s all I can tell you. I mean, going back in time. So, we didn’t talk to each other. In other words, in whatever period, whether it was months or whatever occurred, (inaudible) because of the dynamics that-- it’s stupid, dynamics being the situation that existed, Orlando would go his way. I would go my way. But Lupe is one of those natural things that happen when you’re growing up. You end up, we became immediate friends. I mean, we liked each other. We seem to have a lot of things in common. And to that degree, to 19 �me, that’s why I said we became best of buddies. That had nothing to do with Orlando. JJ: Now, where did they live at? Where did Lupe and Orlando live? What street? ADR: Well, at that time, Orlando, we got to remember something. Orlando, we were in the same grade. But you got to remember, during [00:33:00] that time, the public school system, you attended Catholic school system. JJ: I attended later. I started on the public. ADR: On the public school system, it existed what they call, they had midyear. In other words, in the first grade, second grade, whatever was two parts to the grade. So, if you came in the odd part of the year, you would, stay on the B section, let’s say, because it was the first six months, B was the second following six months. So, if you came in, in the fall, you were part of the B group. If you started out in the spring, in other words, when you enter the public school system, you’re part of the A group, you went into it. They decided to eliminate, around that time during that area, they decided to eliminate that particular system that they had. They also had started creating the upper grade centers that existed. So, I know that [00:34:00] upper grade center, Arnold Upper Grade Center, which was located on Halsted, I mean on Armitage, well, actually on Burling Street, east of Halsted and right in front of Waller, what was known then as Waller High School, which is now called Lincoln Park School. During that time, they had rebuilt the school that had burned down. I can’t recall how it had happened, but Arnold Upper Grade Center, at one point during that would’ve been the early 1960s, it burned down. They came in, built this great new school, Upper Grade Center 20 �that only served the seventh and eighth grade. Now, Orlando was in the different group. When we had our class, we were all part of the same class, but there was a distinction between, and the grade as we were going in, Orlando was in the, as I would recall, would’ve been in the A group. And when they moved, they transferred [00:35:00] him to Arnold Upper Grade Center six months before I got- before me and Lupe went in where me and Lupe were on the group behind his, just to explain how things existed at that time. The point though, coming back in here is that when we had the significance was this particular fight where I had found myself defending Lupe and jumping in because I had to let Lupe do the fighting. When he got into the fight, they were going to fight with the kids, all the boys, we were all there standing. And he started fighting and I noticed immediately that he was losing the fight. And I jumped in without any hesitations and started. That’s when I started beating the crap out of the other guy. Orlando, when he found out about it, had come over to see what had happened. And when he found out what I had done, his whole (inaudible), in other words, whatever [00:36:00] rivalry existed between us sort of ended right at that point because I had defended his brother, his younger brother, and we started hanging around together. And very rapidly, because we hung around the Armitage area, we’re hanging around with a whole bunch of, I want to say with want of a better word, the white kids in the neighborhood. JJ: So, you and Orlando were hanging out. ADR: Right, I mean Orlando. And there was another guy named Sal [Mineo?] that was hanging around the area. He’s the one that kind of, we began to feel sort of with 21 �the white kids, that we felt awkward with them. We really didn’t have-- I mean, we had a lot of things in common with him. And then there was a lot of things that we did not have in common. In other words, we felt a little bit of the prejudice that existed, sometimes unspoken. But [00:37:00] we knew it was there. And unlike, I don’t know about other Hispanics what I mean when I look back at those things certainly because we were more-JJ: Was it prejudice or what would you call it? ADR: The what now? JJ: Was it a prejudice thing or was it just different nationality? ADR: Mostly I would have to say they were mostly Irish. JJ: No, I’m saying, was it, you said you felt awkward. What made you feel awkward? ADR: It’s a good question. Sometimes you just know, you feel things, what they call the gut feeling. Okay. They didn’t have, let me put it this way. Orlando, [00:38:00] myself, I mean, growing up, we were not the timid type individuals. I mean, we were challenged or something would occur. Obviously, we weren’t afraid to, whoever confronted us to fight back. JJ: Was Mineo the same way or --? ADR: The what now? JJ: Mineo, how was he-- ADR: Mineo hung around with him. And Mineo was more knowledgeable at that point, obviously about gangs. When I say that, it’s a nice way of saying, I mean that he was prone to be doing things, whatever those things meant. 22 �JJ: Because actually, I first met Mineo at Franklin school over by Sedgwick and by Cabrini-Green. And he had a Puerto Rican gang there. So, he was already in a gang there. And then I saw him [00:39:00] on Maud, he had another gang there before he got together with the Young Lords. ADR: Right, but in hanging out in here-JJ: Is that what you mean? That he had-- ADR: Well, kind of a mix in that there were other older, a couple other individuals. We came, what started the whole thing when we decided to create the group along with the help of Sal Mineo, was that I got into a fight with one of the older white kids in the neighborhood. And it was a situation where I had come up with my bike and I’ve been riding it, and I stopped on it, and the guy was like, “Get the fuck off the back of my ride.” And I said, “No, you’re not.” And obviously the guy was older than me, and that led into a fight. Mineo jumped in, [00:40:00] kind of saving my ass from getting my ass kicked pretty. I mean, I was fighting an older guy. I wasn’t going to win the fight, obviously. But he jumped in. Orlando was there too. So that kind of made us think, and as I said, it was a gut feeling that we had. It wasn’t something that was openly said, but it was like we felt that we didn’t belong there. So, we talked about it and we said we wanted to start a group of our own. Knowing what you’re telling but it made sense that Mineo provided the means to create the group. And then we got in touch with -- there was Fermin. I mean, from school you had Fermin, Benny, some of the other guys that we had gotten together and said, “Yeah, we need,” -- I know that you came in later prior to the group. 23 �JJ: I actually came in, I was at the first meeting. ADR: Okay. [00:41:00] But what I mean, when we got, prior to having the first meeting, the ones where we had gone together. JJ: Oh yeah. You guys were in school together. ADR: We had gotten together. JJ: At that time, I was at St. Teresa’s ADR: And gotten together. We were talking about it when they came in there. So initially when we had gotten together with Mineo was-JJ: I remember you guys-- ADR: Fermin, Benny, because we were in the same school we were in. JJ: You used to come to St. Teresa’s, which was right next door. St. Teresa’s was a block away from Mulligan. ADR: Well, yeah. JJ: You guys used to come to St. Teresa’s. ADR: What now? JJ: Do you remember coming to St. Teresa’s and waving at the window? ADR: I’ll talk about that in a minute. (laughs) But we, that’s when I said, we’re all in public school. You were attending Catholic school at that time. So that’s what I’m saying. Benny, Fermin, myself, Orlando -- Benny as I recall, was not in school. JJ: David Rivera was there and there was his cousin, Orlando. ADR: I don’t [00:42:00] recall. And then he’s the one that brought Gilbert. JJ: I remember Gilbert. 24 �ADR: Gilbert was an older guy. He hung around with a lot of the Blacks from the Cabrini projects, and he’s the one that brought a guy over. JJ: He and Mineo were friends. They were from the same gang, right? That’s what it was. They were connected. ADR: Right. And around that time, when you had come in as part of, during that time, we used to go out there and taunt you because we used to go in front of the school when you were in school, and we would be calling you out when you were at St. Teresa’s because of the way the glass is, when we’d go down to the school to try to get you out. I don’t know if that got you in trouble or not, but I know that we used to do that to you when you were in school. So, from that, Gilbert set up a meeting with some Blacks. [00:43:00] They turned out to be the Cobras. During that meeting, that particular representative came and told us about socalled facts of life about, because we created, we called ourselves at the very beginning, we called ourselves the Egyptian Cobras. JJ: Egyptian Lords, the Egyptian Lords. ADR: The Egyptian Lords. JJ: Yeah, because you had the Egyptian Cobras and the Vice Lords. ADR: Okay, JJ: So, we tried to unite both. ADR: You’re right. I stand corrected on that -- the Egyptian Lords, because we like the word Lords, and we were, so we create… Now, he told us that once we became part of the gang, we were part of the Cobras, one of their branches, were bound to serve, supposedly for life. This is the Black mentality during that era. And that 25 �was that there were only three ways. The three reasons that you left to [00:44:00] stop being a part of the Cobras or any of the branches was that if you went into the service, you were up. If you’re married. And the third way is, if you die and you got killed. Now looking back, it was obvious why they chose those two things. The guy was married, having a family or whatever reasons. It was no longer considered, in other words, to be part of a gang member, though they did have, if the women submitted themselves to the group, the same rules applied to them. But it was a total different, I think we were too young to understand certain things at that point of what that meant to me. I realized now, if you look back, there would’ve been prostitution because anybody, any of the women that would’ve been coming in would basically to serve the needs of the males and whatever means and enterprises that they would’ve had about making money. [00:45:00] Now, I do know that when we created that, Gilbert, the one that informed us that the Cobras was basically, for all purposes that was done with, that wasn’t functioning anymore. I found out in the service, when I went into the Army, what really had happened. And that was because in the service, as a matter of fact, when I went in, there was the number of, a couple of Playboys. I mean, I realized the guys that were coming into the service, those particular from Chicago, were part of gangs. And in my -JJ: Most of, (inaudible) oh, so if you were -- ADR: Yeah. And in my group -- yeah, in my squad -JJ: They were a gang problem in Chicago, right? That’s what you’re saying. 26 �ADR: Yes. I mean, the people that when I enlisted all, and I’ll get into that, but I mean, the point is that, going back to connect the two things that I learned. [00:46:00] When I went in my platoon, there were a number of Blacks, not just a couple. There were a number of Blacks, but there was two or three from the south side, and that had been part of the Cobra gang. JJ: Part of the Egyptian Cobras. ADR: Right. And one of the guys told me what had occurred that I didn’t know it at the time, what had occurred at the prior years when we had become part of the Cobras. All he knew was that I was a Young Lord. When he found out that I had -- from the north side, they tended to look at us different -- but he’s the one that told me that the Vice Lords were the ones that had basically destroyed the Cobras. What had happened was that he said that, and it would’ve been in the early 1960s when I was think our time, maybe 1960, [00:47:00] I don’t know if it was 1961, 1962 or somewhere around that area. Anyway, in the south side around 63rd Street, on a Saturday, and one of the boulevards or the street, wherever this had occurred, the Vicers at that time was the younger group, aggressive. That was growing up, challenging the Cobras in their territory and the fighting that was going on. The Cobras were the older, that were into prostitution, whatever illegal enterprises that they had, but primarily would’ve been prostitution. And I don’t think so much because at that time, drugs was not that, I mean, it existed, but not as heavily as it would become later. JJ: So they were into-- ADR: But they were into drugs, whereas the Vicers were not at that time. 27 �JJ: But they were into an enterprise. ADR: Cobras were already into drugs. JJ: No, but I’m saying they had an enterprise. They weren’t-- ADR: They had what? JJ: They weren’t just fighting for protection. [00:48:00] They were trying to run the prostitution game. ADR: Right. JJ: Okay. ADR: All right. And whatever. And as I said, I don’t think the drug trades were that big, but it existed probably the nickel and dime type business, type of business. They were at the very level. JJ: So, what was the purpose of the Young Lords? Why did-- ADR: Well, the point is that when the Vice Lords in the area, I’m just trying to explain the situation, the way it was created. The Vicers were at that time were not into drugs. They were, I mean, obviously they wanted to be in, the thing is that they killed three or four guys, three of the leaders, four of the leaders in daylight, which was a big deal for that time that they shot them down and killed them on the streets. Instead of waiting in the dark or finding some other place. They did this in broad daylight, took down, [00:49:00] which put, obviously created a shock for the Cobras when they got down like that. I also found out interestingly enough, that the leader of the Cobras was actually a Puerto Rican guy. Black Puerto Rican. I didn’t know. Yeah, that’s what he was-- I was told by the Black guys. He said the guy, we known that he was a Puerto Rican. Actually, he was 28 �Puerto Rican, Black Puerto Rican, which you can remember Gilbert was the same thing. We used to, at the beginning we all identified Gilbert as being Black. But in fact, Gilbert was a Black Puerto Rican, and I don’t think, if you recall, Gilbert didn’t see himself as Hispanic. He saw himself as a Black, if you recall. JJ: Right. ADR: All right. So regardless of that, I mean, those are the things that existed during that time. So we went, when we did (inaudible), knowing that we were no longer part of the Cobras, we didn’t [00:50:00] know what happened. We weren’t aware of what happened. All we know is that Cobras were no longer in existence or the branch, whatever came down. We then decided to go on our own because we know we could not be part of the Paragons. We could not be part of the Black Eagles. Because they didn’t want us. That forced us to create what we said, where we find ourselves to create our own group. And we had a meeting about that as to what we were going to call ourselves. You were part of that along with the Orlando, Fermin, and the rest of us. Now, the original, what you refer to as the original Young Lords, we’re all the same age. You had also, remember, you have Carlos, Raymond’s brother. [00:50:40] JJ: Okay. ADR: Part of the, some of the other guys. But there were basically seven of us that created the group, and we were all born on the same year. We’re months apart from each other. JJ: Nineteen forty-- ADR: Nineteen forty-eight. 29 �JJ: Nineteen forty-eight. [00:51:00] ADR: The eight year-- we’re all in, born in 1948. JJ: We should have called ourselves the 48ers. (laughter) I’m just kidding. ADR: Well, anyway, we did it up around Gray Center at night with one of the social workers where we were, that we had met, and we decided on our name. We came up with the name, the Young Lords. JJ: Who was the social worker? ADR: Huh? JJ: Who was the, do you remember the social worker? ADR: Who? JJ: Do you remember who the social worker was that met us there? ADR: All we know is that we all wanted to marry her. JJ: Oh, it was a woman. ADR: A woman. A girl. She was in her early twenties. JJ: I thought you were going to say John [Tardy?]. ADR: Not the guy that was in the room we met in. She-- we were all, we used to go there just to go to look at her. Remember? JJ: I remember that now. ADR: Remember the election of 1963 when Kennedy visited that school? JJ: Oh, I didn’t know that. I didn’t know that. ADR: He did. JJ: Okay, so that was the Arnold Upper Grade Center. ADR: And it was in Chicago he had visited. 30 �JJ: The Arnold Upper Grade Center. ADR: Right. He [00:52:00] had visited the school. I’m not sure if it was actually him or the brother, but I know it was one of the, whether it was Robert or Kennedy himself that visited, but it was one of the -- that I know he visited the school. JJ: One of the Kennedys? ADR: Yeah. At nighttime. Not at daytime. It was during nighttime that he attended the-JJ: Now how did we get from, I’m going to get back to this, but how did we get -- the neighborhood is all white, mostly white, right? How do we get all of a sudden all these Puerto Ricans and Mexicans in there? ADR: We were mixed. We lived in the neighborhood. JJ: We were mixed. ADR: Yeah. We lived in the neighborhood with them. JJ: We were spread apart. We weren’t together. ADR: I mean, different houses. It’s not like we were all together. I mean, Orlando, as I recall, was in the same block that I lived, but he was further south of-JJ: You were on Fremont. He was in Bissell. You were in Fremont. [00:53:00] He was in Bissell. I was on Dayton. ADR: Correct. I’m trying to think if he was in Fremont. Yeah, correct. I stand corrected. You’re right. Okay. Benny was also in Bissell, but he was closer to-he lived closer to Armitage. Okay. Where Orlando had a house-JJ: Where was Fermin? Where did Fermin live? ADR: Fermin lived on Clifton, which I -- where later, which is West. 31 �JJ: Okay. And Carlos [Montañez?] lived on Halsted. Halsted and Willow. ADR: Where? JJ: Halsted and Willow. Okay. Carlos Montañez. So, we had all the streets covered. We had-- ADR: Well, I mean, the point is that almost all the guys that lived within the neighborhood, they lived in different, I mean, it was a mixed group with nobody in there, but we were still very much the minority in that time. JJ: Well, because I remember a lot of them, because I mean, my mother [00:54:00] was doing catechism classes for the-- ADR: Wait, what I’m trying to say, you didn’t have a flight, as opposed to when Blacks moved into a neighborhood during that era. If Blacks came into a particular area, you’d have the whites immediate leaving and masses quickly dispersing some of the neighborhood. Armitage and Halsted, it’s a matter of fact, if you look at the statistically, yes, it became heavily -- not heavily -- it became Hispanic, but not predominantly Hispanic. And actually then the trend reversed itself, and then it became white again. JJ: Okay. But all of a sudden it started flooding though, right? Or no, because I remember Halsted and Dickens, that restaurant, it used to be all whites. ADR: Correct. JJ: And then overnight it was all Hispanic. ADR: No, it took years. It wasn’t really the-JJ: It took years. [00:55:00] It took years. But it cleaned up. It became-- 32 �ADR: Right. It changed. It changed gradually, and then it went back. It reversed itself and went back. But the reality, you’re thinking about that the neighborhood never really, now it went through a rough period, but that rough period, you have to recognize it. What the-JJ: Well, I think at nighttime you didn’t see too many whites in the street. ADR: Look, I think what messed up the neighborhood. JJ: I mean, I remember walking through there night, I didn’t see too many, too many whites. ADR: What messed up the neighborhood was drugs. JJ: Okay. ADR: Okay. That’s what brought-JJ: When did that come in? When did the drugs come in? ADR: That would’ve been in the early, the early 1970s. JJ: Early 1970s. ADR: Okay. JJ: But we’re jumping from 1950 to 1970, so I’m trying to-- ADR: There [00:56:00] was no, that’s what I’m saying. JJ: In the 1960s, what was going on in the 1960s? What type of population? From 1960 to 1969. ADR: By 1968, we’re going to go back a little bit. JJ: Okay. ADR: In 1968, the area was more-- there were a lot more Hispanics, but there was certainly no flight of whites in the area. 33 �JJ: Not 1968, right? ADR: There was no flight. They were there. JJ: Okay. ADR: They were there. The [voting?] majority, I mean, you have to look at the whole, you can’t just look at-JJ: Do you not remember on Dayton and Willow and those areas? ADR: See, you’re looking at small enclaves, if I’m using the right terminology, small areas that existed. Because if you take a look at who ran, who was the-- not for any other reason, but what was the color of the skin of the ward alderman? JJ: The alderman, McCutcheon? ADR: Okay. JJ: Yeah. He was white. I mean, all of ’em were white before it was [00:57:00] (inaudible). ADR: All right, but the population, how do you think they were in there? And [Patty?] was-JJ: Only white, one of your corrupt whites. ADR: Fine. JJ: Criminals. ADR: I’m not going to dispute that they were the corrupt whites or not. But the point is that no-JJ: It was a white community, that’s what I’m saying. When we moved in, it was an entirely, completely white community. ADR: Well, I’m not trying to argue with you. I’m just trying to show systematically. 34 �JJ: I don’t want to argue. ADR: No, no, no. JJ: This is your story. ADR: Look, one of the things that did occur, obviously what you refer to as the urban removal of the Hispanics is that Daley succeeded, where you did have the, I’m using the word enclaves, if I’m using it properly, that existed where those buildings were turned down, torn down, torn. You think that happened-- that would’ve been [00:58:00] the area of example. There were like two, three blocks on Sheffield as you reach Lincoln Avenue. That would’ve been south of Lincoln and Wrightwood. In other words, where you got Wrightwood, you got Sheffield that became a park. My question to you is what buildings were there? All buildings, housing buildings with multiple units, predominantly Hispanics, Puerto Ricans, living on that. I take it to Halsted, which is the land where we ended up in. Halsted the same thing, where housing buildings came down. If you take a look at all the areas with a building, if you go back and take a look at those places, all those buildings that were in there, where you would’ve had what you considered to be a major -- I’m looking at back in terms of looking backwards. I can see what occurred. And so the areas that got torn down, that [00:59:00] became parks that became different, they were completely obliviated were areas where you have predominantly a lot of Puerto Ricans or Hispanics where they got rid of them. They didn’t get rid of anything else. If you go around in there, you didn’t see masses of homes being torn down. Why? JJ: They didn’t tear them down. 35 �ADR: Because the whites were living in those houses. JJ: Right, right. ADR: Oh, no, no. JJ: There were always whites there. No, I give you that. ADR: They were the whites. They, Daley was not about the mass with the whites, with the voters. How much is the other one? JJ: Puerto Ricans were not the only ones living there, but they did have a large concentration. ADR: Look, the point I’m trying to make is that they came in there during that time. If a Hispanic lived in a house on a flat, in other words, the houses were what we call flat, rental of a flat, your home is not going to get torn down. JJ: But I’m saying from Dayton and North Avenue to Dayton [01:00:00] and Willow. ADR: That was different. JJ: That was all Puerto Rican. The whole-- ADR: Look, they needed the Boulevard, the extension of the-- my point is that if you go back where they made the move, in other words here, you have-JJ: You had gypsies on Burling. It was kind of each neighborhood. They had a little grouping of people for a while. And then the whole neighborhood there were Puerto Ricans, like everywhere, all around, all through the neighborhood. But they were not the only ones. ADR: You had more Puerto Ricans living on buildings. JJ: They increased. 36 �ADR: With these multiple units. It might’ve been like, let’s say 30, 40 apartments, three, four story. No higher than four floors in most of these buildings. But there were multiple units in there. So roughly in a four building that was large, might’ve been 30, 40 units in it. And if you go back and [01:01:00] you look back, that’s why I said, if you look at Halsted, okay, other rows would’ve been east of on Halsted street between Armitage and Dickens, where we had the hotdog stand. You would recall there was nothing but buildings, multiple unit buildings there. That went down back of, take a look at the-JJ: You’re talking about the whole block. ADR: The whole block got knocked down with multiple units. JJ: Multiple units of Puerto Ricans. ADR: Take it back up further north. JJ: That was where People’s Park. ADR: There were multiple units-JJ: Later, People’s Park later-- it became People’s Park later. ADR: Okay. And not only that, but you take a look at in the back of the other one that got where they had a lot of more buildings also. And then the whole area that got taken down would’ve been by Lincoln. Lincoln over there near the hospital. That would’ve been almost directly south of Waller High School. But there was another area where you had that, I’m trying to [01:02:00] remember. That’s all-it’s like a park now there that had all been knocked down. JJ: So, wait a minute. Are you telling me that there was selectively picking certain buildings? 37 �ADR: Yeah, he selectively was able to target the areas where you have more, if you take a look at and recall, man, use your memory because you need to help me out with this. Remember, let’s go back to Sheffield. Wrightwood. And you got Lincoln Avenue. That’s a park now. That whole section, remember that all being, all those multiple unit buildings that were there? JJ: Exactly. I remember. ADR: I don’t how many blocks, three or four blocks. JJ: Puerto Ricans. ADR: All Puerto Ricans. JJ: And there were some Hillbilly in there too, because Cisco-- ADR: It doesn’t matter. But the point is that went down. JJ: It was [poor, yeah, it was poor?]. ADR: Okay. If you take a look at those multiple units and all the places that existed, they’re all gone. The only thing that never went [01:03:00] down, I mean, I’m not saying they didn’t touch the house in certain areas, predominantly. He never went after areas where you had houses built. I’m not saying he didn’t knock that down on the north side. Very minimal. Okay. Very minimal that that was done. It wasn’t done in masses. It wasn’t done--whole blocks were never, and you can’t recall. You can’t even pinpoint to me where you would’ve had all the owners of a particular block that had your, they had houses that got knocked down. It didn’t exist. Didn’t happen. JJ: No, no. You’re correct. Because in Lincoln Park there was a lot of rehabilitation of the houses versus trying to knock ’em down. They didn’t want to knock down 38 �that many units. But now what you’re saying that’s significant is that the units that they were knocking down were Hispanic units. ADR: Right. JJ: Is that what you’re saying? I’m not putting words in your mouth. ADR: No, no, that’s correct. That’s exactly what I’m saying. [01:04:00] The ones that went down were predominantly Hispanic units in there. And the urban renewal when it was done. JJ: Where I lived at in Dickens, they didn’t go down. They remodeled it, but they raised our rents and we had to move. So, it was the same thing too. But I know what you’re saying. ADR: Well, with the multiple units, I mean, what are the costs of the buildings when they went back up? JJ: Right? ADR: I mean, couldn’t (inaudible). JJ: They couldn’t. No, but they did knock those down is what I’m saying. ADR: They weren’t, and I would correct you on that, they’re not really multiple units using today’s terminology would’ve been a townhouse or a condominium is what it ends up being. Big difference from what you consider to be a multiple unit. Big, big, big difference between the two. So, you can, I mean, to me is you’re using wrong terminology if you’re referring to these areas that were rebuilt with, units [01:05:00] were not the kind of units that existed prior to. JJ: What type of units existed? 39 �ADR: They were minimized. And as I said, they were using today’s terminology, it would’ve been what we call now condominiums or townhouses that were put back in their places where they did this. JJ: They made condominiums and townhouses. But I mean, what were they before? What were they before they were townhouses? What type of structures? ADR: Well, we never had, remember there was no-JJ: What type of buildings were they before they became townhouses and condominiums, you said they were multiple units? ADR: Multiple units on a building. It’s like the house, like the building next door to me. Okay. I don’t know how many units, it’s got to be -- it’s three, four, three or four floors. You’re got an apartment where maybe one bedroom type. So, I would not be surprised if there’s 40, 50 units. [01:06:00] And that’s what I’m saying, what it existed in the area ended where you had 40, 60 units in a building. JJ: Right. ADR: And all those places got knocked down. JJ: And those where the Hispanics or Latinos were. ADR: Exactly. JJ: Okay. Okay. So now did you have to move out at all or no? ADR: What now? JJ: Did you have to move out at all, or no? ADR: Did I? JJ: Did you have to move out of Lincoln Park? Were you forced out or no? ADR: No. 40 �JJ: Okay. You moved out. ADR: No, I moved out because of the problems we got into. One of my parents-- I wasn’t aware that what ended up-- now you’re moving forward into what occurred in later years. JJ: Okay. No, go ahead. ADR: Why I ended up (inaudible)? What happened was we used to steal cars. You know that. [01:07:00] And while we weren’t aware, there was an Italian kid that used to hang around, an older guy. We used to steal the cars for joy rides if for no other reason. At that time, most of the time we had not grown apart at all. We were in a different kind of a situation as what we were now then as the Young Lords. Orlando and myself tended to drift together, always being together. You sometimes would be with us, Fermin and Benny would always be together. The point was that if somebody, and planning the dynamics of our, I hate that word. I don’t explain it, but what I’m trying to say is that if somebody saw us, they thought that we were not together. And it occurred too many times throughout those early years because they thought [01:08:00] they didn’t see us together other than when we had a meeting or something that we would attend the meeting. We’d be there at the meetings, we would meet at the YMCA or other areas where we needed to meet when we were there. But I can recall as many times, I mean I didn’t remember Division [Pete?] trying to challenge us and there’s other people, almost all the ones that ended up becoming our friends later in life thought that they could take over the Young Lords because they thought we were separate and they would come to-- 41 �JJ: They actually had a branch of the Young Lords (inaudible). ADR: Right, I mean, because they wanted to take over becoming the president (inaudible). And then so we, the seven of us and I always refer to this (inaudible), but we were the ones that dictated without realizing I’m not looking back and anything that we would say this is the way it’s going to be, but they never saw us together. We were not hanging around together with each other. As I said, we tended to differ apart from each other doing whatever we were doing on a daily basis. [01:09:00] That type of thing to me led to believe that people that came in and said, “I got an opportunity. These guys ain’t together. I’m going to take over.” Thinking they could do that. To their surprise, any time they would try to do that, it’s basically, “What the hell are you doing? You’re not taking over. We’re running things. And that’s the way it is.” That meant that most of the time, I’m not looking for any other reason, but is that Orlando ended up beating the shit out of the guys. I mean, those things would occur when the fight get started. Before we could say anything. Orlando didn’t hesitate, he was like a rabbit, he’d fucking jump and beat the crap out of, you know, and that would end the whole -- things like that, that would occur. So anyway, the thing was that the referring to this thing about the cars in which you were talking with the service that he had this Italian kid that was hanging around with [01:10:00] us, older guy, and the only reason, obviously he was hanging around with us because he knows we were using cars for joyrides. I mention that because we used to go up to Evanston. We used to drive, I mean, we would take out a car from the Lincoln area, we’d steal a car, go up north and then steal another car 42 �and bring it back. We never came back and said it’s not like-- we knew better than to ride a car. We would never drive a car for more than a day. Not even a day. I mean, if we went one destination, we would dump that car. We’re not stupid enough because we knew the police and somebody in there that would know about it, they might have. Even the technology that exists today didn’t exist then, we weren’t stupid enough to take a chance that the plates of somebody else, that the police would know about it, that there was a stolen vehicle. So, what we would do is we would steal a shitload of vehicles. So, on a typical day for joyriding, we might end up stealing two, three cars. JJ: [01:11:00] And this was a fad that was going on, right? This was like a fad. How long did it last? This taking of cars for joyriding? ADR: Well, remember I’m jumping into the future from going back from the early end. When we were a little older, we ended up, we used to go to Evanston because we ended up meeting people that we helped out on a fight, which I get later on. JJ: We had a branch later on, we had a branch. ADR: You call it a branch, it really wasn’t branch, but people we had gotten to know, they become part of the Young Lords and we didn’t really-- we went out there because we liked the girls from the north side. JJ: I was going to say-- ADR: That was our motive. Our motive was the women. So, we went up there and so we didn’t have money, not even to get on the train. We used to know how to sneak into the train, but we didn’t want to go on trains. So, we would steal a car, go up north, be out there with them, and on return back we would steal [01:12:00] 43 �another car and bring it back over to the neighborhood. All right. What we didn’t know was that that guy that sometimes used to hang around wanted to know when we were dumping the cars, they were taking those vehicles that we had stolen and taking them into what is not what I would call it, a shop where they would strip them and just did whatever they did with their parts. They got caught and it would’ve been whatever it was. I know one thing I’m precise is about the date because of when it occurred would’ve been in late February or the very beginning of March. I take it back when that happened, because I know the date when it occurred, because it’s something that’s a significant date, was on Friday, the 13th when it occurred, March the 13th. And I never forgot that date. When the guy had been picked up and [01:13:00] obviously with the day before, we don’t know. I don’t remember when he had ended. We know that he gets picked up. We know they come after us on the 13th, we had a gang fight that night, as a matter of fact, with some other guys in the back of Waller. It was going to be a gang fight. But we already had stolen a vehicle that sometimes we used to use in gang fights to ram the other vehicles from our posts inside. And at any rate, I got the message and somebody in there that we already knew and the word had gone out quickly. So that time that the cops had been asking, they were looking for us. And when I called home, my mother got on the phone and told me the police had been over here. And obviously my father was going to be stupid enough, was pissed off at me and said, because they already told him that they were looking for us we were stealing cars. I wasn’t about to go home. [01:14:00] I knew better. I mean at that point. So, Orlando, myself and the Irish guy we 44 �called, that was part of our group back then, Jerry, we call him Mad Irish. We decided not to at that point. We said, nobody’s going home. We’re going to get a big, we weren’t worrying about the goddamn police, we were worrying about goddamn parents beating the shit out of us. So, we didn’t go home. And the bottom line was that at that point, Orlando, the girl that he liked, talked him out of it from the north side, talked him out of going with us. When we took off the mentioning the group, these were the Cubans part of the Cuban group that had come over the first wave of immigrants that came from Cuba when Castro had taken over. To us, to our surprise, you got to remember these were white skinned Cubans. [01:15:00] You couldn’t tell the blonde blue eye and all that kind of shit. My thing here is this, they had told us that when we ran away, we went over there to stay over there with them, that we could go to Miami with their family down there. We told them what had happened, blah, blah, and that bullshit. So, Orlando got talked out of it by the girl and me and Jerry decided we’re not going. We took off. We ended up in-- we did make it all the way into Miami. We did spend a couple of days in jail in Georgia, and that’s another story I don’t want to at the moment, but we ended up getting picked up in Dublin, Georgia. At the time we were minors, we were put in jail and then they let us go. Anyway, all that was over. JJ: So, we were going jail all over the country. I went to jail in Saint Louis. [01:16:00] ADR: You want me to tell you about that? 45 �JJ: Oh, you know about the St. Louis one too, huh? What about Saint Louis? No, no. I want you to tell me about that. I’m sorry. We were going to jail all over the country because I went to jail in Saint Louis, that’s what I’m saying. ADR: You want to know about Georgia? JJ: Yeah. Tell me about Georgia. ADR: Okay. What happened was that, all right, we stole a car here and we took that vehicle. We’d had no money, really, nothing to speak of really. But like I said, because we were trying to make it into Miami and staying with the relatives from the people from the north side. And we ran out of money with the vehicle that we had stolen. So, we would try to sell the tire, the spare tire and all that. We had no money whatsoever. So, we had to dump the car. I would have to say near Dublin, Georgia. All I know is that the town is just something that [01:17:00] stayed in-- the name stayed with me. The town exists: Dublin, Georgia. We were hitchhiking at that point. We started hitchhiking and we got picked up. They saw us hitch, I mean you got to think back then we were what, 16 years old or yeah, 16 years old. We got leather jackets and in Georgia we stood out. In town we had these shoes with the boots like boots, shoes that we used to have that. They used to be the style back then. Yeah. JJ: Boots, shoes, I remember. Yeah. ADR: And we stood out. So, the cops picked us up. JJ: Half a boot. ADR: Exactly. We get picked up and by the police in Georgia, in Dublin, Georgia. And they took us in. And so, the story was that when they put us [01:18:00] in, they 46 �wanted to know who we were, blah, blah, blah. And me and Jerry concocted this story. I mean, it was funny now that I looked at it. It wasn’t funny back then, but we said we were cousins. You looking at a Latino and you’re looking at a white where the co-mix in the races wasn’t that back in those areas, particularly in those times. So, they’re trying to figure out how in the hell can you be cousins? We said, “Well, our mothers are sisters. One of ’em married a Hispanic and the other one married a white.” That’s why obviously that was believable. And what we did is when they picked us up, we got rid of our wallets immediately. Okay. We dumped them into the backseat of the underneath, not just with the (inaudible) underneath the vehicle. We had the bad luck that they were changing vehicles, they were getting vehicles at that [01:19:00] time. They picked us up during the day, they didn’t pick us up, it wasn’t at night. It was during the day they picked us up. So, they take us in to question us. They want to know who we are, and they’re trying to find out. So, we’re not giving them any information. We’re making a bogus -- we were settled on the name. We weren’t using our real names. And as I said, when we tell them, so they’re trying to find who we are. They don’t know. No identification, no nothing. But because they were changing vehicles or maybe one of the police officers got wise enough, might’ve decided to go back. What they told us is that they found, they found our wallets because they were changing the vehicles and they took the seats out and anyway, they found the wallet. So obviously they got two different names. They know now we’re not related to each other. When they called Chicago, obviously they were told those two guys are wanted by the police in Chicago. And they 47 �made the check. Obviously they would’ve called the Chicago Police Department, wanted to find out who [01:20:00] we were. So, they find out we were wanted out of that grand theft. They had us for grand theft. Remember they claim at that point we had stolen 300 vehicles and chased us down. So, the police now, and me, I always had a smart-JJ: You’d taken 300 vehicles? ADR: What? JJ: Had you taken 300 vehicles? Or were they trying to clean the records? ADR: They had us that in the given period of time that we have been doing this, that’s not me. And I’m not making, I’m just using the number. Whether it was exaggerated or not, I can’t account. I think to some degree it was exaggerated. I know that we were stealing on an average two vehicles a day, sometimes three. Very unlikely that we end up stealing four vehicles in one day. But on average, we were stealing two vehicles because everywhere we go, we would always take-JJ: How did you take ’em? How did you take the vehicle? How did you take the vehicles? [01:21:00] ADR: Well, we usually picked the Chevys because they were easy to break into. JJ: The Chevys. ADR: They had the small window. There was a little panel window that at that time, the design of the vehicle that we would use a screwdriver that would flip when we stick the screwdriver, flip it. That was your job. We used to have you-JJ: I had a job? 48 �ADR: Yeah. That was a job to break the panel because you were white. It was in there. JJ: [laughter] ADR: Yeah. You’re forget what we used to have, you were white, you were in there. You’d go out there, get near the vehicle, walk like you were walking, stick it in and you would pop it. You would keep walking. You would not -- yeah, exactly. Then either me-JJ: So, I would pop the door and ignition-- ADR: --and have the door open. But you would do it very quickly. You would pop it and make sure that the door was open and keep walking. I mean, you would not stand there. You would walk away from the vehicle. Once we know that the vehicle, I mean, at that point it was open, [01:22:00] either Orlando or me would come in. I had the screwdriver as much as Orlando, but said we would go in and we would pop the ignition and start the vehicle immediately. Because at the time, all you had to do was break the cylinder for the ignition and all we do is use and twist it and that would make the connections to get the, that was whatever the mal-- it wasn’t a malfunction. That’s the way that designed because it made it the easiest. JJ: I remember popping ignitions too. ADR: Right.(inaudible) That was easy. JJ: But that was done with the Chevys and Buicks you could do that. ADR: Well, that thing ended when we would stick the thing in there, we had to break it. All we had to do was stick it in and break it. Sometimes you would have to knock 49 �off the whole thing, that cylinder for the ignition. Sometimes you had to be knocked out, all of it out. But if it was broken and it didn’t make the contact, we would know that we would knock off immediately the cylinder and then stick the screwdriver where [01:23:00] it would make some kind of, always made a contact where you could get the vehicle started. JJ: But anyway, it was-- ADR: That was done within three minutes. JJ: And they were like two a day average. Two every day average. ADR: Yeah. Because we were never-- we never wanted to, one of the things that we were different and we were not stupid. What I’m trying to say is that-JJ: But why so many? Why so many? Why so many vehicles? Why so many vehicles? ADR: Because we were not stupid. That’s what I’m trying to say. We were not stupid to think that we would have a vehicle and that it was a smart thing to drive that vehicle all day long. We knew better. So, we didn’t give a shit about how many vehicles we stole. It didn’t matter to us. We were just using it, we were not using it. JJ: How old were we? How old were we? ADR: We had to be around sixteen years old. Fifteen, sixteen years old when we were doing that. But as I said, the important thing-JJ: [01:24:00] Did we ever drive these vehicles to a party-- ADR: I was the driver. 50 �JJ: --or something like that, or anything. Well, I remember taking them to the dances. We used to go, everybody used to show off their car at the dance. Do you remember that or no? ADR: Give me that again. JJ: I remember going to Saint Teresa’s to their dances with a stolen car. I remember that. ADR: We did that. We didn’t do that too often. JJ: Okay, all right. ADR: There was never any need because as I said, it was a lot easier. See, one of the things that I want to emphasize that we were, that’s what we were never picked up by the police. I mean, we had close calls with actually getting away from the police. Sometimes it was this where we were shot at a number of times, trying to get away from the police in a stolen vehicle. But coming back, one of the reasons we knew better than to drive a vehicle too long is that we did not want to get spotted by the police and take a chance on being picked up with a stolen vehicle. [01:25:00] So that’s why we ended up stealing so many vehicles. Not because we were out there to break records or anything, but because we didn’t want to get picked up by the police. JJ: What other things did the Young Lords do? ADR: The what now? JJ: What other things did they do as a gang? ADR: Well, at that time, I think we learned from mistakes that we made. In other words, we didn’t like repeating the same mistake. If I’m correctly hearing your 51 �question, I mean, what other, one of the other things was the idea. For example, when we were all picked up, not you, because again, you were in a Catholic school. We had a gang fight at the [White Front?]. There was an Italian place, the pizzeria that was from the, what we called the White Front, further down the block on Halsted. JJ: The White Front we hung out at night, at nighttime. ADR: No, that was during daytime, we had this fight. This was during [01:26:00] school. And a fight -- however it got started, I know that the Black Eagles were involved and-JJ: They hung out. They hung out at the White Front, the Black Eagles. Everybody had their restaurant and the Black Eagles had the White Front. ADR: The Black Eagles hung around the White Front. JJ: Right. ADR: Then the whites went to the-JJ: Benny’s Pizzeria. ADR: The pizzeria, whatever the name was. I don’t remember at the moment. I don’t recall. I don’t know how the fight had gotten started, but we had gotten into the fight and beat the crap-JJ: But the Young Lords went into Benny’s Pizzeria. ADR: Yeah, we had gotten into the fight. We beat the crap out of the group inside the place. I mean, we-JJ: Inside their own restaurant? 52 �ADR: Right. Inside their own restaurant. We had gone in. We went there and beat the crap out of a number of the guys that were in there that were in high school and all that. So [01:27:00] when the police showed up and they were doing an investigation, they didn’t pick any, they weren’t able, because we all got away from at the point that that had occurred, we all had gotten away. So, we went back to school. This happened during lunchtime and lunchtimes were one hour from twelve o’clock to one o’clock. So, when we got back into school, one by one, they started calling the names of individuals where the police was with the principal. So, then they decided to go and open up our lockers, and in the lockers they found weapons. JJ: What kind of weapons? ADR: Blackjacks, things like that. A couple of knives. From that point, we said, “No more weapons.” What we did, the trick we used, and we even then, we didn’t liked it yet, because they found, remember they used to have, [01:28:00] what’s the name of the-- Maxwell Street, they used to sell knives. Remember the long, thin knives that we used to put in here? So, when the police would pet us, they couldn’t feel it because we put it around the grip on the pants. Well, even those, they had found those. So, we learned-JJ: Like switchblades or something. ADR: Right, the switchblades. We stopped-- we stopped using it, but we started using as a weapon and we became very well known for, that was the antenna. JJ: Car antennas. 53 �ADR: That’s when we started using, so we didn’t carry weapons after that it occurred. We got busted. JJ: There was a fight. You were just grabbing an antenna. ADR: Exactly. We had the antennas. We had ’em all over the place. JJ: Cut somebody with it or you could-- ADR: We learned the trick of how to break ’em real quickly with a, I don’t remember, but I know it was like a one or two twist. But we’d be able to break it off completely. Because you can’t just kind of-- remember [01:29:00] we’ve learned how to do that. I mean, just the step of-JJ: But also that was an element of surprise too, right? That was like a surprise to the other person that didn’t expect you to come up with an antenna, right? ADR: Exactly. JJ: Am I correct? ADR: But I mean, it’s a weapon where we needed to have the weapon. JJ: But it shocked the other person. They saw you. ADR: Right. I mean, we had the weapons to fight if we find ourselves. So, we didn’t, in other words, we stopped worrying about having to carry a knife or anything like that when we were confronted with another, when we would’ve a fight, and we also learned a number of things. We knew that if we were fighting the whites, our mentality was to always go for the face. We knew as soon as we drew blood, they would stop the fight. We had that mentality that the whites didn’t want to get their faces messed up. Doesn’t mean that every white was like that. But as a general rule, if we were in a fight, we were fighting the whites, we would always 54 �go for their faces with fists, [01:30:00] whatever, we were fighting them to try to draw blood immediately from them. We knew that they would not be able to stand that. With the Blacks, when we would fight the Blacks, we would go for their balls. We knew that it didn’t matter to them if we busted up their faces, they will continue to fight. So, for them-JJ: Were there a lot of fights with Blacks or not? Were there a lot of fights with Blacks? African Americans. ADR: We didn’t have too many fights with the Blacks, but we did have fights with Blacks. JJ: Right. Okay. ADR: Not as many, because we were not generally — to (inaudible), never ventured up north. Remember that, especially during that time, they stayed in their own turf. So, they were never really a challenge to any of us anything. But that doesn’t mean that we were also in any way that we were afraid of them. We were never afraid of them. And we had fights with them when if the occasion occurred that we had a fight with them, we would fight with them. But generally fight was with the groups within the neighborhood, [01:31:00] the Mohawk guys, the other groups, smaller groups in there, and from other areas in the cities. We started to branch out. But in order to get to that, typically, it wasn’t like you had a gang fight every day. What happened with the Young Lords, what was different about the Young Lords was that because we were the younger group, we were always trying to prove ourselves. So that meant unknown, now looking back, we always 55 �wanted to do the most damage. So, we were more aggressive when we were in a gang fight. JJ: We wanted to do the most damage, and we were all always trying to prove ourselves. What does that mean? What does prove yourself mean? ADR: Prove ourselves that to the Eagles and to the Paragons. JJ: What did we want to prove? What did we want to prove? ADR: I heard your word, but-JJ: Yeah, you said that we wanted to prove ourselves. ADR: Yes. JJ: [01:32:00] What did we want to prove? ADR: We wanted to prove ourselves to the Black Eagles and to the Paragons is what I said. JJ: Yeah, but why? ADR: Because we want to still in some way, maybe in our mentality we wanted to be part of them. JJ: You wanted to be like them. ADR: Exactly. JJ: So, they were our role models. The Paragons and the-- ADR: Correct. They were our role models that we looked up to them. JJ: So, we wanted to show them that we could fight like they could fight? ADR: The what now? JJ: What did we want to show them? That we could fight too, or --? 56 �ADR: That we were as good as they were. We thought that they were better. As you said, we looked up to them and we still wanted to be part of them. Other words, the Young Lords, I don’t think that we saw ourselves that the Young Lords would be a continuation. We didn’t-- never discussed it, never opened it. But I mean, the point is that in proving them once, was that our role model, as you said it in the correct word, were the Paragons and the Black Eagles. So, this [01:33:00] idea of the fighting was always to do the most damage, proving ourselves to them. JJ: What did we like about the Black Eagles? What did we like about it? What did we like about the Black Eagles and the Paragons? What did we like about them? ADR: The way they conducted themselves. JJ: How did they conduct themselves? ADR: That’s a set (inaudible) the fight, that the honor system there were strong physically. Women, I mean obviously because being a Black Eagle and all that, and not only from the Hispanic women, but the other women that were running there. So that was the whole idea as much as that thing with the Paragons. What broke us away from that, you’re bringing into another explanation of the time, of the area of what occurred was, involved you. We had invited, at that time, we were in a piece with [01:34:00] the Mohawk guys, and we had invited them to, at that time, during that area, there used to be dances every Friday. Sometimes those dances were conducted by the Black Eagles. Sometimes the Paragons, sometimes ourselves. We would have the dances at the YMCA and much like the West Side Story and the whites you’d have the one group on one 57 �corner, on one side of the wall, the other group on the other side of the wall. And that was true of the (inaudible) even. Obviously the whites did not show up in our dance. We had the dance typically in Spanish. But if you come into the dance, you would see the different group among Hispanic groups, the Flaming Eagles, I mean the Flaming Arrows hanging together. In other words, the groups would hang within each group’s that they be together. We had invited, during the peace treaty we had with the Mohawk guys, we had invited them. [01:35:00] They showed up to the dance. JJ: Who showed up? ADR: The Flaming-- the Mohawk guys. JJ: Okay. ADR: You weren’t there. That night, you were someplace else. I don’t know where you were. Like I said, we didn’t hang. As a group we never were always together, as I’ve tried to explain before. So, they had shown up to the dance. We had girls from the north side. I mean, we had a whole bunch of people. It was one of our better successful dances. Remember Ma? I forgot her last name. That used to make up-JJ: Mom [Aragon?]. ADR: Mom Aragon, (inaudible) Mom Aragon did the cooking, made the tacos and all that other stuff. JJ: Because her son was a Young Lord. ADR: Exactly. JJ: And then she wanted to-- 58 �ADR: Right. JJ: She wanted to take care of her daughter too, because her daughter was a Paragon or hung around with the Paragons. ADR: Right. And anyway, the thing was that at the dance, they showed up [01:36:00] and Paragons wanted to jump them. And we said no. JJ: Jump the Mohawk? ADR: The Mohawk guys. They wanted to jump the Mohawk guys. JJ: Now, was the Mohawk guys Black or --? ADR: No, when they were there, they didn’t know what was taking place. JJ: What nationality? What nationality was the Mohawk guys? ADR: The what now? JJ: What nationality? ADR: Whites. JJ: Oh, they were whites. ADR: Okay. They were whites. Okay. I can’t pin down their complete nationality. I don’t want to say. JJ: Okay. They were like from Saint Michael’s, that area. ADR: Exactly. Yes. The Saint Michael’s area. The point is that Ralph was there. I mean, I don’t remember people, but I know that when the thing in that we said no, we stopped the Paragons. And that pissed him off when they were told, “No, you’re not going to do that.” And Orlando had basically told [01:37:00] them to get the fuck out. And obviously that pissed him even more. They left. Unknown 59 �to us they returned to the hotdog stand. You show up by yourself, I mean, no big deal like anything else, and they jumped you. JJ: I was president at that time. That was when I was president of the group. ADR: Well, you went in there, you didn’t know what-JJ: I’m saying I was president of the group at that time. ADR: They were what? JJ: I was the president at that time of the group. ADR: I don’t recall that. JJ: Yeah, I was the president. That’s why they wanted to get me at that point. ADR: I don’t remember either. I know you got jumped and-JJ: No, I didn’t get jumped. Well, they wanted to jump me, but again, they were that respectful type. So, it was one person, Toothpick, that [stole?] on me. In other words, [01:38:00] he [stole?]. ADR: It was Crazy Johnny? JJ: Toothpick, he stole on me. In other words, I didn’t know where the puncher was. Well, he stole, stole on me. And then the other people got in the middle of it to stop the fights. They stopped the fights. ADR: But anyway, we heard about it when we were told, I don’t know how. We got told. JJ: But he stole on me. The other people stopped the fight. And then we didn’t fight. And I think that that’s what Orlando got mad about. ADR: Well, what happened was, I don’t know, I mean, is that when we left, we left immediately when we found out what had taken place, we ran back over to, 60 �literally, we were running from all the way from the, because we didn’t have no vehicles. It’s not like we had cars back then. We ran all the way back-JJ: From Isham YMCA and-- ADR: From YMCA over to the hotdog stand. JJ: North Avenue and [Larrabee?] to-- ADR: Right. And when we showed up, we were there. The one that stopped the fight, in my perspective, when the gang fight was about to get started, we showed [01:39:00] up and we were going to start fighting with the Paragons. Raymond Montañez, Carlos’s brother-JJ: Was a Paragons. ADR: --interfered because he was part of the Flaming Arrows. JJ: Was he Flaming Arrows? ADR: Yeah, he was a Flaming Arrow. JJ: Okay. ADR: He stopped it and he said, no. He says, because we all always, this is not good. So, he said, “Why don’t you guys have a fight? One guy from each side. So, Orlando immediately, there was no question he was going to be representing our side. Crazy Johnny--they thought he was going to beat the crap out of Orlando because Crazy Johnny had that name Crazy Johnny. And he was physically built a hell of a lot better than he started fighting Orlando. Don’t ask me how he did it, but within a couple of punches, he actually knocked down Crazy Johnny and he was going to end it there, but [01:40:00] they pulled him back. They said, it’s a fair fight. Johnny gets up again, starts fighting, knocked him down again. 61 �All right. At that point, it was like it ended, so they wanted to put another guy. Another guy was put to fight Orlando. Orlando took out, as I recall, Orlando must have beat the shit out of three or four of the Paragons that night. Never once -- I mean, I’m not saying he didn’t take punches, but in all the fighting in there, he took them down. Okay, when that happened, at that point, and I have perspective, we all realized, it’s like at that precise moment what Orlando had done, we had grown up. That’s when we said, “We don’t need the Black Eagles. We don’t need the Paragons. We’re better than they are.” And that’s when we decided to leave the neighborhood. JJ: And we went to-- ADR: Old Town. JJ: --(inaudible) and North Avenue where we had another branch. We had another branch. But I remember [01:41:00] that I went home that night and in the morning you guys came and picked me up in the morning and took me out of bed. Said hello to my mother, Orlando said hello to my mother because Orlando had been in her catechism class and so he knew my mother very well. Plus we would stay at each other’s houses. We didn’t live that far. And then I could believe you were with him or something like that. My face was all swollen from being stole. And I had told my mother I had fell down, but Orlando said that he wanted to talk to me. So my mother went to the bedroom and then Orlando said, “Let’s go.” In other words, we’re going to fight these people. So, it actually wasn’t at night. It was during the morning that we fought. ADR: The what now? 62 �JJ: It was the next morning that we fought that Orlando fought all those people. ADR: No, it was at nighttime. JJ: At nighttime too? ADR: It was at nighttime. No, it was at nighttime. That fight took place with Orlando. It took that night. It was that night. Oh, it was [01:42:00] night. I’m 100% sure. JJ: It was at night. ADR: It was at nighttime. But at that dance that said, we showed up. JJ: I must have been. I must have-- ADR: That’s what I’m saying, you may not remember you got your butt beaten? JJ: No, no. He picked me up and told me I had a fight. ADR: What I can’t remember-JJ: He told me I had to fight him. And so I went to get ready to fight him. And then he interfered. He went-- ADR: No, it was at night. JJ: No, that was in the morning. ADR: Night. JJ: It happened again. It happened again in the morning then. ADR: Well, if it happened in the morning either, I don’t remember that. I mean, I don’t remember at the moment. JJ: He got me out of bed-- ADR: But I know that that night was at nighttime he took. And actually I thought there was more than four guys. JJ: I don’t remember that. So, it had to be a different thing, a different incident. 63 �ADR: But no, and then I’m positive-JJ: The same incident, but different ending. ADR: Right, because like I said, we were going to, I don’t remember if you were there. I don’t remember. That’s what I’m saying. I don’t remember that you were there when Orlando was fighting, right? We had come in, we were getting ready to fight. We were getting ready-JJ: Was major. It was major. ADR: And [01:43:00] Raymond was the one that stopped us. Raymond basically got between the group. He says, you guys can’t do that. The urge is not to fight. He says, you guys, he said, we can’t do this. And then he said he the one making the suggestion, had one representative from each site. And there was no doubt it was going to, Orlando wasn’t going to let any of us fight. Okay. I mean, whoever it was going to be was going to take him out. And as I said, it was Crazy Johnny, the fact that he beat Crazy Johnny, really, Orlando’s, in terms of a fighter, went way up when he did it twice. He didn’t do it once, he didn’t do it once. He did it twice. Okay. And I can tell you, because I never forgot. I might forget certain things in my life or things like that, but there’s certain things that stay imbedded in your brain that make it difficult. I know that he knocked them down and very rapidly, it wasn’t something that was in the fight. [01:44:00] Within the punches, they started getting thrown out very rapid, Orlando, don’t ask him how he did it. Hit him, hit him square on the jaw, knocked him down. I mean, Johnny went down. And at that point, it was like everybody was surprised. I mean, a lot of people couldn’t believe what had happened. Toothpick wanted to 64 �jump, wanted in. They said no. And anybody’s going back and we said, this is a fair fight. We were prepared, I mean if anybody would’ve broken up, we had a full gang fight right on the spot. Then he allowed Johnny to get up and Johnny was like-- I don’t remember. He made an excuse that he slipped or whatever. It didn’t matter whether he slipped or not. He gets up again, starts to fight Orlando, knocked him down. I’m not talking a punching, I’m talking an actual knockdown. Knocked them down. I don’t know if it was in the same side of the face or the other side of the face, but he knocked them down. Then they put up another guy. He took down four guys, four Paragons. [01:45:00] They all went down. Okay. What I’m saying, I don’t mean physically that he knocked him down, but enough where he was beating the crap out of them, they would’ve to pull the guy out and put another guy out. Okay. My recollection was Johnny was the only one that got knocked down. JJ: All right, so what other battle do you remember? ADR: Orlando’s? JJ: No, no, no. Just a battle in the neighborhood of fights. ADR: There’s a whole bunch of them. Shit-JJ: Give me another one. Give me another one. ADR: Well, that particular, the other one would’ve been the night-- I mean, going back that I was talking about when we found out about the stolen vehicles, we had a stolen vehicle and we were really-JJ: Let’s do a different one. We already talked about stolen vehicles. 65 �ADR: But there was the other one where when we were fighting with the Mohawks, for example. JJ: What about the Aristocrats? What about that? ADR: The Aristocrats would’ve been the one where we, they would’ve been with Rory. [01:46:00] I mean, Rory comes to mind because something had happened. He had moved by the Ogden area where it was predominantly Italian at that time. Near the, what the Kennedy, in other words, the section that comes into Ohio or Grand Avenue. I forgot from the highway where the guy got killed that night. You got picked up that night. You went to jail that night from that gang fight. JJ: Oh, the Gaylords. ADR: But the guy that got shot with the zip gun. JJ: That was the Gaylords, the Gaylords neighborhood. ADR: I don’t, it was the Gaylords, that’s, I don’t remember the name. I know we had a plan. The plan was after the whole thing had occurred that we went, because it involved the Paragons in that fight. The fight got started with Rory. They had to do something with Rory, and we decided we’re going to have a fight. There had been a meeting already ahead of time [01:47:00] that how the fight was going to be conducted. To avoid distraction one of the tactics we use is that it would be a group of us to cross the highway. In other words, you got the (inaudible), I’m trying to think, the Ohio (inaudible), I might be mistaken on the-JJ: That was Grand, by Grand-- ADR: The ramp that comes in to-JJ: Milwaukee. By Milwaukee. 66 �ADR: Yeah, exactly. But it crosses -JJ: Noble and -- ADR: Right. But that’s when you’re coming in the (inaudible) when you’re going into downtown from the north side, the extension that goes in at this-JJ: Milwaukee Avenue. Milwaukee Avenue. Noble Street, Chicago. ADR: No, I’m talking from the highway. JJ: Chicago Avenue. ADR: When it goes straight into the city, the first street, when it comes into the street, it’s going to be Orleans Street. That ramp. JJ: Oh, Congress. Congress. That’s Congress, (inaudible), right around there. ADR: That’s the one we crossed because it was during that. There’s that trend where Ogden Avenue, [01:48:00] you do have Milwaukee and some of those areas. But in that area in there, we wanted them to think that we were going to be attacking them to this particular area, and we wanted to create the commotion with the police and everything else to draw ’em away from the area because we knew where they were actually at and that’s where they were going to get hit. But (inaudible) in other words, we were going to the group with the whole idea, crossing the highway, causing the commotion to attract the group towards that area. The police, they’re thinking, this is where the fight is going on. We was actually taking ’em away from, we intended to jump or where we were going to have the battle with where we knew that, where they were at. Unfortunately, what ended up happening-JJ: What was the battle about? 67 �ADR: It had to do with Rory. It had to do something that occurred with Rory getting jumped or something that whatever, that okay. JJ: He got jumped and then he came and got some people. ADR: Right. And then it grew into a bigger fight. What the groups that were being involved, that was the kind of fight that-JJ: I was in jail that time, [01:49:00] me and Hector, me and some of the Paragons went to, because that time the Paragons and the Young Lords were fighting together on the same side. ADR: Yeah. Well, most of the fighting involved, some of the-JJ: We were on the same side for that one. ADR: Well, yes, most of the time-- what you’re forgetting is that a lot of those fights are always involved more than one group. They were smaller groups. I mean, you’re talking to the north side. You had the-- momentarily forgetting the Red Rooster. We had another group of a couple of groups that existed in there. And there were other smaller groups that said there was a lot of different groups like your corner street guys. Some of ’em would’ve names, some would not. So sometimes when fights would get started, it would involve in the bigger fights. There were alliances. We acted no different from gang activity than matched the way in the, I would want to say the medieval times where different leaders would [01:50:00] come together, monarchs or dukes or lords. And we had their groups come immersed to find a common enemy or that common enemy making alliances with other groups to fight another group. JJ: So, the clubs, clubs were making alliances all the time. 68 �ADR: Sometimes not all the time, depending on what the interests were and how these fights created. That example is like with the Red Rooster guys. They had a name, I forgot the name momentarily, that was dealt by Mineo, or Sal. Sal was Puerto Rican and you had a Mexican guy, forgot his name. And the funny part about it, the Mexican guy led the Puerto Rican group to hang around the same thing. They were more like motorcycle guys, guess in that style, remember? There were actually two groups within that they hung in the Red Rooster. And the funny part about it was that the Mexican guy was leading the Puerto Ricans and the Puerto Rican was leading the Hillbillies. They hung around together. Many became a younger, but many used [01:51:00] to, when they had that fight, they asked our help. That’s how we got involved in that fight. Because they were fighting the guys further up north from the Belmont area. They had hung a [figini?], is that correct word? [figini?] of a Puerto Rican with a noose on the neck, on a pole. You should remember that because it involved you and another story that you’re not too crazy about. JJ: Tell me about it. ADR: But that particular fight, when we went to help them. JJ: So, they had a Puerto Rican with the noose? ADR: Right, and they hung it by school in front of the, on a pole near-- that school is gone. They knocked it down. It’s where the hospital -JJ: So, it was like a caricature. ADR: It was hanging off of a-JJ: A caricature, somebody like one of those-- 69 �ADR: Claiming this is what we’re going to do to the Puerto Ricans. JJ: Okay. And you hung and it was a noose around the neck. ADR: Right. JJ: Tied to the light pole. Is that what it is? ADR: The light post, right. It was hanging the head hanging [01:52:00] there. JJ: And this was on Berry Street. ADR: Guzmán at that time was hanging around-JJ: Berry Street by-- ADR: Berry, right. Okay, got it. Yeah, you’re correct. Guzmán at that time was always trying to play the-JJ: Between Halsted and Sheffield and Berry. ADR: Correct. And Guzmán always wanted to be trying to be the leader of the Young Lords. We never let him be. JJ: Santos Guzmán. ADR: Guzmán. JJ: Santos Guzmán. That was his name. ADR: What? JJ: Santo Guzmán. ADR: Santos Guzmán. Santos. Santos was heavyset wrestler. Big guy. I had a fight with him. JJ: He came from Philadelphia. He moved to Chicago from Philadelphia. ADR: He moved to-JJ: He was from Philadelphia, but he became a Young Lord. 70 �ADR: Well, we became, during that time, he’s the one that-- he was bullshitting. What I’m saying is, I mean in the aftermath okay. JJ: You didn’t get along. [01:53:00] You and him. That’s what you’re saying. You and him didn’t-- ADR: A problem there. JJ: I got along with him. ADR: Well, the thing was that when we had this thing in it, okay, Mineo, I mean Sal, not Sal Mineo the one we know, okay. Sal came over to us and said, we need some help. And we said, okay, we’re going to help you out. We’ll help you out on the fight. We also got involved the Paragons and the Eagles on this particular fight. JJ: But wasn’t the fight--weren’t they threatening the family? ADR: Well, I’m getting to that. What happened was we went to, oh, that’s at the time we had the white guy that was leading. There was another (inaudible). There were two occasions. We had Miller and we had this other white guy that led the Young Lords. The point is that we go on the vehicle to where they were going to show us where the thing was hanging. The [figini?] of the Puerto [01:54:00] Rican hanging from the post. And we had gone in there to kind of survey, see what we were up against and all that. JJ: Who’s we? ADR: So-JJ: Who is we? ADR: Hmm? JJ: Who went in there? 71 �ADR: The what? JJ: Who is we? ADR: There was six of us. You, Orlando, myself, Guzmán, the white guy, Benny. That would’ve been it. There was like six of us. Six, seven guys went, because we weren’t loaded or anything. We went (inaudible). And so when we got there to Berry Street, we came in from Halsted and we walked because we wanted to go what we could find. And we were prepared for a fight. We had picked up some antennas. We had already broken the antennas and some sticks that we had on our hands as we were walking towards the front, whereas we were going in there to try [01:55:00] to find what we could find. That particular night, we knew that that wasn’t going to be the complete gang fight at that time, but we just wanted to see what we were up against. As we came up on the corner, Santos went ahead of us running, like trying to be the badass. He went around the corner and comes back as quickly, turns around and comes back running and he’s yelling, “The police. The police.” At that point, guys started running. You went up on the fence, started climbing. I didn’t know you were doing that, the link fence. You’re climbing a link fence. The only thing I could do at that moment as it had occurred, I didn’t even have time to run or anything. I dropped my weapon to the side of the curb. And for some instance, instinct, I put my hands in my pockets and kept walking towards making ’em think like-- I don’t, [01:56:00] because I’m thinking what’s going to turn around is going to be the police. So, if they see me there with no weapon or nothing, they’re not going to-- quickly, in my mind, they’re not going to do anything to me. But to my great surprise, turn around and 72 �I see all these fucking (inaudible) with chains in their pants on their hands going around. But good thing I had my hands in my pocket. So, they come by me down there. So, I didn’t even have a chance of running or anything. You’re climbing and they’re pulling you down. JJ: I think they hit me with a brick. They hit me with a brick and a tire iron. ADR: Well, this all happened at the same time. Remember, I’m not watching you. JJ: They hit my back and well, I released my hands and fell down. ADR: But you’re yelling. The one thing I never forget. JJ: I was yelling. ADR: You’re yelling. (laughter) I’m a Polack, I’m a Polack. JJ: No, no, because-- ADR: I’m no goddamn Puerto Rican. I’m Polack. JJ: No, no, because what he said was, [01:57:00] “We’re looking for Puerto Ricans,” and you said, “I’m Mexican.” ADR: Right, I mean, that’s what I’m saying. But I’m hearing you what I’m telling you, like you (inaudible). Well, when he sat in there-JJ: I said, well, I’m a Polack then. And you were laughing. But they didn’t say we we’re looking for Mexicans. Yeah, when I said, when you going there we’re looking for Puerto Ricans, and you said, I’m Mexican. And all I could say was, oh, well. And I saw they didn’t do nothing to you. I said, well I’m Polack. ADR: All I remember is when-JJ: I was not going to tell ’em I’m Puerto Rican and they’re looking for Puerto Rican. ADR: You said you were-- remember that? That I do, I remember. 73 �JJ: So, after that, what happened after that? ADR: Well, the point was, when they come up against me, I said, the thing going on, I know that they’re pulling it from the side of my eye. They were pulling. JJ: They were ready to kick my butt. I’m a Polack. ADR: But anyway, the guy, when he said, when he’s looking says they thought [01:58:00] I was Puerto Rican. I said, “No, I’m fucking, I’m Mexican.” The girl, they had a girl with ’em, or maybe two, I don’t remember, but I know they definitely, and she says, “Speak Spanish.” So, I’m like, (Spanish) [01:58:13], you know, I said something in Spanish and right away she says, “Yeah, he’s Mexican.” She recognized my accent. So, they didn’t know what to do with me. They got you but we were smart enough not to say anything to each other. So, they grabbed you and they grabbed me and they said, okay. We didn’t know where they were taking us, but obviously we were now prisoners. JJ: Right. And they took us underneath the sidewalk. ADR: They went into, there was a building next to the -- and they took us into a basement. They had a German Shepherd in the basement. JJ: That’s where they used to keep the coal at that time, they used to heat the coal for heating. ADR: Well, whatever it was. And they put us in there. And then we knew, we kind of sensed that they were watching us. We never spoke [01:59:00] with each other. You’re sitting there and I ignore you. You were ignoring me. We weren’t saying nothing to each other. And after a while, I don’t know if they must’ve kept us, maybe a half hour, 45 minutes, they come back and they said, “Get the fuck out 74 �of here. Go home, whatever.” We left. And to their surprise, when we had what we called the war meeting, we decided the neutral point was the Benny’s Pizzeria. So, then they said, they agreed that through words had gone back, decide how we were going to conduct a fight that we met at Benny’s Pizzeria. To the surprise of the leader. Because I was like, you were not there. I’m the one had to go in there. And the guy fucking, you didn’t want to go. I went in there and he says, “You motherfucker.” He says, I said, “Too bad motherfuckers, too late.” That I had, when we said that we agreed what weapons we were going to use in the gang fight. JJ: [02:00:00] I thought I was there. I thought I was there. The next day. I was there. The next day I did go, because I remember him saying you-- ADR: And when I said, we talked about what weapons, we basically, it was a free for all. The only thing we said, we didn’t want there not to use any slip gun. JJ: You got to remember that. That was when I was president of the group. ADR: No, you weren’t. Not at that point, you were not, Cha-Cha. You were a war-- like I said, me and you never held, we never wanted the position. We were always the warlords. You and me were the warlords. We were never, we were the warlords. JJ: Right. But later on, I became president. That was-- ADR: That would’ve been the only time you took the, when you became chairman. JJ: No, after (inaudible), I became the president. ADR: Never wanted it. Neither one of us. JJ: No, no. Orlando didn’t want it. I was president, so I was the president. 75 �ADR: I know that none of us wanted the leadership. JJ: When it changed [02:01:00] I was the president. ADR: Look, none of us. JJ: Oh, you were in the service. ADR: Orlando didn’t want it. I didn’t want it. JJ: No, no, no. That’s when you were in the service that-- ADR: I was gone. That might have been true. JJ: Yeah. That’s when you were in the service. ADR: But before I left for the service, you were never-JJ: I was president of the gang when we changed over. ADR: That might’ve been after I was gone. JJ: And then you came afterwards. ADR: Right. But not during the time in there, Orlando, because as I know Orlando didn’t want it. I didn’t want it. JJ: You were angry because by that time, we were against the war and all that other stuff, and you had just come out of the service. So, you were angry. ADR: But that’s when you came, during our gang years, you and me were the warlords. JJ: Yeah, exactly. We were the warlords. Yeah. ADR: Okay. We were the ones that would sit down with the opposing side, and we never, I just used the word with theJJ: At that time, the gangs were like, what’s that story? We would sit and meet and decide how we were going to fight and all that other stuff. 76 �ADR: Basically [02:02:00] that really, when you look back, everything was okay. The only thing, the emphasis was not to use guns. JJ: Right. Right. ADR: I used to be the (inaudible) not to use guns. JJ: Knives were okay. ADR: Right. I mean, it’s a lot different and none of that. But at that time, the deal was not, they were agreeing not to use guns. JJ: Correct. Well, there weren’t that many guns used at that time. ADR: Obviously. Okay. So, the plan was, at that point, after we did the negotiate, not negotiations, that we’d settled on what was going to happen. Then the fight was to be conducted that particular night, and the fight was going to get going. So, we all went back to our areas. What we decided to do as a group, I’m not saying nobody took the lead in there, that we would send a group-- from the house (inaudible) there used to be all Hispanics. That building’s still standing, like a drive-in-JJ: On the corner. That’s where -- [02:03:00] ADR: The corner of Halsted. JJ: That’s where the Aristocrats had gone. ADR: Clark. JJ: Right, right, right. ADR: That corner right here. We met there. We had everybody in there and we told the young kids, the younger ones, you will come down, go down Berry, the same street that street Berry Street, and break all the windshields of all the vehicles. 77 �Go run down there, breaking all the windshields. Right. We then, that was a Mineo-JJ: That was a long street. ADR: Right. And they would run, come running to-- on Sheffield we had group, a couple of vehicles to the side waiting to come down. Is that what we’re trying to do is push ’em. In other words, when they would come down, they would think that we were coming from that area by having them make a commotion, breaking windows, making a commotion, making them think that we were all coming down that street, coming down at them. They would turn, we were trying to push them into Sheffield to go and make them go down on Sheffield. We then would cut [02:04:00] them off by that group as the other group would be waiting. They would be coming up on that, coming from that site, coming up, going north as the point that they got started commotion going (inaudible) would come in. We had another group that would be coming from the north. In other words, we wanted to trap them. Nothing’s ever perfect. The police, obviously, when the windshields were being broken down and everything, within a few minutes you could hear the siren because it is a long block. You’re correct in stating that. So, it didn’t take, no, not too long of a period that you hear the siren. Police knew there was going to be a gang fight. They always tended to know when those things occurred. So, the police is coming, they’re coming into Berry and the Hillbillies, they’re coming down in there. As they get in there, they run into our group from the south, getting the beat shit out of them. They getting completely surprised. They start running back north, but we’re waiting for them up in from 78 �the north end. Also, there was a group of us, so they ran into them, so we had them trapped. But [02:05:00] like I said in the trip now they’re running into the street and everything else. There were a few of ’em that got away. Most of ’em were getting their ass kicked. Remember, gang fight doesn’t last a long time, a few minutes, and it seems like it’s a long time. Those that ran, they ran into Belmont, going east on Belmont, by the L tracks. Back then, remember there were taverns there. They were no longer in system. Now you got department stores and other kinds of places, but then there used to be quite a lot of bars on that area. It was more at one point, a little bit more like a skid row area type. Remember Clark, the way it used to be and all that existed, the builders that existed back in those days, the cigar shops, things like that. The point is that those guys, they ran in there. The one of the leaders, they, the head number leaders ran into. We know because I was one of the guys, we chased him inside one of the taverns and he was looking to try to save his butt. [02:06:00] We beat the shit out of him right in the bar and then nobody stopped us. They knew what was going on. They knew we fight. It’s none of their business, so we beat the crap out of him right in the fucking bar and we walked out. We won the fight. I mean obviously-JJ: It lasted, how long did that fight last? ADR: The fight didn’t last. I mean the running would’ve had been from a 10 to 15minute interval of the whole thing. JJ: But I mean wasn’t there a whole week of fight? Wasn’t there a whole week of grouping together? 79 �ADR: Fighting? There was the scrimmages that led to that particular fight. JJ: Okay, so a whole week there was skirmishes. ADR: That whole week. Yes, there was scrimmages going on. JJ: And that’s when we met and decided let’s just fight it. Right, because the police was starting to get to-- ADR: No, they knew the activity was going on. Yes. Remember a couple of our, not us ourselves, but the people from the Red Rooster had gotten jumped and they had gotten ambushed a couple of times during that week, what you’re referring to that week, you’re [02:07:00] correct. On that particular week, on that particular day that ended, that’s when the fight ended. That particular night, what we did that night. JJ: Okay. I don’t know the Red Rooster, but I know that it had to do with a family that they were harassing that lived in that building too. ADR: The point was that after what we did to them that night and the way we beat the shit out of them and within the few minutes it wasn’t in there. JJ: Sal, you were looking at it from the point of view of one gang fighting another gang. I was looking at it from they attacked the Puerto Rican family. You understand what I’m saying? You were looking at it from different perspective. ADR: Well, I’m looking for the angle that how we conducted our system. You’re right. The tactics we used. JJ: Yeah, you wanted-- ADR: If we didn’t use our tactics, we wouldn’t want the scrimmage would’ve kept on going. 80 �JJ: So, you were [strategician?]. ADR: Exactly, and then the strategy ended when we beat the shit out of them. JJ: You were concerned with just fighting and I mean, I’m thinking I’m also getting politicized. I’m thinking [02:08:00] these people didn’t do anything. This is a race thing. ADR: To me, is that whether they were racist or not, whether they were racist or not. When we beat-- the way we beat the crap out of ’em. Okay. It wasn’t like we were nice to ’em or anything else. I mean we beat the fucking crap out of ’em. A couple of those guys, we didn’t kill anybody, but I’m sure some of them wished they would’ve died that night because they had broken bones, broken arms, broken legs or broken ribs, fucked up faces that we met. We might have scarred people out that night. We were not nice about what we did. I playing quickly in a fight. We didn’t have time in there. Try to think of what it is to you. You’re down on the ground and somebody kicks you in your face or-- we did a lot of damage that night. We really beat the crap out them pretty good. Those guys that got their asses, they got the broken arms. They ended up getting broken arms with broken legs, weren’t about to come back and say, I’m going to be competing, fighting these fucking guys are crazy. [02:09:00] They didn’t want to fight us. Then when I’m talking about the damage that we tended to do in a fight, not nice because nobody-- I’m not glamorizing. That’s my point. JJ: We started small, but we ended up with an alliance of all these different groups. So, we became strong. We were a big group then. ADR: No, we weren’t-- 81 �JJ: No, what I’m saying, we were fighting just one gang. It was called the Aristocrats, but we had a lot of gang. We had the Black Eagles, we had the Flaming Arrows, we had the Paragons, we had the Young Lords. This was Halsted and Dickens altogether, I believe even the Latin Eagles from the town hall district police station. ADR: Latin Eagles weren’t in existence yet at all. JJ: They weren’t. ADR: They were not. Okay. They were not in existence. JJ: So, this was the Paragons, the Black Eagles and all these-- ADR: The major groups were right. It was us, the Black [02:10:00] Eagles, the Paragons. JJ: Even the (inaudible) in the-- ADR: Those were the four groups basically that existed. The Red Rooster guys, ourselves, the Paragons, the Black Eagles. In reality, you can’t count the Flaming Arrows were not into fighting, so some of them did participate. Now, that’s not to say that some of them did not participate in the fight about the imperial laces, but as a group. JJ: The Imperial Aces and Queens, what about them? ADR: The what? JJ: It was the Imperial Aces and Imperial Queens. ADR: Imperial Aces? JJ: Or they were with the Flaming Arrows at that time too. They were on Dayton and Armitage at the Church. 82 �ADR: They were not in terms of fighting, they were not-JJ: Into that. ADR: No. I mean either-- one thing you’re also forgetting that again, that was different. Not that you’re forgetting. [02:11:00] I mean it’s, you’re asking what I’m remembering. One of the other things that we had in our advantage was that we started a game among ourselves when we were in school, and it is just something that started off with no apparent reason, but that it turned out to be very beneficial that during lunch and it started-- one of those things, we used to punch each other, fight and somehow this evolved into two of us. It would be different guys every day that would have to fight the rest of the group, and we agreed that we could not hit our faces. So, every day it was the kind of thing where we could we punch each other, you have to defend or whatever. JJ: It seemed like a game, but anybody played it. ADR: It was a game that we played every [02:12:00] day when we were in grammar school, everybody, you were not, remember, you were not-JJ: Everybody used to practice fighting and stuff like that. ADR: Well, the point, what I’m trying to say out of that particular situation-JJ: No, I wasn’t with you guys, but that was a normal thing that was played all over the place. I played it too. I played it in jail. I played other stuff and a lot of times too, even times later, I was in and out of jail a lot, so that was it. ADR: I’m having a hard time hearing. JJ: I said other time, I wasn’t also around because I was in and out of jail a lot. Also, I was going to jail a lot is what I’m saying. 83 �ADR: Well, at that time, I mean we’re talking, what you had working against you in that time is that you were in a Catholic school and during that time we were talking, we were practicing this. Look, as a fighter, nobody doubted that you couldn’t fight or not. That’s not the point I’m trying to make. I’m talking what was beneficial for the Young Lords as a whole, [02:13:00] that when we had this little game, when we practiced, we got used to getting punched. That was the aftermath that I look back on that and in other words, I can remember, look, I can remember I trick-- I remember tricking Orlando one time, is that when we used to fight each other, whatever, and I said, okay. It’s like, okay, I had enough or come down and he dropped the [scarf?], and I went and do nothing. I got him right on the fucking stomach, I home, but it was fair game and obviously he came back at me, but we never, not at a point that we were pissed-- angry at each other like that. The thing I’m trying to show you is that we got used to getting hit so that when we got into a gang fight, when we were getting hit, it didn’t mean shit to us. We were already doing that on a daily basis. We were training our body to take punches is what I’m trying to tell you. That made us more deadly in a fight. JJ: I see you didn’t like the [02:14:00] Catholic Church people. ADR: Huh? JJ: You didn’t like people from the Catholic Church? I see that. I said you didn’t like people from the Catholic Church, but before I went to the Catholic church, the reason I was in the Catholic Church was because I got kicked out of the public school, Newbury. I was in Newbury and I got kicked out of there basically. Not kicked out, but my mother took me out of there to put me in to calm me down a 84 �little bit. By that time, I had changed my thinking. Then I made up for it when I left eighth grade and that one year I think I was in and out of jail every day, I think. ADR: You always had that bad luck. I mean. JJ: You call it bad luck. You didn’t go to jail, so you call it bad luck. ADR: I don’t know, man. I mean look, you had the unfortunate situation. Look, remember the time there used to be a curfew. We’re forgetting about the curfew. JJ: Okay, tell me. [02:15:00] ADR: And we got picked up and we were done. It was 10:30 and the police saw us on the street, took us in the squad car and they were going to take us home to report it to our parents. What the hell is your kid doing after 10:30? Remember that there used to be an ordinance. JJ: A routine? Yes. ADR: Okay. You, for whatever reason, we didn’t pick you to sit in the middle of the squad. I mean, they had us in the back seat, right? You knew perfectly well we were going to jump out. Orlando tell us that yeah. I live over here going down there on Burling Street and it was instincts we had. JJ: This was a cab. ADR: We knew as soon as that squad car, as soon as that squad car was-- okay, we were going to jump out of the vehicle and we did. Me and Orlando got away. JJ: Well, I jumped out late. I jumped out late. I was in the middle. ADR: You got screwed up and you got caught in the head-JJ: And then kicked my butt because-- 85 �ADR: I know, but there were things like that that would happen. Okay. That night with the fight [02:16:00] with the guy that got shot, you got picked up that night in that gang fight. You went in there, they picked you up. I got away. I mean all, we were always getting away and I don’t want to say whether it was bad luck or whatever it was that you had, but it was like you would always get caught. JJ: I mean, once you start getting arrested, the police know you and they didn’t spike you an amount of weight. We’ve seen this guy before. We know who he is. Let’s go check him out. And that’s usually why. So, once you start going to jail, they already know you. They get to know you. And I was going in and out of jail all that time. I mean like you said, I was sheltered in that Catholic school and now I’m not in Catholic school anymore, and now I want to be the best gang banger. I want to catch up to everybody real quick. Right? I think you’re right. I was trying to catch up real quick to [02:17:00] everybody and that summer I went to jail a lot. ADR: But bringing it back to something you asked me, what happened with going back when we really got out of track with these other things. What happened in Dublin, Georgia, bringing you back to that. They find, as I said, they find our identifications. They find that we’re wanted in Chicago, which time we were going back about the stolen vehicles, whether we actually-- When I got back, that’s what I was told by the police. I don’t know anything about how many vehicles we had stolen or not at that point. Okay, we get picked up in Dublin, Georgia. We get in jail, now that they know who we are, that we are wanted for Grand Larceny from the vehicle of the (inaudible), they put us in a locker. I 86 �admitted, started protesting. I’m saying, “Hey, I’m a minor. You can’t put me in jail,” which kind of pissed the police a little bit. So, for some reason, because we were Catholic, some mentality that plays into here that we would tell the truth. So, I remember being [02:18:00] brought into a room where there was six police that were sitting around and I had to walk right through them and I’m like, “They’re going to beat the fucking crap out of me at this point.” I mean, I’m in the south, I’m from the north. I said, I have a right to an attorney and I’m giving this - I always had that never shut up and when I should shut up and I know my rights. I’m a minor. You can’t do this to me, blah, blah, blah. And so, they said, okay. I want to talk to an attorney. And they had a list with names on it. And so, when I went up in there, they said a phone spread. There was a table and then there was a panel with names of lawyers on top. And as I said, I don’t know how big the town, Dublin, Georgia, I always wanted to visit it. One of things, I want to go back to take a look how the town looks like now. But anyway, when I come in, I’m scared to death because I’m thinking they’re going to beat the shit out of me as I’m going through them, but nothing happens to me. I get to the phone. So, I start to [02:19:00] look up and they kind of noticing that I’m calling the first name on the list or I might have mentioned the name and I’m marking dialing the number, I mean with the dial on it. And one of them says, “You don’t want to call him.” I’m like, “Why not?” He said, “He’s too old or something to that effect.” Then I go to the second name and I started dialing, and then he said something about that guy too. I go further down the line and I’m being sarcastic. Is there anything wrong with this guy? Like saying, is there anything wrong with this guy? 87 �And again, I knew, I realized I’m pissing him off, but I dialed the phone and I tell the guy who I am and that I’m a minor they got me in jail. So, they said, well, now we can go to the, I’m going to go down there and see you, blah, blah, all bullshit. So, they put me back in the cell and man, coffee tasted like shit. They got us in lockup and everything. [02:20:00] But the captain came, he became sympathetic towards us, to me and Jerry. So, he says, here’s what I’m going to do. He says, if you agree, because we were ready to prepare, we were going to fight extradition. Like I said, we weren’t stupid. I mean we were young, but we were neither stupid either. And we did, we have a certain amount of knowledge about the law. So, we figured we can fight extradition. We don’t go back to Illinois or Chicago. So, he came and talked to us. He says, “Look, if you guys agree not to fight extradition, he says, we’re going to have to take you in the morning.” He says, “You’re going to have to go in front of a judge and then you’re going to tell him whether you’re going to fight extradition or not. You have to make a plea.” And he said, but if you agree that you won’t fight extradition, he says, “I’m going to give the, he referred to them as the Northerners.” [02:21:00] He says, “I’m going to give them 24 hours. If they’re not here in 24 hours to pick you up,” he says, “I’m letting you out of jail.” I said, “Okay.” So, me and Jerry said, “Yeah, we’ll do it. We go in front of this judge.” I think it had, I don’t know what it was, whatever the judge, but I remember having to look up at the son of a bitch because he sit in like a pillar or maybe because we were younger or shorter, you had to look it up, that it looked. But we went in front of the judge. We had their attorney, the guy that I called, that they allowed me to call to 88 �represent us and said, “We’re not fighting extradition.” And asked us, is this your own free will, blah, blah, blah. Yes it is. And all this other stuff. So, he says, “Okay.” They took us back to jail and he says, 24 hours. Twenty-four hours. Now we’ve got two days. I recall might’ve been two, three days that we were in jail. And believe me, I hated every bit. I wasn’t eating shit [02:22:00] because that food, it was fucking crap. I see these movies about, man, in the south--bad. And anyway, 24 hours are up, comes in there and says, “Okay guys, you’re free.” So, he brought us up and then he already had asked us, he says, when they wanted to find out, we told, we didn’t know anything about the stolen vehicles. We told them that all we knew is that we told ’em the truth. We were joyriding on the vehicles, to go to the place where we were going. And he says, well, he says, you guys are in deep shit trouble. He says to what you guys done, you guys stole a lot of vehicles. So, we weren’t thinking like wouldn’t need a lot of vehicles. We probably stole about, we sent two, maybe three vehicles a day. We didn’t strip ’em, we didn’t do anything. We just abandoned them. And it was somebody was taking and stripping [02:23:00] them, me and Jerry, we didn’t know then. We didn’t know the whole story because-JJ: That white guy that you were saying he was stripping? ADR: You knew him. I can’t remember the guy’s name, but the skinny guy-JJ: McKinney. McKinney. Tall McKinley or McKinley. ADR: Which what? JJ: McKinley. ADR: Okay. And anyway-- 89 �JJ: He’s the one that snitched on me. That’s what I know. He set me up and then he snitched on me. And Orlando used to tell me, don’t hang around with him. ADR: Well. JJ: But that’s a different story. ADR: So, they knew when we asked him, he says, why do we intended to do? Well, we had told him that we wanted to go to California and me and Jerry really couldn’t make up our minds whether we want to go or Miami. So, he told us, he says, I’m taking you to the bus station. I’m going to put you on a bus. He said, we’re paying for it. So, he says, “If you want to go, want to go to California, I’ll put you in the Greyhound to go to California [02:24:00] or Miami.” Me and Jerry decided, because we were closer to Miami, I wonder what would’ve happened if we decided to go to California. I always wonder about that. Okay. We decided that we were closer to Florida that we would to go to Miami, Florida, and he gave us five bucks a piece. JJ: So how did you get back to-- ADR: The cop-JJ: How did you get back to Chicago from Miami? How did you get back to Chicago? ADR: Okay, how they got back. I plan to tell how that happened. Okay, we get to Miami, all right? We come out of the bus, the buses were air conditioned and we step into that humidity, man. Oh God, man, I never forgot – I hated it. I would never visit Florida for up until years-- it took me about 40, 50 years to visit Florida. And [02:25:00] that hit end and we’re coming out, we had the leather 90 �jackets, we had our leather jackets. We hit this fucking wave of humidity. So, we figured we’d live like we did in Chicago. We could live off the streets. Remember they had here, you used to deliver milk in the houses, the bread. I mean, there was always something to eat. You didn’t have to starve. And so, when we’re in Miami, first thing we did is we stole some clothes. We went to a department store, try and double up the clothes and took out the clothes that had changed it. So, we figured we could go to down the beach, and I don’t know why we had this mentality, we’re going to be able to knock off the coconuts from the trees. JJ: Live off the land. ADR: Yeah, so we didn’t know that Miami was two cities. You got Miami City and then you got Miami. So, the point is that, and the interim in there, we get picked up again by the by the Miami police, but because we’re juveniles [02:26:00] this time, they take us to a juvenile home. And because we’re from Chicago, we were the badasses. So immediately when (inaudible) and all the kids found out that we were from Chicago, we immediately became the boss. Me and Jerry became the boss on the whole floor. Because they were afraid of us. We were supposed to be the badasses. And we were there probably anywhere from a week to two weeks that I can remember. We were in there and we were running things. I mean, all these other guys were scared shitless of us, but they had us, the cells that they had us, had us to the bed. Anyway, we were running things in that juvenile home. And for me, all I know is that we’re sitting down one day. Like I said, it was no more than two weeks. And maybe I was there in that 91 �(inaudible) home or juvenile detention center. [02:27:00] Like I said, about two weeks that I was there, all I know is that I’m sitting down eating and one of the officers comes up to me and says, “You’re coming with me.” I’m like, what the fuck’s going on? And he takes me out of there and he says, “You’re going home.” And there was a detective that was waiting, and the detective basically says that you’re being sent back to Illinois right now. And he said-- I didn’t know that my parents that were told had to pay for the flight. Anyway, the point is that they take me, the detective takes me to the airport, and at that point I’m thinking of escaping. I’m not going to get on the plane. So, I’m trying to figure out how to get out of it. So, when he goes in there, [02:28:00] he walks with me to the, they already had everything waiting for me. The plane ticket, they go in there on it. Now, back then, none of the security points checked-JJ: None. So, they extradited-- they send you back to the jail or they let you go home because you were a juvenile. ADR: As I said, when I was there, they were taking me, I didn’t know what was taking place other than I’m going to be put on a plane to come back to Chicago. Okay. That’s all I know. All right. When I get into the airport, I’m thinking all I want to think. I’m trying to thinking how to escape. So, one of the first things I did when I got in there, I said, “I got to go use the bathroom.” Here I get into the bathroom, try to sneak out whatever needed to get away, not for me to board the plane. So, he said, “Okay, you need to go use the bathroom, go use it.” But he follows me and he goes right inside. I mean, he opened up the door [02:29:00] and like, fucking Jack, what the fuck is wrong with you? I got to take a shit and I don’t give 92 �a shit. He says, take your shit. He says, you’re not getting out of my sight. He said, I know what you’re planning on doing. He says, you’re not going to do it. So, I pretend to take a shit, I didn’t really need to take a shit. I pretended and get up. So, he stays with me the whole time. So, when he takes me up to the plane, he actually went inside the plane. He must have told the stewards what was up and then whatever. And he sits me on the plane. And ironically I’m sitting by the door of the plane and I don’t know what kind of event, but was one where the door was it had the seats and then the door was there. So, there were three seats. It was a young couple, I don’t know, because this is the way it heard. It was a young couple that must have just had gotten married and probably returning back home [02:30:00] from their honeymoon I think what it was. As I sat down, as he’s there standing looking at me and I says, aren’t you afraid that I’m going to be jumping out of the plane? The door was right there and he says, “Kid,” says, “you’re not going to do this. There’s no fucking parachutes on this plane,” which is making a joke out of it, right? So, I get on sit. There was not for me to do. I mean, plane takes off and all I could think about is I’m going to get my ass kicked when I get back home. I was worried about that. I was kind of quiet. The whole thing. The girl she had, like I said, she was very young, the early twenties, very, very young. Might have been like 21, 20. And I guess my face was showing that I was kind of in there and she’s trying to feed me. Because back them the flights were longer. They used to serve food and I don’t want [02:31:00] to, I mean to me the least thing. I didn’t want to eat and she’s trying to get me to eat and this and that, and acting motherly I guess. And I really 93 �didn’t want-- give a shit about that. But I’m just waiting until I get home. So, I finally get home. To my surprise, my father and my mother are waiting for me. So, then my mom already had a talk with my father. You’re not going to do anything to him. You’re not going to touch him. I know my father wanted to beat the fucking crap out of me. So took me to the side and said, “We know what happened.” And he said, “We’re going to go home right now.” And he says, “Going to have to go down, we’re going to have to go down to the police station.” I said, “Okay.” Well, we got home, my father didn’t say anything to me. I mean, other than giving me a dirty look. But he didn’t touch me. He didn’t do anything to me. So, we come home and we go down to the police station. [02:32:00] At that point, we were living on this block. JJ: [Lake View?], you were living in [Lake View?]. ADR: Yeah, no, I take that back. We’re still living in Fremont. (inaudible) We went down to the police station down here. I’m thinking, because the police station I came down was the one that was the detective on the north side. JJ: Summerdale? ADR: That was down here off of Lincoln Avenue, just north of Edison Street, (inaudible). JJ: Town Hall, Town Hall. ADR: Town Hall, right. So, I went in there, that’s when the cop tells me, “We know that you were in big blah, blah, blah. Everybody’s admitted it.” He says, “All you have to do is that you were riding on the vehicles, on the vehicles.” I said, “No.” I said, “I never did anything.” And I started arguing [02:33:00] with the cop. The 94 �cop insisted saying, look, you says, dude, we know that you guys stole this amount of vehicles. That number sticks in my mind, like I said, 300. And then he started lowering the number, like saying, “Okay, can you admit that you on 50 vehicles in numbers?” And I still said, “No, I’m not admitting to shit. I didn’t do anything.” I kept arguing with him. He was getting pissed off at me. So, he finally got to the point where he said, look, I mean, the conversation wasn’t that kind of long because my whole point was I’m not going to admit to anything. I didn’t do anything. I didn’t joy ride on anything. I didn’t steal nothing. And he said, “Everybody else has admitted.” He says, “You’re the only one right now that’s not admitted.” I said, “I don’t give a shit, but anybody, I’m not going to admit to anything. I didn’t do anything.” But finally, actually, he was pleading with me. He said, “Look, just admit that you were in one vehicle.” I said, “No, I’m not going to admit to fucking shit.” And so, he got fucking pissed off. So, he realized, he said, “You’re going to Audy Home tonight.” He said, “If you don’t admit to one vehicle, we’re going to lock [02:34:00] you up in Audy Home.” I said, “I don’t care.” I said, “I’m not admitting to anything.” Well, my mother started crying and I said, “Mom,” I says, “I’m not going to admit to anything. I didn’t do anything.” So, they said he’s going in. They took me to Audy Home that night and when I got to Audy Home, knowing how our system works, remember? Audy Home here in Chicago. We got all the Blacks, the other badasses and everything else. So, this came back to haunt me. I go in and first thing I did is try to find, because it was at nighttime, biggest guy I could find. That was when we were in the process in there. It was this guy, bigger than all of us 95 �in that group in there. And I bumped into him on purpose to start a fight. So, he didn’t realize what, as I bump into [02:35:00] him, he turns around and says something to me, and man, I just let out as quickly as I could. I hit him as hard as I could on the face, on the jaw. JJ: In the Audy Home? In the Audy Home. ADR: Inside the Audy Home. JJ: So, you’re fighting inside. ADR: And then I kicked him on the balls as hard as I could, and then I jumped him and obviously the other guards and everybody come in rushing pulling me out, which did exactly what I wanted to do. I wanted them to think I was fucking crazy. So, the next day, nobody wanted to fuck with me because this fucking crazy motherfucker, granted one of the biggest guys that I took him down, the word got out, don’t fuck this fucking Mexican’s crazy. I knew what I wanted, exactly what I wanted, I wanted be left alone. I don’t know how many days I spent in Audy Home but again, my mother got me out and went back and they got me out. So bottom line was when we went, you, I don’t know what happened. [02:36:00] I know that Orlando, we had different court dates or what have you. Eventually, because I never admitted to nothing they assigned a social worker to me, but actually I was never convicted or never charged with anything because I finally, finally (inaudible) justice. Well, the campaign, they had to drop the charges against me. I wasn’t admitting to anything. So out of the group, I’m the only one that never got a record for that because I mean, I’m sure they got into the 96 �participated, but I never got convicted. I don’t know what they did to you or what -- what happened to you on that, Cha-Cha? What happened to you? JJ: What do you mean? ADR: From the charges? From the car? JJ: From this car, from the charges of the car. ADR: Right. What happened? JJ: I don’t-- ADR: You were charged with the auto theft from those vehicles, were you not? JJ: I eventually ended up getting deported to Puerto Rico. [02:37:00] I mean, they put me on a plane in handcuffs and sent me to Puerto Rico, and they tried to charge me with burglaries, with car thefts, with all kinds of stuff. That guy McKinney that I’m telling you about, I did the first burglary with him and I started hanging around with him and he was using me to go inside the window. Again, I was a juvenile, and so actually I was taking the risk because I could have got shot going into the window. And so, I went in there and he was already an expert. I mean, he went, got a pillowcase and started putting jewelry in the pillowcase and all that stuff. The only thing I wanted was a toaster because we needed a toaster at the house. I always wanted to have me some bread, toasted bread. And so that’s the only thing that I took [02:38:00] (inaudible) and another buddy of his, they got all the jewelry, the TVs, the money they found, the cash, whatever. Anyway, all I know is that night, around two or three o’clock in the morning, they knock at my door and my mother lets them in and they come into 97 �the bedroom where I’m at and I get handcuffed when I wake up. I’m handcuffed there. ADR: You got sent to Audy Home, didn’t you up in Saint Charles? JJ: I went to Audy Home about five or six times. ADR: But you went up to Saint Charles? JJ: I also went to Saint Charles and they were going to put me in a juvenile penitentiary. ADR: I remember, hold on, step in there because I remember me and Orlando went to Saint Charles to try to break you out. JJ: Exactly. And remember that too. Yeah. We already had a plan to get me out of jail. You guys were going to break me out. I mean, I remember that. Remember, I’m glad it didn’t take place because I would’ve [02:39:00] been still in jail. But what happened is they were going to send me to Sheridan, which was the juvenile penitentiary, until I was 21 and I was only 14 going on 15. And instead, my mother got her pennies together and got me a lawyer. The lawyer stole the money and the lawyer plea bargained me to go to Puerto Rico until I was 21 instead of going to the penitentiary. And he figured that he did me a favor. So, I got put on the plane. I got taken right out of Audy Home, and I drove in a paddy wagon to the airport and my parents drove behind us and we talked at the airport and right at the gate, as we’re going into the plane, that’s when they took the handcuffs off. And then I got met by my uncle in Puerto Rico, and I stayed there for about a year, a year and a half until my father came to pick me up. So, I didn’t stay until I was 21. And while I was there, I got into [02:40:00] a 98 �little trouble, but I never went to jail. But here I was going in and out of jail every other day, at least once a week. So, basically that’s what happened. I know that they charged me with car theft and stuff like that too, but we also-ADR: I didn’t-JJ: We were trying to go to California with some stolen cars. That’s what we, and we got busted about five Young Lords, about three, or four. ADR: I mean that later on-JJ: What other gang fights? ADR: What? JJ: Any other gang fights that you remember? What about the beach, North Avenue Beach? ADR: There were a lot. We used to fight on a daily basis. JJ: You’re looking at it just a gang fight. And I’m looking at it as a gang fight, but I’m looking at it as a racial thing. When we went to the beach, remember North Avenue Beach in (inaudible)? ADR: That was the last day. That was one of the biggest, that’s when I got [02:41:00] my lip cut. That was the, which I actually had to go with my mother work in the hospital, Henrotin Hospital. JJ: What happened there? ADR: Okay, that was the day when always, there used to be a tradition to everybody would fight each other on the last day of school before summer. And we had, as everybody got out of school, there were fights. We all were going down towards the beach and there were all fights going on. I mean, obviously if the whites saw 99 �a Hispanic they would jump Hispanic or vice versa. I mean that were like, groups are going out. We went up to North Avenue. You were with me. I believe that that was when me and you, we were lagging behind the rest of the group. And it was a white kid that had going in back of us as I recall and he said something after we all had passed. But because me and you were the lag [02:42:00] ones, we turned around and he had made the challenge. At that point, we weren’t aware that there was another group of white guys coming. So, that’s the reason he had gotten both because he had seen the group coming--we hadn’t seen the group. So, as we walked towards him, then we ended up seeing the whole group. So, as a stand, we both stood, we got ourselves, I think what we did is we got ourselves against the wall so that nobody could jump us through the back. And we started fighting with them and we stood our ground in there. I know I got hit. The reason I got my lip cut was because I got, the guy that hit me had a ring and we were getting anything, but we were fighting them in there. And the cut most of been some places you bleed a lot. Not that you got a bad cut, but they in certain places of the face. But anyway, that’s when they had, what they did that day is that they took me to [02:43:00] the hospital, the Henrotin Hospital where my mother worked, where they had to stitch me up and my mother found out that what had happened on the fight. Then they took us to, you and myself, we were taken to jail, 18th Street, and I got out with your mom or somebody came from your family to get you out. I don’t think it was your mother. JJ: My father. My father. ADR: Huh? 100 �JJ: My father. ADR: And we both got out at the same-- they let us out at the same time that we got out. That was the fight on there. But the point of that particular fight, as many guys as we took, two of us against the whole group, they couldn’t do shit. JJ: But my point, what I was trying to say was that at that point, Latinos couldn’t go to North Avenue Beach. ADR: The what now? JJ: The Latinos -- Hispanic -- could not go to North [02:44:00] Avenue Beach. It was a white beach. Do you recall that? It was a beach, North Avenue Beach was for the Italians and the Irish. (inaudible) ADR: Well, I mean the police used to favor the whites and now the fighting, that was the whole thing. I mean, what you’re saying, you’re correct. Maybe perhaps we were kind of used about that. You’re correct in that they should have arrested the point that they only arrested us. They didn’t arrest the whites. Okay. Obviously it was a mutual event and it should have been. JJ: But they didn’t want us at the beach. The whites didn’t want us at the beach. Is that incorrect or no? ADR: The what now? JJ: That beach was mainly white. They didn’t want Spanish people there. North Avenue Beach at that time, or am I incorrect? ADR: Not that you’re incorrect. I think that what I recall [02:45:00] from that, for me it was that it was a standard thing that the last day of school there was always going to be a fight. What I do see is the difference of how the police conducted 101 �themselves at that time. So, the prejudice came from the police, not so much the whites, meaning the guys who were fighting. Point was that they should have been, my point in there is that they should have arrested them as much as us because it wasn’t a one-sided kind of situation. Okay, so where you’re seeing the whites that we were fighting as part of the system, you’re not really looking at the authority of how they should have conducted themselves in that particular situation. In other words, they were taking sides. Had we been white and it had the same situation, it would’ve been a total, like who started it or that kind. There was no [02:46:00] question. I mean, me and you, we were busted. They were not. So that thing, I’m not disagreeing with you. I’m just seeing it a little bit differently. JJ: From a different point of view. ADR: From a different point of view, and then most of the gang fighting, that’s what took place until they started hiring more Hispanics. That has changed over the years, but a lot, there were quite a few other gang fights and the big ones, there were so many of them. You’re talking about the one by the Rush Street. I mean, you’re talking about a gang fight when we fought on the streets on Rush Street. Old Town, I don’t mean how many times we had fights in Old Town -- gang fights, [02:47:00] confrontations on the streets specifically. I mean, when I mentioned Rush Street, I remember the commotions that we used to cause sometimes, and then when we used to get into fights with the whites. The repeated fights sometimes with people we made peace and then we ended up fighting again for any number of reasons. The fights that were sometimes we 102 �started learning that some of our own guys that had become Young Lords would start fights to make themselves look good, and then we would end up having to fight fights that we started learning from that experience that we would not take our own members word when they would talk about a fight. That’s where we started making any new member-- that led us, I don’t know how long it took us to do this, but [02:48:00] in the later years when we started learning that guys would start fights for no reason to make themselves look good and that kind of stuff, we started requiring all new members that would have to go to Benny’s Pizzeria. Romas, not Benny’s, Romas Pizzeria and fight the group by their own. Remember that? JJ: I remember that. ADR: Romas knew us. I mean, they knew who we were and all that other stuff we used to -- when the guy said, I want to be a Young Lords, well, you got to go out there and you got to fight these guys and see, we got to know how you take-how good of a fighter you are or whatever. So those guys that would go in there, Romas got a hold of what we were doing because later that they said, “Well, that fucking guy can’t take shit.” Or because we used to send ’em and they knew what was coming that time. Soon as Hispanic coming in got a new inductee for the initiation. Yeah, remember that? [02:49:00] And it is kind of funny to look back. I wasn’t like those guys, but we used to do that because, but when we did that because we wanted to know if the guy was -- had it in him or not, because we were tired. We were-- 103 �JJ: So how long was this gang fights then? I mean how many years did this proceed from? Because the Young Lords started around what time? Around what year? ADR: Would’ve been roughly close to five years. JJ: Okay. Close to five years that those gang fightings were going on. So, from what year did the gang start, from your recollection? What year did the Young Lords start? ADR: It’s kind of hard for me to pinpoint a bit because I won’t have to say that in the number of years, more likely the years of fighting would’ve been four, but no more than five. I mean, [02:50:00] we don’t have a round table. I think we got started around 1960, 1961. I’m not sure about the 1961-JJ: Around 1961. Okay. ADR: The period. But it would’ve have been around after 1960. After 1960, that we got started. JJ: And then the gang fighting was four or five years going on. ADR: I’m saying for me, the gang fighting years lasted longer. I’m out of the picture by 1965, at the end of 1965. That’s why I’m saying close to five years because I left in November. JJ: Of 1965 to the service? ADR: When I went into the service. JJ: It was November of 1965. ADR: Right. In 1965, November of 1965. That’s why I’m saying when we’re asking that question about number of years fighting, the fighting continued obviously after I was gone, but I was no longer part of that because I was in the service. And the 104 �reason I decided it was part of it was some of the things that at that point, it was already current with us as [02:51:00] a Young Lords, but Orlando, Fermin, Benny, you were completely out of the list immediately. We said we were going to go into the service together because we were tired of the bullshit that was around us, and we had decided that we were going to go to the service and you were the first one that I can remember in my recollection, I don’t know whether that’s correct or not. My recollection is that your mother, immediately when I found out you were gone and said, “No, you’re not going into that. You were not going to go.” JJ: I didn’t get accepted. ADR: Huh? JJ: I didn’t get accepted because I had children and I had a record. That’s the reasoning. ADR: You didn’t have children back then. JJ: I actually volunteered. I think we marched together to the recruiting station that was on Lincoln Avenue and I was saying, “Let’s go march together.” I was persuading everybody to go march and everybody got accepted except me [02:52:00] and I had persuaded everybody. ADR: Right. Maybe you’re right about that. I’m not going to then, okay, you might be right. Okay. Then Fermin was second. I know that. JJ: Fermin was there. Okay. Who was there? ADR: Fermin was-- his mother got freaked out. JJ: We was march— 105 �ADR: Fermin’s mother freaked out about him going to the service. Benny, because he was close to Fermin, then dropped out. Then Orlando dropped out and I was the one that was left and I said, “Fuck it. I’m not backing out.” And I decided to go in. Okay, so out of the group, I’m the one that-JJ: So, you were going from 1965 to when? ADR: To 1968. JJ: To 1968 to-- because that’s when we started here. That’s when it turned political in 1968. ADR: Right when [02:53:00] we come back, you’re talking a whole different thing that had taken place. Ralph was the one that started getting political. When I came back-JJ: Okay, let’s hold it right there. END OF VIDEO FILE 106 � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/eb0fbf63b71f6e879499cc73be870422.mp4 746487830d8f11961549600761b6eb6f 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 Angel “Sal” del Rivero 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.) Mexicano-Americanos--Relatos personales Justicia social Activistas comunitarios--Illinois--Chicago Mexicano-Americanos--Illinois--Chicago--Vida social y costumbres Veteranos--Relatos personales Pandillas--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_Rivero_Angel_del_1 Title A name given to the resource Angel “Sal” del Rivero video interview and transcript, interview 1 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Rivero, Angel del Description An account of the resource Angel “Sal” del Rivero was born in Mexico. In the late 1950s and early 1960s he lived in Lincoln Park on Dayton Street. Later his family moved to the Lakeview Neighborhood near Wrigley Field. Mr. Rivero became one of the original members of the Young Lords in 1959. While the Young Lords were transforming themselves into a human rights movement, Mr. Rivero was serving in the U.S. military. When he came out most Young Lords were opposed to the Vietnam War, although many Young Lords also served on the front lines in that war. Mr. Rivero at first resented those who opposed the war. But after Young Lord Manuel Ramos was killed by an off duty policeman, the entire Young Lords group reunited themselves for human rights. 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.) Mexican Americans--Personal narratives Social justice Community activists--Illinois--Chicago Mexican Americans--Illinois--Chicago--Social life and customs Veterans--Personal narratives Gangs--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 2012-07-11 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/398132f23a4d0abd7bef4a0a6362ec28.pdf b138cb5c3e547a544f43470d5d52a8dd PDF Text Text Young Lords In Lincoln Park Interviewee: Angel “Sal” del Rivero Interviewers: José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez Location: Grand Valley State University Special Collections Date: 7/12/2012 Biography and Description Angel “Sal” Del Rivero was born in Mexico. In the late 1950s and early 1960s he lived in Lincoln Park on Dayton Street. Later his family moved to the Lakeview Neighborhood near Wrigley Field, but he never left Lincoln Park as he traveled to it daily. Mr. Rivero became one of the original members of the Young Lords in 1959. The other original members of the Young Lords were all Puerto Rican, including Santos Guzman who moved to Lincoln Park from Philadelphia, Benny Pérez who lived on Halsted, Fermin Pérez (no relation to Benny), and David “Chicken Killer” Rivera whose regular job later was at a meat market. Mr. Rivero’s father was the neighborhood barber who cut hair from their home on Fremont and Bissell Streets, which then crossed each other where they both ended. Mr. Rivero’s brothers improvised a roller coaster ride made from wooden fruit crates that slid down the railing of their back porch stairway, racing down into the backyard until the crates finally hit ground on the cement pavement would glide it on their own. It was exhilarating until the ride ended at the fence. All the neighborhood kids enjoyed it and the Rivero kids made a mint from the nickles they charged for the rides.The first president of the Young Lords was Joe Vicente, who had Italian features. Mr. Jiménez became the last president of several because he was always in and out of jail. Mr. Vicente also lived in the Italian section of Lincoln Park, by De Paul University, on Sheffield and Belden. His cousin, Johnny Trinidad had moved from New York, to Indiana Harbor’s Steel Mill area, and then moved onto 95th and Halsted Streets. Mr. Trinidad always �was free with his opinions, especially before, after, and when he briefly popped into meetings to watch, but he rarely attended any full meeting, saying that he could not because he lived out of the neighborhood. Mr. Rivero recalls these early days, noting that the fact that ethnic youth groups lived in segregated blocks in these early days also played a big difference in their organizing. In 1959, Puerto Ricans were still scattered throughout Lincoln Park and so the Young Lords did not begin from a concentrated hangout but were spread out, trying to carve out their own place within Lincoln Park. For many this meant being targeted by white ethnic youth because they had darker skin, were Puerto Rican, or spoke Spanish. Mr. Rivero recalls the numerous stands the Young Lords made in their early days. As more Latinos and African Americans moved into Lincoln Park, Humbolt Park, Wicker Park, and parts of Lakeview through the 1950s and 1960s, youth began to unite more around national origins. Mr. Rivero describes an encounter where the Young Lords, Latin Eagles, and a whole range of northside Puerto Ricans gangs became involved. The Aristocrats were an established white gang that was led by their only Puerto Rican member, Dulio. They had argued with a Puerto Rican family and had entered into a primarily Puerto Rican housing project called California Terrace, located by Halsted and Barry near Clark Streets and threw bricks through all the windows. A war involving about 400 people began and the white Town Hall policemen hid from view. It lasted an entire week. On one of the days, the Puerto Ricans walked down Barry Street and broke out all the car windows, from Halsted to Sheffield looking for and challenging the Aristocrats in their own territory. On another occasion, a stuffed figure of a person hung by the neck from electrical wires high up in the middle of the street, resembling a lynching. The war ended when both groups met on their own and agreed to stop fighting, to avoid being arrested by the police. Mr. Rivero recalls being one of the war counselors with Mr. Jiménez and helping to resolve the conflict. While the Young Lords were transforming themselves into a human rights movement, Mr. Rivero was serving in the U.S. military. When he came out most Young Lords were opposed to the Vietnam War, although many Young Lords also served on the front lines in that war. Mr. Rivero at first resented those who opposed the war. But after Young Lord Manuel Ramos was killed by an off duty policeman, the entire Young Lords group reunited themselves for human rights. �Transcript ANGEL DEL RIVERO: In a day or two then they decided to send us to Korea. So when I went to Korea, I got sent to a missile site. That prompted-- what I understand is that while I was gone, Orlando was the one that wrote me a letter saying that a colonel had visited the YMCA, the group, inquiring about me. The reason the inquiry was being made is I was being sent to a missile site, so I needed to have a clearance, and when they did, they were doing a background check on me and everything else. And so Orlando was like, I didn’t know what it was about, but when I found out about it, I realized what that was about. They made the inquiry and anyway, the point is that I got, because I was being sent to missile site, I got what they call a confidential clearance. At any rate, I spent 13 months [00:01:00] in Korea. The significance of the period that I was in there that I almost got killed. I had a Jeep fall on me. That’s when I busted my back, my ribs on a Jeep accident, right towards the end of my tour of duty. From that coming back, I came back on leave, but my parents decided that I should go to, spend about a couple of weeks in Mexico for vacation. Came back, got sent to the statesides in Washington and from Washington, the state of Washington, and went to Vietnam. Then that’s when I came back and it ended my tour duty in Vietnam. I came back to the stateside, but [00:02:00] Cha-Cha, you’re falling asleep, man. Hey, you want to end the interview because you’re falling asleep? The main reason was because we could not be part of the other groups mean either the Paragons or the Eagles, is that if you’re referring to the area of the gang activity. 1 �JOSE JIMENEZ: Right. So that’s the only main reason. ADR: The main reason mean, obviously I would’ve to say that was the main reason why the Young Lords came into being. JJ: So we wanted to fit in. But what about, okay, so you’re saying that the main reason that we wanted to, from your perspective, become a Young Lord’s gang was because we wanted to fit in with the older guys, but they wouldn’t let us fit in. ADR: Right. JJ: We were too young. But did it also have to do with us getting beaten up by the white gangs? ADR: No, I don’t think because we were getting [00:03:00] jumped or anything like that, no. That would’ve been--no, I don’t see that as a factor at all. As individuals we didn’t-- I think the more strongly purpose, the reason would’ve been the one to fit in with the older groups, we certainly that had no fear of the white groups that existed in the area. I mean, common sense-- common sense dictates, I mean, the difference between other people or groups where gangs evolve or get started and the variables that exist and how that comes to about. But as a group, not really. I think without realizing-- [00:04:00] it’s sort of creating a team. Sometimes teams come into being -- Or I was trying to make another explanation. My perspective, for us, it was like a team that was created much, I mean, I’m making an analogy. Any team that becomes successful and a team becomes successful, obviously you don’t hear it about the ones that don’t become successful. So the analogy that I’m trying to make out of this particular situation is as far as the Young Lords and what later on is represented, was 2 �much in the analogy that I’m talking about that I’m thinking is sort of like with the Bulls, for example. Obviously without Michael Jordan [00:05:00] and other, but it wasn’t just Michael Jordan. The other players that played, that was made up in there with the coach and everything else made through a unique team that ended up winning a lot of titles for the Chicago. I mean, it is the Bulls as they won, and when they broke away, it hasn’t been in Chicago, it hasn’t been duplicated. And so I think that it does when certain things, elements that come into being a can create that kind of environment. So not every team, not everybody’s going to succeed at those particular levels. So, so far as the gang activity, this is what I mean, what the Young Lords represented. The innovations, we didn’t know we were doing anything-- referring to the weapons, for example-- lessons learned. It wasn’t like we sat down and that we needed to continue to carry weapons. When we got caught the first [00:06:00] time with the blackjacks and with the knives in that particular gang fight at Arnold Upper Grade Center, we quickly learned this is not a smart thing to do, to be carrying weapons around so we changed our tactics and improved on it. That made it a lot easier that we could walk around. Somebody stopped the searches. I mean, a police officer pulling us over won’t find any weapon, no reason to be picked up, no reason to be thrown in jail. We didn’t give them the excuse. We didn’t know what we were doing. I mean, the effect, the impact that we were having and we were creating. The other area that I already spoken about is about the ability to, the tactics and learning how to fight, how to take a punch. We didn’t know we were training ourselves for fights. We even thought as that we thought it was a game to play 3 �among each other. Obviously, when we look back on that, for me it makes me realize why is, I mean that when we were fighting, we didn’t think about when we were fighting that we took a punch or not. It was sort [00:07:00] of like second nature to us. We took a punch, like so what, the guy hit me big deal, or that it stung or that it hurt. But because we were already used to that, that was the part without realizing that we were training ourselves, we didn’t know if we were doing that. Years later, we came to realize, I mean, in my part, I came to realize, wait a minute, we trained ourselves to take a hit to be able to attack. We were fighting-the little things that we did. And again, in that particular area of fighting how somebody throws a punch, how to receive the punch. Because when we’re fighting, again, I have to emphasize that in there, that how we learned it wasn’t just taking the hit, but when you’re seeing it, where you going to get it, where you want that impact to hit, you’re not going to avoid the hit, and it had to become second nature. So that we would, in fighting how when somebody would hit and how we get hit sometimes where we leaned, how we moved, all of these things was part of that particular thing that made us, [00:08:00] later on, I mean, it started to make us famous and obviously the thing that we wanted to prove to the Paragons and to the Eagles, that we were just as good as they were. So we wanted to do more damage. And again, all of those little things that were being done in that time helped us to gain that reputation. But the cornerstone, not the-wrong word. The turning point was the fight that I mentioned that, as I said, when Orlando had to fight with the Paragons over the issue, that they wanted to jump the [Black...?] 4 �JJ: Okay, and which, yeah, that was the corner, the turning point at that time. So I think you made a very important point here. You said that a lot of it had to do with fitting in more than in protection. In other words, that we were not afraid of the white gangs. ADR: Or [00:09:00] the Black gangs for that matter? JJ: Or the Black gangs or anybody. It was more like we wanted to fit in and we couldn’t fit in the Black Eagles. They were older or the Paragons. So we had to have our own group, and now we’ve got to show them that we’re even better than they are. So that’s a very important point. ADR: Well, obviously we-JJ: From my perspective, I am going by the routine saying that it was for protection. But actually I agree with you. I think now that you’ve mentioned that, that was more like we wanted our own thing, our own-- ADR: Well, the other area, I mean in the fighting we did-- as far as the fighting, again, how we conducted ourselves. One of the other which has been touched, and I’m retouching the particular area, is the area that we were not constantly [00:10:00] together. That also was a plus side, because it is, as I said internally, there were groups that individuals, individuals that came in thinking we can take over or we can run it, and always coming up against a solid wall of, no, you’re not going to do it. JJ: So how did that work that we were not together all the time? You mean the whole group wasn’t together. ADR: It’s just the way we-- 5 �JJ: But they had little groups. We had little cliques. ADR: It was our lifestyles. I mean, more than anything else, for whatever reasons. For example, obviously, well, not for whatever reasons. I mean, if you take a look at Benny and Fermin, they tended to be in school together. They’re always doing things together. So it was natural for them to go in a particular way. JJ: Okay, so you had one group. That was one group, and then there was-- ADR: The other group. I mean, there were other, a mix of groups [00:11:00] because one of the things I have mentioned earlier, they were not, when I’m talking, not that it’s difficult to remember, but there were a lot of other people. You got other people involved in part of the Young Lords that came in and ended up believing or that throughout the period of time that things were going on. JJ: There were different generations. Again-- ADR: Not so much that there were generations. I would’ve to say that there were individuals, how would I put it? The reflection for me, I mean among ourselves, is that we tended to have a certain people that followed us as a group. So for example, me and Orlando tended to be together, but it wasn’t just me and Orlando. There were other fringes from the newer members that would hang around with us just as much as when you drifted, you drifted with you. We spent time with you, but not as much as, in other words, you tended to drift away from us with other individuals, but [00:12:00] we weren’t-JJ: Everybody went, there were different cliques and everybody-- ADR: Exactly. Different areas and things that were going on. JJ: So that gives me, other people were drifting around too to the different groups. 6 �ADR: And it wasn’t that we didn’t get along or anything. It’s just the way for me, even-JJ: One day, somebody hung around here and another day in another location. ADR: I’m trying to think of it. There was a lot of individuals that had a certain amount of impact. For example, you had Shorty, a Mexican guy. It also had to do with the girlfriends and individuals the way who was with whom and that kind of stuff. The only thing I can explain, I mean if you’re talking from my perspective, is that I just happened to be-- spend more time with Orlando than I did with anybody else because we just tended to naturally drift together. I know I taught him how to drive a car, which was kind of funny so far as, because we had to go steal a car, steal cars in order [00:13:00] to teach him because he wanted to learn how to drive. Remember, I was the only one at the beginning. I was the only one that knew how to drive. The only reason I knew how to drive because my father wanted to wash his car every day or every other day on it that forced me to learn how to drive. My father loved cars and I didn’t, I mean, I didn’t really care for them, but I was the very first one that knew-- out of that whole group that knew how to drive. You had to learn, and you learn actually more quicker than Orlando. Orlando’s wrecked. I don’t have any vehicles. JJ: I learned in a stolen car. We all learned in a stolen car. ADR: He busted up a couple of cars in the process of learning how to drive. JJ: I ate it from (inaudible) too. ADR: And you had an easier time learning how to drive than he did. As I recall, okay. 7 �JJ: So people were drifting from one group to the other group and all over the neighborhood. So [00:14:00] they were in different parts of the neighborhood. Some went to, what is it, the Adams playground? ADR: And also, yeah, but you got to remember how we went home when we went home and things like that. The things. But it was just sort of a, I don’t think that we were any different in terms of that socializing than any other group. And I believe that any other group, there’s a tendency for certain people to hang around together. Within a given group, you have your inner circle of certain individuals hanging together or spending more time with each other than other individuals. And so that’s the way it worked. So there were a lot more gang-- I mean, there was a lot more for me, because I have deference, because when you talk about the fighting that existed at the beginning, what made us, I mean [00:15:00] becoming more noble was for another reason that we drifted out of the neighborhood. So when you’re referring to other areas, we weren’t just hanging around Armitage and Halsted. We’re going up north. We went to that, which now I believe is part of the Latin school where they had the private school that existed back then that we had. I mean, we went-- things to come back to mind that were a lot of different places. The guy that actually got us with the idea to help out that came in, I can only remember his nationality. He was actually a Spaniard, Spanish kid. He was in high school with us that became part of the Young Lords, and they had asked him for help because they knew some of the people that were, which turned out to be the Cuban, I referred to as the Cuban clan, if you will. The individuals that, as I said, that first wave of immigrants that 8 �came to the United States, that the Castro had ousted, Batista, and we had that came here. There was like 10,000, [00:16:00] I believe, that came into the Chicago area at that time, or maybe exactly what the number. But these were well to do people. The children were attending-JJ: We actually had a branch of them up north. ADR: Well, that’s because we helped them. How we ended up going is that they had a fight actually with some Japanese kids, that karate bullshit and all that other stuff we’re going to be, who gives a fuck about karate. We went and beat the crap out of ’em. They were endeared to us because we helped them out on the fight. We went in there and did what we did and beat the shit out of these guys, and then invited us to go up north where they lived. They lived up in Evanston. JJ: They had nice girlfriends. ADR: Beautiful women. So that was part of the, and obviously for girls, I mean, the thing about it is that obviously we were the Young Lords, so we attracted a certain amount of-- women are women, I mean, even back [00:17:00] then, no reality that we had is then we were the Young Lords. So it wasn’t because it was Sal, or it was Cha Cha, I’m going on with a Young Lord, we had the reputation. JJ: What about Young Lordettes? ADR: Huh? JJ: Weren’t there Young Lordettes, ADR: These were pissed off-- The Lordettes was a part of a group of women that were part of us. But you would have to ask, I mean, and this kind of thing. That’s the question that they would need to answer. Obviously they knew-- I can’t believe 9 �that did not aware of what we were doing. And certainly that must have pissed him off at times because we really, at least for my part, and even Orlando, I think, but we didn’t have steady girlfriends, and I don’t think we did it as something that was in our minds. I think it was part of our mentality is that because we were meeting girls all over the place. I mean, when we used to go down Lincoln, [00:18:00] Evanston, the South Side, other areas, we were always constantly meeting women. So it was not like we wanted to be tied down to a particular girl. And me in my particular, I tended to stay away. And then I think it was true for the rest of us. Though, I got to say, you reminded me something about you. You tended to fall in love. You tended to fall in it, and you fell hard. It was like, I got to be with a woman. And it’s like, what the fuck is wrong with Cha-Cha, man? I got all these other damn broads. And then he’s out there-- you used to get heartbroken when you were out with a girl. You wanted to be with her sometimes. Now you’re making me remember certain things. It not that you didn’t want to spend time with us, it’s that you fell in love with the damn broad and you had to be with her all the goddamn time. Like what the fuck is wrong? Leave them alone. Interested. JJ: Why would I want to be in a gang? ADR: The funny part about it, you ended up, how many times? Well, I mean, I’m not trying to get personal, but-JJ: How many divorces, right? ADR: Right. [00:19:00] I don’t-- I mean, I used to not be tied down or anything. JJ: You’re still married to the same woman. 10 �ADR: Exactly. JJ: How long have you been married to the same-- ADR: I don’t-- 43 years. JJ: Forty-three years to the same woman. ADR: That’s the opposite of you. You know what I mean. I don’t understand that. JJ: You made your point. You can rest your truth. ADR: But you did. I mean, you are reminded of certain things where sometimes certain things are missing. It’s coming in there and you’re making me realize that you had something that, I mean, I am kind of, I’m not dwelling on it. I’m just trying to point out that kind of fits a little bit of the puzzle of that why sometimes you weren’t hanging around with me and Orlando or some of the other guys because you did get taken aback when you were with a woman. JJ: You think that could have been because I was going to jail a lot or --? ADR: No, you keep saying it. Jail. It [00:20:00] wasn’t jail. JJ: It wasn’t jail. ADR: You didn’t spend, I mean, you did certain things. It had to do with the women. That’s where you, the thing about that was going on with you. You did. I mean, there’s no doubt that you got picked up more often than the rest of us. Okay. We hardly got, I mean, quite honestly, we hardly got picked up and actually you spent more time with a woman than you did with us because you used to-- if I’m putting, I’m not sure. Did you fell hard for that or you couldn’t? In other words-JJ: I don’t remember. ADR: You were pussy-whipped. I’m sorry. The women. 11 �JJ: No. Probably that I don’t know, but I-- ADR: Okay. JJ: Because I can’t-- I do remember that I would be with one. ADR: Yeah, then you just like had to be with a woman all the time. JJ: (inaudible) woman had a man. And then when they split up. (inaudible) ADR: I recall, I mean, I really can’t be certain, but even I think at the age of 16, you almost got [00:21:00] married. JJ: I know I went to jail for a stabbing over a woman. I did that. Stabbed somebody over a woman. Yeah, I did that. ADR: But remember the fight. You remind me about the fight, about the stabbing that I wasn’t there. That happened up in the north side. JJ: Same high school. ADR: That had to do with a woman. Right. JJ: And I went to jail for it. Yeah, I did six months. ADR: That had to do with a woman. JJ: They wanted to give me seven years. I was lucky. I got six months. ADR: So that’s what I’m referring to. You fell hard for a woman. JJ: I stabbed a guy by five times or something, I got crazy. I was drunk too. Okay. ADR: Yeah. You were jealous. (inaudible) the rest of us. I mean, I reaction. We were going out with somebody and making out. She went out and made out with another guy. Hey-JJ: I wasn’t the only one that was going around in the neighborhood too. Other people were going through that. 12 �ADR: The thing is, we weren’t, I mean, and in particular, I mean what I learned from those things, and not all of us were [00:22:00] the same way. When I had that situation come up with a woman, I just simply would walk away from her. I would not like, “Hey, do you want to go out?” That’s your business. I’m not. And Orlando did the same thing. So later on he could be persuaded by a woman-falling for a woman. JJ: He did that too. I remember he did that too. He fell in love a lot too. ADR: Yeah, he did. Later on. He did. JJ: Later on, later on. You’re right. ADR: Later on when he did-JJ: So we were dealing with issues, different issues. We were dealing with different issues, including with women and women. ADR: Right. The area, there’s a lot more, I mean, at the moment, and you’re calling is that, I’m not remembering, but obviously in so far as the gang fights. JJ: But what about the Young Lordettes, because I want ’em to get it. ADR: The Young Lordettes. I mean, you’re talking about Lynn-JJ: But there was one group, Lynn and Margaret and Sheila [00:23:00] and Edna. ADR: Sheila, right. JJ: And Vita and all those people. What’s her name? Marta or [Ynez?]-- what other women? What about Little Cha-Cha was involved? ADR: I think what it was, you forget. JJ: A little Cha-Cha too, a Mexican girl from the, because we had a group of Mexican women too. 13 �ADR: Right. But the rest of us, some of the people in the group I here, that’s what we differ. We didn’t make a big deal out of it, but we did differ. I know that Orlando and myself, I can’t speak for you, but we didn’t care, in other words, about the Lordettes. Like I said, because of what we were doing and going to different places, but I know that some people in the gang wanted to have the Lordettes. You were one of those individuals. You pushed for that. You wanted to have them. That wasn’t something the rest of, not [00:24:00] some of us that we wanted, we didn’t to us, because remember, we weren’t going out with them. JJ: We were expanding. I wanted to expand. I wanted always to expand. ADR: As a group we appreciated, and it doesn’t mean we didn’t appreciate ’em. We appreciated them, but with the exception, well, we didn’t have the love interest with them. I mean, for some of us, so to us it was in give or take type situation, whether it matter or not. JJ: Now, were these women, were they mostly into gang banging? ADR: No. Not at all. JJ: Not into gang banging at all, right? ADR: No. JJ: So they were more into parties. ADR: They were more into the dances and things, the socializing activity and that. JJ: That’s important because a lot of people think that they’re gang bangers. They’re into drugs and prostitution and all. None of that. ADR: No, no. With us, [00:25:00] it wasn’t anywhere near anything that had to do with anything like that at all. 14 �JJ: So what did it have to do then? ADR: Just the socializing aspects of the dances, activities that we had and that kind of thing. Obviously on their part-JJ: Because later on that became like a stigma for them. As people got to know more about the Young Lords, they thought that the women, the Young Lordettes were prostitutes or whatever. That’s what they thought, and a lot of ’em shied away. ADR: Why would they, when you’re saying something like that, why would they, again, a question. Why would they? JJ: I’m saying that that could have been, it could have been. I don’t have proof. I don’t have that. ADR: I think remember the Black Eagles, though? I can’t recall whether in effect, even the Black Eagles, the women, and the Black Eagles, here’s the difference between us and the Paragons. In the Paragons and the Black Eagles, the women, [00:26:00] I don’t know if they basically had also, they had in other words, a group of women. JJ: They did. They did. ADR: Okay. The difference between them and us, it is obvious and in fact, that some of those, the women ended up being couples, ended up getting married to each other. I would say that in larger, in other words, more members married their own, in other words, club members in both groups. Both the Paragons and the Eagles. JJ: And the Black Eagles. 15 �ADR: Where we in the Young Lords, I really can’t make any connection. JJ: Well, one or two. There’s one or two. ADR: Because even Angie with Poncho, they came together. JJ: (inaudible) and Mary Gladys-- ADR: Was not part of the group. JJ: That was later. She came later. ADR: Yeah. She was not part of the group at all. JJ: Of the Young Lordettes. ADR: Gladys was, what’s his name? Wayne-- Edwin’s sister. JJ: Yeah. That was later. You’re right. ADR: Yeah. Much [00:27:00] later. They had nothing to do. JJ: But what about Ruben Aviles and (inaudible)? That was later, too? ADR: That was later, too. JJ: Okay. That was later too. ADR: There was no, absolutely no. JJ: I mean, they were both Young Lords, but-- ADR: She became later because he was-JJ: But they got together later. They got married later. ADR: Was not, it’s a gang. JJ: Right? It’s a gang. ADR: None of that existed. Not anybody in the group ever married anybody that was part of the Lordettes. 16 �JJ: Well, I had a girl named Cuba. I had a girlfriend named Cuba. We had some girlfriends, though. We did have-- ADR: As girlfriends, as girlfriends to some of us, yes, but not married. Not in a very lasting way. JJ: And do you remember some of the leaders? I remember there was a girl named Vita Beatrice who some of the leaders of the Young Lordettes, Beatrice, Margaret Trinidad, and [00:28:00] Edie, Manuel Ramos’ sister. ADR: Edie-- that was later. But see, that came later. JJ: But I’m saying those were three leaders of the women. Do you know any other ones? Do you know any other women leaders or no? ADR: The what now? JJ: Those were three leaders of the Young Lordettes. There were a couple Young Lordettes groups. There was one-- ADR: Well, actually, you can’t, you have to correct yourself on that. JJ: Halsted and Armitage. There was-- ADR: You can’t, when we became a party, no, I’m not trying to argue with you. From my perspective, from the point that we became a political organization, that’s when Nita came in. That’s when other women that became, they became prominent, but they became prominent as part of being Young Lords, not become Lordettes. JJ: Okay. Now, they were called Young Lords then, but Edie was the leader of the Young Lordettes for a while, and so was Margaret. ADR: It might’ve been during the period I was in the service. 17 �JJ: Yeah, [00:29:00] no, maybe when you were in the service. ADR: Yeah. JJ: They were leaders in Old Town, Edie and Margaret, and then Beatrice was the leader from Halsted and Dickens. We had a group of Young Lordettes there. ADR: Okay. That would’ve been, like I said, during the period that I was out of the country. JJ: Yeah, I remember I was going out with Yoruba. She was a Young Lordette from Halsted and Armitage. ADR: Well, you reminded me of something too, right now as far as the women. There was one real, I don’t remember her name. She was really good looking Puerto Rican girl, and everybody was after her. JJ: That was Beatrice. I think that was Beatrice. ADR: But she was not a Lordette. JJ: No, she was not a Lordette. ADR: She was more to the right, and I think to the, but her brother was one of the guys [00:30:00] that belonged, actually was part of the Paragons. The reason I’m mentioning this is that the brother ended up committing inadvertently-JJ: Oh, Chino. Chino. ADR: The one, Chino killed himself, right. JJ: His sisters were Paragons. Yeah. His sisters were Paragons. ADR: Right. JJ: Yeah. That’s not who I’m talking about. ADR: No, that’s the one I’m talking about. It was after-- 18 �JJ: He was a Young Lords, and his sisters were Paragons. Okay. ADR: But that’s particular, the one, you making me reminded because at that point he made the stupidity to play in the Russian roulette. That’s how he killed himself. And I remember sitting down one time one night and I thought that was real stupid because, and where I sat down one time when they were playing the game, obviously nothing, nobody got killed when I was there, but I know that he ended up doing it again and he killed himself. JJ: Himself. Yeah. ADR: The bullet and ended up killing himself, which messed up the sister, [00:31:00] and that just came to my mind when we were talking about the thing that I just thought about. But as a group, I, during the era, those things we did, we didn’t know what we were doing, that it was playing those particular roles that were setting us up for certain things that ended up, I think helping as far as our interaction into the political process. JJ: I mean, we trusted each other. How did that happen? How do you think that happened? ADR: I think because we started out at a very young age, so that in doing all the activities, we never second guessed each other and what we did, and even [00:32:00] to that point, it’s like with the challenges that were made to people in the group and how we ended up defending each other. JJ: What kind of challenges? ADR: Well, as I said, again, people, for any number of reasons that came into being, I guess you’d have to look at it. I can think of two ways right now, but also to 19 �involve other, might’ve been more than two, but I’m referring to, which I have mentioned a number of times about people trying to take over the group and we’re not successful because we would come together. And the other one would be as individuals when we would end up having fights. For my part, I can remember one time where we took more, you and me would take more processing to some of the things that we did, and as I recall and I have mentioned is we tended [00:33:00] what we had the title because we negotiated the fighting process that when a gang fight would take place, when we would have sit downs with the opposing inside, and we call ourselves the warlords. In other words, we gave ourselves a title that we would sit down with the enemy to make out how we were going to have to fight. Kind of silly, but we used that word and it was usually tended to fall to you and me when we did those things. JJ: So that meant that there had to be a lot of trust. ADR: Well, I’m getting to that about the trust and things that happened. I remember Santos Guzman, one time I had proposed something that I wanted to do. I remember the recalling Orlando and myself were ones that basically were, if you want to call, started the Young [00:34:00] Lords, they were instrumental in creating what came the Young Lords. Santos wanted to be the leader. I mean, I’m moving kind of fast forward to make-JJ: That’s your perspective, because there was other people that-- ADR: Yes, there were, but I’m refer to in clarifying part seven people originated. Well, I’m not trying to take credit in the way that you’re implying. JJ: I’m saying that’s your perspective in this one. 20 �ADR: No, well, I mean, I’m trying to do this. My perspective, what I would say is that if there hadn’t had been-- hadn’t been an Orlando. JJ: Oh, definitely. ADR: No Young Lords would’ve existed in their self. JJ: Orlando. Orlando founded the gang. ADR: Huh? JJ: Orlando founded the gang, the Young Lords. I mean, Orlando to me is the one that started the Young Lords. That’s the way I look at it. ADR: No. JJ: And then he got us all together, and I agree that you and him. ADR: Me and Orlando were the ones that got together. JJ: You and him did hang around together a lot. You and him did hang around together. ADR: It was me and Orlando, then (inaudible). JJ: But I hung around together with him too. I mean, he lived [00:35:00] right. ADR: If his brother, we put it to this way, there wouldn’t have been any Young Lords. If his brother hadn’t gone into a fight and I hadn’t been there to defend him, that would’ve meant that me and Orlando would’ve never become friends. Now, what would’ve happened, we can speculate all you want, but the creation of the Young Lords, when me and Orlando got together that we needed to have a group of our own. That was our idea. Orlando could tell you the same as much as I’m telling. If me and Orlando had not become friends and sat down, we have to have our own group. 21 �JJ: Me and Orlando were getting ready to fight each other at one point. Me and Orlando, this guy was going to give a watermelon to whoever won to fight between me and Orlando. That’s how me and him met. That’s how I met Orlando. We were supposed to fight over a watermelon. ADR: [00:36:00] Over the what? JJ: This older guy didn’t like me and didn’t like Orlando, and he wanted us fighting, and he said, he offered to buy us a watermelon, whoever won, this was on right there on Dayton and Willow. This is when I first met Orlando. ADR: Orlando was hanging around. JJ: But I’m saying he was like that with different people. He would fight different people and then he would respect them after they fought. So that’s how I’m saying. That’s how me and him met. That doesn’t mean that we decided on the Young Lords then he called me to a meeting. He’s the one that called me. ADR: Well, that’s what I’m trying to tell you. Look. JJ: What I’m saying, Orlando was hanging was a leader and everybody had a relationship with him. ADR: No, you got it wrong. I’m telling you, your interpretation of facts is-- On Freeman, there was a club at the corner, and basically [00:37:00] everybody was considered to be part of that particular club that went and signed in. As I said, Orlando during the, I’m talking referring to the evening, Orlando used to go around the area and the same thing as me. I mean, as far as I remember, and the end there, you were not around in the initial process. I’m talking the initial process before the, we even had the Egyptian Lords before there was any 22 �creation of that. The reason that came about it, it wasn’t like we sat down immediately and decided to do this is what I’m trying to point out to you. What happened was that when I had the fight and Orlando had come over, when he found out about it, he started hanging in the corner. The following day he said we need to have this around. He started hanging around on Fremont because he didn’t live there. We were going to the same school at that point, it wasn’t like, hold on. We had friends, the group of kids, those that lived on Bissell and Freeman, the congregation, [00:38:00] we had a group, a gang we called ourselves the Dayton Boys, you’re forgetting about that. They were the ones that I meant that I talking about where I ended up having a fight with one of ’em was trying to take my bike. The Dayton Boys hung around Dayton and Armitage. That was their corner at that time. JJ: That’s correct. ADR: It was an Italian place that used to-JJ: That’s where he broke his arm. ADR: Right. I’m breaking it down. So they’re over here on that corner where they hung around. The younger kids, we were the younger ones, much younger. They were hanging around at the end of Fremont, and what would be, whatever the name of that side street that led into the tunnel that you would go to go to when we went to Mulligan School in the morning, to the elementary school. But on Bissell, not on Bissell, on Fremont there was that storefront that was considered our (inaudible). There was also a candy store that was typical in that area of having your nickel and dime family owned businesses. [00:39:00] There 23 �were actually two. There were three businesses. The club, another small storefront from a house that was being run by typically older people, and one immediately across from there. We used to have gangs. We used to play with the girls. We always wanted to make out. I mean big (inaudible) as we were growing up and liking girls, you reminded me of something because we always wanted to make out. The big thing with, I mean, it wasn’t like we got the Playboy magazine or we had all these pornography or things that you see today. And you’re forgetting that at that time, I would remind people, girls used to wear scarfs all the time, and I actually started a stupid little game with one of the girls that we liked, the girls who we wanted to kiss, used to have the sleepover sometimes, the pajama parties. Orlando was hanging around at that point after the fight, he was hanging around with me because we knew the same people. It wasn’t because he was hanging around with me, but we were hanging around within the same group. Mineo, Sal Mineo became [00:40:00] kind of drifted into our group. For whatever reason, he was the much older, but he drifted into this particular group. From that was what led into the creation of wanting to have the gang. So that’s what I’m saying. If Orlando and myself had never gotten together, you would not have had, I don’t believe that there would’ve been some kind of a gang, maybe, I don’t know what would’ve happened, but this is what occurred. And we used to have a game that he’ll remind you, I’m going into the gang. I took one of the girls, some of us would kind of pair off into some of the girls, and I still remember her name, Billie May. Okay, Billie May, like I said, they had those guys, and one of the games we used to play around, because either 24 �we used to play the bottle, we roll in the bottle, so we get to kiss the girl, which is a big deal when we were kids. I ended up taking one of the scarfs away from Billie that she had said on her scarf, and she says, I want give it back. I said, yeah, but you got [00:41:00] to have to give me a kiss. So one of those things, she says, okay, and then we started and it became again, all the girls always said, ready. We started playing that game every day that we would go around trying to take the scarfs away from ’em, and then in order to give ’em back, they had to give us a kiss. So it became a game that in a natural process. All of that was what we were getting along. You asked me that. I wasn’t able to answer what I’m talking about, that we didn’t feel that we fit it in, and that’s where somehow because of maybe things that were taking place, we really didn’t felt remember close because the Dayton Boys were the older brothers of some of the individuals that we were hanging around with. I remember one guy named Jack, there’s another one that was the son of the father that owned the, on Armitage and Halsted that owned the hotdog stand. And I remember getting one time because of the curfew getting picked up [00:42:00] and comments that were made where they did took me home saying kids in there, but with the parents that maybe my kid ought to be hanging with somebody else because too many Hispanics are coming in into the neighborhood and that kind of thing. Me and Orlando, not in great detail, we kind of briefly kind of discussed that. We didn’t feel that-- in part because Orlando, you got to remember, you’re forgetting so about Orlando, but two characteristics that we both had and we still have. We were not afraid to fight. We reacted. If somebody challenged us, we jumped on 25 �it. We didn’t think about it. It was second nature to us. We would immediately go into a fight. Maybe you might call us quick tempered, but we had [00:43:00] that characteristic that we would fight back. He didn’t care who it was or how big the guy was. We didn’t allow ourselves to be pushed around. Now, I have to admit, sometimes that’s not good to quickly react in this kind of a situation, but that what led into the idea along with Mineo that we discussed with Sal Mineo that we discussed with him about having our own group. That led to further things. Now how you got involved-JJ: One way was that I had met Orlando before. ADR: You might have, I’m not denying that. JJ: Orlando, Orlando went to my mother’s catechism classes. My mother had catechism classes right in her house, the neighborhood kids, the loco, the crazy ones, would go there to these catechism classes. They were public school kids and she had ’em make their first communion. Orlando was one of those people, [00:44:00] and so I met him there. I met him there at that time. So that’s one. The other thing you mentioned, Mineo. Me and Mineo had been in the same gang at Franklin School over by Cabrini Green, the housing project. I had met him there before he moved more into Lincoln Park. So I had met him there like two or three years before he moved into Lincoln Park. Now you’re telling me he drifted with you guys. I agree, because I think the first fight was the Dayton Street Boys and I wasn’t there for that first fight because Orlando-- ADR: Well, it wasn’t a fight, wasn’t, as I said, nobody was hanging around. We weren’t hanging around together. What happened is that I pointed it out to you, maybe 26 �I’m not explaining correctly. You guys was at school. The fight got started during, in the, probably at lunchtime. JJ: so you guys did have fights because that was still at Saint Teresa’s. ADR: Right. JJ: So I came into, at the end of the day, I came into the Young Lords when they [00:45:00] had the first meeting. ADR: Right. JJ: But I was still-- ADR: But that fight. JJ: But you guys had a couple of fights before I got into it. ADR: Well, what I’m trying to say is that the way the thing occurred, revisiting that particular thing. Lupe, get whatever argument or however it came out to be, it starts at noon, and in order not to get into any trouble with school or anything else, it’s like, we’ll meet after school for the fight. Okay. I know that a fight’s going to take place. Lupe’s going to fight this guy. All right, so then I’m there. JJ: How old were you then? ADR: Ten, 12 years old, or 12, probably 12 years old. Probably 12 years old. So I’m there and there were other (inaudible), the other kids from school, knowing that from the class, I mean, people were asking from the school itself if there’s going to be a fight, but you’re forgetting something that I-- not that you’re forgetting. [00:46:00] I need (inaudible) that, remember Orlando came from a large family of brothers and sisters, actually more on the brother’s side. So Lupe among the boys was the youngest one at that time. I don’t know if the family ended up 27 �having any other boys, but at that point, Lupe was the youngest. Then came Orlando. So Lupe and Orlando, are like one year apart, and then it was Hector. Hector ended up dying a couple of years later of a heart attack. Now, I actually got along better during the period that I ended, because Hector was at school and he was older, I don’t know, maybe two years older. I’m not sure I can recall that. It was probably two years older, or I would’ve to say probably two years older than Orlando. And I actually got along better with him than I did with Orlando. As I said, my initial contact with Orlando is we didn’t get along at all. And maybe, like I said, it’s got something to do with our character [00:47:00] that we were prone to react to each other immediately and not taking it, whatever. So when the fight, as I said, Lupe’s going to have the fight, so we went out there. We were out there. I know Hector came and Hector now, if I’m correctly recalling, and I was already fighting because what happened, Hector showed up. Orlando had not shown up at that point because he didn’t know his brother was going to have a fight that somebody must have ran or something in and said, your brother’s having a fight. So what happened is I said, the guy had either knocked down Lupe, which at that point, or push him or he was losing the fight. At that point, I jumped in. I knew that Lupe was going to get his ass kicked, and I wasn’t going to let that happen. At that point, my reaction, no, not because I wanted him to do this, was my friend. Okay, this was my best buddy and I wasn’t about to let him get his ass kicked. So my reaction was I took it immediately, jumped in and [00:48:00] started hitting the other guy and went on with, we continued to have a-- I ended up beating the crap out of the guy, maybe 28 �because I took him by surprise. I’m not going to try to take credit as a badass or anything because as I said, I did jump in. He wasn’t expecting that. And maybe I have the initial initiative and being able to start hitting him quicker than he could withstand. So I mean, sometimes that happens in the fight, not because we happen to be badasses. It’s just the surprise attack that things occurred. But when Orlando showed up, the fight was over already. And when Orlando’s there, I know that Hector was there, and then he came with Lupe what had happened, Orlando took a different attitude towards me. He came and said, thank you for basically saying, thanks for helping my brother. And it was not no big deal, nothing. No big deal was made out of that or anything other than that. But then the gradualness, remember I don’t know timetable of what happened. [00:49:00] I know that then he started hanging around in the area that I was, and again, not because of me, I think he started hanging around there because in drifting, wherever you claim that he was at, I don’t know, but I know that in the area it was just down the block. When we were in there, he was no more different than I was from my house, from Fremont, which I was closer to. JJ: Where were you living at? What address were you living in? What address were you living in? ADR: Well, the house still stands, I don’t know. I’m forgetting the number right now. JJ: I lived at 1909 Fremont. ADR: Fremont and Armitage, I was probably a quarter. JJ: So where did you live? I lived at 1909 Fremont and 1604 or something, 1600 Dayton. We lived near North Avenue and Dayton. Then we lived near Dayton 29 �and Willow, and then we moved to 1909 Freemont. [00:50:00] And then we went to 2117 Bissell. ADR: Well, on Fremont when I lived. JJ: So where did you live? Where did you live? ADR: I lived over at that time, the period of time we didn’t tend to move around. I was on Fremont, which is a couple of houses down, a red Victorian home. JJ: By Wisconsin? By Wisconsin? ADR: No, near Armitage. JJ: Okay. So that was right there. ADR: Armitage almost closer. JJ: I was half a block down? We were on the same block. ADR: Less than a half a block. Okay, okay. Okay. Orlando was on Bissell. JJ: Bissell, yeah. ADR: Okay. And he was almost all the way down. Almost all the way down. So the distance for him, like me to walk down to the corner, if you said that, this is Wisconsin, that street-JJ: I lived near Wisconsin. I lived near Wisconsin. He lived near Willow-- ADR: Well, the point I’m trying to make is that-JJ: Before that I lived at Dayton and Willow. So we all lived there. We were all from that same area. ADR: But again, what I’m pointing out to you is when we were met [00:51:00] at that age in time, all we did is we would go to that corner. I mean, if I came down from 30 �my house after eating and he would leave this house as I’m eating, and when we came in, the group of people-JJ: I didn’t hang around with Orlando at that time. ADR: I know, I know that. That’s what I’m talking. JJ: I think you were hanging around with him. ADR: Right, we congregated. And what I’m trying to point out to you, we congregated and this-JJ: We were all in the same area. We just-- ADR: You lived, but you guys were not, and as I said, we’re only half block away. We not, well, I’m trying to be more specific because now-- Fermin and Benny. JJ: Where did they live? ADR: They lived, they both lived on Bissell. JJ: They lived on Bissell too? No, on Halsted. ADR: No, no, no, no. Wait a minute, wait a minute. Benny lived on Bissell, closer, almost parallel to me. But he was on Bissell, closer to Armitage on Bissell. JJ: Okay. I know later on they lived on Halsted. ADR: And actually we might’ve been living back to back because he lived in the building. [00:52:00] JJ: So we’re only like a half a block away. ADR: I can pinpoint it. I’m going to say Benny lived on Bissell, it would’ve been the east side of Bissell Street, close to Armitage. I lived on Fremont, but on the west side of Fremont. Again, close to Armitage. JJ: I didn’t even know that. I didn’t know that. 31 �ADR: Fermin, okay, Fermin lived on Clifton. JJ: I thought you always lived near Lakeview in (inaudible). That’s good. I didn’t know that. ADR: So, and Fermin was in Clifton. JJ: Okay. Oh yeah. Fermin was further. ADR: But the friendship that developed between from the very beginning was that Benny and Benny and Fermin hung around together. So all I know is that when we hung around together, Orlando and myself, within the group that I’m talking over here, Benny was not around. Okay. Neither was Fermin. [00:53:00] But we knew each other from school. In other words, the attending classes in there, that’s where we tended to know each other. JJ: David Rivera lived on Fremont. ADR: David Rivera comes much later. JJ: I know, but David Rivera is Orlando’s cousin. ADR: Correct. Well, I mean, might be-JJ: His cousin. ADR: But he comes later. He comes later. JJ: I know, but what I’m saying is these are the Young Lords original founders. ADR: Yes. JJ: And we’re all living in the same area. ADR: Right. He comes in part later on. But the original, in other words, at the very beginning-JJ: You were hanging early with Orlando. You were hanging. 32 �ADR: Before that (inaudible) it was, and he comes later. JJ: Stipulate today, I’ll stipulate today. ADR: Well, the point I’m trying to make, you’re an attorney. So when you’re telling me who started the Young Lords, I mean that’s what we always said. The two guys that started the Young Lords was Orlando. JJ: I won’t stipulate to that completely. ADR: Okay. JJ: I won’t stipulate to that completely. But I say that you hung around with Orlando. I [00:54:00] think that the meeting took place in Arnold’s with the seven founders and I think the Young Lords came (inaudible) at least he’s the one that recruited me. ADR: Well, let me put it this way. You can’t have-JJ: He recruited me. You might’ve been together. But what I’m saying, he recruited me. So I looked at him as the founder. But if you and him were together, that’s fine. That’s fine. I think we were all the original founders. ADR: Wait, I ask you something, see what you’re forgetting. Are we forgetting another individual? JJ: Are you saying that you founded the -- ADR: Who was the first again, who was the first president of the Young Lords? JJ: We said there was the first person because Orlando didn’t want it. I was voting for Orlando, but he didn’t want it. 33 �ADR: So there was never any doubt about Vicentes becoming, let me, I’m going to put you on the spot on this one. I’m going to put you on the spot on. Where did the name the Young Lords evolve from? Who suggested the name? JJ: I [00:55:00] know that we were talking there and there was some group in New York called the Majestic Lords, and then they were also the Vice Lords. ADR: The one that suggested was Vicentes’ cousin and one of the little-JJ: He had come, he had lived in New York. Okay. ADR: He’s the one that suggested. JJ: But am I correct about the Majestic Lords? ADR: Okay. But this is much later. I mean, when I’m setting in the timetable, this takes place later. Not at the point. I’m not going back in there. I’m not-JJ: I wasn’t voting (inaudible). That’s that. I agree with everything. Well, I was agreeing with-- ADR: What I’m trying to tell in here. You can’t have one thing without the other that would’ve ended up producing what it produced. Okay. That’s all I’m trying to point out. Okay. JJ: He was Joey-- ADR: Which (inaudible) which, wait a, hold on. JJ: He was our first president, right? ADR: Wait a minute. JJ: Where did the meeting take place? [00:56:00] Now I ask you. ADR: At the Arnold Upper Grade Center. JJ: That’s where the meeting took place. 34 �ADR: That’s where we had the meeting. So that’s where, not at the YMCA. We did not have no meeting. JJ: Arnold Upper Grade Center is where we selected the name Young Lords. ADR: Yes. JJ: And that’s where we became Young Lords. ADR: Yes. JJ: And that’s where we had the seven original members. ADR: That’s where we had the initial meeting. We had the meeting and all that under. JJ: What date was that? Was that fall, summer? ADR: I can’t, I mean, I know it had to have been warm weather. JJ: Spring probably. Probably the spring. Was it the school or after? ADR: Right. But the point is that that leads to the point that you asked the other question much later. Remember among the group, I’m the only Mexican like, and Guzman, at that time, at the very beginning, no, Vicentes is the leader. We’d chosen him as the leader. JJ: And I think we chose him because looked Italian. But he was-- ADR: [00:57:00] Wait a minute, we chose him. We chose Vicentes as the leader. We then basically, not basically, as we started to grow there were other suggestions. You had made some certain suggestions. I don’t recall what it was. JJ: They didn’t listen to me anyway. ADR: No, no. Listen, wait, had no, you’re forgetting about something that occurred. You weren’t there because as I said you were in another school. JJ: Okay. 35 �ADR: What happened was that I had suggested something at that point, just like the other feelings I had. Remember I’m the Mexican, I didn’t feel, this is like at the beginning because Guzman was-JJ: Were we making a big issue that you were Mexican? ADR: No, no. Let me finish. JJ: You were all gang bangers. ADR: No, no. Let me finish. Let me finish. JJ: Alright. Okay. ADR: I had made a suggestion on something. So Orlando, well, his attitude was, [00:58:00] if that’s what you want, fine. So I had gotten into an [inferment?] at that point he suggested, in other words, in other words, there was some question as to what I wanted. I can’t recall what the issue was. But really what it came down is to the trust that evolved, that ended up evolving from ourselves. So at that point, Orlando didn’t give one way or other, he didn’t give a shit. And he said, well, that’s what you want, whatever. I mean, the attitude that he took in so many ways that responded to it, I felt kind of out place at that point. So really this is when I was going to me, in my mind, I was going to quit. Okay? So the next day in school, Fermin and Benny and then Orlando, he said, you know what? In other words, I think what they did that they talked among themselves and said, if this is what you want, [00:59:00] you’re going to have it. Because it is like, we’re brothers. So Guzman was opposing what I wanted to do. And then he comes back, he was all fucking pissed off because the group, in other words, went against him. And the fact that I was Mexican played a role because he would 36 �say, “He’s a fucking Mexican. I’m Puerto Rican. Why are you guys backing a Mexican?” JJ: Because he came-- ADR: Wait, hold on, I’m not finished. JJ: --he came from Philadelphia. ADR: So then as we were in school, remember Guzman had dropped a grade below. He was actually a year older but because when he came from wherever he came from-JJ: (inaudible) ADR: He did, he then-JJ: But nobody paid attention to him. ADR: --he dropped me. I was in the bathroom and he made a remark to me about, “You’re going to get your fucking way,” whatever. And I walked away from him. I mean fuck it, whatever. And I made the mistake when we were in the, we had come out of the gym and I went into the bathroom and I had [01:00:00] going down to wash my face and motherfucker came, and yeah, on the back, I hit me in the neck and then hit my head. JJ: And you’re still worried about that? ADR: Well, I turned around and I-JJ: You still feel guilty about that? So what? ADR: No, let me finish. So I turned around and started fighting him. So when the teachers walked in, I mean, we were considered to be going into battle. JJ: So you fought him. You fought him. Right. So what. 37 �ADR: What I did is I turned around and I squeezed-- because the only thing I could do was squeeze his fucking balls. JJ: I won’t forget him. ADR: No, you asked the question. You got to finish this. So then no, John had me in a headlock in there, and the teachers walk in and they heard that what had happened. I mean, they come in there and obviously they broke us apart. And then I’m walking around but because he hit me, I hit this outside of, my face was red. (inaudible) Everybody -- (inaudible). So then at that point I’m like, I’m not fucking, because we were going to have a fight. So [01:01:00] then we went out and I mean, it must have been like the whole school (inaudible) going to have it out. So we go across the street into the alley before this is when they turned around and I said, “Fair is fair,” in my mind, the son of a bitch. I guess you don’t want me to swear, but I’m thinking this motherfucker jumping from behind. Right. JJ: He, he stole on you. Right. ADR: So what I did, as he got near me, I kicked him on the balls as hard as I could. JJ: Paralyze him. ADR: And then I went at him and all he could do, because he was (inaudible), he grabbed me and he could hurt me. Man, I’m pounding the shit out of him on the face, because I had my other hand free. And I mean, it was a big, big deal. But he made a technical mistake because in the terms of the (inaudible) as fighters, I was not Orlando. So then he had to live up in [01:02:00] there that Sal almost beat the shit out of you. And he could complain. But the mother-- that I kicked him on the balls because the point is you dropped me from-- you started, you 38 �broke the rule. So there was nothing for me to honor to treat you differently giving you a fair fight. When he jumped me on the back, he broke the rules. JJ: He jumped a Young Lord. ADR: And he gave me the right. JJ: He jumped a Young Lord, which he wasn’t supposed-- ADR: Well, not so much I was a Young Lord but that broke the, that to me was, that solidified our friendship as the original Young Lords that somehow perhaps I think was that we would stick together. No matter what happened to any of us, we would stick for each other because then afterwards, anything that would happen to any of the among ourselves, we always reacted. We reacted to what happened. As soon as, like I said, I can go back. The thing with the Paragons, all I can tell you what I saw and what I knew, what happened that night. I know that I keep emphasizing, took four of the Paragons down. You mentioned [01:03:00] there was another fight. I don’t, I mean not. But I know damn well that night. And he took, knocked down Crazy Johnny twice, knocked him out practically. I’m not saying he put him out unconscious or anything like that, but knocked him down with the punches. The punches took Crazy Johnny down. And just as much as that kind of thing, Santos, his reputation of being the baddest son of a bitch no longer worked. Years later, wait a minute, years later, I had another fight with Santos. Same thing. We were this, when we used to hang around on Armitage, what they call from the song, that restaurant that was owned by a Mexican couple, Sugar Shack. JJ: Oh, the Sugar Shack. Yeah. 39 �ADR: You remember the Sugar Shack? Okay. The Sugar Shack. We were in there. That’s where we crazy-- met Irish. JJ: Where was the Sugar Shack at? Where was the Sugar Shack at? That was more-- ADR: Close to across the street from where the [01:04:00] fire station’s at Larrabee, it would’ve been on Armitage west of, almost immediately west of Larrabee. JJ: Okay, okay. ADR: But again, some other week, whatever it was, I had it out again with Santos. Now, the funny thing about this fight now was, remember by that time we used to have the Cuban with the color Cuban high heel, they have boot that we were wearing at that time. So I go out. At that point it was like, okay, let’s take it outside. The fight got started with an argument I had with Santos, and let’s take it outside. We went outside and started fighting, and this time it was a fist fight. But I remember that in throwing a punch at him, or I ended up, because I was wearing, the shoes that I was wearing wasn’t conductive for a fight. It wasn’t very smart of me. But anyway, the point is that I slipped and I fell, and before Santos could react [01:05:00] to come at me, Orlando jumped in and then took over and it started pounding on Santos. So Santos was forced to fight Orlando because Orlando basically, no, he’s not going to, and he took him out and beat the shit out of Santos. After that, Santos completely drifted away from us because we had totally embarrassed his ass. He had wanted to be, I don’t know what reason they didn’t let him become, because he was maybe too boisterous or whatever. He originally wanted to be part of the Black Eagles. They didn’t let 40 �him. That’s why he became part of us. And he thought, well, I’m going to run the gang because I’m the older guy here and all this and that. It didn’t work. So at the very beginning in the takeover, we would’ve, to give the credit to Santos would’ve been the first person that ever tried to take the Young Lords, control of the Young Lords that didn’t succeed. Then later on, as I said, as we started growing in reputation and things, we talked. JJ: [01:06:00] So you’re saying the original seven kind kept the group together. So the original seven always kept the group together. ADR: Right. JJ: Is that what you’re saying? ADR: I mean, I think that what I’m reflecting on is when you asked the question about the trust. JJ: The trust, right. ADR: Okay. You used the word trust. I’m not sure that that’s the correct, I’m not debating the word. I’m just, we’re using, but I think the trust in there, what brought us together to create that individual-- I’m not arguing the word, the word trust, but I think there might be another word that gave us that cohesiveness, that if anybody challenged that particular group in it. That group was expanded to include Ralph and some of the individuals that became part of, in other words, they became part, in other words, the initial group expanded not by large numbers, but by small numbers expanded beyond the seven. JJ: Right, right, right. 41 �ADR: Okay. In other words, the challenge [01:07:00] though, it can be debated because in talking to Orlando in the future, I mean what happened later on is to how that trust was created. All I can say is that in the years, there were times that Orlando would ask me, I need you here, and I would react. I didn’t have to ask twice, what it was about or what it involved. I simply was there. JJ: That’s what I’m saying. That’s what we did. We did do that with the trust. ADR: Okay. That’s what I mean. I mean, the point is that the thing with New York, not that we were pissed off at you or anything. You were out there and it’s like, Orlando, Sal, you got to stop Andre. JJ: Right. ADR: He said, I got to go. He said, because I was going to go to the meeting, I was going to go there. And he said, no. He said, because he tell me, I don’t examine the exact words, but he says, no, you got to deal with Andre because Andre wants to do something. [01:08:00] And he says, I’ll take the meeting. I says, I’ll deal with what’s got to be dealt over there. But he said, you got to get him out of this mentality. Basically what he told me. So I didn’t debate the issue. I just said, okay, that’s what we need to do. This is how we’re going to handle it. JJ: You’re talking about the split between the Chicago Young Lords and the New York Young Lords. ADR: The what now? JJ: The split between the Chicago Young Lords and the New York Young Lords. Andre wanted to do something. ADR: What do I remember about the split? 42 �JJ: No, no, I’m saying, are you telling-- I’m just saying this is what you’re talking about, right? You’re talking about the split. ADR: Yeah. JJ: And then Andre wanted to do something. ADR: Yes. JJ: Okay. ADR: Exactly. JJ: He didn’t agree with it so he wanted to do something but Orlando and you stopped it. That’s what you’re saying. ADR: Well, what happened was, what actually happened is that Andre had approached Orlando on what he [01:09:00] wanted to do. JJ: Okay. ADR: Okay. Orlando immediately realized that that wasn’t a good idea. JJ: Right because we were respecting, Orlando knew that I was meeting with them and we were respecting, they were our guests. They were Young Lords too. I look at ’em as Young Lords. ADR: Well, there were certain things that we already were-- at the point the thing-- the way it came down, they were already aware of certain things that were taking place, and quite honestly, not all of us. JJ: And that was not a gang fight. We were not gangbanging. ADR: It was not gang fight. Nobody at that point, quite honestly-JJ: We were political. We’re not-- 43 �ADR: It was political, but we were concerned about you giving in to what they wanted to do. Okay? JJ: Right. ADR: So in essence, I can’t find, in other words, we didn’t, I don’t want to use the word trust. I’m being [01:10:00] cordial here. The point is that we were-- there were doubts as to what you were going to do. In other words, we weren’t sure that you were going to act in our best interest. And so the point was, the reason Orlando wanted to make sure he was at the meeting was because he wanted to control you. Make sure that you won’t do anything-- in other words, concede anything or give anything into New York. That was really why he, instead of him, he could have said, I’ll go deal with Andre. You go take in. If he would’ve, in other words, more confidence in what the outcome would’ve been. JJ: He wanted stay in the meeting. ADR: So Orlando wanted to make sure that what you did or what didn’t do with something that, in other words, that you wouldn’t do anything stupid. I mean, that’s not a right word. That’s not right. In other words, we didn’t know-- the reaction is we weren’t sure how you were going to react. Orlando felt he could better deal with you, dealing with you on that issue by being there. That’s the reason nobody’s ever asked, “Why didn’t Orlando [01:11:00] go and deal with Andre?” JJ: All right. ADR: Okay. Andre, I mean, Orlando, was concerned about you, how you were going to deal with that issue. So my job felt that you got to take care of Andre, that he 44 �doesn’t do what he wants to do. Okay? In other words, you got to stop him. Okay? That’s how that occurred that night. JJ: And basically what we agreed is that they were revolutionary compañeros. ADR: Have I agreed to what now? JJ: Basically what I said that they were revolutionary compañeros, that they were our guests and we were not going to attack them. ADR: Well, personally, we didn’t think, me and Orlando, I mean, I have to say, because Orlando, we didn’t think much of New York. We didn’t think much of New York. JJ: Okay. I agree with you. ADR: I mean, the point is you were more, what we saw is an issue, not a problem. That word would be issue. The issue we saw [01:12:00] with you is that you were [nine slaps?]. Okay? Remember, you’re forgetting that Orlando had slapped not once, but had slapped them twice on different occasions, the guy from New York, when he mouthed off to Orlando. JJ: Oh, you’re talking about Yoruba. ADR: Yoruba, exactly. JJ: Okay. Alright. ADR: So we never-JJ: I thought they was angry then. I was out of town when that happened. ADR: The point is, if you would’ve been there, you would’ve criticized. You had a tendency to criticize-- you did it to me-- and you’re (inaudible). In other words, you took the feud-- I’m not criticizing in the sense that, do not understand why that was done. Okay. 45 �JJ: Okay, what view would I have, what view? ADR: Well, your logic was proper, but on the issue involved was impractical. That’s the best way I can, you would’ve said, well, we, Latinos, we should not be fighting each other. We agree with you. I mean, I’m very willing. But when you’re dealing with somebody that’s, in other words, [01:13:00] harming the group, you weren’t willing to take, in other words, be forcible. And the issue of how it had to be dealt with. That’s what I’m saying about, he always wanted to play the nice, nice role. You didn’t take the responsibility for having to do the hard things that ended up getting the results of what the things we needed to do. And that is a criticism that not only me, but I can take Orlando, would have the same criticism that he had about you is that you want always be, you want everybody like to us, it was like you want everybody to like you. And we didn’t agree with you on that particular issue. So Yoruba, Yoruba had challenged a lot. JJ: I’ll agree 60 percent. Sixty-three percent. I’ll agree 60 percent. But that’s your perspective. That’s fine. ADR: Well, Yoruba made the mistake of mouthing off in a bad way to Orlando. And that’s why he told him, in other words, to pay him back. He went and with his open hand, slapped him, [01:14:00] humiliated him and telling him, he says, “You’re not good enough for me to punch you because you’re a fucking pussy.” Basically. JJ: Well, how did this start? I mean, what was it? How did it start? ADR: Well, because remember, the New York guys had this thing that they didn’t even throw it out openly. “We’re the educated ones.” You used to throw out, these 46 �guys are in college and big deal. You know what I mean? The practicality, what I think you were forgetting. JJ: But they had people from the streets too. ADR: Fine. They didn’t have the balls. JJ: No. The people, they had balls themselves. ADR: Okay, fine. They had balls. Okay. JJ: We grew up in a different way than they did. So because of that, we looked at them differently. I mean, we grew up differently than they did because they grew up in New York and we grew up in Chicago, and they looked at us differently too. I [01:15:00] mean, vice versa. And I tried to, even before-- that wasn’t the first time that I was a mediator because even in the gang, I had to be mediator. To me, we were all Young Lords to me, and I’m trying to find a way to keep us as Young Lords. ADR: But you’re forgetting. You’re forgetting. You’re forgetting. Even at that time. JJ: And it wasn’t easy. It wasn’t easy because I was-- ADR: Yeah, but see, what you’re forgetting is that these people did not have for us, some did not have the interest of the organization. JJ: There was individuals, there was individuals within them and individuals within us. The majority of the group wanted to stay together, but there were individuals on both sides that had problems. ADR: That might have been so. JJ: That happens in any organization. 47 �ADR: But see, when they broke away, they proved the point. I mean, the point is what we, I mean from the perspective of, and [01:16:00] again, some of the individuals, and we opposed a particular idea. I mean, believe me, even immediately, we’re finding out that you allowed ’em to keep the name, the younger, your justification was, well become more recognizable name. The rest of us. I can’t speak for everybody, but I can’t speak for number of individuals, we thought you screwed up. JJ: Okay. Speaking for yourself, how did you feel about it? ADR: I think that was a big mistake. And I’m not the only one, but I’m speaking for myself. I thought that was dumb because you gave them, (inaudible) they never had, they did not do-- A lot of the stuff that was done that they took credit for were was done under the Young Lords, it was done by us. The takeovers, the fights, the issues with the police, the other things we had, all of those things, the creation of the programs that we had-- breakfast program, the healthcare, other things we had, we had all these things. And you pissed us. [01:17:00] I’m saying not only myself, but you pissed some of us off. What the hell are you doing letting them keep the goddamn name? They didn’t contribute shit to the name. They didn’t go through the struggle. I mean, you mentioned in of doing the things we done when the police, whenever they would’ve, people getting hurt and getting killed, where were they? How many Young Lords got killed? Okay. And one of our guys, how many times ended up in jail for being Young Lords and got locked up and got shot at? So when you gave the name, we thought, and I said, I’m using the word we because I was not the only one. Okay? We thought you 48 �screwed up. Totally screwed up because you gave them a platform they did not have, that would not have had, if that name would’ve been taken away from them. Okay? That’s what you don’t realize the mistake you made, you created that problem, okay? Inadvertently [01:18:00] you created. You thought you were doing something good that came back to bite your ass because the Young Lords party would’ve never existed. Where they wouldn’t go, where it go. If we would’ve said, no, you can’t use the goddamn name, what are they going to do? Maybe we would’ve forced ’em to become something better, and that would’ve been good, but you didn’t give ’em that opportunity. You allowed them to, they copied everything. I mean, all the great things that what the Young Lords, they were being copied. You allowed that to happen. Nobody. I mean, this is something you have to take that, I mean, as a criticism, that you have to take the blame for that because you’re the one that created that problem, not the rest of us. And honestly, and as a friend, you did a disservice to the people that went to jail. Did a disservice to the people that got shot. Because everything in the paper over the years, what have I been complaining about over the years? I mean, when asked being involved and stuff, I said, I keep (inaudible) this is all fucking bullshit. [01:19:00] Fucking lies that has been written about what happened, how it happened, how it occurred, and you keep telling me it’s going to get straightened out. Where does it getting straightened that New York done that and all this other crap and all so-called experts, they knew about the activity when they never fucking participated in any of the goddamn-- hardcore issues that we had to deal with. All the speakers that I seen and things that go on, 49 �secondary or third meaning come from secondhand information, not from the participants. None of the things that I’ve seen in there were actual participants to say, “Here I did that. I got shot, or I went to jail for this, or this happened over here, or I had to take this guy down because of that.” Where was the guy there that can sit there and do that? None of the actual participants that did the things that were done are ended up participating in this situation. They all talk [01:20:00] about how badasses they were, but nothing -- where the fuck are they? What were they doing? Hiding behind the fucking end of back of the line when we were fighting, who went to the fights that had to be dealt with when somebody got attacked. In the beginning, all of a sudden it was Orlando, myself, Andre, when you say you’re right, I mean, I mentioned because it always comes from (inaudible), but Andre, the rest of us that we were Richie, Popo, some of the other guys, we were the ones that were dealing with the fucking bullshit. Much of what happens in life. They ain’t got the other ones, the speakers. Well, I represent, I do this, I do that, or this is going on, and what the fuck? Where were you motherfucker when you were there, when we needed to, really needed you to do the things that that needed to be had? Why did you coin the word of the rally Young Lords? Where did that come from, Cha-Cha, if not from the fucking fact that the only thing when we were holding a rally, when the party was had, [01:21:00] instead of having the actual participants benefit from the goddamn things that were done. Did they ever benefit from that? Maybe with a lockup in jail? What happened to, I reminded we forget about-- look at Carlos. Look how he ended up, he ended up in goddamn jail doing 20 to life. 50 �JJ: Which Carlos? ADR: Carlos Perez. Did you know he was in jail? JJ: Oh, no, no, no, no. This Carlos? ADR: Andres, no, I mean Raymond’s brother. JJ: Oh, Carlos Montanes. Oh, he’s in jail? ADR: Yeah. JJ: Oh, no, I didn’t know that. ADR: There was some of the other guys that ended up doing time. The point is we’re asking is the kind of end-- I’m juggling in here and not may even making any sense of what I’m saying. JJ: No, no. You’re making sense. ADR: But the point is that this thing-- [01:22:00] JJ: I’m listening to what you’re saying. You’re making sense. Again, I see there’s side two. I see a different side too. But I definitely feel what you’re saying. I mean, you’re making sense. I think you’re correct in a lot of things there. I think a lot of repression, a lot of problems that took place here were not given the recognition that they deserve, that we deserve here, that the people in Chicago deserve. But then again, I think that they were contributing in a different light in New York in a different-- ADR: I’m not a, when you say the contribution--I’m not saying-JJ: I don’t blame the cadre in New York for that, because there was several branches of Young Lords in New York that came together. There was some street people like Pickles that was from the streets that when I went there, he 51 �was complaining that the students are not [01:23:00] listening to what I’m saying. And so I can relate to him from the street because I said, well, you know what they have to listen to you because this is the people’s movement. It’s for people from the streets. But Pickles joined with them. In fact, (inaudible) came out of that, and he was under central committee. So I mean, there was some mistakes made on all parts and people were trying to divide us up, infiltrating, but we also made mistakes too. I mean, like you said, we’re Young Lords. We can’t be slapping other Young Lords. You understand what I’m saying? Do you believe that we should, me and you have argued many, many, many times and we never slapped each other. ADR: Look, it wasn’t-JJ: Have me and you ever slapped each other? ADR: No, I’m trying to make, I’m mentioning that. I think we’ve argued. All right. Was it on the face value? Was it a good thing? No. Okay. [01:24:00] I can agree with that. But at the same time, the question, the follow up question, was it necessary? Answer is yes. All right. Because in certain situations, this is again in the study of the Young Lords. JJ: (inaudible) beat up another human being. ADR: No, no. Lemme make my point. Because as we’re saying in there, when you look at the Young Lords. JJ: We broke out of that. We said, we don’t want to deal with gangbanging stuff. ADR: Right. No, I am getting to that. I mean, what I’m trying to say from here, listen, what I think, what I’m referring to that those particular issues, what point I’m 52 �trying to make out of that is an explanation. When I say in the question of what I’m asking, was it a justifiable thing to do? I mean, was it a good thing? The answer is no. That’s what I said, but there has to be a follow-up question that answers that it was something that was necessary to do. And I say the answer to that is yes. Now I have to explain that. In order to explain that-JJ: [01:25:00] And then he was our guest. ADR: --well, here’s what I’m trying to-- bear with me, and in the moment, you’re making me forget the point that I’m trying to make here. But the thing I’m trying to say is that our group was no different from other groups in terms of what I was referring to. Somebody was to come and actually study us, say why did these things occur as they would find out? I mean, this is what about laying out on the table and those issues is too, in other words, somebody saying, I mean, maybe a hundred years from now when there has been a contradiction on the part of the youngers that in other words, a member slaps another member in that kind of a situation and study. In other words, in other words, when there’ve been studies to why this was done, you’re going to find many groups that these interactions that take place in order for the group to succeed. This is what I’m saying, where it becomes necessary to do the things, or you become too placent, in other words, in certain areas, that makes the strength [01:26:00] of the organization. So what I’m trying to get at, I’m going to make a statement that’s not going to make any sense to you whatsoever, but I want you from time to time to come back and ask myself to explain whether it’s here or any other time into the future. And my statement is this, educated people are stupid people. I want you to keep 53 �that in mind, and I’ll repeat it again. Educated people are stupid people. Because if you look at that and just in life, they’re going to find how the puzzle comes together when you can put that puzzle when you’re looking at things, because it has to do right now with the economy, when I’m referring to that, is all the educated people that came in there, they came in up with all the economists. I mean, if you look at the economy, and I’m not going to get into it, but I’m making, again, it’s an example, an analogy that all troubles of the United States [01:27:00] that we end up having right now is based on what the economists and what they were trying to do and giving us the (inaudible) pictures that existed, obviously. And anybody that’s listening to what I’m saying is going to say, well, this guy’s full of shit. What is he talking about? But what I’m trying to say is that the economists a lot had a lot of fault and giving us the rosy picture, but a system, how it works, not realize it. Because in the end, because they’re educated, you can’t tell ’em. This is what I’m referring to, all the stupidity of the things that the educated people, this is what got us in fucking trouble right now. It wasn’t the average person. I mean, and we’re struggling to get out of this hole we find ourselves in today because they’re too stupid to understand that the middle class, in other words, the average worker needs to make money in order to survive. You’re forgetting, and I’m not asking, I’m going to ask the question, but I’m answering the question. Why the idea of what to have. Why was it that somebody came up with the idea that here in the United States, for example, that in having a welfare system, you had to give money to the [01:28:00] poor person and others didn’t have a job, didn’t have anything. Why was that person given 54 �money? I said, I’m asking the question, but I’m also answering. The reason that the money was given food stamps, in order, and a check, not a lot of money, but a check that was given to them at the end of the month was so they could go and continue to be productive in society by buying goods instead of begging for the damn goods. Because if somebody buys a can of food, that means there’s going to be a factory worker doing that soup, putting it together, the raw material that has to be produced in order to make the can, in order to put the label on it as much as putting the food on it and putting people to work. Because if the poor people keep increasing and they can’t buy anything, they don’t have anything, what’s going to happen? We’re going to become a third rate nation. Well, that’s what I’m referring about smart people being, I mean, educated people. Correct myself, educated people being stupid. What are they doing? Outsourcing all that goddamn jobs out of the country. [01:29:00] Is the Chinese buying our goods? I mean, the Chinese got, I mean, getting philosophical, but the import, it’s over a billion persons in China. They represent basically one third of the world population, Cha-Cha. And you think with all the goods in there that they’re going to be able to, where are we seeing the production when everything’s been sent to be built by these people? Every product, every material, everything that’s being done, labor. That’s why labor put a label. We want to know where the damn product is being made and everything that’s been made in China. But what is China buying? Educated person is going to say, “Hey, China’s buying shitload of stuff from the United States.” You know what? You’re right. But you know you’re an idiot because they’re buying the fucking companies. They’re 55 �buying the goddamn product. What happens in the book, if we go, their cash flow goes back to China, it doesn’t stay here in the United States. They own the companies. [01:30:00] They own the land. They own land in the United States. JJ: The Chinese. ADR: Oh, the goods. Yeah. I mean, I’m not saying they buying whole (inaudible), but they own land. So the buying their goods, the buying is going back to China. I don’t mean to get on China, on China, make some against the Chinese or anything. But the point is the logic of the educated person without going back with the Young Lords. And what I’m referring to correlation here is to me, the educated person was the Young Lords from New York, and they were stupid. JJ: Some were educated. Again. So when I went there-- ADR: Fine. I mean, I make it, I’m generalizing. JJ: You’re generalizing. Okay. And what I’m saying is when I went there and saw the Young Lords in New York, they were just like we were I, they were just like we were, the people in the leadership were, yes, a lot of ’em were [01:31:00] students, but the cadre were just like we were. And we also had students here too. I mean Omar or other people were students. We had students with us. [Victor Chavarria?] was a student, [Marta Chavarria?], (inaudible), (inaudible), all the doctors, the attorneys they were working with. ADR: But the people we had in there rose to their levels. If you’re going to talk about, for example. JJ: My job as the head of the group was to try to keep the group together. I’m coming from my job, which is, and today you’re a union organizer. You organize 56 �unions, and so your job is to keep the union together. So I was doing the same thing at that time. I’m saying, I see that we got a bad problem here. Somebody got slapped and now we’re going to divide a movement [01:32:00] that was for self-determination for Latinos. So I’m looking-ADR: Cha-Cha, they didn’t have, no -JJ: I’m looking at our ideology. I’m looking at our belief system and it is going to be torn apart. And what are we going to do about this? And I have to take a position knowing that I come from this group here, the Young Lords, but at the same time, these other Young Lords are Young Lords too. And so I’m just saying, I’m not saying it was right or wrong. ADR: Trying to justify. JJ: This is oral history. ADR: You’re trying to justify it. Look, the point is New York has nothing without us. New York had never had anything without us. JJ: What you said, explain my part. I’m trying to explain my part. I won’t justify it because this is your-- ADR: Go ahead. Go ahead. JJ: So my position was how can we keep us together? And that’s what I was trying to do. And I know that there was going to be a coup d’état happening and [01:33:00] I had to deal with it. But that was my role at that time. I had to do my role. And I believe that Felipe came here. Felipe Luciano, his role was to defend. They was sending to defend me York, and that’s what he was doing. So I respected him for that. He’s our guest. We don’t want to attack nobody here. 57 �We can’t attack our guests. And plus these are our brothers no matter what. It’s just like when Andre and (inaudible) and Orlando, and who was the other one? Orlando and somebody else. Orlando. ADR: Louie was there. JJ: Orlando was sticking up for Ralph for (inaudible). ADR: Ralph. JJ: And Andre was sticking up for (inaudible). I had to be in the middle. I had to be in the middle then, because I couldn’t allow the group to fall apart. I was just doing my role. I’m just saying. I know you’re angry about it. ADR: Well, the point is, the point of what you’re saying-JJ: I want to explain. ADR: Okay, I understand. [01:34:00] But you bring it up. It has to be answered. I mean, at the point when you’re bringing it up in here. Look, number one is just as much as I’ve learned and you’re forgetting either, well, let me put it to this way. If you see somebody that’s sitting in front of you sharpening a knife, what are you going to do? JJ: I’m going to get me a shield or something quickly. ADR: You were blind. Okay. Evidently you were blind because you didn’t see what the rest of us saw. Okay? You were blind. New York already-- your instincts, your street instincts left you at that point. That the best thing I’m putting it to you, nice. You let your street instincts get the best of you. I mean, I get away from you because you should have known what was going to take place. And it wasn’t difficult for the rest of us to say he fucked up. You forgot, and this is what I’m 58 �saying about the nice-nice, I don’t mean to be [01:35:00] sarcastic or anything in there, in this thing in it. We didn’t need New York. We had the rest of the goddamn nation. We didn’t even have the time to organize other chapters that wanted to be organized. So what was, and again, in the platform now, that’s quarterbacking now, meaning the Monday night, in other words, now reflecting on things that could have taken place, which is not fair. But what I’m trying to say is that then in New York, obviously didn’t take advantage of something they had in their ability to do. They could have taken the other chapters, created other chapters across the nation and overtake us in popularity by, but they didn’t do it because they weren’t smart. Educated, but stupid. I don’t mean to imply that every member that you’re trying to point out to me, I’m talking the leadership and the things in it. Because if I would’ve been there and I got the name the Young Lords party, now I’m going to go to Detroit, I’m going to go to Philadelphia, I’m going to go to Los Angeles, [01:36:00] I’m going to go to Houston, I’m going to go to Dallas. I’m going to go to Louisiana, wherever I can open up different chapters. That’s what the good thing is, that they didn’t take advantage of that. That’s quarterbacking. I mean, not quarterback, whatever. I’m the analogy about I’m going something and it’s not fair. But what I’m trying to point in there that the other side of it, what really took place is now they had (inaudible), but they’re not imaginative individuals to come up with new ideas, to do things. We might not have had the education, but we were not stupid. JJ: We were thinking in different levels. ADR: But look, the thing is then-- 59 �JJ: Because I’m not thinking then at that point, I’m not thinking just that I’m just a Young Lord. I’m thinking that we’re representing a movement of Latinos. ADR: The movement. JJ: But you’re still the only thinking and I respect that, that we’re just Young Lords. And so [01:37:00] these people here want to factionalize and want to being Young Lords. ADR: Cha-Cha, if you’re saying that. JJ: No, I’m just saying-- ADR: Wait a minute, wait a minute. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. JJ: An issue like that, not saying which is correct-- ADR: You’re forgetting what was happening here in Chicago. I mean, if you were so concerned about the movement, why were you not involved with the issue of when we were dealing with the Latin Eagles, the Latin Kings and the other groups trying to kill each other? JJ: We were dealing with that. We had meetings about it. We had truces and everything like that with the different gangs. We were dealing with that. ADR: May I remind you of something. What did we say we were going to do that never happened. Okay. And I say that because you were one of the proponents at the time in the (inaudible). You made it a point in the earlier parts of the political organization about what had happened in Libya, the country. [01:38:00] JJ: Okay. 60 �ADR: Okay. Do you recall now what I’m referring to? What did Libya do in its independence from the French? What did the Libyans do at the beginning? You remind me. JJ: No, no. Remind me. I don’t know (inaudible). ADR: Okay. They got rid of the drug dealers. They killed them. JJ: Exactly. ADR: Why? What would’ve been the reason for the revolutionaries, of Libyan revolutionaries to kill the drug dealers? JJ: They couldn’t be rehabilitated. They couldn’t be rehabilitated, I am thinking. I don’t know. I don’t remember. ADR: Who’s the, what destroys the community. I mean, I’m asking questions, what I’m trying to say, but I’m going to get to the point. JJ: Okay. ADR: The point was that they did that because that was the one that contributed to the breakdown of the families and everything else because of the drug addiction, [01:39:00] the bad things that come with those particular issues. So they basically told ’em, either straighten yourselves up or something’s going to happen to you. And so they started, obviously they didn’t listen, in order to get rid of that problem or to unite the people, they had to get rid of it. We discussed that. We discussed that in the neighborhood, that we had to go to the drug dealers to stop your fucking bullshit because you’re destroying the neighborhood. Unfortunately, that was one of the threats that we never carried through, and I think for other obvious reasons why that didn’t happen. But the point was that we 61 �did discuss it about doing because of what had happened to Libya. In order to liberate the people, in order to change the mentality, what was taking their unity they created, they needed to deal with a problem. This is where I go back to the point as, and I’m not justifying it. I’m not trying, just trying to justify, I’m just trying to paint the similarities that exists. Yoruba getting slapped-- [01:40:00] The practicability of why that had to be done. So I’m trying to justify what Orlando did. It needed to be done. Just as much as the Libyans did. And I know it’s an extreme example. It’s an extreme example. JJ: Why did it need to be done? ADR: Because you got to remember that New York tended to think-- the impression they gave me. JJ: But Yoruba was not representing all of New York. ADR: It doesn’t matter. JJ: In fact, I didn’t give a damn about New York. I didn’t give a damn about Chicago. ADR: If you gave a damn, why did you allow ’em to keep the name? JJ: I first-- ADR: But why did you allow ’em to keep the name? I mean, I’m asking questions that should have been asked you. JJ: That’s what got us in trouble thinking that here’s Chicago, here’s New York. To me, I’m a Latino first. That’s number one. ADR: But you forgot -- 62 �JJ: We became political. When we became political. We said, we don’t even care about the gang anymore. To us it’s not about a gang. It is about building a movement. ADR: [01:41:00] Nobody at that point, nobody thought of ourselves and we never thought of ourselves. Let’s correct something here. JJ: Because at that time (inaudible). ADR: At that point, there was nothing mentality about the gang, it was you’re (inaudible). I mean, I’m pointing out something to you. Okay? I don’t mean it to be, take it for what it is. At that point, no one thought or none of us within the internal, what other people labeled us, none of us thought of ourselves as a gang in any form, which way or form, when we bridged the gap of becoming political. In other words, that would’ve been and be precise in the date. That would’ve been from the point that when Manuel got killed, that we, in other words, because there’s a story behind how that came about and that particular issue, how that occurred. JJ: Manuel Ramos. ADR: But at the very beginning, and we then nobody thought about it. So your point about this thing got labeled, internally, we never believed, we never applied it to ourselves. We never believed in that. And we had left that long ago, had let that go. [01:42:00] So why are you bringing that up? That had nothing to do. It was taking place on a political process that was taking place that had nothing to do with gang activity. 63 �JJ: That moment it appeared that we were still, even though we gave up the gang, some of our thinking was still there. Would you agree or no? ADR: No, because look, the issue with New York. The issue with New York was the name. Their justification, I mean, if you’re trying to analyze why they came, they were supposedly that they needed to take you back to New York. Okay? They wanted you to go to New York. JJ: I remember that. I remember, okay. ADR: That was the whole thing was about, so why are you bringing this stigma about the-JJ: They wanted me to go to New York and make them the national headquarters. They wanted New York to be the national headquarters. That’s what they wanted. ADR: Exactly. Exactly. JJ: I remember that now. ADR: But I think that’s my point. JJ: But [01:43:00] I think they were being facetious because they knew I was not going to do that. ADR: Well, my point was, and maybe that’s where Orlando, I would ask, why did you but let that particular, because like I said, our concern was you, so I wasn’t there at the meeting. Obviously I was taking care of the other issue. But the point is that, and I couldn’t understand why maybe you blindsided our side without really say, why is New York going to be allowed to keep the name? Okay. And in the aftermath, we just said that. We weren’t thinking what did New York had to in 64 �exchange what was New York or there was nothing. And without, again, I emphasize without the name, if they would’ve been told, look, you guys don’t want it. You want to go ahead, fine. You want to break away from us, fine. But now you’re not going to use the name. [01:44:00] That’s it. So what you should have done, again, it’s not fair to you, but what should have done at that point shouldn’t have let it happen. Is that-- no, we’re going to, well now we’re going to dictate, and you know what? We’re going to replace you guys as leaders. We’re going to send a couple of Young Lords to assess the value and pick other leaders to run the organization. That’s what should have happened. I mean, it’s not fair to you at this point as many years that going back. But what should have been done is it should have been told, okay, this is what you want. Because this is what I’m saying, how we reacted to the-- that’s where you-JJ: No, no, no. I think you have a good point, good point there that we didn’t think it out that well, we should have thought it out better. I’ll accept that feedback. That’s good feedback. We should have been, had we thought it out better, we might have been able to avoid some of this. So that is my responsibility as the head of the group at that time, to I’ll accept that criticism. That’s good criticism. [01:45:00] We should have analyzed the situation a little bit better and knew-because we knew they were coming to meet with us and we should have been able to have some kind of answer to them that they could take back with ’em. And perhaps we wouldn’t have been split up. Perhaps we would’ve been able to work things out. ADR: I mean, if they were to split up-- 65 �JJ: That is my fault. That is my fault, I’ll accept that. ADR: That is your fault. (inaudible) JJ: I accept that. And that created confusion among the Young Lord members in Chicago and New York. So I’ll take that responsibility. But again, my other responsibility was to try to keep us together, not for us, our sake as Young Lords, but for the movement’s sake as Latinos at that time. And that might sound softy. ADR: Stop it-- wait a minute, wait a minute, wait. I’m not going to-JJ: Our job was to build a movement at that time. That’s why we started in Chicago, to build a movement and it spread New York and it spread to other cities. And that’s all I [01:46:00] was trying to do-- ADR: If you were so concerned. JJ: But I’m not justifying, I’m saying-- ADR: No, I’m not saying you’re justifying. JJ: I’ll accept (inaudible). ADR: But look, that should be left at that. Because the point is that if you were concerned about the movement, I’m trying to answer the question. If you were concerned about-JJ: I would’ve analyzed it. ADR: The (inaudible) Patriots. The Panthers, did they dictated policy to us? JJ: No, they didn’t. ADR: So then if they wanted to do something else, would you have been able to stop ’em? JJ: No, they didn’t (inaudible)-- 66 �ADR: How are you going to split the goddamn movement? JJ: No, no, no. I’m saying that we had a movement together in New York and Chicago. ADR: Well, you mentioned the thing that your idea was New York. JJ: New York was for Puerto Rican independence. New York is-- the biggest population of Puerto Ricans is in New York. Chicago is-- ADR: How much full-JJ: -- is Mexican and Puerto Rican. But New York at that time was mainly Puerto Rican, and we were a group here of Mexican [01:47:00] and Puerto Rican, of all Latinos. That’s what we were, that’s the thing. ADR: Okay. Well, you’re opening yourself from my part to criticism for me. Okay. Because your analysis is faulty. JJ: Okay. ADR: You talk about a movement among Hispanics, New York was the least of the goddamn problems because I could ask you what was happening at the other side of the coast. in the west coast, and if you really wanted to talk about keeping a movement together. I’m trying to get to the point in here. JJ: No, I’m talking about the Young Lords. ADR: Exactly. And I’m talking about the Young Lords-- no, what you’re referring to, the movement was the movement, the Young Lords, I mean-JJ: No, no, no. ADR: No. The movement. Alright, stop right there. JJ: We were part of the movement. 67 �ADR: Well, my point is this what I’m trying to say what-JJ: I didn’t want lose all those chapters. ADR: Cha-Cha, if Hispanic movement in order to truly exist and a microscopic already existed with the Young Lords, okay, you’re forgetting [01:48:00] something that, and this is the problem that I’ve always said over all these years in the aftermath of the Young Lords, all right, you’re forgetting (inaudible), how it worked well and you are applying when you talk about it. That’s why I’m criticizing you on this particular issue because you’re forgetting that it wasn’t Puerto Ricans that did it by themselves. They did it with Mexicans and we did it some Cubans and some other nationalities within the Hispanic movement. And right now you’re talking just about the Puerto Ricans. And somehow this is, no, wait a minute. I didn’t say, well, that impression, you’re giving that impression. JJ: I said at that point, no, I didn’t. ADR: Wait a minute. But you’re giving that impression. I said the movement in order to succeed among the Hispanics. We have to have a coalition, which it existed much like that. Mexicans and Puerto Ricans already learned how to lift it, especially in the city here in Illinois works very well. That lesson is not being applied by New York and it ain’t being applied by the goddamn thing, everything that’s written about the Young Lords as being a Puerto Rican group, and you really want to make an impact on the people, [01:49:00] how it started, and name the men who contributed to the movement more than anybody else. I will make this statement. Mexicans and Puerto Ricans in Chicago. Fuck New York because they were all fucking Puerto Rican, we’re fucking in there and then 68 �contributing it. And if you want to make a movement between the people, you got to stop forgetting about the fuck New York. You’ve got to start remembering that the Mexicans had a lot to do with the movement here in Chicago as part of the Young Lords, as a broader picture of what took place. It wasn’t done by the Puerto Ricans by themselves. You’re forgetting that sometimes or not that you do it intentionally. Okay? That’s why in New York, I could give a fuck less about New York. I don’t mean to sound vulgar or start swearing or things like that, but it pisses me off to sit there and somehow this fucking movement of the Young Lords dealt with this issue of fucking Puerto Ricans. Where were the fucking Mexicans [01:50:00] who took the (inaudible) together? We did it together. You want to show the younger youth, you got to show ’em that we have lived, we know how to live together, how to get along together, how to work together. Where the fuck are they going to learn that if you’re not telling them the real story. Your story ain’t about fucking New York. Fuck the Young Lords party. They didn’t do shit. They didn’t contribute a fucking thing to the movement other than the fucking name, the big (inaudible) mouths. What else did they do? Tell me because they were shooting there when I was leading the fucking marches. They weren’t there when I took over the goddamn seminary. They weren’t there when I took over the fucking church and they weren’t there when I was fucking facing the cops, that I was the front person in front of everybody in there ready to take, possibly taking a fucking shot from the fucking cops. They weren’t there. When I went to the Carina alone with other people that were there, I was there by 69 �myself. But when I was there, when I was in front of the line going to the Carina projects [01:51:00] and get into the issues that had to be dealt with. ADR: Those are the things I didn’t do it-- I’m not saying that I was there by myself. I had other people, Puerto Ricans and Mexicans together when we did these things. So where are the Mexicans? I mean are we fucking blind or what? I mean our skin so dark that we’re not there because there’s certainly nothing’s ever mentioned about the contribution of the Mexicans into the Puerto Rican movement. None. Okay, none whatsoever. All these goddamn years, all this stuff in there talking about blah, blah, blah, and I was like, bullshit. Where’s the contribution when somebody said, we have had contribution from the Mexicans, they’re our brothers that have helped us. We’re all together. Where-- give me one statement that it shows anywhere in motherfucking right or neither. Show me one fucking sentence when you got that. JJ: I did make a button that said “Tengo Aztlán, Tengo Aztlán En Mi Corazón.” [01:52:00] I made that button. So I have to differ with you a little bit, but I definitely respect the pride that you have for the Mexican community and definitely for example, Luis Chavez took over the People’s Church. He led the People’s Church (inaudible) with the heads of our clinic, (inaudible) health clinic, Puerto Rican patriot. It was named after the Puerto Rican compatriot, but yet it was Mexicans that were running in the leadership of our clinic, Mexican Young Lords, that were doing that. So I definitely respect, definitely respect that. And you’re correct that we did not give enough attention to the Mexican Young Lords. And I’m not giving a but to New York. One of our main issues though, that 70 �including Mexicans and Puerto Ricans were fighting for at that time [01:53:00] was self-determination for Puerto Rico. ADR: The what now? JJ: The main issue that when we started was self-determination for Puerto Rico. Our first button said, our first button said, “Tengo Puerto Rico En Mi Corazon” and then we made the button “Tengo Aztlán En Mi Corazón” to recognize the contribution of the Mexican people within our group. ADR: But my point, okay, you’re bringing something up. The thing, okay. (inaudible) No, no. I’m point out something of what you said in there that people are not aware. All right? When that was done, and many times during the period when we used to have debates, they lasted all night and (inaudible), and I can remember hours we spent arguing some of these points. You were arguing when the button was being created. Not all of us were sitting there were in agreement about the button, but do you recall what you said? Were you convinced those of us that were Mexican [01:54:00] to go with the idea with the button, the way it was being written the way you wanted? “I got Puerto Rico En Mi Corazon.” How did that come about? JJ: I’m not sure. ADR: You don’t remember? JJ: I don’t remember. I don’t remember. ADR: Okay, as a brother, sometimes critical-- you forget important points of what took place. The argument we were having with you that night is that because those of us that were different nationalities weren’t created by (inaudible). Why are we 71 �doing this? There were issues. The (inaudible) even Puerto Rican siding with some of us that saying, that makes sense. We’re not all, not everybody here is Puerto Rican. We kept arguing the whole night about (inaudible). You kept fighting that we needed to have that blah, blah, blah, whatever. But you made one point that finally convinced when we said we agreed to it, and then sometimes it becomes a regrettable agreement. What I’m trying to say because of the issue that the way I just out spoke and then letting certain things out that you don’t realize the consequences of the way this has been taken. [01:55:00] ADR: The way New York abuses it in terms of the presentation by so-called Puerto Rican movement, that they were not really that goddamn movement. You said to us, “You guys, the Mexicans, the Argentineans, you went to a number, you all have your flags. Y’all have your countries. Puerto Rico’s not a free country. It’s a possession of the United States.” And we realized the (inaudible) because like I said, it was a long discussion that night, an argument, but we realized that we conceded to you that you were right in the sense that if Puerto Rico was to become a free nation, we needed to support that. And that was the idea of why we allowed that we said we got Puerto Rico mi Corazon. That’s how that came about. And whether you did or not, the point the credit, the only credit, the credit I’m giving you is the fact that they made up an accurate report in saying Puerto Rico is not a free country [01:56:00] or otherwise that would not have taken place. ADR: And that’s the same thing I’m taking there, that you’re not giving credit. This is sometimes, quite honestly, sometimes-- I don’t get angry. But I mean, I’m 72 �disappointed in you that all these years things has been said in there that not enough has been mentioned that this thing about much like what you’re doing with New York about saying, well, just looking back about having the name that again, playing nice-nice, you, in other words, you allowed another, a bigger harm to take place and you don’t see the consequences of that. The consequence I’m pointing out to you, if I’m going to go sell a point of why the unity between the not here in Chicago so much in Chicago, Chicago is different than probably than New York and other places because here the unity of among Hispanics is probably much stronger than any other part of the country. But if I’m going to go to New York or other places where you got a mix or Florida Cubans and Mexicans and which are minority [01:57:00] over there, the Cubans, the Puerto Ricans and numbers in there, my point to them in there, in order to sell ’em in there, take a look at what this group did. They did it with different nationalities, but how am I going to sell something when everybody, every time they read it, well, the Young Lords were fucking Puerto Rican. How did they allow Mexican to get in there? Don’t you think I’m going to hear something like that being said? I didn’t know fucking-- where do you get that? The Mexicans started to help start the gang of the young roots. They were a fucking Puerto Rican group. They were a Puerto Rican gang. They don’t know the truth. They don’t know what took place. Why? Because you got people lying. Perpetrating lies about the movement. You got second sources trying to speak for the first sources. That’s a harm Cha-Cha, a big one. You want to get people on your side. You want to impact the youth. This is what I refer when I’m talking [01:58:00] about the truth. 73 �The truth speaks for itself. I’m not going to say we were perfect, that we were goddamn saints. But what they’ll see, what I mention is that the unity that existed, the trust, you talked about all these things, this is why the (inaudible) gets put together, the trust we had with each other that we didn’t second guess with each other didn’t matter that you were goddamn Puerto Rican and I’m goddamn Mexican. If Sal said he wanted to do that, well fucking do it. He knows what he’s doing. Or if Cha-Cha said something, do it. What I’m trying to say in that trust, that’s how we build. You talked about the trust. The trust came from the ability to trust each other unconditionally because we didn’t feel that we were going to get stabbed in the back or anything. I don’t have to worry that you were going to be doing or anything like that. That’s if you want to teach, educate, this is what I’m referring. Everything else is-- that’s all fucking bullshit. I mean, Carlos can hear me and I would say it to his face, fucking, [01:59:00] what are you talking to an expert on the Young Lords? You didn’t know shit. You were a fucking rally Young Lord and almost all the other goddamn speakers there, they were all rally Young Lords. They weren’t there participating, doing any of the heavy work that needed to be done, negotiating the things that, all the different things we did, contributions. I mean, it wasn’t just me and seven people or seven people and me. It was a contribution of the community. Remember you asked me to give a perspective. So I’m unfortunately, I find myself using the word I perhaps too much. Alright? But you’re asking about what there is, where I fit and how these issues came to be, but it was a contribution of different, it just Mexican and Puerto Ricans. We had whites helping us. They were part of the 74 �Young Lords. With the women that participated and did the damn things. We even had Blacks in our organization. Where is that Cha-Cha? Where is that being? [02:00:00] Where does it show up? How you want to impact a Black to say you need to be part of the movement or you need to vote for me or you need to help me out when you’re talking about the Young Lords, and then they say the fucking Young Lords are Puerto Rican, what do I got to do with the Puerto Ricans? How do you impact the woman that you’re trying to bring her into the group? Well, what do I want to do with a bunch of fucking Puerto Rican male children, as fucking pigs, right? JJ: They agree on that. They agree. ADR: You understand what I’m saying? I don’t mean to maybe I’m going to the extreme of criticizing you, but the thing is, this is the failure that what I all these-JJ: You’re making good points. You heard me, right? ADR: Okay, so the movements that we’re going to move will come back in there if we don’t correct. This is what of all these years, but I’ve been trying to refer to you what needed to be done. [02:01:00] Okay? You just never really wanted-perhaps you didn’t want to listen to me. I don’t take it in a, but all these things. This is what I referred about telling the truth, putting the facts on the table. Because if people look at what was done and how that came to be, it’s not the bad they’re going to look at. They’re going to look at the cohesiveness, the trust, the things that made the things work. We learned from the women. (audio cuts out) Perfect. Take one. I can recall without hearing again, the occurrence, they had to set us down and said, you guys are fucking up. A couple of times that 75 �they in there. You guys are doing this. You’re not supposed to be doing it. I mean, even on the women, they rolled up and stood up to us saying, we don’t like the way you guys are going. Remember that? They had the guts to tell us off and we listened. And sometimes the males would being males, maybe some of us smirked at them, [02:02:00] but we had to listen and we had to listen to what they had to tell us, and obviously they might’ve been a part because of the greater movement with the woman’s movement that was coming into existence. But-- and because of that, more than likely they realized that, wait a minute, these guys are treating us like shit. We got to change them. How are you going to reach people? I mean, when you talk about the movement, that’s when I heard you say this thing about I didn’t want to split the movement. You bewildered the shit out of me. How the fuck are you talking about movement when you’re talking-- well, nobody’s, maybe nobody’s going to fucking listen to you if you keep talking about a group and correlate to what exists that nobody else has any interest unless you happen to be a Puerto Rican that, in other words, other than that, nobody, believe me, nobody’s going to want to listen to you because it doesn’t connect. It doesn’t-- you know this is what I’m saying about reaching the audience, reaching the-- [02:03:00] The thing is, I mean, there’s a lot to be thought from what happened and it just not because we, some were super-duper or whatever this, yes, we were lucky. It is like sometimes somebody winning the lottery or we were in a certain time and place. We reacted in a certain way. We didn’t plan it. The events that occurred in the way they occurred just sort of fitted in place and that was it. Now we can take it to the 76 �other level, use that as a vehicle to help organize a larger movement and in other words, to the Hispanic populations that continue to increase in the United States, and make it useful. Like voters. Why do we want to have, when the Hispanics don’t want to vote right now for many number of reasons, but they can study us. Here’s why you should vote. Here’s what can’t be accomplished when people get together. [02:04:00] Now, we might just be one example out of many, but still one example is one more that didn’t exist. And other things in terms of organizing and things that occur, that has to be the lessons that learned that I talked about yesterday. The things that we learned. I mean, I looked at perspective from my point dealing with the YMCA, how they did things, and I think they had enough brains to see that ain’t working and I know why it ain’t working. I got a better way of doing it. Doesn’t make me super smart or anything else. It’s just that I was lucky enough to see it differently and then apply that to something else. Then I go back to the statement, educated people are stupid people. I know some people that are listening to what I’m saying may not make no goddamn sense at all, but if they really think right higher, they know what I’m talking about. [02:04:59] As far as the Young Lords, all of us, not all of us, that stand corrected, quite a few of us became successful. I like to think that I became successful, but there wasn’t just being by myself. There were other guys that went on to do a lot more things in life and contributing not only to society. JJ: How were you successful? How were you successful? 77 �ADR: Well, if you take a look at who we were, it’s like saying how many heartbeats away was I away from being in jail? To that add the only individual that I can kind thank again comes to Orlando and I need to explain something about Orlando, why in the later years, I became more as a friend, more endeared. Not that I, sometimes it’s been years that sometimes that I don’t go beyond seeing him. [02:06:00] And then the things that we haven’t discussed that had to deal with the issues like with drugs. It was part of the movement of those things that happened. I think Orlando, me personally, saved me from becoming in any way, becoming in any way addicted to drugs, and I got him to thank for that because he put it in a perspective in such a way that it made me think that I could never do that. And I got him to thank. As a friend, when I came back from Vietnam at the end of 1968 as far as the Young Lords, to me, it was a non-existent thing. I mean, it is not like I came, “Hey guys, I’m back.” I didn’t do that. Interestingly enough, Orlando knew I was coming out because he would ask my sister from time to time when is Sal coming back. So as soon as when he knew when I was coming back, he came to see me. [02:07:00] Out of all the guys, Orlando was the-- he came and said, how you doing? And I went out and we started hanging out together, which kind of surprised me because it was the least thing I expected was for him to come looking for me. So then we started hanging out together. I remember seeing you, not under the best of circumstances when you were living in Wrightwood with an Hispanic girl, but that was not under the best circumstances. JJ: Meaning what? I was using drugs at that time? 78 �ADR: Yes. Kind of shook me, shocked me. I wasn’t expecting that at all. You’re in a goddamn suit, the whole bit and-JJ: High as a kite. ADR: Huh? JJ: And high as a kite. In a suit, but high as a kite. [02:08:00] But while you were gone, there was a drug epidemic in the neighborhood. ADR: The what now? JJ: While you were gone in Vietnam, there was a drug epidemic in the neighborhood. The country was hippies, the country was hippies, and we were following that. ADR: Well, there might’ve been a drug epidemic in the area and (inaudible) but not as big as what came later. JJ: Oh yeah. It came later. Later it what, got worse? Yeah, got worse. ADR: I mean, in your time-JJ: Because later it spreads more to minority groups, so-called minorities. ADR: The time you’re talking with-JJ: First it was the hippie movement, and then some of us got into that hippie movement, but then it spread to the barrios. ADR: Remember, Gorilla? Gorilla was a Paragons. JJ: Okay. Right. I remember. Oh yeah, I know who you’re talking about. ADR: What I remember, because as I said, I wasn’t [02:09:00] getting-- my recollection of when I had come back, there were very few people, and I don’t know how 79 �much usage you were doing. I mean, as compared to what happened later. What I’m saying is in comparison to when I first got back. JJ: I became addicted, I became addicted. ADR: To me, it seems like you were. JJ: I was addicted. I was on the corner every day. ADR: Okay. I mean, I don’t know about that. I mean-JJ: One day I was in a suit and tie and the next day I was like a bum. So I mean, I was addicted. ADR: Okay. The thing was that there weren’t that many people that were addicted at the time when I came back. JJ: Right. ADR: But you were in the minority, you guys were in the minority. I’m mentioning Gorilla because Gorilla was the one that one of the suppliers at the time. And as I said, when Orlando came back, I had come back and hanging around, [02:10:00] being single and what have you not, I used to go down to Rush Street a lot, and sometimes with Orlando and things like that. We ran into Gorilla one time and were knowing each other and everything else, I was kind of surprised to see him down on Rush Street. But I quickly caught onto why he was down on Rush Street. Obviously sell some of his wares that he had. But he wasn’t the kind of guy at that point that-- even then he was not a user. He was in the business. He was making money. He always had money in his pocket, obviously from the sales. But what I recall in that area, the particular area that started happening is that the group at the very beginning, when I’m saying I’m 80 �coming back, the issue of drugs [02:11:00] was not something that was heavily within our group at all. You were the exception and you kept that under control. But as time passed, the gradualness of the individual is like the guys we all knew who was doing drugs. It wasn’t hard to figure out, it wasn’t a secret or anything, but the group was in a minority and it started to increase as time passed. So if there were two, three guys doing it, we knew what they were doing. And this is one of the reasons that we had discussed, but what we were going, the Young Lords came into being and the political aspects of it. In other words, the political aspects of the Young Lords came into being, the discussion of the drug dealing came into focus, but nothing was really ever done along the lines of what the discussions that have been had about that. But the group started increasing [02:12:00] in numbers. In other words, people doing the drugs became increasing to the point that they became the majority rather than the minority within certain given time. That happened in other neighborhoods. The, go ahead. If you’re going to-JJ: Go ahead. Go ahead. ADR: So the issue of the drugs and that particular issue, the epidemic for me, the way my perspective came much later, the epidemic, that a neighborhood that basically had a minority of drug users, the neighborhood changed to completely of having a majority of drug use. A lot of guys will deny, I mean, I’m not the only exception you got, Fermin never did drugs, myself. Maybe there’s a couple of other guys. I can’t think right off the camera, but we were really the minority. We never did any drugs because everybody else did. [02:13:00] And for us, it was 81 �the transition. When we used to go down to Rush Street and there’d be five, six of us going down to Rush Street and every weekend, and then maybe once with Ralph and once in a while the guys all were doing is getting high once a month, but then once a month became once a week, and then once a week it became every day. Okay. I mean, that was the effect. JJ: Everybody would say it was just once a month. Yeah. ADR: Right. So that issue, I mean, I think the thing with drugs, it was something that we-JJ: Well, the good thing about Fermin and (inaudible) and people like that, the reason they didn’t get into drugs was they were the sports. We had teams, sports teams. Remember you mentioned about the YMCA. So they played basketball, they played softball, and they were very good at it. [02:14:01] I mean, I got good at it too sometimes, but I didn’t stay with it. But they stayed with it. They were athletic and they represented the Young Lords, and we won a lot of games. So we had our own basketball teams, our own baseball teams and everything else. But I was in the boxing team I remember. I did win a trophy one day, but even though everybody booed me because I was kicking the guy after he was (inaudible). But at least we, but see, but what I’m saying is we were in tournaments as Young Lords because the YMCA was trying to get us out of the gang. And like you said, that was a mistake because-- ADR: But you’re talking about the time also. JJ: That’s why he didn’t get into drugs. That’s why Fermin and then never get into hard drugs. 82 �ADR: And Benny didn’t do it until much later on. JJ: No, he did it later. He did it later. Yeah. ADR: Huh? JJ: He did it later. ADR: Right. [02:15:00] That’s what I’m (inaudible). JJ: Yeah. ADR: He did it when we became political that he got drunk. That’s what I was referring to earlier. The process of when the majority became into drug addiction was during the political process that took place with the Young Lords. But prior to that, it was basically non-existence. I don’t say if you can call it success, but obviously for me, I referred to it in my own mentality, I had sort of a triangle, meaning that I had a daytime job, which I applied myself because I had a family from the very beginning. I, having gotten married almost immediately after coming out of the service. And in the process, I went back to school, along with Louie. Louie was the one-- this issue. I don’t take credit for certain things. Louie convinced me to go back to school, college. [02:16:00] I really hadn’t thought about doing that. And then part of that, because I originally coming out of the service, as I said, I was leaving everything behind with exception when Orlando, as I said, came around and brought me back into the group. Because of my hearing problem that I started developing, when I left the service that I realized that I had a hearing problem and the disability was recognized by the immediate, because it happened right after I left the service. I discovered that I had the problem, a hearing problem at that point was because I wanted to become a 83 �pilot, I mean a commercial pilot, but not flying the big planes, the smaller planes. And I was going to go to school for that, and I had to leave it because of my hearing. So I felt like I was going to sort of quagmire as to what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. And at that point, I really didn’t know what I wanted to do. [02:17:00] Then the issue of the Young Lords started coming into play and the political processes that things were evolving. So there were a couple of years where I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I was young enough to realize I got enough time to plan my future. I just wanted to kind of settle in. So the bottom line is that Louie convinced me and said, you need figure out when you go back to school. Because my plan was if I’m going back to school, use the GI Bill, I want to make sure what I’m going to and how to, what am I going to use it? But he said, leave that alone. Don’t worry about it. Get back and you got four years to figure out what you want to do. He convinced me to go back to school, and in doing so, I started taking courses that I felt comfortable with. I’ve always loved reading, and I always had an interest in law. So I started taking criminal courses and for work, work-wise [02:18:00] engineering courses to enhance my position as an operator. So the years started to roll by more quickly, and I found school to become very easily. So I ended up going, attending junior college, got my two year degree. Then I transferred to Northeastern and got my, and I actually I, which is kind of surprised me because I was a lousy student, I really wasn’t a lousy student at all. But I ended up graduating with honors from Northeastern. I got my degree and I graduated with honors, and I also started studying law. Then quickly, moving up, I got accepted into law school, but I got sideswiped. I 84 �use the word sideswiped because, and I got into organizing it with the union. We had a change of power and I was asked-JJ: What union, what union? ADR: That’s the Operating [02:19:00] Engineers with Local 150. But the point was-JJ: Also part of the Latin American-- ADR: Right. But I’m trying to say about the triangle. The education, the radical movement and the conservative movement that exists within the construction industry gave me a different perspective of how I viewed things. I had the knowledge of radicalism, firsthand, conservative, working with the mentality, the conservative movement. So not that the construction workers are conservative, but I mean, in other words, a completely contrast mentality of how things are viewed, the political process and everything else, how the system works that comes from the construction industry. But there’s a lot to learn, really because they can educate you in a lot of different things and not just about being a worker or an operator [02:20:00] or a carpenter or an electrician. It’s a society of workers that do things to benefit their own groups and do things that, in other words, to enhance their positions and workplace and things that come with that. And obviously then the other one, what I got from education. The numbers, the statistics, the studies of different groups and all these other things, that all kind of helped me see things in perspective and making me realize what the Young Lords have represented. Some of the things that you’re hearing me talk of what I said, why things and how the American system really works. And sometimes I say things and I realize at the moment that I don’t always explain that it needs to 85 �be explained. And sometimes I’m guilty of explaining too much, and at other times, I’m also guilty of not explaining everything enough of what I’m talking about. But what I’m trying to [02:21:00] say is that the system within the movement is the certain amount of not, realistic, not where it would be. In looking at the movement, I realized that the movement made a lot of mistakes that didn’t live up to what the way things should have been brought. They were blind. Because I think that’s why I always looked at, I mean, in reaching something, a decision or a conclusion, the best way to do it is to see all the options that are on the table. Law school teaches you that, okay. It teaches you to see different views so that you can come to a conclusion to a certain (inaudible). It’s ideal. It doesn’t always work sometimes, but that’s the essence of looking at things. So for me, looking at things over the years, I think it helped me become a good organizer business agent with the local. It made me, [02:22:00] one thing, one of the rules I learned, I call it a rule like certain things, is that I always kept in mind is that not to be judgmental, okay? Because you have to, in representing people or organizing, you can’t be a judge. I mean, you can’t be taking sides and things. You have to listen to what people are saying from both sides in order to help you reach a conclusion as to how to solve a particular issue, or sometimes you have to hear from more than one point of view or two different points of view or three different points of view, what I’m referring to. Other things helped me evolve. And obviously-JJ: So the Young Lords helped you get into the union, the Young Lords helped you go forward with the union, is that what you’re saying? 86 �ADR: Yeah. It helped me because in organizing, there were certain things that-- labor movements organization abilities are [02:23:00] where I can say they’re great (inaudible). But again, the issues with the Young Lords is the ability to, there’s correlations, what I’m trying to say with what happened with the Young Lords just as much with other groups or things in the labor movement, it is really, there’s a lot of things that are related to each other. And to me, it’s like reading a history book and it’s not learning about that history when you got, in other words, there’s particular saying that you don’t have to jump off the roof, in other words, to feel how it hurt you. And that’s what I’m referring to in history, that there are certain number of things that, in other words, the same being is that if you can’t learn from history, you’re [02:24:00] bound to repeat the same mistakes. I agree with that. JJ: How long have you been a union organizer? How many years? ADR: Actually with our local, from the point we come in, we carry a two title that’s being business agent/organizer. So how the whole time for me, I would’ve to say the whole time, more than 20 years that I was a business agent. Business agent/organizer. JJ: Okay. So you’ve been working with the union more than 20 years now, and it helped you with the Young Lords. ADR: Right, because it would’ve been in 1980. JJ: Yeah. ADR: Yeah. JJ: Okay. 87 �ADR: More than 20 years. JJ: And you also worked in the, I know we only get a few more minutes. You worked all the way with the Young Lords, even with the Harold Washington campaign? ADR: Right. That was another thing that we never discussed, but that needs to be discussed as to how the political process that came that we haven’t really discussed [02:25:00] those political, this is the aftermath of the Young Lords, because the only thing I would say, we might want do some more interview on this. I’m the one, and not for anything that I’m trying to take, not the point of trying to take credit, having learned that the experience that we have had, I’m the one that approached Omar because I was working from the union. I was a worker back then-- I wasn’t. We were helping Jane Byrne on her reelection campaign, knowing what previously from the Young Lords experiences of the Young Lords, I had the idea. I knew that all Omar was working for [Callie?], I knew that you were working for Washington and some of the other people. So I went to Omar and I said, why don’t we get in touch with all the interest at different parties that belong to different organizations and let’s have a talk. And I told him my idea. JJ: So then the Young Lords were working in different campaigns? ADR: [02:26:00] Yes. JJ: Okay. But I was working with Washington. ADR: You were with Washington. Omar was with Callie. I was with Jane Byrne and with some other people. Not only, but when I told Omar, I said, I don’t want to restrict it. 88 �JJ: We were not in existence as-- ADR: Exactly. And my point to, right, but my point to Omar was, I don’t want to just deal with, so get as many people as we can that are working for the different candidates. Let’s bring ’em together. I said I want to have a meeting and I told ’em what I wanted to do. I said, well, my idea is that whoever wins the, because I knew whoever wins the primaries was the next mayor from the Democratic side, and that was the deal that we had agreed. When we sat down in there, that’s what, whether Omar said it or that was done, I was the one that came up with it. Our position is that whoever wins the primary, the rest of us have to join up with that group [02:27:00] and help ’em in order to enhance the positions, the capabilities of what we’re going to go with this. In this instance, your candidate won. That’s where we went and said, okay, I want to work with you now. That’s how in the aftermath of the political process, we came to Washington. At that time, I was already in law school. I was attending already law school. And so we (inaudible), and that’s how we went to the point of enhancing the positions and other things that came with that, which you mentioned about, I think. But the task force, as I recall, not for any other reason, I can’t think of the guys. He was married to, a Jewish woman at -JJ: You’re saying the Latino Task Force, that that was created, we created that. We created basically with other groups, with other coalitions. ADR: The idea came from, as I call it, was from that name, B-- god, it starts with a b, I believe, [02:28:00] the congressman from New York that came to help Washington. 89 �JJ: (inaudible) me and you took him around. ADR: He was good. JJ: Me and you took him around. ADR: He knew his shit. Lemme tell you something. JJ: He gave us an idea of setting up. ADR: Exactly. Exactly. With subpoena powers. JJ: Latino task force with subpoena powers. And then we took that to our members, to our group that we were working with Washington at that time, Harold Washington, and then Harold Washington agreed with us. And we got together with other groups and formed that coalition. ADR: Which obviously had to do. JJ: Still exists today. DA still has it. It still exists today, right? Under Mary. It doesn’t exist anymore. ADR: (shakes head no) Daley killed it. JJ: Oh, Daley killed it. Daley, Junior killed it. I told you about that guy. You can’t support that guy. Okay. ADR: [02:29:00] Well, the point, the thing was-JJ: Let’s wrap it up, let’s wrap it up. ADR: The point of all that isn’t that no one was really listening to, and I said this earlier, or if I didn’t, by then, what I’m trying to say is that really listening to what is being said, they’re here, but they’re really not listening to what’s being said. But then you in creating the task force emphasized the fact that we had to have subpoena powers. Okay. Which then happened because, and again, I blame, I’m not 90 �blaming you on that particular level, and I’m trying to say, but some of the other people that had the education that, oh, we can’t, I fought you to the point, because you didn’t want to embarrass Washington. When Washington himself had told us sitting down and you’re not hearing what the guy’s saying. You got to give him an excuse he needs an excuse to justify what he’s going to give us. Because if you just goes around and said, I’m going to create, in other words, he would’ve gone [02:30:00] on the floor and said, tomorrow I’m going to create a Latino task force that has subpoena power. All this goddamn members say, what the fuck is wrong with you? Okay, let it go. We can do another interview. I mean, my point on that, what I’m trying to say, he was saying, in other words, justify, go out and protest. I mean, I was mention, I can’t remember the guy’s name that came in there. He sits there protesting in front of the goddamn city hall and oh man, man can be, everybody’s bitching. Oh, he can’t be doing that. He’s embarrassing the Hispanics, because they’re protesting in Washington. We help Washington. What did Washington do then? Help him one goddamn bit, didn’t do shit for Washington. We all know that. Washington says you guys got to put him in the tax force. Remember that? He sat on the original task force. So my point is that, okay, (inaudible) well, what I’m saying is what I said that Washington, they had to tell us. The rest of them were in there. [02:31:00] Why are you putting that guy in there? Because he’s out there protesting. I got to put him in a goddamn thing, now me to stop them doing this, I had to put ’em in a taxi. 91 �JJ: Okay, now we’re going to start talking about you’re in the service now, right? So are you in the army, navy, or what? ADR: The Army. JJ: And where were you stationed there? ADR: What now? JJ: Where did you go to? Where were you stationed? ADR: Well, one thing before we get into the Army that we were mentioning about the fights, the gang fights, the major fights that was never mentioned. Make me think you’re forgetting. We fought against 18th Street and you’re forgetting it was Mama’s group that we fought against and we had gang fights with them. JJ: Oh, oh, with Mama Velasquez? ADR: Yeah. JJ: Oh, Arturo Velasquez, who ran for Alderman later? ADR: Not Arturo. Yeah. JJ: He ran for Alderman later. ADR: [02:32:00] Yeah. JJ: What in the hell-- ADR: We fought against him. JJ: What was the name of their group? ADR: I don’t remember. JJ: Did you fight against him at that time? That’s how we met each other. ADR: No, we fought against them. JJ: And what was that fight? What was the reasoning for that fight? 92 �ADR: Those are fights that we used to come in when, as I said before, sometimes we were asked to become as an alliance to another group when they were fighting a fight. That was one of where alliances were made, we’re fighting. We fought against their group. There are other ones, I mean, I’m sure they’re going to come to me, but there were other, in that end of the years, there were other, a lot more fights. Typically, we had fights almost, I’m not saying exactly, but almost on a daily basis. That was unique to ourselves. Not to the Paragons, not to the Latin Eagles, I mean the Black Eagles. We were unique in that. [02:33:00] And we ventured one of the things in this many times in there that we were mobile, we weren’t, other than probably the longest period of time, was that we stayed in one particular place would’ve been Old Town. But we tended to be mobile during those years. And one of the things that really in expanding the group, but how we operated was the fact that what I mentioned earlier, that we were not always together as a group. I mean, people didn’t realize it was a cohesive group that existed within the Young Lords. So as I said, if you take a look at the [Division Pete?], you look at it. What’s his name? Oh God, I’m forgetting his name. [02:34:00] Her husband that got killed. I tend to forget names. JJ: Angie? ADR: Who? JJ: Angie or --? ADR: Angie’s husband? JJ: Poncho. Poncho. ADR: Poncho. Tried to challenge us. Got his ass kicked. 93 �JJ: What do you mean he tried to challenge? What do you mean because he was-- ADR: Pancho tried to take over the group. JJ: Okay. What do you mean he tried to take over? You mentioned that a couple of people tried to take over the group. ADR: You had, as I said, Division Pete, Poncho. Almost every guy that came into the group, they brought in a couple of guys. There were other guys that wanted to become leaders. Now, we didn’t know that immediately. I mean, if things would come up in there that it would become apparent, as I stated before, when we would’ve meetings that who was going to be the next president or that wanted to be somebody else, a president that came into place. So what I’m trying to tell you that, for example, when Division Pete, [02:35:00] he did it along with a couple, it wasn’t just by himself. He was doing with a couple of other guys from the area Old Town, because as I said, they didn’t see us all together. I know that when we had the meeting, and often the case, the one that was our in trying to describe, I have to go back to Orlando. He was like the gladiator. He was always the one that would take him on. They ended up kicking Division Pete’s ass when he had made the challenge and fighting him. And like I said, there were other people. You were asking about fights. I remember one time with Orlando when as many fights that might seem-JJ: There was always a struggle within the Young Lords of different people that wanted to take the leadership role. ADR: And Orlando was always at the forefront of defending the group. JJ: Right. 94 �ADR: I remember one night when he got drunk. [02:36:00] Now, to my credit, as I said, the friendship I had with him, I mean obviously repeated it many times. He was drunk one night as many times when we used to get drunk every weekend, we used to go try to get drunk, try it, because we thought that was a cool thing to do or we wanted to do it. But you remember the fight when he took on, he fought about 11 different fights in one night? He was fighting everybody? Among the group and everything that he had gotten, know what he was doing. Orlando. JJ: When he fought Andre or whatever, I remember one time I had to get in the middle of is that, and both sides wanted to kick my butt. Both sides. ADR: Well, that night he ended up the only one he-JJ: He told me he was going to kill me and Andre. ADR: He started a fight with everybody within the group. He was drunk, he was drunk. And obviously, [02:37:00] Orlando’s Orlando but we didn’t, the rest of the guys didn’t give a shit. They-- we weren’t going to take his crap. But I mean, he fought about 11 of us one night, except me. He’s the only one that, in other words, recognized me. He never tried but he was fighting with everybody else, including yourself. Fermin, Carlos, I mean all the other guys because he was drunk. He had drank, he was completely fucked up. But that was Orlando. That was his thing about explaining. But-JJ: I remember Division Pete and Andre were together. ADR: Andre was another one that tried to-JJ: And then Orlando was defending Ralph. ADR: Who? 95 �JJ: He was defending Ralph. ADR: Right. You’re right. JJ: And that’s the time that I had to get in the middle because they were going to destroy the group. And so I had to get in the middle. [02:38:00] And one time Orlando was winning-- no, Andre was winning over Orlando because the ones that started the fight was Division Pete and Spaghetti and Ralph. But then the ones that did the fighting, those were the ones that started the fight. Division Pete and Ralph, the ones that did the fighting was Orlando and Andre. See, even though the other ones started the fight, it became a fight between Orlando and Andre. And then Andre had Orlando for a while and I grabbed Andre. He had him stuck and he was getting ready to do damage. And I came from behind and grabbed, I grabbed Andre, and Andre told me, I’m going to kill you. You let me go whatever. I said, well, let him get out of the fence so he could fight you fair. Let him get out. So then I did that for him. [02:39:00] So then later on, it was the other way around, it was Andre that was on the ground and Orlando was ready to get him. And that’s when I grabbed Orlando and he told me the same thing, I’m going to kill you son of a gun. So I said, okay, whatever, later on, but let Andre get up. So I kept the fight balanced because I didn’t want the group to destroy because there was a split between the group that hung around on Wheeling and the old Lords, the core group like Orlando and Spaghetti and yourself and other people that was a core group was I had to get in the middle and play mediator. Do you recall that or no? ADR: Who? 96 �JJ: I had to get in the middle to keep it fair. ADR: Right. JJ: Do you remember that at all or no? How do you remember that? ADR: [02:40:00] You’re talking about a different fight. JJ: Oh, it’s a different fight? Okay. ADR: That was a different fight. JJ: Okay. Alright. ADR: The one I’m talking is where Orlando got drunk. It had nothing to do with no-- it had nothing to do with that. The one, I realize what you’re talking, but you’re talking about a completely different fight. JJ: Okay. But you had heard about that one. ADR: Right. JJ: Okay. So that was the other one. ADR: But the other one I’m referring to is when he just started going at the guys, it got to the point that he didn’t recognize-- the only-- he ended up, for some reason, that recognized me was me. I’m the only one that he didn’t pick a fight with in that was drunk is what my point I’m trying to make. But you reminded me about the fights. All these guys that came in that ended up being friends, you’re forgetting one guy that would not mention that I haven’t mentioned hardly at all. Carlos. Carlos, Raymond’s brother was very much part of it, but he was a quiet [02:41:00] one. But he was in the thick of a lot of the fighting, a lot of the things that we did, he was always there and we hardly ever mentioned him, but he was, 97 �all the fighting we did, he was always there fighting with us alongside of us. But we hardly ever mentioned him because we-JJ: He lived over by Halsted and Woodwright. There was a Spanish store underneath and he lived in that building that was a big multi dwelling like you said. ADR: But he tended to be very quiet. JJ: Right, right. ADR: Never really said anything much or anything else, but he was always there fighting with us. JJ: Okay, now you’re in the service. Right? And you’re there from 1965 to 1968, 1966, 1967, 1968. ADR: Right. That would’ve been, you can’t really count when you’re saying 1965-really that was November when I left at the end of November. JJ: Okay. ADR: So you got one month [02:42:00] December and that was it from the month of 1965. So it-JJ: So it was 1964? ADR: So you’re really looking, I was going away from 1960- in other words, the three years from 1966, 1967, 1968. I came back in November of 1968. JJ: Okay. Alright. ADR: After the convention when I returned. JJ: After the Democrat convention. So now how-- ADR: When I went in, I was 17 years old. 98 �JJ: Right. ADR: Alright. And I wanted to be a paratrooper, but it turns out that this is how I ended up, for whatever reasons, sometimes things happen, one doesn’t realize the impact that it has on you. So I’m thinking that when you’re going to be a soldier, you’re a soldier and that’s it, there was nothing other than you’re prepared for war or you’re firing weapons and that kind. I’m 17 years old. But when I got in and actually I left when I learned another important lesson [02:43:00] in life. That particular night I got jumped. You remember that? Cha-Cha? You’re falling asleep. JJ: Oh, I’m sorry. No, go ahead. Okay. No, we’re in the service. We’re in the service. ADR: Okay. JJ: And you wanted to be a paratrooper, you said? ADR: That was from the Continentals. That’s why I have no dear love against your cousin. JJ: My cousin Danny Rodriguez. ADR: Yeah, Danny. What happened that night. JJ: President of the Continentals. ADR: Danny, well, he got, in some ways, when you think in life some people get paid back and it works both ways. But what happened that night was that, going back to my younger years, well remember I met you when I was a Patrol Boy. When I had been a Patrol Boy, it said the captain of the Patrol Boys, one of the Continentals was one of my patrol boys. And [02:44:00] there was a girl-- we 99 �used to have the tunnel that went underneath the El tracks on the street and the station was right there in the morning. He was trying to make out with one of the girls, forcibly trying to kiss her. And obviously she didn’t want anything to do with him. And I made the mistake-- I happened to see what had happened and I said, leave her alone. He said something to me, again, you’re young, 12 years old, whatever age I was at that point, whether I was 12 or 10, I clipped him, I hit him, knocked him out. He tried to get up and fight me and beat the crap out him and it was the end of it. Then I had him removed. I took away like I said the guy was in charge, I had me charged and I kicked him out. Never did anything. Years went by. But your cousin [02:45:00] was an asshole. He instigated him because I found out about that later and the night when they found out that I was leaving in the morning I was leaving, that I was going to go into the service. Danny instigated the guy to get even with me. So as I was going down to Old Town, remember that’s at the time we still hung out in Old Town. So that was the last night. And I was on my way down to Old Town. I was walking down on Armitage, passing Waller High School. He came from behind me and dropped me, took me by surprise and dropped me. And I know (inaudible) when I turned around, I started fighting him. And the Continentals, your cousin came up and I said, this is bullshit. [02:46:00] So it was kind of, I never forgot that, but like I said, and I never forgave him for that either. Kind of was laughing about it. I said, it’s going to be paid back on this one. So when I got back up in there, Ralph found out of him what happened that I had gotten jumped. We came back and they were gone and we went looking for him because I was going into the 100 �service. Ralph said, don’t worry about it, Sal, I’m going to going get these guys. And I was leaving that night. But the lesson I learned about that comes from this is that if you’re fighting somebody, and that’s what I had done and reflecting on that particular situation, is I humiliated the kid in my younger years. And that’s something I learned is that if you’re fighting somebody [02:47:00] and you beat ’em, there’s a choice to be made at that point. You can either allow the guy to get up gracefully and perhaps have a friend for life or you can beat the shit out of him and have an enemy for sure for life. And that’s what I had done with that guy when I knocked him the first punch when I had hit him. I mean, I found him and knocked him that, but I ended up humiliating him because I kept letting him in there humiliated in front of the girl, not realizing that he liked the girl. So in beating the shit out him, keeping his ass further, I had humiliated him something obviously he didn’t, never forgot. And your cousin fed that particular thing them in place against our group. I mean, particularly to myself, because I think it was [02:48:00] as much just like anything else, the Young Lords, I mean. Let me ask a question that has to (inaudible) because it’s inside of your family. Was there any (inaudible) that your cousin had about the Young Lords? JJ: Andy? ADR: Yeah. JJ: Well, between me and him, because we were cousins, we already had a history together. And so he didn’t show that to me. I mean, he more or less, he had his group and then we had our group. 101 �ADR: I think he had an (inaudible) against the group because we were, remember they came after we, at whatever point-JJ: We were more fighters than they were. They more hung around at Newbury’s playground. And so we were more fighters than they were. They were not really that much into fighting. [02:49:00] ADR: As a group-JJ: One day we went to the police station because we were just playing games with ’em, just joking around with ’em. And they took us all to the police station and we had to all stay until the parents came in and got everybody. But that’s the only time that I know that they went to jail or that they fought. And we were just playing games with ’em. ADR: Oh, there was another gang fight. I mean, you’re talking, when we had a fight. JJ: I mean individuals came all the time, but I mean. ADR: Do you remember the fight where they lined us up, the police, they had lined us up. JJ: It was in the-- ADR: Who were we fighting that night? JJ: We were fighting them, but it was playing games. We weren’t really fighting. Then the police arrested us all and then lined us up inside the police station, made us do pushups, turned it into a festival (inaudible). [02:50:00] We were having a good time. ADR: But I mean, my point of what I’m trying to get you to reflect on something else. I know that there was a mock fight, if you want to call it that, but the mock fight in 102 �itself-- I’m reflecting on something, on somebody that in later years underhandedly-- that’s not a nice word. And it’s not what I’m really mean, but I use the word (inaudible) because I can’t really describe anything what the Young Lords ended up representing. And my point is that was there (inaudible) part of your cousin in so far as the issue with the young Lord is we had become more popular. We were better well known. And obviously we were much better fighters than they were. They couldn’t even, you know. JJ: No, they weren’t into fighting. They weren’t into fighting. There were some groups that were not into fighting. Like you said, [02:51:00] even the older ones, the Black Eagles and Paragons, they didn’t even want to fight anymore. They had lived through that and they didn’t want, in fact, the fighting was gone by 1968. There was no fighting. I mean, people were just, that’s when drugs came into the neighborhood. ADR: Well, for me, when I was gone first, like I said, what changed that number? What changed? Now, one of the things when I got inducted in and when I went in, I didn’t know that I was going to have to have a job in the Army, whether it was going to be a cook, a driver, whatever. For some reason hadn’t, when I went in, I hadn’t picked what I wanted to do because it was supposed to. I thought I was miss, I just want to jump out of airplanes. I want to be a paratroop. And the sergeant, when I was being inducted in kind of laughed. He said you’re not going to be jumping planes every day. He says, you got to do some work. He says, cook, things like that. Driver, what? [02:52:00] So at that point I’m thinking, what the fuck am I supposed to do? I don’t even know. My mind is blank. What the 103 �fuck am I going to be? So he chose it for me. He looked at me and he said, you know what? He says, you look like the kind of guy that likes to drive big machines. So he marked me down as a heavy equipment operator and that’s how I ended up becoming a heavy equipment operator. ADR: So when I went in, after going to the training and all that, that I was trained and originally I was going to be sent to Vietnam. The period, and a lot of to be said about what things that I learned in the service, but I was 17 years old instead of going to Vietnam at the point that when too many 17 year olds were dying, getting killed in Vietnam, and obviously mothers were complaining to [02:53:00] Johnson. Johnson decided to stop sending the 17 year olds. And it just so happens when we were graduating out of our training, basic training in what they call a AIT, advanced training into your particular occupation. So all the 17-yearold kids out of the class where we had been taught basic said to, they stopped us and separated us from the rest of the older guys and said, you guys, they held us back. END OF VIDEO FILE 104 � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/c596581aa9b694020f577d4710517808.mp4 c372141b7cc234e8c25f46b8865008cc 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 Angel “Sal” del Rivero 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.) Mexicano-Americanos--Relatos personales Justicia social Activistas comunitarios--Illinois--Chicago Mexicano-Americanos--Illinois--Chicago--Vida social y costumbres Veteranos--Relatos Personales Pandillas--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_Rivero_Angel_del_2 Title A name given to the resource Angel “Sal” del Rivero video interview and transcript, interview 2 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Rivero, Angel del Description An account of the resource Angel “Sal” del Rivero was born in Mexico. In the late 1950s and early 1960s he lived in Lincoln Park on Dayton Street. Later his family moved to the Lakeview Neighborhood near Wrigley Field. Mr. Rivero became one of the original members of the Young Lords in 1959. While the Young Lords were transforming themselves into a human rights movement, Mr. Rivero was serving in the U.S. military. When he came out most Young Lords were opposed to the Vietnam War, although many Young Lords also served on the front lines in that war. Mr. Rivero at first resented those who opposed the war. But after Young Lord Manuel Ramos was killed by an off duty policeman, the entire Young Lords group reunited themselves for human rights. 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.) Mexican Americans--Personal narratives Social justice Community activists--Illinois--Chicago Mexican Americans--Illinois--Chicago--Social life and customs Veterans--Personal narratives Gangs--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 2012-07-12 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/da992deaaef65ddf71e39ad0762d27f0.pdf bdbebc471b4a958d13a1b7a85eb24575 PDF Text Text Young Lords In Lincoln Park Interviewee: Antonio (Maloco)” Jiménez Rodríguez Interviewers: José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez Location: Grand Valley State University Special Collections Date: 6/25/2012 Biography and Description Antonio (Maloco) Jiménez Rodríguez has no qualms about admitting that he was the Vice-President of the notorious Hacha Viejas, or Old Hatchets, of the 1950s and 1960s in Chicago, which some believe was the city’s first Puerto Rican gang. It definitely is the most well-known group of that era. The leader, Juan Hacha Vieja, came from Barrio Mula in Aguas Buenas, Puerto Rico. He was a World War II veteran with a lot of heart. Several witnesses describe one time in 1982 when a Puerto Rican landlord in Wicker Park pulled out a .32 Colt automatic pistol and pointed it directly at Juan “Hacha Vieja”’s face as Hacha Vieja was walking in a small passageway between two garages, approaching his building. The landlord wanted to embarrass Hacha Vieja and make him run, or at least get scared. But Hacha Vieja just stood there and pulled a .38 snub nose revolver from his pocket and, even while the .32 automatic was being pointed to his face, started loading bullets into his gun. Mr. Jiménez Rodríguez also recalls that the Hacha Viejas had no gang colors. In fact, they had no real gang name and bore little resemblance to the groups of today who sell drugs or hang out on street corners. The Hachas Viejas drank mainly beer or rum at the saloons or at the homes of members in places like the Water Hotel or the social clubs that their own members owned. Juan “Hacha Vieja” had been given that nickname when he was just a boy in Barrio Mula of Aguas Buenas, Puerto Rico. At the time he was working for Tio Gabriel Jiménez as a farmhand in a mountain farm that also produced coffee. The name was given to him because “he was �very good with the machete at the farm.” When times were bad economically, he and Tio Gabriel’s sons would move from farming to construction or to other farms, doing odds and ends to survive. Hacha Vieja became close friends with Mr. Jiménez Rodríguez and his other brothers and cousins. After World War II, many of them moved to Chicago, mostly to the La Clark and Lincoln Park areas. The more they located meat packing, factory and restaurant and hotel jobs near Wells Street and Chicago Avenue and around downtown, or at the steel mills south towards Indiana, the more they contacted their friends and family from Aguas Buenas and Caguas. Other Puerto Rican families did the same and pulled entire families from their cities and towns, setting them up in Chicago. Juan “Hacha Vieja” was loved, feared and respected all at once. If he liked you he would turn your last name into “Hacha Vieja” -- Pablo became Pablo Hacha Vieja and José would be José Hacha Vieja. On the weekends when they drank at the Clark Street saloons or by Halsted Street and along Madison. Often they would usually get into a brawl and spend the night in jail for disorderly conduct or loitering. By Monday, they would all be back to work. Mr. Jiménez Rodríguez recalls wanting to get along with everyone, but there were other minority gangs that hated the Puerto Ricans with a passion. They had to get their respect or they would be pushed around and slapped or beaten up. He explains that they had no other choice but to fight, and carve out territory; the police did not defend them. And many times the police would join these other gangs against the Puerto Ricans. By the early 1960s there were three taverns that were owned by the Hacha Viejas: one at La Clark close to Grand Avenue, another on Western, about one or two blocks north of Division, and the third by the Hotel Lincoln on Armitage Avenue and Clark Street. One day Mr. Jiménez Rodríguez remembers coming from the west side club on Western Avenue to the Armitage Avenue and Clark Street Tavern. The Italians and Irish were hiding, waiting for he and his friends. A mob converged on the Hachas Viejas and started beating them with chains and bats. He, Hacha Vieja and some others got cut very badly ending up in the hospital for a couple of months. Still on another battle, they also got cut up by a Mexican gang from Taylor Street near Halsted .It also put them in a hospital. But Mr. Jiménez Rodríguez explains that this is how they learned their lessons, the hard way for not paying attention. They needed to be prepared at all times. As time went on they did less fighting and could just socialize and enjoy a good time. It was no longer just them; more Puerto Ricans were moving in. � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/df27a23641e7119349dc545ab010bf46.mp4 8dd30633e1da51f1b7a2fa3973818e9e 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 Antonio “Maloco” Jiménez Rodríguez 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 Pandillas--Illinois--Chicago Puertorriqueños--Illinois--Chicago--Vida social y costumbres Veteranos--Relatos personales Pandillas--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_Rodriguez_Antonio Title A name given to the resource Antonio “Maloco” Jiménez Rodríguez video interview and biography Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Rodríguez, Antonio Description An account of the resource Antonio “Maloco” Jiménez Rodríguez has no qualms about admitting that he was the Vice-President of the notorious Hacha Viejas, or Old Hatchets, of the 1950s and 1960s in Chicago. He was a World War II veteran with a lot of heart. 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 Gangs--Illinois--Chicago Puerto Ricans--Illinois--Chicago--Social life and customs Veterans--personal narratives Gangs--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/1ed01bfbe605891a68ad1aeba90b1145.pdf 1eafe5c58de7853c47e1e983bc757f0d PDF Text Text Young Lords In Lincoln Park Interviewee: Antonio López Interviewers: José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez Location: Grand Valley State University Special Collections Date: 7/11/2012 Biography and Description Antonio López grew up in the Logan Square Neighborhood of Chicago and heard about the Young Lords early in life, as his parents are activists. Mr. López is also active in various projects and community organizations. He is of Mexican descent and Logan Square is currently a prime real estate target for developers, who continue to prey on Latinos and the poor, and are supported by city hall and their housing Master Plan. In fact it is not hard to locate many of these developers who readily finance machine loyalists and who have sat and still sit on the many city boards. Mr. López ‘s parents were connected to the land grant struggles in New Mexico that were being led by Reis López Tijerina. Mr. Tijerina was born on September 21, 1926 near Falls City, Texas. He is preacher who founded the Alianza Federal de Pueblos Libres (Federal Alliance of Land Grants) in New Mexico. He is widely credited as launching the early Chicano Civil Rights Movement, although Mr. Tijerina prefers the term “Indo Hispano Movement” because the word “Chicano” can also divide Mexicans. At the time of this oral history, Mr. López was completing his doctoral studies in the Department of History at the University of Texas, El Paso. His doctoral dissertation focuses on the Rainbow Coalition, which originally began with Chairman Fred Hampton and included the Young Patriots and Young Lords. Mr. López has voluntarily assisted the Young Lords on various projects beyond his dissertation. �Transcript JOSE JIMENEZ: Antonio, if you can tell me your name and date of birth. ANTONIO LOPEZ: So, my name is Antonio Reyes Lopez. I was born on July 21, 1980. I was actually born in Gary, Indiana and then raised in Chicago, Illinois. JJ: In 1980? AL: Yeah, I was born in 1980. My folks were steelworkers. Actually, my family is from New Mexico. JJ: They were steelworkers there? AL: Well, they weren’t steelworkers in New Mexico. My dad was actually a migrant worker, a student. My mom was a farm worker too. They came from rural families in New Mexico. And then, like a lot of people, looked for work in the steel mills at that time and migrated from New Mexico to Gary in the late ’70s and then worked in the steel mills together. JJ: Did a lot of people migrated at that time to the steel mills? AL: Yeah, there was a lot of people that -- well, I don’t know if too many people from New Mexico, but I think in general for years and years and decades, [00:01:00] the steel mills and the jobs here in Chicago have attracted a lot of people. But also the politics of steelworkers at that time was really hot. So my folks are actually movement people, very much activists. And so, to be there in the steel mills was kind of a place to be. So, they went and worked there, of course, until that industry kind of collapsed in the mid ’80s and that’s when my family moved to Chicago. 1 �JJ: Okay, but did they go there to organize, or did they just go there to work? AL: I think they went there to organize. JJ: But they were involved in -- AL: Yeah, they were involved in some of the politics of that era. So, as you know, a lot of the politics was like -- a lot of people had done the community work. But that got kind of repressed. So, there was a lot of movement towards going back to the point of production and doing work, really the working class organizing at the point of production. [00:02:00] So, during the late ’70s, really steelworkers were very much at the forefront of a lot of that kind of politics, a lot of that militant revolutionary politics particularly across race, coming together in the class struggles. JJ: So, were there union organizers? Were they union? AL: Yeah, they became part of the union, but I think they were more -- JJ: What union? AL: I think they were with the -- what is it, the -- oh man, I’m going to forget right now. JJ: Some kind of steel. AL: U.S. Steel. It was the U.S. Steelworkers. Yeah, they were working at U.S. Steel and they were involved with the union. And also, Gary’s a Black community, so they were really involved in kind of doing that work. So, part of it was also implicated in the history of my family being -- my dad particularly being pretty much a revolutionary in New Mexico and then having to get out of New Mexico because shit got crazy. 2 �JJ: Let’s talk a little bit about New Mexico. So, who’s the revolutionary there? Was that connected to [00:03:00] Reies López? AL: Yeah. I mean, Reies was very active a little bit earlier than my dad. My dad’s a little younger than Reies. But definitely involved with the Chicano movement. My dad was very much at the forefront. He actually founded Chicano Studies at the University of New Mexico in the ’60s. JJ: What was your dad’s name? AL: My dad’s name is [Ezequiel Lopez, Ezequiel Antonio Lopez?]. My father was from -- JJ: And your mom’s name? AL: My mom’s name is [Esther Lopez?]. My father comes from the villages, though, that Reies was organizing in the ’50s. So, my dad is from a village called Sena, New Mexico, and Sena, New Mexico is a rural mountain community. I mean, these are really poor people who lost the land back really when the U.S. came in and conquered New Mexico. So, there’s a history of colonialism, history of conquest that goes way back with my family. JJ: So, was that the land grants? Was that (overlapping dialogue; inaudible)? AL: Yes, that’s all of that struggle [00:04:00] that Reies then went into and entered into that struggle in the ’50s basically. That’s where my dad’s side of the family is from. JJ: I’m just kind of going back a little bit. (break in recording) 3 �AL: -- against not only the capitalists and the owning class here in Chicago, but it was also struggling against over political organizations at the community level who were saying we should follow a race program, we should follow a racial program. So, it’s kind of in the middle of that. It’s struggling against -- that’s the way I see it. I see it as saying, look, that’s important. It’s important that we have pride. It’s important that we love our people. But we’ve got to get to the class struggle, and that’s why the community service programs were so important because they were educating people on how important the politics was, that you have a state that doesn’t meet the needs, that actually thrives on poverty, thrives on despair in the city of Chicago. JJ: So, you said we’ve got to get to the class struggle. [00:05:00] Can you explain? AL: Yeah. One of the concepts I try to introduce in my project is called a flexible hybridity is what I call it. That’s like an academic term. See, I don’t think the Black Panthers and the Young Lords -- you can correct me if I’m wrong. But it wasn’t about saying, “We’re going to form this alliance. And all the sudden now we’re going to dissolve being Puerto Rican or dissolve being Black or dissolve being Southern white.” So, it wasn’t like this coalition where you come and now you’re this artificial new unit. It was saying, “No,” it was saying “We still love being Puerto Rican, Mexicano, Black. We’re Brown and proud. We’re Black and proud. We’re Southern white and proud. White power, Black power, Red power. Power to everybody.” Right? But it was also saying at a certain point we’ve got to come together as a working class in a class struggle. So, that flexibility to be able to say we can come together and defend Puerto Rican independence and 4 �defend the Chicano movement and Aztlán, defend Black power, defend [00:06:00] Black people but yet come together in a class struggle. That flexibility, I think, is very important. It makes the original Rainbow Coalition different. A lot of people think you form a coalition, it’s just like a new thing and all the sudden you’re a new -- it wasn’t about being a new organization. That’s what I think people don’t understand. That’s why I try to highlight that there wasn’t a headquarters, there wasn’t a Rainbow Coalition headquarters. It was basically like you’ve told me you handle your business and your neighborhood and your people. We’re handling ours, you’re handling yours, and we come together on the class politics, on the revolutionary politics. And I think that’s a really important lesson that people have not really grasped yet. JJ: So, you’re trying to get into class politics [being?] common interest. AL: Yeah. And you build in your community the class struggle in your community. You know what I mean? You engage the -- because we’ve got a -- JJ: Is that what you’re (inaudible)? AL: Yeah. What I’m saying is I think that’s just a different vision of solidarity than what people have right now. When they think of solidarity, it’s like, “Oh, let me go to Mexico and go do work over there.” No, do work in your neighborhood. [00:07:00] Do work in your community. You know what I mean? Build a class consciousness in your space, wherever you’re at. JJ: What is class consciousness? What does it mean to you? What does it mean to you? 5 �AL: Yeah. So, what I talk a lot about a lot -- and this is really what the project or the main research question is -- how do people develop a political consciousness of class struggle? Where does it come from? Where do you develop that? Do you develop it from leaders telling you that this is what you’ve got to think? Do you develop it from reading Mao or reading Frantz Fanon? What I write about -- what I try to argue is that actually a class consciousness or a political consciousness comes from what you experience and what you live and what you understand in the city of Chicago, right? So, a class consciousness particularly is an understanding that there is a political struggle between the working class and the owning class. There is an antagonistic -- that struggle cannot be reconciled. You can’t have [00:08:00] an amicable relationship between business owners and workers. And it’s because one side is trying to exploit, rob, make as much money off they can from people from exploiting their production, and the other side are the workers who are being exploited. And so, any time you have an exploiter and exploited contradiction, you can’t reconcile that contradiction. So, how do you develop a consciousness of that? Now, that’s a class struggle. But we know that people aren’t just workers and owners. They’re Puerto Ricans. They’re Mexicanos. They’re Black folks. They’re Southern whites. They’re whoever they are, people from the Middle East, wherever they come from. So, how do you come from that position of saying, “I’m a Chicano,” and having a real hardcore identity about that -- say, “I love my people” -- to then say, “But you know what? There’s an important class struggle at play that affects everybody.” Not only does it affect everybody in Chicago, it’s everybody in the world. It’s a global 6 �struggle because imperialism went around the world. They went global. [00:09:00] They went global, right? The capitalists had to go global in order to save capitalism some time ago. So, when you embrace that class struggle aspect, you connect with everybody around the world. You connect globally because that struggle is in play everywhere. So, how do you develop that consciousness? How do you develop the consciousness for class struggle? JJ: So, are you saying that you’re connecting to struggles that are involved all over the world? AL: Yeah, you can understand it. Once you embrace -- and like I said, it doesn’t mean you have to relinquish who you are and what you -- your love and your pride for your people or where you’re from. But when you embrace a class consciousness, you’re able to understand what the politics is in other places of the world because there’s business owners and workers everywhere. And so, you can understand what -- it gives you the key into understanding the dynamics of oppression in other places in the world. And therefore, you can connect as oppressed peoples. [00:10:00] JJ: So, as oppressed peoples -- so, you’re saying like in Mexico there’s the struggle between the rich and the poor and in Puerto Rico there’s the same struggle. AL: Yeah, there’s a struggle between the rich and the poor. JJ: And so, you’re saying that these people who are poor are connecting with the poor in each country. AL: Yeah, so what happens is that -- JJ: But they also have their own countries. 7 �AL: So, there’s an issue where you can connect. But what I’m more interested in and what I think the original Rainbow Coalition is important is because if you only say, “Man, I’m Mexican, so I only think about Mexicans,” that race, that idea, that border -- it blocks you from recognizing that you have something in common and a shared experience with a Puerto Rican. We have all these divisions between Mexicans and Puerto Ricans in Chicago, which is a false antagonistic relationship. JJ: What was this called? At that time, we had the Rainbow of Coalition. Do you remember (inaudible)? [00:11:00] AL: Yeah. I think one of the things that I try to -- JJ: I mean, some of it’s just nationalistic. AL: Yeah, it was called pork chop nationalism. It was called cultural nationalism. That’s what you’re looking at. If you’re really nationalistic, you’re not able to get to the internationalism. So, I think the original Rainbow Coalition -- JJ: (inaudible) a term that came out of that when (inaudible). AL: And that’s why I think if you look at -- you can look at a lot of people. JJ: The difference between progressive nationalism and cultural nationalism. AL: Exactly, cultural nationalism versus revolutionary nationalism. It’s an important distinction to make. But I think the thing is -- we have a lot of (inaudible) particularly young people my age -- JJ: It was being made by the Rainbow Coalition. AL: That’s right. JJ: It’s part of the concept that (inaudible). 8 �AL: That was one of the main -- why it’s so politically significant because it was introducing -- and that’s what I’m saying [how flexible?]. You could have the revolutionary nationalism and the [00:12:00] internationalism, the class struggle aspects of it. JJ: You were saying it was (inaudible) are. AL: Yeah, exactly. It’s all right. But see, a lot of people think nowadays think, “All I got to do is be proud and represent my people and carry a big flag and be down for my people.” And it’s not about that because there are some of your people who are capitalists, who are exploiting you, who are taking advantage of you, and who are creating more oppression. And that’s who we should be in struggle with too. JJ: And divisions, who are creating more divisions for the benefit of capitalism. AL: That’s right. That’s right. That’s right. So, we can look at lot of people, but Fred Hampton always kind of was so good at expressing it. He says you can’t fight fire with fire. You’ve got to fight fire with water. And if you think about racism, you might feel a lot of racial oppression. But you can’t fight racial oppression by saying, “I’m only down for my race.” There aren’t even no races anyway. But you might say, “I’m only down for my people.” You’re fighting fire with fire. What you have to do is fight -- as he said, you have to fight racism with solidarity. You have to fight racism with the class struggle. [00:13:00] You fight capitalism with socialism. And that was the essence really with the Rainbow Coalition. But it was a solidarity that wasn’t about making this new artificial organization or a new people. It was about saying, “Look, do real work, community service work in your 9 �communities. And if you do that and we understand you’re not racist, we understand you’re doing important work and we come together, then we can meet and then we can build.” JJ: So, it wasn’t an organization. What do you think it was? AL: Oh no, I think it was an alliance, a coalition. I think it does -- it meets all the standards of a coalition. It’s like one Panther said, we have each other’s back. And I think that’s what it was. You had each other’s back. The Young Lords supported people. They worked together. They helped each other. They embraced the 10 point platform of the Black Panther Party. The did the community service program. The Young Lords were -- y’all came from the neighborhoods. Who knew Lincoln Park better than the Young Lords? Nobody. [00:14:00] The Black Panthers didn’t know Lincoln Park, but you guys knew. So, I think that was part of the genius of the Panther Party too was to not go in and try to say, “We know your neighborhood more than you know it.” It was to say, “No, you know, organize your neighborhood, man. Let’s get it together. Let me just give you a little bit of this Panther politics.” The way I write about it in my dissertation is that the Young Lords and the Young Patriots were already prepared to embrace that politics. They didn’t need the Panther Party to come in and necessarily teach them too much or manipulate them or -- if you grew up in Lincoln Park, you saw police brutality, you saw poverty, you saw all these kinds of things going on. You come from Puerto Rico, you know what’s going on in Puerto Rico. So, when the Panthers come and say it’s a class struggle, people -the Young Lords say, “Oh, yeah. We see that. I see what you’re saying. Let’s do 10 �this.” That’s what it was. You didn’t need to be -- and I think that’s where the struggle with other academics is who try to kind of represent things in a different light. [00:15:00] JJ: Because it wasn’t clear (inaudible) a lot of members what you’re discussing right now. It was clear among the leadership, but it wasn’t really clear -- you know, we were evolving at that time so to speak. AL: So, I think it’s important to think of the Rainbow Coalition. We can think about it as an alliance, as an coalition. But I think it’s important to think about it as a political tactic. That’s an important thing to think about, to think about it as saying, “We’re going to form this because we have an enemy who thrives off of these racial divisions, who thrives off of our people wanting to be race leaders or have this cultural nationalism.” So, the original Rainbow Coalition was a political tactic to undermine that, to strike against that and to really teach the people that it’s a class struggle. JJ: What it wasn’t for sure was an organization. It was not an organization. [00:16:00] Because there’s confusion today among people. They think it was an organization. It was just like you said. People were already working in their (overlapping dialogue; inaudible). And they came together and it was more of an alliance, or a tactic. AL: And I think when you talk about -- this was really something that developed among the political leadership of each organization is important, because you guys, the rank and file members were busy in the breakfast for children program. They were busy selling newspapers. They were busy fighting with landlords or 11 �fighting with business owners or whatever it is that they’re doing. A lot of times, when you’re doing that work, you don’t have a lot of time -JJ: And just discussing -- there’s a lot of discussion (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) renaissance. AL: Yeah, going to political education meetings. That’s a lot of time you’re putting in. So, a lot of people that -- maybe they didn’t even have a chance to really come together on that level. But they knew that the Young Lords had each other’s back and they knew that -- JJ: It was understood. AL: Yeah, it was understood, it was understood. JJ: It wasn’t clearly articulated, but it was understood. AL: So, and this is where I think we’ve got to deal with these liberal concepts of a coalition and solidarity, because [00:17:00] there’s this liberal notion of, “Oh, people got together and they were like” -- no, it wasn’t like that. People had hard work to do and every day they had to get up early as hell and put in work. It wasn’t -- so, we had to kind of work against that liberal notion of coalitions and solidarity work. JJ: You just mentioned something that was interesting. What about -- because it was also work. The coalition was work. It was about raising people’s consciousness, right? And so, as a lot of people thought that, okay, I’m a Marxist-Leninist, why isn’t everybody in a Marxist-Leninist? What the Rainbow Coalition was saying was everybody is not that. So, everybody doesn’t understand the class consciousness, so we have work to do. 12 �AL: Yeah, I think so. JJ: I mean, is that what you found out? AL: Oh yeah, I think that’s a really important point because -- I would put it like this. [00:18:00] One of the things that -- the way that I write about it is that I think you can think about the Rainbow Coalition alongside thinking about how important the breakfast for children programs were or the health centers or the legal service programs were. It was one of the most effective political tactics. See, the community service programs -- in my mind, it was a tactic to be able to educate people. In other words, if we’re feeding you, there’s somebody who’s not feeding you. If we’re caring for your health and your welfare and your education, it’s because this country, this society, this state is not caring for your health. So, it was a way to educate people. It was a tactic that was allowed -- that provided people the way to interact with the community but also to educate them about what -- who really cares for you. And so, in that -- and so, people -- the Panthers and the Young Lords talk about people learn through what? They learn through observation and participation. So, through the community service programs, people could observe and participate, and that’s how you learn politics. So, there was very much [00:19:00] an educational aspect to the community service program. JJ: And you’re by saying by interacting (inaudible) connecting to the community. AL: Right. Which is why the politicians, the police always were trying to close those institutions down. Because it was a point of interaction. It was a point of education. And also, it was a point -- and this is what I write about in my 13 �dissertation. Those were the most important tactics that brought legitimacy to the Young Lords, the Black Panthers, the Young Patriots, and also the original Rainbow Coalition. When you’re feeding people and caring for the elderly and doing these things, then the people see. “Man, okay, they’re not gangsters and only gang bangers. These are people from our neighborhood who love us, care for us, and are putting our lives on the line for us.” And it teaches them. They see it. They observe it. And then, they’re with it. So, the legitimacy aspect was really important. That’s why all the stuff with the police gets too hard, right, because the police are the police. But once you’re getting that real legitimacy in the communities and building with people in the communities, that gets [00:20:00] dangerous. Because, see, [they always deal with you?] when they’re dealing with you. You’re going to go fight the police, they’ll deal with you all day. But once you get that legitimacy with the community, that’s dangerous. JJ: Who were -- can you give me some of the names of the people that you interviewed for your dissertation? AL: Sure, sure, sure. Yeah, I think this one of the things where I hope the project goes and I can do more interviews with people. I was able to talk with a few of the Panthers, people like Lynn French. I was also able to talk with one of the women who was in the apartment when Chairman Fred Hampton was killed. JJ: So, Lynn French was -- what was her -- AL: Lynn French was part of the -- I think she -- although this wasn’t like clearly defined. But she was, I think, the labor minister at one point. Labor minister, I believe. But that wasn’t -- maybe different. 14 �JJ: Everybody did a whole lot of different things. AL: Yeah, there was a lot of different titles. But she was a very important woman, female Panther. The Black Panthers of Chicago [00:21:00] had a lot of really great women leaders and workers. JJ: And you mentioned some others. AL: At that time, her name was Brenda Harris. She was more of a rank and file member. But she was in the apartment when Fred Hampton was killed, and she was also shot during that incident. So, I was able to -- she was shot by the Chicago police during that incident. I was able to interview her. JJ: It was (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) talk with her. AL: It was amazing to talk with her. It’s amazing to talk to all of these activists. She was really amazing because I think she -- I really felt the spirit of her, of how that consciousness that the Panthers had and how it still survives and it still exists. So, she talked a lot about -- I talked to her about her -- she grew up in Lawndale and went to schools there. So, she talked about how bad the schools were and how they were really racist and how -- JJ: Lawndale is the West Side? AL: Yeah, the West Side. JJ: Where the -- AL: Yeah, she grew up there. JJ: She came from (inaudible). 15 �AL: Yeah, she grew up in that community. [00:22:00] One of the best parts of her interview too -- she used to sell newspapers and she used to talk about how the people -- JJ: She’s still alive? AL: Yeah, she’s still alive. And she talked about how when she was selling newspapers that people recognized her. They liked her. They would feed her. So, she talked a lot about that legitimacy again that was built there and how even at one point there was a raid. The police raided the Panther office. I think it was in June actually of 1969. They had raided it three times, but one of them, they set a fire up in the headquarters. And many of the people there in the community in the West Side had learned to love the Panther Party. They actually ran up there and put the fire out themselves. There was this guy that had a fancy leather jacket and he was even beating the fire with his leather jacket. You don’t do that if you don’t have any love and care for that organization. You know what I mean? So, she really was able to break it down on how there was really this [00:23:00] deep connections that were beginning to be build. I think that’s important. I think we can’t romanticize it. But there were these really profound ties that were beginning to be built in the communities there because they came from there. They came from the communities, and then they did all this service in the communities just like the Young Lords and I think just like the Young Patriots too. JJ: So, who was (inaudible). 16 �AL: I was able to talk to Willie Calvin. He was on the defense committee and stuff like that. JJ: (inaudible) in your dissertation. AL: I draw a lot on his. One of the things I draw on his work was the interview with him was that -- he came out of the Army and then he was -- he got basically organized in Crane High School there on the West Side also. And so, a lot of it was them -- how they encountered the Panthers and they got basically brought into the organization. And so, I more utilized his work to talk about how the Panthers drew from not only -- it was students [00:24:00] and then it was also people from street organizations but also it was ex-military or veterans that kind of came back from the military and then became organized into the Panther Party. There was kind of three -- a lot of people think it was just kind of ex-gang members that became Panthers. And it really wasn’t that. Actually, the Young Lords may have more of a history of that, of actually evolving from a street organization into a political party. The Black Panther Party was not really that. It was a lot of students. Fred Hampton wasn’t a gang member. A lot of other people weren’t. They were civil rights activists and many of them were students. Some of them came from street organizations and some of them came from the military. So, I use him as kind of an example to demonstrate there was people coming from different directions. JJ: Ok what about Young Lords? AL: I was able to talk with [Omar Lopez?]. I was able to talk with you. JJ: What (inaudible)? 17 �AL: Omar was really good because Omar -- he’s a Mexicano and his brother was also pretty much [00:25:00] a very important activist that had been political in LADO and also was even political in Mexico. And so, there was that kind of history of people understanding oppression in Mexico or Puerto Rico or coming to Chicago and already having that kind of background. And then, he’s involved in LADO. I think at some point, he makes a transition into the Young Lords. So, he was able to really break that down. JJ: He was (inaudible) student (inaudible). AL: Yeah, then a circle that I think is a -- JJ: The YMCA or something like that. AL: Yeah. So, he was -- but we talked a lot too about what it meant to be -- because I think he actually grew up in Humboldt Park actually, which was at that time still a predominantly white neighborhood. So, when you talk about -- we were talking a lot about Latino history in terms of what it meant to be -- JJ: Well, he came in 1966 around that time. At that time, it was Puerto Rican neighborhood(inaudible) [00:26:00] because it was a Mexican family in a primarily Puerto Rican area at that time. And they got involved with the Puerto Rican community. AL: One of the things that was interesting about the history was his brother was actually (audio cuts out) to react to the riots and actually try to get people out of jail by selling these records of -- there’s this really famous ballad of the -- that was talking about the history of the Puerto Rican riots. But again, the way that 18 �the cultural nationalism worked that he got involved -- I think it was the Spanish Action Committee or something like that. JJ: Spanish Action Coalition. AL: But they were just -- because they were more nationalistic, they didn’t really want to work with -- kind of across with Mexicans. So, I think because of that, they kind of began LADO, right? So, again, it’s one of these precursors -- JJ: And they became criticized even though they were in a leadership role in (inaudible). AL: Right. So, he ended up having -- because you have, again, these divisions -[00:27:00] JJ: Not by the Young Lords because we definitely respected his leadership. AL: Of course. But the thing about LADO too -- JJ: They played a major role in the Young Lords. AL: The thing about LADO too that’s important is they were very much involved with welfare activism. And they were doing a lot of work with women who were dealing with all these humiliations and problems with the welfare offices that were developing with the war on poverty programs at that time period. And so, I think through that it was always this defense, this community defense. So, LADO was involved with that. I think again, even in the West Side, there’s the West Side organization and even in uptown, which is the Young Patriots, where they come out of -- which was [JOIN?] which was doing this welfare activism. And they were also beginning to do a lot of antiracist work. So, I think when I look at it, there’s these earlier organizations that are beginning to grapple with the solidarity 19 �politics. You can go ahead and come through. No, that’s no problem. That are beginning to grapple with those issues of how do you develop a [00:28:00] movement, a coalition across cultural nationalism or dealing with those issues. But I don’t think it came together as forcefully as it did with the original Rainbow Coalition. But they were beginning to do that. They were doing the community defense work. They were interested in community control. They were doing welfare politics. JJ: We were working together. AL: Yeah, people were working together. It’s not that one starts and the other one (overlapping dialogue; inaudible). JJ: We had a coalition with them with LADO and then we had the coalition with the Panthers. AL: Yeah, I see. JJ: So, we had -- they were involved with everything we did, and we were involved with everything (inaudible). AL: I think that’s a good way to put it because it’s not like they stopped. I mean, at one point join -- JJ: Because the Young Lords had coalitions within the Puerto Rican community and the Mexican community. And the Black Panther Party had coalitions in the African American community. And the Young Patriots had coalitions in uptown and other white organizations. AL: That’s an incredible way to think about it. 20 �JJ: So, when we had the Rainbow Coalition, that put all these organizations together. [00:29:00] AL: That’s a great way to think about it. I mean, when you think about that moment -I mean, this is why at that time period people were -- I think people figure out that you have to build coalitions because you’re dealing with an enemy who doesn’t want you to deal with -- you’re dealing with an enemy as a coalition, a real strong coalition who doesn’t want you to have a similar very strong coalition. See what I mean? So, I think at that point, it’s really important to know your enemy, as they would say. JJ: It’s powerful. It was city wide. And that’s why the (inaudible) came out now. Now, were you able to look at, in your dissertation, at some of the oppression? AL: Yeah, oh yeah. I mean, it’s really -- JJ: Because (inaudible) right? AL: It’s a painful history to look at because I mean -- JJ: Did you discover anything? AL: Yeah, I think probably one of the most -- and maybe people will argue against this. [00:30:00] But I think that when you look at repression, it’s not just that they’re violent towards people. It’s also the way that they use laws and the ways that they introduce -- they criminalize. To criminalize people is also a very important thing. So, if you look at -- the way that my dissertation is -- the way I look at it is like the original Rainbow Coalition develops basically in early 1969, sometime in January or February is as close as I’ve been able to kind of identify when it comes together formally. I mean, people are working -- 21 �JJ: It was January. AL: People are kind of working together previously. JJ: The day after the police -- well, we got connected to Fred. AL: So, people know each other and they’re working together. But I think a more formal thing comes together in January or February. And then, there’s a lot of really important work particularly around the universities and the campuses, organizing work. But if you realty look at -- what I think is if you look at when [Manuel Ramos?] is killed, that’s really an important moment because I think -my interview with you was that there were still some Young Lords who were kind of [00:31:00] maybe not all in yet at that point as far as becoming a political organization. But when Manuel Ramos gets killed by a police officer in May, it really kind of drives home the point that there’s this -- Fred Hampton says we live in a sick society. And so, I think that really galvanizes a lot of people at that point. And there’s really this amazing series of events after Manuel Ramos is killed where the Black Panthers and the Young Patriots and a lot of other people, SDS and other people really kind of come together at that point. Now, in terms of repression, to me, I don’t think it’s a coincidence that after these series of events and protests and marches and agitating -- you guys go to the police station. You go to Bridgeport actually. JJ: (inaudible) AL: Yeah, you went to mayor -- I don’t think it’s a coincidence that after you go to Mayor Daley’s neighborhood -- [00:32:00] JJ: We were like a (inaudible) we didn’t even know it was Mayor Daley’s house. 22 �AL: Yeah, so I don’t think it’s a coincidence that after you went to Mayor Daley’s hood that just days later he declares a war on gangs. It’s just days later that Mayor Daley declares a war on gangs after all of this agitation. JJ: I didn’t know it was a few days after that. AL: Yeah, it was just days later. It’s literally a couple days -- JJ: There was a major (overlapping dialogue; inaudible). AL: And that’s what I call governmentality in my thing is when you have a conscious. JJ: The (inaudible) was right after the Manuel Ramos (inaudible). AL: Right after all the Manuel Ramos agitation and rage and anger about him being killed. There’s all this activism and direct action. And to me, I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Mayor Daley declares a war on gangs right after that. Now, people say it was because all these gangs are getting together, and the Blackstone Rangers thing. I don’t think so. I argue against that. [00:33:00] I think it was because there was -- JJ: No, we were already there. AL: Yeah, they were already doing all this stuff. And they didn’t have a revolutionary political consciousness. But I think when all this this comes together with the Panthers, I think that really ties together the Panthers, the Lords, and the Patriots that much more solid with Manuel Ramos. JJ: All (inaudible) Blackstone Rangers, Jesse Jackson was working with the Blackstone Rangers at that time. They developed some red berets. AL: That’s right. 23 �JJ: And so, they were (inaudible) so the city was worried about them too. But you’re right. We had just gone to Mayor Daley’s house to protest in front of his house. AL: That’s my argument. I mean, I’m not saying it’s mine because I’m arguing against other academics who might say it. But I think it’s important. I think that Manuel Ramos -- so, after they declared the war on gangs, you really see a more systemic series of repressions. It kind of makes it okay for the police to run wild on all these organizations. You really see an escalation of surveillance. You see people getting killed. And what I write about -- I have a chapter [00:34:00] that’s called “The Rainbow Summer of 1969” which is really where you have all this heavy -- when you guys take over the church which is not too long after Manuel Ramos is killed -- this heavy politics going on but also this heavy repression. And that’s that relationship. JJ: The McCormick Seminary was taken over right after Manuel Ramos (inaudible). AL: Exactly, right after that. So, I basically -- JJ: We were on the news that whole week. AL: So, I think the death of Manual Ramos kicks off the Rainbow summer of 1969. But you had people getting killed. You had people getting arrested. Fred Hampton goes to jail in early June. It’s just a lot of systemic repression. But I think it’s connected to the war on gangs, which to me was a conscious effort to contain a lot of this coalition building that was taking place. JJ: Do you think it was connected at that time was the war on gangs (overlapping dialogue; inaudible). 24 �AL: Yes, I think it’s a conscious -- that’s why I use the word governmentality to deal with the ways that local agents of government think consciously about power and how you maintain it. [00:35:00] JJ: So, what about Reverend Bruce Johnson was killed? What did you (inaudible)? AL: Yeah, I think that’s part of it. I think what you’re dealing with is that Reverend Bruce Johnson was an important institutional leader in Lincoln Park who had embraced the Young Lords. So, in other words, you have to eliminate that force because Reverend Bruce Johnson provided a lot of legitimacy for the Young Lords because a pastor, someone who’s running a church embraces this organization -- JJ: He’s the United Methodist -- AL: Yeah, he’s the United Methodist minister. JJ: And he was a pastor of the church that was taken over. The congregation opposed us, but he supported us. AL: That’s right. He’s a supporter. He’s an institutional leader. He’s got a lot of legitimacy in the community. And if he’s supporting this organization, then they’re connected, then the Young Lords is legitimate. But if you get rid of that, then it’s like you have the Young Lords is kind of disconnected in a certain way. It’s kind of [00:36:00] cutting a real main lifeline, again, of that interaction between the community, the legitimacy that’s required. JJ: And he was found stabbed 17 times and his wife 19. AL: And we know how it is. You’re dealing with an enemy that will hire some sadistic -- 25 �JJ: So, they tried to even make it look like he was stabbed with a knife, like “Oh a Latino..” That’s what they were trying to say at that time. Like stereotyping. (overlapping dialogue; inaudible). AL: Like a Latino. That’s an interesting point to make. That’s really important. If you think about that -- that shows you how sadistic, how maniacal these people that we’re dealing with, that they would even do that to make it look like that. And that’s who you’re dealing with. And that’s what I try to say. Let’s not underestimate or not think about who we’re dealing with. We’re dealing with some of the most brutal people that have lived on the face of humanity. JJ: So we don’t have any proof, but it could’ve been part of the [oppression?], is that what you’re saying? I don’t want to put words (overlapping dialogue; inaudible). [00:37:00] AL: The way I look at it is that I think the -- one of the aspects of those in power is that it unleashed people to do a lot of crazy shit. You know what I mean? So, nothing is out of bounds. So, even this heinous death of Bruce Johnson -- I mean, they could have hired -- who knows who they were hiring. They could just say, “Hey man, go off this dude.” You’re dealing with some sadistic people. So, I don’t think -- JJ: And in fact, there were a lot of letters being written to the bishops to kick him out of their church. AL: Right. They might have wanted to do it, to get rid of him one way or another. But if he stood in there and said, “No, I’m going to defend this community, I’m going to defend this organization,” then they get violent. That’s the way -- that’s what 26 �you’re dealing with. So, to me, I think it’s deeply connected. I think it’s -- look, we don’t need that. We know. We don’t need the direct records. You know what I mean? Because we know. That’s what we call in academia epistemology. We don’t need an empirical [00:38:00] proof. We don’t need a smoking gun to know that that’s what went down. We know that’s what went down because that’s the importance of politics. That’s what I try to write about in my dissertation. If you don’t understand the politics and then make sense of why this Reverend Bruce Johnson is going to endure that kind of death then it’s going to make sense why Manuel Ramos was shot by an on duty police officer. We don’t need to go through a legal process and do all this because we know the politics of it, the class struggle, the political struggle. That’s what you need to know. That’s what I think is important. JJ: So, what other -- is important that -- you mentioned the class (inaudible) what were some other points there? AL: Yeah, I think the major thing to realize is that in December [00:40:00] there’s all this tremendous repression. The best example -- or the worst example is the assassination of Chairman Fred Hampton, who was one of the most powerful -- a lot of people forget that he was one of the most powerful advocates and one of the most eloquent advocates of the Rainbow Coalition, but also somebody who was really good at blasting these cultural porkchop nationalists. He was one of the best at -- if you read his speeches, you’ll crack up laughing because he’s just that great. And so, he had a speech that was actually called “It’s a Class 27 �Struggle Goddammit.” That was the title of his speech. This was Fred Hampton. So, again, he’s another person that, unfortunately, was -JJ: We used to call him Chairman. AL: Chairman Fred Hampton, for sure. Chairman Fred Hampton was assassinated. [Mark Clark?] was killed and a lot of other people were shot during that raid on the apartment. But Chairman Fred Hampton -- after his death, one of the things that I tried to write about [00:40:00] that I conclude with is that you really see the reintroduction of these racial divisions in Chicago because a lot of people -- when Chairman Fred Hampton was killed -- were of course angry and enraged that this young, incredible leader would be shot up like that at four in the morning. But a lot of people -- because again, there’s not necessarily that revolutionary political consciousness that circulates in the communities -- they might have thought he was killed because he was Black or he was killed because he was a Black leader. But Chairman Fred Hampton was killed because he was a revolutionary leader. He was an internationalist. JJ: We didn’t call him Chairman in (inaudible) was more relaxed. AL: Sure, I understand. JJ: But just out of respect, we knew he was the chairman of the (inaudible). AL: He was a revolutionary internationalist leader. JJ: (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) He related very well to the room. When he was in the room, you wouldn’t even know that he was the leader of the (inaudible) you just [00:41:00] -- he wasn’t into titles. 28 �AL: So, if you see what happens -- what I write about in my conclusion is that already -- he’s killed in December. Already in January and February, there’s all these events to commemorate him and there’s all these things. But you already see people going back to that cultural nationalism, going back to that porkchop nationalism right away. JJ: And in fact, that existed in that time of the Panthers and some of the Young Lords and especially in the Young Patriots too. AL: But that becomes really intense. JJ: So, that was part of our work. AL: That was the work. That was the tactic to engage that. But you already get that intensity. The one thing that I think we should think about more is that I think they’re really conscious and understanding that whenever you inflict a lot of pain on people like when they killed Fred Hampton, that oftentimes the first tendency is to react through cultural nationalism and to react through that kind of rage because you can say, “That’s [00:42:00] one of my people and they killed him because he’s Latino or Puerto Rican or Black.” And I think they know that. [aside] Go ahead man, actually I think someone might be in there, but- So, I think they understand that very well, and I think that’s -- and they even [thrived on this?]. One of the things that I try to show, the evidence I try to show is that – JJ: [aside] There’s nobody in there. AL: [aside] Oh sorry about that man. Sorry about that. JJ: That’s alright 29 �AL: So, one of the things that I try to write about is after -- if you look at like what the police are doing -- and again, this is why I study the police, the people that we’re up against. What they’re doing is they’re actually antagonizing Black people in Chicago. They’re tearing down posters of Fred Hampton. They’re shooting up posters of Fred Hampton. They’re staging mock raids of -JJ: Wait, this is -- AL: After Fred Hampton’s killed. They want people to react that way. They want people to react through cultural nationalism and racial consciousness. Instead of class consciousness, they want [00:43:00] racial consciousness. So, they’re antagonizing people to get them even more angry and more thinking that what it was about was because he was a Black leader when in fact, he was a Black leader but he was also a revolutionary internationalist leader. So, it’s a way that you kind of silence that history. And now, all of the sudden, now you get Chairman Fred Hampton is really -- he’s only thought about as like a Black Panther or Black Panther leader or Black leader but in fact, he has the leader of everybody. He was the leader of a lot of people, not just Black folks. So, I think it’s important to see. So, the way that I think about it is you have the original Rainbow Coalition undermines and disrupts what’s going on in Chicago for a brief moment, for a few months, for a year maybe. But then, you have the repression and then it gets kind of recuperated, the racial consciousness. The way power gets recuperated -- and it’s the same thing -- if you look historically -if you look at the Haymarket riots or if you look at when Black people [00:44:00] were resisting militantly during the 1919 race riots, when you look at different 30 �things, things get disrupted and then the class struggle -- the way it operates is they fix it. They get -- we’re dealing with a smart enemy who learns. They observe and participate too, so they learn and they develop new and sophisticated ways to keep their power and make money. That’s what happens after the -- they learned. They saw the original Rainbow Coalition, what it was. The repressed it. If you can’t fix it nonviolently, they’ll fix it violently. And then, they kind of come afterwards and then they develop a new way because they not only want to fix it, they want to fix it for the future. They want to make sure that no other coalition, no other revolutionary work is going to happen in the future. So, they do all kinds of shit to kind of get people stuck in what I call paralysis to keep them kind of politically paralyzed. JJ: That’s very important, what you just said about what they want to do. [00:45:00] Their intentions -- and it’s very important how Fred -- how he opposed their intention and why the Rainbow Coalition was important. You just said that Fred was a leader, not only of Black people, but of all people of (inaudible) and that’s what he was able to do, I mean, with his coalition was to unite more people that were not necessarily from the African American community, like Latinos, like poor whites and that. He was able to do that. And the enemy was doing the opposite. Like you said, they didn’t want this coalition to ever exist again. And they came with the cultural nationalism. So, this is very important what you just said. Fred was a leader of all people. AL: One of the conclusions -- I’m hoping to maybe write about this more in the future, look into it more. [00:46:00] So, it’s not really set in stone. But one of the things 31 �that we’ll come to is I think that we’re dealing with an enemy with an owning class. I think that they know that the best way to undermine class struggle is to attack Black folks or to attack Latinos or any other kind of racialized people, but particularly I think Black people because I think that they know -- like I said, they understand how people react and they know that in those reactions builds a lot of divisions or maintains a lot of divisions. And I think they know that. I really do believe that. I really do believe that. That’s one of the features, that’s one the characteristics of the people that we’re up against. And that’s why to me it’s not coincidence that you have all this kind of heinous violence and oppression that Black people endure in the United States. It all maintains that racial consciousness. And we’re dealing with an enemy that thrives upon people maintaining a racial consciousness exclusively. [00:47:00] And what we’re trying to say and I think what the original Rainbow Coalition tried to say -- it's not a problem just dealing -- you can have a racial consciousness, but add the class consciousness to the racial consciousness. JJ: And that was the beauty of (inaudible) the timing of that (inaudible) was people were proud of who they were, but the people were also relaxed and able to communicate with each other very well during that time. People were learning from each other here just like they were learning internationally from each nation. So, it was like that consciousness of internationalism. But with respect to nationalism (inaudible). I mean, everybody was united because of that. AL: You could see it on a global level. 32 �JJ: But today you can see the differences that racial -- and negative racial (inaudible) and you can see it when you go to meetings. AL: That’s right. And I still think there’s all the -- I think there’s all the ideological struggle that still exists. [00:48:00] People don’t really want to acknowledge it. And that’s the other thing that we’ve got to deal with too because people really -they say they like the Panthers and they like the Young Lords, but really, they’re practicing a different ideological politics than the Black Panthers and the Young Lords. JJ: What do you mean by that? AL: Well, (audio cuts out) really study the Black Panthers and the Young Lords and the ideology. This was ideology. This was ideological struggle. You can’t escape it whether you want to or not. And they were practicing a particular ideological struggle that came from a history of revolutionary activism on a global level applied to Chicago. You see what I mean? And this was against certain ideological tendencies. And we can name them. We can name them in terms of Trotskyism. We can name them in terms of all these other leftist mistakes that people were making, which is why you had SDS going the direction it went, which is why you had all this struggle with all these other organizations. JJ: What do you mean going the direction -- AL: Well, when they factionalized based upon all of these ideological struggles. [00:49:00] They fell apart based on that. JJ: And we did too. 33 �AL: And all the organizations (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) it happened everywhere. JJ: That was a tool (inaudible)? AL: I think so. JJ: Or was it naturally and they (inaudible) took it over. AL: I think the way to think about it maybe is that during that time period there’s a -you have to give people a break. So, people are experimenting with a lot of ideology. And it’s all right to do that. It’s all right to experiment and read books and look at different -- the Cuban revolution, the Chinese revolution, look at things like that. Again, what we know is that you can’t be a mechanical in terms of ideology. You have to really come from what is going on in your particular community, your particular location in build a struggle and build an ideology based on the needs of your people in that particular area, which was [00:50:00] Chicago or Lincoln Park or the West Side. And I think that’s why when the Black Panthers or the Young Lords -- the ideology that y’all were using in driving that and applying and learning from -- because you can make mistakes as long as you learn from them and do it again -- was an ideology that came organically from the conditions of Chicago. And I think when you have all the other people, other activists come in from other areas or other places, whether it’s -- they might be Young Lords but they might be from New York. They might not really understand Chicago. Whenever you have that kind of situation and you try to extrapolate and try to apply it to different places, it’s not going to work. This is why when Dr. Martin Luther King came to Chicago in 1966, he wasn’t able to 34 �really create the kinds of changes he envisioned even though we might like those visions because it wasn’t tailored to the particular conditions that existed in Chicago. And that’s why I think also the original Rainbow Coalition is important because it’s an alliance that developed from the particular conditions of Chicago, which is a segregated racist ass city. And so, when you deal with [00:51:00] ideological struggle, you’re oftentimes dealing with people who don’t have organic knowledge of the city, of the neighborhoods. And we’re trying to apply mechanically ideas of anarchism, Trotskyism, all kinds of shit, which really just confuses the people and takes them in a direction that only our enemy really thrives upon. Now, you don’t need to know -- again, this is one thing I write about. You don’t need to be an expert on Marxism and Maoism to know the class struggle. This is why I like what you all are talking about too. You only have to look around and be really honest and sincere about what conditions are going on in your neighborhood and in your family. All I’ve got to do is look at my family and see what the hell is going on with this sick society. I don’t even need to read a book. And that’s what I think is when we deal with the ideological struggle, which I think people -- we’ve got to be real wary because, yes, we’ve got to build unity, but we can’t be naïve that that ideological struggle [00:52:00] still exists because there’s forces that are still pushing, peddling cultural nationalism, peddling anarchism, peddling all kinds of shit to our people, whether we want to like it or not. That’s another thing I like about this project. I taught me that there’s a lot of things you might want to do, but whether you like it or not, 35 �there are some conditions you’ve got to deal with whether you want to like it or not, you’ve got to deal with it. JJ: What are any final thoughts about your project? AL: Well, I mean, I just think that the thing that we -- one of the things that I try to write about -- I hope it’s not taken in a disrespectful way -- is that there’s one way -- there’s one thing that we’ve got to set the record straight because you talked about a lot. People have misrepresented the history and misrepresented the organizations and really distorted what work people did. So, it’s important that there’s that set [00:53:00] the record straight kind of work that needs to be done. Academics call it -- we need to recover the history and be accurate about it. That’s very important. But that can’t be the only way that we -- the only reason why this history is important. I think it offers political lessons that can be applied to what’s going on today. So, a lot of times I think -- and this is why I think some of the divisions occur in terms of the history because people want to get their story and they want to set the record straight. And it’s really hard because people have different experiences. So, there’s not just one Black Panther experience or one Young Lord experience or one Young Patriot experience. There’s actually a lot of different experiences. If you’re a woman or depending upon what your background is, you’re going to have a different look at it. And then, some people actually maybe weren’t as committed as other people. So, there’s going to be a lot of those. There’s people that claim they were this and claim they were that. [00:54:00] So, you have a lot of things. So, setting the record straight is important. That work has to be done. And I think the 36 �movement people, the activists that were doing stuff back then need to tell their story. And academics need to step out of the way or just be assistants or whatever they can do to help them come forward. But at the same time, I think there’s political lessons that need to be acknowledged and looked at and discussed and then brought forward to today. And so, I hope that we do both of that work. I hope that both of that work is done. In my introduction, I write about this woman who says, “I love that history, but what happened?” And that’s what I’m trying to say. We need to be able to explain what happened and be very clear with the people about what we’re dealing with and who we’re dealing with. So, that’s what I’ll say. All right, Cha-Cha. END OF VIDEO FILE 37 � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/41fb868f82a1902cf80ef0b0015fab25.mp4 98d928e98d8ad9912c8c50f0885e2c38 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 Antonio López vídeo entrevista y biografía 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_Lopez_Antonio Title A name given to the resource Antonio López video interview and transcript Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource López, Antonio Description An account of the resource Antonio López grew up in the Logan Square Neighborhood of Chicago and heard about the Young Lords early in life, as his parents are activists. Mr. López is also active in various projects and community organizations. He is of Mexican descent and Logan Square is currently a prime real estate target for developers, who continue to prey on Latinos and the poor, and are supported by city hall and their housing Master Plan. In fact it is not hard to locate many of these developers who readily finance machine loyalists and who have sat and still sit on the many city boards. Mr. López ‘s parents were connected to the land grant struggles in New Mexico that were being led by Reis López Tijerina. Mr. Tijerina was born on September 21, 1926 near Falls City, Texas. He is preacher who founded the Alianza Federal de Pueblos Libres (Federal Alliance of Land Grants) in New Mexico. He is widely credited as launching the early Chicano Civil Rights Movement, although Mr. Tijerina prefers the term “Indo Hispano Movement” because the word “Chicano” can also divide Mexicans. At the time of this oral history, Mr. López was completing his doctoral studies in the Department of History at the University of Texas, El Paso. His doctoral dissertation focuses on the Rainbow Coalition, which originally began with Chairman Fred Hampton and included the Young Patriots and Young Lords. Mr. López has voluntarily assisted the Young Lords on various projects beyond his dissertation. 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.) 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 2012-07-15 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/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/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/ec6c3128b89428b5b703100a8837a797.pdf 98b4b4fd7d2525fbc9f903f0fcb3a453 PDF Text Text Young Lords In Lincoln Park Interviewee: Billy “Che” Brooks Interviewers: José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez Location: Grand Valley State University Special Collections Date: 3/28/2012 Biography and Description Billy “Che” Brooks is Deputy Minister of Education of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense (BPP) and Director of YouthLAB@1521 through the Better Boys Foundation. In 1969, Mr. Brooks was very close to Chairman Fred Hampton who was the main spokesman of the Black Panther Party in Illinois. As one of the primary leaders of the BPP, Mr. Brooks was under constant, daily harassment by the Chicago Red Squad and Gang Intelligence Unit. He also worked closely with the Young Lords through the Rainbow Coalition.Mr. Brooks recalls one time when Mr. Hampton asked Mr. José ”Cha-Cha” Jiménez to sneak Mr. Brooks out of a rally at Grant Park, where the police wanted to arrest him on a simple, disorderly conduct warrant. In the middle of the Michigan Avenue Bridge, by Oak Street, the police blocked the automobile in which they were driving, pointed their funs in the faces of those in the car, and arrested Mr. Brooks. The Young Lords drove to the police station and posted his bond. They then drove Mr. Brooks back to the BPP headquarters and told Chairman Hampton, “This one is on us.” Mr. Brooks began working with the Better Boys Foundation in 1978 as the Coordinator of Community Involvement. He continued this work until 1994 and then returned to the agency in 2008. In the interim, Mr. Books engaged in a whole variety of community and public interest work including positions with the Westside Association for Community Action, Habilitative Systems, Inc. and the Harvard School of Public Health. �Transcript JOSE JIMENEZ: (inaudible). BILLY BROOKS: My name is Billy Lamar Brooks, Sr., a.k.a Che. I was born in Forest, Mississippi on July 18th, 1948. My family migrated to the State of Illinois, to the best of my recollection when I was three years old. I pretty much have lived on the West side of Chicago my entire adult life. I [00:01:00] spent most of my time in the North Lawndale community in an area called K-Town which is called K-Town because most of the streets start with a K, you know, Komensky, Karlov, Kedvale, Keeler, Kolin, Kildare, Kostner, then we go Tripp right in the middle there. And I went to Bryant School, which is located on 13th and Kedvale. From there, I went to Mason School, which is on 18th and Keeler. I graduated from Mason School in June of 1963, attended John Marshall High School where I ran track [00:02:00] for four years and participated in African American History Club, but it was called Negro History Club, taught by a guy by the name of George Crockett. I graduated from Marshall High School in June of 1967. This is where it get interesting, I went to Wilson Junior College, which at that time was located on 70th and Stewart, ran track there also, cross country. And got engaged in [00:03:00] a real African American club, you know, which opened my eyes up to the contradictions that existed in terms of poor people in this here country. I became politically conscious, politically aware of this government just in terms of how it treated its poor citizens. It was never my intention to be quote unquote, a “subversive, radical” or a member of the Black Panther Party. [00:04:00] I wanted to be a lawyer, I wanted to be a doctor and a 1 �lot of that was just based on the fact that I wanted to be a part of the American dream, which I was told was available to me. One thing led to another, I met some guys from the South Side of Chicago that I bonded to and we would meet and talk and meet and talk and I got tired of meeting and talking. I was familiar with what was going on in Oakland in October of 1966, you know, but it was not something that [00:05:00] (pause) I really wanted to be a part of, but I met this dude named Bobby Lee Rush, who’s a sitting congressman now in D.C., he represents some legislative district congressionally on the South Side. And we began to collaborate and organize around the issues of police brutality, which was something that I had witnessed as a very young person pretty much all my life. And one thing led to another just in terms of my consciousness and [00:06:00] my willingness to actually want to become part of a broader more focused struggle. Didn’t really know what I was getting into, but I had a burning desire to resist the temptation of not being a part of probably one of the most progressive and revolutionary movements in the history of this country when it comes down to dealing with the contradictions with capitalism and the overt oppression of [00:07:00] poor minority communities, you know. So, I actually went into the concept of being a member of the Black Panther Party not as a Black nationalist, not from within an Afrocentric perspective, but with the understanding that if we were actually going to have an impact on heightened contractions and changing some rudimentary social policies in this here country then we have to work with some coalition politics which was really part of the ideology and philosophy of the Black Panther Party, starting with the original 2 �Rainbow Coalition [00:08:00] with the Peace and Freedom Party out in San Francisco, Oakland, Bay Area when Eldridge Cleaver ran for president, you know, So, it became part and parcel of our philosophy and our ideology here in the State of Illinois where we were actually upon the leadership of our deputy chairman Fred Hampton who really understood more so than any of us at that time the importance of coalition politics. He took the lead in establishing [00:09:00] relationships throughout the city of Chicago. Even at one time and point tried to hook up with the Black P. Stone Nation, which is what they were called at that time and that didn’t work out too well. Worked a little with David... JJ: Why didn’t it work out too well? BB: Actually, at that time, there were a lot of dollars floating around out here from the so called Model Cities Program and a lot of that money were going to gangs, you know, like the Vice Lords, like the Black P. Stone Nation and they felt that we were a threat to them. You know, our focus was [00:10:00] on organizing poor and oppressed people in regards of where they were or what they were doing. And basically, it didn’t work out because they saw us as a threat to them. A lot of it had to do with... JJ: Threat in terms of taking your funds from the Model Cities? BB: Well, more or less. I would say to the extent of us impacting their ability to get those funds, you know, because we were talking about changing the economic infrastructure of our community, we were talking about building a political and economic base that actually we would control as opposed to [00:11:00] working with governmental handouts that placed all kind of constrictions and, (pause) you 3 �know, restrictions and unnecessary demands, was really basically what governed what we did. At that time the big thing was opening up businesses in the community and we weren’t into that at all. We were into heightening contradictions, you know, as we did with our breakfast program, as we did... JJ: Yeah, heightening contradictions meaning what? BB: It actually means that you’re making people aware. Okay, first of all, we look at oppression, we see oppression as violence, okay. [00:12:00] And the major contradiction that we looked at was children were going to school hungry, you know, and it’s kind of difficult to learn when you’re hungry. So, we saw that as a major contradiction. So, our intent was to heighten the people’s awareness of that. JJ: Major contradiction because they were hungry in a prosperous country? BB: Exactly, exactly. In a country that was one of the wealthiest countries in the world. All of our survival programs were geared toward heightening contradictions, you know, from the medical center to the free prison program. But the cream of the crop was... JJ: The Free Prison Program, how was that heightening contradictions? BB: Well, we [00:13:00] a lot of people that were incarcerated in Southern Illinois, people were not able to visit their relatives. And if you are incarcerated and you don’t have anyone coming to visit you, pretty much anything can go down, okay, so we created the Free Prison Bussing Program that took actual community residents, free of charge to visit their loved ones. Which really pissed off the penal institutions, you know, because then they started to have to change the 4 �way they treated our incarcerated family members. [00:14:00] Then people basically started going on their own to visit their relatives. All our programs were based on survival. Later on, Huey P. Newton conceptualized a different approach to the infrastructure of the Black Panther Party and started talking about revolutionary and communalism which connects all poor and oppressed communities around the world that are struggling with the same social, economic and political concerns. But they were all part and parcel of our original 10-point platform [00:15:00] and program. The most salient one was point number 10 where we talked about, we want land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice and peace. And as our major political objective, a United Nation supervised plebiscite which is a vote to determine the destiny of our poor and oppressed people and communities, you know, we wanted a vote. And we still would like to see that happen now in 2012 because the conditions haven’t changed, they haven’t changed here, they haven’t changed in the so-called Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. We’re still being exploited to the max in terms of [00:16:00] economic system, you know. JJ: Okay, so this was about the people determining their own destiny and bringing it to a vote you’re saying, (inaudible)? BB: Yeah, you know, bringing a vote, it would be a plebiscite. The whole concept behind United Nations is that they’re a world body and that each member of the United Nation represent nations around the world. And you well know, most of the oppressed third world nations and countries are being exploited for economic [00:17:00] reasons. 5 �JJ: So, you came when you were around three years old to the West Side of Chicago. BB: Yes. JJ: Okay. And you lived in K-Town (inaudible). BB: Mm-hmm. JJ: And then later on of course, you joined different groups, but you joined the Black Panther Party. BB: I only joined one group. JJ: Prior to that? BB: You know, I joined the Black Panther Party in October, 1968. Prior to that, I was not affiliated with... JJ: Any other group. BB: No. JJ: Okay. So, how did you get from Mississippi to Chicago thinking about the Black Panther Party? In between there with growing -- BB: Well, I came from... JJ: -- up on the West Side, what was that like (overlapping dialogue; inaudible)? BB: Well, [00:18:00] from Mississippi, I was three years old, I have very little memory of that. Some of my more salient thoughts are black and white police cars. We used to stay on 18th and Hastings and I had a Uncle Joe, a big truck driver, he used to drink a lot, he was very strong and he’d get into it with the police a lot. JJ: In like disorderly or something like that? BB: Yeah, no, I used to actually watch him beat the shit outta the police. 6 �JJ: Oh, he (inaudible). BB: Yeah. You know what I’m sayin’? I mean, eventually they would get the best of him, you know, but those are some of my early memories and I used to wonder why the police were so brutal. [00:19:00] JJ: Were there a lot of relatives here, did you have a lot of relatives? BB: Oh yeah, pretty much... JJ: I mean, did they come at the same time? BB: We all left -- as far as Mississippi, my uncle -- I had an uncle who lived in Gary, Indiana, he’s the oldest of my mother’s siblings. He came first, okay, and he worked at the steel mill. Then I had my Uncle Joe, then I had relatives in Joliet, Illinois. But I would say by the year of -- I was born in 48, so by the time I was six, seven years old, we had a real close-knit clan [00:20:00] here in Chicago area, which at that time included... JJ: On the West Side? BB: Yeah, but it also included -- JJ: Joliet and -- BB: -- Joliet, it included Gary, Indiana ’cause just about every weekend, we’d pile up in the old Buick and we’d be going to Joliet or we’d be going to Gary. Yeah, a lot of family here. JJ: So, you grew up with a family, cousins and all that. And what were they into, what were your cousins [and them into?], what the – I’m getting more personal. BB: I was the black sheep, okay? My mother pretty much was the only one who supported my [00:21:00] activities in the Black Panther Party. 7 �JJ: You’re talking about later, when you were an outcast for being a Panther. BB: No, I’m just talking about when I joined the party. JJ: But I’m talking about growing up. BB: What do you mean? JJ: You said you were the black sheep growing up. BB: No, no, not growing up. My stepfather was a Baptist minister, and I grew up in a church. I was a junior deacon, I taught Sunday school up until my senior year of high school, which was 1967. No, I fit quite well within the family structure up until like ’67, which was my first year of college, the first day of college, which was like September... JJ: What college was this? BB: Wilson Junior College. JJ: (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) BB: I remember participating in a 10 a.m. demonstration up here on Pulaski and [00:22:00] and Roosevelt. At that time, Richard Elrod was the city’s corporation counsel, he was one of Daley’s number one (audio cuts out) he became sheriff, Richard Elrod. And that’s where I met [Dax Crawford?], and I met Doug Andrews, you know, from the West Side Organization, WSO. And that was my very first arrest. JJ: Oh, you got arrested in that [thing?]? BB: Yeah, well, you know, at that time, they had what they called over here, Contract Buyers League, you had a lot of slum landlords and this was on the heels of what 8 �Dr. King was doing who lived a couple of blocks back from where we are now, [00:23:00] three blocks over, so he was part of that. JJ: Dr. King? BB: Yeah. JJ: Lived here, you mean in Chicago? BB: Yeah, yeah. JJ: Oh, I didn’t know. BB: Yeah, they’ve got a little apartment complex right over there on 16th and Hamlin in his honor, Dr. King Apartments, yeah. JJ: Okay. BB: Yeah, you know, this is where he -- him and Bob Lucas, they organized and... JJ: (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) Bob Lucas. BB: Yeah, Dr. King stayed right over there on 15th and Hamlin, you know, that’s just like three blocks from where we are now. So, he had a lot of influence on activism in this particular neighborhood. And even though I got arrested and I was part of it, I still didn’t proactively engage myself as an organizer, but it was something that spoke out in my mind and I think that was the first time -- ’cause they didn’t [00:24:00] handcuff us, they just loaded us in the paddy wagon. And I remember getting in the paddy wagon and holding up my fist and saying, “Black power.” I didn’t know what the fuck Black power meant at that time, but there was just some rage. Because there were a lot of older seniors who were -- it was a 10 a.m. demonstration, they’re just sitting there protesting, they weren’t bothering nobody. I didn’t even have to go in, I coulda just got my ass on a bus, 9 �took the train and went on to school. But I said, “No,” because they had ’em surrounded, and they had their little helmets and shit on and had their little billy clubs. And I said, “They ain’t gonna beat these old people up,” you know what I’m saying, “I ain’t gonna let that happen.” So, they let all the old people (laughs) go and took our ass to jail. [00:25:00] JJ: Is it just upbringing or something, you were looking for the old people or (overlapping dialogue; inaudible)? BB: Well, man, you know, you grow up -- JJ: (overlapping dialogue; inaudible). BB: -- you grow up with respect for your elders and you wanna protect them and that was a lot of what that was from my point. I had a lot of elders in the church, the mothers, you know, they had the Mothers’ Board, and then they had all the old cats on the Deacon Board. And it was just something Cha-Cha that you learned to do. JJ: Because these were people from the church that were (overlapping dialogue; inaudible). BB: Well, not necessarily from the church, but they were people from the community who reminded me of people. JJ: (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) BB: They were people fighting for their rights [00:26:00] against the slum landlords, they weren’t fixing anything, they was charging people absorbent amount of dollars to live in these fuckin’ rat holes, and people just got tired and they started protesting. 10 �JJ: And this was on the West Side only or... BB: Well, I think it was citywide. JJ: It was citywide? BB: They was doin’ the same thing in Inglewood, they was doin’ the same thing in the Kenwood Oakland community, that’s where the Woodlawn Organization -- now, this was around the time when the University of Chicago was expanding. JJ: But they were displacing people when they were expanding. BB: Yes. JJ: So, [00:27:00) it was a (overlapping dialogue; inaudible). BB: Well, it was called urban renewal. JJ: Okay. At that time, yeah. BB: And it was citywide. The same thing that happened here, happened up north. JJ: Exactly. In Uptown, Lincoln Park? BB: Yeah. JJ: In Uptown more, they were dealing with slum landlords more, where Lincoln Park was more displacement. BB: Urban removal. JJ: Urban removal, yeah. BB: Yeah, you know what I’m sayin’? Because the land was prime, you know, and the people with the dollars, the people with the money wanted to come back. You know, at one point, they all fled outta the city. [00:28:00] JJ: When was that, I mean, (overlapping dialogue; inaudible)? 11 �BB: Well, you know, late ’50s, pretty much all of the ’60s. When they started building the University of Illinois, Circle Campus down there on Roosevelt and Halsted. Now, you know we used to go down there and buy (inaudible) and, you know. JJ: On Maxwell Street there. BB: Yeah. You know, you’re being politically correct, but then we called it Jewtown in the heyday, didn’t have no problem saying, you know, Jewtown (inaudible) and they weren’t Maxwell Street Polish, they were Jewtown Polish and they had this concept of bartering [00:29:00] that they call it, they called it jewing. They’ll have a product that they paid five dollars for, they wanna sell it to you for ten. So, you sit there and talk back and forth to ’em, then you get it down to five dollars, they’re not losing no money. You know what I’m sayin’? They’re not losing nothing, they just -- if you had a strong game, you know, you can get ’em down to 4.50, but the majority of people, they’ll pay the top price. Yeah. JJ: You had them down to 4.50. BB: Actually, I’d go down there and steal that shit. (laughter) Go down and steal that shit, man. JJ: (overlapping dialogue; inaudible). Okay, so we had Maxwell Street or Jewtown as it was called by everybody at that time, that you said I was trying to be politically correct. But [00:30:00] there were a lot of Jewish vendors, I mean, so they didn’t (overlapping dialogue; inaudible). BB: Well, it was all Jewish, you know. JJ: (overlapping dialogue; inaudible). BB: It was all Jewish. Now you had your -- 12 �JJ: They didn’t mind it at that time. BB: Well, no, you know, you had your street, you know, vendors, you had your blues singers. JJ: (inaudible) and everything on the street. BB: Yeah. JJ: I remember (overlapping dialogue; inaudible). BB: Yeah, we had Smoky Joe right there, that’s where everybody used to go get their (inaudible), you know, big ole hats and Stacy Adams shoes, you know, understand, that’s what we wearing back in high school. JJ: So, that kind of -- in that area, people were displaced from that area later, or is that what you’re -- BB: Pretty much. JJ: -- what we’re saying? BB: Yeah, pretty much. I mean, you see the spread that they have down there now from Halsted coming back west, going all the way down [00:31:00] to Harrison, you know what I’m saying? (inaudible) even went all the way back to 18th Street. JJ: Okay, so these things related to housing, to police brutality and then you said you joined the Panthers in October of ’68. BB: Mm-hmm. JJ: So, I mean, what happened, what was your position in the Panthers at that time? BB: I was a Deputy Minister of Education, structure wise, Bobby Rush was the Deputy Minister of Defense, which patterned after central committee, Huey P. Newton being the Minister of Defense, that meant Rush was the leader of the 13 �party [00:32:00] here. And then Fred Hampton was the Deputy Chairman which pretty much meant that he was the spokesman and that he understood the ideology and the philosophy, and he was able to speak on it, with some shit Rush could never do. And then up under me, there was Rufus Chaka Walls, he was the Deputy Minister of Information. Later we had Ronald Doc Satchel as the Deputy Minister of Health. Ann Campbell. (laughs) JJ: And then Ann Campbell, what was her position? BB: She was the like the Communications Secretary. JJ: Communications Secretary. BB: Yeah. We had a deputy minister of labor [00:33:00] initially, which his name was Ron Carter. No, no, not [Ron Carter?], [Don Patterson?]. JJ: Don Patterson. BB: Yeah, Ron Patterson. JJ: Yvonne King [with them, was it?]? BB: Yvonne King actually was Bill’s secretary. JJ: Bill’s secretary. BB: Along with Jewel Cook. JJ: Jewel Cook (inaudible). BB: Yeah. JJ: Bob Lee. BB: Bob Lee was Field Secretary. And what the field secretaries did was go out and organize certain parts of the city. As you know, Bob Lee had North Side and that’s how he got going, you know, from Northeastern to basically Uptown. He 14 �was real instrumental in organizing the Young Patriots and he probably was the only one that good do it ’cause, I mean, (inaudible). [00:34:00] (laughs) You know how we rolled, right, you was there. But everybody had a specific role and responsibility within the infrastructure of our Black Panther Party. Now, I have to emphasize, our Black Panther Party. JJ: So, I see that there was some people that were not -- in terms of the Rainbow Coalition in the beginning, people were not accepting it? BB: Well, no, I... JJ: (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) understood. BB: I won’t say there was no acceptance, it was just like the whole concept was coalition politics. JJ: But there wasn’t hesitation. BB: No, no, I mean, this was something that was mandated, this was part of our charge. We just had to find the right person to do it. You know what I’m sayin’? You couldn’t send me up there. JJ: (laughs) BB: You know, [00:35:00] you know. But we supported the work of Bob Lee because the whole intent... JJ: Chicago was a segregated city, I mean for a while (overlapping dialogue; inaudible). BB: Oh, still is, still is. JJ: So, the West Side and the North Side were segregated (overlapping dialogue; inaudible). 15 �BB: Right, right, South Side, West Side, North Side. JJ: So, you were growing up on the West Side (overlapping dialogue; inaudible). BB: Mm-hmm. See, my job over here, we opened up... JJ: I mean, did that affect the coalition building or -- BB: No, no. JJ: -- segregation is (overlapping dialogue; inaudible). BB: No, I mean, not really. Our biggest dilemma came with Students for a Democratic Society, RAM One, RAM Two, Bernadine, Jeff Jones, Mark Rudd, [Brian Dean?] and Bill Ayers. When they opened up their office over there on Ashland and Madison, we just [00:36:00] had problems with that because the whole intent was for them to go back to their respective communities to combat racism. JJ: And Ashland and Madison, what type of community was it? BB: It was a Black community. JJ: So, they were in the middle of a Black community. BB: Yeah. JJ: And most of them were White (overlapping dialogue; inaudible). BB: All of them were White. JJ: All of them were White. BB: Yeah. JJ: So, you had a problem with that. BB: Well, yeah. I mean, the thing was is that y’all go in y’all community and organize, and educate the racists in your neighborhoods to understand and support what 16 �you guys are doing to bring about social change. And they never quite got that. We used to call them Mother Country Radicals as you very [00:37:00] well know. We never had a problem with Mike James, you know, Mike and I are still good friends, I just don’t get up to the Heartland Café ’cause it’s so damn far, you know, and then... JJ: And the reason for not everyone following Mike James... BB: Because Mike James was cool, Mike James was a greaser. JJ: He was organizing, a greaser. BB: Yeah, he was doing his -- he was, you know. JJ: He was doing his job -- BB: Yeah. JJ: -- organizing the greaser (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) in the White community. BB: Right, right. JJ: And the Young Patriots were doing the same thing in Uptown (overlapping dialogue; inaudible). BB: Exactly, exactly. JJ: Okay. BB: We never saw SDS as part of the Rainbow Coalition, you know what I’m sayin’? JJ: At that time (overlapping dialogue; inaudible). BB: It never did. It never did. All right? JJ: I don’t wanna put words in... BB: No, no, we never did -- 17 �JJ: You never (overlapping dialogue; inaudible). BB: -- particularly after October, [00:38:00] November in ’69 when they decided to break off and become the Weathermen. JJ: Okay. BB: You know what I’m sayin’? And they decided that they were going to go around and start blowing shit up, you know, they wanted to do some armed revolution. And we said no. They aligned themselves with Eldridge Cleaver and DLA and it hurt. Basically, what it was that we were trying to deal with our survival programs, we knew very well that we’re not ready for no armed struggle, we didn’t [00:39:00] have the weaponry and probably never will happen. The idea was to educate people, the idea was to heighten the contradictions and to use what we were doing as vanguard party to put the [masses of the?] people in a situation where they would see a need for change and make those necessary changes through a concept called protracted struggle. I have not given up, you know, it’s a process, it’s an ongoing process, you know what I’m sayin’, but you constantly have to organize, you constantly have to educate. And see that’s one of the things people don’t wanna talk about now in terms of what our intent was, [00:40:00] what our purpose was. JJ: So now, when you’re speaking, you’re not speaking individually, you’re saying that the party in Illinois was feeling the same thing you (overlapping dialogue; inaudible). BB: Well, actually, let me give you an example of something. JJ: I remember Fred Hampton also (overlapping dialogue; inaudible). 18 �BB: I know you do. JJ: (overlapping dialogue; inaudible). BB: (laughs) I know you do. But see the thing of it is that we did what we called party lines. JJ: I think some of them came later on when they started organizing, but at that moment (overlapping dialogue; inaudible). BB: Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, he was gone basically from April of ’69 to August ice cream truck shit, you know, he was in the joint. Then when he got out in August, he was gone... JJ: Ice cream truck meaning? BB: He allegedly stole... JJ: That’s where they accused [00:41:00] him (overlapping dialogue; inaudible). BB: Yeah. And he was out on appeal, and he was fighting it. JJ: He had taken some ice cream and then supposedly have given it to the -- BB: Right, right. JJ: -- kids in the neighborhood. BB: Right, right. And then from August going forward, four months later he was dead, assassinated, December the 4th. And between August, you know what I mean, we had like three police hit someone in our office, we had one in July, we had one in August and we had one in October, which was one I was in there on. And then later on in November there was a situation where Spurgeon Jake Winters had a confrontation with some police on the South Side, Gilhooly and Rappaport, [00:42:00] those were their names and they killed him, but he killed a couple of 19 �them. Then they intensified their efforts to just totally destroy -- and what people sometimes don’t recognize is that when that incident happened Spurgeon really wasn’t in the party. JJ: What incident, I mean, (inaudible) clear on -- the incident that (inaudible) Spurgeon -- what was the incident? BB: They had a shootout with the police. JJ: Okay, but I mean what was the basis, what was the police (overlapping dialogue; inaudible)? BB: It wasn’t -- I don’t know. JJ: Stop and frisk? BB: I don’t know, I wasn’t there. I just know the end result. JJ: And you said there were three hits by the police, meaning that they came and raided the office three times. BB: Mm-hmm. [00:43:00] JJ: And the Panthers defended the office each time (overlapping dialogue; inaudible). I mean that’s what you’re saying or... BB: What I said was they hit our office three times, arrested us and beat the shit out of us on each occasion. I don’t know if you wanna call that defending, you know, I remember when they was beating the shit outta me, I didn’t feel like I was defending shit. You know what I’m sayin’ was some brutal shit they put down, you know what I’m sayin’? We were victims. JJ: Okay. 20 �BB: None of them were hurt, you know, because that’s not what we were about, we were about propagandizing, [00:44:00] we were about educating, we were about putting together programs. And they knew it, they had enough provocateur agents and informants in the Black Panther Party to know that we really wasn’t... JJ: You said provocateur agents, what was their role (overlapping dialogue; inaudible)? BB: They would create situations to (audio cuts out) things that would allow the police to -- William O’Neal for instance was an excellent example of a provocateur agent. He was placed there by the FBI and the Gang Intelligence Unit. And he was called out on a number of times as being [00:45:00] a provocateur. JJ: I mean, what did you do? I know, I saw one time a homemade electric chair that he had created to (overlapping dialogue; inaudible). BB: O’Neal was on the defense cadre, okay, security detail, you know, which meant that he was under the leadership of Bobby Rush. Each deputy minister had a cadre, you know, I mean we had structure. And on a number of occasions O’Neal was called to the carpet by Rush, Bobby Rush, the congressman, the preacher, the minister defended him and vouched for him. This is record stuff I’m talking, I don’t have a problem saying this. I don’t know if it was out of his naivete, [00:46:00] you know, I would not sit here and say that Bobby Rush was an agent for the government, but I will say that he had a security clearance as a member of the United States Military, which was hard at that point in time for a black man to get. Now, I can say that he left the United States Army and went to SNCC and left SNCC and came to the Black Panther Party. I can say that we 21 �never had a good relationship to this day. Reading in the paper today that he was in D.C. yesterday with a hoody on in support of Trayvon [00:47:00] Martin. With all the other kinda work, the Black Congressional Caucus can be about right now just in terms of enacting legislation and processes to impact poor people particularly in his district, that was a coward act to me. Enough of Bobby Rush. Nothing I’ve never said before. JJ: Okay, so you have not seen that (inaudible) within (inaudible) record is. BB: Oh, of course not. Of course not. When he ran for alderman, he ran on the platform of the party initially. When he first ran, [00:48:00] you know, he had a lot of comrade brothers and sisters out there working the precincts for him. Then once he got elected, he kinda like turned his back and he made this statement that people who support him can take care of themselves, which was like, okay. We had talked to him about sponsoring legislation in the City Council that will call for decentralization of the police which was one of our points in the 10-point platform. “If you can’t do nothing else Bobby, you know, just putt it out there.” He was in the position to do it. Harold wouldn’t sign off on it, Harold Washington. [00:49:00] But Harold couldn’t introduce the legislation, only an alderman can do that. And that was his first to me... JJ: What about like after Fred was killed, there was a raid on his house too, wasn’t there? BB: Well, interesting thing about that. (pause) They said it was police who (inaudible) stand over there in the Hilliard Homes on State Street, but he didn’t actually [live there?]. The irony is that he showed up at Breadbasket that same mornin’ with 22 �body guards from the African American Patrolmen [00:50:00] Association, hanging with Jesse who if you remember, we didn’t even mess with Jesse, you know. So, that’s all I gotta say about that. He wasn’t with no Panthers that next day, he was with the police. JJ: Let’s leave it there, I don’t wanna (inaudible). BB: No, honestly, I mean, you know, I’m just answering your questions. JJ: (inaudible). BB: If you get a chance to interview him, ask him about that, go ahead. JJ: No, no, no. I mean, he said, it’s understood that there was division within the... BB: Not divisions. JJ: Not division, but (overlapping dialogue; inaudible). BB: Contradictions. JJ: Contradictions, contradictions. BB: You know, contradictions. JJ: But you don’t see him as an enemy, I mean, it was just a contradiction (overlapping dialogue; inaudible). BB: You know, [00:51:00] you got two words you’re playing with here. JJ: Okay, all right. BB: Okay, contradiction and contrary. JJ: Okay. BB: Okay? A lot of what he did was contrary to the principles of the Black Panter Party, okay? And he very well knew it. The contradiction part of it is that not being truthful, being a liar and just being [involved?] and not practicing what you 23 �should be doing, [00:52:00] so you contradict yourself with contrary behavior. Because if you apply to a marriage and me and you both know, I’ve been married four times, you know what I’m saying, because within that marriage there were contradictions, there was some contrary shit, so you could process it or not. (inaudible). JJ: Okay. I got you. (inaudible). So, tell me, before -- now this is at the end of -- not at the end, but it was a problematic situation within the party at that time. What I mean, Fred Hampton was murdered, killed, it affected the movement. At first the movement was strong [00:53:00], and then later on it did hurt. But before that, when Fred was alive, and the Panthers were -- can you kind of describe what was some of the work of the Panthers at that time? BB: Well, you know... JJ: (inaudible) work that took place. BB: From October... JJ: For people that don’t remember those times. BB: Well, from October to April, you know, our focus was on political education, organizing infrastructure. JJ: Were you public, I mean, were you having press conferences at that time, or no? BB: Of course. JJ: Did you have like an (inaudible) a period for training before you came out? BB: No, we just went right into it in October and started having political education classes, started organizing for our breakfast [00:54:00] program, we started selling our newspapers, we started soliciting people like Dr. [Cass?] and [Eric?] -- 24 �Quentin Young to be part of our medical center. We opened up our first breakfast program here in April of ’69. So, our whole time period from like October to April of ’69 was organizing, you know, selling newspapers, propagandizing. JJ: How did you get the cadre (inaudible)? BB: Well... JJ: It doesn’t happen like that overnight, I mean, you have to (overlapping dialogue; inaudible). BB: When I say October to April, that’s not overnight? JJ: Well, that is [00:55:00] overnight, but... BB: No, it’s not. No, it’s not. No, it’s not. No, it’s not. JJ: (overlapping dialogue; inaudible). BB: Uh-uh, it’s not overnight. JJ: Well, no, it was a few months. BB: You know what I’m sayin’? I mean, you have to realize something man, Fred Hampton wasn’t even an outside the wall of Black Panther for a year. We started in October of ’68, he went to the penitentiary in April of ’69, he got out in August of ’69, he was assassinated in December of ’69. So, when I say organize, when I say educate, when I say propagandize, you know, we hit just about every college, university in Chicago, we hit all the high schools. [00:56:00] We traveled to Northern and Southern, we hit Champaign, recruiting, we recruited college students. That’s how we got Doc, Doc was at Circle Campus. Chuckles was at Circle Campus. So, the critical piece was political education, so the 25 �people would understand the ideology and the philosophy and be able to articulate what our programs were and at the same time be able to implement ’em, you know. So, from October to April, you know, we were able to establish our breakfast program, we were able to establish donations with Quaker Oats, Joe Louis Milk, Parker House Sausage. We didn’t have no money. [00:57:00] So, we were able to do that. Then we started focusing on a medical center, organizing that, getting nurses, getting doctors, getting the community support. We were in the street, you know what I’m sayin’, we were on these university campuses, we was on these college campuses, we were on these junior college campuses, not so much as churches. That’s what I remember. We first got tight in Lincoln Park if you remember. And that was like a big rally out [00:59:00] there. At that time, I was drinking Bali Hai, I had a Bali Hai, you know, and then we had... JJ: You’re talking about Lincoln Park when Bobby Seale was there or (overlapping dialogue; inaudible)? BB: No, no. When we got humbugging out there. JJ: In Lincoln Park. BB: Yeah. JJ: In the Lincoln Park neighborhood or the park itself? BB: Park. JJ: The park. Humbugging, I wasn’t there that day, I heard about it. BB: Yeah, but I’m just saying that’s when we really -- JJ: Humbugging meaning (overlapping dialogue; inaudible)? 26 �BB: Fight, fight, fight. JJ: (overlapping dialogue; inaudible). BB: Chaka was speaking and at that time they had, I think they called them self [Cloverstone?]. JJ: (inaudible). BB: And they was disruptive and disrespectful and they didn’t like the concept of a coalition, of a[00:59:00] you know. And we grew from there. Ain’t no point in talking about our other escapades Cha-Cha, but, you know, you get the drift of what struggling is, what community organizing is and how we did what we did. There’s so much more than I can talk about. JJ: Okay, so the programs were a means of getting the community also involved, no, or what? They did the promotions for the party and the -- even for us it (inaudible) in terms of the Young Lords, in terms of getting people involved. BB: That’s how you do it. [01:00:00] JJ: But you’re saying that wasn’t a big thing, the... BB: That’s how we survived. JJ: Okay, (inaudible). BB: I mean, every time the police would attack our office, the community would come out, and, yeah. JJ: Did they ever come out because of the work of the programs that they were (overlapping dialogue; inaudible)? BB: Well, they knew we were providing them with a service that they otherwise would not have had. They did not like the idea that we were being harassed by police. 27 �We got in a lot of trouble in some ways because there were a lot of people wearing [01:01:00] berets, you know, field jackets who really weren’t party members and honestly did some shit that we got blamed for, but it is what it is, you know. We could not have survived after December the 4th without community support. After what they did to Fred man, even skeptical people, you know what I’m sayin’, even staunch Christians got mad because they knew that was wrong. You know what I’m sayin’, they knew that was wrong. They knew it was incorrect. And [01:02:00] I wouldn’t be here today if I had not gotten the support of people who believed in the work we did, trust me, and the work that we’re going to continue to do. And you know how difficult it is, you know what we went through, and you know we’re gonna continue to go through, it’s a protracted struggle. And one of the more difficult things I find is that -- I’ve got some comrades doing this Illinois history project on the Black Panther Party. When we initially started, I told them, I said, “How the fuck do write history when you’re fuckin’ making history?” You know what I’m sayin’? Because ain’t gonna be no conclusion, that shit’s [01:03:00] constantly, constantly changing unless you’re doing a documentary like what you’re doing, you know what I’m sayin’? And I understand why you’re doing it. But I do believe that, you know, I believe in you Cha-Cha, you know, we did seen some things together and we did did some things together and we’re gonna continue, even though I’m a better disc jockey than you are. JJ: (inaudible). (Laughter) BB: I can’t stand the smell of it. 28 �JJ: (inaudible). BB: Yeah. But this can be a beginning of something ’cause anything else salient in your mind, you wanna shoot at me? JJ: Did you see any [01:04:00] connections in terms of the Young Lords and the Panthers, what were some of the events that connect -- what were some of the things that we did together? BB: Well, you know, the thing about it was that... JJ: Then you remember the (overlapping dialogue; inaudible). BB: Oh man, yeah. I can’t talk about shit like that on here, I really will get into some trouble. But what I can say was that when you talk about coalition politics, you gotta have partners, you gotta have partners that you believe in, you gotta have people that you believe in, ’cause you’re talking about two different organizations, the Young Lords and the Black Panther Party. And you guys, particularly up under your leadership, and how you studied [01:05:00], you know, how we used to sit down and talk, how you used to collaborate with Fred, the times that he saved my ass, you know what I’m sayin’, other things that can’t be mentioned. But there would not have been a Rainbow Coalition as we know Rainbow Coalition to be in the State of Illinois without the Young Lords. Simply because you guys were organizers, you understood the street, and you looked at some of the things that we were doing and said, “That shit makes sense.” You know what I’m sayin’? And you put it into practice, you know what I’m sayin’? And I tell brothers this [01:06:00] today, calling themselves street tramps, I said, “As long as y’all out here doing this here, you’re not a threat, but the minute you start 29 �talking about organizing, the minute you start telling people they should vote, the minute you start telling young people to go to school, get a good education, that’s when you become a threat, and that’s when they’re gonna come at you.” You know what’s I’m sayin’? I would like to see another coalition come about of people working across communities like we used to do. We made a difference in Lincoln Park, you know, we made a difference over here in North Lawndale. We had our breakfast program here, we had our medical center a couple of blocks over and that was all based on the fact that we processed the needs of the people. [01:07:00] You know what I’m sayin’? We fed people initially and people started supporting us, we started testing people for sickle-cell anemia, you know, free. There were no free health clinics in Chicago at that time. You know what I’m sayin’? You guys emulated that because it works. And there are times when you ask me a question Cha-Cha that’s opened up all kind of different thought processes and I might not pinpoint an answer to you. But the Young Lords and the Black Panther Party here in the State of Illinois, [01:08:00] I can sum it up by saying this, we came together as brothers, and we trusted each other. That was in 1969, today is 2012 and we’re still doing it and we’re going to keep doing it. And it’s based on the ideology, it’s based on philosophical understanding, it's based on principles of struggle. Does that mean we don’t make mistakes? No. We’ve had our ups and downs personally, organizationally, but we done survive for some fuckin’ reason. I had no idea that me and you would ever [01:09:00] be sitting down, you know, “What’s that mother fuckin’ Cha-Cha interviewing me, who the fuck taught him how to use a god damn 30 �camera?” (laughs) You know, you’re [Howard Alton?] now, you’re [Mike Grayden?] now. You know what I’m sayin’? You’re documenting man, you know what I’m sayin’, and it’s phenomenal. And that in itself speaks more to who we were then and who we are now. Our struggle for human rights, our struggle for justice, it is just as intense now as it was 42, 43, 44 years ago, you know, we’re just on a different [01:10:00] stage of the game. I’m trying to accelerate what I’m doing. I’ll be 64 years old, I didn’t even think I’d see fuckin’ 30. Most of my life since 1971, ’72, I already had one daughter in the party in ’69, but my children became my focal point. Now my focal point are my grandchildren, giving them some insight, giving them some love, so that they will understand the type of things that they need to do not only to survive in America, but thrive [01:11:00] just in terms of making a difference. If I can’t do more than that, I’m good. JJ: Anything that you wanna add? That was what I wanted to add. What did you wanna add? BB: I’m good. JJ: You’re good, okay. END OF AUDIO FILE 31 � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/209cd4e0bb793ed039cf37970288221f.mp4 e2e825a461636b871fe30060e5ffcbf2 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 Billy “Che” Brooks vídeo entrevista y biografía 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 Afro-Americanos--Relatos personales Juventud--Illinois--Chicago 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_Brooks_Billy Title A name given to the resource Billy “Che” Brooks video interview and transcript Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Brooks, Billy Description An account of the resource Billy “Che” Brooks is Deputy Minister of Education of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense (BPP) and Director of YouthLAB@1521 through the Better Boys Foundation. In 1969, Mr. Brooks was very close to Chairman Fred Hampton who was the main spokesman of the Black Panther Party in Illinois. As one of the primary leaders of the BPP, Mr. Brooks was under constant, daily harassment by the Chicago Red Squad and Gang Intelligence Unit. He also worked closely with the Young Lords through the Rainbow Coalition. 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 African Americans--Personal narratives Youth--Illinois--Chicago 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 2012-03-28 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/9f46468d32b54e4bafa02810ad6938ae.pdf 97ff4af8f433e0def045774ddeab1476 PDF Text Text Young Lords In Lincoln Park Interviewee: Carlos Flores Interviewers: José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez Location: Grand Valley State University Special Collections Date: 3/29/2012 Biography and Description Carlos Flores is a cultural activist who lived at La Salle and Superior in the La Clark barrio, growing up on Armitage Avenue. He takes pride in relating that his family was “the last of the Puerto Ricans to leave Lincoln Park” and recalls life in Lincoln Park which included his share of minor street battles as a teen member of the Continentals Social Club. Mr. Flores also fought for Puerto Ricans as a full fledged member of the Young Lords.Mr. Flores served on the Chicago Mayor’s Advisory Council on Latino Affairs, under Harold Washington. This council was first set up in 1983 by the Young Lords and four other Latino representative organizations city-wide soon after Harold Washington was elected the first African American mayor in Chicago history. Its purpose was to make recommendations of potential candidates to the various departments and for other Hispano concerns. Mr. Flores earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Education from the University of Illinois and he holds a Master’s Degree in Criminal Justice. He has worked as a private investigator for the Office of Civil Rights, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and the Illinois Department of Public Aid. He plays the vibraphone, is a free- lance photographer, and a documenter and promoter of Puerto Rican and Afro-Caribbean music. Mr. Flores is also founding member of the Puerto Rican Arts Alliance and a former coordinator for Project Kalinda, at Columbia College’s Center for Black Music Research. Since 1998, Mr. Flores has assisted in organizing an annual Cuatro Festival. He produced a documentary film about the 1998 Havana Jazz Festival and has �written many essays on Afro-Caribbean and Puerto Rican music, some published in journals such as Chicago’s De Paul University Dialogo and the Centro Journal of Hunter College in New York. Mr. Flores has conducted his own oral history interviews with Chicago Puerto Rican residents, and as a photographer has held exhibitions at Malcolm X College, the Old Humboldt Park Stable Museum and the Old Town School of Folk Music. Currently, Mr. Flores continues his community leadership, giving lectures on Puerto Ricans, Afro- Caribbean music, and urban renewal displacement for the Urban Life Center. He also teaches a workshop for the Neighborhood Writing Alliance and another workshop on Puerto Rican tiple construction. �Transcript JOSE JIMENEZ: Okay, if you could -- Carlos, if you can give me your full name, when you were born. CARLOS FLORES: Yeah. My name is Carlos Flores. I was born in Guayama, Puerto Rico, in 1949. I arrived in Chicago in June of 1959, at the age of 10, or right before turning 10. The first place that I moved to that I lived in Chicago was in Superior and La Salle, which is like in the area right around Clark Street and Chicago Avenue, near there. And so I spent a couple of years there, and then went to school at Ogden Elementary School. JJ: How old were you then, about? CF: 10, 11. JJ: So what was Ogden like? I mean -- go ahead and answer. CF: Ogden school was, well, you know, it was kind of interesting because back in those days, it was a lot of Puerto Rican -- my sisters were already here. They had been here, like, maybe three or four years before. But Ogden School [00:01:00] was kind of like, at that time there was no bilingual education, so what I remember from that situation is that I used to be put in the back of the room, and all I did, I spent drawing in Crayolas all day long because, you know, I couldn’t communicate with the teacher. I couldn’t participate in the classroom because I didn’t speak the language. So, you know, it was a disadvantage in terms of my educational process at that early age, in terms of the disruption that happened with it. You know, coming from Puerto Rico, being in school, and then 1 �coming here and actually being put through that whole disruption, which eventually did have an impact on my educational life because eventually, I ended up dropping out of high school and getting kicked out of high school. You know, I just like -- the interest, and I really lost focus in terms of, you know, educational objectives, you know, that you might have gone through as, you know, as -- I mean, the [00:02:00] initial process would have been to go through grammar school, high school, and then into college. That would have been the smooth transition. But many of us came here, and the disruption of the language barrier actually caused -- had a cause and effect on a lot of our lives because of the fact that we -- by the time we’re already in high school, we just, you know, we were so far behind trying to catch up that a lot of us just gave up, had no aspiration. I mean, and then, you know, people would not have ever talked to us about going to college. That was like something that you need, you know, it was unheard of, you know? So. But, you know, I remember living there. I remember there was -right on the corner of Superior and Clark Street, there was a store called the Spanish American Food. It was kind of like one of the first stores that actually provided services to people living in that area. So they had all kinds of produce, and all kinds of stuff. Then you had several theaters on Clark Street. You had [00:03:00] one which was called the Standard, which we used to call [el marito?], which, you know, was like 10 cents a pop, but it was horrible. And then down the street was the Newberry, which was about a block away, and then about two or three blocks from there was the Windsor, which was on Clark and Division. And so those were the theater houses that we would go to when we were kids. But 2 �then I didn’t live there. You know, we lived maybe one or two years there. Then we moved to 17th -JJ: What type of housing was there? CF: Well, you know, we live in apartment buildings. And you know, there was a lot of Puerto Ricans living there. They were all living, and right there, in the corner of La Salle and Superior, there was also an orphanage that was run by the Catholic archdiocese. There was a lot of orphans that lived there. I mean, the building is still there. The area’s changed a lot, but that particular building is still there. A lot of the housing that was there was a lot of apartment buildings. And so basically that was the [00:04:00] kind of housing that was there. We used to live like on the third floor, right there on Superior and La Salle. Then from there, we moved to another building -- JJ: The [Water?] Hotel was across the street? CF: The what? JJ: The Water Hotel. Was that across the street? CF: The Water Hotel? JJ: There was a hotel called the Water Hotel. CF: There was a bunch of hotels, man, on Erie, Ontario. I mean, they was part of Skid Row in a way, back in the days. I mean, I was too young to, you know, even realize, but I know that there was like on Clark Street, south of Chicago Avenue there was numerous hotels that actually, you know, housed a lot of the people that would -- at that time, you know, they were called bums, and they were just bumming around. A lot of alcoholics, and it’s kind of interesting because it’s right 3 �in the outskirts of downtown that you had this thing going on, and then all of a sudden when the city, you know, began to clean up, they really cleaned up, you know. They surgically just removed all those people, just like they removed people [00:05:00] from, you know, in other areas a little bit later on. But they began by cleaning out that whole area. I mean, they’re still doing that, you know. They’re doing it all the way on the west side now where the united -- the United Center is, where the Bulls play basketball. The UIC, Cook County Medical Center, and Rush Presbyterian. That whole area has been surgically removed, and they’ve gotten rid of all the people who live in those areas. So like it started there, but there was a lot of, you know, it was called Skid Row back in the days. I don’t remember the name of the hotels, but there were quite a few that were, you know, up and down the street. Also on State Street, too. So. JJ: So you were going to Ogden, and then from there where did you go after that? CF: From there, we went to -- we then moved to 1714 North Larrabee, which was another, you know, Puerto Ricans were also moving to that area. And from there, I went to a school called Newberry, [00:06:00] which today is called a Newberry Academy. It’s like a school where a lot of the -- what is it, the talented, creative kids go to school there now. But back in the days, it was like, there was a neighborhood school, and there was a lot of us that would go to school there. It was kind of like somewhat integrated. It was becoming more integrated as more people lived there. So that’s how we actually -- where I grew up most of the time, in terms of my whole teen years, on Larrabee Street. I used to hang out at St. 4 �Michael’s High School, St. Michael’s Church, which was like two blocks away from my house, and -JJ: So you didn’t go to St. Michael’s at all? CF: No, I didn’t go to -- I went to St. Michael’s in high school. JJ: Oh, in high school. You didn’t -- CF: So in grammar school I went to, like, I went to Newberry and I went to [Arnold?]. JJ: And Newberry was a -- CF: Public school. JJ: Public school that was mixed, you said, at that time? CF: Yeah, it was integrated. It was integrated. It was integrated. Mostly, you know, Puerto Ricans, whites, some Black kids. [00:07:00] There were some kids that used to live on Burling Street where, you know, we used to call them gypsies, you know. They were like some of the gypsy kids that lived there. But they were like from different parts of Europe, and their families, like the [Horvaths?] and the [Doonas?], and the [Laceys?]. Those were the names of the people who lived there. JJ: So there were a lot of them, though. CF: There were a lot of them. There was like a whole block on Burling. I mean, it used to be to the point that we used to get into fights with them. But then at the end, at one time there used to be, you know, like they used to mess with us, you know, as kids, and then eventually we outgrew them, and after a while we actually -- there was more of us than there was of them. But at one time, they 5 �were kind of like these bullies kind of kids. Like I remember one guy named Dennis Horvath, and [Gary Doona?] all those guys, you know. JJ: Yeah, I knew Gary Doona. I met him. CF: Gary Doona, yeah. All those guys, you know, they thought that they were like some bad dudes, but in reality, you know, when it came down to nitty gritty, you know, [00:08:00] they didn’t have no heart. JJ: So now when you were fighting them at that time, you were not part of a group. CF: Nah, it was just kid stuff, man. Yeah, you know, grammar school, you know, sixth, seventh, eighth grade, you know, that kind of stuff. And like I said, after a while, we actually outgrew them. You know, there was more of us than it was them. You know, it was like, so there was always a lot of conflicts in grammar school after school. But you know, like six -- JJ: What were some of the conflicts? CF: Huh? I don’t know. I guess someone probably saying something to one of the girls who actually was a cousin of them, or their sister, and they didn’t want -because you know, in a way, they were a little bit prejudiced, you know. Even though they looked just like us, you know? They were like dark-skinned, oliveskinned people, but they were like -- they had some kind of -- some prejudices and racist attitudes about, you know, who we were as a people. And you could tell. You know, you could always tell that attitude about [00:09:00] you know, like, they would not hesitate in calling somebody “nigger”. You know, and in a moment’s notice. But yeah, but that was not even an issue. You know, after a 6 �while, they just like calmed down and chilled. So from there, you know, I went to school at Arnold, and then my family also then bought their first house. JJ: So they moved from Larrabee -- CF: From Larrabee to 1120 West Armitage, which is right on Armitage, near Sheffield. Now when I was living on Larrabee, it was kind of interesting because I was involved in that community. As a matter of fact, I actually played baseball, little league baseball, in this one league called the Old Time Little League, and I was probably like the Jackie Robinson of that league because I was the first Black, Puerto Rican kid that played baseball in that whole league. And then, but that was a whole thing in Lincoln Park where I grew up. JJ: What were some of the teams there? [00:10:00] You know, because I played in a baseball team, too. CF: Yeah, but you know what that -- JJ: But I never was too connected -- CF: Well that little league, the teams were like -- JJ: Oh, we played regular hardball in little league. CF: Right, it was a little league. But these teams were like named after baseball teams. You know, like I was in the team called the Cubs, and they had the Cardinals, and so, you know, it was an interesting little league. JJ: I was on the Leprechauns. CF: The what? JJ: The Leprechauns. CF: The Leprechauns? 7 �JJ: Yeah, and there was an Italian baseball [medic?]. CF: Yeah, well I played baseball [all but the ball?]. But the interesting thing about Lincoln Park during that time period is that every Sunday, every weekend, the place is packed because, you know, the passion of a Puerto Rican was baseball. That was their thing. And so every Sunday you went to Lincoln Park, that place was really packed. You know, my dad used to be a baseball manager. They would use all the diamonds in the park. Every diamond, baseball diamond that was there was being utilized. And you know, I remember them playing league ball, but then they were playing softball, [00:11:00] the 12-inch fast pitch, which was actually a league that was run by the Caballeros of San Juan for many, many years. But so, you know, Puerto Ricans on Saturdays and Sundays were usually in that park. I mean, if you go by there now today, it looks like a desert because ever since, you know, people started giving them doubt, and Puerto Ricans no longer use that park to play baseball anymore, and the high schools closed down. So I don’t know what they’re doing with that land. I mean, it’s just there, and nothing’s being done with it. The baseball -- I hardly ever see anyone playing baseball there anymore. JJ: So you mentioned the Caballeros of San Juan. Who were they? CF: Caballeros of San Juan was this organization that was formed by the Catholic archdiocese to actually I guess, you know, make life a little better for Puerto Ricans that migrated to Chicago. Like, you know, the big migrations started coming to Chicago like in 1946, and from 1946 to 1966, it was a major migration. I mean, one of the biggest [00:12:00] migrations of one particular group from one 8 �area to the other, and there’s like thousands and thousands of Puerto Ricans that migrated here, you know, looking for a better life, better jobs, and so a lot of the people that came to live here were not -- you know, they were kind of like in a way peasants, in a way. They were not, you know, educated people. They were like people that, you know, were either working as peasants or farmers, and they decided they wanted a better life for their kids and their families, so they just took a chance, got on a plane, and came here. And they found work, and they did okay because, you know, some of them raised families, you know, had their kids go to college for the first time, and the end result is that we have some of the major players that live in this city who actually came from those families. So it wasn’t, you know, it wasn’t a group of really educated, sophisticated, middle class [00:13:00] Puerto Ricans that migrated to the city. It was basically more the less educated, poor peasant population that came from Puerto Rico from 1946 to ’66. I mean, now, you know, it’s a whole different ball game. But those were the people that were living here like in the ‘50s and in the ‘60s. You know, and then living in different areas of the cities where they came. They actually lived in the south side, in Woodlawn. They moved to, you know, Clark Street, which is like near Lincoln Park. I think they call that now Gold Coast. That’s what that neighborhood’s called now there. Because you know that Chicago is broken into all these, like, trendy neighborhoods. Gold Coast, they lived in Garfield Park, they lived in Lincoln Park, Humbolt Park, and so they lived -- they were scattered throughout the whole city. So -- and as they came here, they began to establish their own little things. So with the Caballeros and the archdiocese there then, 9 �[00:14:00] I think that they were part of this process of actually recruiting Puerto Ricans to come to work here. Because that’s how the whole migration came, you know. There was an employment agency that went to Puerto Rico to recruit. JJ: What was the name of that? CF: I think it was Castle something. It starts with Castle. It was an employment company, employment agency that recruited. And what they were doing is they were looking for domestic workers and also people to work in the steel plants in east Chicago and throughout the city. And so you know what they did is they actually brought in like kind of like a labor force from the island to work here. And so, you know, a lot of these folks came, they didn’t speak the English, they, you know, it was a whole rude awakening coming from beautiful island to this winter, this cold, cold-blooded, you know, big city, and so the thing is that [00:15:00] the Caballeros and the archdiocese, given that, you know, most Latinos, mainly Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, Latino and Latin American, and the Latin American and the Caribbean, they’re all -- they’re Catholics. So this is a service that the archdiocese put together, and they began programs of how to make Puerto Ricans, you know, to -- what’s the word I’m looking for? To integrate, and to actually melt into the melting pot, into the mainstream of here in the city of Chicago. So they would give them, like, English classes. They would, you know, do social programs to help them out. There was also this whole system of, you know, recreation. That’s what they did, you know, so one of the recreations would be baseball leagues. They created baseball leagues, softball leagues. They used to have all these councils in different neighborhoods, Concilios, where 10 �a lot of the people from that area, based on a parish. So they would take a church, [00:16:00] and they would have a council out of those churches. So like in St. Michael’s, where I grew up in, it was Concilio Numero Tres, Council Number Three. They were gone -- they were not given names, but they were like by numbers, you know, Council Number Three, Number Four, Number Five. They had one south of -- they had one in Chicago on Orleans, which is part of St. Joseph. They had them all over the city. And so they come together, they played baseball, they played dominos, they would have fundraisers, and they would have dances. And it was an interesting, you know, clique of people helping each other out back in those days. And then you also had the whole dynamics which a lot of people have never even studied. I mean, I think that this is something that is part of a history project in its own, is this whole thing of social clubs. Because you know, nowadays in Chicago, you have, like, for example, one of the biggest clubs you have here is La Sociedad Michoacana, [00:17:00] which is, you know, a lot of these people from Michoacan, which actually from Mexico, will actually have formed like a civic society, Los Hijos or La Sociedad Michoacana. And these folks will send money back to even to the point where they actually have bought ambulances and firetrucks with the money that they made here and they sent it back. But that whole concept is a concept that it had been here already, because the way that the social clubs work is that, for example, they would have [La Sociedad de Ponce, Los Hijos de Vega Baja?], and they had their own little -besides what the Concilios had in the archdiocese, they had these private clubs. And what they did is that they had dances, they raised money, they had their 11 �own, you know, officers, and they would, like, self-sustain. And so they also provided and all this. So like if someone from Vega Baja was going to come to Chicago, the people in Vega Baja would say, “Well you know, when you go to Chicago, [00:18:00] check out the people in the Vega Baja club.” And you go there, and you go there, you introduce yourself, and you’re going to find people that either know you, know your family, know where you’re from, and they would help you find housing and jobs and so forth. So there was -- it was kind of like an interesting thing. I mean, I think -- I mean, that’s been one of my things of actually going back and studying that whole concept with the social clubs, you know, [Los Hijos de Ponce?], [Los Hijos des Caguas?]. Every town had a little social club, man. And that kind of, you know, kind of kept the community together in terms of knowing, you know, who was what, what was going on. So it was kind of like our own little community being formed. Because you know, down in Lincoln Park, we had what they call a Puerto Rican community center. The Puerto Rican community center was located on Dickens and Halsted on the second floor. They had a baseball team. They had -- they were there for years. I think this guy named Mike [Rivera?] was the president of it, and [Florito?] and all these guys were, [00:19:00] you know, people go there on weekends to play dominos, play pool, hang out, have a beer. And you know, that’s how they were able to keep themselves afloat from, you know, from all that other stuff, you know, in terms of going crazy with the winter and everything else. So, you know, the social club played a tremendous role in the survival of Puerto Rican migration into the city of Chicago. 12 �JJ: And what about -- there were other groups too like the, you know, did you know anything about the Puerto Rican Congress? CF: Oh yeah. There were other groups. There were like [El Puerto Ricua?] which won -- which actually was formed by -- JJ: Had you ever gone in there? CF: Yeah, as a matter of fact, I remember the -- well I remember in the ‘60s, they had their building right on Milwaukee, right over the -- right there by the expressway on Milwaukee south of Augusta. Between Augusta and Chicago, there was a little building there, and they -- I mean, I remember because I used to -- you know, [00:20:00] we used to play baseball, used to play baseball against them. I played baseball on one of the little league teams. It was called [El Posto Boricua?]. And it was an army, VA post center, you know, for the army veterans. A lot of the veterans that went to Korea that were veterans. JJ: Puerto Rican veterans? CF: Puerto Rican veterans, right, that went there. As a matter of fact, the organization existed not until a couple of years ago. I don’t think that they’re around anymore, but that was one of the -- and then you had the -- JJ: What did they do? What did they do? You said you went in there? CF: They probably -- you know, I was young, so they probably, you know, did the same thing. You know, did events and activities that promoted and helped Puerto Rican veterans. You know, I mean, I think that was their target, you know, in terms of helping Puerto Rican veterans and providing you know, again, another civic organization to help, you know, the process where Puerto Rican 13 �veterans would get together. Then you had the Puerto Rican Congress, which is another organization [00:21:00] that -- I think they were formed like in 1952 or ’53. And that organization also served the same role. Not the same role as the church, because the Caballeros, you know, it was more of a Christian, religious type of an organization, and they had all these different structures of -JJ: But they were huge. I mean -- CF: Oh, the Caballeros were huge. I mean, these other organizations were, you know, they were more kind of like grassroots organizations where people came in. Now the Puerto Rican Congress, what they did is, I remember they had the one building was on Larrabee and North Avenue. They might have been somewhere else before that, but that was like one of the first places. I used to play baseball with their little league team, and they were a lot into baseball. Now, it’s interesting because, you know, we’re getting ready to do -- there’s an exhibit that’s going to be displayed, I think in April, first, second week -- next week, as a matter of fact -- about the legacy of Roberto Clemente. It’s at the Smithsonian Institute. It’s one of two exhibits that are going to be [00:22:00] presented. It’s a traveling exhibit that they’re going to be presenting in Chicago. And so the Roberto Clemente’s going to be happening within the next week or so, and it’s kind of interesting. I mean, I’m thinking of going to the reception. I hadn’t really decided but, you know, the whole thing about Roberto Clemente not only being a great baseball player, but also, you know, the life lessons that he taught us in terms of being humble, being, you know, a person with a lot of pride, and being very proud of who he was, not only as a Black Puerto Rican, but as a great 14 �human being. So I think that, you know, that’s what we walk away from this life. That’s why he actually was so revered because, you know, the guy even gave his life, you know, going, you know, getting on this plane, and that was kind of like suicide because he would have checked the plane, you know, the guy who actually got Clemente to hire him, you know, had a defective plane. [00:23:00] And the plane, you know, had not been, you know, it’s terrible what happened. He could have avoided from going, from dying. JJ: So basically what happened to the plane? CF: The plane, as soon as they took off, it, you know, and the plane was like -- JJ: It was loaded with what? CF: It was loaded with supplies, you know, because of the -- they had an earthquake in Nicaragua. And Clemente had been there like maybe the year or two before to play baseball in the Pan-American -- not the Pan-American, but [La Serie Caribe?]. He went to play then. He said the people were a little beautiful, so he actually wanted to give back. So he got on this plane, but the plane that -- the whole story is that the guy who actually heard Clemente, you know, trying to look for a plane to take supplies and, you know, he knew he had a defective plane. And so he told Clemente, “Yeah, I can do it. And you can ride with us.” And that plane was loaded up, it was defective, it was like -- so as soon as it took off, it just went down. And they never recovered his body. But [00:24:00] that whole thing of actually learning from him about how you -- I mean, a lot of us learned a lot of things from him. One of the things that I learned in life from him is that -and so a lot of people also because Clemente was also criticized because a lot 15 �of, you know, the American media kind of felt that he was a hypochondriac -what’s the word that I can’t -JJ: Hypochondriac. CF: Hypochondriac, where he was always complaining that he was hurt and stuff. But he used to hate to give interviews because of the language barrier. He couldn’t speak English as well, and so what the media would do is they would actually verbatim repeat what he would say in broken English. And, you know, and kind of like was making fun of him. And he kind of didn’t really care for that kind of stuff. So he actually stayed to himself to a lot. So what happens -- and I can relate to that, because I know that a lot of people -- I hear they think that -[00:25:00] they confuse, you know, your integrity and your self-respect and the way you conduct yourself with being arrogant, you know, and that’s not the case. I mean, even African American ballplayers who would criticize Clemente that he was never, you know, a communicative guy. Well he couldn’t, you know, he couldn’t talk to them. He couldn’t really communicate with them because he had language barriers. But also, this whole thing about this pride and this integrity and the self-respect that you have, a lot of people sometimes confuse that as you being a showoff, or you think that you’re better than anybody else. No, that’s not it. It’s that, you know, you had a certain pride. I mean, one of the things I’ve learned, if I get kicked out of somewhere, I don’t go back. I mean, I learned that from my mama, you know. I take my pride and walk away. You just don’t walk away from -- you know, keep coming back and then slapping in your face. So that was the kind of thing you learned from Clemente, but I was going to go to the 16 �event and actually tell people [00:26:00] that traditionally that’s our sport. You know, Puerto Ricans have always traditionally -- they’re baseball folks. Not in comparison to the Mexican community, which their main sport is soccer, right? So the Clemente thing, I was just going to say that Clemente had a great influence on our baseball thing, but in 1959, we also had the history in Chicago. In 1959, there was a team from the Puerto Rican Congress that won the national championship. A lot of people don’t know about that, but in 1959, there was a team that entered into a tournament in the Park District. They won all the way up the ranks. They won all the things, the state championship, and they ended up representing Chicago in the Midwest, and they played in Dayton, Ohio. I think that they played the championship game with a team from Birmingham, from Alabama somewhere. And they beat them for the national championship. I mean, I hear stories about -JJ: They were from Lincoln Park? CF: [00:27:00] Yeah, some of them were from Lincoln Park, exactly. You had people like [Benny Torres?], [Rigby Lleya?], you know, [Mochito Alves?] was one of the managers on that team. There was, you know, a bunch of guys that were very talented that came out. So you know, obviously that’s [an accomplishment?]. A lot of Puerto Ricans don’t know that. And we had people out here who are now in charge of our history who don’t talk about that kind of stuff, and those kind of things are important to tell folks about. So, you know, and then you had people -because, you know, you had a kid right now. His name, I think, is [Victor Cruz?] or something, who actually played with the Mets. He actually went to Clemente 17 �High School. So there was a product that came out of that. But we also had people like Benny Torres, Rigby Lleya. We had [Ephraim Valentín?] who was one of the Valentín brothers who actually -- who were assigned to a major league contract including this guy [Reynaldo Ramos?], [Bobo’s?] brother, who spent like two years in the minor leagues with the Yankees, [00:28:00] you know, who were like teammates together. So it’s kind of interesting that we’ve contributed to the betterment and growth of the city. You know, so in ’59, here we are, national champions of an amateur baseball tournament that a lot of people really pay no attention. And there are stories about the little second baseman was real short. He’s in the hotel, and there’s this big old white guy who was saying, “Hey, you must be the bat boy.” And so the little Puerto Rican second baseman says, “Okay, I’ll be the bat boy.” So when they’re playing, the guy hits the ball way out there, and he's running the bases, and he’s telling the guy, “I’m the bat boy you were talking about yesterday.” Those are the kind of stories -- because you know [Bob Medina?] also played on that team. And Bob Medina was one of the people that was involved with the politics in the city. He was a campaign manager and so forth. So he was also part of that whole baseball league. So we have a tradition and we have a history of things that we’ve contributed to the growth of the city. JJ: And that was with the [00:29:00] Puerto Rican Congress? CF: Those were the Puerto Rican Congress. So that was just an aspect. And then, you know, the Puerto Rican Congress later got involved with -- because they always worked with the youth. They was always trying to figure out different 18 �ways to channel that energy. And so then they got into the business of music, and they actually formed a music academy, and as a result, some of our top players now came out of that academy and are doing great things musically. Like there’s this guy named Edwin Sanchez who’s actually a piano player. He’s played with La India. He’s actually played piano with the Tito Puente Orchestra. He played with Jimmy Bosch. He’s played with a bunch of -JJ: He actually was married to my daughter, too, (inaudible). CF: Edwin? JJ: Edwin Sanchez, yeah. CF: No kidding. The piano player? JJ: Yeah, he’s the father of my granddaughter, yeah. CF: No shit. Edwin was? JJ: Yeah. CF: Wow. I didn’t know that. Because he’s married -- he got married -- JJ: I’m ending this interview. (laughs) CF: Yeah, because I actually -- he got married again. [00:30:00] I didn’t know that. JJ: Yeah, he got married again. CF: I didn’t know that. JJ: Yeah, Nyla is his daughter. CF: Ah, okay. Yeah, Edwin is one of those guys that came out and, you know, people like Mike Rivera, this kid that just died [Richie Biyo?] was one -- JJ: Yeah, [Damon Rodriguez?] was -- 19 �CF: Right, the [tres?] player, your cousin. Yeah, they were all involved. I mean, I had four of -- so he had came out with a bunch of bands. But a lot of the kids that came out of those groups are actually -- as a matter of fact, there’s this record company that actually just reissued all their albums called [Numero Uno?], the record label. And they actually wrote the whole history. And they actually -- I got into some shit with them, you know, because they were out to make money. It wasn’t a thing of them trying to produce [this thing?]. They all wrote -- make money, and they actually wrote a historical analysis of the whole music scene back in the ‘70s, and I actually criticized them because the actual what they put out was not [00:31:00] really the truth. You know, they were talking about the music of the bands from the Puerto Rican Congress were like the top bands out here and they weren’t. Because, you know, there were like bands even back in the ‘50s, the music bands that were like -- when we were kids, you know, [Un Maquaeño?], [Felipe La Grande Sonora?], there was a whole bunch of groups that were playing. And you know, these were like little kids. And so their sound was okay. It was mediocre, but there was already bands already in place that were playing [some main?] music. But that’s just part of the growth and the development of us living in the city. JJ: Okay, now what about -- were you familiar with some of the dances that St. Michael’s was -- CF: Oh yeah. They used to have -- you know, just to think about that, and it’s kind of interesting that. You know, and I actually asked Jesus Rodriguez about this, how the church would treat us [00:32:00] as parishioners. 20 �JJ: Who is Jesus Rodriguez? CF: Jesus Rodriguez was one of the leaders of the church, of the Catholic church in Chicago. He was [cursillistas?]. We used to have like [cursillos?] which actually were like religious instructions and educational retreats that actually would actually educate people on religious affairs. And so he was one of the [cursillistas?] and was also a leader in the band -- the band -- a leader in the church. And so he was involved in the St. Michael’s church and, you know, it’s kind of almost as close to a priest as possible because what they would do is they would have masses, and the priests were basically not -- they were not Spanish-speaking priests. So the priest would do the mass in Latin or in English, and then Jesus Rodriguez would actually translate, you know, what was being said. But the interesting thing about that is that mostly [00:33:00] all the churches would never allow the Puerto Ricans to have mass in the big church. They would always have us do, you know, trying to treat us like second class citizens. They would always have us have our masses either in the school building next door or in the basement of the school building. Never in the big church. And it wasn’t until years later that -- JJ: At St. Michael’s they -- the Puerto Ricans did not go to the -- CF: The main church. JJ: They had to -- CF: They went to -- they had mass in the building right next door, which is like on the side, remember? Because I used to go there. They said, “Get going.” I sent coffee for free, man. I would go there. I would go to the big church and then 21 �right after that I would go and get some donuts and stuff, and that’s how they -and they used to pack, you know, they used to have two masses. I think one at 10:00 and one at 11:00, you know, to accommodate everybody. JJ: So when you say pack, I mean, how many -- CF: I would say that each mass it was probably about 150, 200 people. [00:34:00] In one setting with the kids, the whole family, because it’s whole families church, you know. It’s the mother, the wife, the father, and the kids. And so they would all go to church. And then they would have the mass, and then they would go down to the basement. But never you would ever have church in the big church. It was never there. And it wasn’t until later, and then they would have, like, major dances at St. Michael’s, and they would have to have them in the gym, the high school gym. And that’s really where we had the dances, and people come out, and they -- JJ: Did a lot of people come out dancing? CF: Yeah, a lot of people came out to the dances. They, you know, had Black bands, and -- JJ: About how many people came out? CF: I would say three or four hundred people. They would come from other concilios just to actually support, you know, whatever fundraising event. So people would, you know, if the Concilio Numero Uno had an event, and you were from this Concilio, you would go there, and that’s how they began to share [00:35:00] with each other in terms of support. So it was kind of like a tight-knit family based on 22 �this religious order, religious influence. So Jesus Rodriguez was one of those people that actually was one of the church leaders. JJ: [And?] helped to organize the -- CF: Yeah, he helped to organize the thing at St. Michael’s, but he was also involved in the archdiocese. They had a committee called the Spanish Speaking Committee, which is actually a part of the archdiocese, and what they would do is that they would train and give training to Puerto Ricans that came. I think they even provided in some cases housing for them to live there -- you know, they were like single men -- to live there. And, you know, just basically helped people make the transition from the island to here in terms of understanding how things function around here. Because a lot of these folks that came from Puerto Rico, man, came straight from the countryside. You know, probably didn’t even live in the city in there, [and from?] the island. So they came straight from the [00:36:00] countryside to this big, major city. And you could imagine, you know, being lost if you didn’t have the right orientation. JJ: Okay, so now this is people that really were not going to the grammar school. They were going to public school, but they were attending the mass, and a lot of the activities in the -- CF: Yeah, because the -- JJ: But what was going on inside -- go ahead. CF: No because, you know, back in -- I mean, I don’t think people really could have afforded to send their kids to Catholic school. The ones that did, you know, because if you look at the average family back in those days, you probably had 23 �families that -- it wasn’t just a boy and a girl. You had five, six, seven. And my situation was the same situation for a lot of people where, you know, your family was like your father and your mother, and you had like maybe four sisters and three brothers, so it was like six, seven, or eight of you. So what the father would do is that he would leave to come to Chicago or wherever it is he was [00:37:00] going to come to the United States because it was basically -- I mean, as far as they went west was Chicago. You know, they’d start out in New York and then they’d start exploring other areas, you know, like Cleveland, Philadelphia, east Chicago, Lorraine, Milwaukee. And so the father would come first, and then he would send for the mother. And once he got settled, he would send for the mother and maybe two or three kids. And then the other kids would stay with their grandparents. I was one of those. Me and my young sisters were raised by my grandparents. And then later, years later, then we actually came. And that was the story of a lot of us that, you know, that the father and the mother could not afford to bring all the kids, so they brought them piecemeal by piecemeal, one or two at a time. And so you had families with a lot of kids. It wasn’t this thing of birth control or controlling population. It was like, you know, they come as they pop. They come as they pop. And so you had large families, so a lot of families [00:38:00] either the kids, what they did as soon as they turned to a certain age that they could work, a lot of them would drop out of school and go work with their father or in the factory distributing. JJ: Were they encouraged to work? 24 �CF: Well I think that they were encouraged to work. You know, I think that -- I don’t know. A lot of people would say, “Well, you know, education’s the way out,” but I think that a lot of -- in terms of people were living in such poverty that every little dollar helped. So as soon as, you know, and so the kid who was already 14-, 15, 16-year-old who came here and went to school. I mean, I have photographs of my sisters being like eight, nine, ten years old, you know, I have a class picture of them. And being in the same classroom were kids that were like 13, 14 years of age. All in the same school. So you know, you’ve got a 13-, 14-year-old, and you’ve got them going to class with kids that are eight, nine, and ten years old, after a while that’s going to frustrate [00:39:00] a young kid. JJ: Why were they -- CF: Because of the fact that there was no bilingual programs, and you actually had all these Latino kids in the same classroom. I don’t know how it was done, but you had kids that were like 13, 14, 15. By the time they got to be 15, 16 years old and they were old enough to work, they would just go work, and the figure, you know, “School ain’t going to do nothing for me. I won’t be able to catch up.” Plus, a lot of these kids also came from the countryside. And you know, that whole thing of orientation of, you know, pursuing education, higher education, I don’t think it was in the minds of a lot of these kids. And their parents did not know what -- many of them didn’t even finish high school. Even grammar school. I know my mom went to school up to the third grade. So yeah, you know, people that were uneducated, who did not know, had no sort of idea, but a lot of the parents did. A lot of the parents pushed for [00:40:00] you know, “My kids are 25 �going to do better.” And they kept pushing, and did all they can to make sure that their kids got an education and went on to high school and on to college and so forth. And so some -- it paid off for some of us. JJ: And what about St. Michael’s? You said you went to St. Michael’s High School. What was the population there? CF: Well St. Michael’s High School when I was there was like -- I was there ’65, ’66. It was, you know, it wasn’t coed. It was boys and girls, and it was really integrated. It was Blacks, whites, you had, you know, the Italians from Taylor Street. You had Puerto Ricans that were coming from, you know, because it wasn’t just kids from the neighborhood. They would come in from different areas. So you had the white kids, you had Italian kids, you had Black kids that came in from Cabrini-Green, and so people who could afford to send their kids there would send them. Because they had a grammar school and they had a high school. And so [00:41:00] it was an integrated setting. JJ: Okay, now going back a little bit during Newberry and that -- because there were -- we talked about the social clubs, but there were also neighborhood clubs, right? At that time. CF: Well the social clubs were the neighborhood clubs. JJ: The social clubs were the neighborhood clubs. CF: Right. That’s what I was talking about. JJ: Didn’t they call them street clubs too? They were -- CF: Well, you know, you probably had these clubs that actually -- JJ: I’m talking about like the Caballeros and the -- 26 �CF: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. You’re talking about the youth clubs. JJ: The youth clubs. CF: Yeah, the clubs that -- JJ: Those were different. CF: Yeah, those were different. Those were like made up of young youngsters -- JJ: And how did they form? How did they -- CF: Well, you know, you actually -- JJ: The Continentals, you were a member of -- CF: Right, right. The Continentals was a group of -- you know, basically it was a group of kids that hung out, you know, they hung out together, and they decided to form their own club. Now, we used to be the Continentals, and we used to hang out at Lincoln Boys Club. And, you know, it was [00:42:00] [Danny Rodriguez?], [Juan Columbus?], kids that hang out together and, you know, so Danny was one of the people that actually formed the Continentals, and it's kind of interesting because, you know, we used to identify each other with these sweaters. Our sweaters was kind of like the American flag. It was red, white, and blue, and we had an emblem, and the emblem meant something for something. So we used to -- it was kind of like an organized kind of thing where we had a youth worker from the Boys Club helping us organize ourselves, pay dues, bring in money, and raise money, buy our sweaters, do events, and so forth. So it’s kind of like a youth social organization. Then you had the YMCA where they had your group, the [Alloys?] were there. Then you had the older guys that -- and you know, I know a lot of people equate these guys with being 27 �gangs, but I used to call them clubs anyway. But then you had the older guys, which were the Black Eagles and the Paragons, and those guys, they formed because [00:43:00] of this thing of protection. They used to get beat up all the time, and they decided to form the groups, and they decided they were not going to take an ass whooping anymore. Because they used to get, you know, it used to be a lot of -- back in those days there was a thing with rumbles and, you know, knives and chains. It wasn’t this thing of automatic rifles and guns, and that’s how you get things done. You drive by and you shoot. Back in the days, none of us had cars. So you couldn’t do no drive-bys. JJ: Yeah, so you said that they were tired, they were not going to take this anymore. CF: Right, you know -- JJ: What were they tired of? CF: Well, you know, I think that there was a lot of conflict, you know, given the fact that we were moving into these communities that were already occupied by already other immigrants that had been here, Irish, Italians, Germans, and we’re coming into those neighborhoods because as we were coming in, a lot of them began to freak out. And they decided to do the white flight. You know, it was either Blacks or Puerto Ricans that were coming in, and they decided to move out. [00:44:00] But even the ones that stayed, actually they always felt that, you know, it’s like every immigrant’s got to shit on the next immigrant that comes over. And so, you know, a lot of these immigrants that, you know, that they went through the same shit that we went through. And even though we were American citizens, we went through the same experiences that a lot of immigrants went 28 �through. Back in those days, Puerto Ricans were being picked up and we were being held as immigrants because they didn’t have any papers. And, you know, we were getting treated the same when people realized and found out, “Well, these are Puerto Ricans. They are American citizens. They don’t need to have papers.” I mean, that’s documented for a fact, that a lot of Puerto Ricans actually experienced that. And they, you know, even though we’re American citizens, we got treated the same way as many of the immigrants are being treated today. So you had these things where, you know, the abuses, and you had -- and yet our parents would take that kind of stuff, and say, you know, “Don’t rock the boat. [00:45:00] We’ve come here to work,” or, you know, humble, quiet people. You know, they had that attitude. They didn’t want any trouble. But I think that the kids, you know, as soon as you became part of the -- and integrated into the society and began to form our little cliques and neighborhoods -JJ: And there were a lot of them. You mentioned several names. CF: Yeah, yeah, there was a lot of them. There were like the Latin Kings started, even though the Latin Kings had become a universal gang, you know, all over the country. But the Latin Kings started here, and they actually started, you know, in Humboldt Park west side. But back in our area, we had the Black Eagles and we had the Paragons. And those guys were kind of like older guys and, you know, we kind of looked up to them. But it was a thing that -- it’s not like today. Today you have this territory, and you had these, like, you know, “You don’t wear my color and I don’t wear yours.” There’s this whole thing about colors and so forth. But back in the days, [00:46:00] the older guys would look out for us, you know? 29 �And we actually couldn’t wait until we could be part of their thing. And so it was kind of like a family nucleus. JJ: So if you were in a different club, would they still would not fight against you? CF: They were not fighting against -- we’re not fighting against each other. I mean, the ones we were fighting against were the aggressive, you know, the white gangs, the Italian gangs. Like back in our neighborhood, we had that place called Roma’s, you know, Roma’s Pizzeria. And a lot of them white boys there, you know, they wanted to whip our asses and stuff, until the same thing that I was mentioning with the gypsies, they came out, and they would kick our asses. And then all of a sudden, we became the majority, and we actually had -- we shut them down. You know, they got shut down, and so -- but there was a lot of conflicts back in those days, so a lot of the guys actually formed these clubs in order to protect themselves. And they were not about to do, you know, like, take a slap in the face and keep on walking. They were just going to confront. And they were young people, you know? And young folks are not going to take that [00:47:00] crap, you know? You get this -- think that you will live forever and no one could ever mess with you, and that kind of a thing. So I think that that’s how that whole thing with the social clubs. Now every social club -- the Black Eagles had -- back in the days, that was the thing, the sweaters, you know? Everyone had a sweater. The Paragons had the sweater. I think that they had the same color you guys had. They were black and purple. And the Young Lords are like black and purple. They were what, black and pink? That was the Paragons? JJ: Yeah. 30 �CF: We had red, blue, and black. The Black Eagles were black and white. JJ: Your colors were what again? CF: Blue, red, and white, just like the American -- yeah, with the stripe. And you know, the sweaters were kind of cool. That was what identified us, when you went to, like, you went to dances and you went to sock hops, we would have our sweaters folded, you know. It was just an interesting kind of a situation which is totally different from -- JJ: But people were not fighting each other. CF: No, ain’t nobody -- nobody was fighting each other. JJ: And you had said, you know, fighting against -- so it was like a [00:48:00] fight against the whites. CF: The whites, the Italians, whoever was kind of messing. And then later on, it just got crazy, man. It just got crazy. You know, the drug thing came about. JJ: So what does that mean? What do you mean, the drug came about? CF: Well you know, I mean, I think that we all noticed it when all of a sudden the country, you know, when things got crazy in the ‘60s in this country, you know, and all of a sudden you just saw a lot of militancy and a lot of radical politics, and everybody was up in arms. And all of a sudden, you began to see this influx of drugs in the community, man. It’s like all of a sudden people started, you know, you started seeing people getting high on heroin. All of a sudden out of nowhere, the heroin was kind of like, you know, and wherever it is, I mean, there’s a lot of theories. JJ: Was there a lot of heroin going around at that time? Or was it just -- 31 �CF: Well, it came about. It came about that in the 19-- mid-’60s, [00:49:00] ’66, ’67, all of a sudden these communities began to see a lot of drugs going into the -- JJ: (inaudible) there’s an epidemic of cocaine, and at that time there was an epidemic of heroin. CF: Yeah, heroin. It was a lot of heroin that was going around. It was cheap. You know, people were doing it. They’re smoking marijuana. There was a lot of alcohol. But a lot of it that I think did the most damage was the heroin. The heroin actually, you know, caught up with a lot of people, and a lot of people just went in and never recovered from it. And so unfortunately, I used heroin at one time, you know, back in the days. And I am not ashamed to say it. But I actually -- I guess I must have some good angels that actually guided me in the right direction because I could have easily become hooked too. But I chose not to go that route. But I know a lot of folks that went that route, and they used -- JJ: Well you also had an education that helped, too. Now you went -- CF: To what? JJ: Through the [00:50:00] St. Michael’s, and then you went and got -- CF: Yeah, yeah. JJ: Then you went to college. CF: Yeah, I did. But you know, but my education -- JJ: In fact, what do you -- you have a master’s degree? CF: Yeah, I got a master’s. But I didn’t use any of that shit. I didn’t use any of my degrees. JJ: But that contributed. 32 �CF: Oh yeah, yeah. I actually, you know, my thing was that I didn’t get up at St. Michael’s was -- JJ: You don’t think it contributed at all? CF: What? JJ: You don’t think that helped you at all? CF: Oh, it helped me. Man, I’ll tell you where it helped me the most. When we were part of the program. I actually went to, you know, like to me, I am actually working on a theme right now. I have a writing -- creative writing group that meets once a week, and we’re working on a theme on freedom right now. And so I wrote a piece as the group leader saying, you know, trying to remember well what is the first time that I really sensed freedom? Because freedom, you know, some people’s freedom are other people’s burden. Because you’ve got someone saying that, you know, I’m going to free this country. I’m going to build a railroad, you know, all the way from here [00:51:00] to the end of San Francisco. But that means that -- who’s going to build that railroad? You’re going to build that railroad, you’re going to make the money, you’re going to exploit the workers, and you’re going to bring in work, and you’re going to give them like ten cents an hour or a nickel an hour. You’re going to exploit them. And they’re going to build the railroad for you. And you’re going to take all this glory. So you have the freedom to do whatever you want to do. You have the freedom to scam and to rip off people. And so I wrote a piece about my first taste of freedom. And my first taste of freedom was going to grammar school and being in the same classroom, you know, throughout the whole day. In the morning, you’d be in the 33 �same. Then when you go to high school, all of a sudden, you go to different classes. You get out and you go to woodshop, you go to gym, and just like being in college. You have that independence. So with me, it was great shit. You know, you get to go outside and go to lunch, woodshop, and then at the rest of the day I would be cutting class with the rest of my homies, you know. Be out there, “Y’all, come on. Let’s go. Let’s go hang out.” [00:52:00] And so that caught up with me. So I got kicked out of Waller High School, out of the public school. So I got another chance, and I went to St. Michael’s, and I also got kicked out of St. Michael’s because I actually told a story about me being a bully. I was a bully. I used to take, you know, all the little white kids, and I would say, you know, “Give me your money or I’ll kick your ass.” So I would take quarters and dimes. I was like the tough guy, you know? And I was a really bully. I mean, I am sure that people see me now -- I mean, I’m just like -- I’m going to be 63 years old. But if people see me now, and they see me on TV doing all the stuff that I do, I’m sure that some of those kids that I actually took their money from when I was in school are saying, “That son of a bitch took my money. He actually bullied my ass,” you know? So I used to bully these kids. And one time, you know, and I used to work. I used to have jobs working at Tom’s Shoe Store, like on weekends, so I was always dressed up really well, and had money. I mean, I always worked as a kid. You know, I worked washing windows or [00:53:00] doing whatever. And I remember one time this kid came to me and says -- I got into a thing with a kid in the classroom, and so I told this kid to pick up, you know, so kick him and he knocked the books over. And I told him to pick it up. “Pick up 34 �my book.” So this other kid who actually happened to be another tough kid who actually happened to probably be in another white gang, told the other kid, you know, “Don’t pick up shit for him.” And so I said, “Oh yeah? I’m going to talk to you later.” So we went out to lunch, and I slapped this kid. And this kid said, “I’m coming back tomorrow and I’m going to shoot your ass,” you know? So I said, “Oh yeah?” So I went and I got all the guys from the neighborhood, Richie, [Bobokin?], all the young kids that, you know, were looking for a fight. I said, “Hey man, this guy said he was going to shoot me. So you guys are going to come down.” (This is a story -- I don’t know if you ever heard it.) So I actually had all these guys come down from the neighborhood. Because back when I was in St. Michael’s High School, this was like ’67, ’66, [00:54:00] they all came, and they all came the next day to the school from Armitage and Halsted and Sheffield, and but the kid never showed up to class. So these guys were ready to fight. So as soon as they let school out, those guys started beating up everybody. They beat up the nuns. They beat up the priests, beat up the students. They just -- anybody would kick their ass. So everybody got whipped that day. And so the next day they brought me into the office and said, you know, “You’re lucky we don’t call the police on you because, you know, what happened here yesterday was pretty bad. And so what we’re going to do is we’re going to expel you. We’re going to kick you out of school.” And that was just another strike against me. And so I was running out of strikes. So then from there, I got an opportunity to go to Argonne National Laboratory. And Argonne National, that’s when we were all there. You and a bunch of us, and it’s kind of interesting 35 �because I was just talking about that this week, yesterday, in that group meeting, in terms of how [00:55:00] it was back in the days, how we were freaking out. Because they used to call us hardcore students. JJ: What was Argonne National Laboratory? CF: Argonne National Laboratory was the national laboratory – (dog barks) hey, stop. It’s in Lamont, and this is where they actually [spotted the Chicago?], part of the atomic – (dog barking) stop! Part of the atomic energy commission. This was like where they split the first atom, and this was a laboratory out in Lamont. And they have an atomic accelerator out there. So what they did is they actually -back in the days, in terms of providing opportunities to minorities, young minority students, they actually set up a program there to help students not only finish their GED but also to get them some kind of skills in terms of learning how to work. Learning to work. JJ: This was for at risk youths. CF: Yeah, for, you know, for at risk -- (dog barks) hey, stop! For, you know, youth that were at risk. [00:56:00] So a lot of us -- we were all at risk. As a matter of fact, they used to call us hardcore students, or hardcore people. You were there. And so what they did is they had all these, like, minority young people going out there. You had members of the Blackstone Rangers, the Disciples. As a matter of fact, the [peace to our nation disciples?] when they were out there, they were in peace. Because you know in Chicago, they were at war with each other. So there were us, you know, and so I know the scientists were going crazy because every time they looked out the window, they saw these, like, you know, young 36 �Blacks and Puerto Ricans with berets and with different color sweaters, and they were trying to figure, “What the hell is going on?” But I actually took advantage of that program, and what I did is I actually signed up to be in the photo department. So at 17 years old in the photo department, they took me under their wings, gave me a camera. You know, I used to wash prints as a job, and then in the afternoon I would take classes for GED. I know [00:57:00] a lot of you guys did a lot of different things. I heard stories about you guys sleeping in closets and shit like that when you were supposed to be working. But you guys were abusing your privilege. But (laughter) you guys were abusing your privilege, but I took advantage of it because I actually had an opportunity to learn the skill of photography. And what I did is they gave me a camera and gave me all this film, and it was like really, really nice folks who were there. JJ: Who was the president or the teacher? CF: Well, you know, the guy who used to run that whole program was Mike Lawson. He used to be the guy who was in charge of making sure that he coordinated -- JJ: And where did he come from, Mike Lawson? CF: Mike, you know, Mike was kind of like a social worker. He was probably involved with the church, and that’s how we met him. You know, he was a youth worker with folks out here. So that’s how you got us all -- JJ: I think you grabbed me [and pulled in?] or something. CF: Who? JJ: You or somebody who was -- 37 �CF: It was Danny, I think. Danny was the one that got all of us in that program. So there was a bunch of us, you know. [00:58:00] I had photographs in that place, you know. I remember [Sexto?] used to be in there. You, myself, Danny, and it was so weird because I know -- I don’t know, there was a couple of times where we missed our rides or our buses and we had to go down to [U Chicago?] and grab the bus there to go there. But sometimes there was this brother there, this African American guy who used to drive. He was not part of our program, but he used to give us a ride. And the guy, you know, like before he’d go, he’d take a couple of swigs of vodka, and he’d be driving on the road, and he’d be late. So he’d be driving on the exit ramp trying to beat the traffic. It was crazy. It was you know, like, being young and, you know, you get into all those adventures and stuff. JJ: But it was while we were trying to get our GEDs. CF: Yeah, we’re all trying to get our GED, and I think it helped me a lot because then what I did is I left that program, and then I turned to junior college, to Central [YMCA?] college, and I actually eventually got my GED. Because I was almost like three months before [00:59:00] grad. When I got kicked out, I was going to be graduating three months later. And right before graduation, I got kicked out. So, you know, I went to [U Central YMCA?], and then from there I transferred to Northern Illinois University. And from there I came back to the city, and I went to UIC. Got a BA, and then I got a master’s, a master’s degree in criminal justice. But I didn’t use any of that stuff. I actually just used the education and I moved on and did other things. 38 �JJ: Now, the Young Lords came out, you know, were like more [to the actual ones?] they were one of the groups in the neighborhood. But then they kind of transformed into a political group. And it was right around that time that they -you know what I’m talking about. CF: Right. Well, you know, back in the time, I mean, as you begin to get older, you begin to get an education, you begin to be exposed to a lot of different things, and you know, this is the time that, you know, we had people like Malcolm X. [01:00:00] We had people who actually were really rocking the boat, you know, and the whole country was in disarray. The hypocrisy of this country was coming out, and it was being put on display. People were just kind of like just reacting, you know. The youth were rebelling against their parents, and they were rebelling against, you know, the status quo. Black people wanted rights. The whole civil rights movement. It was a lot of stuff going on. And so that also touched us, because we were part -- you know, it wasn’t that we were, like, separate. You know, we also had our own issues that we were dealing with, and one of the issues that we were dealing with was this whole issue of being displaced, being in a community that we had lived there for a long time. Because you know what? I mean, I don’t hardly hear this anymore, but the whole phrase of the hood. The hood. That’s the way we used to identify our community. You know, we’re going, “I see you in the hood. I’ll be back.” You don’t see that anymore because I don’t think people really have those ties [01:01:00] with neighborhoods now. Nowadays, you know, it’s like a lot of these neighborhoods are very, you know, people will live -- they live there three or four years, and then 39 �they move on. So there’s never really that relationship that you develop as looking at your community, as being part of your family, part of your home, your house. And that’s the way we looked at our neighborhood. You know, our neighborhood was this kind of neighborhood that, you know, like I said, when we would see people, like, far away, we’re on a [picnic?] you’d say, “Hey, I’ll see you back in the hood. I’ll see you on the block,” you know? And we knew when we were talking about the block, we would be back in the neighborhood. So there was this, like, emotional, spiritual tie to the community. And so -- but it was great. It was a great -- I mean, I really loved growing up in Lincoln Park. It was really, truly integrated, even though the majority of the people, after a while, after the ’62, ’63, ’64, it became more predominantly Puerto Rican. [01:02:00] It was still an integrated community, but the loving thing about it is that it was kind of like a village. And the village was that everybody looked out for everybody. Everybody knew everybody. I remember, you know, if I did something, you know, Luis, the owner of the grocery store, would say, “I’m going to tell your dad.” And shit, when my dad got home, you know, like he’d say, “Come here. Luis told me you did this.” You know, like, “And you better, you know, you’re punished,” or whatever. So it was that kind of a thing where people look out for each other, and, you know, kids would be out there playing. You have all, you know, Adams Playground. You had the People’s Park. You had that little Bauler playground, the little playground down Halsted. It was called the Bauler Playground. You had Arnold Park. So you had all these little, you know, Oscar Meyer, we would hang 40 �out. So you know, there was a lot of baseball, a lot of recreation areas that we could hang out. And it was a great place to live in terms of -JJ: [01:03:00] So you’re painting -- I’m looking at geography now. So you’re talking about the Bauler Playground on Burling and Armitage? CF: Right, Burling and Armitage. JJ: And then the Oscar Meyer playground all the way on Clifton. CF: On Clifton. And then you had the Adams Playground, which is right south of -beyond St. Theresa. JJ: Beyond St. Theresa’s. And then you were talking about the Lincoln Park. CF: Then you had Lincoln Park, which is the bigger park. JJ: So this is a big area that we’re talking about. CF: Oh yeah, it was a big area. JJ: And that’s primarily Puerto Rican at that time. CF: That’s primarily Puerto Rican, and it was even extended all the way up to Wrigley Field, up in, you know, right around -- JJ: Addison. CF: Addison and Halsted and Clark. And so, you know, Lakeview, Addison [Bill?], which is called Addison [Bill?] today, was up, even up in that area. So, you know, Puerto Ricans had expanded in all these areas, and so, you know, it was really great. You know, at times you felt like this was your neighborhood, [01:04:00] and this is the way you ran, and then all of a sudden -- JJ: So you mean like the north side of Chicago. CF: Right. 41 �JJ: The north. CF: It was kind of like the mid-north of Chicago, and then, you know, all of a sudden lo and behold, there was a lot of things that were going on where the city was doing all this planning. You know, we’re definitely, you know, this would probably be in the era of the Black Panther party. This is part of the radical politics. And, you know, and then we’re beginning to see the consequences that were taking place as a result of realtors and developers and speculators coming in and buying up property, raising the rent, moving people out. And after a while, you know, we began to see that this is the plan. There was a plan of moving people out, and this is how the whole thing with the Young Lords came about. JJ: And so you also became active within the Young Lords. CF: Yeah, I became active. JJ: So a lot of the different groups, also -- CF: Yeah, but I -- JJ: Because that was the whole community. CF: Right. But I was already, you know, [01:05:00] in order to -- to be part of the Young Lords is the thing, because I know that you probably had to talk some of the guys into it. Because a lot of the guys were, you know, they had to be educated. A lot of the guys did not have the discipline -- did not have the discipline of knowing, you know, what this is all about. All they know is like, “Hey, who’s fucking with us? Let’s go kick their ass.” JJ: Exactly. 42 �CF: That’s how, you know, I would describe it. I would describe these guys, and they were not -- I mean, I was already had begun to, you know, by the fact that I was going to college, I had begun to get exposed to a lot of these, like, writers and philosophers and activists and all kinds of different politics. It was a really easy transition for me to get in. So, you know, I jumped on board. Actually -- JJ: Well you were saying that for the other people, it was more they were just there because they had been in the Young Lords. CF: They had been in the Young Lord gang -- JJ: And they were kind of following -- CF: The Young Lord Club, not the gang. The club. JJ: Oh yeah, the club. And then [01:06:00] so they’re following the club structure. CF: Exactly. JJ: And then that’s why they were able to stay involved through the construction, but we also had other Young Lords that were already politicized. CF: Right, right. You had some that were politicized (audio cuts out) those get to the other guys. Not everybody got it, because not everybody actually fell in the cliques. A lot of people said, “You guys are crazy. You know, they’re nuts. Let me just go back and hit my pipe, and I’ll be happy, you know, with what I’m doing.” But I think that a lot of folks actually decided to jump on board, and then there was other people that came and jumped on board because of the fact that they couldn’t believe what the hell we were doing. I mean, they couldn’t believe that, you know, even the -- I mean, when you read this history, you know, you had [penal elements?] coming from New York that actually are individuals that 43 �already, you know, college graduate or attending college or who had a totally different experience because the Puerto Rican experience in New York [01:07:00] is a longer experience because they began coming there at the turn of the century. And all of a sudden, you know, you keep hearing about these guys, the Young Lords. They’re taking over churches. They’re doing all this fighting and politicizing. And so, you know, a lot of people took notice. And so you began to attract people also that were involved in radical politics who also came and joined the group. JJ: What were some of the things that the Young Lords did there that -- CF: Well some of the things that the Young Lords did there -- well I remember, you know, they’re taking over this church because before the church was taken over, I used to work in the church. I used to be -- there used to be a program called the Joint Youth Development Corporation, and that was run by the city. And at the church, at the Armitage Methodist Church, [Mochito Alvez?] was kind of like the assistant director, so we had a little center there. And I used to run the recreational center, the gym, and [01:08:00] I had all these kids playing basketball. And so I was already involved and doing social programming, you know, in terms of athletics. And so I was young myself, and so I guess I got hired because I used to play baseball with Mochito, and he got me the job. And so that was in college. So but then the transition came where -- and I remember the reverends that were there. It was kind of interesting. They had a reverend who was Cuban. His name was Herrera I think. JJ: Sergio. 44 �CF: Sergio. Sergio Herrera. And it’s kind of interesting because his dad -- they were Cubans. They were Cuban immigrants that came, and they actually fled the whole thing that happened in Cuba with Castro. And I remember one year -- this was before the Young Lords. This was a story that there was this white guy who also got hired to -- JJ: You mean before the Young Lords were political. CF: Right, right, right. Before the Young Lords even took over this church. So we had this guy who was crazy. It was some white guy that actually [01:09:00] came in. He was an instructor. And I guess he was actually teaching kids about expression. So he actually told people, “I want you to go up to people, and when you go up in front of them, just start screaming. You know, ahh. You know.” So they went and did that to Sergio’s father, and I thought the old man was going to have a heart attack, you know? Because they all went and started going like that to the old man. But it was just kind of interesting the kind of events that were going there. It was just purely social, you know. I used to, like, have the kids play basketball. You know, I used to get films about baseball. So there was nothing really political, nothing out of the ordinary. Just like, you know, being another boy’s club, another YMCA. But then the Young Lords came and they took over. And I remember the painting of the murals. That was like very interesting because it was the first time that, you know, we changed some murals on the wall that represented revolutionary figures. [01:10:00] You know, you had Adelita, who was a Mexican revolutionary. You had Pancho Zapata, who was another one. You had Emeterio Betances, Albizu Campos, and Lolita Lebron 45 �who were like, you know, revolutionary symbols. And then the biggest symbol was when you entered the side door, you had a big picture of Che Guevara. And at the time the Che Guevara picture was painted on the wall, the Herreras were still living in that church. They were living there. And I know they freaked out. Because they left Cuba running away from, you know, from this Communist tyrant, supposedly the enemy of the people, and all of a sudden, you know, here they’re back facing, you know, the same situation. But some of the programs that were actually being offered at that church were like health programs. You know, there was a health clinic that was provided because at the time, you know, a lot of the folks, even though you had the Cook County Hospital, [01:11:00] there was really not a lot of health programs out there. You know, infant mortality was probably at a very high risk. So we were providing people at least with a basic examination, a basic –- yeah. JJ: If you can hold that thought for one second, the health program. Okay, I just did want to ask you about [Samuel Herrera?]. Because yeah, I believe he was transferred later to Los Angeles or something like that. But so there was a Cuban congregation, you were saying, also? CF: I don’t even know what the congregation was, because I never went to the church. JJ: But he was Cuban, and he had just -- and he fled Fidel Castro. CF: Right. He fled. JJ: Now, did he ever talk about that? 46 �CF: Nah, he never really -- he never really got into discussion with him. He was a very mild-mannered guy. He, you know, and I don’t think he really wanted to rock the boat either. Because I don’t think he ever got into confrontation with any of us. So he never really rocked the boat. He came out of that whole Methodist church thing. And again, he was also working with the late Bruce Johnson [01:12:00] back in the day. So I know -- I don’t know what kind of relationship they had. I know that he was very mild-mannered with me, and so we talked, but we never really talked politics. But I did know that his parents and himself came out of Cuba. And I think he probably had already been here, because he already spoke English. But his parents had just probably had just left Cuba because of the fact that, you know, what was going on there. JJ: Were there a lot of Cubans in that area? CF: I don’t know -- no, there was not a lot of Cubans in that area. No, there was not a lot of Cubans in that area. It was mostly Puerto Ricans and Mexicans. But mostly Puerto Ricans. Cubans were, you know, not that many. And I don’t even know what the congregation was because I never went to church there. JJ: Getting back, okay, you were talking about the health program? CF: Yeah, you know, one of the programs that we established was a health clinic, and so basically you had some interns that were at the County Hospital, some coalitions were made, [01:13:00] and so they were coming in. They were providing at least basic examination. If they needed to make a referral to the hospital, they would do that. And so that was one of the services that were being provided that was not being provided anywhere. Because the only way people 47 �would even have any access to health is if they went to a private doctor or they went to the hospital. And in some cases, if they had no insurance, you know. So they would end up going to the county, or unless they got real sick, that’s the only way they would go to a doctor. But it was none of this stuff to do any prevention, you know, health prevention. I think that we began that whole process of trying to get people to start understanding that, you know, health is an issue that we should be afforded in terms of the people. You know, because without health, you know, you really have nothing when you’re sick. So that was one of the issues that -- one of the programs that came out of that. JJ: And how much did the people have to pay to -- CF: As far as I remember, it was nothing, [01:14:00] and it was real interesting because what they did is they turned the -- they turned some of the little rooms, they turned into like examination rooms. Like up in the office, there was one examination room. There was another examination room downstairs. And so basically, that’s how people came in. They came in whenever, you know, the clinic was open. People would come in, and they’d bring their kids. Their kids were checked, and if they needed any additional treatment, then they would be referred to the county or to another clinic or to a doctor. But it was bringing that basic health facilities to people in the community, which was unheard of because in the past, you probably would have to go to the clinic or go to a doctor, or you didn’t know how you were going. So that was one of the programs. The other program was this breakfast program. It was short lived. I used to run that program. And that program was actually adopted after the Panthers breakfast 48 �program. And we actually would get up in the morning. I had my sisters [01:15:00] be part of that program. We actually ended up cooking pancakes, and we actually, you know, had maybe about 14, 15, 16 kids that would come in before school. And we would feed them, and then we would actually not -- we would not give them any heavy dosage political classes. We would just do things like, for example, I would bring a map, and I would ask them, “Where in Puerto Rico is your family from?” “Oh, from Arecibo.” “Go up to the map and show us where Arecibo is.” You know, just real basic stuff in terms of creating conscious in terms of who they were as Puerto Ricans, right? And so that was that. The other thing that we also -JJ: I remember we would have crossing guards and all that. CF: The what? JJ: Crossing guards for the kids. CF: Well there was a crossing guard because the kids would stop in right before school. So they would be there like around 7:30. JJ: So the Young Lords would be the crossing guards. CF: We would be crossing -- make sure the kids got to the school because [01:16:00] they would have to go to either Arnold, or they would go to the other grammar schools in the area. So they would come in and get their breakfast. Then the other program was there was this relationship with the [people at the law office?] which actually opened at the same time. And so you would actually -- when everyone had a legal case, you would also refer them to the law clinic. So you 49 �know, there were some services that were being provided to folks in that community. JJ: And who was funding the Young Lords at that time? CF: Funding the Young Lords? Shit. You know, to be honest, that’s a good question. I think they were just getting funding from grassroots people. You know, we’re not getting -- there was no government funding. It was no, you know, no philanthropists were giving us, no foundations were giving us money. It was money that was coming in. I remember one time that we actually got donations because I mean, I still -- I think I still probably have letters [just towards?] the end of the Young Lords, [01:17:00] we actually were asking for donations of food. And I remember one time there was a company that brought in thousands, you know, a bunch of boxes of cereals, man. I don’t know if you remember that. And we had to get rid of that cereal because the rats were breaking into the boxes. And we had to start giving the cereals away. But we were getting like donations from stores, and dollars. And one time I even, you know, was the treasurer of the organization, holding onto all the money. Because what happened was that after a while, you know, our organization -- JJ: You’re the one that took the money, there? CF: I was the one that took the money, but I had to fight with a lot of you guys because everybody wanted money. So my thing was that after a while, things began to get a little shady because of all the repression that was coming down, and all the people getting arrested. JJ: What kind of repression? What do you mean? 50 �CF: Police aggression, you know. We were actually always being watched. It was always police cars parked. They were always taking notes. They were always watching. There was a lot of, [01:18:00] you know, confrontations with the police, and so what happened, every time that someone got arrested, we would have to go out there and try to get money to bail folks out of prison. That was the one way of how they neutralized the whole organization by actually continuing to have confrontation, arresting people, and, you know, having people arrested. And what happened to the point where a lot of people went underground, and I think you were one of those folks, is that you never, you know, kept your court dates. And so actually what they did is they issued fugitive arrest warrants for you guys for not showing up. And so you guys had to go underground, and that’s how the whole organization got neutralized and it got put out through that process. And you know, so you actually analyze all that, that how do you actually eliminate an organization is that you keep arresting the leadership and you neutralize the leadership, and the whole organization -- cut the head, and the rest of the organization just dies. [01:19:00] And so that’s what happened back in the days. You know, there was confrontations with the police all the time, you know. Even though, I mean, I heard stories about people throwing like, you know, we used to fight with water balloons. I mean, people on top of the church throwing water balloons at the cops. Somebody told me a story that they remember. I think when the church was taken over, they were throwing water balloons at the cops from the church. JJ: I don’t remember that. 51 �CF: Somebody told me that. They had some videos on that. But I never -- they never materialized. But those were some of the issues that -- the other interesting thing about this is that you had, you know, there was this whole movement of like there was the political representation, the aldermen and all the other folks that were in the city, who were actually demonizing us. You know, they actually -- I mean, because that’s another tactic of, you know, you’re either [01:20:00] with us, or you’re against us. And so if you’re against us, then we have to, like, demonize you. We have to make you look like you’re terrible people, that you’re going to cause harm to us, you’re going to cause harm to our neighborhood, our society. So there, you know, was all this fearmongering, or mongers going out and creating fear within the neighborhood. You know, like the aldermen, you know, was actually trying to pass ordinance trying to make sure that more repression or more laws or rules be placed against us because of, you know, like loitering rules and loitering laws. Because they kept saying that we were criminals. But in reality, how can you be a criminal? We are kids that grew up in their neighborhood. The people that live in their neighborhood are our families. So how is that family going to be afraid of us? Which was a key thing. That’s what backfired on them. So they could have actually continued this campaign of trying to discredit us, but, you know, we were part of that neighborhood. You know, people would know who we were. [01:21:00] It wasn’t like we just, you know, came from another planet and planted ourselves in that community to try to make changes. We were a part of growing up, and growing up in a community, and actually reacting to some of the consequences that were 52 �going on. And that was that whole gentrification and displacement process that began to happen. And that’s how, you know, you begin to get politicized with how the organization begins. And I think you started this thing when we came out of prison, and got this education, and then you tried to get everybody else on board. So that was the lesson to be learned. It was a short-lived lesson, but again, it was a life lesson. You know, and my life lesson is I tell people, “There’s nothing you can’t do if you were to put your mind to it,” you know? And you know, when I go out and I talk to young people, I mean, you know, you try to give kids an inspiration about what we did back in the days. Because nowadays, you know, [01:22:00] you’ve got all these organizations, and you’ve got all these groups, and there’s also things that you can fall back on, you know, so you’re not out there by yourself. I mean, we were out there. It was just us. And it wasn’t, you know, we were really faced with danger. I mean, some of our people were killed. It wasn’t a game. You know, the cops were serious. They was, you know, like the mayor, the order was shoot to kill. They were shooting to kill. You know, and they were not, you know, the majority of the police department were mostly whites. And they used to practice, you know, the tactics that were like very oppressive. They would pick up, you know, some of our guys and would actually drop them off in neighborhoods where the white gangs were. You know, they were doing this stuff all the time. And you know, I get it. That was making a comment with people, you know, needing to learn and to know about their history. A lot of these police officers and firemen that we had in the city department -- as a matter of fact, the new fire chief that just got appointed 53 �[01:23:00] fire chief in Chicago, he’s this Puerto Rican guy that’s been on the force for a long time. But, you know, back in the days, there were no Puerto Ricans. You know, hardly any Blacks in the fire department and the police department. They even had an age requirement, a height requirement, that to be a policeman you had to be a certain height. That was discriminatory because height has nothing to do with whether or not you can do the job or not. And it was just another obstacle from keeping us, in terms of being involved in the process, because if you look at a lot of Puerto Ricans and Latinos, we’re not tall. We’re short people. And so that whole requirement was fought, and it was fought hard. And people went to prison. People, you know, shed their blood. People shed their lives so we could open some doors to let folks like the guys that are on the police department and the fire department today. So a lot of these guys think that because they’re named Rodriguez and they’re good looking and they got a job on their own [01:24:00] they don’t understand that people fought for them to have their jobs, and they need to take that into account and appreciate what was being done back as a result of our movement, of our struggles, to open the doors for them. So. JJ: Okay. Later on, you were also involved with the whole question of AfroCaribbean, Puerto Rican -- CF: Yeah. I did. I mean, I think that the, you know, I wanted to -- JJ: And what are the other things -- CF: Yeah, well, you know, I went to school to -- I went to UIC -- JJ: (inaudible) 54 �CF: I went to UIC and I got a master’s, and I was out there, you know, trying to figure out what was the best for me. I even went to law school for like a year and a half at DePaul. That didn’t work out. I went and got a master’s in criminal justice. That didn’t work out. But I had already been to school, man. [01:25:00] I had already been exposed to that whole political process, that whole thing of radical politics and being involved, and being a radical myself. And so that drove me to who I am today in terms of dedicating my life to making sure that you fight discrimination, you fight exclusion, you fight all the oppression and all the things that keep people back. So, you know, throughout my whole career, I mean, I actually -- when I went to UIC, I actually got arrested with a bunch of folks, like 40 of us got arrested because we took over the president’s office. This is like right after the Young Lords. I had already started going to college, and I remember going -- me and [Scott Lopez?], [Rory Guerra?], [Rudy Lozano?], [Danny Solizo?], the aldermen, [01:26:00] got [Roberto Torres?], there was a bunch of us, like 40 of us. We went to meet with the president of the U of I, and we decided we ain’t going nowhere until we get a commitment from you that you’re going to, you know, recruit more Latinos in the school. Because we were there, but we wanted to make sure that when we left that there would be more people behind us. Because that was the whole thought process, you know? We tear the doors down, and we keep the doors open. And so the whole concept behind that whole boycott, that was I think in 1973 that we got arrested, was to make sure that the school would actually have a program that would recruit other Latinos. As a result of that, there’s a program called LARES, which is called the 55 �Latin American Recruitment Education Program at U of I. And it’s been there. It came out as a result of that struggle. So, you know, our actions have resulted in some positive things. So it wasn’t all done in vain. So everywhere I went, you know, I actually got involved. [01:27:00] You know, when I was in law school, we had a thing called the Latino Law Student Association, doing the same thing again. You know, we’re here, but if we make it fine, but we’ve got to keep that door open. And the doors have been maintained open. At least they tried to close it, but we actually had a little crack that, you know, it’s not closed all the way. And so I think a lot of, you know, a lot of people, a lot of people that went to law school, a lot of people that got degrees should understand that at one time, there was a lot of racism and discrimination that wouldn’t allow for them to go, you know, to go to school and to take advantage of those educational opportunities that are out there. So I kind of want to feel that I’m one of those that have, you know, that have contributed to making sure that these institutions, you know, have taken place. Like institutions like ASPIRA and [01:28:00] other groups that actually flourished afterwards. So it has, you know, it has been a thing, you know, where either I have actually got involved with the -- I went to work for the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission after I went to -- got out of college. And there, I fought, you know, we were fighting employment discrimination under Title 7, and so I actually went into government (audio cuts out) [us to get?], to fight racism under employment discrimination. And that was - and I did about ten years of that, but I was always involved with stuff that I was learning. I would always come back to the community and say, “We could do 56 �this. We could do that.” Got involved, during the time I was working with the commission, got involved in the Harold Washington campaign, which is an interesting, interesting thing. I mean, I was like -- I mean that was kind of like the highlight of this whole issue where we actually just turned this whole city upside down and created history by electing the first Black mayor of the city. And that was a hell of an experience of [01:29:00] being with that. And I remember when Harold got elected, when he won the primary, it was like -- it was an interesting thing because I remember working out of an office on Kinzie. Francisco DuPrey was there, [Antonio Delgado?], it was a bunch of us, and I remember everybody left the office the night of the primary, and you know, Jane Byrne had some gangbangers working, you know, with this guy [Correa?], and, you know, had some folks. And you know, I thought we were going to get shot one time, you know, because it was me and about three or four of us left. Everybody had gone to the primary party down at the McCormick, and these guys walked in. And you know, for a moment they got really scared that, you know, that these guys were going to retaliate. But -- because that, you know, they looked at it from the point of view of, you know, it’s us against them. You know, they didn’t see it as a political thing. It’s like, “Our guy lost, and now we’re going to shoot you.” You know, that kind of a thing. [01:30:00] So -- but that in itself was an interesting -- I mean, it was like the euphoria that was in the air, I’ve never seen it, you know, people in the street hugging, and people that didn’t know each other. I mean, it was really a sense of a great victory that actually came down. And as a result, we began to take advantage of it, you know. I know you gave one of your 57 �speeches. I remember seeing you up there at the Puerto Rican parade on the Harold Washington -JJ: I introduced Harold -- CF: Yeah, when you came and you gave an address, and you were talking about the Sandinistas, and I was saying, “Shit.” You know, I tried to, you know, we’re like talking, you know, this is a community festival, and he’s over there talking about oppression and the Sandinistas, and it’s because that was, you know, the time the Sandinistas were also there. So yeah, that was kind of -- JJ: You were in the audience? CF: I was in the audience, because that was -- I was in the audience, and I was like -- JJ: How was that? I mean, how was that -- CF: Oh no, it was well received. You know, it was well received. The whole thing with Harold being there. JJ: And everybody was wearing buttons, the Young Lords. CF: [01:31:00] Everybody was wearing the Young Lords button. I remember that Willie Colon or Tito Puente was the guy -- JJ: Willie Colon. CF: It was Willie Colon that was actually presented there, and so it was a hell of a thing. But we actually began to get involved. We got involved on, you know, I became a member of the Latino Commission. Through that, we began doing all kinds of different hearings. We got this whole program on infant mortality in the community. We began, you know, challenging resources into our community. We began to open doors for people to get into the political process, where people 58 �today, you know, are now congresspeople. They’re aldermen. One guy, he used to be the head of the commission just finished running for mayor in Chicago after being a state senator. So there was a bunch of us that actually took advantage, who had been involved in this whole struggle that actually became involved and just took it to another level and began to start heading departments [01:32:00] and getting involved in terms of creating things in the community, you know, like the Humbolt Park Vocational Center became one of those things that you actually brought to the community. So we began to actually open doors so people could begin to start taking, participating in the process. But that all comes from that Young Lords experience, that beginning way back then. So. JJ: Any final thoughts? Anything you want to -- CF: I don’t know what else the hell I could say, man. Besides the fact that I’m still fighting out here. You know, like, you know, because at this time I tell people, “Man, I should be right now, I just turned 63. I should be somewhere in a rocking chair, you know, drinking like coconut water out of a coconut.” But shit, the struggles continues, man. There’s always -- there’s never -- you know, not only you have to fight, you know, the other forces, but now, you know, my biggest force or now my biggest enemy is my own people. Because now you’ve got a bunch of folks [01:33:00] that are now they have the name of [Miguel Juan?] and [Rosario?] and they’re like the worst because what they did is they learned -they get elected, and then they go on and they learn to become politicians. And all they do is they only look out for their own selves or their own hidden agendas. And so the [dumb folks?], in a way, have kind of created an obstacle, even 59 �though they do talk about that they’re there for the people. They’re there for themselves, and they’re there for their bosses, you know, the political bosses. And so they take orders, marching orders, from the folks. And so, you know, unfortunately, you know, back in the days in this community, when we had politicians by the name of Pucinski, [Holowishka?], and I think I made this comment before, we had a community. All of a sudden, you know, we actually elect people by the name of Juan, Maria, and José, and our community is gone. You know, we’ve been displaced. Everything has been totally, been gentrified. You know, even today, [01:34:00] in the year 2012, the community I live right now, I’m probably the last of the Mohicans living on my block. This used to be all Puerto Rican in [Lincoln?] Park. And the same thing with Humboldt Park. That’s gone. You know, just about. Puerto Ricans have scattered all over the city and gone back to the suburbs. They’ve gone back to other neighborhoods. So the whole process of gentrification still goes on. I just don’t think that you have that kind of a movement that we had back in the days -- at least a movement that unifies everybody for the same cause. You’ve got folks out here that are running organizations, that are actually projecting and focusing on their own hidden agendas. You’ve got political figures out here who take orders from the Democratic organization who are sometimes probably our own worst enemies. And you’ve got folks that actually are cutting deals and doing things for themselves, and not, you know -- so the community has grown [01:35:00] really, really fast. But I don’t think that you have the same kind of issues back in the day. I’m still getting with issues. I mean, my latest issue has been this issue of 60 �given the fact that one out of every four Latino is someone of African descent, you know, my thing has always been -- and I’ve been fighting this for the last two decades -- is, you know, we always talk about, “Well, no, in my country there’s no discrimination. We all get along.” You know, it’s like -- but if you really look at it, you know, Black folks, Afro-Latinos, people of African descent that are Latinos had been ignored and had been treated like invisible people when we’ve been here all along from day one. We built this damn country. We built the infrastructure. And they got free labor not only here in this country but everywhere. In Mexico, everywhere. They brought all these Black folks to come in because of the fact that the Indians couldn’t cut it, so they had to bring in some labor to, you know, dig up not only [01:36:00] the sugar and the stuff. They were looking for that gold. So they actually brought in some heavy folks. So you know all this time they’ve been treating us as we don’t exist and that we haven’t contributed to anything. But we’ve done, and we made a lot of contributions, and so my biggest fight right now is in trying to get people to acknowledge those contributions and to begin to treat us with the respect that we deserve to be treated like, as Black people. And so, you know, one of the things that really bothers me is this whole image of what a Latino looks like. When you look at the media, and I get sick and tired of looking at the damn TV because every time you look at Spanish TV, even the American commercials, and they portray a Latino, we all look the same. We all look like you, Cha-Cha. We need, you know, real Black people. Like you look like a white boy. You look like a -- you look like a white boy. You know, all these, like, white-looking people. There’s no one ever 61 �that looks like me on TV unless you look at a reality show. Then you begin [01:37:00] to see. JJ: My mother told me I was going to be a lawyer. Okay. CF: Yeah, okay. Yeah. Well -- but that’s one of the biggest things right now. So that’s actually taken a lot -- gotten a lot of steam, and I go around and I talk to people, and I, you know, people, you know, all of a sudden, you know, you’ve got people talking about the relationship between African Americans and Latinos. Well hell, their relationship has always existed. Ain’t nothing new. You know, if you really, really, really -- you know, even the whole issue of Marcus Garvey and Arturo Alfonso Schomburg back in the mid -- the last century, you had all these relationships that existed between Latinos and African Americans, and so we just have to explore and look at our history, and basically that’s what we did. But I’m done, bro. JJ: I appreciate it. END OF VIDEO FILE 62 � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/ceae7017cfbea99f450ab72b953d1483.mp4 2ed86ff96f452dc475ba5cc13e822a39 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 Carlos Flores 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 Chicago (Ill.)--Política y gobierno--1951- Artes, Puertorriqueños--Illinois--Chicago Renovación urbana--Illinois--Chicago Relaciones raciales 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_Flores_Carlos Title A name given to the resource Carlos Flores video interview and transcript Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Flores, Carlos Description An account of the resource Carlos Flores is a cultural activist who lived at La Salle and Superior in the La Clark barrio, growing up on Armitage Avenue. He takes pride in relating that his family was “the last of the Puerto Ricans to leave Lincoln Park” and recalls life in Lincoln Park which included his share of minor street battles as a teen member of the Continentals Social Club. Mr. Flores also fought for Puerto Ricans as a full fledged member of the Young Lords. Mr. Flores served on the Chicago Mayor’s Advisory Council on Latino Affairs, under Harold Washington. This council was first set up in 1983 by the Young Lords and four other Latino representative organizations city-wide soon after Harold Washington was elected the first African American mayor in Chicago history. 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 Chicago (Ill.)--Politics and government--1951- Arts, Puerto Rican--Illinois--Chicago Urban renewal--Illinois--Chicago Race relations 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 2012-03-29 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/30cb63a01e6addba8972f2d1b7130dcf.pdf 8532ac07605ae66986da98dea49ab3ec PDF Text Text Young Lords In Lincoln Park Interviewee: Carlos Munoz Interviewer: Jose Jimenez Location: Grand Valley State University Special Collections Date: 5/19/2013 Runtime: 01:05:02 Biography and Description Oral history of Carlos Munoz, interviewed by Jose “Cha-Cha” Jimenez on May 19, 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 JIMENEZ: Okay, Carlos. If you can give me your name and where you were born, and where you work. CARLOS MUÑOZ JR.: Okay. Right. My name is Carlos Muñoz, Jr. I was born in El Paso, Texas in 1939. The particular day, it is August 25, 1939. I am the son of poor Mexican working-class immigrants, undocumented at the time. And my father was from Chihuahua, Mexico, my mother from Durango, Mexico. They came during the Mexican Revolution of 1910 as children. And the revolutionaries at that time would drop off their kids at the border there in El Paso so -- to keep them safe from the violence of the revolution. My mother’s father, my grandfather, was one of Pancho Villa’s generals [00:01:00] and he was assassinated the year my mother was born, actually so -JJ: (inaudible)? CM: His name is [Calixto Contreras?], General Calixto Contreras. And so that was my maternal grandfather. And I was born in El Paso and when I was 12 years old, we moved to East LA, East Los Angeles, California where I was raised. And I’ve been in California ever since, since 1952 when I was 12 years old. JJ: Can you describe or what do you remember from that experience in East LA? CMJ: Yeah. When I was in East LA, we lived in all the barrios there were -- there were different gangs in the streets. Since my mother died when I was three [00:02:00] and my father remarried, my stepmother and I didn’t get along so I wasn’t home too much. And I became part of gang life. And I’m lucky to be alive today, 1 �actually. The kids that I grew up in East LA with either wound up in prison or dead. JJ: What do you mean? CMJ: Well, there was various gangs. The one that I was the most-time member of was the Olive Street Gang in a barrio called Bunker Hill. That was right in the boundary East LA/downtown LA area and that’s the one that I was really the longest and the one that I walked away from. At the age of 15, I got tired of fighting and decided that I was going to do something different with my life. And I decided to play baseball instead of hanging out in the streets. So then I started in high school. [00:03:00] I became an athlete and a pretty good student. And then I graduated with honors from high school. I was the only quote, “vato loco,” end quote, that graduated with honors. “Vato loco” at that time for us was a reference to those of us that were products of the barrio, products of gang life in the barrio, which is now known more like homeboys. That was the vato loco designation at that time. JJ: Was the barrio always that Chicano, Mexicano or...? CMJ: Yeah. Where -- in East LA at that time, I got there in the East LA area in general, it was predominantly Mexican, I would say, 95 percent Mexican. And there was a clear demarcation, East LA and downtown LA were all Mexican, 95 percent, in terms of ethnic/racial groups. And then southern -- South Central LA [00:04:00] at that time was all Black, Hollywood/West LA was all white. It was kind of like you know, that kind of a demarcation. Nowadays, you go to LA and man, it’s a mixture of Central American and Mexican. It’s no longer just Mexican. This is a 2 �result of the civil wars and revolutions that were fought in Central America in the late ’70s and early ’80s. A lot of political refugees came over and they would taste (laughs) East LA, too, or South Central LA. But now, it’s been a whole different ball game, a whole different landscape in terms of racial and ethnicity and backgrounds of people in LA. JJ: But you said the first place you came to was in Texas, in Tejas, in Texas. CMJ: The first place, when we got to East LA? JJ: Before East LA. CMJ: Oh, before East LA. In El Paso where I was born, in El Paso, yeah. I was born in El Segundo Barrio in El Paso. JJ: What was that like? CMJ: And at that time in El Paso, [00:05:00] talking about segregation, it was all segregated. Mexicanos or Mexican Americans, we all lived on the side of the city that was close to the bridge to Juárez, Mexico and that was El Segundo Barrio. And then the downtown LA was kind of like the boundary. When you passed downtown LA, it was all white. JJ: In El Paso, Texas. CMJ: In El Paso, Texas, it was all white. And below the downtown center, it was Segundo Barrio, and that’s the way El Paso was when I -- between the ages of 1 and 12 when I was born, so it was... And when I went to East LA, it was kind of similar but not quite as segregated. JJ: So how many brothers and sisters? Were they born here or...? CMJ: I’m the only one. I was a real weirdo growing up because all my friends had 3 �brothers and sisters. As you know, Mexicanos, Boricuas, and all of us have a lot of big, extended families. [00:06:00] And my mother died when I was three so my stepmother couldn’t have kids so I don’t even have brothers or sisters that are half. So I was -- I grew up by myself, yeah. So I was the only one that had that background that I knew about. (laughs) JJ: Okay, so then, okay. So now, you’re in East LA and you’re starting -- you’re in school? You’re... CMJ: Yeah. I went to Belmont High School in downtown LA that it was the first time in my life that I experienced an environment that was mixed. You know, kids from different walks of life and races. We were the only school in the whole city at that time that had foreign students. So consequently, in the student body was kids from all over the world there. Mexicans, Asians, Europeans even, Africans, Hawaiians, Polynesians, and [00:07:00] so it was -- it was a good experience. Because I realized, “Wow, you know what? There’s other people in the world that I can relate to.” So my best friend, actually, was a Japanese American that was a part of the only gang in LA that was a Japanese American gang. [Baby Black Ones?] they called themselves. So he and I kind of grew up together in high school and I learned Japanese from his parents and he learned Spanish from me. (laughs) Which came in handy when I went in the military when I volunteered draft after high school. Mm-hmm. Oh, let me give a story about high school that I just thought about. It’s important to capture the historic moment that I was growing up. During the 1950s when I was in high school, segregation and racism was pretty bolder. Even though the school that I went to was mixed, 4 �[00:08:00] if you were Mexican or Black, you automatically -- if you were a guy, you automatically got put into the Industrial Arts major. Woodshop, you know? That kind of thing. Not the academic major. And so I was asked when I was making the transition from junior high or middle school to high school, I was asked by my white counselor what does your father do? And I said my father works with his hands. Cheap labor. Construction. And she told me, “Okay, well, that’s a very honorable profession. You should follow in your father’s footsteps.” So anyhow, I go home that day, “Pa, pa, guess what? I’m going to follow in your footsteps,” and he got very angry. I was going to say another word but I guess I better keep it clean with the language. He got very angry and he told me, “Mijo, you go and tell that SOB that I don’t want you following in my footsteps. I want you to work with a pencil.” My father only got about a fourth-grade education. So to him in his mind, working with a pencil or not having to [00:09:00] work with a pick and shovel was a major improvement. It was, to him, success. He wanted me to finish high school and become a person that worked with a pencil. So I went back and told this counselor, “Yeah, you know, my father doesn’t want me to follow in his footsteps,” I said. “So he wants me to work with a pencil.” So she says, “Hm, work with a pencil.” So she says, “Okay, we’re going to put you in a business major and that way, you can become a used car salesman or something like that.” “Okay, sounds cool.” So I go to my first class. It was a typing class and all girls, right? All the girls had the typing class. And so I was really happy because I’m the only guy and all these girls, right? And I learn how to type. And I didn’t realize that at the time but it saved my life later on when I 5 �was in the military because it got me out of the combat zone and I got to work in an office typing. And so I was able to get a high school diploma in [00:10:00] a business major which did not give me the courses I needed for college. I never took chemistry, algebra, science, those courses that are needed to go into college, so have to go to a community college to make those courses up. So I was trying to -- when I graduated, I went to community college and I picked -- I couldn’t find an algebra class so I took a class that was called geometry. I didn’t know what geometry was. But it sounded like algebra and so I became part of that class. For the first time in my life, I was beginning to flunk a class because I had always gotten good grades. Even though I was a street kid, I still like school and I was doing good in school. And so but then it kind of hit me. “Maybe these white people, maybe they’re right. Maybe we Mexicans don’t have what it takes. Maybe we are intellectually inferior,” you know? So I began to question my ability intellectually. So I dropped out of college and I volunteered draft. [00:11:00] This is just before Vietnam broke out. So because I learned how to -JJ: So you volunteered? CMJ: Yeah, I went to a draft. Yeah, there was no war. JJ: Oh, it was a draft. Okay. CMJ: Draft, volunteer draft. Yeah. And in those days, it was mandatory that you served in the army. There was a draft, right? So you’d have to sign up for the draft. But I decided, “You know, I don’t want to wait. I want to go and get it over with,” so this place called volunteer draft means that you let the draft board know, “Hey, I want to go now. I don’t want to wait until I’m called.” So I decided to go in 6 �and get it out of the way. I didn’t know what was going to be happening down the road. So because I knew how to type, to make a long story short, I would up in army intelligence in the G-2 section typing stuff like that. That was no big deal. I’m in intelligence and I didn’t even know what it meant. But that was just -- it was a typing job so I was pretty happy there. And they sent me to South [00:12:00] Korea. And in South Korea, I began to get you might say a sense of something was wrong. Because even though I was a poor kid from the barrio, I was programmed to be very patriotic, I was programmed to believe the myth of democracy, that we had a democratic society, that we represented the best in the world. JJ: I was going to ask you that. So you were -- at that time when you joined, you were very patriotic. CMJ: Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. I just want to serve my country, right? But in spite of the fact we were victimized by racism and all of the other stuff. But growing up, you don’t think about those things. You just assume things are the way they are. So I didn’t question anything like none of us really do at that age. So I went in the volunteer draft to serve my country. So anyway, to make a long story short, I wind up -- I was trying to be a killer like all soldiers, combat-ready and everything else. But because I knew how to type, they put me in army intelligence. So I wound up going to South Korea and become part of the Korean Military Advisory Group. [00:13:00] So when I was there, it was a coup d’etat in 1961. And I started thinking, “Wait a minute. If I’m an “American soldier” defending democracy, why am I being ordered not to try to stop this coup d’etat because it’s 7 �a democratic government?” So here we were as an army, as another -- as a democracy supposedly putting into power a military dictatorship. It didn’t make sense to me. Because something is rotten somewhere and I didn’t -JJ: This is South Korea? CMJ: It’s South Korea. So that began -- I began to question what I was doing there and begin to think something was wrong. Oh, I was 20 years old. What did I know, really? I wasn’t that political yet. But it was my first time in my life that I began to think politically in a way. This to me is a contradiction. I’m here to protect democracy in this potential country, an ally [00:14:00] of ours, and at the same time, I’m allowing a military dictatorship to take power and not do anything about it. So it didn’t make sense to me. So then, at the time Vietnam started happening, it was a secret war in 1962. And so I -- they wanted me to volunteer to go to Vietnam to become one of the first military advisors, set up a Vietnam Military Advisory Group since I was in the Korean Military Advisory Group. And by that time, I started questioning because I was getting -- my job in the intelligence office was to gather all the reports from the CIA coming in, documenting them and then passing them to the general’s office. But I started reading this stuff, you know? So something -- man, we’re going into this country. And again, another democracy supposedly. And where do we go in -- we’re going to go in there and become part of a war there. It doesn’t make sense [00:15:00] to me, you know? So I refused to go to Vietnam. Instead, I was quote -- I wasn’t court martialed because they couldn’t court martial me because there was no public war going on so they could not accuse me of being a disloyal 8 �soldier. Instead, I got two weeks of prison and let’s say kind of a insubordination kind of a charge. Article 15 they called it which doesn’t go on your record when you get discharged. So I got discharged with an honorable discharge which later on qualified me for the GI Bill to go to college. So I got out of the army and the first thing I did when I got out, I joined the Vietnam Veterans Against the War organization and I became an activist against the war as a veterano, as a veteran. And so that was my real transition to being [00:16:00] an activist and beginning to get very political. And then my next -- after that -JJ: Who was leading it at that time? What was -- CMJ: John Kerry. JJ: Oh, John Kerry? CMJ: Senator John Kerry. JJ: Vietnam Veterans Against the War? CMJ: Yeah, yeah. Matter of fact, John Kerry was one of those Vietnam veterans who got a medal of honor, actually, in Vietnam when the combat started really heavy. He was wounded and then he, when he served his duty, he became part of the anti-war movement because like me, he didn’t agree with what we were doing over there. A lot of us; Not just him and me, but you know, a whole bunch of veterans beginning to question what we were doing there. And so all these veterans together begun to get organized so we got to speak out against the war. And although I didn’t serve in Vietnam because I refused to go, I still got classified as the Vietnam War-era veteran meaning that I was in a combat [00:17:00] zone so at that time, we all qualified for the GI Bill so I got to know these guys. And so when John Kerry and others organized the 9 �movement against the war, I joined up. So John Kerry was one of the Vietnam vets that took all their medals off and threw them over there in a protest action in the steps of the White House. In the 19- -- it must’ve been in 19- what, 1966, ’67, around there. And so he was a real hero to me because this guy, this is damn courageous what he’s doing. Of course, later on he became a politician and nowadays, he’s part of the ruling class apparatus, right? But for that moment, he was a good radical, a good anti-war activist. So that got me going. And I haven’t stopped since. I’ve been an activist. I’ve been out there speaking out against the war, speaking out against racism, [00:18:00] sexism, you name it. I’ve been doing it and I’m still doing it. Right now, I’m involved with -- I’m a member of Veterans for Peace and we represent the anti-war movement in this country. And I’m also a part of the immigrant rights movement. I’m a member of the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights in Oakland. So I’ve been an activist ever since. But to go back after I got out of the military is that when I got back, then I went back to school with the GI Bill. And at that time, there were very few of us Mexicans in the area going to school. So we decided -- I started looking around to see if I bumped into any other students that were Mexicans or Latinos and I couldn’t find any. But eventually, little by little, people started coming out of the closet. People got, “Okay, I’m not -- [00:19:00] I’m not Spanish American, I’m not Spanish, I’m Mexican. Órale.” You know, “Friday, let’s get together. Let’s get organized.” JJ: This is recently. CMJ: This is in 1960 -- late ’60s. JJ: Late ’60s, okay. CMJ: So in ’67, we founded the United Mexican American Student organization and I 10 �became a president of that organization. And so then we started thinking about, “Well, you know what?” By that time, by the way, the farm worker movement had started so Dr. King, of course, and the Civil Rights Movement was going strong. So we were being inspired by Dr. King and by Cesar Chavez. And on top of that, there was all kinds of revolutions happening in the world. So we were all connected to all that and we were all being inspired by all the action going on out there against US imperialism and colo- -- anti-colonialist movements as well as here at home civil rights and farm worker rights and so forth. [00:20:00] So we decided to do something that had not been done yet. We looked at each other and said, “You know? We’re supporting all these revolutions, we’re supporting the civil rights movement, we’re supporting the farm working movement. What about our own backyard, the urban barrios? What are we doing there? We’re not doing anything. We got to do something. So we got to start our own movement.” So we started to organize and say, “Well, what can we do to organize a movement? We can start with the schools.” Because all of us, we looked at each other, we all had a hassle to try to get what we got. We were not put into academic tracks, we were -- we had to deal with that vulgar tracking system, a racist system that kept us out of the universities. So we decided to organize a movement against racism in public schools in East LA. So we did that in 1968. JJ: Was that the walkouts? CMJ: Yeah. So then in 1968, we started doing that and we had an organizing committee that I was a part of. [00:21:00] To make a long story short, we pulled it 11 �off. We had -- it became -- there’s a document in my book. We had the -JJ: Can we see the book for a second. CMJ: Yeah. This is the book here. It’s called Youth, Identity, Power: The Chicano Movement and I document all this history I’m talking about right now that -- okay? And I became part of this organizing effort and we -- our concern was to make demands to the school board that we wanted -- we didn’t want racist teachers anymore. That we wanted to get our own teachers in there. That we wanted the classes that need to be taught about Mexican culture and Mexican history and about the role that we played as a people about developing the United States of America society, right? So all of that took place. It was a segregated schooling situation [00:22:00] so it was also anti-racist and anti-segregation. So we pulled it off. Thousands of kids walked out of the schools in East LA. JJ: But I mean how did you go about (inaudible)? How did you organize the -- how did you lead that? CMJ: Yeah. Well, what we did -- yeah, how we organized it was okay, we went out into the community and talked to parents. Talked to the people in the labor movement out there, in unions. Talked to them about what we thought was important for them to support us in trying to do this. To put the demand -- oh, we were asking for nothing revolutionary, really. But really, what we wanted to do is to have -- is to make a change in the educational system so that Chicano kids and Mexican kids could have access to a college, to be prepared for a college. You know, very reformist kind of thing. JJ: Did you have a petition or I mean how did you...? 12 �CMJ: We had petitions signed and all that. [00:23:00] And yeah, we did that. And but more importantly, we had parents join in our organizing efforts and say -- so they talked to other parents. The high school kids talked to other high school kids. So we had a different -- a whole network going on throughout East LA and other parts of LA city, as well. And so then, we -- during the month of March, we pulled it off. We started saying we were going to have a walkout, we were going to call it the blowouts to get everybody out of the school, to march to the school board, make these demands which we did. So we had all of these kids coming out. We didn’t expect it to be that great. We thought if we could get a handful of kids out, maybe some pickets and all that, we won’t be -- but man, oh, just about all the kids walked out. And in that whole week’s time, it took -- we stopped -- we brought the school system to a stop. Kids were walking out every day and over 10,000 kids walking out every day. [00:24:00] It was a very historic moment that we didn’t realize it at the time, mind you. Nobody had written a book like this yet? (laughs) We didn’t know that what we were doing was historical. It was just something that we had to do to start the struggle, to make sure that we were going to be org-, organized throughout the Southwest. So we pulled it off and sure enough, walkouts in East LA became our Selma, Alabama in a sense. They started the Civil Rights Movement in the South, we started the Civil Rights Movement in the Southwest. And that we called it the Chicano Movement. Pretty excited that we could talk about Chicano power, Chicano meaning to us a reconnection to our Indigenous past. Chicano, we defined it as a label, a name that came from Mexica. Mexica culture in Mexico, the original, you know, the 13 �Aztec, known as the Aztecs. So out of the Mexica came [00:25:00] Mexicano, Mexico. So that’s Mexico today, right? The name, the word Mexico. So we said, “Okay, so we’re going to be Mexicano.” Well, we’re not Mexican so we’re Chicano. You just cut out the M-e. We were born in US, okay, we can’t be Mexicanos because we’re not Mexican, we’re Mexican Americans. So we’re going to cut it short, Mexi, we’re going to cut that part out and it’s Chicano only, right? So we went through a lot of discussions about this but we decided that Chicano would become our new identity. That represented rejection of assimilation and basically, it represented the decolonizing of our people. Because we learned about the history, the true history, of how we got colonized. How the Southwest used to be Mexico and there was this war that was fought that the US made against Mexico to take over half of the Mexican [00:26:00] nation and territory. So we sort of begun to redefine ourselves as colonized people as opposed to “Americans,” right? So that’s what we did. Now, what happened after that, after the walkouts, about a few weeks later, 13 of us unbeknownst to us through secret grand juries and also through the freedom -the COINTELPRO. The FBI counterintelligence program that we did not know at the time was involved with these secret proceedings of indictment. I learned that later on after I became a scholar and I did the research. Based on the Freedom of Information Act, I was able to get all these documents about how the FBI had been spying on me and others -- those of us that were organizers. And so we got arrested, we got put into [00:27:00] prison for -- on the charges of conspiracy to disrupt the school system of LA city, of Los Angeles. And -- 14 �JJ: Right after the walkouts? CMJ: Right after the walkouts. A few weeks after the walkouts. JJ: You said 13 people or... CMJ: Thirteen of us, 13 activists. And I was -- there were two of us, we were leaders of UMAS. I was one of them, the other was Moctesuma Esparza from UCLA and myself from East -- from Cal State LA. And then Sal Castro, a high school teacher, may he rest in peace. He just passed away a couple of weeks ago. A dear friend of mine and comrade. And so 13 of us were indicted for conspiracy. And so we were put into prison for a few -- about a week or so. And then we went out on bail. In my case, the American Civil Liberties Union [00:28:00] bailed me out and then everybody else had other lawyers. So we were all facing 66 years in prison for the crime of organizing the walkouts. So after that, that added fuel to the fire. JJ: Sixty-six years. CMJ: Sixty-six years. Looking at it, you -- listening to it now, you say, “That is ridiculous. (laughs) That’s absurd.” But back then, it’s like a [mash?]. It’s a long time. JJ: And these were people that had no previous records or... CMJ: No previous record. We’re all activists, you know? But again, it was part of the COINTELPRO, a program that they decided that they would go after us before we -- in other words, at that moment in history, the FBI had its hands full with the Black Power movement and Civil Rights Movement, white radicalism, anti-war and all that. So they didn’t want to have a Brown front emerge, you know? And - 15 �JJ: They had the Young Lords. (laughs) CMJ: Yeah, they had the Young Lords in Chicago and [00:29:00] the Young Lords in New York eventually. So they didn’t want to have what happened in ’69 a year later, the unification of the Young Lords with the Chicano Movement that took place in Denver, Colorado in ’69. They wanted to prevent that but we still did it eventually. But our indictment representing was adding fuel to the fire because a lot of people out there who thought we were being too radical by having these walkouts. Then we got busted and they learned about -- that’s unjust because we were not -- we were not doing anything revolutionary or communist-inspired like the FBI said. So people got angry and became quite supportive so the movement was built all over the Southwest. A year later in ’69, in Denver, Colorado, there were walkouts. In 1970 in South Texas, Crystal City, Texas, walkouts. So walkout became the means to generate the movement. [00:30:00] I mean, the people asked because that was the big issue of education that everybody could relate to, you know what I’m saying? That we just want to a better school for -- better schools for our kids. You know, we deserve that. We deserve that, all of our generations, my father’s generation, World War II, we fought in wars, we fought in wars for this country, and we still came back and we’re still not first-class citizens. “Ya basta,” we said. We got to do something different. So that’s what happened. That’s what made me a revolutionary for life, really. JJ: And then your father was born in Mexico. You were born here. And now, you’re 16 �a Chicano and he’s a Mexicano. But when you describe it, it’s really the same people. Some people are kind of confused about that. CMJ: Yeah, yeah. Right. JJ: So how -- when did that begin for you to feel that you were separate or (inaudible)? CMJ: Yeah. Yes and no, yes and no. What happened was, [00:31:00] okay, the question is what happened after we proclaimed ourselves Chicano? How did our parents who were Mexicans relate to that? Well, they couldn’t relate to that. We would have arguments with our families. And I was told, “Well, you’re Mexican, man. You’re not Chicano. What is Chicano, anyway?” So I tried to explain it to them and basically what we said to them was and what I said to my parents was being Chicano is being proud of our Mexican heritage. That’s what it means. The only difference is that because we were not born in Mexico, we wanted to make clear that even though we were not born in Mexico, that being Chicano meant that we were proud of our Mexican ancestors. And specifically, our Indigenous ancestors. We wanted to reconnect and that was a way we wanted to reconnect. We no longer wanted to be Mexican American, hyphenated Americans. At that time, it was hyphenated. I explain that in my book. We wanted to be just [00:32:00] Chicano or Chicana in case of women. So -- but there was a time when there was no understanding but eventually, they caught on eventually. Okay, now we understand. But initially, it was no -- it was kind of a problem. (laughs) But eventually, it was cleared up. But even it was hard to do that. So anyway, after the out on bail -- we’re out on bail, see? And it took two 17 �years in the courts. There’s a book entitled Racial Injustice and that deals with our case. It was written by a law professor at the law school. Racial Injustice. JJ: But I mean, who wrote the book? CMJ: I’m trying to remember -- I can’t remember the guy’s name right now. It’s in here. JJ: (inaudible) Racial Injustice. CMJ: Racial Injustice, yeah. [00:33:00] And so that documents our whole case. What happened, what we went through in terms of the indictments for conspiracy and all that. JJ: Can you give us a little (inaudible). CMJ: What was that? JJ: A little bit of what took place with the kids. CMJ: A little bit of what took place when we were indicted? JJ: Yeah, it’s in the book but if you can give us an idea of what -- CMJ: What happened was in other words, it begun -- the court proceedings started so preliminary to trial. And our lawyers collectively made us little legal strategies to prevent us from going to trial right away instead to try to get to the supreme court. The state supreme court, not the national supreme court. So they put all kinds of legal maneuvers. So eventually, it got to the state appellate court which is the one below the supreme court and it took two years for that to happen. And so when that happened, then basically, we were found [00:34:00] innocent by virtue of the First Amendment to the US Constitution freedom of speech. So like I always tell people, I guess the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover, didn’t realize that Mexicans were also covered by the First Amendment. So that’s what happened. 18 �But in those two years that we’re talking about our legal case going on forward, there was also a lot of other stuff going on. We organized -- well, actually, the party -JJ: Can you explain how that came about? CMJ: Okay, so then in the 1969 Denver conference -JJ: You said we. Who were the players? CMJ: The players are the Crusade for Justice led by Corky Gonzales, United Mexican American Students that I was a part of, MAYO, Mexican American Youth Organization from Texas, were the main players here. Brown Berets from -became the main players. Brown Berets became main players during the walkouts because they were part of the organizing [00:35:00] effort. It was basically the organization that we decided in the walkouts that would be our -- the security. There would be -- in the case the cops attacked us, the -- we needed the Brown Berets to be there to defend the kids from getting hurt by the cops. And they said, oh. So the Brown Berets became in the image of the public one of the most militant groups at that time. So that ’69 conference, they were also a part of that. They were key players, as well. JJ: Who were the leaders at the time of the Brown Berets? CMJ: David Sanchez at the time was the Prime Minister of Brown at that time. Now, by that time, I was already teaching. I started teaching at night. After I got out of prison on bail, I started teaching (laughs). I was a first-year graduate student and we didn’t have -- at that time, we didn’t have any Mexican Americans, not that many Mexican American scholars. There were only five in the social sciences, 19 �for example. And they [00:36:00] were older guys and they didn’t know anything about Chicanos. They didn’t want to be part of our Chicano studies plans. So we had to, out of our own ranks of students, we had to come up with a faculty so I was one of those guys. Since I had been a leader at UMAS, I was asked to be the guy to build the Department of Chicano Studies, the first one in the nation. So this is happening in two years. JJ: You were asked to build the first one in the nation, the Department of Chicano Studies? CMJ: Yeah, right. JJ: So that was the first version (inaudible). CMJ: Yeah, yeah. JJ: This was in -- CMJ: At Cal State Los Angeles in 1968. JJ: But you formed it, you made it. CMJ: Yeah. JJ: And then others followed after that or...? CMJ: Yeah, after that, there were others that came up. They followed. By 1969, there were three things -JJ: Who asked you? Who asked you? CMJ: UMAS. JJ: UMAS. CMJ: See, in other words, as students UMAS, we made demands to the administration that we wanted to have a Chicano Studies Department, okay? And Black 20 �students did the same thing. [00:37:00] So it was a Black/Brown kind of unity thing going on and so we gave them these demands. And so the administration, “Okay, okay, we’ll do it, we’ll do it.” Because we had -- it was right after the walkouts. There was a lot of mass movement going on out there so they didn’t want to say no (laughs) for obvious reasons. So we got the department but then with no faculty. So in order to staff the department, you need faculty. So I was picked, two of us were picked, to be the first “teachers” or faculty in the department part-time. We were full-time grad students and part-time faculty (laughs) because we didn’t have our own faculty. So the first thing I did as “department chair” was to recruit -- try to find throughout the country Mexican American scholars that had PhDs. So it was kind of hard to find. But anyway, so to go on, this is all happening in a two-year period, from ’68 to ’70, right? (laughs) All this stuff going on. Sixty-nine, the following year, the Denver [00:38:00] conference and then at the Denver conference, Plan de Aztlán was produced. JJ: What was that? CMJ: Plan de Aztlán was a manifesto. JJ: And who produced that? CMJ: Well, it came out of that conference. It came out of the Crusade for Justice Conference. And so that manifesto called for x number of things that we in the Chicano Movement are committing ourselves to finding this revolutionary struggle to create not only better schools but our own schools, our own political institutions, our own economic institutions, et cetera. So the political institution 21 �thing, we thought about -- well, at that time, we didn’t think about a party, per se. But after the Plan de Aztlán was put out, then we started talking about, “Well, you know what? We can’t do all of these things we’re demanding or calling for. Let’s take one at a time. Let’s take the more important one.” We need -- we were at that time in history, we were not representing a political process. [00:39:00] We were all underrepresented. We didn’t have our own elected officials and that kind of thing so we decided to create our own political party. So we called it La Raza Unida party. JJ: Before we go onto La Raza Unida party, can you describe -- because this is where the Young Lords came to Denver for the first time. So can you describe how that conference was organized and what took place during those days? CMJ: Yeah. The conference was organized basically by the Crusade for Justice, okay? And the Crusade for Justice under the leadership of Corky Gonzales were the folks that put it in play. They’re the ones that kind of -- the logistics and stuff like that. And then UMAS, the Brown -JJ: And why did they (inaudible)? CMJ: Because they had the facilities. It was the only -- the Crusade for Justice was the first civil rights organization to be created in the US. Okay? JJ: Of Chicanos. CMJ: Of Chicanos. That was in 19- -- [00:40:00] I think in 1965, Corky Gonzales founded it. So they had funds and they had their own building, okay? So they the ones that says, “Okay, look. We got this building, we got these funds, let’s have it here in Denver. We’d be happy to host it.” You know what I mean? So 22 �that’s how it came about. And so then, the word started putting out all over the place and the Young Lords were invited. We wanted to have a Latino unity thing, as well, to start moving forward to come up with this plan of action that will result -- not only with the building of the Chicano Movement but also with establishing an alliance with other Latino organizations like the Young Lords. So the Young Lords attended and were represented. And so from that moment on, we were connected in terms of political actions that were there. So whatever the Young Lords did in Chicago and New York, eventually, we were in solidarity with. [00:41:00] We were publicly -- were publicly supported and vice-a versa. Whatever we did over here in the Southwest, the Young Lords would also support it. And eventually, the Black Panthers and other militant people of color organizations. That was the thing that we wanted to build. But in the meantime, the main thing is to build in our own backyard and get our own folks involved in organizing. So the party was the way that we thought at that time we should do it. So La Raza Unida party was in a way a culmination of the Chicano Movement. So we went from con- -- we went from the walkouts to other walkouts to the conferences at Plan de Aztlán, and also to another conference in Santa Barbara after the Plan de Aztlán that I was also a part of called Plan de Santa Bárbara where we put together a manifesto demanding access to higher education for Chicano kids. [00:42:00] And to open up the doors to these institutions that historically had been closed to us. So this is where I decided that my future work was going to be to build Chicano studies in the university which I’ve devoted my life to doing so far. And so when we were “released” from being 23 �indicted and all that, then that’s what happened. So okay, so here I am. I got my PhD, I got my -- I was out on bail and got my (laughs) PhD when I was out on bail. And so then I became one of the handful of PhDs in the country so I -JJ: One of the what? CMJ: One of -- a handful of PhDs that we had. One of the first ones to get a PhD and therefore, I was able to do the work that I’ve been doing. JJ: Now, the -- so it started in Los Angeles, the Chicano Studies Department. CMJ: Right. JJ: Now, did you move to other states or cities? CMJ: Yeah. So there were -JJ: Were there funds [00:43:00] connected to do that or...? CMJ: Yeah, well, basically for the most part, it was California, Chicano studies. California was the first place where Chicano studies grew pretty fast. And then in Colorado, it started in Colorado, and then New Mexico and then Texas. But the Plan de Aztlán -JJ: Because I think after then is when we have the Puerto Rican Studies. CMJ: Yeah, right, exactly. JJ: So it was -- I think it’s right around the same time. CMJ: Exactly. So that was -JJ: It was kind of born. CMJ: Right on. So there was also this interaction going on with the Puerto Rican students, Puerto Rican student groups. So yeah, eventually, it became a nationwide thing so it’s still going on. It’s not as radical as it was when we started 24 �it. Because as I write about in my book, there were -JJ: Why has it changed? Why do you think it’s changed? CMJ: The change happened because it -- becoming part of the university [00:44:00] -see, our plan, my vision -- I keep talking about myself. My vision was I wanted to develop a paradigm that was in opposition to the dominant paradigm, you know what I mean? The dominant theories, the dominant methodologies, the dominant history. I wanted to play a role in developing within the university our own paradigm that dealt -- that was com- -- that competed against the other one. We wanted to decolonize the study of our people. In the context that we took it in our own hands, we’re going to write the authentic, the true history. And not the racist history that was being done at that time. Okay? So that’s what we did. And so then, but it differed in terms of degrees of political involvement. It wasn’t -across [00:45:00] the Southwest wasn’t exactly the same. There were differences here and there in terms of how they defined Chicano studies. But for the most part, there was common ground at that time. But now, even now in the 21st century, things have changed completely. And those who have become professors were not products of the Chicano Movement or the Boricua Movement like we were. They were products of a system. We didn’t have enough faculty to take over a whole university, (laughs) right? So consequently, people that are now teaching are more interested in career as opposed to community engagement, for example, community involvement. JJ: Career for themselves? CMJ: Yeah. 25 �JJ: Or for -- not for the student. CMJ: No, for themselves, yeah. There is a careerist kind of process that goes on in higher education. In other words, people are concerned about becoming experts and all that and they’re not concerned about what we were, my [00:46:00] generation, is concerned about is -JJ: What were we concerned about as this -- CMJ: What we were concerned then was to become organic intellectuals. What I mean by organic intellectuals is that organically connected to our communities. In other words, where we saw our research being the kind of research needed by our communities to empower our communities. You see what I mean? As opposed to what’s happened now for the most part is doing the research to publish books about our experience which is okay. JJ: So what is -- what -- that’s a good point. So the research is the research to empower the community. Can you kind of define that a little bit? CMJ: Yeah. Okay. What I mean by that is okay, research, for example, the issues that our communities face. Take one that is happening -- continues to happen today. Police harassment, you know? [00:47:00] How the system of injustice -- in other words, redefine the system of justice as a system of injustice. And begin to understand that what’s going on in terms of police community relations has not been good for our communities. So what they’re really finding in terms of community control of the police or how can we empower our communities to take on the police in a way that sort of redefines the relationship between cop and street youth. But it continues to be the case that we were not able to succeed in 26 �that way. How are you going to produce cops that are going to be sympathetic to a community when you have an institution of the police that’s a military institution, really? It’s a militarized institution. So that means you got to take on the whole societal [00:48:00] thing so make a revolution out of that. So that’s what we wanted to do but it’s easier said than done. Because those of us doing the kind of research like that could not get our books published, for one, at that time. My book, for example, was rejected by every single publisher. I had to go to England to get it published. Verso Press is a left wing publisher in London. So this is where this was published because it was too radical, it was too -JJ: What was that book, the book again or...? CMJ: My book? Youth, Identity, Power. JJ: Youth, Identity -- hold on a second. Okay, Youth, Identity, Power: The Chicano Movement? CMJ: Right. JJ: Okay. CMJ: So I was told, for example, by publishers this is not something that a political scientists writes because my PhD is in political science. So it’s not something that a political scientist writes. [00:49:00] And so it’s not -JJ: Your teaching is in political science. CMJ: Yeah -- no, no, Chicano studies. JJ: Chicano studies. CMJ: Yeah, right. I never taught in the political science Department. I didn’t want to. I wanted to create something new. Something that would be corresponding to 27 �what the needs of the community were. JJ: And today, the professors are lapse of that understanding. CMJ: Yeah, so today, we have people in the Political Science Department -JJ: (inaudible) they were putting in every teacher they got. (laughter) CMJ: Yeah, right. JJ: So the professors today are not engaged in the way that -- CMJ: Yeah, they have different -- they’re more theoretical now, for one. To be “respected” as a scholar nowadays, people think they have to be theoretical. And I don’t have anything against revolutionary theory but (laughter) or other theories but I don’t have any sympathy for it. But the point that I’m getting at is that it’s the nature of the institution to perpetuate the status quo. [00:50:00] Ando so there is very little room allowed for a revolutionary scholar to publish her work or his work as readily as others. There’s more opportunity now because not only do we have left wing presses. At that time when I got my book, it was -- Verso Press was it. And now they got different -- there’s other -- plus we have our own publishing houses now, too, Chicano. Arte Publico is one and I think there’s another one. I can’t remember off-hand. So now, we’re able to get more books published because -- but in those days, it was not possible. So basically, the important thing is that the name of the game has changed. The society has gotten more conservative, reactionary, and consequently, it’s been difficult to have a left perspective or a radical perspective pronounced or be visible as much as it was back in the ’60s. [00:51:00] And this’ll be -- I guess that’s what’s going on. 28 �JJ: Now, you’re not teaching now. You said you’re retired, semi-retired? CMJ: I’m semi-retired. I’m still teach -JJ: Where do you teach at? CMJ: I teach part-time. JJ: Where? CMJ: At UC Berkeley. JJ: UC Berkely. CMJ: Where I’ve taught at before (laughs) so yeah. JJ: For how long? CMJ: Well, I started teaching at the University of California in 1970. So I’ve been teaching since 1970 for the University of California and Berkeley since 1976. So my first job was at UC Irvine from 1970 to 1976. Then I went to the University of California Berkeley in 1976. So I’ve been there ever since til now. JJ: Immigrant rights you’re saying is part of the (inaudible) we got right now so that’s all. CMJ: Well, there has been, and ever since the ’60s, a growing population [00:52:00] of workers without papers in our society, so-called “illegal aliens.” And as the society has moved to the right, there’s been more and more anti-immigrant, racist hysteria. Historically speaking, every time there’s an economic crisis in the society, immigrants are scapegoated. They are -- the right wing, even the liberals, they say, “These illegal aliens are taking away jobs from American workers, are putting American workers out of work.” Which explains the crises, right? (laughs) Which is not true. It’s never been true. But that’s the stereotypic 29 �racist explanation for it. So it’s gotten worse and worse and worse. Under the Bush administration -- no, I take it back. Under the Clinton administration, actually, liberal [00:53:00] Democrat, they militarized the border. Clinton militarized the border. They started -- I mean, when I was a kid going -- crossing the border from El Paso to Juarez, the Border Patrol didn’t wear guns. So now, the Border Patrol has become like a military group, like an army. And it’s been -under President Clinton, that border was militarized. They built a wall, making it difficult for people to cross, and so it’s been getting worse ever since. So now, there’s been over time different kinds of congressional efforts to reform immigration policy. And right now, we’re in the middle -- as a matter of fact, any day now, we’re supposed to find out what’s happening with the latest effort to reform immigration policy. [00:54:00] And I’ve done an analysis of that and I also include that in my last chapter. About the fact that what’s going on now is basically policy that is going to be in the interest of corporations and not in the interest of the working class. They’re going to make it difficult for a undocumented worker to get citizenship. That person is going to have to pay a fine of 2,000 dollars or more, has to go back to Mexico and wait x number of years before she or he can apply for citizenship or apply for a visa to come back to work legally. So to me, that’s not good policy. Plus also, under the Bush administration, they created the -- they reorganized the [00:55:00] immigration system. Now it’s called the Homeland Security -- Department of Homeland Security. And Homeland Security, the arm of enforcement, immigration enforcement, has been called ICE, the ICE agency. And it’s called -- it’s what -- 30 �what does it stand for? Immigration Customs Enforcement, ICE. And what I call that is a terrorist arm of the US government because every day, ICE terrorizes (coughs) families. JJ: Do you need water? CMJ: Yeah, yeah, (inaudible). (coughs) (break in audio) CMJ: So ICE, again, the -- means Immigration Enforcement Agency. Customs -Immigration Customs, ICE, customs agency. [00:56:00] These guys, when they go into somebody’s home, they got -- they’re all battle -- it’s sort of like a soldier. They look like soldiers going in with guns, bullet vests, helmets, you know? And here you got a family of undocumented -JJ: Right. They’re watching TV. CMJ: They’re watching TV, the mom’s cooking or whatever, the kids and these guys just break in. “Okay, you’re under arrest.” What the hell? Because you have no papers. So basically, what that means is that today is worse than ever in the history of this country in terms of how it deals with immigrants because what they’ve done is they have criminalized the undocumented immigrant as opposed to just dealing with that person in terms of, “Okay, well, you got to get papers and bla bla bla. We got to deport you. Sorry, but...” And now they go in there. And then, they get imprisoned. [00:57:00] They don’t get deported right away like they used to. Now they send them to private prisons that have become very, very profit-making institutions. So this is why I have rephrased what President Eisenhower said once. When he came -- when he start -- when he stepped 31 �down from the presidency, he warned the American people about the dangers of the military industrial complex. Remember that? It’s always quoted. It’s very, you know. What I say now is the danger comes from the corporate military prison complex, okay? Because I see this -- they’re interconnected more than ever. JJ: So they’re making a profit -- CMJ: They’re making a profit. JJ: (inaudible) was working as a pastor and they said that they were deporting some people and they -- but then they waited to collect [00:58:00] the money first. CMJ: No, no, see, they -JJ: For a traffic fine, they put them in court. CMJ: Yeah, right. JJ: Maybe I’m misunderstanding. CMJ: No, no, no. The example of profit-making, what I mean by profit-making is instead of going to a jail, a regular jail, okay? Where people go who get arrested and then they call their lawyer and all that. Instead of doing that, what they’ve set up private -- different private systems, I mean private prisons that are like fenced in and everything else. It’s not a jail, per se, but it’s kind of like fenced in and everything. JJ: Concentration. CMJ: Concentration camp. That’s what it looks like when you see one of those. So they send people there to wait for how long, sometimes days and weeks before they get processed for deportation. [00:59:00] What that means is that this 32 �private prison is charging the government x number of millions of dollars to house people that are being -- they call it detained, detained. Not imprisoned, but they’re being detained for processing. You follow me? But it’s the same. But the consequence is the same. It’s a terrifying experience for families, you know what I mean? And -JJ: The business is making money for the government. CMJ: Exactly. That’s what I mean by profit-making so it’s very lucrative now. Okay, so that’s what’s happening now. So the point is that the immigrant rights movement is comprised of organization like the one I’m part of that are organizing to put pressure on the government for a human rights comprehensive immigration reform. Human rights meaning that we demand immediate legalization of [01:00:00] undocumented workers. They should have a right to work, period. And yeah, they -- some of them become citizens if there’s a path for citizenship. But they shouldn’t be penalized by having to pay thousands of dollars and going back to Mexico before they can become citizens. And also more importantly, that the militarization of the border stop. That we want to see the border become like it used to be. We don’t want to see any militarized things going on there like weaponry. And now, President Obama has sent in drones -- now they’re sending in drones, too, that can kill anybody they want to kill over there in the border. They determine terrorists that can -- to guard against terrorism. So all of this is going on and so the movement [01:01:00] is trying to put a stop to that, as well. So basically, we want to say -- we’re saying as an immigrant mass movement, we want to say, “Look, these people are human beings. They deserve the right 33 �to work if, in fact, there is work for them that Americans don’t want.” American workers don’t want to work in the places where they’re being hired. This is why they are in demand by those businesses that can’t hire American workers because they need cheap labor. So basically, that’s what’s going on right now. But it’s a long uphill fight because President Obama has not been a friend of Latinos in the context of pushing for human rights and immigration reform. Which is a shame because as you know, if it were not for the Latino vote, he never would’ve been elected President. I mean, Obama had the Black vote, but he needed the Latino vote [01:02:00] to get elected and reelected. And so he’s gotten that on the promises that he’s made that he would be pushing a reform of immigration policy that was going to be human rights-based, but he has not kept his promise. JJ: So suddenly, human rights-based demands or issues are -- it has to do -- it has to do with the border, demilitarizing it? CMJ: Demilitarize the border, right. And de-terrorize -JJ: De-terrorize the border, de-terrorize the border. CMJ: Yeah, right. (laughs) No more terrorism. We don’t want any -- we don’t want ICE to operate anymore. We want ICE to come in, yeah. JJ: So it has to do with ICE. CMJ: Yeah, yeah, we don’t want -JJ: And it has to do with these private corporations. CMJ: Right. Get rid of those private prisons, right. JJ: What other issues related to that, ICE? 34 �CMJ: And then the right to stay here and work without having to be criminalized. No more criminalization of the workers. JJ: There’s clearly a clash between what [01:03:00] the rest of the American electorate wants. CMJ: Well, yes and no. I think actually -JJ: Or at least what they’re saying that they want. CMJ: Yeah, it’s a clash with the right wing Tea Party people, what they want. And as opposed to the American people because there’s been polls made recently where it comes out that the majority of Americans now are sympathetic to immigrants more now. So the majority, I think the majority now are saying yeah, they’re -- they should have the right to work and not getting -- not get criminalized. Yeah. JJ: Any final thoughts? CMJ: Yeah. Well, final thoughts is as I get older and I’ve learned two things. The first one is that life is struggle and struggle is life. [01:04:00] You never get to a point in time in your life when you say, “Oh my God, we’ve got it made. We’ve succeeded in everything that we’ve tried to undertake.” But I also learned that victory is in the struggle. That as long as we’re fighting the good fight, fighting for human rights, fighting for an authentic, multi-racial democracy, we’re winning. Because the time’s coming where we’re going to be the majority in this country, people of color. And I think it can happen. So it might not happen in my lifetime. I won’t be around to see it. My children should be able to see it, my grandchildren will see it. The kinds of seeds that those of us from the Young 35 �Lords party and Chicano Movement, (inaudible) party envision. Our vision will come to realization eventually. It’s going to happen. I’m convinced of that. And I’m going to keep on fighting until I die. JJ: [01:05:00] Thank you very much. END OF VIDEO FILE 36 � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/510939e3483735a79fe624a7c46e8b7b.mp4 8e912c03802f5a5b7424147fa72e1d9c 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 Carlos Munoz vídeo entrevista y biografía Descripción Spanish language Description entry La historia oral de Carlos Munoz, entrevistado por Jose 'Cha-Cha' Jimenez el 5/9/2013 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_Munoz_Carlos Title A name given to the resource Carlos Munoz video interview and transcript Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Munoz, Carlos Description An account of the resource Oral history of Carlos Munoz, interviewed by Jose 'Cha-Cha' Jimenez, on 5/9/2013 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 2013-05-09 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/9802e2bfb59c15acf7acc990be467843.pdf d7e1626c3623f5899af83f7f982fb313 PDF Text Text Young Lords In Lincoln Park Interviewee: Carlos Vasquez Interviewers: José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez Location: Grand Valley State University Special Collections Date: 7/18/2012 Biography and Description Carlos Vazquez is from Detroit, Michigan but he was born in Mexico and his family is from Ciudad Juárez on the border with Texas. Mr. Vasquez’s family settled in Detroit in the 1940s and 1950s.The family stays together and helps each other. In fact every year they have a family reunion and it is usually Mr. Vasquez who plays a major role in organizing it. He is the youngest of his siblings and says he “understands Spanish well but does not speak it.” Mr. Vasquez is a musician who has played in several bands. He loves blues and plays rock and roll, country, Motown, Puerto Rican iibaro music, among others. Mr. Vasquez learned jibaro when he lived within a Puerto Rican household for several years in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He met José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez while Mr. Jiménez was a senior counselor/supervisor for Project Rehab. Mr. Vasquez decided to join the Young Lords and has volunteered to work on all of the Lincoln Park Camps. Mr. Vasquez has also recruited other volunteers to handle the sound and stage at those events. The Lincoln Park Camps were first organized in 2000 during the Vieques, Puerto Rico protests that eventually closed down the military base. It was the beginning of a reunion and an educational vehicle for the Young Lords, since the Young Lords had not been active for many years. DePaul University was then also helping to document the origins of the Young Lords. So the camp became a semi-retreat to educate and motivate people. The first camp was held in Ford Lincoln Park in Lakeview, Michigan. There was the roasting of a pig, boat and hay rides. The �Teatro Chicana paid for and made the journey, all the way from California and Washington. They produced and were able to get others at the weekend camp to participate in a guerilla skit about the displacement of the people from Lincoln Park, Chicago. Many people came from Puerto Rico, New York, Aurora, Chicago, Milwaukee, Lansing, Detroit, and Grand Rapids. Today Mr. Vasquez’s son and other children still recall the event and say that it had a positive effect on them. �Transcript JOSE JIMENEZ: Okay, go ahead, Carlos, and give me your full name, date of birth, and where you were born. CARLOS VASQUEZ: I’m Carlos [Raymundo?] Vasquez, born in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. August 15, 1953. JJ: Oh. Okay, Carlos, if you could give me your name, date of birth, and where you were born, again. CV: Name’s Carlos Raymundo Vasquez. Arrollo -- that’s my mom’s name, maiden name. So they do it in Mexico, Carlos Raymundo Arrollo Vasquez. I was born in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua. JJ: Chihuahua? CV: Chihuahua, yep. August 15, 1953. My mom told me a story about me being born on the 15th, that they were late [00:01:00] for something and she didn’t wanna have to pay whatever, and they put down the 31st. That’s the story she gave me. So on my ID, when I was born, they put down the 31st. JJ: But you were born -- CV: But I celebrate the 15th with her from when I was little. JJ: But she tells you it was the 15th? CV: She tells me the 15th. So I went with that story, what she told me before. Had nothing to do with whatever, but it was just the story that she told me about it. That’s the way we celebrated all my life. JJ: Okay. So what was Ciudad Juárez like? Did you live there for a while? 1 �CV: No, I was too little to remember anything. When I came here, I spoke Spanish. JJ: What year was that? CV: We crossed over in ’57. JJ: What do you mean, you crossed over? What was that? CV: Well, slowly, because we started from [00:02:00] Durango, where my dad’s from, and Villa Unión, where my mom’s from, a little town outside of that. So little by little, we came, going toward the border. It took a few years to get there. My dad, he was a musician, besides working, so he would do side jobs and stuff like that, make more money. JJ: What kind of music? I mean, what did he play? CV: Well, then there’s another story that they told me. My dad would play for some funerals. They had, like, the kids got sick and something that they were having -a lot of them were passing away for some reason, some disease or something, and he was playing for funerals. JJ: What’s your dad’s name? CV: Jesus. JJ: Jesus? CV: Jesus Cisneros Vasquez. JJ: Okay, and your mom’s name? CV: Carmen Arrollo Vasquez. JJ: Did you have any brothers and sisters? CV: [00:03:00] Six other brothers and two sisters. JJ: What were their names? 2 �CV: My oldest brother was Beto -- Albert, Alberto -- and then after, that’d be Luis. My sister, Yola. Jesus. Pedro. Eduardo. Myself, Carlos. And then my sister, Julia. But she was the only one that was born in the United States. She was born after we came over in El Paso, Texas, across from Juárez. So I was too young to remember a lot of that stuff, like I said. I talked with my older sister and my brothers and that about it. They all went to school in Mexico. I was raised in Detroit. My uncle -- JJ: You mean they stayed behind and you came? So a few came? CV: All of us came [00:04:00] at the same time, but -- JJ: You didn’t go to school. CV: No, I was too young. JJ: Oh, you’re the youngest. CV: Yeah, I was the youngest. There’s seven of us in the boys, and I was the youngest seventh son. So I was I think three or four. You figure ’53 to ’57, when we crossed. JJ: So you started in ’53, trying to get to the border? CV: I was born in Juárez, so we were already there. So we crossed over. My sister was born a year later or two years later, when we came over to El Paso. JJ: And when you say it took a long time, you mean you lived in each town as you went up? CV: No. Well, what from they tell me, it took a little bit, a few years to get over, because of all the paperwork back then, because it was a large family. And my uncle brought my dad over here when he was a kid, and there’s pictures of them 3 �when they would be farming, picking, you know? [00:05:00] From what they told me, he was up in Utah, but they went to Indiana, when she told them about Michigan, which is why we came to Michigan, because of my Tío Callito, my dad’s uncle. He’s the one that brought us here. JJ: So you were going to farm? CV: They were. JJ: They were. CV: They were, ’cause my dad, he was young in the picture with my uncle when he came over here when he was a kid. And he went back to Mexico, and that was his dream, was to bring his family over here and raise them in the United States. A lot of my relatives stayed in Juárez. Some of them crossed over, raised families in El Paso, Texas. And other parts of my cousins and aunts went to California. JJ: But you keep saying crossed over. What do you mean? CV: They were from Mexico. JJ: By plane? CV: No, no, no, just crossed the border, from Juárez [00:06:00] to El Paso. That’s the border. It’s like Detroit, Canada, same thing, you know? But we were the only family that came up here, my uncle’s family and us, at that time. My other cousins, them and my aunts, they all went to California, different parts of California. The other ones stayed in El Paso. I basically spoke Spanish when I came here, but I entered kindergarten and first grade. Then I lost it. I just started 4 �talking with everybody from the United States and picking up the way they speak. I used to come home -JJ: So you remember Detroit. That was the main thing. CV: Main thing, yep. JJ: You don’t remember anything about Mexico? Nothing? CV: Nothing at all. JJ: Nothing about Mexico. CV: Nope. I couldn’t even tell you about El Paso [00:07:00] then at that time, you know. The way it went was just growing up in Detroit. JJ: Okay, so you’re in Detroit. What part of Detroit? CV: When we came, we came over to -- this is from what they tell me -- the I-75 freeway still wasn’t built. So they used to have a theater over there. We supposedly lived above the theater, and then moved over to Labrosse, which is Corktown over by Tiger Stadium. JJ: Corktown? CV: That’s what they call it. Irish community that was there. JJ: So when you came, there was an Irish community? CV: They were mixed. Irish, Maltese, Polish. Not that many Italians, but it was a strong community. That was the southwest side of Detroit. That’s where we grew up. That whole community over there is mostly Latino, [00:08:00] but it’s mixed. JJ: Now? Now it’s Latino? 5 �CV: No, from what I remember from back then. But we were one of the first families there -- JJ: What year was this, about? CV: Early ’60s. I remember that. JJ: So all this other time, you were in Texas and the other places? I mean, you got to Detroit in the ’60s. CV: Yep, ’57, yeah. All I remember was from the pictures that we have is -- JJ: So how old were you then? How old were you then? CV: That would be four or five years old. First school I went to was Casa Maria. Okay, that’s a preschool. I graduated from it. They’ve got a photo of me, you know. Zoology. I was supposed to work with animals. That was the diploma they gave me. But that’s still there. It’s on Trumbull right down the street from Tiger Stadium. But it was just a little school [00:09:00] for the kids before they went into kindergarten. Then they had a school down the street called D. Holton, which was there on Trumbull, right off of Trumbull. But it’s gone, you know. They put another building. A lot of the buildings that we grew up in are gone now. They’ve been replaced with other things. But it’s still that area, right by Tiger Stadium, Labrosse. That’s where we started. There was a couple other families that I remember throughout my life that we grew up with. The Rodriguezes, the Ocegetas. They came from different parts of Mexico. JJ: Rodriguez? CV: Yeah. JJ: And what other family? 6 �CV: Ocegeta. JJ: Ocegeta? CV: Yeah, they were around our street and -- JJ: And your street you said was what? CV: Yeah, Labrosse, right. That’s right down the street from Tiger Stadium. We used to sit on the porch and you could hear the ballgames, and you could hear the noise and stuff like that. [00:10:00] We stayed in that community for -- it’s on the other side of what they would say, the Ambassador Bridge, okay? Because it’s divided Grand Boulevard. If anybody’s been to Detroit, the way that it’s built, they built Grand Boulevard like a horseshoe around the city. It would start from the west side and go all the way to the east side and end on Belle Island. So where we lived was the southwest side over on the other side of Ambassador Bridge on Grand Boulevard. And in the old days, that’s where all the rich -- not rich, but the autocar makers or whatever, the people that had money. There’ll all mansions on that street on West Grand Boulevard, as you go around the whole city. They’ve got another city called Outer Drive, which is built like a horseshoe around the city. They would have Woodward, which was the main street that came out of Detroit, [00:11:00] coming from downtown the river, which split the city. That was one side, the east side, and the other side, the west side. We grew up on the west side. JJ: So you were living with the Rodriguez and the other? CV: Ocegeta. JJ: And then you’re growing up with their kids and that? 7 �CV: Right. Their kids. Everybody back then had large families, you know. You had eight, nine kids, seven to eight kids. It didn’t matter. Everybody had large families. JJ: And this was a Mexican community? CV: Mainly. Well -- JJ: It was Irish, but then -- CV: Yeah, downtown. Downtown over by Tiger Stadium, yeah. JJ: That was Irish first, but then was changing? CV: It was changing at the time. When we came in, like I said, in the phone book, I remember seeing our last names, Vasquez. You would see maybe two, three Vazquez in the phone book back in [00:12:00] the early ’60s. As there progressed, more and more Latinos moved into the neighborhood. But as of our family, it was my uncle and, you know, my family. But we stayed on Labrosse ’til I remember going to Casa Maria, and then moving by Clark Park. JJ: Clark Park? CV: Yeah, that’s when we moved a little bit more west. JJ: Is that named after somebody, Clark? CV: I was doing a little research on it and it was just a park that had something to do with somebody in the early ’20s or something. But it was a nice park back then. They used to use it for -- I don’t know if you remember in the old days, they’d have the nice, big picnics and stuff like that. JJ: So it was a picnic area. CV: Right, back then. 8 �JJ: Is it a pretty big park? CV: Clark Park’s about a mile. We used to walk around it or whatever. One mile from -- JJ: Is it flat? A lot of trees? CV: Yeah, [00:13:00] a lot of trees. In the middle of the city, you know, but when we moved over there, I went to first grade. All the -- JJ: What school? What school? CV: Maybury. All the schools were around Clark Park. So if you went to Maybury, you went to grade school one through six. You would cross the park and go to junior high, which is Amelia Earhart. That was up to seventh to ninth grade. And then down the street, across from Clark Park, was Western High School, and that was a high school. So you didn’t really leave the neighborhood when you went to school. But they had a lot of Catholic schools there where the majority different families that could afford it would go to Catholic school. JJ: Did a lot of the Mexican kids go? CV: Right. JJ: They did go to -- CV: Yep. Yep. Like I said, some families had the money. They made good money back then. And some families, they went to the public schools. JJ: Well, where was your father working [00:14:00] at that time? CV: From what I remember, they said my dad worked for McLeod Steel for a while. JJ: A steel company? 9 �CV: And he had an injury or something, and that’s how he collected from them for some reason. Then we bought a house on 10th Street. JJ: So were there steel mills there, a lot of them? CV: Oh, yeah, big. Ford Motor Company, that’s that neighborhood. The whole car industry was all around our neighborhood. JJ: And it’s based in steel? CV: Yep. JJ: Okay, I didn’t think about that at the time. CV: Yeah, that whole neighborhood’s built around the cars. Everybody worked at Ford, Chrysler, or GM, whatever. My brothers, they worked for them companies. And it was all around us, so, like, I remember when I was a kid growing up, it’s all you see, the semis going by with cars, new cars going from over here, from Fleetwood, from Cadillacs on Clark Street, going down to Fort Street. Fleetwood, and then they had Ternstedt, [00:10:00] I think it was. GM’s on Fort Street. So the whole neighborhood was kind of like when you grew up, you graduated, you went to work for the auto industry, unless you went to college. Then you went somewhere else. JJ: So like a working class neighborhood, you said? CV: Very hard, yeah. JJ: But a pretty good job, I mean, working for -- CV: For the time, considering these times, it was great, you know, because now my kids, it’s hard for them to find a job unless they graduated, keep going college and stuff. 10 �JJ: So at that time, it was pretty good. I mean, everybody was working. CV: My brother -- JJ: So the community was a working class Mexican community. It went to a Mexican community? CV: Yeah. JJ: Mainly Mexican. CV: Mainly. You know, it’s been mixed, you know what I mean? And Detroit, if you’ve ever been to Detroit, that’s the only side of town where the Latinos work. JJ: Southwest side? CV: Southwest side of Detroit. JJ: That’s [00:16:00] the only side of town they’re at? CV: Yeah, the majority. Still, you can find them here or there, one or two, but not like you would. It was considered a barrio back then. It started from West Vernor, which is a street, one of the main streets. Fort Street, Michigan Avenue, Woodmere, and back over by downtown, Trumbull. That whole area, it’s like a square area by the Ambassador Bridge. Yep, they have a church, one of the oldest churches over there. My brothers still work there, Sainte Anne’s. And that’s right there, right off 18th Street. Bagley was a main street. They got Mexican town, which is right now -- JJ: They’ve got a Mexican town? CV: Yeah, because of the restaurants. They built a lot of restaurants around there. But Bagley was a main street where a lot of Latinos lived at that [00:17:00] time. Twenty-fourth, 18th Street, all that area was all families. [Everybody?] [Solanos?]. 11 �I could go on with different families, but I don’t remember all of ’em. I had older brothers that hung out with different people in the neighborhood. JJ: So I mean, you said the families. So one of your brothers hanging around with one family and another with another family? CV: No, they knew us because there were so many brothers. So everybody knew everybody, you know. By the time I got to high school or got to school, junior high and that, they already knew who I was because of my brothers. Everybody went through the school. JJ: So this was like, when you say [barrio?], you’re talking about everybody (inaudible)? CV: Right. JJ: Not like -- CV: No, it was a community. It’s a tight community over there, southwest side of Detroit. Like I said, you go -- JJ: What made it tight? What made it [00:18:00] a tight community? CV: Because I think being Catholic. You know, the churches, okay? That was the main thing back then. You know, I know that’s what drew my dad and my mom over there in that area where we lived in Clark Park. Holy Redeemer was over there. That was one of the main churches. But Sainte Anne’s was the older church, like I said. When we first came from Mexico, it was the old part of the neighborhood, which was over by Bagley and the Ambassador Bridge. So when we made that move from Labrosse over to Clark Park, you know, that was newer to us. So it got a little more mixed. And gradually as you got towards the end of 12 �the neighborhood, which is Woodmere Cemetery -- that’s over by Dearborn, which has the largest Arab community in the country. So we grew up with Arabs on the other side. JJ: [00:19:00] So you were connected to the Arabs on one side. CV: Oh, yeah, at the end of Detroit on the other side. They came in a little later, but they grew strong, real big, that community. They bought a lot of businesses. They liked to make money on the party stores and stuff like that. JJ: Was there any friction with them? CV: No, not really. It was just they were doing what they did, ’cause as I said, everybody had jobs back then. Everybody made good money back in the ’60s. JJ: So nobody cared about friction. CV: No, not like nowadays. Nowadays, you go down there, the neighborhood’s a little rougher than it was when I grew up. You could stay out late, you know. We didn’t have no electronics like they do now, these computers, so everybody was running around on the streets ’til about ten o’clock at night. JJ: And these are kids, right? CV: [00:20:00] Right. JJ: About what age? CV: You know, they can be about 7 years old up to 10. They would let them stay out, as long as they were in front of their house running around. JJ: When you were 7 and 10 years old, you were kind of running around? CV: In that area around my house. JJ: And there were no problems? 13 �CV: Not like nowadays. The gangs, I would say back then, were like the gangs from West Side Story, you know what I mean? They had the Bagley Boys and the Stilettos. JJ: The Bagley Boys? CV: Yeah. JJ: Was the group -- were they Mexican? CV: Yeah, they were Latino. They could be mixed, you know. JJ: So what were (inaudible)? CV: Well, there weren’t that many, like I say, like now. But the thing about them gangs back then was that they were more kind of like where you grew up in Chicago. You know, you had your own streets, you know what I mean? [00:21:00] But it wasn’t as tight of Chicago because of the way Chicago was built. The houses were real tight over there in Chicago, and you go over there in Detroit, they’re just a little more suburban, however you like. ’Cause I’ve been to Chicago and like on the outside outskirts, you know, it was more like that. JJ: But you guys had a lot of killers, though. (laughs) Detroit was known for that. CV: Detroit had its mafia, but you know, that’s a whole ’nother -- JJ: So Detroit had a mafia. CV: Yeah, that’s a whole ’nother story. That was on the east side, Hastings Street over down by [Stow Buoy crash?]. We lived on the southwest side. Detroit was like that back in the early ’20s, you know, ’30s with Al Capone and them guys, because Capone used to go from Chicago, cross over, come over, and deal with these guys over here in Michigan. 14 �JJ: Okay, [00:22:00] so they had a history of the mafia, like Chicago. CV: Right. JJ: But when you were growing up, were they still on the east side? CV: More or less. I’d say yeah. You know, if they were, I was too young to know that much of it. It was a large Black community. That was the main thing over there in Detroit. The early ’60s, I remember, was Motown. The music industry was strong for them back then. JJ: And how did that affect you, the Motown music? CV: Everybody driving in hot rods. You know, everybody had fast cars back then, cruising [Glazier?], Woodward, big streets, just like the older movies in the ’50s. They had their little (audio cuts out) you know, stuff like that where they would hang out. JJ: With those fountain drinks. CV: Right, yeah. JJ: So they had it there too. CV: They had it, yep. JJ: Like, a lot of the cities (inaudible). But, I mean, it was bigger because, I mean, [00:23:00] Motown came from Detroit, so it was a bigger influence or no? CV: As far as what? JJ: What music did you like at that time? CV: That’s the way we grew up. We grew up with Black music, you know. We used to listen to the old DJs from Philly, different cities. Chicago. Me and my brother Pedro would stay up. We didn’t watch that much TV. It was a lot of radio. 15 �Everybody had transistor radios back then, carried one in your pocket or whatever. Then we had a radio in the room. Like in the early ’60s, I remember listening to Muhammad Ali fight, but he was Cassius Clay back in the early days. Then I’d stay up and watch boxing with my dad. My family watched a lot of boxing in the early days. But we didn’t start watching TV that much, you know, like I said, because we’d be running around at night, [00:24:00] playing around. And then later on, maybe I’d watch it with my dad. JJ: You were running around [in that?] (inaudible). CV: Running around like kids do, playing stickball, kick the can, hide and seek, you know. Just being a kid. Nowadays they don’t do that. Nowadays they sit in front of a TV and they play with their games, Xbox and the other things. They don’t branch out as much as they used to. They’ve got their sports, the ones that play sports, but not like before. But yeah, that community, the music had a big effect on the way people grew up. You know, the dances and stuff like that. My dad was a musician and I remember us going -- they had boats. They called them Boblo boats. They used to take you to this island, which was downriver. It was Canadian-owned, but you can go. [00:25:00] It was like going to Cedar Point, and everybody would get on the Boblo boat, take it down the river, go down there, and they had music on the boat. They’d have bands. They’d dance. They had two or three floors on the deck, you know. On the 4th of July was Mexican Boblo, so my dad would go play on the island. He was a musician, so we would go with him. I remember that. JJ: What did he play? 16 �CV: My dad played saxophone when he was here, but he could play guitar, sax, a little bit of everything. He was pretty good. But he read. I learned later, but you know, I learned by ear. Nineteen seventy-one, I think, I started playing. But he played, like I said, all his life. He played with different bands and stuff besides working. He ended up working when we were on [McKent?] Street at a graphite company, you know. That was his last job that he worked. [00:26:00] He worked there all the way. Small company in the neighborhood off Green, one of the streets down there. JJ: What about your mom? What did she do? CV: She stayed home. Back then, the moms didn’t go out and work. You know, they stayed home with the family and stuff. She mainly wanted to learn how to speak English. That was real hard for her, so she took classes at Holy Redeemer. I’d walk her to school every once and a while and she would take a couple classes, learn how to speak, write, you know, read English. Everybody on her side of the family were more or less professional people in Mexico -- doctors, nurses, lawyers, and stuff like that. So they went to school. My dad was a working family. They worked over there. JJ: So your dad, basically his family was more -- CV: Work-oriented. JJ: Just work-oriented? CV: [00:27:00] Yeah. JJ: Some of them worked in the fields too, you said. 17 �CV: Right. Well, that’s where they would start. But like I said, I don’t remember that much history of them in Texas. My brothers had a little more knowledge of what went on over there. But they all went to school in Mexico. There’s pictures of my brothers in different grades. So they grew up over there speaking Spanish real good, and when they came over here, they kept it. JJ: But your mom, her family was more professional? CV: Well, some of ’em. Not all of ’em. But yeah, they went to school. But when she got here, you know, she stayed at home most of the time, cooking and watching the house. JJ: She also went to the church. CV: Go to church. Them days, we’d go to church quite a bit. JJ: So what did your brothers do? (inaudible), what kind of work did they start doing? CV: What? JJ: In other words, what kind of work did they start doing? [00:28:00] Your brothers. ’Cause they’re older, right? CV: Well, what was weird about it was that I was the youngest brother, so I had two older brothers -- well, three, Lalo, Pedro, and Jesse, which were a few years older than me. So they were more my age. And then the other ones were way older -- Beto, Hector, and Luis. Them guys, I remember Hector went to Chicago. He took off in the early ’60s. He went to take classes to learn how to weld, so he’d become a welder. That’s what he did all his life. JJ: And he lived in Chicago? 18 �CV: No, he went over there for a while. He got the training and everything over there and then he came back. And he was gone, so you know, they -- JJ: Did he have any family relatives there? CV: No. Well, yeah, we did. You know, we had relatives in where your sister’s stays. JJ: In Aurora? CV: Aurora. I remember going to Aurora [00:29:00] in ’67, ’68. Yeah. You know, we’d go to -- JJ: Actually I was living there then. CV: And we were going on picnics over there in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. I remember going there ’cause, yeah, we had relatives over there in the Chicago area. They had moved. But my dad’s big thing when people come from Mexico was to bring them here and take them to Niagara Falls. So we would drive through Canada, go to Niagara Falls, and show them the falls and everything. He liked to do that. JJ: Oh, he liked Niagara Falls? CV: Yeah, which is cool because they don’t have that all over. Michigan’s got a lot of water, you know, more than other states, a lot more stuff to do. We never ventured on this side of the state, Grand Rapids area over here. You know, it was always on the east side of the state. That’s where we did stuff. JJ: ’Cause Grand Rapids is where you’re living today. CV: Yeah, I came here in ’93. JJ: [00:30:00] Nineteen ninety-three? CV: Yep. It was December 21st, 1993. Yep. 19 �JJ: Okay. Well, we’ll get back to Grand Rapids. So your brothers, one of them went to Chicago. What about the other ones? CV: Well, my brother Albert -- which is the oldest -- he was working different type of jobs, but he hurt his back. So he went into buffing and polishing. Somehow he ended up in that, and that’s what I do now. I worked at a brewery for 14 years, Stroh Brewery, and when I left -- JJ: This is you. You’re the one working there. CV: Yeah, but he got me into what I’m doing now. But I’ll go back to that. Yeah, but the other brothers, I remember them working for A&P. Luis and Hector welded, and then Beto did the buffing and polishing. And then [00:31:00] my brother Jesse and Luis both enlisted to Vietnam in the early ’60s, you know, so they went over there and they fought. JJ: They wanted to go? CV: Yeah. Well, the story I got from Jesse was that him and Mickey Baker went out and got drunk and signed up, and Mickey didn’t sign, and he ended up going and Mickey didn’t. You know how when you’re young, you do crazy stuff. But he did wanna go. They wanted to do something, you know, for the country, and then also they wanted to -- what you say? -- patriotic or whatever, you know. But he was working at Cadillac right after he got out of school. He was in high school, graduated, and he went to Cadillac, which is down the street, which is a great job. But then he went to Vietnam, or he joined the service, ended up in Vietnam. Luis, the same way. [00:32:00] They were both gone around the same time. And he came back in 1968. I think he got out then. 20 �JJ: He got out of the Army service? CV: He served his three years, three and a half years, whatever they did, you know. JJ: Okay. So then he came back. Did he get a good job? CV: No, he changed because Vietnam changes everybody, you know that. There’s a lot of drugs over there. He wasn’t into the drugs and stuff, but it just changed his whole -- the whole United States changed in 1968 and 1969. It affected a lot of people, that war. JJ: He didn’t come back that patriotic? CV: Well, he took off to California, you know, so he went out there. My cousin’s out there in East LA. He stayed with them. That’s where he met his wife, up there in [Bakersville?]. You know, he didn’t get married until later on, but he met her up there. He lives [00:33:00] in New Mexico. He’s the one that was a truck driver for a while, you know. But yeah, he went to ’Nam, both of them, and then Lalo worked at Chrysler. And my brother Pedro, he’s the one that went to Stroh Brewery. He’s the one that got me into Stroh. I got in there when I was 17 years old, 18. Yeah, I was 18, 17, 18 years old when I got in there. I got married right away. JJ: So how long did you work at Stroh? CV: Fourteen years, until they closed. Fourteen and a half years, ’til ’84. Then they shut it down. JJ: And what kind of work did you do there? What were you doing there? CV: Easy work, you know. Bottles get jammed on the line in the pasteurizer. I was a relief man later on, give everybody breaks. But anything to do with the bottling 21 �and the packaging, that’s what area -- I ran the machines. They got a Coca-Cola plant. I could’ve got a job [00:34:00] here. But I didn’t wanna go back and doing what I did before. You know, so I wanted to try something new, and that’s when my brother showed me how to buff and polish when I left there ’cause I didn’t go to school. I should’a went to school. JJ: You didn’t go to school at all? What do you mean? CV: Well, I got married right away. Eleventh grade, I went up to there. JJ: So you went up to eleventh grade? CV: Yep, and then I just started working right away. JJ: So what high school did you go to? CV: I was in Western, like everybody else. JJ: Everybody else? Did that mean (inaudible)? CV: Yeah, that was as far as I got. JJ: And then after that, you dropped out? CV: My wife got pregnant. We got married. But I married her the following year, you know. So I went to work. It was funny because I went to work for the Detroit [Line?] Company, which makes steel. Line, they put inside the steel. I think I was 16 and a half years old, working there, and they had them -- you know them jacks that you use to break [00:35:00] cement? Well, they used them to break -they’ve gotta kiln, you know. They heat up the line in these ovens. Well, they shut ’em down and you’ve gotta climb in these little doors, and you take that thing and you’ve gotta hit it up against the wall. You’ve gotta hold it and break that stuff loose, I mean. I didn’t like that. Now, that’s 16, 17 years old, you know. 22 �Just too rough, the type of work for me at the time. I didn’t last. But I did that for, you know, maybe about three, four months. JJ: But eleventh, you almost graduated. CV: Right, but I never continued ’cause I got a good job at the brewery. They paid what the auto industry paid. We were making, you know, the same type of money they were back then at Stroh, and it was a real simple job. There was nothing really -- you couldn’t do if you know how to drive a hi-lo, how to package, run the machines, and stuff like that. [00:36:00] It wasn’t automated like Budweiser and them other companies. That’s why they paid it out. It took too many people to operate that company at the time. JJ: So that was a good job. CV: Oh, yeah. JJ: You didn’t need to go to school to get it. You already had it. CV: I messed up that way. JJ: But you already had a good job. CV: Right. That’s what I’m saying. Nowadays, it’s rough with kids because you can’t walk out of school and walk into a good job. Not no more. You need school, you know? You’ve gotta have that diploma in order to move ahead. Let me see, Lalo. But, yeah, Pedro got me in there, and then my sister Julia, she worked as an insurance claim adjuster. So she ended up doing that. My sister Yola, she ended up working for the -- ’cause she was bilingual at the time. It was early bilingual (inaudible). JJ: Now, were you bilingual [00:37:00] [then?]? 23 �CV: No. JJ: You were bilingual later? You’re bilingual now. CV: I learned how to speak Spanish here in Grand Rapids. My Spanish was real bad. I boycotted it for some reason when I was young. You know, when you’re a hippie in the early days, you wanna hang out with -- JJ: You were a hippie? CV: Oh, yeah, big time. Yeah. Yeah, yep. JJ: Okay. CV: You know, that’s why I played guitar. I went into the music. I liked the atmosphere, you know, the music. I wish I would’ve learned the way my dad would’ve taught me back then. I would know more. But now when I listen to the songs that [Patrick was pulling down there?], all them trios and stuff, you know, it’s all great music, all the stuff that the guys did back then. But I got into it, like I said, in the ’70s, but everything changed in ’68, ’69. The neighborhood changed. JJ: How did the [00:38:00] neighborhood change? CV: ’Cause everything was Motown. Everything was Black. Everything. The music. Everybody dressed up. And once ’69 came, everybody started wearing jeans. They loosened up, you know, let their hair grow, hanging out. JJ: You had at that time? CV: But I was married, you know. I got married right away and I was working. My friends, a lot of them were on the corner. I’d go home to my family, you know what I mean? JJ: Okay, now, all your friends were on the corner? 24 �CV: Well, the majority of them. JJ: And when you say on the corner, what do you mean? CV: From my neighborhood, it’s like that’s where everybody would hang out. JJ: What street? CV: Vernor. Clark Park. JJ: They would just be hanging out on the corners? CV: Well, there were certain corners. Toledo and Junction. Everybody had their own little corners where people would just meet and just talk, you know, hang out. JJ: And they drank? CV: [00:39:00] Oh, yeah, and they’d go into Clark Park, that kind of thing, different parks in areas. JJ: Drugs? CV: Drugs was big time in Detroit back then. A lot of heroin. Yeah, there were a lot of heroin users back then in the neighborhood. A lot of overdoses. JJ: A lot of overdoses were going on at that time? CV: Yep. JJ: ’Cause this was the Vietnam War era. CV: A lot of those guys -- like, I met this guy, Jerry Manchaka, at Stroh. He’d come back from ’Nam, and another guy, Bud. They were telling me stories on how they got hooked over there in Vietnam. They would smoke heroin, you know. I didn’t do it. That was one drug I didn’t mess with. You know, I ventured into other stuff, but like I said, I was always with my family. So as long as I had my job, that kept me straight. 25 �JJ: You mentioned (inaudible). CV: I tried to smoke weed. You know, drank wine. I didn’t drink beer. I worked in the brewery, started at 17. I didn’t have a beer until I was 25. [00:40:00] Them guys that sits there, you have free beer in the lunch room, you know, at Stroh. It was part of the contract. JJ: It was part of the job, right? CV: A lot of them guys became alcoholics. JJ: But you didn’t drink beer at that time. CV: No. JJ: So you drank wine. CV: Smoke weed and drank wine. JJ: You drank wine at that time. A lot of people in the neighborhood drank wine too. So that was just common. CV: That was just the routine, the way we hung out. JJ: In Chicago, they drank Richards. CV: Ripple? You know, Thunderbird, Night Train, whatever. JJ: Is that the kind of wine you were talking about? CV: Yeah. JJ: High-class wine. CV: I’d say I ventured into a little Spumoni, you know. Nah, it’s just neighborhood stuff over there. You know how it is when you go up. My brothers, my brother Pedro, you know, he hung out on the streets a little more -- him and Lala -- a little more. It wasn’t what I did, because they didn’t get married. He didn’t get married 26 �’til [00:41:00] later, you know. But everybody grew up in the same neighborhood. I left there in, oh -- Nick was born -- ’74, ’75. My brother died. Overdose. My brother Pedro. JJ: Of heroin? CV: No, he had valiums and some other drugs when he was drinking, and they said he fell asleep and, you know, he died in his sleep. But that was in 1975. So it was about the time I left the neighborhood. I moved outside of Detroit. It was over by Dearborn Heights area. That’s where I bought a house later on, around that area. But he was -- out of any of my brothers on the street, I would say he stayed right there on Toledo and Junction. They had a bar right there and them guys would all hang out right there. But he was married. You know, he had his family. JJ: You know, you’re seeing all your friends [00:42:00] going to drugs and all that. What was your thinking? I mean, you know, why didn’t you go into it? How did you look at them? CV: What do you mean? JJ: In other words, you must’ve said, these guys are stupid, or something. I mean, how did you look at them? CV: No, a lot of them were making money on the side. Everybody always made money. I didn’t like that. I just didn’t like the atmosphere. JJ: You just didn’t like? You just said, I’m not playing? CV: I didn’t like the traffic because I have kids. You know, I’d bring them over to the house, but it’s just when you’re married, it’s a different story. Some people don’t 27 �care. But like I said, I’d hang out with certain people, and plus I was in a band. There was drugs around all the time. You know, but something told me about it, not to get too crazy. Later on, I did, in the ’80s. But that was stupid. JJ: Yeah, you fought it [00:43:00] for a while. You didn’t -- CV: No, that’s how I ended up over ’80s -- well, the ’80s, ’90s, early ’90s when I ended up over in the rehab. That got me over here in Grand Rapids, you know, drinking and doing drugs. But the early part, like when we were raising my kids, I was kind of just maintaining. I always knew I had to get up at 6:00 in the morning and go to work. Even though I hung out at a bar, played music at night. I’d be there ’til 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning. I was the one that ran the band, made sure the equipment was put away and everything. I’d walk in the house about 3:30. I have to get up at 6:00. But it was extra money. JJ: So you were like the band leader, then. CV: Right. JJ: And you guys played what kind of music? CV: Rock and roll. JJ: Rock and roll? CV: Yep, Top 40. But it was rough back then because in my neighborhood, they didn’t accept it. JJ: What do you mean? CV: Well, there was nothing but Mexican bands. You know, Latino music. And all the bars we played, you know, we’d have to ask [00:44:00] the bar owner if we could play this type of music. I mean, they had Santana, you know, Mongo 28 �Santamaría, and different bands like that. But when you walked in the neighborhood in Detroit at that time, it was all -JJ: You’re talking about rock and roll. CV: Yeah, like we’d be playing some Bob Seger, you know? And then these guys -this is in the [Abara?] Lounge. And right after we get done, a Tex Mex music would go up or a Mexican band would go up there and start playing. We played a lot of talent shows over there. But we ventured up out of that neighborhood, go downriver. That’s where we ended up most of the time, playing. JJ: Downriver? CV: Yeah. Detroit’s [wine?] area. You know, Detroit, the southwest side of Detroit, you’ve got Allen Park, Lincoln Park, Southgate. There’s a lot of communities going downriver. Detroit runs -- coming from Lake Erie, you know, coming from that area. So a lot of communities were going that way. [00:45:00] I hung around the (audio cuts out). They’re close-knit, the music industry over there for them guys. It was hard to get a job over there for us. But we did all right. I mean, I had fun. I made money. You know, that was the main thing I was doing. I learned how to play, yeah. But you know, you were saying about the music. Back then in the early ’70s, that changed everybody. Like I said, ’68, ’69 was just the music, Vietnam, the whole thing. You guys were doing the same thing over there in Chicago, but over here, I remember going downtown ’cause Downtown Detroit was happening back then. We had Kennedy Square, which was right there in the middle, and they’d have a lot of events going on. The Hare Krishna would be out there and the Black Panthers. [00:46:00] You always had to go 29 �through them in order to get into the store. They’re gonna hand you a pamphlet and they’re gonna talk to you, and they’re gonna try and sell you something or they’re gonna try and recruit you, you know. Not that much Hare Krishna, but the Black Panthers were real good at that. JJ: Trying to recruit? CV: Talked to different people. Talked to them about what their cause, you know? JJ: What’d you think about the Hare Krishna and the Black Panthers? CV: Black Panthers, I liked them guys, you know, because I liked the way they talked. They knew a little bit more. The Hare Krishna were into some type of religion or a belief that I really wasn’t into. JJ: But you could understand a little bit about the Black Panthers, you were saying? CV: Back then yeah. JJ: But you didn’t agree with them. CV: I didn’t disagree with them because I was a minority. But they stuck together. To me, they were badass because they were tight. You know, you see [00:47:00] four Black guys dressed in leather all walking, strutting down the street real strong. That was unity. Them guys, they showed it back then. JJ: Were you familiar with any other groups? CV: They had Brown Panthers in the high school, in the neighborhood. I knew a few guys that were into that. JJ: The Brown Panthers or Brown Berets? CV: Brown Berets. Yeah. Yeah, Brown Berets. JJ: Okay, they had Brown Berets in (inaudible), you were saying? 30 �CV: Yeah, a couple guys, you know. But like I said, I was into music. I’d be there like anybody else, listening to what they had to talk about, stuff like that. But my main thing was that they were for their cause, you know what I mean? And I was into something else, which only drove me away. Maybe if I was single at the time, you know, and I wasn’t into music, I might’ve did something. My son Benny does that now. He’s strong in the community [00:48:00] on the southwest side of Detroit right now. But they were all over, you know? Everywhere you went downtown, you ran into ’em ’cause they had Hudson’s, Crowley’s, Woolworth’s, you know, different stores you had to go shop in. We didn’t have malls. JJ: And the Panthers were there? CV: Outside. You know, outside on the corner. If you crossed at the light, they would be there. JJ: What about the Brown Berets? Were they anywhere? CV: Not as bad. Not as much. But they would be there at Kennedy Square. You’d see different groups. And then if you ventured off to Ann Arbor, where we went once in a while, they had the White Panthers. That was John Sinclair. Michael Lynn, I met him in 1969. He was from Highland Park and he was into that. He understood a little bit more. He was a little bit older, you know, than I was. But he was into that. So he would always call me. “Hey, they’re gonna have a speech over here. Let’s go.” [00:49:00] And I’d go with him because I liked the crowds, and I’d go with him. But he knew what they were talking about and he would follow them. JJ: And he was your friend, so you kind of just -- 31 �CV: What’s that? JJ: He was your friend, so you kinda hung out with him? CV: All the time. He became godfather to my daughter. Yeah, I met him. He used to sell shoes at Griggle’s, sporting goods. You know, later on, he sold clothes. But we were real tight back then. In ’69, I met him. JJ: Now, you’re growing up in the United States. I mean, you’re rooting for the United States, right? So how did (inaudible) these people are attacking the United States, the Panthers and the Brown Berets and all them. CV: They had a lot of -- JJ: Could you relate to some of them? CV: Well, they had a lot of problems with the police, you know, back then, them guys. [00:50:00] We used to have a thing called the Big Four. There were four cops that rolled in a car instead of one, and when they came around, they got out. Something was gonna happen. They don’t get out of the car unless they were gonna do, you know, some harm to somebody. I mean, they wouldn’t put you in the hospital, but they’d make sure they’d make a point. They had three or four cars like that that would cruise the neighborhood. You know, and we had the riots in ’67 over there off 12th Street. That shut down the community and the southwest side of Detroit. They had the National Guard in Clark Park. JJ: What do you mean? You had the riots in the Mexican [crew?]? CV: No, but it ventured off as far as Bagley and 18th. They had problems with, you know, people. The National Guard and some people in the neighborhood. JJ: Were they Mexican or Black? 32 �CV: Both. JJ: It was both Mexican and Black together? CV: Both there. They had a few. You know, but the main thing was downtown, over by Motown area, where the [00:51:00] old Motown is. They had problems. That’s where it started. But, you know, that was an event that -- ’67, yeah, like I said, right around then -- then after ’67, after the riots, a lot of white people started leaving Detroit. You know, they didn’t like the way things were moving. JJ: It was a white flight. CV: Somewhere around there. The northwest community, you know. I remember my brother, his brother-in-law, his mom lived out there towards Greenfield. You know, I didn’t venture much out of my neighborhood. There was an Irish family, the Sullivans, that moved to Dearborn Heights when I was a kid, and I took a bus trip out there one time. That was my first time in the suburbs, you know. [00:52:00] It changed. At that time, it changed (inaudible). But my family, like I said, they stayed in that neighborhood for quite a while. I was one of the first ones to leave the neighborhood. JJ: It changed a lot (inaudible)? CV: As far as drugs, as far as jobs, you know, as far as leaving the community and stuff like that, at that time, because everybody was moving. But certain families stayed, you know what I mean? JJ: Your father stayed? CV: What’s that? JJ: Your mother and father decided to stay. 33 �CV: No, they stayed. They stayed on Macken Street ’til -- it had to be late ’70s. Then they moved over. My brother had a house over there on Logan on the other side. It was still considered the southwest side of Detroit, but it was a little upside of the old neighborhood (inaudible). [00:53:00] And my mom and dad moved over that way, took over that house -- my brother Hector’s house. JJ: And your friends, as you were growing up, were they Mexican? White? CV: Mixed. JJ: Black? CV: Uh-huh. I hung around with a lot of people from Tennessee and Kentucky. I remember them guys. I learned a lot from them dudes, you know? Hillbillies, we called them back then. JJ: Was there a hillbilly community there? CV: Oh, yes. Oh, yeah. JJ: Good size? CV: Yeah, real strong. Yeah. JJ: We have that in Chicago. CV: They were Baptists, you know, a lot of them. JJ: They were what? CV: Baptists. Yeah, they weren’t Catholic, you know. But the mom and the dad were real strong, same way like my mom, dad. Like, once I started growing my hair and hanging out with these other people, they didn’t -- we had a bar down the street called Dixie Bell. [00:54:00] That was all country music, and all I remember as a kid was a lot of people fighting in the alleys when they come out 34 �of there because I used to have to go get food for my dad at Pete’s Steakhouse, and I have to go by there about 2:00 in the morning. Them guys would be coming out. But, yeah, they had Hank Williams. He cruised through there. Patsy Cline. You know, and it’s just a little bar on the corner, but it was there on Vernor, you know? They had a few of ’em, but they were in the community. We knew a lot of them. But they were in cars, hot rods. Back then, that’s what I remember. (inaudible) JJ: Now, there’s a stereotype that they didn’t like Mexicans or Blacks. CV: No. We got along. Maybe down South, but not in Detroit. The ones from Detroit, they were like anybody else. They were in the gangs on whatever corner. They would hang out with whoever. Back then, [00:55:00] it depends -you know how it is in the street -- how tough you were. That’s where you made your mark. If you could beat up so many people, people look up to you. That’s what it was back then. They didn’t shoot nobody. That stuff didn’t come on ’til later on. That’s when Detroit got bad, you know. These other gangs, the younger guys started carrying guns. And when I left in ’93, it was real bad. That’s when the Counts took over the neighborhood. JJ: Yeah. Counts? CV: The Latin Counts. JJ: The Latin Counts? CV: Yeah. A couple of guys from Chicago -- older guys -- started them. JJ: So Latin Counts from Chicago, moved to Detroit? 35 �CV: I don’t know if they were from Chicago, but two older guys started it. That’s what I remember. And them guys were over there on the southwest side. Then all of the sudden, different gangs started branching out in the neighborhood. JJ: So they became big, the Latin Counts? CV: In that neighborhood, yeah, at the time. JJ: In the southwest side. CV: Right, [00:56:00] at that time. JJ: And then what other Spanish gangs were there? CV: Well, I don’t know if they were Spanish, but you know, the Cash Flow. They had different gangs. Yeah, but they weren’t as big. They didn’t cause as much trouble. I just remember when we used to go to a party store, we’d go to pick up some beer and stuff, and we’d be sitting in the car and these kids are coming down the alley shooting. And they’re shooting at somebody going into the party store, and everybody’s running and hiding and taking off in their cars. But these are 12-year-old kids with guns. They didn’t care. They were recruited by the older guys to do what they had to do. A lot of it was drugs at that time, you know. By the time I left when I went into rehab, that’s when it started getting a little crazy. JJ: Okay, so you say you went to rehab. How old were you then? CV: Forty. JJ: You were about 40. CV: I quit drinking when I was 40. I’m gonna be 59 this year. [00:57:00] Right. I don’t know. It was just -- 36 �JJ: That’s 19 years? CV: I think so. Right, ’93? JJ: That you haven’t drank? Yeah. CV: Ninety-three. JJ: You say you were 40 when you quit. CV: Right, yeah. Yeah, that would be right. JJ: Okay. So what happened then? Were you married? Did you divorce? CV: Well, that was the thing. Our marriage fell apart. I had lost the house and moved back to the neighborhood and bought another house. I was buffing and polishing and working a lot of hours and drinking and staying at work and hanging out after work and stuff. Yeah, so I grew apart from my wife, you know. She got tired of it. She just said, you know, “You’d rather do what you’re doing. I’m 40. I wanna still do part of something with my life.” We separated. [00:58:00] It went from there. And then I’d say that was -- JJ: And you had how many kids? CV: Three. JJ: What are their names? CV: Antoinette, Dominic, and Benito. Benny wasn’t born until 10 years later, you know. We raised two of them, basically, and then when I went back to that community, that’s where I raised Ben for a little bit. I was -- JJ: And you weren’t married with anyone else before? CV: No. All my life. JJ: What was her name? 37 �CV: Linda. Linda, yeah. They were from the Albion area over by Jackson, her family. Her dad, he was real like a hustler. JJ: She’s Mexican too? CV: Yep. Yeah. Her dad, he used to sell tortillas, take ’em to Lansing, Jackson, you know. He’d drive in a van long before any of these other trucks were doing it. But I remember [00:59:00] helping him. It was ’69. That’s when I started going to her house. But he would drive all the way over to Ann Arbor and they had different stores. They’d make a road trip and deliver tortillas to the little, you know, Mexican stores that they had in that community. Lansing was a large community for that. Another thing I remember in the old days was the quinceañeras, you know? I remember a lot of them growing up. JJ: What is a quinceañera? CV: When a girl turns 15, 16, that’s womanhood for them. They get dressed like a wedding dress type thing and they throw it for them. They have a dance, that thing in the church. JJ: What do you remember? You said you remember the quinceañeras. CV: A lot of fights. (laughter) A lot of fights after. It’s cousins and cousins, but it was alcohol. I remember. And the dancing, [01:00:00] you know. I wasn’t into that that much, but it’s family. I had to go. But quinceañeras were a strong part of the Latin community back then, for Mexicans, I know that. JJ: So you’re talking about a community that was pretty solid with quinceañeras, with the church. CV: Right. 38 �JJ: Baseball teams and all of that? Soccer, I guess. Soccer. CV: That, I don’t remember that much. Like I said. But baseball, oh, yeah. JJ: Hardball or softball? CV: Hardball. Clark Park had their leagues. They’ve got a guy’s name over there on a plaque in Clark Park, Angel. I grew up with him and he worked with a lot of the kids over there in the community when they were playing ball and stuff. JJ: Yeah, were there any organizations (inaudible)? Do you remember? CV: La SED. JJ: La SED? CV: Yeah, that helped people get jobs and stuff like that. [01:01:00] My niece works for Western -- well, it’s not Western High School anymore. It’s International. I think they changed the name. She’s not probation, but when you skip school. JJ: Truant officer. CV: Truant officer. Christina. The last I remember, she was doing that. She was working for them. JJ: Didn’t your family get involved in the political events too or no? CV: I can’t vote. I’m not a citizen. JJ: Oh, you’re not a citizen? CV: No, I haven’t given them my citizenship from Mexico. JJ: Why is that? I mean, you’ve been here for how many years? CV: Oh, too many. I’ve paid my dues. It’s just something I don’t wanna do. Everybody bugs me about it, but my mom’s buried in Cuare. We buried her in 39 �’94. My dad’s buried [01:02:00] in Detroit, you know, but just something I don’t wanna do. JJ: But, I mean, why? Don’t you feel American? CV: You can’t get more American than the way I speak, but it was when I came here, I went into rehab. I wanted to go into HRP because it was Hispanic. I wanted to become more -- JJ: You wanna hear more about your culture? CV: There you go. Right. JJ: Hispanic Residential Program. CV: Right. JJ: That’s what HRP stands for? CV: Yeah. The lady who sent me there, she told me, you know, “You can go over there to the other place.” I said, “No, I wanna be with people that speak Spanish. I wanna learn how to speak Spanish better.” JJ: So HRP is the rehab, that you wanted to go there. CV: Project Rehab was the name of it. I was seeing an outpatient at the Latino Services in Detroit. She was a [crude?] lady, and it was around Christmastime. [01:03:00] She was leaving for vacation and I had seen her a couple times. She said, “I’m gonna go on vacation.” I told her I wanted to go somewhere where they could keep me from drinking because I told her, “I’ve got a jumbo in the car. As soon as I get done talking with you, I’m gonna go open the jumbo and just go back and drink. So I need to be locked up, basically, but I don’t wanna go to jail.” So she showed me a pamphlet of the Project Rehab, which was a pine tree with 40 �two people sitting out in the country. When I came over here, it’s over here on Eastern. It’s like Detroit, you know? It’s in the neighborhood. It’s in the city. But the good thing about it was I met a lot of people. It changed my life, you know. JJ: So you felt that you needed to be locked up. Why? CV: Because of the way I was drinking. Because I had lost my family, [01:04:00] you know. Just the change in my life at that time. I quit working, you know? Right toward the end of there, I quit working. JJ: So you were drinking before you lost your family. CV: Right. It got worse. It got worse. That’s what it did. My daughter told me, she said, “You’ve gotta do something.” So like I said, I turned 40. I said, “I’ve gotta do something to change it. I’ve gotta make a move.” So I went into the rehab. JJ: What was rehab like? CV: A learning process. JJ: When you first got here, what happened? CV: I got the DDTs. You know, I met Dave Perez. He was I guess a gang member from another part of the city, from this part of Grand Rapids. He’d come and pick me up at the bus station over here on Wealthy. I had not stopped drinking for so long that the bus ride, by the time I got here, [01:05:00] I had the DDTs, you know, the shakes. Real bad. So when a couple guys in there offered me a glass of apple juice, I couldn’t hold it with two hands, I was shaking so bad. They were laughing at me, you know. You’re gonna get cured in here, from that, so I liked their attitude. One was from New York and the other one was Lenny. He was 41 �from Muskegon. So it was just meeting other people and, you know, learning. Another learning process. I did a lot of reading. JJ: You did a lot of reading, but what were you reading? CV: The stuff that they had in there, the information, you know, about alcoholism, as much as I could. The 12-step program. I went from being part of to running meetings, [01:06:00] and ended up in the kitchen, cooking, ’cause I liked to cook. You know, just being part of the -- JJ: So everybody had a job or something? CV: In the rehab, in order for you to participate in everything, you had to do a chore, some type of chore. Either vacuum, clean the bathroom. You know, they gave you something to do, so it was a process that helped you. JJ: Now, this was a Hispanic program. CV: They had the Bolan. JJ: I mean, what type of Latinos did they have in there? CV: Huh? JJ: What type of Hispanics were there? CV: That was the thing. That’s the first time I met Cubans and Puerto Ricans. I hung around them before, but not as much as I did here. When I went on a trip to Detroit, I had to go see -- because my sister-in-law passed away. I picked up my guitar and I brought it back to the rehab, and then I started jamming with [01:07:00] these guys, playing Latino music, learning songs, making songs, singing, and playing in the room. So it kind of changed my attitude, you know. I wanted to be part of. 42 �JJ: It changed your attitude? Before you didn’t like it? CV: I was strictly into rock and roll, into (audio cuts out), you know, you name it. JJ: And now you’re more into the culture, your culture’s music, because rock and roll is part of the culture of Black. Latinos too that grew up with it. CV: Right, but in the ’70s, the music changed where -- JJ: I mean, Latinos grow up with whatever. CV: Well, I was talking to Patrick about that ’cause they had these bands, the (inaudible) All-Stars and the musicians from New York and stuff like that when salsa came out. These guys introduced me to all that. There’s Mexican music, which my sister and them, and all that [01:08:00] they know about. So I had to relearn all this stuff. It was new to me to get into it, let alone that. I had to learn Spanish. So that’s when I started hanging around with different people over here, and that’s all they spoke. So little by little, I picked it up. JJ: So you’re in the program. About how long were you in the program? CV: I went in in December 21st, I think it was, before Christmas, and I got out at the end of April, right before May. About four months, yeah. JJ: And then you go back to Detroit? CV: I was gonna go to Muskegon, you know, but I got talked out of it and stayed here. I got a room with Analita. You know, I think you helped me out over there. You knew her, or somebody did. Yeah, that was over there by the rehab, and I stayed with her and stayed in the [01:09:00] Grand Rapids area. So I’ve been here since. As soon as I got out of there, I got a job through Yolanda Wilson. She used to get people jobs that came out of jail, so she got me a job in the buffing 43 �and polishing. That’s where I ended up working in the McDonald’s industry. I worked there for about a year, and then I went to where I’m at now. I’ve been there since. I’ve been lucky. A lot of people change a lot of jobs. JJ: Did you continue with treatment after that? CV: Yeah, I participated with meetings, Latino support groups. JJ: And you were one of the leaders of that. CV: Right, helped out, (inaudible). JJ: It was something that we started, right? CV: Right. And that helped me out a lot because, you know -- JJ: That was, like, 12-step with -- they had music in it and everything else. CV: [01:10:00] It involved a little bit of everything. I liked it more than the other one because I went to meetings at these other places, to the Al-Anon Club, and I just feel alienated. Not saying nothing bad about these people, but it was like a clique and I wasn’t in the clique. I didn’t feel right. Yeah, I met one guy that knew Patrick and I ran into him later on in the years, and he says he was my sponsor. I said, “I don’t remember you.” He said, “Oh, yeah, I gave you my number,” and blah blah blah. “I’m sorry,” I said. I’m pretty good with faces, especially if you’re Latino. But, yeah, it was a learning process, that’s what it was for me, both learning how to stay away from alcohol -- you know, my problem was I hung out at the bars all the time. I shot pool, stayed with the guys. It didn’t matter. I’d stay late. [01:11:00] And then to come here and just quit, you know, a lot of people in Detroit, they didn’t think I would do it. They were just saying, “You’ll be back.” Which, you know, it’s hard because a lot of people, when I go back to 44 �Detroit, they’re in the same bar stool when I left. My sister, she still drinks. I’m not the type of person to preach to people a lot. I recommend. That’s as far as I go. I mean, I did what I did because, you know, I wanted to change my life. I wanted to do something positive. And then I got a son, Benny, which does the same thing. But he contributes to the community. Every day, he’s at Clark Park, working with the kids, teaching them how to breakdance and just to be part of, do different things. JJ: In fact, [01:12:00] he’s had a group or something? What’s the name of it? CV: Motor City Rockers. The Motor City Rockers, right. I think he had some pictures he posted up. They did Tiger Stadium a couple times. Them guys would play up there in front, you know. They do their breakdance and they’re pretty good. But the main thing about it is that they reach out to the kids. They start a really young age and they go all the way up. A lot of his cousins are part of what he does, you know, his mom and everybody else. My son Nick -- JJ: A lot of them, it keeps them out of the gangs too. CV: Yeah. Well, on the streets. I don’t know if the gangs are as strong as they were before, but it keeps them off the streets is the main thing. They’ve got other programs over there that other people run, but Benny’s just a small part. JJ: (inaudible)? CV: Huh? JJ: The place that Benny works with? CV: Benny works with [01:13:00] (inaudible) and [Lawndale?]. JJ: Okay, but he does work on the side. 45 �CV: Huh? JJ: He works out of the place too on his own? CV: His is now on his own. I don’t know if he’s still working for the same people, but they gave him the building where he would have classes and he would have them people come and (inaudible). JJ: Now, you said your other son. CV: Nick, he works on houses. A lot of the housing in Detroit is -- people left. There were a lot of houses being torn down and empty. Nick goes in. He works for a company that buys these houses and fixes them and sells them or rents them, whatever’s left. Detroit goes all the way to Eight Mile. It’s pretty big, you know, so a lot of it’s empty. Everybody left, like I told you. The communities, they were the first to leave, and then little by little, everybody else started leaving. But it ain’t like Grand Rapids where they fix [01:14:00] houses. They’ll burn a house because of some reason or they’ll level it. JJ: Now, I met you at HRP also, right? What was I doing there? CV: You were a counselor. You were working there. You weren’t one of my counselors right away, but we would go out to a lot of road trips with you, I remember. JJ: Because before, they didn’t want people to go out. CV: Right. And then the other thing was we had to go to certain churches. We wanted to go to a Catholic church, but they told us whatever type of church they went to. But any type of trip to Meijer’s or anything was good to get out of there. You know, it wasn’t a bad place to be. There’s food and somewhere to sleep. As 46 �long as you followed the rules, everything was okay. But they had a few guys that would venture out, sneak out, [01:15:00] and they’d end up doing bad. But it was a good setup. It’s changed a little bit from what it was. JJ: So the program was pretty good. I mean, we were able to go out to the different things. CV: Yeah, I helped a few people I would say down the line. I met a lot of people, and then they were in the same boat, what I was in. I went to AA for a while after that, but I quit going. I didn’t drink no more, but it’s just something I didn’t do no more. I quit going. JJ: You helped out with the Latino support group. CV: For a long time. JJ: That we founded, that we started. CV: Right, and then we did Lincoln Park thing. JJ: Camp. CV: The camp with the kids, the KO Club. JJ: So you got involved with me with the Lincoln Park camp. And what was that like? I know you did music and [01:16:00] some (inaudible). CV: Right. What I liked about it was it was something outside the city, you know. I really liked it over in the area by Youngs Lake, that little campground that we had. You had the music. You had the boats, you know, the little things. The campfires. It was just nice. I wish that happened all the time. I love when we hear -- this is like where I live right now, Grandville. It’s like by over there (inaudible). To see these kids running around here, and they have programs for ’em here. Don’t get 47 �me wrong. But it ain’t like that one where you would see a bunch of these kids taking off to a camp. The city’s changing, this city, since I’ve been here. JJ: Okay, so Lincoln Park Camp. Yeah, I think we had people come from Chicago also, right? CV: Yeah. JJ: So (inaudible) the purpose of the camp. [01:17:00] Do you remember? (inaudible) not clear. CV: Now I wouldn’t. But back then, I know we had to do with the Young Lords and the Lincoln Park Project, which was something that was going on over there with DePaul University and Chicago. I made a lot of road trips with you out to Denver for the 30th anniversary for something they had out there with the Latinos out there. JJ: Corky Gonzales. CV: Corky Gonzales. I got to see a lot of people. The guy in the Indians (inaudible), there were a lot of people at that meeting. It was an anniversary. But I have a poster still. But it was something different. That was ’94, ’95 -- I think ’95, somewhere around there, ’cause I went to Mexico and then I went to Denver in the same year twice. But it was nice because you [01:18:00] met a lot of people that changed, really changed everything back then, especially Corky Gonzales. He didn’t speak but he was there. I remember there were other poets and people like that that were there at that thing. JJ: At the anniversary? CV: Right. It was the 25th anniversary. 48 �JJ: Yeah, 25th anniversary. We had [from the crusade for Jesse’s place?]. CV: That’s what it was. That’s what it was, yep. JJ: We had that. The Young Lords in Chicago had gone there in ’68 for the first time. We took a busload in Chicago. That’s when we got involved in the (inaudible). Actually, he helped get us involved, Corky Gonzales. CV: [01:19:00] Right. Yeah, you know, it was cool. Like I said, there were a lot of important people, a lot of names that were there. And they went to a park. I remember being in some park that they had been at a long time ago, and they went to have some speeches there and stuff, which was cool. The Lincoln Park Project, I remember going to DePaul University, being involved with a lot of meetings because they had the photos and stories about the Young Lords that they were trying to accumulate at the time. I was part of the meetings. They made decisions with different people that I met over there in Chicago. JJ: So we were trying to tell the history again. CV: Right. (inaudible). JJ: And you didn’t know anything about the Young Lords but you were helping out. CV: Right. All that came after I got out of the rehab. [01:20:00] All I knew about you being part of that was that you were from Chicago. I think back then, I wasn’t as interested because of, you know, coming out of the rehab and stuff. But it was all, like I told you, a learning process, and it helped me to be a part of, to contribute. I met Stacy at -- JJ: That was the (inaudible). CV: No, no, no, it was out that college. We were handing out coffee. 49 �JJ: Oh, Calvin College. CV: Calvin College. Volunteering. We were volunteering. JJ: We were selling coffee for the KO Club. CV: Right, coffee and doughnuts. JJ: The KO Club was a youth program, a gang prevention program, that we set up in the style of the Young Lords, right? But we called it the KO Club. CV: [01:21:00] For the kids. You did that out of the church. I remember we were part of the church over by Vernon. JJ: United Methodist Church in Vernon Heights. CV: But there at Calvin was volunteer work. JJ: Yeah, they had a conference. CV: Right. JJ: And we were selling coffees to these women, and they let us do that. The United Methodist Church let us sell coffee to their conference, and we actually made a lot of money. Not a lot. We made about 800 dollars in a couple days. CV: That was pretty good. JJ: It went to the program, to the kids. That was that. So you helped with that. CV: Right, that part of it, yeah. JJ: You did a lot of volunteering. I can remember the sound, you were always the one that handled that. CV: Right, the PA system for them to speak and to run the guitars and stuff like that, because I was part of music -- JJ: The Lincoln Park Camp. 50 �CV: Right. JJ: So we had about three things. We had Lincoln Park [01:22:00] Camp. CV: The KO Club. JJ: We had the Latino support group. CV: And the KO Club. JJ: And the KO Club. CV: Three things I was part of. JJ: They worked together. CV: Right. But I went with you out of town quite a bit. JJ: We had a little Young Lords group here. You were part of that. CV: But I went out of town with you a lot of times to Chicago. We made a lot of road trips. JJ: You went with me to New York too. CV: One trip to New York was great. That was one of your best speeches. But you’ve gotta speak louder. (laughter) But it was good. It was one of the hottest days of the year, kind of like it is now, and we were in Spanish Harlem. JJ: The 40th anniversary of the Young Lords in New York. CV: Right, but it was so hot that day in that church. JJ: We had had the 40th anniversary in Chicago, but it was New York’s turn. CV: But that was good. JJ: What’d you say? I’ve gotta speak louder? CV: Yeah, you’ve gotta. JJ: It was good, you said, still. 51 �CV: Yeah, it was like [01:23:00] Denver. I got to meet a lot of people, and they were from -- it’s all history. JJ: Yeah, we were well received in both places. CV: Right. But it was a guy’s daughter that was there, his granddaughter. JJ: Oh, and Pedro Luis Ocampo’s granddaughter. CV: You’ve got a picture. We got a picture with her, right? And he’s an important person, you know, for what you guys believe in. JJ: (inaudible). CV: Yep. JJ: She came and said hello (inaudible). CV: Yeah. Getting back to where I came from and to how I got here, my thing was the change in life for what I did. Detroit, to grow up in that era, it was a plus because you can do more at that time. Now, you know, streets are a little dangerous. You’ve gotta watch your back when you walk around. It’s changed. Everybody left [01:24:00] Detroit, you know. It’s just hanging there, surviving, one of the cities that’s survived. My son does what he does for the community, for the kids. He’s still there. He don’t stay in Detroit, but you know, he goes down the neighborhood every day, him and his buddies. They’re there at Clark Park, which is good, you know. JJ: So what are you doing now? What type of work and stuff like that? CV: I’m running casino parts. Slot machine parts. Yeah, I do that, buff and polish. JJ: So you’re doing buffing and polishing? 52 �CV: Yeah. Well, I polish. I polish some parts. They’ve got buffers. But I run them parts for them, prep ’em before they’re plated. They put chrome on them. JJ: And you’ve been there for a while. CV: Yeah, I’ve been there since ’94. You know, I left to California to go help Michael Lin, the crisis he had out there. Then I came back and they rehired me. [01:25:00] So I kind of lost my seniority, but still about 14 years, he said, a little more, something like that. But it’s good. It’s a small business and tight. JJ: You know the owners real well? CV: Well, I worked with his dad. He passed away and then his son took over, so it’s good. And he said we’re about two-year contracts that we’ve got going, so as long as it keeps me working. Knock on wood. I’m one of the ones that’s working, making money. A lot of people I know, they ain’t doing nothing. Like I said, I’m almost 59. I’m working as hard as I did when I started, 100 degrees in there. It’s hot. But that’s what we do. Should’ve went to college. I would’ve been sitting behind a desk. (laughter) JJ: Well, I mean, you like the job. I mean, it’s a good job. CV: It’s something my brother Beto taught me, yeah, how to do. You know, it’s a trade. It’s a dying trade, but it’s a trade, yeah. You’ve gotta be good at it. They’re not gonna hire you [01:26:00] off the streets unless you know what you’re doing. It’s dangerous. Jerry got hit twice today with a part, just to show you. The machines run at 1,800 RPM, like a fast wheel running at you, and if you lose a part, it’ll hit you. You’ve gotta be able to hold onto the part, so it’s physical. You know, a lot of pain. But you’re making money. They don’t pay by 53 �hour. They pay by how fast you go. You know, but it’s a dying thing. They don’t do that no more. A lot of businesses don’t pay like that. They go hourly. So it’s good. JJ: Any final thoughts? CV: I’d like to contribute I’d say to this community, which I became part of. JJ: Grand Rapids, you mean? CV: Grand Rapids, yeah. I don’t know how far, you know, [01:27:00] I’m gonna go as far as working. Everybody else I’m around, they’re retired. All my brothers, you know, they don’t work no more. JJ: (inaudible) 59. CV: It don’t matter. Them dudes retired when they were younger than I was, my brothers did, you know? It depends on your job and your pension and everything. So in your situation, where you’re at. I don’t know. But if I get out of what I’m doing because it’s too physical, I’ll end up probably playing some music, doing cooking, doing something I like to do, something a little more laid back. But I’ve gotta pay the bills, you know? If I could be part of something in the community where I can volunteer, keep me busy, I’d do that. I’d do a lot of -what you call it? -- watch my diet and stuff now because I was overweight for a long time. I had to change my eating habits and stuff like that. [01:28:00] So I’m on my bike a lot now, walk whenever I can, try to do physical stuff. We got a heat wave now and I ain’t gonna do it out there in 90 degrees, you know. Yeah, it’s just see how it goes, you know. I’m not involved with the Young Lords as much as I was before, but I still communicate with them, you know? So, you know, it’s 54 �like you were telling me, they have that thing in Oregon, a play that’s going on, I want to get in touch with Michael Lynn. You know, if he’s still there, and the play is still going on at the time and I’m not doing nothing, I’d like to go out that way, you know, be with him and to go see it, do something. Because, you know, we’re tight. We grew up together, but we don’t see each other no more, you know? Especially when you get our age, you lose contact with different people. Something to do, you know? I’m not married no more, but, you know, but I’m still around -- [01:29:00] I’m going to the family reunion Saturday. I’m the one that runs everything. I do that for the family, you know, keep (inaudible) nephews and nieces. You know, we used to see each other at funerals, you know, and that was it. You know, weddings once in a while, you know, but I say, hey, once a year, I make an effort to go to Detroit, I rent the park, and get the food together, and try to get as many of the family together to keep it tight. Because my ma and dad used to go to (inaudible) used to have picnics there. And that’s all the old pictures. JJ: Go where? CV: Belle Isle, La Bella Isla. It’s right there in the Detroit River. West Grand Boulevard starts from the Ambassador Bridge, goes in a circle, and it goes right into Belle Isle. So with the way they made the city, but a lot of people used to have picnics there in the old days. They had the [01:30:00] Grand Prix there a few times, you know, but yeah. I do it because of the old days, you know, when we used to get together with family, so I try to keep everybody, you know, tight. Some of our family’s out of the state, but the ones that are here in the Detroit 55 �area, I try to get them, you know, together, keep the family tight. You know? I don’t go down there as often as I used to, but one time a year, I make an effort. I think that’s important, you know, for family to -- especially when -- it’s like, my niece just had a, you know, baby, (inaudible). You know, and the new -- the younger ones get to meet and read about the older ones. They have pictures, they have the little pamphlets and stuff, you know, the stories about the family and stuff like that, you know, so they can read. But it’s [01:31:00] pretty good. You know, some -- a lot of people do it, they do it their own way, because, you know, I’m making it up, at least try to, you know, do it. JJ: So what’s the benefit? Because I know you do a lot for the reunion, you do that every year. What do you think is the benefit of the reunion for the family? CV: So that your cousins won’t forget your cousins. They know each other. They won’t walk down the street and say, “Man, I didn’t know we were related.” And a lot of that stuff goes around. You know, people grow up. It’s not like when we came. I’m second generation, you know, I’m talking third, fourth generation. You know, it’s not like before. They don’t all speak Spanish, you know? And I was just one of the few that didn’t do that. So, you know, I think it’s important, especially for, you know, different cultures, being Latino. United States changed, you know? [01:32:00] A lot of Latinos in the United States now. So it’s important to keep all that, you know -- JJ: So how do you feel about that? Now we’re -- I didn’t ask you, did you experience any discrimination at all when you grew up? CV: I get profiled once in a while, but I’m -- 56 �JJ: What (inaudible)? CV: That’s when they see you and they think you’re up to no good, you know? They think just because of the way you look, you know? JJ: So, what do you mean? Can you explain that? CV: I look Indian -- Mexican. JJ: (inaudible) examples of profiling? CV: Well, I’d have to say the DNR, you know, a couple times got me. JJ: What is DNR? Department of Natural Resources?, something like that? CV: Right. They come to check your fishing license, you know? And there’s other people that are around, and they’re all fishing around me, but they come straight to me because I got long hair, and I look Indian, Mexican. I own a boat, you know, but they don’t think I can own a boat. They come ask me for my registration. I mean, they’re doing their job, I don’t give them a [01:33:00] hard time, but I just think it’s a type of profiling that they’re doing. They’re not going up to everybody. And I see it in this neighborhood lately, because of this heatwave we had going around, that’s just, the cars are stopping, everybody, you know? And I can go down a couple -- JJ: Police are stopping everybody? CV: Oh yeah. JJ: Really? CV: Yeah, Saturday night. You know, but they have trouble over here, you know? And they have -- heat brings alcohol, brings drugs, brings -- I can’t say nothing negative about the police too, they’re doing their job. But, you know, every once 57 �in a while you’re going to have the ones that, you know, go over the edge. You know, I see it. And then I’ve got family out there in California and Arizona and stuff like that, and New Mexico. There’s relatives that are related to other relatives that have experienced worse, you know? JJ: In New Mexico, you have family (inaudible)? CV: Well, my brother Jesse lives down there, you know? [01:34:00] And his son. My sister Yola. JJ: Oh, you mean this stuff that’s going in on New Mexico -- CV: In the United States. JJ: How do you feel about that? CV: Well, my thing is that I’m fortunate that I don’t live in the area, you know what I mean? Over here, we don’t get it as bad. But you know, if they change it like they did the law over there in Arizona, you know, that means they can stop anybody for anything. And if you’re -- they want to check you for your papers or whatever -- and I have what they call a green card. You know, I have mine, everything’s legal, I’m a permanent resident of the United States. But if you don’t have your papers, you know, they’re getting them as far as taking them to the doctor. Their family’ll be sick, and then they’ll go ahead and they’ll get a hold of the family, because they know they’re not from here. You now, [01:35:00] so there are different ways that they got to do it. They’re having problems with too many people in the country coming over. JJ: So you think they have to do it? 58 �CV: Certain areas. Certain areas have to because of the overflow, especially down there by Mexico. And the drug dealers don’t help by sending them over with all them packs on their backs, you know? They do it -- guys got family over there. They’re going to offer you so many thousand dollars for their family, they’re going to do one trip for them just so they’ll have some money for their family. They’re not going to experience that type of money nowhere else. They’ll go to jail for that, you know? It’s rough. JJ: So on the one hand you’re saying they have to do it, but on the other hand, as you were saying, that maybe they -- CV: Both sides. Both sides gotta do it, or they -- one guy’s got to do their job because they got to do their job to control the country, and the other guy’s got to do it because he’s struggling. The families are starving or they don’t have nothing, they’re in [01:36:00] poverty, so they say “I can’t get a job, I can’t get into the United States, but this guy offers me $5,000 to bring in a pack of weed on my back and I can make it over there through the desert?” He’ll do it. You know what I mean? And they’re young people. JJ: Is it really about just drugs? Or are some people just trying to get a job, you know? Or -- CV: The majority of them that get caught in there, you know, are the ones that are running the drugs, and the other -- JJ: The ones that are being caught now? CV: Right, so -- 59 �JJ: They’re leaving -- you’re saying that they’re leaving the other people that are just coming here for jobs alone? CV: No, the ones that are coming for jobs are getting caught too, you know, illegally. But they got different ways they come in (inaudible), you know what I mean? It’s just too many -- that’s a big issue, big issue, immigration, you know, with the United States. I don’t live there, that’s what I’m saying. My brother lives down there in New Mexico. Especially the people in Arizona. JJ: So [01:37:00] how do you feel about your brother? CV: My brother Jesse, he’s been down there most of his life, you know? He’s the one that was in Vietnam, you know? And he believes that it’s just, you know, there’s the poor people over there on the other side that want a better life, you know, and they want to come over. We were lucky. Back then, they were giving the papers out. They’re not doing that no more. That’s changed. 9/11 changed everything, you know? Especially with immigration. I had to do -- my card is Homeland Security. JJ: Your card says Homeland Security? CV: That’s who’s, you know, watching you. That’s who keeps track -- JJ: On your card, it says Homeland Security? CV: It’s Homeland Security. It’s part of -- you know, their security to keep track of the immigration, you know what I mean? So it’s like a little chip that’s on that card, you know, in order to keep track of everybody. But, you know, [01:38:00] that’s what you got to use. I haven’t been out of the country in a long time, you know? 60 �When my ma died, that’s the last time I went to Juarez. You know? It’s been a while. JJ: I’m just saying, my card doesn’t say Homeland Security. It should, right? (laughs) CV: Yeah, yeah. JJ: I’m just kidding. CV: It is all good, you know, to be able to grow up in the United States. JJ: So, because you’re growing up in the United States, but you’re still a Mexican. You said “I’m not going to be a citizen.” So you got a little pride -- does that mean you got a little pride for Mexico, or what? CV: Viva Mexico. (laughs) [Zapata?]. Yeah, Zapata. JJ: I mean, is that the way you feel, or am I putting words in your mouth? CV: No, no, no. That’s -- I was a revolutionary in the other life. (laughs) JJ: You’re coming down. CV: I’m coming down now. We’re good? JJ: Yeah. [01:39:00] CV: Okay. JJ: All right. You done? CV: Yep. END OF VIDEO FILE 61 � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/019735a8279b4e5009a4a53c57b54fef.mp4 38feefec8f79e228c996c4db87dddaa2 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 Carlos Vasquez vídeo entrevista y biografía 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 Mexicano-Americanos--Michigan 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_Vasquez_Carlos Title A name given to the resource Carlos Vasquez video interview and transcript Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Vasquez, Carlos Description An account of the resource Carlos Vazquez is from Detroit, Michigan but he was born in Mexico and his family is from Ciudad Juárez on the border with Texas. Mr. Vasquez’s family settled in Detroit in the 1940s and 1950s. Mr. Vasquez is a musician who has played in several bands. He met José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez while Mr. Jiménez was a senior counselor/supervisor for Project Rehab. Mr. Vasquez decided to join the Young Lords and has volunteered to work on all of the Lincoln Park Camps. Today Mr. Vasquez’s son and other children still recall the event and say that it had a positive effect on them. 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.) Mexican Americans--Personal narratives Social justice Community activists--Illinois--Chicago Mexican Americans--Michigan 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 2012-07-18 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/cefbedaec8c20f4a1634c00d44aab4fa.pdf 8d236e146bb661f3492d87eb64aabbc9 PDF Text Text Young Lords In Lincoln Park Interviewee: Carmelo Romero Interviewers: José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez Location: Grand Valley State University Special Collections Date: 8/23/2012 Biography and Description Carmelo Romero grew up in Lakeview and today lives in Logan Square. His family also lived in the Lincoln Park neighborhood and knew of the Young Lords. But it was not until the Young Lords set up their neighborhood storefront office that Mr. Romero took notice of them. He holds a Master Degree and appreciates the contributions to civil and human rights of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcom X, and loves to study African history, especially the Moors who took over Spain for 800 years and influenced Latino nations in many ways. Mr. Romero explains how the Moors even contributed to jibaro music in their sounds and song chants. Maria Romero, his sister, remains a full-fledged member of the Young Lords in her heart. In the 1970s she ran the office at Wilton and Grace Streets. Mr. Romero would often stop by and, as the Jiménez for Alderman Campaign took hold, he volunteered to help. But he was more involved with school then. Today, Mr. Romero is a promising writer and has published several short stories. He also works for a housing development organization that is providing affordable housing in Logan Square. �Transcript JOSE JIMENEZ: Okay, Carmelo, if you can give me -- and we’re rolling now. There’s no trick questions or nothing. Just relax. It’s not a (inaudible). But if you can give me your full name and your date of birth and where you were born. CARMELO ROMERO: Okay. Full name, Carmelo Romero. I was born in Río Piedras, Puerto Rico, and I was born March 5, 1954. JJ: Okay, Río Piedras. And your parents, who were they? CR: Well, Ana Maria Santiago Coto and Cayetamo Romero. JJ: Cayetamo Romero. Okay, what about your brothers and sisters? CR: Brothers, George, Julie -- I think her full name is Julietta -- and Yolanda [00:01:00] and Maria, Cruz Maria. JJ: Okay. And what type of work did your parents do? CR: Well, my mom basically took care of us and nannied children, you know? And my father worked at Northwestern Hospital in the maintenance department, and then he also had his own business. He was a trained masseuse. JJ: He was a trained masseuse? CR: Yeah, and he also through reading and everything like that trained himself in Eastern arts of healing. So he had often two or three botánicas. JJ: Okay. Oh, botánicas, huh? CR: Right. He also was, like many people are just natural herbalists. My sister Maria is like that. And that’s what he was, so [00:02:00] he knew plants by the feel. He knew what could heal and what could hurt and all that. So he was able to put 1 �things together like that and treat people, help people. Basically, you know what’s incredible about it is that I could put a store like that over on Damen and North Avenue, and man, I’m making money because it’s like everybody that comes in there, they have the money to spend (laughs) on these types of selfcures. JJ: And they’re into that, I mean. CR: Oh, yeah, that’s become -- JJ: -- part of the culture. CR: Yeah. Yeah, and that’s something that, again, reaches back to -- JJ: Actually, my mother’s into that. I mean, she didn’t have a botánica, but she’s into spiritualism. CR: Yeah, and so many people -- JJ: And (inaudible) a little bit. She says she [00:03:00] doesn’t, but she (inaudible). CR: Well, some of it is natural. JJ: But he had businesses. He had a couple businesses. CR: Yeah. And his whole thing was, you know, he was very politically aware and everything like that. JJ: What do you mean by that? What do you mean by that? CR: Well, he was a very proud -- JJ: I mean, was he Republican, Democrat? CR: Oh, no, definitely Democrat. He’s as far left of a Democrat as you could make. JJ: Oh, he was far-left? 2 �CR: Yeah. You know, that was his whole reasoning and everything like that. The weird thing about it is that he would make a great occupier. JJ: Okay, you mean the occupy movement? CR: Yeah, that would be his -- JJ: Well, did he talk to you about that? CR: He talked about it. He wouldn’t [00:04:00] talk to us about it, but he would just -like, guys would come into the store and he’d discuss things with them and I had big ears. I would hear all this stuff, and Maria too. Even as young kids, we realized there’s just something out there that deals with this politics stuff that controls things, you know? He was very much aware of all of that. He was very much aware of how the game is played and all that. JJ: The game’s played, what do you mean? CR: Well, you know, a politician comes to you and he says, “You’re a store owner, all right? I want you to do this, I want you to do that. Can you put this --” “What are you going to do for me?” You know, and the politician would say [00:05:00] this and that. But at that time, all these store owners would also say, “Well, you know, I’ve got this friend here and I’ve got this friend there, and I’ve got a cousin here, and they all need help too.” Which I think is missing in people today, that it’s what’s the largest amount -- and I don’t blame people for this -- what’s the largest amount you can offer me? And there’s no mention of the other people, you know, no mention of the cousin, the familia there, and all that. It’s just, “What can you do for me?” And then it goes on from there. That’s one thing that’s missing from us, that we don’t think like that anymore, you know? It’s like 3 �[00:06:00] at that time, people were still coming over, all right, and we knew people that were still coming over. JJ: Were still coming over from Puerto Rico? CR: Yeah. Right now, nobody knows anybody that’s coming over. They just know people that go back and forth. Everybody’s just entrenched here. There’s another difference. It’s like I said, everybody’s just entrenched here, but they’re not a part of the culture, you know? I spent a few months in New York, and God, I love that city. Everything, every ethnic group in New York is entrenched in New York. It’s like you will never see [00:07:00] a Polish guy drive by and say, “Oh, yeah, Mami,” all right? But you would see that in New York because Puerto Rican culture is a deep part of New York. All these fascinating things in New York -- it was just like part of the thing, you know? It’s like salsa dancing was (inaudible) yeah, all right, we do that at the bar. What’s the big deal, you know? But then here, that just wasn’t the case. It was like we’re just so separate from all of that. Then as I studied further, I came to the realization that’s all Chicago, all right? Yeah, I dated an Italian girl who lived on Taylor Street, and you would swear -- JJ: She lived on Taylor or you lived on Taylor? CR: She lived on Taylor. I lived [00:08:00] around, you know, Wilton and Grace, there around Sheffield, I think it was, or Fremont, one of those two streets. And it was like that area, which I used to call Little Italy, that’s where it was, you know? Then I had friends who lived in Bridgeport, and that’s where that was. It’s like nobody in this city -- and I couldn’t understand it because it’s hell getting around 4 �in New York. But here, it was so easy back then. You could get anywhere you wanted to all the way from where the Baháʼí Temple is, from Wilmette all the way down to Blue Island, and damn close to Gary in this city. It doesn’t take more than 45 minutes. [00:09:00] I used to do that, get on that train and do that, and though my feelings were deeply Pan-African, I still love -JJ: What is that? What is Pan-African? CR: That so many people of color in North America who are here now, particularly people in the islands and here, have root ties to Africa because of the slavery. But then later on, I learned we also have deep root ties to the Mediterranean, you know? That was the coolest thing when I went. I was working for this photo agency like around 1989 and they sent me to Europe, and particularly the Mediterranean. I was doing fashion photography there and I was going from -- I lived a quarter of the year in Barcelona, [00:10:00] a quarter of the year in SaintAntoine in France, and then I spent time in Turkey and Morocco, and damn, the Mediterranean is like -- and then I come back here and I’m like, we’re so much closer to each other. Why can’t we have that here, you know? As I say, it’s not always gonna be harmonious, of course. You have conflict within families. Just go to a Puerto Rican or an Italian wedding. They all end the same, all right? Puerto Rican and Italian weddings, the girls outside pulling their hairs out and guys just drinking beer, watching them. JJ: Fights, you mean? CR: Hmm? JJ: You mean like fights? 5 �CR: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I don’t know what it is that weddings bring out in all of us, but [00:11:00] that’s like a connection. I would say to people, “Well, yeah, that’s that connection. That’s because the historical blood line connection from the island Puerto Rico to the Mediterranean,” you know? JJ: So you’re saying there’s some historic line there? CR: Oh, yeah, it’s a historic genetic line, especially from Puerto Rico to Spain, France, and Morocco, all right? There’s folk music from Morocco that you would swear, if you heard it, jibaros in Puerto Rico would be singing. But that’s the connection because, see, the Spanish and the Portuguese were unlike the Northern Europeans. They brought everybody over. JJ: I know that Spain, [00:12:00] Arab countries who ruled Spain for 800 years. So you’re saying in Morocco, they do jibaro music? CR: Yeah. It’s got the same -- well, they have a different type of stringed instrument, but it’s like the same way. A little bongos, someone playing the stringed instrument, and this chanting back and forth, and with a constant “Lo-le-lo-li.” JJ: Lo-le-lo-li? CR: Right. Then later on, you hear that in Spanish flamenco. What’s called French Apache dance, you can hear that in there too. JJ: Now, you said you got into the Pan-Africanism. What got you into that? CR: I used to read a lot and read weird stuff, right? And I found this guy [00:13:00] named Frantz Fanon. I read his two books. JJ: Actually, the Young Lords met Frantz Fanon. 6 �CR: Oh, yeah, yeah. Well, that’s where I got -- there was a poet who worked with the Young Lords, Felipe Luciano. JJ: Oh, that’s right, yeah. CR: I met him at this party somewhere and he mentioned Frantz Fanon. JJ: In New York? He’s from New York. CR: Right. But he was here in Chicago. JJ: Okay, at that time. CR: It was somewhere in Hyde Park, something like that. It’s probably on the University of Chicago campus. So he mentioned that, so I dug them out and read them. Well, it was a weird concept to me because like everybody else at that time, I just thought about this country, the United States. [00:14:00] Yeah, I know they brought slaves over. But then his thought process was that there’s an African diaspora out there, you know? And the thing about it is that later on, like practically everything in the world, it became corrupted for political purposes. But the idea behind it, that you don’t have to go out of your way to be African or anything like that, but just enjoy that it’s there. Then later on when I got a chance to go to Spain and the Mediterranean, I realized that it’s everywhere, you know, because it sprung from the Moors culture, mixing in [00:15:00] with the Roman culture. JJ: That’s what I was thinking of, the Moors. They were in Spain for 800 years. Now, the Moors, I don’t understand, are they Morocco? CR: Yeah, they came out of Morocco. Morocco was their center of operations. They came out of Morocco and their whole thing was to spread Islam, you know, 7 �throughout Eastern Europe. Well, they got as far as the British Isles and really dominated for a long time. JJ: I really like jibaro music. I mean, my family played that and all that. So you mentioned that and I (inaudible). So we might’ve gotten it from the Moors, then. CR: Oh, but, see, everything over here, we got from somewhere else because even [00:16:00] what they call the Native Americans, well, there was once a land bridge on the Siberian Strait and they came, basically immigrated from that part of Siberia to here. So everything here came from the Old World, and then, you know, there was also the theory of supercontinent where all the continents at one time were one. Of course, that stuff splashes all over the place. JJ: Now, that, I had heard of that in some college class that I took. So where did you go to school? CR: I started out at Malcolm X College. JJ: In grammar school. CR: Oh, grammar school, wow. The ones I can remember were King School when I was a little kid, McLaren School later. JJ: On the North Side by Lakeview? CR: No, these were on the West Side. JJ: [00:17:00] West Side where? CR: In the area which is pretty much now the medical center, the University of Illinois Medical Center. JJ: Oh, okay. Around Van Buren? CR: Yeah, we lived on Van Buren. 8 �JJ: We used to call that La Madison. CR: Right. JJ: Do you remember that? CR: Yeah, I remember that. I remember them calling it -- now, Sundays right now, I have a booth over at Maxwell Street Market. You know, we sell stuff. But I remember back then, Maxwell Street being [La Halsted?]. You would go to Terry’s and go through there. I remember -- this is the greatest memory, because I needed a suit for my eighth grade graduation -- my mom taking me to this place called Morry’s. JJ: Right, yeah, I went there. CR: Yeah, and she’s just the [bickering?] [00:18:00] and went back and forth between her and the guy. He’s like, “Lady, I’ve gotta have lunch. I haven’t had lunch and (inaudible).” And finally I’m getting the suit. The smell of the fabric, you know? It was so cool. Then you go out and then from there, we went straight over to the Polish places, you know, and got a Polish -- the weird thing about that is, like I said, I’m working on Maxwell Street now, and the morning job that I have, we service basically those restaurants, Maxwell Street restaurants and stuff like that. JJ: So Maxwell Street, can you describe what it was, I mean, at that time? CR: Well, back at that time, it was like this whole market of all kinds of stuff. Whatever you [00:19:00] wanted, you could find at Maxwell Street. In addition to that, you had musicians, you had artists, you had entertainment. Sometimes some guy would get caught trying to steal from somebody and all the vendors in 9 �that area would just beat the crap out of him. They don’t call the police or anything like that. It’s just get him out. Get out. Don’t come back. JJ: It was like an open market? CR: Oh, yeah, yeah, open. You had guys selling fruits. JJ: You can barter. CR: That was the whole thing. It’s like people bartering back and forth. What sticks in my mind about that, again, the center relationship, it’s like when I was in Morocco, I saw markets like that. That was the whole thing is bartering. This guy was explaining it to me, “Well, no price here is set.” JJ: [00:20:00] You negotiate, whatever. CR: Right, so you have to know how to negotiate, barter, but you have to be entertaining. You can’t be rude or the seller will just cut you off. If you’re rude, cuts you off. JJ: But a lot of Puerto Rican families used to go there? CR: Puerto Rican, Mexican, Black. Most vendors were Jewish. JJ: You’re talking about Pan-Africanism. Did you feel Puerto Rican or African? Or maybe I’m saying that in a wrong -- CR: No, no, no, you’re saying it pretty much the right way. I felt that nationalities didn’t count. Back during that time, I didn’t call myself Puerto Rican. I didn’t call myself American. What counted was what you, the individual, were made of. I looked at myself as someone who is deeply African with [00:21:00] sprinkles of Spain and France in there because whenever I would see that -- I just knew that was in there, you know? But I didn’t know exactly how it was in there until I went 10 �there. So back then, anyone would tell you, who knew me back then, I’d just never call myself Puerto Rican. I also never called myself American, despite the fact that when I was in high school, I was in ROTC. But most guys, that’s so you don’t have to swim naked in gym. That’s the reason why guys get into ROTC. Well, back in those days. JJ: What high school was that? CR: Waller. Robert A. Waller. Now it’s Lincoln -- JJ: You went to Waller High School? [I went there?]. CR: Whom? JJ: So how did you go to Waller High School? You were living up north. CR: We moved out here. When we moved -- JJ: You [00:22:00] lived on Van Buren. CR: Right. Then from Van Buren, we moved to (inaudible). Back then? To me, it was cool. JJ: Okay, what do you mean? CR: I just mean I was in contact with Black kids, white kids, or what every other Puerto Rican called [los hilbilos?]. JJ: [Los hilbilos?]? CR: Yeah, there were a lot of kids, a lot of families in that area -- JJ: Hillbillies? Los hilbilos, los hilbilos. CR: Yeah, right. But Southern -- JJ: (inaudible). CR: Yeah, a lot of Southern immigrants there -- 11 �JJ: At Van Buren (inaudible). CR: Yeah, and there were Puerto Ricans, there were Mexicans, there were Blacks. So my feeling was, you know, this is kind of cool. Everybody seemed to get along, so as I grew older, [00:23:00] I was always fascinated by the news and stuff like that on television. JJ: So now you’ve moved from Van Buren. You guys move into the Lincoln Park neighborhood. CR: Not yet. We moved, but still on the West Side. The weirdest place, all right? I can’t even tell you where it was. All I can remember of it is, like, overgrowth. That’s all I could ever see was overgrowth. It was dank and dark. JJ: What do you mean, overgrowth? Grass? CR: Grass, plants. An incredible amount of grasshoppers and crickets, just like they were everywhere. You could smell that tobacco. That was our backyard. I could tell that my mother absolutely hated it, you know, and we were there, like, two months, and she never unpacked [00:24:00] and we were gone from there. Then we ended up in the Lakeview area. JJ: In Lincoln Park. CR: Right, right, Lincoln Park. JJ: Because it had Waller and all that. CR: Right. We were on Halsted and Orchard. JJ: Okay, they run the same, so you mean -- 12 �CR: No, no, Halsted -- actually, Armitage, because I would go -- yeah, Armitage was the street where Waller was on, Orchard and Armitage. Right. So we were on Fremont and Armitage, and between Armitage and -- you know, that area now. JJ: And Wisconsin, yeah. CR: Yeah. No, and North Avenue. JJ: And North Avenue, okay. But then (inaudible). CR: Dickens -- no, not Dickens, but another English author street. Willow. Willow and then North Avenue, okay. And that area back [00:25:00] then was -- JJ: So you moved a couple places in there? CR: No, no, no, we were always on Fremont. JJ: Fremont between Willow and North Avenue? CR: Right. JJ: I got you. CR: No, between Willow and Armitage. JJ: Okay, all right. And what year was that? Because I lived on Fremont. CR: Around ’69. Yeah, around ’69 because it was the year that the Cubs were doing good. JJ: Okay. In ’69, we had the church, the Young Lords church there. You didn’t notice that? CR: No, so that must’ve been -- JJ: Sixty-eight. It must’ve been ’68. CR: Sixty-eight or ’67, yeah. So, you know, we moved around there. You know what? It was around the time of Martin Luther King’s assassination. 13 �JJ: That was ’68. CR: Right, so that’s when it was, because that’s what I remember most about that is that [00:26:00] when we moved there, there was still that mixture that I enjoyed. But then King was assassinated and it just all blew up, you know? It all went to hell. Nobody wanted to associate. And Waller, the weird thing about Waller is that it encompassed -- the Cabrini-Green, but also the Gold Coast where you had bastards that’re just too cheap to send kids to Parker or Latin. They said, “Oh, well, let them go to Waller. It’s free.” So there were a bunch of rich kids there who detested their parents, rich white kids who detested their parents and associated with us. My particular group there was, like, we all wanted [00:27:00] to be artists in one way or another. I wanted to be a writer and a trumpet player, and there was another. There was two other guys that did get to -- man, they actually did get their dreams because they worked with Spike Lee. JJ: [Who were these?]. CR: Yeah, Rob and Gus. JJ: Rob and Gus. Friends of yours? CR: Yeah. And they got to work -- well, hell, they’re in Amsterdam now, you know, just sitting back. JJ: You don’t remember their last names or anything? CR: Rob was Smith and Gus was Stone. JJ: Okay. And these are close friends of yours? CR: Well, they were. JJ: Yeah, but they made it. 14 �CR: Well, they made it, yeah. They made it the way we all said -- because we all wanted to be basically -- you know what’s weird? Because that was, what, 1968. But if you were a person who loved classical music [00:28:00] and jazz, for some reason, there was a gas link to the late ’50s. Real cool jazz, real jazz, inventive jazz was, like, it. You actually heard it on the radio. And it’s all artists, whether you were painters, actors, whatever, gravitated towards that because the improvisation and everything like that. That, Pablo Picasso paintings, you know, Chagall, and all that. You gravitate towards that because of the improvisation. This is creative. This is what I wanna do is create, you know? And before King’s assassination. You really had [00:29:00] that. Then after the assassination, it’s like everybody splintered off, even the Blacks. JJ: There were riots at Waller. I remember those. CR: You’ll have to tell me that. I was standing there watching. I was like, well, I’ve gotta help me. But then that’s what bugged me the most, was there was this one Puerto Rican girl who was, like, the sweetest girl in the world and everybody got along with her. Then there was this Black kid who’s the same way, and on the day of the riots -- I remember them all -- they were good friends, and they’re walking up. He’s walking her home and a bunch of Black kids attack them. [00:30:00] And what I remember about that is -- JJ: Why did they attack them? CR: Because everybody was running around rioting. It was after King had been assassinated. I remember our teacher standing us by the window. Are you parked all right out there? 15 �JJ: Yeah, I’m parked. CR: Okay. They’re saying that the school was closed and all that, and I remember going down and standing around and looking around. I remember a bunch of Black kids pushing a bunch of Latin Kings, chasing down these white kids, and beating the crap out of them. I was wondering, what does this mean? I understand people are mad that this man was dead. I had already started studying politics [00:31:00] back then, so I pretty much knew about that. But, you know, why is this necessary? And it just blew my mind. It sort of led me to wanna find out, all right, these people, why don’t we act like that? I’ve gotta find out about myself, all right? And in trying to find out myself -- JJ: (inaudible) Martin Luther King’s death, you wanted to find out about yourself. CR: Yeah, you know, because it seemed important back then to know where you stand. I didn’t understand. What the hell are you talking about? Is this a cowboy movie? You know, because I used to watch a lot of the old -- well, I still do. All my DVDs are old movies. JJ: Oh, cowboy movies? CR: All old movies. Anything made before [00:32:00] the ’50s was just outstanding. Anything made during the ’50s is really cool, you know, because it’s so camp and dumb. Then you had the ’60s where nothing really happened. Then later on in the ’70s, you had the slasher films appearing, and that’s really cool because there are artistic films where the director and writers are actually trying to say something and there’s just films that go straight to DVD. Trying to figure out which is which is pretty cool. 16 �JJ: Now, you were in Waller. How many years did you go there? CR: Well, I went there five years, all right? I failed one year, but I did it on purpose because there was a girl there [00:33:00] that I was going with that wouldn’t graduate until after I did. So I figured, well, you know -- this is the way my mind works -- I figured, well, when I was in grade school, I went from fifth to seventh grade, so I owe them a year. What the hell? Actually hell is not the word. So I said, I love this girl. I wanna be around her and everything. So, yeah, I’ll just blow a year of high school. JJ: So you went from what year to what year? CR: Now, see, that’s all confused. About ’69 to ’72. JJ: Oh, ’69 to ’72, you went? CR: Yeah, about somewhere around there. JJ: Okay, ’69 to ’72. So you didn’t become familiar with the Young Lords then. CR: Actually, well, yeah, I had heard about everything because I was a student [00:34:00] of politics. I was studying personally. At Waller, this was the thing at Waller. I would present that to my teachers and I had a couple of teachers -- for some reason, the history teachers there were just very, very conservative. “This is garbage.” Then I would present it to my English teachers, the literature teachers, the music teachers, and they said, “Wow, this is cool.” Not exactly that, but you know. I would say, “Okay, I don’t know what’s going on here, but I don’t care.” (laughs) So I hung around for that last year, and then didn’t turn out so good because her father ended up -- well, her mother died, [00:35:00] and then her father turned her into his wife. She ended up committing suicide. 17 �JJ: (inaudible). CR: Yeah. So it was like, wow. I mean, I didn’t think about losing the year. I just thought about, this is nuts. This shouldn’t be happening. This is something I should be writing, not something that should -- JJ: Was this a Puerto Rican girl or no? CR: No, she was Black. JJ: She was Black, okay. CR: Yeah, they lived in Cabrini-Green, and her father was like this storefront minister, you know. I didn’t know the weirdness that was going on there. But, see, that’s the way it is. In a way, that’s why I can’t stand these reality shows, you know? Because all the weirdness is there, [00:36:00] all right? That makes it harder for writers because what the hell? How can we go beyond this? We can’t astonish people anymore. Everything is just out there. But back in those days, all these secrets that were running around -- as a matter of fact, that’s part of a novel that I wrote about a private detective working around that period and the things he -well, you know, that’s basically what a lot of private detective fiction is. You start here and then it gets dirtier and dirtier and dirtier and wealthier and wealthier and wealthier. JJ: Now, you said you’ve had some things published already, right? CR: Yeah, short stories, poems in weird, defunct [00:37:00] magazines. I tend to follow the line of pulp writers, although I consider them the greatest writers ever. JJ: Consider them what? CR: Excuse me? 18 �JJ: The greatest writer what? CR: Ever. I mean, that period of fiction that started with Dickens and then Conan Doyle. And around that same period, even though it didn’t deal with crime, you had Dostoevsky, the Russian writers. There’s just fiction that came out of that that’s here forever because the feelings are there forever. Then as you got into the ’30s, pulp writers were writing these detective stories. Dashiell Hammett. See, that was my thing. [00:38:00] I always wanted to be a combination of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler and Ernest Hemingway. Their writing, you know, it brought you into these worlds. I think that’s very difficult to do now because those worlds are for you to see on cable and even on regular television now. JJ: So what was Waller like, though, I mean, during the time you were there? CR: See, that was weird because, again, before the riots, it seemed like everybody, despite whether you liked each other or not, you got along, all right? Then after the riots, everybody was just mean except for, like, kids who had their little groups and cliques, which we were considered [00:39:00] the uncool, the dorks. But nobody messed with us because we learned [harmony?]. JJ: Uncool, the dorks, because you didn’t belong to a group? CR: Because we weren’t hating each other. It’s like all of these two or three little groups, you had the Puerto Rican kid. With our group, I was the Puerto Rican. Then there were three Black guys. Then there was a Japanese kid and there was a Puerto Rican girl, then I always dated someone Black. We were all interested in art and jazz, so we would end up in places we weren’t supposed to 19 �be while all the other kids [00:40:00] were at sock hops and things like that, you know? Then there was other kids who were in the chess club and things. JJ: Sock hops? You mean -- CR: Dances, stuff like that. JJ: So a lot of dances going on in the neighborhood? CR: Oh, yeah, when I was in ROTC, we ushered for this group that became real, real popular called -- and now I forgot their name. But I remember that they were real, real popular, and we ushered for them at a show. They had all kinds of stuff going on around there. JJ: What about the neighborhood at that time, ’69, ’70? What type of population? CR: Again, it was everything depending on -- every block seemed to change. You would have a block that seemed to be mostly Puerto Rican. Then you would come across a block that was mostly Mexican. [00:41:00] Then there would be really right across the street, the building across the street would have a bunch of white folks in it. Then you would have a business, and whoever the kid was, the business -- there was this -- I think it’s still there on Armitage and Sheffield -there was this cleaners. There was this Japanese kid whose family owned the cleaner. He was the coolest kid in the world. He hung out and everything like that, you know. That’s what you had from block to block to block. Then you would get to North Avenue and then the projects would start, and it was weird because the projects, the white buildings that were on Halsted and North Avenue -- or, no, Halsted and Division [00:42:00] were mostly Puerto Rican. Then you had some whites -- 20 �JJ: You’re talking about the Cabrini-Green. CR: Right. JJ: The white projects there. CR: Right. Then you had some whites there too and it was predominantly -- JJ: Did you know people from there? CR: Oh, yeah, my best friends were from there. My girlfriend was there. JJ: In the white projects? CR: No, no, no, no, at the red projects on Cleveland where they used to -- the beginning of Good Times? JJ: Right. CR: Yeah, right. They would show those, and that’s where most of my friends were. Like I said, we really wanted to be bohemians, you know? I mean, kids would look at us because we’d come to school with black turtlenecks and black berets, and the girls would be wearing the black leotards and black leather skirts with flat [00:43:00] shoes. The kids then would look at us the way they look at the goth kids, you know. It was the same reaction. But there was no violent anything until after the riots. Then after the riots, for a couple of years, it was like nobody wanted to like each other. We hated that because we wanted to like everybody. It was like wherever we went, if we went back home, there were gangs around. They would, you know, they says, “Nah, you’ve gotta represent something. It’s either us or them.” So all of us, especially in Cabrini-Green, because there were like three gangs around there, recruiting -- what they used to call recruiting, you know? And it was weird. [00:44:00] I sort of thought about this last year when I 21 �was watching a film on King, that it’s so weird that so many things just ended after he was assassinated. They haven’t come back yet. I mean, this whole thing that’s going on now, the current election, that’s all about what was going on back then. It’s all hatred. They’re just people in this country, can’t stand to have a Black president, want people of Hispanic descent -- despite the fact we’ve been here longer than them, if you count the fact that Spain was here 600 years ago -they want us out and want to destroy whatever women have gained. I don’t understand [00:45:00] that. It drives me nuts because it’s the same crap I used to hear back then. How could we have not evolved in anything but sports? Back then, I loved soccer and I would never admit I was in the United States because we had a crappy soccer team. Now we’ve got one of the best teams in the world. How come everything else hasn’t evolved like that? Why do we have people running around this country, wanting to turn it into a Christian Iran, you know? And nothing against -- I love Persian people. My girlfriend is Persian. But I’m talking about the theocracy and the government that just takes the life out of people. Why do people in this country wanna do that to this country? I don’t understand it. It drives me nuts. [00:46:00] And more than that, it’s the same crap that was happening then. Why haven’t we advanced? See? This is the potential for a wonderful, beautiful country, you know? Europeans wanna copy it in the Euro zone. They’ll never do it because you’ll never get the Greeks and Italians to agree on anything. I’ve been there, I know. But here, we’re just right here right next to each other. It’s like we could sit down and watch football, but we can’t communicate over our kid’s school. Doesn’t make any sense to me. 22 �JJ: Did you go to college? CR: Yeah, I went to Malcolm X College, and then University of Illinois in [00:47:00] Chicago, which is now Circle Campus. JJ: So Malcolm X College, you went to the first two years? CR: Right. JJ: Then you transferred to the University of Illinois Circle Campus? CR: Right. JJ: And you graduated? CR: Well, not technically. I haven’t paid my bills. JJ: You haven’t paid your bills? CR: Yeah, so I don’t have a degree. But eventually I’ll take care of that. JJ: Only when you pay your bills? CR: Well, no, it’s like, I mean, if somebody clicks in on it, you also get that tag that there’s a problem with it or not accredited. It’s like you’ve got the degree but it hasn’t been accredited. That’s the problem that a lot of college -- well, not all college. JJ: Is that you or is that all the students? CR: Naw, that’s been around forever. JJ: So you pay your bill or you don’t get your -- CR: You’ve got your degree, but if someone called us up, they’d say, “Wow, it’s not accredited. [00:48:00] It was this problem. It was that.” I don’t think that happens anymore because now -- JJ: But you have your diploma, right? 23 �CR: Yeah. JJ: So you can prove that you graduated. CR: Yeah, but, you know, nowadays with online and everything like that, everybody double checks everything. JJ: Okay, and when they double check, they say it’s not accredited? CR: Right. JJ: Okay, so it works. CR: Right, because I still haven’t paid that old bill. But it doesn’t really matter, you know, because the degrees -- see, I made the mistake of getting the degrees in things that eventually just were all right, like in culture. My BA was in what was called communications. That was journalism and all that. It was basically journalism. But [00:49:00] now, a degree in journalism -- JJ: So you have a BA in journalism. CR: Right. JJ: Okay. CR: Then later on, it was in cultural education. JJ: Oh, you have two degrees. CR: Yeah, a BA and a masters, and my masters was in cultural education. Then it just got -- you know, who cares about that? We all know about culture. Even then, though, I don’t know why I wanted degrees in that. Oh, I know why, because they all got me involved with the jazz programs at the school. That’s what I was after. Like I said, my whole thing was to either become a jazz musician or one of those three writers because my mind was just like all in the 24 �’30s, ’40s, ’50s film noir. They call it film noir, [00:50:00] the private detective, the black and white, the fedoras, and all that. Even though it’s contemporary, that’s what most of my writing goes back to. They called it the hardboiled school of writing. And I was fascinated by that. But, see, what I also wanted to do -- and I was able to do this -- I wrote this story and it was published -- damn. I don’t remember where it was published. I believe it was Playboy or whatever. And if you remember, during that time, there was a lot of gang fighting, and there was particularly a big rivalry between the Latin Eagles and the Harrison Gents, all right? So I wrote a story in the ’30s style of writing where there was [00:51:00] the Harrison Gents did something to -- it was very West Side Story. They did something. He raped one of the sisters of one of the Eagles, and then the Eagles just rained down violence and vengeance on them all. My purpose of the story was to show how stupid all of this was, all right? For once in my lifetime, I became a folk hero in that neighborhood because somebody got a hold of this story and they looked at it from the point that, man, we killed off so-and-so. JJ: Wait, I think a family was killed. CR: Yeah, that was back then. JJ: Because I was incarcerated when one of the Harrison Gents -- and then the Eagles were my cousins. So I knew both sides. It was bad because he told me it was his family. They got burnt. [00:52:00] They burned that down. You wrote about it. You wrote about it. CR: Right. But, see -- JJ: Small worlds. 25 �CR: The weird thing about it, again, is, well, you know -- I can’t remember the magazine it was published in, but my whole perception was these folks can’t read. It’ll never end up with them. And somehow, someone showed it to them, and I became a folk hero, you know? They loved the story. I was afraid I was gonna get my ass kicked, but they loved the story and everything. Then I felt cool because, see, that’s what a writer wants to do. One way or the other -- who was it? The writer of one of those gothic novels. Jane Eyre. Whoever wrote Jane Eyre said that you [00:53:00] know what a writer wants to do is for you -maybe she didn’t say this -- but anyway, for the reader to embrace them or give them a good boot in the [beer?]. Either way, you want a reaction. That’s when I felt, wow, I had done that. JJ: Let me ask you, because your writing, you also lived on Wilton and Grace. CR: Right. JJ: Right. Was it right after you graduated that you moved up there? CR: It was just before graduation. JJ: That you moved the family? CR: Yeah, that the family moved around there. JJ: (inaudible) by Sheffield near Grace. CR: Right. JJ: So a lot of families [followed Sheffield up?] from Halsted. CR: Yeah, we went west. You know, go west. That’s what [00:54:00] ended up happening to us. JJ: Was there a reason why you moved? 26 �CR: Yeah, because, you know, rent. That’s always the reason why us or anyone else moved was rent. JJ: What do you mean, the rent? CR: The rent got too high, so you moved to an area where the rent wasn’t as high. JJ: Okay. You mean the neighborhood was changing? The rent was getting high? CR: Yeah, I guess so. JJ: You guess so. But you know that the rent was high. CR: Yeah. Well, I knew when we got ready to move, it was because the rent was too high, you know? JJ: You raise that rent, we’re moving. CR: Right, that was it. JJ: [From here to you?] (inaudible). CR: Right. That’s why we moved where we moved. JJ: So you moved by Wrigley Field, by that neighborhood, the Lakeview neighborhood, from Lincoln Park to Lakeview. CR: No, that is the Lakeview was called the Lakeview. JJ: [00:55:00] It goes up to -- CR: See, I always thought of it as New Town. JJ: New Town is -- CR: The gay part of the North Side. JJ: Yeah, it’s connected to Lakeview. CR: Yeah, because I used to live on Wellington. I had an apartment on Wellington and Broadway. 27 �JJ: Oh, Wellington and Broadway is New Town. CR: Yeah, right. JJ: You didn’t move in with your parents? CR: No, that was after I was out of college. First I was married, and we were married about nine years. Then after we broke up, I moved back to that area, and I had a place around there. JJ: In New Town near Broadway and Clark, in those areas? CR: Yeah, around there. JJ: Then [00:56:00] Lakeview is north of Diversey. CR: Okay. And I guess west of Clark Street. JJ: Yeah. CR: Yeah. Okay, I get that now. Now, see, at that time, there was no Wrigleyville, though. JJ: Right. They didn’t call it Wrigleyville? CR: Yeah. Well, you know that area that’s around the ballpark is basically Wrigleyville. JJ: So you lived right by the [ball park?]. CR: Mm-hmm. JJ: You moved, what, around 1972 or something? CR: Yeah, ’72, because my last year. It was my last year in high school. JJ: So by ’72, Lincoln Park was (inaudible). CR: Oh, no. Yeah, by ’72, Lincoln Park was gone. JJ: It was gone. There were no more Puerto Rican families, poor families. 28 �CR: No. [00:57:00] There are two families living on Orchard, between Armitage. You know, there’s this little hot dog stand right across the street from [one of them?]. JJ: Right now? CR: Right. And right there on Armitage, between Armitage and the next street over -which it’s Willow or whatever it is -- there are two Puerto Rican families who own the buildings who still live there. JJ: Recently you’ve seen? CR: They’re there. I don’t know them personally, but I just know that they’re Puerto Rican. JJ: I mean, how do you know they’re there? CR: Because I see them. JJ: When you go there? CR: I run seven miles in the morning, you know. That’s my workout. Well, yoga first, and then I run seven miles. [00:58:00] Once a week, I run down Armitage, and the grandmothers -- JJ: Is there a reason why you picked Armitage? CR: Habit. Yeah, you know, it’s just a habit, just going over the bridge and then going down towards Armitage, under that underpass where that big factory is. You know, it’s just something about it that’s just -- it’s like an odyssey. I also think, like, for me it’s personal. It’s the only familiar thing that I know. So I do it once a week. JJ: Okay, all the way from [here?], pretty far west. 29 �CR: Yeah, but if you’ve been running all your life, if you’ve gotta run all your life, that doesn’t mean anything. JJ: [00:59:00] Okay. CR: Yeah, you can do it in an hour. JJ: Okay. CR: So it’s like nothing. Well, maybe in the winter. JJ: It might take me three days. CR: Maybe in the winter, a little longer. JJ: Yeah, for me, it might take me three days (inaudible). (laughter) CR: Well, you know, some people aren’t made to. JJ: Okay, so now you’re on Wilton and Grace, and this is ’72. CR: Yeah, around that time. JJ: And what type of neighborhood is it now? CR: See, here’s where the problem comes with me. I didn’t spend a lot of time in the neighborhood. I was off trying to (inaudible). I was going to college and also our main hangout was jazz clubs on Clark Street and thereabout, the Happy Medium and all that. They don’t exist anymore. The only one [01:00:00] left I think is the Jazz Showcase, and he moves from one place to another. You know, but there was the Sardine Club and all of that, and for some reason, I looked old enough for them not to bother me to come in. I was a photographer. I was doing photo [arts?] and all that. So it was like I was so involved in everything, and I was involved in soccer. I love soccer. I just wasn’t around the neighborhood that 30 �much. The most time I spent around the neighborhood, it was like I got involved with the art group [El Taller?]. JJ: Oh, [El Taller?]. With (inaudible). CR: Yeah, (inaudible). We would have meetings a couple of times. But then even -- JJ: Did you draw? CR: No, no, no, no, I was a photographer, photographer and a poet. JJ: Okay, that’s right. CR: [01:01:00] We would have meetings. That was cool. But then I would go home and then I wouldn’t spend that much time. The most time I spent in that neighborhood was when my sister got me involved with your campaign. JJ: The alderman campaign? CR: Right. But you know what? It was kind of pleasant because you did have -again, what I like, people of all kinds all over the place. It started to change after we left. JJ: In what way? CR: Well, now it’s just strictly a yuppie area. JJ: Okay. So all the families moved out? CR: Yeah, there’s basically no families. JJ: But for a little period, what? CR: Yeah, there were families. There were people all over. The coolest thing that I used to love to do is go take pictures of people [01:02:00] in the summer in the swimming pool because that was at Arnold Park, right? They had the swimming 31 �pool there, and everyone from the neighborhood would be there. I took some really great pictures. JJ: Of Arnold Park? CR: Yeah, and the people, and you could see all the colors. I only shot in black and white back then, which I still prefer, you know. But you could still see all the shades, all the colors, all the differences in people’s physique. I remember showing some pictures to some friends of mine who were like, “Aw, she’s Egyptian.” I said, “No, she’s not.” They would all look at this. “Wow, look at this kid here. He’s got no skin tone, but he’s got curly hair, nappy hair.” That was the coolest thing about that area. [01:03:00] Then you know the other thing, there was a lot of weed around back in that area, and there were also musicians around. I used to live west of there. A couple of the guys from Chicago used to hang out. There was a recording studio somewhere on Willow, there around. JJ: At Willow, you mean back in Lincoln Park, right? CR: You know where that DePaul Campus is now, okay, and the seminary? Well, just a little north -- north or south -- just a little south of there, there were like these old turn of the century houses, the wooden houses, and all of them were inhabited by recording artists. Like all these guys, most of them were white, but they didn’t care who came up to their place to mess around with this and that. [01:04:00] There was that community around there now. I don’t know if it exists. I haven’t hung around DePaul in years. But that’s the way that area used to be. You know, now everybody tells me it’s all retail. I know the Goodman Theatre 32 �has a theater there, and I used to go to a Borders over on North Avenue and Halsted. I don’t think it’s there anymore. JJ: What do you remember of the campaign? Anything? CR: Yeah. I remember there was, like, a lot of hard work. I don’t know about anybody else. I didn’t care about winning or losing, just the fact that there was a Puerto Rican out there doing this. That’s the only thing that mattered to me. That was cool. Oh, we might win, we might lose. What the hell? [01:05:00] Just a Puerto Rican out there trying to do this, and that meant a lot to me because, you know, I was a Puerto Rican out there trying to write, trying to play trumpet. So just to see -- because it just seems like with us, man, we just don’t wanna try sometimes. It’s just, uh, I dunno. We say, no, you’ve just gotta try, and just trying, it leads to other things. We do have some cool guys -- well, you know, I don’t think much of politicians, but we do have some guys out there doing stuff. JJ: So that wasn’t like a traditional campaign anyway, though, was it? CR: No. No. There were all these young people. You know, [01:06:00] traditionally a couple of older guys would round guys up, tell them, “All right, you’re voting for David. Get in there.” This was like young people, and young people putting out the word and everything. Our parents, our neighbors looking at us like we were crazy, you know, but there was always this feeling in me that there was a little bit of pride in them for what we were doing. JJ: The adults, you mean? CR: Yeah, because, you know, they’d say, “No, don’t do that. [Soy comunista?].” And all that. 33 �JJ: So they were using it. The machine would spread rumors too, so they were saying [es un comunista?]. CR: Well, yeah, but everybody said that. But, see, [01:07:00] again, all that -- JJ: How was our office? How did that look? Do you remember seeing the office? CR: Yeah, you had, like, you know, the person at the desk and then a couple of classrooms or something. JJ: No, I mean outside. How was it painted? CR: I don’t remember the painting. JJ: You don’t remember the purple? There was a purple. CR: All right, now I do. Now I do. JJ: A weird color. CR: The weird thing about that is that later on when that rock singer Prince became popular, and that purple -- I said, “The hell? There’s this guy -- like, is his father a Young Lord or something?” That was all I could ever think about Prince, other than the fact I saw his first concert ever. Well, I think it was his first concert. [01:08:00] It was at I believe Northern Illinois University, football stadium. It was the Rolling Stones tour and he was opening up for them, right? So his band started up. They did something. Wow, these guys are like Devo. Then he comes out and he’s got this long trenchcoat. He’s dancing around. That sounds cool. Then he takes the trenchcoat off and he’s wearing a g-string and we’re like -- (laughter) My girlfriend at this time, [Iona?] -- this white girl Iona -- she said, “Get that faggot off the stage.” And it might be on YouTube with this can of beer hitting the pianist from Prince’s band. That was my girlfriend throwing that beer, 34 �you know. And people were going nuts. “Get him off,” and everything like that. After about 20 minutes, the Stones [01:09:00] came out and everybody rocked it and everything. But now as an older, more civilized, mature person, I’m thinking, okay, we ran Prince off to bring Mick on, who’s been having affairs with his [basic?]. Again, well, I mean, at that time, it was insanity fueled by reefer, Johnny Walker, and -- what were we snorting? Coke, I guess it was. No, it wasn’t. Hash. We all wanted to be Jim Morrison back then. But, see, then that’s another thing that I think the music was so much better back then, all right? I’m glad to see Hispanic artists from Mexico, Ecuador, South America becoming mainstream because that means money for them. But damn, [01:10:00] they’re losing the music. I liked it better when there was a separation between art and what’s popular. But I feel good for them because they’re making money. JJ: So what do you think about -- you were in Lincoln Park, and you also were in Wilton and Grace. Both these communities had Puerto Ricans in it and other minorities. CR: Right, right. JJ: But they left. Did they leave or were they pushed out? CR: Everybody left. JJ: Okay. They just wanna leave? CR: No, again, the rent was too high. And so everybody got moved west, and I mean everybody. That was a big immigrant area, even [01:11:00] immigrants from the South. There were a lot of people there from Kentucky, New Orleans, well, Louisiana. You know, everybody got moved west. 35 �JJ: They [get moved?]. CR: Oh, no, no, it was got moved. I’m convinced there’s no way in the world this could’ve happened accidentally, that there was a plan to just move people out and take advantage -- JJ: What convinced us? CR: Because it doesn’t make any other sense otherwise, and because I’ve gained -- I love golf, you know, and I go to trade shows where I find deals and I sell deals to people. What I found is that these types of things in cities, businesses like a Walmart [01:12:00] or something like that, they target an area. Then they get political, and through the politician, they get zones changed or whatever, and rent becomes a little higher. Then people, friends of the investors, brothers and sisters and all that, they go in there and buy. That’s how Wrigley Field became Wrigleyville. Before it was all Puerto Ricans, Greeks, poor people, and a lot of bohemian artists who were also poor people. JJ: Wrigleyville by the Cubs, right? CR: Right. That’s like one guy said to another guy -- JJ: This was Puerto Ricans and poor people. CR: No, I’m talking about primarily restaurant and bar guys, the restaurant industry. JJ: No, no, but I’m saying before that. CR: Oh, yeah, before that. They said, [01:13:00] “All right, the Cubs are there. You got that ballpark there. It draws. All right, let’s clean it up. Let’s clean up the area.” JJ: Let’s clean it up? 36 �CR: Yeah, let’s clean it. Let’s clean up -- JJ: So cleaning it up means getting rid of -- CR: Right, because you can buy the buildings -- JJ: Am I putting words in your mouth? CR: No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. You buy the buildings cheap, you get rid of the people that are there, you renovate ’em, and you sell them high. That’s how Wrigleyville became Wrigleyville because that’s what they did in that whole area. You know, bought the buildings cheap, they got rid of the people. I don’t know if there was a westward move then. People just scattered. Some people went to the South Side. Some people came back here to the West Side. [01:14:00] Then other people -- wow, I know of Puerto Ricans who went back to the island and are doing very well, you know. But people just disappeared. You know what? You’ve got me interested now. In some way or another, in one of my runs, I’m gonna stop and talk to those two women, you know, find out how they were able to hold on, because it’s fascinating to me. I once ran by there on Thanksgiving and their whole families on either side were there with the traditional foods and everything. I bring them up because that area now, you know what the rent is? The ownership tax, just owning property in that area right now, is incredible because of the tax that you have to pay, because that to me shows [01:15:00] a certain amount of success and survival. Well, that’s what it is, success and survival. JJ: What do you mean? 37 �CR: Everybody else got beaten out. They rode everything through to the point that now when that area is at its most valuable, they’re still there, you know? They weren’t beaten out. And that’s something that -- JJ: Who wasn’t beaten out? CR: Those two Puerto Rican families. JJ: Okay, those Puerto Rican families on Orchard. CR: Yeah, because as you go down, you no longer have Cabrini-Green there anymore, so it’s like, wow, if you wanna get poetic, those buildings were destroyed. But these two families still thrive, you know, because when I went by there last year, I could see someone coming in with a baby. I was like, wow, that’s awfully cool. [01:16:00] So one of these days, I’m gonna stop off and say, “Man, I’d like to write about you people.” You know what I mean. JJ: It’s getting late. Any final thoughts? CR: Well, the only final thoughts I have is that, you know, the ugliest thing in me is this whole election. I want it over and done with. I respect the president. I think he and his family have gone through this with the greatest grace, and so have we. I think ethnic people, Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, Black, we’ve gone through this with just the greatest restraint and calm because [01:17:00] I’m sure most of us -- well, I don’t know. I won’t say most. I feel that his four years have been an assault on me, all right? JJ: What do you mean? He assaulted you, you mean? CR: No, not him. JJ: But his four years? 38 �CR: His four years have been an assault on him. JJ: Everybody has assaulted him. CR: Right. All right, in particular, Tea Party, all right? I just got into a thing with someone earlier today. It’s like, stop with all the crap. That’s what I say to Tea Party. Well, maybe that’s what I should say. Tea Party people, stop with all the crap, all right? Because none of this is about the Constitution or anything like that. When you’re young, running around young about give us our country [01:18:00] back and all this -- you’ve heard of the gorilla in the living room, right? The gorilla in the room, all right? Well, there are three right here that these people just can’t stand. Number one, they can’t stand a Black president. Number two, they can’t stand hearing what the Tribune published not too long ago, that we Hispanics are gonna become the number one ethnic group in this country. It’s driving them insane. Last but not least, they wanna destroy all the rights that individual women have accumulated. And all that thing about anti-gay marriage, anti-abortion, it’s all about those three things. I don’t wanna hear it anymore. You know, when people say that Romney’s an idiot because -- and I’m like, he’s a politician. Politicians are not idiots. [01:19:00] They just know that when they’re talking to idiots, they have to talk like an idiot, you know? That’s why that guy said that incredibly stupid, anti-biological stuff last week about rape. Well, I’m not quitting -- yeah, I’m not quitting the race. Why should he? He’s five points ahead even after having said that stuff. What does that tell you? He’s talking to the stupid, you know? And we intelligent people have to realize that there are a lot of stupid out there, and we’re never gonna educate them. So we 39 �just have to just go out there and occupy. Occupy the voting booth. I know who I’m gonna vote for. You vote for who you want to, but do it because you really feel that’s [01:20:00] the right person. JJ: What fascinates you about the Occupy movement? CR: That there’s no leader. It’s like something Mozart wrote, you know? There’s a movement. It moves to something else. There’s a crescendo. There’s a long -but there’s no leadership in it. Someone hears about it and they go there. We’re occupying this building. The cops may come out and kick our asses. Yeah, but I like what you’re saying. I’m gonna occupy. There’s no leader to it. Now, the Tea Party claims the same thing, but that’s crap, all right? They do have a leader. It’s Ronald Reagan. That’s their whole philosophy, and by the way, [01:21:00] the original political Tea Party was founded like in 1962, dedicated to make sure that John F. Kennedy did not get voted in. JJ: In 1962? CR: Yeah. They’re not even original. There was a Tea Party in 1962. It was in Dallas, Texas, right? And they didn’t want John F. Kennedy president, and that was their whole thing. What are you people talking -- you copied from that. There’s nothing original about this. And it’s totally organized, you know. And that’s different from the Occupy, which isn’t organized. It’s like someone will beep you on your phone and they’re saying, “We’re occupying here, we’re occupying there for this, for that. Are you in?” If you’re in, you go there. [01:22:00] You take time off from work or whatever. That’s what I love about the Occupy movement, that it’s of the people. Now, the problem with it is that 40 �because it is of the people, and the people have made their statements, it can’t be co-opted because -- no, man, I’ve gotta get to work. (laughs) You know? JJ: I appreciate it. END OF VIDEO FILE 41 � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/b60d40e121ffe3ba96035fd98d4e96c8.mp4 a91132c3410f57b6d1ba73c98a7a8cbb 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 Carmelo Romero vídeo entrevista y biografía 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 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_Romero_Carmelo Title A name given to the resource Carmelo Romero interview and transcript Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Romero, Carmelo Description An account of the resource Carmelo Romero grew up in Lakeview and today lives in the Logan Square neighborhood of Chicago. His family lived in Lincoln Park and knew of the Young Lords. Mr. Romero volunteered to help with the Jiménez campaign for Alderman. Maria Romero, his sister, remains a full-fledged member of the Young Lords; in the 1970s she ran the office at Wilton and Grace Streets. 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 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/65e4fa90b551daf302f4f605c12f1632.pdf 1540a035cd167c081a4da38789840edc PDF Text Text Young Lords In Lincoln Park Interviewee: Carmen de Leon Interviewers: José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez Location: Grand Valley State University Special Collections Date: 5/14/2012 Biography and Description English Carmen De Leon is a Young Lord who grew up in New York City and today lives in Loíza, Puerto Rico. A strong advocate for women, Ms. De Leon worked closely with Young Lord Richie Pérez on a range of education and youth centered programs. In her oral history, she recalls her days working with the Young Lords. Ms. De Leon discusses how the Young Lords were infiltrated by government agents and how “ideology” was utilized to factionalize and create divisions within the Movement, including encouraging takeovers, discrediting, and purging leaders. She vividly describes members being taken hostage as well as how she herself was purged from the Young Lords. Her interview provides important insights into how these repressive tactics were carried out and how they ultimately destroyed the connections between the Young Lords and the barrio base. Spanish Carmen De Leon es una Young Lord que creció en la cuidad de Nueva York y ahora vive en Loiza, Puerto Rico. Soportará fuerte por mujeres, Señora De Leon trabajo cerca con el Young Lord Richie Pérez en programas de educación para jóvenes. En su entrevista comparte sus memorias sobre los días que trabajo con los Young Lords. Señora De Leon habla de cómo los Young Lords fueron infiltrados por �agentes del gobierno y como “idolología” fue utilizado para nublar y hacer divisiones dentro del movimiento. Esto también incluye soportando unos que tomen poder y descreditando los líderes. Con vivacidad describe como los miembros fueron tomados como rehén y como ella misma fue purgada de los Young Lords. Su entrevista nos da una prospectiva importante en cómo estos tácticos fueron pasados y últimamente destruyo las conexiones dentro de los Young Lords y el barrio. �Transcript JOSE JIMENEZ: (inaudible) the same as (inaudible). Ready [John?]. P1: Recording. JJ: Okay, go ahead. CARMEN DE LEON: My name is Carmen [Iris?] de Leon [Quiñones?]. I was born on August 13, 1955 at Bellevue Hospital in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, New York City. JJ: Okay. And who were your parents? CL: My mom, her name is [Paula?] Quiñones. And my father, his name was José Antonio de Leon. JJ: (inaudible) were they also born in New York? CL: My father was born in Juncos, Puerto Rico, and my mom in Gurabo, Puerto Rico. But they did meet in New York. JJ: They met in New York? CL: Yeah. JJ: So what year did they (inaudible) CL: My mom was 16 when she arrived to New York, and she’s 79 now. JJ: [’30?] or something? CL: Yeah. Yeah, she [00:01:00] got to New York, I believe, like 1949, something like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. JJ: And your father also came? CL: He was there. I don’t know what year my father... 1 �JJ: (inaudible) CL: I believe so, yeah. JJ: And what about your other siblings (inaudible)? CL: They’re all in New York. JJ: I mean how many? (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) CL: Oh, okay. I had five sisters and two brothers. JJ: (inaudible) their names (inaudible) CL: My oldest sister, her name is [Inez?], a brother named [David?], a sister named [Nidia?], myself, sister named [Marixa?], sister named [Evelyn?], sister named [Josephine?], and a brother named [José?]. JJ: And you said the Lower East Side of Manhattan? CL: I was born and raised in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. JJ: Coming from Chicago, I have no idea [about that?]. What is that like? [00:02:00] CL: The Lower East Side, it’s the lower part of Manhattan where a lot of immigrants resided there for work. And so a lot of Puerto Ricans, besides going to El Barrio in Manhattan, they also resided in the Lower East Side. JJ: So it’s part of Manhattan, so (inaudible) Square, that area? CL: Okay, it’s not far from there. JJ: Not far from (inaudible) Square, that area. CL: Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Delancey Street housed in that area, close to Chinatown, not far from Little Italy. JJ: So what are your first memories? CL: My first memories of the Lower East Side, as a child, it’s so funny because to me, 2 �all the Spanish people that I knew were Puerto Ricans. [00:03:00] (laughs) That was it. And everyone worked. You know, that w-JJ: What kind of jobs? CL: Sewing. My father, he was a welder. My mom didn’t work. She took care of the kids. But everyone else, if you were not sewing, you were doing some sort of manual labor. JJ: What was the housing? (inaudible) CL: The housing, well, we never lived in projects, but my parents always rented apartments, which were like 35 dollars a month. So we lived on Ludlow Street, which is in the Lower East Side. We lived on Sherriff Street. JJ: How many bedrooms (inaudible) CL: Two bedrooms, three bedrooms. And they were very, very big and very nice. JJ: I know at one time they had a bathtub in the (inaudible) CL: Yes, my grandmother lived in an apartment [00:04:00] where the bathtub was in the kitchen and the toilet was in the hallway. JJ: (inaudible) CL: And they were like a railroad train type of apartment. You had, like, the kitchen, then the living room, then the room, so they look like a train. JJ: Like if you were in the (inaudible) CL: Uh-huh. JJ: But they were good sized? CL: Some small, some fairly large. JJ: So what was the grammar school? Grammar school? 3 �CL: Grammar school. JJ: Where did you go to grammar school? CL: I went to P.S. 160. When I started school, it was in first grade. JJ: So when they say P.S. 160, I’m not clear on (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) CL: That’s an elementary school. JJ: Yeah. But I mean are all the schools called by number? CL: Public schools, yes. Well, in the Lower East Side, yeah. JJ: Is that (inaudible) CL: Well, I have no idea because we didn’t really live anywhere else. JJ: But they were all called by numbers? CL: By numbers, yeah. JJ: So in the school, it was all Puerto Ricans or...? (inaudible) CL: There were a lot of Puerto Ricans, [00:05:00] yes. But there were no Spanish teachers at that time. And, like I said, when I started school, I started in the first grade. JJ: Puerto Rican speaking Spanish or...? CL: Yeah. Puerto Ricans speaking Spanish. JJ: (inaudible) Spanish (inaudible) CL: Yeah, ’cause when I first started first grade, I didn’t speak any English. JJ: Where would they (inaudible) were they there (inaudible) Like what city did they (inaudible) CL: No. Yeah. Well, yeah, yeah, yeah. To me, everyone was all the same. The parents spoke Spanish. 4 �JJ: Like, culturally, were they from cities or from the country, the rural area. CL: Oh, that I don’t know. That, no. No. JJ: But they had (inaudible) generation. CL: I believe like me, you know, I was the first generation. JJ: (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) the late ’40s? CL: Yeah. JJ: (inaudible) late ’40s [in the end?] because I know (inaudible) Puerto Rico (inaudible) 19... [00:06:00] CL: Yes. JJ: But there was a big immigration in late ’40s. Is that what you’re saying? CL: Uh-huh. I believe that the Puerto Ricans that migrated here in the early 1900s mostly went to El Barrio. JJ: So that’s the old (inaudible) CL: Uh-huh. Yeah, because Tito Puente, he was born and raised, and his parents were, like, there. JJ: Yeah so there were (inaudible) Okay, so El Barrio was the older -- CL: Yeah. JJ: -- Puerto Rican section. CL: Mm-hmm. JJ: In the 1900s, so now the Lower East Side, there’s a new body that is forming? (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) CL: Well, to me, you know, I never thought about that as a child, really. But I did know that the parents did not speak English, so if they didn’t speak English 5 �obviously, to me, they had just -JJ: So the most of the people didn’t speak English? CL: No. JJ: So they had to be new. CL: Yeah. [00:07:00] JJ: There was a new wave -- CL: Uh-huh. JJ: -- of immigration in that area, the Lower East Side? CL: Uh-huh. JJ: Okay. So remember, what are some of the stores? Bodegas (inaudible) CL: The bodegas owned by Puerto Ricans. JJ: What kind of (inaudible) CL: No, we just called it the bodega. I remember, where I grew up on Ludlow Street, the bodega, you would find [verdura, aguacate?], everything that you needed to cook Puerto Rican food. The rice, the beans. And it used to strike me kind of strange because he used to put hay on the wooden floor. JJ: Oh. CL: (laughs) JJ: In Chicago, they had hay (inaudible) used to say it (inaudible) because they used to put hay on the floor (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) CL: Especially when it rained. JJ: I don’t know why they did that. CL: No, no. [00:08:00] 6 �JJ: But the name bodega -- so what, Ludlow you said (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) CL: Ludlow Street was a fairly commercial street, mostly for Jewish store owners. And they sold a lot of figurines. Beautiful, expensive figurines. But there was just one bodega. JJ: So were there a lot of Jewish store owners, was there Spanish food and stuff like that? Spanish products? CL: No. JJ: Or were there Puerto Rican stores owners? CL: The Puerto Rican store owners were the bodega y la carniceria, the meat market, that was on the corner. JJ: Okay. So you went to P.S.? CL: 160. JJ: 160. And how far did you go in that school? CL: ’til the sixth grade. JJ: Okay, the sixth grade. (inaudible) CL: Well, that’s the first time I saw Bozo. JJ: Oh, okay. [00:09:00] Bozo the Clown? CL: (laughs) Yes. JJ: (inaudible) CL: I was like, oh. JJ: Now you see him and (inaudible) CL: That’s where -- 7 �JJ: He came to the school or...? CL: Yeah, he came to the school to visit. That’s where they sent me to speech class because, since I didn’t speak English, you know, they thought that I had just gotten there from Puerto Rico. So they sent me the speech class ’cause I couldn’t pronounce some of the English words the way they wanted me to pronounce it. JJ: So they had a special speech class? CL: Yeah, for a lot of us. JJ: For a lot of people? CL: Yeah. JJ: ’Cause other people, like, some people they would put back a grade. CL: Yeah, I was put back of grade as well in the fourth grade. Miss [Elwood?], I remember her clearly. JJ: Okay. Then you were also in a speech class? CL: Yes. JJ: And there were other (inaudible) you there? CL: Yes. Yes. [00:10:00] JJ: What about your friends and then what kind of social life? CL: Well, school friends, when we went to school and we played recess, Double Dutch, jumping rope. JJ: Double Dutch (inaudible) CL: You know, tag with the boys. JJ: Okay. So what about high school? 8 �CL: I didn’t go to high school. JJ: Oh, you didn’t go to high school? CL: (laughs) No. JJ: Oh, okay. (inaudible) CL: I went to the Young Lords high school. (inaudible) JJ: You went to the Young Lords high school? Okay, what was the Young Lords high school? CL: Well, let me first tell you how I got there. Again, like I told you, I was growing up in the Lower East Side and drugs was kinda very rampant in the neighborhood due to -- JJ: What kind of drugs? CL: Heroin -- JJ: Heroin. Okay. CL: -- mostly. JJ: What year was this? CL: ’70. JJ: ’70? CL: ’71. JJ: (inaudible) was all over [00:11:00] (inaudible) CL: Gentrification. JJ: Oh, gentrification, that’s... CL: Yeah, this was the beginning of -- JJ: Yeah, but you went from drugs to gentrification (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) 9 �CL: Yes, because -- Okay. Well, that’s why the drugs were put there because of the gentrification. And what they did was -- JJ: What do you mean? CL: Okay, they had a plan for the Lower East Side, and we were not included in the plan. So you have to first get rid of the Puerto Ricans that were there in order to execute the plan that they have now. JJ: Who is they? CL: The government, the rich -- JJ: The city? CL: -- the city. And so what they did was they -- JJ: Are you talking about the mayor or the alderman (inaudible) CL: Yeah, whoever was controlling it. JJ: (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) who are you talking about? CL: Well, I’m talking about whoever wanted this gentrification, and planned and executed. JJ: Somebody had a plan, but it was a plan. CL: It was a plan. JJ: Why do you say it was a plan? CL: Because, after so many years, we see the results of the plan. [00:12:00] The Lower East Side is totally a home -- JJ: It looked like it was set up in a way that... CL: Yes. And so what they did was they infested the neighborhood with drugs. JJ: They came in with drugs? 10 �CL: Well, yeah. What they did was -- well, it was easy, accessible to get the drugs. So kids who didn’t have, they started to deal drugs. It was easy to get. So if you don’t have any money, and you wanted money, well, then you deal drugs. JJ: (inaudible) everybody was selling and there was no police trying to stop it. CL: No. JJ: Is that what you mean? Something like that? CL: Yes. JJ: I mean, that’s what you’re saying? CL: Yes, yes, yeah. The police were not really doing much about the drugs. They were very easily accessible to the kids. JJ: Okay. To the kids? CL: Yes, I was only 15, 16 years old. JJ: You were 15 or 16? CL: Yes. JJ: And then you started using drugs at 15 or 16? CL: I [00:13:00] started to experiment, yes. JJ: (inaudible) not snorting? CL: No, just the snorting. I never shot [sharps?]. JJ: You never fooled with that? CL: No, no, no. And at the same time, the youth was getting very, very fed up of what was going on in the Lower East Side. The Vietnam War. Our male friends were being drafted to the... JJ: You’re talking about street youth or college youth? 11 �CL: Street youth. Nobody was thinking about going to college. JJ: Okay, so they were upset. There was no college. CL: (laughs) No. JJ: There were no colleges at that time? CL: Yeah, there were colleges, but -- JJ: But [not enough motivation?] (inaudible) CL: -- no one was thinking about going to college. JJ: There was people in the street (inaudible) CL: And so, you know, we would take the garbage and we’d go burn it, and the whole social... JJ: But was this, like, before the Young Lords you were taking garbage and burning it? CL: Well the Young Lords were already -- ’cause in [00:14:00] ’70, ’71, the Young Lord’s Party was formed in New York. JJ: (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) CL: But there were other little groups coming about, like Movimiento Latino, that was in the Lower East Side. Carlos Feliciano, his case was something, you know, very big at that time in New York where they had placed a bomb in his car, etcetera, etcetera. JJ: Right, so that was big and a lot of people were talking about that? CL: A lotta turmoil. And we were not gonna take that. JJ: And then there were people talking about the war too or...? CL: Yes. 12 �JJ: On the Lower East Side, there was a lot of political work going on? People passing leaflets and stuff like that or...? CL: Yes. Yes, there were. See, it was a dual type of thing because the drugs were always there, and then on the other side, this was happening too. A lot of us were becoming rebellious against our parents, against the establishment. And so [00:15:00] I was becoming more aware. JJ: Against the parents? What do you mean? CL: Well, yeah, because, you know, our parents come from a generation that you do as you’re told. Where our generation -- JJ: So when you say a lot of others, you’re talkin’ ’bout women? CL: And the guys. JJ: And the guys. So, you got the parents that are telling you, “Do as you’re told.”? CL: Exactly. Don’t say a word. JJ: Yeah, and they’ll say you’re rebelling against them? CL: Yes. And the establishment as well. JJ: (inaudible) CL: Well, yeah. We would hit the streets, you know, we would go hang out, we would go do a whole lotta cra-- JJ: Hang out where? CL: Well, I used to go to this place called the [Latin House?] on Hester Street. JJ: What happened there? What was that like? CL: We would all come together, listen to music. At that time, the music was a lotta slow jams. The (inaudible), The Stylistics. And that started to become more 13 �[00:16:00] of a family. And so, again, the question of money was a big issue for kids, or for us then. And so when the Young Lords had the parade that they took over the front of the parade. That really -- I was so impressed behind that. I went. JJ: How did that happen? Because I wasn’t familiar with that. How’d it happen? The regular Puerto Rican parade? CL: Parade and the police used to march in front. JJ: (inaudible) CL: And so the Lords felt that that was not right. The people should march in front. JJ: Police shouldn’t march in front. CL: Exactly, and so we were gonna take it over. I wasn’t a Lord then, but I wanted to be a part of that, and so I went. And while I was there, my father saw me. And so I was fighting my [00:17:00] father and the police at the same time because my father was going to kick my butt. I was only 15 years old. JJ: (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) CL: Yes. And they were not too keen with the Young Lords. They felt that that was a gang. JJ: Your father? CL: And my mother. JJ: But they thought it was a gang? CL: Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, and like I said, our parents’ generation come from, you do as you’re told. And you don’t say, you just do it. You don’t question it. You don’t do otherwise. 14 �JJ: So you guys took it over? Took over the front of it? CL: Well, there was a big riot. People got hurt, hit. The parade was -- JJ: Anybody got arrested or...? CL: -- stopped. People got arrested. JJ: People got arrested? But, I mean, did you eventually take it over or no? CL: No. JJ: Or just got (inaudible) CL: It was just a lot of craziness going on. JJ: So if it was stopped, it must have been a [00:18:00] (inaudible) CL: Yes. Of course, yeah. Yes. Mm-hmm. But, you know, when I saw my father, I was more scared of him. (laughter) JJ: I can deal with the police. (inaudible) CL: Exactly. JJ: (inaudible) Okay, so what other things that are going on? CL: Okay, so I start rebelling at home, like I was saying. You know, I would go to the streets and there was, like, hang out. There was no sense of direction in my life. I was just bouncing off the wall. And my mom, after us, you know, with the hard hand. It wasn’t let’s sit and talk and let me explain, I’m gonna hit you for what you’re doing. And so one day I got home about eight o’clock. When I got home, I got severely punished physically [00:19:00] because this is the way... JJ: Your mother or your father? CL: My mother. My father, they had separated. JJ: Split up. (inaudible) 15 �CL: So the next day -- JJ: Now all your sibling was living in the house (inaudible) CL: Yeah. Mm-hmm. JJ: The next day, what happened? CL: So then the next thing, I had gone, sometime before, to court for Carlos Feliciano, and I had met some of the members of the Young Lords, and I was like really impressed. You know, these -- JJ: What impressed you about them? CL: They looked like they had a direction, that they were going somewhere, that this is what it should be. And so, you know, I had met them, etcetera, etcetera. So, okay, I went home, whatever. So one day, a friend of mine says to me, “Well, listen, you know, I have a friend, and he has some drugs. You want to start dealing and make some money?” And I’m like, “Wow, yeah, why not? I can use a couple of dollars.” And so we were on the corner [00:20:00] of Hester and Forsyth Street. So there’s a park that goes from Houston all the way down to Canal Street on Forsyth. So this was Hester and Forsyth. And I was with this girl named [Elena?]. And we’re waiting there, and the guy just doesn’t show up. And we’re waiting. And the guy doesn’t show up. So it must have been about four o’clock, and I see this group passing by. And I see this guy that I had met at the courthouse for Carlos Feliciano. His name was TC, or is TC, [Tony Copeland?], who became my future husband. So as they’re walking by, I recognized him and he recognized me. And so he, well, you know, we were very happy to see each other. So he says to me, “What are you up to?” And I’m like, 16 �“Nothing.” Well, of course I wasn’t going to say here I’m waiting, [00:21:00] you know, to do something really bad. So he says, “Why don’t you come with us? We’re going to [Yihequan?] to see this movie.” CL: Yihequan is -- JJ: Yihequan? CL: It was a Chinese group and they were located -- JJ: (inaudible) CL: Dealing drugs. JJ: Oh, dealing drugs. Okay. So he walked in... CL: Okay, so he says, we’re gonna go see (inaudible) at Yihequan. So I says, “Yeah, okay. I’ll go.” And it was about four or five o’clock in the evening. So I left, and I didn’t do the thing about picking up drugs and dealing the drugs. Well, the movie was great. I think we were watching Women Hold Half the Sky, and we had a really great time. I don’t remember who else was there, but I do remember my future husband was there. So it was about nine o’clock. And I am like, “What time is it?” He says, [00:22:00] “It’s nine o’clock.” I’m like, “Oh my god. If I go home now, I’m really -- they’re gonna kill me. JJ: They’re gonna kill me. CL: So I says to him. “Can I go with you guys?” And he says, “Well, yeah. If you want to.” So I ran away with him and the Young Lords. So I call my sister and I says to her, “Nidia, I’m not coming home. I’m safe. Just let mom know that I’m safe.” So I went up to the Bronx, Cypress Avenue. 141st and Cypress. And so, the next day, Tony, you know, TC as he was known back then, takes me to the 17 �storefront or the office. JJ: Now you’re staying with TC -- CL: Yeah. JJ: -- himself or with -- CL: Oh, no. JJ: -- the other Young Lords? CL: Okay, no. [00:23:00] He was sharing an apartment. They were called collectives at that time. JJ: Okay. What are collectives. What is that? CL: Collective meaning several people lived together. It wasn’t just a man and a woman, or a man and man, or woman and woman. There were several. There’d been several couples, several friends. JJ: They were, like, couples. They weren’t (inaudible) CL: Yeah. Yeah. So it was him, [Lucky Luciano?], who’s [Felipe?] Luciano’s brother. JJ: Oh, Lucky Luciano? Okay. CL: Uh-huh. A girl that he was with then, and myself and Tony. JJ: And you were living together in that collective? CL: In that collective, yeah. Yeah. JJ: How did you pay them rent and stuff like that? CL: Oh, he paid the rent. JJ: Oh, he paid it? Okay, so [continue there?]. CL: So, that was September of 1971. JJ: (inaudible) September of 1971? 18 �CL: Well, it was late August beginning September [00:24:00] that I ran away that I ran away with Tony and the Young Lords. And so, a few weeks later, you know, I continued to call my sister to tell them, you know, that I’m fine. My mom was hysterical and, you know, I was so young. So my sister knew where I was, and she knew with whom I was with. And so, about three weeks later -- no. About a couple of months later in October. October 15, 1971, my father was killed, and so she needed to get ahold of me. JJ: How was he killed? CL: He was stabbed in a social club. They were drinking and one thing led to another, and a friend of his, in fact, that was raised with him here in Juncos, Puerto Rico, [00:25:00] stabbed him. And so when my mom tells my sister, then now she has to tell my mom where I am because she has to go get me to go to a funeral. And so I remember, I think it was a Sunday about seven o’clock in the morning, it’s a knock on the door. So Tony gets up and he goes to answer the door, and he’s in his underwear. And when he opens the door, it’s my mother. And when, you know, he comes and he says, “Carmen, your mom is there.” I totally freaked out. I said, “Oh my god, I’m in trouble now.” And so she was very, very, very serious and very upset with me too. And so she said to me, “Your dad passed away.” And I looked at her and I said, “So what am I supposed [00:26:00] to do, cry?” ’cause I lived a life very angry with my father. JJ: (inaudible) Why? CL: Well, because he was very abusive with my mother. He had a lot of issues. JJ: What do you mean? Hit her? 19 �CL: Yeah, he would. Yeah, physically -- JJ: [Violencia?]? CL: -- abuse of her. Yeah. So anyway, I left with her. And we did the whole funeral thing with my dad and whatever. So after all of that was over -- JJ: What do you mean the whole thing? CL: Well, you know, going to the funeral with the family. They buried him here in Puerto Rico. We didn’t partake in that. You know, there’s, like, this family feud. I was all right with that back then. I was so upset with him. It was like a relief, if you can understand. JJ: (inaudible) to get rid of your father? CL: Isn’t that a horrible thing to say? It’s just for my mom, you know. JJ: (inaudible) he was [close to?] your mom? CL: ’Cause he would -- Yeah. Yeah. [00:27:00] JJ: (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) CL: Very, very close to her. JJ: (inaudible) CL: So I went back home, and she thought that I was going to stay at home. And I said to her, “I just can’t do this anymore. You know, to me, I want to be there. You know, I want to change the world. I feel that that’s where I belong.” And so I went back to live with Tony and to become a Young Lord. JJ: While you were there living with Tony, you were still in the collective? Or no? CL: Yes. Yes. JJ: You were still living in the collective together. 20 �CL: Uh-huh. JJ: So what were some of the work that you were doing? What was some of the work? CL: With the Young Lords or...? JJ: Yeah. CL: Well then, [00:28:00] of course, I met [Panama?] at the time. I met [Augie Robles?]. I finally got to meet [Yoruba?] because he was in China during the time that I had -- JJ: (inaudible) China at that time? I was in China too. CL: With him? JJ: No, no. In the late ’70s. CL: Oh, okay. I met [Richie?]. But before my mom went (laughs) to get me, because she didn’t know where I was, she knew that I was with the Young Lords. So she took the police to the national headquarters in El Barrio to demand that they return her daughter. And, of course, they didn’t know that I was in the Bronx. They didn’t even know who I was. So they must have had a shock when they saw the police. (laughs) JJ: So she thought that the Young Lords [00:29:00] were taking you hostage or something like that? CL: I guess. Yeah. JJ: Okay. Now you said, Richie. What do you mean you called him Richie? Richie [Bredas?] CL: Richie Bredas. Yeah. (inaudible) Well, I knew that Richard was a teacher, that 21 �he taught typing. I know that he was the minister of defense or information. JJ: I think he was information minister. CL: Yeah. Minister of information. Yoruba, I was, like, in awe of him, you know. You’ve gone to China. JJ: You were in awe? What do you recall? I mean, he went to China? CL: Yeah. I remember him being a very, very serious individual. I had met [Mickey Melendez?]. We had gotten involved with, or they were -- JJ: What about Mickey? What are your thoughts about Mickey? CL: Mickey was very serious man too. JJ: Okay. Very serious? CL: You know, [00:30:00] they were all very serious. (laughs) Like, “Ooh!” Then again, I was only 16 years old. I was so young. JJ: You met Augie, you said? CL: Augie, we became the best of friends. JJ: What do you mean (inaudible)? CL: She became my (Spanish). [Auga?]. I liked her a lot. She was very staunch in her beliefs. Richie and her were together at that time. JJ: They were living together in the -- CL: Yeah. Uh-huh. I met [Iris Morales?]. JJ: Thoughts about her? CL: Iris Morales, I used to like her a lot back then too, and, I mean, I still like her today. [Valerie?], [David Perez?]. JJ: (inaudible) 22 �CL: Did you ever meet David Perez? JJ: David Perez? Yeah. (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) CL: Okay, well, he was -- his companion. JJ: (inaudible) Did they call it (inaudible) [00:31:00] or...? CL: At that time, we called it, yeah, companion. JJ: (inaudible) CL: Yeah, we didn’t... Yeah, exactly. JJ: (inaudible) CL: Yeah, no. No one said wife or husband. You said, you know, companion. JJ: (inaudible) At Chicago, we had an underground [training for people trying to get?] (inaudible) collective, but we didn’t use companions. We used brother and sister (inaudible) CL: Oh, okay. Mm-hmm. We used brother and sister too, but, I mean, in terms of relationships, you know, “That’s my companion.” JJ: I gotta tell you (inaudible) term. CL: (laughs) It’s a good term. JJ: (inaudible) So tell me something about Tony (inaudible) CL: Tony. JJ: Yeah. CL: Like I said, I met Tony -- JJ: What impression (inaudible) CL: Well, I found Tony to be a very handsome young man at the time, smart, [00:32:00] and he was very friendly. And so we sparked a relationship that lasted five 23 �years. I have two children by him. JJ: What are the names of your kids? CL: My oldest son’s name is [Damien Copeland?]. My second son is [Eric Copeland?]. JJ: (inaudible) CL: Eric Copeland. JJ: Eric Copeland? Do they live here with you? CL: No, they live in (inaudible) JJ: What kind of work (inaudible) CL: Who, Tony? I believe Tony works for a union. I don’t recall. I mean, we have, really, no contact, and he’s into some sort of a -- JJ: Oh, you’re not together? CL: No. Oh, no. No, no. Our relationship lasted five years. JJ: Five years? CL: Yeah. JJ: So, how (inaudible) CL: Oh, well, that was 15 years ago. I had met someone else [00:33:00] when I was 38. JJ: You’re with someone else now. CL: Yeah. Uh-huh. JJ: Okay. (inaudible) 15 years ago, you (inaudible) CL: Uh-huh. JJ: (inaudible) 24 �CL: My life is good here. I’m into more spiritualism, more -- JJ: (inaudible) CL: Yeah. JJ: (inaudible) CL: No. No, no. JJ: (inaudible) CL: More the way of the yogi, the way of the monk. JJ: (inaudible) what, the yogi, the...? CL: More into working on my inner self so my externals could be in a better place. JJ: Okay (inaudible) I’m just kind of trying to think of a way to understand (inaudible) [00:34:00] So this is not like (inaudible) CL: No. It’s more like Tai Chi, more connecting yourself with the universe, with divinity, with the light. JJ: (inaudible) something like that? That’s the only thing I know. CL: Okay. JJ: So it’s more like that? Something similar to that? CL: It’s called the fourth way if you’ve ever... JJ: I’m not familiar with it. (inaudible) CL: Uh-huh. Well, you can Google it. JJ: So can you explain what (inaudible) fourth way or...? CL: Well, yeah. It’s more on working on yourself so you can be a better being so your being can grow. Because once your being grows, then everything around you will also change and grow. 25 �JJ: Sort of like [00:35:00] (inaudible) CL: Oh, he needs five minutes? (Spanish) JJ: (inaudible) P1: Well, I mean, you guys sound -- (break in audio) P1: And whenever you’re ready. JJ: You could tell me a little bit about Richie. We were talkin’ ’bout Richie Bredas. CL: Well, Richie, Richie was always laughing. A person who was a very happy, happy individual. Always laughing, cracking jokes, and serious as well and very smart. Very, very smart and people respected him. He carried that because he gave respect. [00:36:00] Didn’t matter how old you were, ’cause I was a young whippersnapper. And a very, very giving individual. I had gotten the opportunity to live with him, his companion Augie at the time, and Tony, who was my companion at the time. And we shared a lot of good, good times. And again, he was very, very, very good. JJ: (inaudible) CL: Well, he was with Auga at the time. JJ: Oh, okay. CL: And I was the Tony, and we made up the collective. JJ: So you were living together in the same collective? CL: Uh-huh. Exactly. JJ: He was a giving person and -- CL: Always laughing. 26 �JJ: ’Cause he was information deputy? CL: Uh-huh. JJ: So [he was in the?] -- CL: And he worked hard and he had a good job. He had gone to college and -- JJ: What kind of work (inaudible) CL: A teacher. JJ: He was a teacher? Okay. So he was a teacher, he was a Young Lord. CL: Uh-huh. JJ: (inaudible) CL: Yes. [00:37:00] JJ: So he was doing community work at the same time? CL: That’s one thing about the Lords back then. That we were always in the community. People knew us. People bought the (Spanish). They knew us. We went door to door. You know, it wasn’t, like, an organization that locked itself up and talked a lot of rhetoric, which that did happen later on. JJ: But not at that time? CL: Not at that time. JJ: At that time it was (inaudible) CL: Out in the street and we were organizing. JJ: Talking to people in the neighborhood? CL: Exactly. And Richie was involved in organizing a lot of students. JJ: Students? CL: Yes. 27 �JJ: What school was he working at? CL: Well, at the time, he was still a typing teacher. So you know, at -- and what was that organization’s name? [00:38:00] Aspira. JJ: Aspira, Aspira. So he was worked with Aspira, with the schooling groups and that? CL: And he had recruited a lotta students as well. JJ: He definitely did a lotta work (inaudible) CL: He did a lot of work, yes. JJ: (inaudible) worked with Aspira. CL: Yeah. JJ: So we were talking also about PRRWO (inaudible) Puerto Rican (inaudible) CL: It was called Puerto Rican Worker Revolutionary Organization. JJ: And who were the leaders of that? CL: [Gloria Fontanez?]. JJ: (inaudible) CL: Yes. The Central Committee. JJ: Where did she come from? Oh, the Central Committee was part of them? CL: Yeah. It was still, everyone there except Yoruba, [Juan Gonzales?], David. Okay. So the Central Committee consisted of Gloria [00:39:00] Fontanez, her cousin, [Carmen Cruz?], I believe Gloria’s husband, [Don Right?], who we all, then later on, believed that he was an agent. JJ: Why did you believe he was an agent? CL: Well, I mean, you know, I don’t have like documentation -- 28 �JJ: [You mean a rat?]? (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) CL: -- but everything that happened once this individual came into the picture just led to all of that. The Young Lords then felt that they needed to organize the workers. We needed to become a more of the workers organization than just a community, lumpenproletariat organization. JJ: So they wanted get away from the [metropolitan?]? CL: Yes. And so we -- JJ: (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) CL: -- needed to be more ideological. And so we needed to be more ideological, we needed to be more Lenin, more Stalin, more Mao. And in order to do that, we had to change our name, [00:40:00] and so they did. They changed the Young Lord’s Party to the Puerto Rican Workers Revolutionary organization, PRRWO. And so, at the time, we linked up with a group called the MLN from Chicago. And they would come to New York and we would have these crazy debates. I mean, these seminars with these crazy, crazy debates. And when I mean crazy, it wasn’t about I’m gonna teach you and you’re going to teach you, no, I’m gonna put you down and you’re gonna put me down. It looked more like a war to me. JJ: Criticism and self-criticism? CL: It was more criticism than self-criticism. (laughs) JJ: I know, that’s what -- you know, the (inaudible) something similar. That’s what they were explaining to us. CL: So then that didn’t work. You know, MLN went their way. JJ: So that’s Movimiento por [00:41:00] Liberación Nacional? 29 �CL: Uh-huh. That didn’t last too long. They went their way. PRRWO went their way. Still looking for affiliation. Then they found the Revolutionary Union, R Union. JJ: (inaudible) CL: Majority white organization. And that’s when this individual Don Right comes into the picture. JJ: So he mighta just been a member of Revolutionary Union. CL: Yeah. JJ: Maybe he wasn’t an agent, he was just...? CL: I don’t know. It could be. JJ: (inaudible) CL: It could not be. JJ: (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) CL: All I know is a lot of crazy stuff started to happen after that. We would go to meetings. We no longer were in the community. So we had severed the ties with the community. JJ: Okay. What does that mean, that you were no longer in the community? CL: We were more in meetings debating with one another, with each other, about how wrong you are, how right you are. [00:42:00] And then it became very rigid. If you differed, then you were under attack. You could not differ because then you became the oddball, and you were under attack. And those were the things that were happening to me back then. JJ: But if can hold that thought first. CL: Yeah, okay. 30 �JJ: (inaudible) you became rigid. The whole (inaudible). But now, you said that you were no longer with the community. CL: Yes. That meant that we no longer went to the community to organize. We no longer had those -- JJ: You weren’t going door to door. You weren’t doing any -- CL: Or those health clinics or the -- JJ: Were you doing any programs or anything? CL: No programs. We weren’t doing anything. JJ: Just talking? CL: Just talkin’. Exactly. You know -- JJ: Did you get into the -- CL: -- still building the structure of the -- JJ: -- about Marx and Lenin? Did you get into the (inaudible) CL: Exactly. And that... JJ: Because before, I mean, the Young Lords -- I read books about Marx and Lenin. We (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) CL: No, no, but this was -- JJ: But now it was all Marx and Lenin and nothing -- CL: Nothing else. JJ: -- about the community. CL: And if anyone disagreed -- JJ: That was just a different line. CL: Mm-hmm. [00:43:00] And if anybody disagree, or when they had these heavy- 31 �duty debates in the Central Committee and they purged someone. You know, like when they purged Juan Gonzalez, when they purged -JJ: They purged Juan Gonzalez too? CL: Yeah. Yeah. JJ: (inaudible) CL: And they purged Yoruba. So Yoruba left -- JJ: Yoruba they purged (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) CL: Iris had to leave because she was the wife, and when they purged David Perez -- JJ: The wife of who? CL: Of Yoruba. JJ: Yoruba (inaudible) CL: Yeah, at the time. JJ: (inaudible) CL: No. (inaudible) JJ: So that all started (inaudible) CL: Yoruba. And then, when they purged David Perez, Valerie had to go, too. JJ: So wait a minute, they were purging all the Central Committee? CL: Anyone who disagreed. JJ: But it looks like David and Yoruba and -- CL: And so what happen-- JJ: -- people like that, they were Central Committee members. They were purging the Central Committee. CL: And so what [00:44:00] started to happen in the body of the organization, most of 32 �the members started to leave because then it was no longer that zest, that passion to go to the community, you know, to become one with the community. JJ: Let me get this. Anybody that kind of was helping the Young Lords (inaudible) as leaders of the Young Lords were being purged at that time? CL: Can you repeat that? JJ: Most of the leadership was being purged? CL: Yes. Yes, yes. JJ: The old leadership of the Young Lords. CL: And so back with Richie, Richie was on the Central Committee. And at the time, we thought that was the right thing. So yeah, we started to even mimic or even believe some of these things until it just continued to happen. JJ: Some of these things? What were they saying? What were they putting forth? CL: Okay, like, let’s see. [00:45:00] It’s just like, let’s say, for instance, if at the moment they believed that we were not a party, we were an organization. That became the hot issue. Or which way were we gonna suppose to organize the factory workers? JJ: Okay, hold on a second. So we were not a party, and we needed to become a party? CL: No, an organization. JJ: We need to become an organization. (inaudible) back to globalization? Okay. All right. (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) CL: I don’t know. See, because remember, now, this is the Central Committee and these meetings, you really didn’t know because, you know, this was like -- 33 �JJ: The Central Committee was here and you were here? CL: Yeah, exactly. (laughs) We were here and they were up there. JJ: (Spanish) CL: Uh-huh. (Spanish) And now that you [00:46:00] talk about that, Gloria Fontanez, I grew up with her family. I didn’t know her. JJ: Yeah, what was she like? CL: Okay. Well, let me just say. I grew up with her family. Her brother was my best friend when I was 14, 15 years old in the Lower East Side. We hung out in the same places. When I get to the Young Lords, then I find out that she’s related to these people that I used to go visit her mom, eat at her house, you know, share, and you all her brothers and sisters, but I did not know her ’cause she had left. She was way older than they were and she had left way before I came into the picture. Gloria was -- JJ: But what were her brothers and sisters like? CL: They were really nice. They all knew how to dance. That was something. JJ: Lotta dancing (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) CL: In the Lower East Side, you had to know how to dance some mambo. JJ: (inaudible) Oh, mambo. You didn’t do [split?]? You didn’t split? CL: No, no. Mambo. You had to dance Latin. You know? JJ: (inaudible) did the mambo (inaudible) CL: They were really good people, humble people. JJ: Humble people? (inaudible) CL: Yeah. I used to love her brother [00:47:00] dearly, dearly, and he got caught up 34 �with the drugs as well. JJ: One of her brothers, Gloria Fontanez? CL: Yeah, Gloria. JJ: So she was really, like, community (inaudible) CL: Huh? JJ: She was really before that community? CL: Yes, yeah. JJ: And then just get into (Spanish). (laughter) Nah, I’m just joking. I mean, ’cause the spiritualism (inaudible). So she got really involved in the ideological? CL: Yes. I mean, to the point that when they would do this thing, it was so insulting. And that started to turn me off. I would say to myself, “Oh my gosh, so what is it? You can’t express your opinion, your view? If you have a different opinion or something then that means you’re the bad guy?” So they had placed my husband, or my ex-husband, Tony in the Central Committee. And honestly -- JJ: Of who? CL: Of the PRRWO. [00:48:00] And I really thought that he wasn’t ready for Central Committee stuff. So I was wondering what was going on. But then again, okay, fine. He and Richie were arguing over something, and he never even said to me what, but they were in real hot water. So one day he comes home from a meeting and he says to me, “Things are really hot.” And I kind of felt it every time I would go to a meeting. And now, this time, Richie is married to [Diana Caballero?]. JJ: (inaudible) 35 �CL: So, you know, things were not going well in these meetings. And you kind of, like, sense when things are not right. But my husband comes home and he says -- JJ: What do mean you sense it? What are you sensing? CL: Hostility. JJ: You mean instead -- CL: And afraid. JJ: of friendship, hostility, [00:49:00] fear? CL: Yeah, among the [conjoint?]. JJ: Among the conjoint? They’re scared (inaudible) CL: Scared. Afraid to voice an opinion. JJ: Of what? They would be ridiculed, [but not included?] CL: Ridiculed. Well, no, not yet. Well, I never thought that things would ever get to that point. JJ: So they were being ridiculed for that kind of thing? CL: I would say shut down. JJ: Shut down. They were being (inaudible) CL: Exactly. Then you became the outsider. JJ: So you’re saying that (inaudible) CL: Exact on that. You know, you’re dangerous. Where you coming from? JJ: Are you an agent or something? CL: Exactly. JJ: So the agents are asking the agents, “Are you an agent?” The agent is saying, 36 �“Are you an agent?” CL: Yeah. It was all part of COINTEL. JJ: I don’t know if they were agents. I’m just saying that. CL: Yeah, I know. Well, but they were doing the job that COINTEL wanted to be done. So anyway, [00:50:00] my husband comes home and he says to me, “Things are not well in the Central Committee, and I’m a real hot water because I don’t agree.” He said, “Me and Richie are in hot water because we don’t agree with certain things.” And I already knew that Richie was not happy because he was the not happy person that he used to be when I met him and throughout the years that I had known him. So we used to have meetings on Thursday. So that Thursday, no, Wednesday, my husband comes home and says to me, “I’ve been purged from the Central Committee.” JJ: [Told him to come home?] CL: He tell me that he was purged. JJ: Did he say why? CL: He didn’t say why. He just said, “’cause I was not in agreement with what was going on.” So Thursday we were supposed to have a meeting with the conjoint, [00:51:00] and I was going to attend, Diana, and some other members of this committee. But something came over me. There’s such a bad feeling, and I said, “You know what, Tony? I’m not going to go to this meeting.” I’m gonna call these people, and I’m going to pack everything that they ever gave me, and I’m gonna tell them that they can come and pick it up downstairs.” Because they already knew that since they had purged him, I was going to be purged to 37 �because it had happened with Yoruba and Iris, it happened with David and Valerie. There was already a pattern. So I didn’t go. In not going, Diana went to the meeting. So she gets kidnapped at this meeting. JJ: Diana Caballero, you’re talking about? CL: Diana Caballero. JJ: She’s kidnapped at the meeting? CL: Well they take her against her will to keep her against her will to keep her hostage [00:52:00] in somebody’s apartment, her and Richie. JJ: So they had, like, [the own deal?] or...? CL: Well, you see, since I didn’t go to that meeting, and I know that if I would have gone to that meeting, they would’ve taken me too. JJ: But I mean they took her hostage, so in other words, [they’re posted?] in their own safehouse. CL: Yes, exactly. JJ: [Gone forever?] or whatever. CL: Exactly. JJ: (inaudible) well-organized group to have a deal like that. CL: Yes. JJ: (inaudible) CL: Yes. And, and I’m talking about people that Richie knew for years that slept in his home, that ate his food. JJ: So these are people that Richie knew? So they were not (inaudible) these were just people that (Spanish)? 38 �CL: Yeah. They were very -- Exactly. JJ: (Spanish) CL: But yes, they were (Spanish), they lost their mind. They really lost their mind. JJ: (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) CL: Because then they tortured him. They turned cigarettes off from him. They beat him. You don’t do that to someone [00:53:00] who... JJ: But then if they’re like that, somebody’s getting stuff [in their head?]. CL: Exactly. Richie became the traitor. He became the bad guy. JJ: Somebody’s feeding them -- you don’t know who? CL: Exactly. Well, COINTEL. JJ: Because most of the other people were people, they grew up together (inaudible) CL: Yeah. JJ: Somebody else has been (inaudible) CL: Exactly. JJ: And they’re part of (inaudible) CL: Well, no. They were not there. No. JJ: Oh, they’re not (inaudible)? CL: These were our own people. JJ: Our own people from the (inaudible) So somebody’s interested in being (inaudible) CL: Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. So, I’m devastated because now these are new people, but then they had also recruited some new people that we had just barely knew. And I had just given birth to my second son, he must have been eight 39 �months old. So I got a call from a female, one of them, stating to me that whatever they gave me for a baby shower, that they wanted it back. [00:54:00] Well, my street stuff from the Lower East Side, of course, came out. I was like, “You can take it all. And don’t you ever...” JJ: (inaudible) CL: Exactly. “Don’t you ever come here again. Ever again.” And so this was April 1976. Heartbroken, young girl from 16. I’m 21 years old now. Two kids. No direction because the direction was -- my life was the Young Lords. I go to Auga. Auga was working in Gouverneur Hospital on the Lower East Side. And she was my -- JJ: (inaudible) CL: (inaudible) She was my (Spanish). Someone that I loved. Loved her for many, many years, respected her. And it was so important for me to tell her [00:55:00] and to let her know that what they were saying was not true. Because then what they did was, is that they wrote this article in Palante stating that Richie Perez, Diana Caballero, [Felix Flores?], [Lydia Flores?], Tony Copeland, and Carmen Copeland, that’s how I was known back then, were meeting to overthrow the Central Committee. In the five years that I was in the Young Lords, not once did these three couples ever meet together alone. Ever. And never to talk about overthrowing the Central Committee. They had, or so they said because this is what came out in the Palante article, Lydia Flores, [00:56:00] she was the one that came forward and said that we were meeting. JJ: You were what? 40 �CL: Meeting. That the three couples -- JJ: Lydia Flores (inaudible) CL: -- were meeting to -- Uh-huh. And meanwhile, this young woman at the time, we used to share. They had a child, we had a child, we used to share, we used to go to the park together, we used cook dinners on Sundays together. JJ: Lydia Flores? CL: And her husband Felix. JJ: So she grew up with everybody else? CL: She was in student Aspira, part of the -- JJ: Student Aspira, but she didn’t grow up with anybody else? CL: Yes and no. Because in the beginning was Aspira, and then later on, it was the PRRWO. Felix did, he also came from Aspira, but I think he had more of the Young Lords because -- JJ: He was Huracan’s brother. CL: -- Huracan’s brother. JJ: Yeah. Felix (inaudible) CL: Okay, Felix. JJ: But not Lydia. CL: Not Lydia. JJ: (inaudible) [00:57:00] CL: Yes. JJ: (inaudible) CL: But, you know, these are things that hurt a lot, I mean, because when that 41 �happened, my husband and I, we split up right after that. JJ: But let me just, you know, say ’cause we had members in our group that we grew up with. Right? (inaudible) that doesn’t matter when -- whether they grew up or not. CL: Anyway, getting back to Auga. I wanted her to know that this was not true, that we were not doing that. So I go to Gouverneur. I muster up the nerve to go and see her. I was just afraid of her doing what she did. Because when she seen me -- I go, she was working in emergency. When I go there, I’m like, “Augie, I’m here to tell you that it’s not true. [00:58:00] You never even asked me. Does that matter to you?” She just turned and just walked away. JJ: What was her name again? CL: Auga [Goga?] (inaudible) JJ: She didn’t answer you? CL: She didn’t, no. JJ: (inaudible) CL: She stood with the PRRWO. You know, she stood with them ’til the end. ’til the end. JJ: Because you had purges of the members (inaudible) CL: Said I wasn’t going to stay with -- You know, okay, I got purged and everything, when my husband w-- I had already decided I could not do this anymore. You know, I could not be in an organization that was like that. This was not the Young Lords. JJ: It was not the original Young Lords that (inaudible) and you were very scared? 42 �[Marxist, Leninist?] CL: Doing horrible things, no. No, you don’t go around beating people like that. No, no. You just don’t. After that, to get a hold of Richie and Diana [00:59:00] was like mission impossible. Because, again, we wanted to write something in response to what had happened, and we did. We did do it. I don’t even have a copy of that ’cause after, you know, we moved -- JJ: But more or less, what did it say? CL: That it was not true. Oh my god, we took Gloria Fontanez and Carmen Cruz, and we also like dragged them in the street. You know, we were so upset with them. JJ: (inaudible) CL: How dare they? JJ: What kind of (inaudible) CL: Okay, you know, several things were not true. JJ: These are just feelings or...? CL: No, we had facts. JJ: (inaudible) CL: But I just can’t, like, you know. But it was a pretty large, you know, and I’m still trying to locate that pamphlet so I can read it and refresh my memory in what had happened. JJ: But basically, you were [01:00:00] saying what? They’re not relating to the people or...? CL: That we were, that the turn that the Young Lords Party had taken was not a 43 �correct turn. JJ: It was not a (inaudible) CL: That we had criticized so many groups in the movement. JJ: The turn of going to work with the workers? CL: The turn of changing its name PRRWO and divorcing itself from the workers and the community ’cause we were not doing proletarian organizing or anything like that. We were stuck in rooms doing (inaudible), you know, I don’t agree with you, you don’t agree with me, so I’ll kick your ass and you’ll kick mine. That’s what it was all about. JJ: (inaudible) saying that that was (inaudible) CL: But then throughout the years, after I left and of course after, you know, you can’t have an organization with one person. So you’ve got to dissolve the -- because eventually other people who have been there from the beginning, like [Miriam?], [01:01:00] had to leave too. And then throughout the years I ran into her, I ran into other people, I ran into people who hurt Richie, who regretted it, and they were, like, in a frenzy at the time. JJ: What were they saying about Richie? What were they trying (inaudible) CL: During the time that they beat them up? JJ: Yeah. Yeah. Well, what is the beating? We didn’t (inaudible) CL: Oh, okay. Well they turned cigarettes off on him, they hit him, they kept him against his will. JJ: Did you see this or...? CL: No, ’cause then Richie came out, and Richie told us. And the persons who did 44 �this. JJ: So they put cigarettes on him? (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) CL: Yes, turned the cigarette off on his skin. And the person who did it, he came out and he said it. He regretted it. JJ: Who was that? CL: Oh, gee, I don’t know if I should. JJ: Say it? That’s all right. Okay, you don’t -- It’s not important. Okay. You don’t want to say an identity? (inaudible) [01:02:00] CL: But Richie forgave that person. P2: (inaudible) Panama. Panama. CL: (Spanish) Richie didn’t -- P2: I’m sorry. For the record, Panama is [still another thing?]. CL: We’ll talk about it off camera. (laughs) JJ: (inaudible) CL: But then, you know, after that Richie -- we finally was able to get in contact with Richie, and he was very, very scared and very weary because his life was in danger. But we were able to meet and we wrote that pamphlet. We were very happy and satisfied with it. And then after that, everybody just tried to pick up the pieces and move on. JJ: So people kind of got together later on? CL: Right after the purge. Okay, they took Richie maybe about a month after, and then about another month when Richie came back and he finally was willing [01:03:00] to meet with us. 45 �JJ: And met with different people [and that?]? CL: Mm-hmm. JJ: So what happened to Gloria and Auga? CL: Well, Gloria, she kept on -- JJ: Gloria and (inaudible) CL: Then Carmen Cruz left, and she went on with her personal life. And Gloria, I think she started drinking a lot. I do know that I ran into her several times throughout the years. The first time I run into her, it was in a dance place called [Justine’s?]. JJ: What is it? CL: Justine’s, it’s a Latin joint that they had back in -- JJ: In the Lower East Side (inaudible)? CL: No, that was on 38th Street and 8th Avenue. JJ: (inaudible) CL: I’m in the bathroom and I’m just, like, I’m there. When I turn, I see her coming. When she seen me, she was, like, the smile. [01:04:00] I looked at her, my body just became so rigid, and my face dropped. She knew right then and there ’cause her smile went from smiling to frowning. And the energy, boom, was like, don’t you dare. I have nothing for you, nothing at all. And so I walked out. The next time I run into her we were -- My husband and I, we were invited to the John Leguizamo show, when he had the show on television, but we went to the TV show. JJ: John (inaudible) 46 �CL: John Leguizamo. And so when we’re there, when we turn, she’s there with the daughter, oh my God, the whole family. There was the daughter and friends. And so I had to explain to my husband [01:05:00] who she was. So I didn’t make it easy for her. I just kept going pss. (gestures indicating whispering) (laughs) The third time I run into her, we were doing some work to free the political prisoner Dylcia and the women and the guy. JJ: (inaudible) prisoner of what? CL: From the FALN. JJ: The FALN? (inaudible) CL: We were at the Puerto Rican Day Parade, and we had, like, this side table. So I decided to go to the store to get a bottle of water. So I got my water, I’m coming out, and who’s coming in? But she is with some guy. I don’t know what she expected, for me to hold the door or something, but I slammed the door in her face. And the guy looked at me like (makes a face) and she was like, “Just leave well enough alone.” She went in, I went out, [01:06:00] and that was the end of that. I’ve never seen her again. JJ: (inaudible) proactive and everything? CL: Yeah, she is proactive. She does poetry. P2: (inaudible) last time I saw her. (inaudible) CL: She does poetry now. People don’t know -- in fact, I have a friend. His name is [Jeremy Delgado?], and I was on Facebook checking on his page, and he had made a comment, and she came out. And when I seen her, of course, every time I see her, I kind of, like, freeze. You know? So I went into her page and 47 �says, “Is that Gloria. Oh?” So I called him, and I spoke to him, and says “Listen, you have this woman on your page.” And he says, “Yeah. She’s a great poet, a great writer.” I’m like, “Well let me tell you a little story about Miss Gloria Fontanez.” Okay? He was in total shock that this woman partook in the downfall of the Young Lords Party, and how she [01:07:00] helped create a situation to hurt so many innocent people. All in what? You know? JJ: (inaudible) Is there anything else (inaudible) community? CL: His name is [Miguel Vasquez?]. JJ: Miguel Vasquez? CL: Uh-huh. JJ: And what [does Miguel do?]. CL: Miguel is a English teacher for elementary school. JJ: How did you meet him? What was that (inaudible) CL: I met him in New York on the train. JJ: Oh, on the train? CL: Yeah. JJ: So you guys moved and you live here. CL: Well, we met 18 years ago. And so, two strong-headed people. The beginning was very [01:08:00] hard for us. And so we decided to part ways in the beginning, and he came to Puerto Rico. And when he came to see his parents, his parents were old, and so he decided to stay. I’ve always wanted to live in Puerto Rico, and I’m like, “Gee, if I don’t move to Puerto Rico, I’m going to lose my chance to, you know -- 48 �JJ: Be together. CL: -- have a relationship with this man. And so I decided -- and my kids were already grown, out making their own life. And I said, “Well, let me move to Puerto Rico.” And I did. And here I am. JJ: So what does he do? (inaudible) CL: He’s a teacher. English teacher. JJ: Oh, yeah. English teacher. (inaudible) CL: Well, yeah, he was active in New York with, how you say (Spanish). P2: The United Bronx Parents. CL: The United Bronx Parents. P2: (inaudible) [01:09:00] CL: Very nice guy. Very decent man, taught me a lot of things that, when you grow up in a place like the Lower East Side, you tend to grow up with missing certain things like morals. And, you know, when you also are rebelling, you tend to move some of these things in your life because you’re willing to -- you’re rebellious, you’ll rebel against anything and everything. JJ: So do you think we made an impact at all in -- you guys made an impact in New York or...? CL: Oh, absolutely, yes. Oh, yeah. You know, it’s so funny. Moving to Puerto Rico, I couldn’t find the kind of work that I did in New York and the salary, so I decided to work in restaurants because they gave me the salary or the way [01:10:00] that I liked to live. So that’s what I’ve done in the last 18 years, or 15 years, here in Puerto Rico. I’ve worked in restaurants. So this youngster several years ago, 49 �he says to me, I did a paper on the Young Lords. Well, we were talking about the Young Lords, and I’m like, “You know, I used to be a Lord.” Oh my god, he was so amazed. And he says to me, “You know, I did a paper on the Young Lords.” He was excited. Oh my god. And I’m like, “Well, I want to read your paper.” And one thing led to another. And I’ve never read his paper, but -- and I did promise that I wanted you to meet him. And the kid is only 19 years old. JJ: (inaudible) CL: And look, he in Puerto Rico... JJ: (inaudible) CL: Yeah. JJ: Anything else that you want to add (inaudible) [landmark?] [01:11:00] CL: Well, to finalize, the experience, the people that I’ve met, what I’ve learned because, again, I didn’t go to high school. And my education came from the Lords. JJ: Did you get a GED or anything? CL: Yeah, I did get a GED, but after all the Lords, then I tried, you know, started to find my way. Because, again, you know, when you’re 16 and you’re 21, it’s an impact. JJ: But that’s (inaudible) you seem to be (inaudible) the Lords for them teaching you about life -- CL: The reading, understanding. JJ: You started reading? CL: Yeah. We had to read Lenin, Marx, Stalin. So you have to be at a certain level 50 �to understand, you know, and read this. JJ: (inaudible) CL: [In there?]. JJ: (inaudible) CL: Yeah. In fact, I never went to [01:12:00] take classes for my GED, and I passed it the first shot. When I went back to school, and I took a test, they could not believe that I didn’t go to high school. So yeah, of course it impacted. I learned a lot. And one thing I did say that after that happened, I would never join another group blindly, ever. If I were to join a group, I would definitely have to know exactly where they’re coming from, and I would have to truly believe. That’s why, when I left, that day that I told Tony, “I’m gonna call them and I’m gonna leave.” I no longer believed in the PRRWO. JJ: (inaudible) CL: And I still have good friends. Panama, Richie -- JJ: (inaudible) CL: And I’ve met you, you know, who started it all. JJ: (inaudible) END OF AUDIO FILE 51 � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/7e59af5b7c5d0ea787e9221d510757b2.mp4 548a6e755aa65307ea2dbbac5d4b3686 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 de Leon vídeo entrevista y biografía Descripción Spanish language Description entry Carmen De Leon es una Young Lord que creció en la cuidad de Nueva York y ahora vive en Loiza, Puerto Rico. Soportará fuerte por mujeres, Señora De Leon trabajo cerca con el Young Lord Richie Pérez en programas de educación para jóvenes. En su entrevista comparte sus memorias sobre los días que trabajo con los Young Lords. Señora De Leon habla de cómo los Young Lords fueron infiltrados por agentes del gobierno y como “idolología” fue utilizado para nublar y hacer divisiones dentro del movimiento. Esto también incluye soportando unos que tomen poder y descreditando los líderes. Con vivacidad describe como los miembros fueron tomados como rehén y como ella misma fue purgada de los Young Lords. Su entrevista nos da una prospectiva importante en cómo estos tácticos fueron pasados y últimamente destruyo las conexiones dentro de los Young Lords y el barrio. Sujetos Spanish language Subject terms Young Lords (Organización) Puertorriqueños--Estados Unidos Derechos civiles--Estados Unidos--Historia Lincoln Park (Chicago, Ill.) Narrativas personales Justicia social 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_Leon_Carmen_de Title A name given to the resource Carmen de Leon video interview and transcript Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Leon, Carmen de Description An account of the resource Carmen de Leon is a Young Lord who grew up in New York City and today lives in Loíza, Puerto Rico. A strong advocate for women, Ms. de Leon worked closely with Young Lord Richie Pérez on a range of education and youth centered programs. In her oral history, she recalls her days working with the Young Lords. Ms. de Leon discusses how the Young Lords were infiltrated by government agents and how “ideology” was utilized to factionalize and create divisions within the Movement, including encouraging takeovers, discrediting, and purging leaders. She vividly describes members being taken hostage as well as how she herself was purged from the Young Lords. Her interview provides important insights into how these repressive tactics were carried out and how they ultimately destroyed the connections between the Young Lords and the barrio base. 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 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 2012-05-14 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/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/f53ca79a48a41e3dcab3a99127807a75.pdf 8931847ead2676679cd8d1a268a8df54 PDF Text Text Young Lords In Lincoln Park Interviewee: Carmen Rance Interviewers: José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez Location: Grand Valley State University Special Collections Date: 3/30/2012 Biography and Description When Carmen F. Rance’s family first came to Chicago from Puerto Rico, she lived at the Water Hotel then moved to Lincoln Park where she grew up. She joined the Young Lords through the Breakfast for Children Program, waking up early morning after morning and volunteering to cook home-style meals for elementary school children before they attended school in the mornings. Her family owned a large apartment building on the corner of Clifton and Armitage Avenue where many other Puerto Rican families lived. There was a storefront downstairs where bands played and held parties. Her family was active with Council Number 9 of the Caballeros de San Juan and Damas de María, at St. Teresa’s Church. St. Teresa’s had a separate hall that was used by the Caballeros and Damas to throw larger dances, weddings and other events. Ms. Rance recalls how St. Teresa’s became a major focal point for the Puerto Rican community at a time when the community was growing rapidly and spreading beyond the neighborhood dividing line of Ashland Avenue. Groups like the Young Lords, Black Eagles, Paragons, Flaming Arrows, Imperial Aces and Queens, Continentals, Latin Eagles from Addison and Halsted, Latin Angels from Humbolt Park, and the original Latin Kings from Wicker Park would all come to the wellorganized, safe dances run by the Damas and Caballeros at the church. There were few fights but always lots of competition on the dance floor. Today Ms. Rance works as a case manager and has been a lay leader in the San Lucas United Church of Christ for many years. That church also has a long history of �community activism through leaders like Peter Early, Rev. María Lourdes Porrata, and Rev. Jorge Morales. Together, they created the West Town Concerned Citizens’ Coalition, which has rallied against police brutality, hunger, and promoted affordable housing. The church runs various programs including a food pantry. On September 23rd, 2008, the Young Lords celebrated their 40th Anniversary at the church. �Transcript CARMEN RANCE: Because when we -- I was part of the Young Lords, and we did, and we did that and then people sit there and they -(break in audio) JOSE JIMENEZ: CR: Okay. Say what is, you know, your name and -- My name is Carmen Flores Rance and raised in Lincoln Park, you could say. But no, a Chicago resident. Didn’t move too far from the neighborhood. So I don’t know anyone. Ask me question? JJ: Were you born -- you were born here? CR: I was not born here. I was born in Puerto Rico. I came here when I was five years old, and my sister was six years old. And we -- when we first came here from Puerto Rico, we stopped at La Salle and Superior and we lived there at La Salle and Superior. It was a Puerto Rican -- there was quite a few Puerto Ricans around there. And -- JJ: What year was this? CR: This would have been ’56, ’57 that I came [00:01:00] because I was five and my sister was six. And that’s when the fun started. So we were there like maybe five years. JJ: And you were how old at that time? CR: I was -- when we moved out to, you could say Lincoln Park, because I consider Larrabee -- I don’t know what community was that, was Lincoln Park. We moved 1 �from there. We were there for like six years. But we lived in a very small apartment. JJ: Back on La Salle and Superior? CR: On La Salle and Superior. We lived in a third floor -- JJ: So how old were you then when you came to -- CR: Five. But we went straight there. We lived -- JJ: What do you remember there? CR: There was -- the few Puerto Ricans that were there -- I mean, it was Puerto Ricans, but you know, I was small. So I remember my mother and my father and my brother. The Puerto Ricans that lived in the building, there used to be a beauty shop there, it was Clara’s -- I don’t know if anybody remembers Clara Byron. Clara Byron owned [00:02:00] that beauty shop on the first floor. She used to do hair. JJ: You don’t remember the address -- CR: Well, it would have been Superior. Seven -- could have been 700 West and Superior. JJ: Back in the corner was the -- CR: Right on the corner -- no, the beauty shop was in the first floor, we lived on the third floor. So it was the building on that corner on the south and it was on the west side of the street. JJ: Okay. Kitty-corner to where to Catholic Charities is today? CR: Right. And that wasn’t Catholic Charities. That used to be an orphanage. Wasn’t that an orphanage in the late ’50s, early ’60s? 2 �JJ: Yeah I’m not sure -- I’m not sure when. CR: Yeah it used to be an orphanage and then Catholic Charities took it over. For everybody does not remember that there used to be an orphanage there and then across the street from this flower shop. JJ: Because you lived right across the street from the flower shop. It still exists. CR: Yes. So we had to cross [00:03:00] to get to -- on the other side of the street. JJ: Okay and so there was a business there you said? A -- CR: A beautician there, she ran a beauty shop there. JJ: Any other businesses that you remember? CR: That I remember, if you went on Clark Street, Clark and Superior, then you saw some of the Spanish stores. But I was kind of little, so I don’t remember. But I know there was a Spanish store there. There used to be one. There used to be a theater there too. I forgot the name of that theater, but it was on Chicago Avenue between Clark and Superior. It was a neighborhood theater and there used to be a Spanish store. JJ: Did you all go to that theater? CR: I used to go to that theater. I think now it was strip joint. JJ: They saying [el meaito?] -- CR: [El meaito?]. (chuckles) See, [el meaito?]. See I was right I remembered that was. And we used to go there and see the movies. It was a little dinky little place, but it was a -- now it’s a strip joint. It was I think a strip joint. And there was a [00:04:00] Spanish store, and they used to sell Spanish products and stuff. And then a little bit further down was Holy Name Cathedral. And we were part of 3 �-- we could go to catechism there. I remember Las Hijas de Maria. They would teach the catechism class. If you remember Carmen Travieso was my catechism teacher. JJ: Carmen Travieso. CR: Carmen Travieso. And it was a big Puerto Rican church. It was a lot of -- I think that we had mass there, but we were very involved. Las Hijas de Maria y Los Caballeros de San Juan. They were very involved. JJ: And this was ’56? 1956? CR: No it would be ’56, ’57, ’58. Because we went there for a couple of years. Then from there we moved to -- JJ: Okay. Where did you move to? CR: 1714 North Larrabee. JJ: Okay, 1714 Larrabee. By Willow? [00:05:00] CR: Or what was that? Where was Saint Michael’s at? Sedgwick? JJ: I think that was Willow and Wisconsin. CR: Wisconsin. It was Wisconsin. Wisconsin and Larrabee. JJ: Or Menomonee? Was there another street called Menomonee? CR: There was a Menomonee there, but I can’t rem-- Mohawk. I remember Mohawk. But we were on Larrabee. The 1700 block. JJ: So you went from going to mass at the Holy Name Cathedral then you were going to Saint Michaels? 4 �CR: Then we went to Saint Michaels. And there, we had a mass on Sunday. There was a big -- it used to be a big community there. Because people would come from all over to go to church at Saint Michaels. JJ: When you say big community, are you talking about Puerto Ricans? CR: The people -- yeah the Puerto Ricans that lived there plus the Puerto Ricans that came. And I’m gonna say that they came from down North Avenue and probably on North Avenue there was a lot of Puerto Ricans. There was a lot of Puerto Ricans in Cabrini, and I believe that they also went to Saint Michaels. So I don’t remember the crowd, but it was a lot [00:06:00] of Latino, lot of Puerto Rican families there. JJ: So it was a big center at that time, Saint Michael’s. CR: Big center. And I’m trying to remember, Father Headley? Do you remember the Father Headley from -- and other Headley was very (inaudible) to the Puerto Rican, (Spanish), [00:06:16] spoke fluent Spanish. JJ: Father Kathrein. CR: Father Kathrein, that’s right. I forgot about him. He was there too for -- was Father Headley from Saint Teresa’s? JJ: Our Immaculate Conception had mass too, I believe. Immaculate on North Park? Immaculate Conception. CR: Oh yes. I remember Immaculate Conception, but I really didn’t hang out there. My brother did. JJ: I wonder if it was Father [Reem?] or something like that. But I mean, that’s what I remember. I just want to know what you remember in terms of that. So -- 5 �CR: I remember -- JJ: So what was Saint Michael’s like? CR: Do you remember the Continentals from Immaculate Conception? They used to hang out at the Immaculate Conception church. And they would throw parties there. [00:07:00] JJ: Right. I remember that. CR: Vaguely I remember. My mother wouldn’t let us go out. Carlos got to go out but not us. And they used to wear the pink sweaters with the big C. Was it pink or red? JJ: The pink stripe was the Paragons. CR: The Paragons? No, but the Continentals -- JJ: Continentals I think had -- they were red, white, and blue I believe the -- but I think they were light blue, and then (inaudible) was a red stripe or something like that. CR: Okay. But we didn’t go out. We didn’t go out because my mother wouldn’t let us out. JJ: But you -- we were talking about a lot of youth at that time with different color sweaters. Is that what you’re talking about? CR: Yeah. JJ: Or am I putting words in your mouth? CR: No, I’m not. The Paragons. Give me some other names. The Continental. JJ: The Black Eagles. CR: The Black Eagles. 6 �JJ: Flaming Arrows. CR: Yeah. JJ: Imperial Aces and Queens. I don’t even think -- CR: All them people. JJ: Youth. CR: And weren’t they mostly Puerto Ricans? JJ: Right. They were mostly Puerto Rican. Now were these the gangs that you [00:08:00] call gangs today? Or -- CR: What you call gangs today but not with the violence piece. I think they just used to throw parties and hang out. But fighting and doing -- I didn’t see too much of that. It was more like having parties and meeting. That’s what I remember but my mother would not let us out. So I really didn’t know what’s going on. I just used to see them, so. JJ: So but you saw them at mass too, right? CR: They would come to church. I’m not gonna say all of them came to church but their families would come to church. And it was Puerto Rican families. JJ: What families do you remember coming to church? CR: Oh god. I remember the Lugos that lived in Cabrini-Green. What was the -Almestica, Almestica? Rosalia Almestica? Do you remember Rosalia Almestica? Rosalia y Roberto [00:09:00] at the -- who was the other family? There was a Puerto Rican family that lived in the projects. The first projects that were built which was Cabrini which would have been like 1000 North on Larrabee. And there was a Puerto Rican -- was a Black Puerto Rican family and 7 �those people we knew from when we first came from Puerto Rico. They were my father’s friends. And they welcomed us to their house and then they ended up moving into the projects. I mean those were beautiful projects and they lived on - and I never forget they lived on the 16th floor of the projects of the first CabriniGreen projects. And then when the projects started deteriorating. The elevators were broken. People had to walk up and down them stairs. And one day, one of his daughters got raped by thirteen Black boys in the elevator. She ended up having a, pregnant. They didn’t want to give her an abortion. [00:10:00] And the family moved out. That I remember. I remember the [Berrios?]. Joe Berrios family lived in the projects. The Lugos lived in the projects. JJ: When you say the Berrios and Lugos. What is that just one family? Or -- CR: These were different families with a lot of kids. They were Puerto Ricans with a lot of kids. So it was at least six kids in each -- in their family. Almestica, they had six. I’m trying to remember what was the -- Rosalia, Roberto, [Blitson?]. Because Blitson ended up moving with us on Armitage. No, they moved on Halsted and Dickens. They own property on Halsted and Dickens, that family that I was talking about. They ended up moving out of the Cabrini Projects when their daughter was raped. And she had the baby. And her mother did not want that baby. So this [00:11:00] girl was 12, 13 years old and she had a baby. And the baby was never -- they gave it up for adoption. We never found out what happened to that baby to this day. JJ: So now this is a Puerto Rican family. Their daughter gets raped by Black kids. CR: In those projects. 8 �JJ: In those projects. Was there -- did that create any rift between the community and -- CR: No, I think the family moved out. I don’t know what happened after that. And the kids did not get charged because they were minors. And no proof. JJ: So you said it started deteriorating. About what years did the deterioration start? CR: I’m gonna say ’60 -- maybe ’65? I can’t remember when Cabrini was built but ’65, between ’65 and ’69, that’s when we kind of moved -- I think we moved out around ’68 to Armitage. JJ: Oh you were living there too? CR: No, I mean not in [00:12:00] the projects. We were living down the street. JJ: Down the street. CR: Yeah so the pro-- those first projects was like 1100 North on Larrabee, and we were 14 or 1700 North on Larrabee. So we were like on the other side of North Avenue. And there used to be a -- oh the Peñas. I don’t know if you remember Paulina Peña and their family. That was a big family, and we knew them from Puerto Rico, and they lived on North Avenue. 900 West on North Avenue. And they were very close to -- JJ: So they were from Guayama? CR: They were from Arroyo. JJ: From Arroyo. And you knew them from there? CR: And so -- JJ: So what other towns were you representing? 9 �CR: Guayama, Arroyo, Humacao, Mayagüez, Bayamón. So -- and we ended up meeting that family -- the Peñas were a very big family. It was like about seven or eight of them. And their kids are still around, and they live -- they were living there first than we were. [00:13:00] They were living there first then we were. That Puerto Rican family we knew. There used to a Five-and-Ten Cent Store on North Avenue and Menomonee? Or Mohawk? JJ: Near there. It was near Larrabee. Yeah, I remember that. Yeah. CR: Remember that Five-and-Ten Cent Store? JJ: With the counter and everything like that. CR: Yeah that people would come -- Woolworths. There was a Woolworths. JJ: Woolworths, yeah. CR: There used to be counter where people would come there and eat. I remember that. JJ: So you were living right around there. That section near there. And so that’s North Avenue. So how was North Avenue in terms of Latinos at that time? CR: There was lot of Puerto Rican families living there. Especially down North Avenue between I’m gonna say Clark all the way down to past Halsted was all Puerto Rican families. And Larrabee too. All of Larrabee and Mohawk. The Garcias -- Myrna and Gladys Garcia’s family lived there. [00:14:00] My godmother lived there. They lived down Mohawk. JJ: What were her name? 10 �CR: [Masimina?] y Don Pedro. That was my uncle -- I mean my godmother and my godfather. And that was -- that whole building was a Puerto Rican family. And then they ended up moving on Armitage. That’s how I remember that one. JJ: So you had people living from Park and North Avenue all the way to Halsted you said. CR: Right. So there was Puerto Ricans all the way starting I’m going to say Clark, we could say La Salle. There was a lot of Puerto Ricans living around there. And they followed -- everyone followed each other. There was a lot of them living like I said on North Avenue and then Larrabee and then it just kept -- Willow -- Burling -- Halsted. What’s the other street? Dayton, [00:15:00] Orchard. Orchard had -Luis Gutiérrez uncle and aunt lived on Orchard. I lived on Orchard after I got married. Well not get married but after my older days. JJ: And Congressman Luis Gutiérrez. CR: Right. His family lived on Orchard. Believe it was this. And then I remember talking about El Congreso, that was on North Avenue and Larrabee and Caribe. JJ: And what did they -- CR: They used to have dancing. There was dancing and it was the baseball league. El Puerto Boricua I think it was the name. Puerto Boricua. And they used to have really, you know, just family gatherings and -- JJ: So Puerto Boricua was a different organization, or they were connected with the Congreso is that what you’re saying? CR: They -- it was a baseball league. It wasn’t part of the church. It was just a baseball league that they would have dances and people would come there and 11 �meet. I guess all the Puerto Ricans [00:16:00] that came from Puerto Rico, I guess everyone would meet there. And I remember as a little girl going there with my parents to the dances. So -- and it was a lot of Puerto Ricans. JJ: Puerto Boricua is a veteran’s organization or? CR: It was. It did have the veteran’s thing, but I don’t know what it stood for. I can’t remember. JJ: (inaudible) I think it was a VFW. CR: VFW or VFM post. JJ: But it was all Puerto Rican. CR: All Puerto Ricans. Because my father used to be a -- JJ: I forgot where they were located. You don’t remember or? CR: They -- that -- there was -- okay, let me see. It was two of them. There was one, you know what I can’t remember. But it was more than one. One was on Ogden I think, Ogden and -- JJ: Chicago Avenue? CR: Maybe Chicago Avenue? That was number two. So we would exchange [00:17:00] and go to different parties there. And then there was a lot of Puerto Rican families around Milwaukee and Grand and Chicago Avenue, Ashland. JJ: So could this have been like part of the same community but in different like pockets or? Because I know you were talking about La Salle and Superior and now you’re talking about Chicago Avenue and Grand. CR: Right because some of -- a lot of the families started moving more north. 12 �JJ: So they were moving more north. And looks like they were moving more west too. CR: Mm-hmm. JJ: I mean pockets at least. CR: Pockets of them, but you know, couldn’t keep up with them. JJ: Because in between you had -- what were some of the buildings in between? What kind of businesses? CR: There used to be the Spanish store, the bodega, La Bodega, the stores. I can’t -I was kind of small at that time, but I think it was [00:18:00] the stores. The Spanish stores I remember. JJ: What was that a downtown or was it a industrial area or what kind of area was it? CR: It was just buildings. It could have -- just buildings. I don’t think there was an industrial area, no. Just -- JJ: Putting words. (chuckles) CR: No, I’m just trying to remember. Every time you talk, I’m just like remember the houses around there. You know, third floor, fourth floor, fifth floor. I mean walking North Avenue. But we weren’t that far. We were just -- JJ: Oh so they were tall buildings. CR: It was tall buildings. Not, you know, row houses or like that. JJ: Where’d everybody stay? How -- what did it look like -- CR: Oh my god. We lived -- okay, going back to Larrabee, if we were on Superior. Superior and La Salle, it was a three-room house. And it was my father, my mother, me and my sister, my brother. And then, you know, Puerto Ricans tend 13 �to bring their aunts and their uncles to live with them, the sisters and stuff. So it was [00:19:00] my uncle and my aunt. We all lived in a one, two, three room apartment. That was a three room apartment. So my bedroom, me and my sister’s bedroom was in the kitchen. We had bunk beds. And I can’t remember the other rooms. It was a very small apartment, but we all lived there for many years. JJ: And where did you play? Or did you go out or? I mean, I don’t know what those -- CR: I don’t know where we played -- JJ: -- the guys go out. CR: My mother wouldn’t let us out. When we were on Superior and La Salle, we very rarely went out. We would be in the house. And if we did, it would be around the neighborhood, and we would probably hang out in the beauty shop that was downstairs. We would hang out there. But of going out to play, I can’t remember. Just going to school, you know, and I went to Ogden. [00:20:00] JJ: Okay, you went to Ogden. CR: Ogden School. JJ: What do you remember about Ogden? CR: I remember about Ogden was that we did not speak English. So me and my sister were put in the same classroom and my sister had already started school in Puerto Rico. So when she came here, they put both of us in a classroom. I believe we were maybe first grade. And I think they forgot about us. They didn’t know that we were there. Because they never spoke to us. And at that time, 14 �again I would say my name is not Carmen. My name is Camila. They didn’t know how to pronounce my name, so they changed it to Carmen. My sister’s name was Mina. They changed it to Myrna. And then we had to learn Spanish in the -- you know, I mean English in the street. Learn it little by little until you got it. But of them having bilingual education to teach us, none of that. So it was very hard. It was a very -- it was not a good time for us. [00:21:00] And we always wanted to go back to Puerto Rico. Because I believe we came in the middle of winter, and we were not dressed properly for the weather. And it was very cold, I remember that. And we always used to cry and tell our mother that we wanted to go back to Puerto Rico with our family. And we couldn’t. So that was the starting of our life in Chicago. JJ: And actually, your parents, were they planning to come to stay here or? CR: I believe they were. My father came first. And I believe my father came to pick cucumbers and tomatoes in Connecticut. He went to Connecticut, and it was the time of the -- el Muñoz Marín, they had that bootstrap. And I believe the churches were the one that paid his airfare to go and work in those fields. So and I didn’t even know this until years later. My father was a migrant worker. He came here to work. And then I guess he didn’t like it over there in Connecticut and he ended up coming [00:22:00] to Chicago. And I believe some of his friends that he knew in Puerto Rico took him in which I think was the Peñas and the Almestica and the -- I can’t remember the last -- the family. Found a job at Western Electric and that’s where he retired from. Like the next 30 years, he worked at Western Electric. 15 �JJ: That was a pretty good job. CR: At that time. JJ: Did they have other Latinos working? CR: There was a lot of Latinos working there. Blacks too. JJ: Western Electric. CR: Yeah. Western was well known. You had Western Electric, you had -- oh my god what was the factories that were around there? On Clybourn? Remember the factories on Clybourn? There was a lot of Puerto Ricans -- JJ: Seeburg was there. CR: See-- yeah. JJ: OH MetalCraft. CR: MetalCraft was very well known. I remember those. JJ: Midwest Coil and Transformer was another one in Halsted. CR: Okay. JJ: Yeah because that’s -- [00:23:00] I knew there was a lot of factories at that time. CR: Right, but you know Western Electric was like on 35th or something and Cicero? JJ: (inaudible) was south, yeah. CR: It was south. So my father -- I used to remember my father every morning he’d get up at three in the morning. Wait for the bus, take the bus -- and he didn’t have a car, my father did not drive. So he had to depend on the bus to take him and bring him back to work. I remember the blizzard of ’69 that the whole city of Chicago was in a standstill because there was no busses running. The snow was I don’t know how high the snow was. And he couldn’t come home so he was 16 �like stuck out there for like three or four days. I remember that. We were out of school because everything was just totally dead. Nobody moved. JJ: And you were in school in Ogden at that time? CR: At that time, well the snow wasn’t -- when I was on Larrabee but during -- at Ogden, I graduated from Ogden. And I’m sorry [00:24:00] I take that back. It wasn’t Ogden. I ended up -- from Ogden I ended up in La Salle. When we moved to Larrabee, then I went to La Salle. JJ: La Salle was on Sedgwick or? CR: Sedgwick and Menomonee? Or that was -- so Ogden was my first school when I came here from Puerto Rico. Then when we moved to Larrabee, then I started going to La Salle. We did go to Newberry but then for some reason we got transferred out and ended up in La Salle. So I ended up graduating from La Salle. And that was in ’65, 1965. JJ: From eighth grade? CR: From eighth grade. JJ: Okay. And there was just elementary, just kind of routine elementary. CR: Yeah, routine. JJ: Anything exciting at La Salle? CR: Not that I remember. There was a lot of Latinos. I can’t remember the names and when we graduated, everybody took a different path. Some went to Tuley. Some went to Lake View. [00:25:00] Some went -- I don’t know if Wells was around. I can’t remember if Wells was around. Some went to Saint Michael’s. 17 �But we couldn’t afford Saint Michael’s, so we didn’t go to Saint Michael’s. We ended up going Waller. Which is now Lincoln Park. JJ: Lincoln Park High. CR: Lincoln Park High School. JJ: But you went to -- did you go to Saint Joseph’s at all? CR: I went to Saint Joseph for the catechism and just -- but not for school. We couldn’t afford to go to a Catholic school. JJ: Okay. So you went for the catechism? CR: Catechism and maybe -- JJ: And where’d you did your communion? Where did you -- CR: My communion was Saint Michael’s. JJ: Saint Michael’s. CR: Because Saint Joseph I believe was on Orleans, right? And Chicago? JJ: Right, right. So you were at Saint Michael’s, you were going to Spanish mass [00:26:00] in the big chapel and everything. CR: Beautiful. Beautiful church. And then they moved out. They stopped the Spanish churches -- they didn’t stop the service, they just moved it to a smaller -they moved it to the hall. And then from the hall -- it was shrinking. They moved it to the rectory, in the basement of the rectory. Until one day they just stopped. JJ: So they started at the big chapel? CR: They started in the church. And from the church they went to the hall which was Saint Michael’s high school. JJ: So were they advanced -- was that an advancement or? 18 �CR: No I think it was a deterioration of the community changing. JJ: So the community was changing so, less -- CR: The shrinking. Less people so they didn’t need that whole mass. You remember Saint Michael’s. That was a humongous church. JJ: Well I remember a humongous church but when I was looking at some of the documents there was not much record of Spanish people going to -- attending that church. [00:27:00] CR: But there was. JJ: So you’re saying it was a humongous -- CR: It used -- at one time it was a service where half the church was filled. And then as people started moving, it just kept shrinking and shrinking and I guess they justified -- JJ: Half the church was filled of Spanish people? CR: Of Spanish people. Everything was in Spanish. The music was in Spanish. The priest -- JJ: And apparently they didn’t make enough noise because in that there’s no record of that. CR: There’s not? Okay. JJ: I mean I was looking at some -- CR: Probably it was intention. JJ: No, what I’m asking -- I guess what I’m trying to ask is, to you there was a big congregation? 19 �CR: I believe it was a big congregation. And there was weddings there. There was, god let me see if I remember when I was a little girl. They used to have communion there. The -- there was a lot of activities. But I guess it’s not -- JJ: Well what kind of activities? I mean you said weddings and -- CR: Weddings, parties, they would do Mother’s Day party [00:28:00] for Mother’s Day. They would do an Easter party. Christmas. They would do Los Reyes. JJ: Los Reyes? CR: They would do Los Reyes. JJ: You mean the parranda? CR: (Spanish) [00:28:12] JJ: And you said that there was an Easter, right? Were you there that -- there was a play I believe that they used to do. CR: They used to do the plays, but I don’t -- I remember them, but I just wasn’t real involved. But like I said it was an activity where there was a lot of Puerto Ricans there. There was a lot. So there was a lot, you know everybody spoke the same language. The food was eaten. The people got together. JJ: And in fact, the Puerto Rican Congress was not that far away from Saint Michael’s. CR: No it was like two miles. JJ: So that was like a center at that time for Puerto Ricans. CR: Right. The Congress which was on North Avenue there in Larrabee. JJ: And (inaudible) and all that, all the different vans and that. And the [polls?] [00:29:00] you said that (inaudible). 20 �CR: And the baseball leagues. JJ: What do you mean the baseball leagues? CR: You know there used to be baseball played at Lincoln Park. You know that we had a lot of Puerto Rican not -- we did not play in Humboldt Park. We played -or my father had -- he was a manager of the baseball league. He played in Lincoln Park. And the other park -- there was another park. Was it Garfield? JJ: On the southside? CR: On the southside -- the Puerto Ricans played there. And I remember there was a riot. There was a riot that broke out -- a baseball riot. In Garfield Park. JJ: In Garfield Park? CR: Between the -- I don’t know what -- who it was, but I know it was Puerto Ricans and maybe Black or was it White? I can’t remember. But I remember that riot. And then there was Garfield. But not in -- Lincoln Park, we played baseball there. So like North Avenue -- North Avenue and Lincoln Park. [00:30:00] North Avenue and Lincoln Park. JJ: North Avenue and Lincoln Park by the VFW? CR: That you had to go walk over the bridge. They used to play baseball there. JJ: And a lot of people used to show up? CR: Oh my god it was -- and they used to sell food. JJ: What kind of food? CR: Well you know it was so funny because I was talking to my brother and my brother was telling me that there used to be a hotdog stand or a food stand over the bridge to -- you know when you had to go over the bridge, so it was Lake 21 �Shore Drive. So there used to be a little stand there and people would buy ice cream, popcorn, and stuff. So this guy -- this Puerto Rican guy started making sandwiches. And his business got so big, and my brother was telling me that he just recently -- he interviewed him about how the business, how he made the business. And he started making sandwiches. So people would buy sandwiches from this guy, and he would sell it out of the trunk of his car. So that I remember. I don’t remember it too clear, but I remember that we used to buy ice cream and pop and hotdogs there. [00:31:00] But when this guy started making his own sandwiches and people would come and get from him instead of getting it from the park. JJ: And did they raise -- how did they raise money? CR: Well you had the beautiful baseball league, and I guess they had dues, and they used to wear beautiful uniforms. I remember the uniforms. Beautiful outfits. And when they had the leagues, and I believe there was leagues that would come from Puerto Rico to play baseball there. I mean it was very popular. Very popular. JJ: Were these well-organized? CR: Very well organized. Managers and everything. Because you had El Congreso and you had El Puerto Boricua, so it was a big, big baseball leagues. And so they played at Lincoln Park, and they played at Garfield Park. JJ: You don’t recall them playing at Humboldt park at that time? CR: No. That one I don’t remember. I remember Garfield and Lincoln. [00:32:00] 22 �JJ: Now, they had -- did they also have any -- I know Saint Michael’s had an annual fair. And do you recall that at all or? Like an annual fair, you know, with the Ferris wheel and all that? You don’t recall. CR: No, I don’t remember that. JJ: Okay. The Puerto Rican Congress, were they not involved in the first parade or something like that? CR: There was, but I wasn’t really part of it. And it could have been -- I remember the queen. I remember there used to be a queen. There was a queen. I can’t remember who it was, but she was. __: Carmen Cristia. Because (inaudible) and Carmen Cristia there was like a discrepancy as to who was the real Puerto Rican queen. JJ: Carmen Cristia? CR: See I don’t remember that one. I remember -- JJ: I recall the day we had to vote for the queen there at the Puerto Rican Congress. CR: Was it? JJ: Which is right there in Lincoln Park? I mean that’s something that’s kind [00:33:00] of like where the first parades -- because at first there was a Festival de San Juan all the way in 1953 at Holy Name Cathedral. At the (inaudible) at the -- CR: So I wasn’t here, I was still in Puerto Rico. JJ: But then the official Puerto Rican parade I think began through Saint Michael’s and Puerto Rican Congress and some of the other -- CR: Oh really? Okay. 23 �JJ: That’s what I recall, I mean what I remember. But because I agree with you. There was a very big community at -- CR: Oh my god. Yes there was. I mean when you look back at all the, the V, I mean I can name people I just remember -- JJ: What people? Why don’t you tell me about them? CR: Okay. The Vélez, the Peñas, the Lugos, the Almestica, what else? Oh my god. Pantoja, [00:34:00] because that was a big family on Larrabee. Big, big family. JJ: So when you say a big family, you’re not talking about the immediate family, you’re saying the relatives. CR: The whole -- yes, it was relatives. Aunts, uncles, all of them all lived around each other. JJ: So people were coming from Puerto Rico, not just one family but aunts, uncles and everyone. CR: Brothers, sisters. And then the ones that were here would have gotten married and, you know, started their own family. JJ: So is that not like some of the immigrant communities that come except that Puerto Ricans were already citizens but. CR: Yes. JJ: But they were coming like immigrants? CR: Right because you know my family -- my mother took in or brought my uncle, my aunt, two aunts and two uncles came from Puerto Rico when we came. And then my uncle, I remember my uncle joined the service, he was in the army. And he went through a really rough time, very racist. You know, he would tell us stories 24 �of things that happened to him, [00:35:00] and he came to live with us. So my mother brought her two brothers and her two sisters to live with us. So you could picture just all of us. And a cousin. Because I just remembered now, a cousin too. So she brought her cousin, her two brothers and her two sisters to come here. They worked, made money and some of them right now they live in Puerto Rico. But when they were here, they lived with us for many years, and we all lived together. JJ: In the same three room apartment? CR: No, that one was my uncle, my two uncles. But when we moved to Larrabee it was my two aunts and my two uncles. They all lived -- and this one was a little bigger. We had a three bedroom. It was a three bedroom, living room, dining room, kitchen. Six rooms. So it was a lot bigger. So in like in one bedroom it was me and my sister in one bed and my aunt, and my other aunt slept in another bed. Then the room in the back, there was bunk beds, so my uncles lived there with my brothers. [00:36:00] And then my mother and father slept in the front. But that was a bigger apartment. JJ: And everyone -- was there -- did everyone get along pretty well or no? CR: It was a Puerto Rican community. We all got along. It was a beautiful community. We had a rooster that the -- we -- I never forget that we lived next door to this White -- it was a White family. And that rooster would wake up in the morning and just, you know, crow. And they started complaining. We had rabbits, chickens (chuckles) in the backyard. And they started complaining. JJ: No goats. 25 �CR: No goats. It was chickens, it was rabbits. And they were in the back. And we lived in a third floor. It was a third floor. We were living in a third floor. And the Vélez lived on the second floor which I asked you Ricardo and what’s his name? Because they part of -- JJ: Victor. CR: Victor Vélez. [00:37:00] They lived in the second floor. And that was a family of about ten. That was a -- that family, there was ten of them. JJ: This was Larrabee and North Avenue? CR: Larrabee and North Avenue. The Vélez lived in the second floor. We lived on the third floor. JJ: And this was ’65, ’66? CR: It would have been ’65 through ’69 I’m going to say. And who else lived there that I can remember? Oh my god. It’s another Puerto Rican family that lived there. It was a big family. It was a lot of them. They lived on the other side of Willow on Larrabee. They must have -- they must have owned, or not owned, but they lived like in three different buildings. And it was a big family. Fabian, Fabian and it’ll come to me, their last name. They lived there. JJ: So what was the common language or was it mixed or? [00:38:00] CR: No it was Spanish, Puerto Rican. Puerto Rican. And then I remember there used -- a Black -- I remember a Black beauty shop moved like next door to us and they used to you know, Black -- a Black barber shop. It was a barber shop; it wasn’t a beauty shop. And I remember my mother took us there to fix our hair. She put a relaxer on our hair. And the relaxer was very, very strong and messed 26 �up our hair. Because they processed -- it was a process they used this horrible stuff on our hair. And I remember one day our hair fell out. Those were little things that I remember. And then Blacks started moving in. And -JJ: On North Ave? CR: On Larrabee. No, on Larrabee coming down Larrabee because you had the projects there. I guess when those projects started deteriorating, people were starting to move. JJ: Because you’re talking about Larrabee and then there’s Ogden coming in also. [00:39:00] CR: Right but Ogden was -- there was some projects there and there was a school there. Wasn’t there a school? JJ: Because we, you know, so there you had Chicago and Ogden and now there’s North Avenue and Ogden. And now there’s Puerto Ricans there too. At the time. CR: Right. JJ: So there’s kind of like moving west and north at the same time. And then they -North Avenue was like -- would you say that was like a -- people kind of just followed North Avenue, down? CR: Yeah. All of North Avenue like I said between Clark all the way maybe I could say Ashland? That was all Puerto Ricans. JJ: So it didn’t go past Ashland at that time? CR: Well maybe it did, but I didn’t go that far. I didn’t go that far. It could have gone past Damen for all I know. I think there was an Italian there. 27 �JJ: Okay. Because you also had another barrio from Harrison and Halsted and Jackson and that area there was also. CR: I remember that. I heard of families there, but I don’t -- I don’t know those families. [00:40:00] I knew some and my mother and father would go visit them. You know you would have the Puerto Rican parties. JJ: What was that? CR: The Puerto Rican parties where they would have lechón y pitorro. And so when I was little, but I would go to these parties and everybody, you know, just have a good time. Dance, eat, talk about old times. I just remember the women. Good music. Good music. But I was little at that time so I can’t remember. JJ: Records (inaudible). CR: Records. It was records. There was no -- I don’t remember the TV too much. I don’t think there was too much Spanish. But the old records, the 33 and all the songs that would come out. JJ: Spanish songs or? CR: All Spanish songs. JJ: Were there any bands at that time, any Spanish bands that you can -- CR: There was when we would go to the party at Congreso. The bands would come and perform. And it was good music. Good music. [00:41:00] Good liquor. A lot of dancing. People would dance and have a good time. JJ: Live music and -- CR: Live music. Good dancing music. JJ: So now you’re in Saint Michael’s. No you’re in Waller. 28 �CR: I’m -- yeah, so we -- we were going to Waller but then what happened was Urban Renewal took over all of Larrabee. I guess they built the projects and then when it was -- when it was our turn, we had to move. Because Urban Renewal, what they were going to tear down and I don’t know what they were going to do. And at that time my father decided to buy a house -- a building. And he got a building at 1113 West Armitage. It was a three flat building. Three apartments in the back, two in the front, with a storefront. This guy was going to [00:42:00] move to Arizona and he wanted to sell that building. He sold that building to my parents for $35,000. But before that -- before that, me and Carlos, when Carlos first came from -- which is my brother, Carlos came from Puerto Rico. We were outside playing on La Salle and Superior and Carlos had just come from Puerto Rico. And we crossed the street and Carlos got hit by a car and I was there and that was the shock of my life. I actually saw my brother get run -- practically get run over by a car. He did not know any English at all. He suffered so much. They put a cast on him from his chest all the way down to his leg. And we lived in a third floor apartment. So it would take like seven men to bring this boy all the way up to the third floor. And it was a horrible, horrible scene. [00:43:00] And Carlos never came out good from that accident. But the man that hit him set up a trust fund for Carlos, for our family and that’s how my mother and father were able to buy that house on Armitage. Because they took the money out -- they took some of the money out and put a down payment on that house. And that’s where we ended up in Lincoln Park. And we were there like 30 years. Twentyfive, thirty years. 29 �JJ: 1100 that’s like Clifton and -- CR: Between Clifton and Seminary. We were right in the middle. We were in the middle. JJ: And so there were other apartments there. You rented some apartments there? CR: And my parents would -- we would keep the whole third floor and then the second floor was rented, the front and back and the first floor was rented. And then the storefront was rented. So I remember it was a secondhand store one time. [00:44:00] It was a Puerto Rican family bought it for -- they played dominos there. They would play -- it was like a club -- Puerto Ricans would hang out there and stuff. And then I can’t remember what it was afterwards and stuff. And so we ended up (break in audio). My mother used to make ends meet by taking in foster kids. So through our house, we must have had like about 100 foster kids come through our house. Because that’s what she would do. To make ends meet, my mother would wash clothes, would iron clothes, would cook. I remember the teachers that would come -- we would have teachers at Arnold. Remember what Arnold? There used to be some Spanish teachers, and my mother would cook for them. And at lunchtime they would come and eat at my mother’s house and that’s how she would make ends meet. JJ: In the house. Not a restaurant. CR: No they -- my -- they would come to my mother’s house, and they would eat lunch and my mother would cook. And that’s how she makes [00:45:00] ends meet. JJ: Several people used to do that. My mother’s -- 30 �CR: She used to do that too? JJ: Cook in the house. CR: She used to cook in the house. JJ: But at Clark Street. CR: Okay she did it on Clark. My mother did it on Larrabee. And I remember Cruz? What is Milli Santiago’s? -- Juan Cruz? __: Julio Cruz. CR: Julio Cruz was one of the people that would come and eat. Ruben Cruz, the pastor and his sister. These are people that we know after -- JJ: They were teachers at Arnold or? CR: They were teachers and people that worked -- that knew that my mother would cook, and they would come out there and eat. JJ: I remember Ruben Cruz, yeah. CR: Ruben Cruz, remember Ruben? JJ: Had a TV program later. On Channel Seven. CR: Later on. JJ: So now you’re on Armitage. You’re away from Saint Michael’s right? CR: Yes. And we started going to Saint Teresa’s. So Saint Teresa was our church. And we did -- I did catechism. JJ: How did that start? How did that start? CR: That one? There was a Puerto -- there was a mass [00:46:00] there. There was a Spanish mass there and there was Puerto Ricans there. So you had Arroyo’s Liquor Store, which was on the corner of Sheffield and Armitage. You had the 31 �discotheque. They used to sell records next door. Then you had Jay Neal’s. Remember Jay Neal’s? And it was a cleaners. And then it was a store and then you had Saint Teresa’s. And I remember the dances in Saint Teresa’s. JJ: Oh you’re saying, so you’re looking at from Sheffield to Kenmore, those businesses that were there. CR: The businesses that were there but there was families living all the way on Burling, Larrabee. JJ: They were going further -- CR: So we’re going -- I’m going further east. JJ: But you’re more -- now you’re closer to -- CR: But we’re closer to Racine. Racine and Armitage. JJ: So Armitage became a Puerto Rican street at that time. CR: At that time you had -- JJ: Because you had North Avenue but now you get Armitage. CR: You had Armitage, so people were moving in. [00:47:00] JJ: So Puerto Ricans are moving north, as a group. As a -- CR: Sheffield. On Halsted. Jay Neal’s -- no not Jay Neal’s. Shinnick’s. Remember Shinnick’s the drugstore that was under the L Station? That was a German drugstore and his -- his son ended up marrying the -- oh my god what was the Puerto Rican family that moved there? Ivan Medina? The Medina sisters. They ended up marrying one of the sons. And then the other son ended up marrying a Mexican girl. Then you had the flower shop. Then there as a barber -- no barber shop it was a barber shop. It was a -- the Medina, but it was a different Medina. 32 �They owned a barber shop right there on Bissell and Armitage. Remember the barber shop? JJ: On Bissell and Armitage? CR: On Armitage. JJ: Yeah there was a barber shop there [00:48:00] I don’t recall the owner. CR: And on Halsted, do you remember the clinic? The Infant Welfare? That was a Puerto Rican clinic. Everybody that was there went there. JJ: On Halsted? CR: On Halsted. So you had everybody that lived on Willow, on Burling, on Orchard. All the way down past North Avenue, go to that clinic. That was a Puerto Rican -and that clinic did not start there. Remember the meat -- Gepperth’s? What used to be Gepperth’s Meat Market? That was Infant Welfare, and they ended up moving and then the Meat Market came in. I remember that one. So -- and then you had a cleaners on the corner of Armitage and Halsted. It was a Cubanowned cleaners. And then, god all the -- then that’s where you had a lot of Puerto Rican families living between Dickens [00:49:00] all the way past Willow, past North Avenue up to Clybourn. And then that’s not counting Bissell, that’s not counting Sheffield. You had Orchard. You had -- what was the other streets that was around there-- it was all Puerto Ricans. JJ: So what percentage of the community was Puerto Rican what do you think? CR: I’m going to say it was past 50 percent. It was mostly. There was not -- I -- there was more Blacks because you had Manierre School over there on Sheffield and near Armitage. So Manierre or Sexton. I can’t remember -- 33 �JJ: Sexton. CR: It was Sexton. That was a Black -- and there was Blacks there and Puerto Ricans. So I’m going to say 50 percent, or more was a Puerto Rican neighborhood. All the stores were there. There was a Spanish store on [00:50:00] Bissell. I forgot the name of that store. JJ: On Wisconsin you mean? By the bridge? CR: Under the RITA? JJ: By that yeah. Right near there. CR: There used to be -- JJ: That the one you’re talking about? The Spanish one? CR: -- the grocery store. JJ: Right. The grocery store. And you still had Mario’s on Halsted and Willow. (inaudible) CR: Okay. JJ: But now the Puerto Ricans are moving more toward Armitage and closer to Saint Teresa’s. And lower, were there Caballeros de San Juan? CR: Not around there. It was mostly just Puerto Rican family like Clifton. All of Clifton. So it was like from Armitage and Clifton past I’m going to say Fullerton was all Puerto Ricans around there. There was a building on the corner of Clifton and Armitage, that whole building was Puerto Rican. And then there used to be a lemonade store across the street from that [00:51:00] big building. Hedman was next door. There was big factory there, Hedman. Lot of Puerto 34 �Ricans in -- well lot of people. It was a mix. It was a lot of White, Black. It was a factory. JJ: So there were factories around there at that time. CR: Yeah. Because you had the -- on Clybourn there you had that frame place, I’m trying to remember the name of the frame -- they used to make frames, picture frames. Lot of Puerto Ricans worked there. And then you had Hedman. You had, I don’t know what was the -- it was all factories. __: Oscar Mayer wasn’t that around there too? CR: Right. Oscar Mayer was on -- JJ: On Sedgwick, my father went there. CR: The Oscar Mayers, the -- but no Oscar Mayer was -- JJ: It was on Sedgwick. It was more on Sedgwick. CR: It was more on Sedgwick, but that -- yeah, I remember that one too. JJ: My father worked in the area for many years. CR: But then we had Oscar Mayer School that was on Clifton and -- JJ: The Oscar Mayer School, yeah. CR: -- and Dickens. Clifton and -- JJ: Is that what you’re saying Oscar Mayer school? CR: Or the factory. I remember the factory. I don’t remember working there. [00:52:00] I remember that was a big place. But I’m talking about the school, Oscar Mayer. JJ: But that had changed because that wasn’t like that all the time but when you were there it was Puerto Rican. 35 �CR: It was Puerto Rican. JJ: So it had already -- CR: All of Racine, Puerto Rican. JJ: It had already turned Puerto Rican when it had -- before they had -- there were other ethnic minorities that were living there? CR: There was, but we just hung around -- you know, there was Whites, there was Blacks, but it was mostly Puerto Ricans. We knew all the Puerto Ricans. JJ: When you got there. CR: Yes. JJ: To that section. Okay now did Saint Teresa’s have any activities or anything like that? CR: Saint Teresa had a Spanish service. JJ: Like Saint Michael’s had, did Saint Teresa’s do that? CR: Saint Teresa’s had that. There was dances down in the basement. The school, we didn’t get to go to Saint Teresa’s school because we couldn’t afford it so. JJ: Down in the basement was there -- was the mass in the regular chapel or in the - CR: It was a regular church. It was a mass in the -- and then they would have coffee [00:53:00] and donuts in the rector-- not in the rectory, in the hall that was next door to the church. So it would have been Bissell. No, not Bissell. What was that? JJ: Kenmore. Kenmore. CR: Kenmore. 36 �JJ: Okay so now did you have any activities at that -- CR: It was dances and it was weddings, baptismals. JJ: Now I remember -- CR: The clinic. JJ: -- going to dances there. So you had some core -- hardcore youth going there, who were also there. I mean they -- besides the baptisms and the other. They were actually working with the youth at that time. CR: Yeah, yeah. JJ: The Puerto Ricans that were at that church. So they were providing services for the youth at that time. CR: There was a lot of Puerto Ricans. JJ: Or do you recall -- CR: I remember some of the activities, but we did not go to Saint Teresa’s. We just would go to church on Sunday. I did my confirmation [00:54:00] there. JJ: That’s right because you were being sheltered in your house, is that -- CR: Yeah, you know, my mother would not let the girls out. JJ: So what did the girls do -- they’re sheltered in their house? CR: The boys got to go out, but the Puerto Rican mothers would keep their daughters in the house. JJ: So what did the daughters do when they were at the house? CR: We would watch TV, hang out. We could play in front of the house because we lived -- here was our house and it was a big parking lot which was part of Hedman’s parking lot. So it would be like -- I’m gonna say 20 car parking space. 37 �So we would play outside while when the cars were not there. After the cars left we would play outside. So that was it, play. JJ: Okay. CR: It’s a dog. Dog. Dog. I think he’s -- JJ: Oh, okay. [00:55:00] So what -- after -- you moved from there, when did you move from there to Lincoln Park? CR: In the -- I’m going to say, my parents ended up moving but so we were there from ’65 to maybe in the ’80s. JJ: Okay you were there ’65 to the ’80s, so during that time, 1968, ’69, when the Young Lords came there. What did you think about that? CR: Oh my god. I remember the Young Lords. They took over the church on Bissell and Armitage. So I really couldn’t hang out with them. JJ: Dayton and Armitage. CR: Dayton and Armitage. Okay so it was Dayton and Bissell, Halsted. And I just used to hang out with them. But I wasn’t really part of the Young Lords. I just used to do the activities with them. So I remember that they -- you -- the Young Lords took over the church. And I remember going to City Hall [00:56:00] and I remember there was I guess there was some argument or fraction going on in City Hall. And we ended up going back to the church. I remember the pastor there that was killed. JJ: Reverand Bruce Johnson. CR: Bruce. JJ: And what -- what was the community saying at that time when he was killed? 38 �CR: That he was murdered. And they said he was murdered by the CIA. That was the word out there that he was murdered by the police. He was murdered. JJ: They didn’t blame it on the Young Lords? CR: No. He was helping the Young Lords, that’s what I heard. And that’s why they killed him. And then I remember the breakfast. There was a breakfast that we started. I remember the Black Panther party coming down and telling us how to run the programs. Because they were running the programs in California or LA. And we did that. And then we ended up opening up the clinic at Saint Teresa’s. JJ: So you worked in the breakfast for -- CR: I worked in the breakfast. I’m -- JJ: What was that like? CR: That was beautiful. [00:57:00] That was beautiful. We used to make really good breakfast for these kids. They loved it. So we had all the kids in the neighborhood would come there. We even -- and had it set up where the kids got to eat a very good, hearty breakfast. And then we opened up the clinic. And that’s where I met Omar and [Abba?] López and the doctor. There was a doctor that came from Denver. Do you remember the -- there was a guy that was a doctor. JJ: Alberto [Chamino?] was a medical student, but you had Doctor Jack Johns was kind of the director of the -- CR: The clinic. JJ: -- the clinic. CR: Okay so I wasn’t too involved with that. 39 �JJ: And some other, and some other -- CR: Nurses and assistants. JJ: Yeah, they were voluntary -- not volunteer doctors, but volunteer -- CR: So I did mostly the breakfast, not the clinic. JJ: But it was in the same location. Were there people from the community coming in? CR: Well the clinic -- the clinic was at Saint Teresa’s, I remember. The breakfast -[00:58:00] JJ: You were right. They moved later to Saint Teresa’s. CR: Okay. JJ: It started at the church -- CR: It started at the church okay. So I remember going -- JJ: Because (inaudible) years later. CR: And the breakfast was done at the church. I mean not at the church on Bissell. I remember the breakfast so. JJ: And so what other things do you remember? Do you recall -- were you at the church when Manny Ramos -- when we had that funeral or no? CR: No. JJ: Okay. CR: No, I heard about it. But I wasn’t there. And I believe there was some other shootings that took place on Damen? Damen and Division? The riots. And some other stuff that was going on, but I did not participate in that. 40 �JJ: I think the riots were earlier and there was a riot at that time in the [community?] But it was not Young Lord -- CR: No, no, that wasn’t. You just heard about it, you know. As a Puerto Rican community you would hear about all that stuff that was going on. But we were very sheltered. [00:59:00] My mother -- JJ: That was my (inaudible) years. CR: You don’t remember because they didn’t let us go out. We would not go out. She let the boys go out but not the girls. JJ: Did it have an impact, some of the work that was being done -- what I mean, did it affect the community at all? Not everyone was for the Young Lords. CR: No, they weren’t. But everyone knew the Young Lords and I’m not going to lie, some people would say that you know you guys were a bunch of thugs and gangbangers and stuff. And then you had some that did very good work. So it was a mixed reaction, you know? So. JJ: Well because actually the Young Lords were thugs before. They weren’t -- CR: And you guys used to hang out on Sheffield under the L station. And there used to be a liquor store there. JJ: So that didn’t help their image later that everybody was drunk. CR: Everybody used to drink and smoke pot and hang out, right? [01:00:00] That was a good times. Good times. And then, you know, when the Young Lords started organizing then that was a different era there then. JJ: What about McCormick Seminary that had you -- 41 �CR: Now, I remember McCormick Seminary because I knew there was a takeover, and I don’t remember a lot. I know there was a takeover, but I can’t -- I was there but I don’t remember. JJ: You were there in the community. CR: I just -- I was there as a supporter. But like -- JJ: Like inside or outside? CR: We were -- there was a sit-in inside. So they -- JJ: And you went inside? CR: Yeah. JJ: What do you -- do you remember anything? CR: I just remember going with the crowd. That was it. JJ: Okay. Was there a good-sized crowd or? CR: It was a pretty big crowd. It was a pretty big crowd. And I remember some of the leaders if you think back of all the leaders that were there. I cannot remember all of them, but the Young Lords were very instrumental and there were some other people there and [01:01:00] -- but I can’t -- I wasn’t -- I didn’t stay around. I couldn’t. I just was part of -- I think there was a march. I remember the march. And that was about it. JJ: Okay now after that, the neighborhood continued to change. And then what did you get involved with after that? CR: Well, you know, after the neighborhood started changing people started moving out. I remember the one family that lived right next door on Dickens. Remember the Polish -- there used to be a Polish stand there. Oh I remember -- let me tell 42 �you what I remember clearly. When Martin Luther King got killed, we were at Waller. We were at Waller. And we -- there was no Latino representation in that school and so one day we just got together, and all the Puerto Ricans walked out. The Puerto Ricans walked out. This was a school that wasn’t very friendly to the Puerto Ricans [01:02:00] that were there. They never would push the Puerto Ricans to excel. When it was time for college graduation they would tell us, “Go to a city college or get married.” Or a lot of them worked in factories which to this day, these -- a lot of these people retired from these factories that worked -- that used to -- that they started working there when they were in high school. And so I remember walking out because we wanted some constants. We wanted teachers and the whole Puerto Rican -- all the high school kids that were there, we marched out and stood in front of the school. And then I guess they settled the differences and that’s where we started getting some Spanish teachers there. I remember the riots. I remember when Martin Luther King got killed. JJ: So who organized this? CR: This was like a group of us. It was me and I can’t remember. It was some other people. We just -- a group of Puerto Ricans had just got together, and we just wanted some representation there. JJ: And this was in 1968? CR: It would have been ’67, [01:03:00] ’68. And there was a lot of Puerto Ricans there. JJ: So this was before the Young Lords -- 43 �CR: Yes. JJ: -- that you were doing this. So the community actually was already -- there was act-- people that were activists. CR: Right they were active. Because we wanted -- Arnold, Arnold was a Puerto Rican School. I didn’t go to Arnold. I did not end up -- my brother ended up going to Arnold. It was a big graduation but again we were moved into Waller and there was no Latino representation. And the education wasn’t the greatest. And if you did not -- and the kids would hang out. A lot of them would hang out in front of the school. I mean they were good years. They were good years. But when you look back at all the young Latinos that were there, the Puerto Ricans that were there, not a lot of them went to college. Because they never pushed college for us. They would just not recommend college for us. My mother that -my mother only went to school until the second grade. She made sure that we went to college. So me and my sister, we ended up going -- after we [01:04:00] graduated from high school, by ourselves -- we took it upon ourselves, my sister ended up going to Northeastern. I ended up going to Loop College. That time it was Loop College. So there wasn’t anybody there to kind of push us along to attend University of Chicago or anything. JJ: And this was because there were no teachers that were -- CR: There was no representation for us. Even though it was a Puerto Rican community, there was a lot of Latinos there. The representation wasn’t there. So we suffered. There was a lot of suffering going on. The repre-- you know, it’s not like now. So that -- we learned to survive. That was survival in the community. 44 �JJ: And then you said that there was a Martin Luther King got killed and what happened? CR: When Martin Luther King got murdered, the riots that broke out -- all the Black kids, because Waller was a school that was Black, White, Puerto Rican. It was a mixed school. And I never forget, and we had kids from Cooley, [01:05:00] Cooley High. There was kids because when the Cabrini came, they divided. Some of the blocks went to Cooley and some of the blocks went to Waller. So they would have to come down Larrabee to go to Waller. So when this riot took place, I will never forget every Black kid was beating up anything that was White. And I remember me and my brother -- my sister, it was me and my sister. We were trying to defend everyone. No, no, don’t hit her. No don’t hit her. But the riots just spread out past Halsted and Armitage. It went all the way down to Sheffield. Breaking of windows, just Oz Park. You remember Oz Park? That used to be DePaul. DePaul was there. The center. There was a center there. But those were not very good times. JJ: By Webster and -- CR: Yeah, Webster and Dickens? I remember the Young Lords took over that park. Because you guys wanted -- JJ: People’s Park. [01:06:00] CR: And it was People’s Park for a couple of years, right? A year and stuff. So, I don’t -- that one I just remember at that time I started -- JJ: We actually took over the -- they had tore down the buildings that Puerto Ricans used to live on -- between Armitage and Dickens by Halsted next to Oz Park. 45 �CR: Right and left it (break in audio). JJ: About 350 people took it over. CR: See, that one I wasn’t part of, but I heard about it and stuff. JJ: But it was going on in the community and people were I guess talking about it because it was from there. CR: That’s why, you know, to this day I tell people Lincoln Park was a community when the Puerto Ricans were there. We had a community. You know you heard the music, the eating, the getting along with everyone. Now it’s not a community. Maybe to some other people, but when we were there it was a community. Everybody knew each other. Everybody talked to each other. [01:07:00] And it wasn’t like a lot of violence, and you go now there, and you feel so out of place. JJ: But there were a lot of a different clubs -- street clubs but there was not a lot -- a lot of violence? CR: I didn’t think it was that much violence. JJ: No, I agree with you there wasn’t a lot of violence but there were all these street clubs. CR: Right you had -- there used to be a boy’s club. What was the name of that boy’s club on Sheffield? Sheffield? That the school -- the Manierre -- there was a school there on Sheffield. JJ: There was Boy’s Club on Orchard. CR: On Orchard but then there was another club right there on Sheffield before you get to -- JJ: By Armitage what was that? The Puerto Rican Youth Center or something. 46 �CR: It was a youth center. C -- Chicago Youth Center. Then you had -- yeah, there was more places for the kids to hang out. Places -- [01:08:00] JJ: There was all kinds of -- there was several places. At nighttime Arnold wasn’t open -- CR: Right it was open to the community, and you had the field it was open. JJ: So they were like an afterschool programs for the youth so that’s why -- CR: You had DePaul and there was a lot of activities there at DePaul. Where the childcare center -- JJ: (inaudible) for the youth. So there was a lot youth. And that prevented the violence. CR: Now that’s what we need to go back to. But -- and it was a good times, it was good times. You know, there was -- I’m not gonna say there was no violence, but it was not -- it was a clean cut violence. That it wasn’t like now. JJ: So in other words, once the neighborhood was stable and there was a community, the violence dropped. Is that what? Am I putting words in your mouth? CR: I didn’t see -- I mean there was gangs. I’m not gonna say that there wasn’t. There was gangs and you heard of the guys hanging out on Sheffield [01:09:00] and so you knew who the -- do you remember Andre Gonzalez? -- Andre and his brother Richie and that whole family died too. The only one living is his sister. They all ended up dying of AIDS or heroin overdose. The Rodriguez family. They used to hang around there. Johnny and Danny ended up dying of AIDS. JJ: Because actually there was a drug epidemic there. 47 �CR: The heroin. And the Rodriguez, oh my god. There was so many guys that ended up -- JJ: Many Young Lords fell into that. CR: Yep, and then you had the Vietnam War. A lot of them went off to the Vietnam War and came back very messed up. I remember that. I remember all the guys from -- JJ: And then the whole hippie era was around that time too. But it was a -- but then the -- but you’re saying the community -- but the community was different, but it was also beginning to -- people were beginning to be displaced and -- CR: Yes they were because [01:10:00] I remember the family that I talk about that owned this beautiful property on Halsted and Dickens, they ended up losing it because they couldn’t afford it. And all the people down Halsted, a lot of them lost their property. A lot of them stayed but a lot of them lost their property. JJ: How did they lose their property? CR: They couldn’t afford it. Everything was -- JJ: But they were affording it before. CR: They were but for some reason I guess it was a time that the prices were starting to go up and they could not keep up. Something happened that started displacing the families. And then you had DePaul come in. I remember when DePaul came in. JJ: What happened then? CR: DePaul displaced a lot of families. They started buying all the property around the neighborhood and everything started going up, up, up. And it wasn’t the 48 �same. It wasn’t the same. And I didn’t feel that because at that time [01:11:00] I had left that neighborhood, and my parents stayed there. And I ended up moving to -- I was on Leavitt and Armitage. And at that time I got pregnant, and I was living there. So I didn’t get to see but they changed a lot of the Puerto Rican families that owned property -- a few stayed, like you had the Arroyo family. They kept their property. They kept their houses. I remember the Rodriguez family kept their houses. And to this day I believe there’s maybe a couple of Puerto Ricans and Mexicans that own property. I don’t know if they still own it, but they do live there. JJ: Was there any pressure by the city at all, by like building inspectors or anybody like that? CR: It could have been. I wasn’t -- JJ: But you’re not aware. CR: It could have been. And they couldn’t keep up. JJ: Was there a plan to displace people? CR: I believe there was. I believe wasn’t that the Title 20. Was that the name of the plan to displace [01:12:00] all these people? I believe that the plan -- __: Chicago 21? CR: It was Chicago 21 or 20. I remember the plan was build those Cabrini projects. But then let them deteriorate. Because those projects deteriorated very quick. JJ: So they let them deteriorate. CR: They let them deteriorate. JJ: What do you mean? 49 �CR: Elevators would break. They wouldn’t replace them. You started seeing people hanging around. And then I believe that was the scene of the heroin time. And you know people were shooting up and selling drugs and liquor stores started coming up. And that deteriorated. JJ: So you’re saying they let it -- the police and everything -- CR: I believe they did. JJ: Let it deteriorate. Why would they do that? CR: Because probably it was -- were they looking at the plan that that was going to be prime property? I believe they looked into the future. That was only a temporary plan. I mean some of the row houses stayed. I remember Montgomery Ward’s. And what is Mongomery Ward’s now? Condos. Condos. [01:13:00] People live there. That used to be one of the stores that people used to shop there. That was like -- that was Larrabee and Chicago Avenue. The building’s still there, they just restructured it to be very expensive homes. You got a police station there now. What used to be the projects is now a big police station on Division and Larrabee. And then all the projects started going down until people couldn’t live there anymore. Then the floors started -- people only lived like the first eight floor. Everything else was shut down. Crime. Till it just disappeared. JJ: So that police station is the old Chicago Avenue police station? CR: I don’t know if that was the same one. JJ: But they have a police station there. CR: But they have a police station right where -- JJ: Where the Cabrini-Green used to be. And now there’s condominiums there. 50 �CR: No, it’s open land because they tore them down. The last project to be torn [01:14:00] down was the projects that was on Halsted and Division. That was the last family to move out of there, the last family to go. And I believe it was a couple of years ago or last year. JJ: And what was the reasoning to tear down those? CR: I remember somebody said that having people living on top of each other would thus create like rats. If you put them all on top of each other they don’t grow, they don’t thrive. And that was not a good setting. So why build them in the first place? JJ: Concentrated poverty basically. CR: And that’s what happened. JJ: So now where is the poverty concentrated? CR: Where did they go? JJ: Yeah where did they go to now? CR: Well now I guess they were -- you know what, I don’t remember. JJ: Is it concentrated or no that’s not happening? CR: Now we’re scattered back to -- I think we’re scattered in the projects; I mean in the suburbs. You know like scattered site. And then you had Altgeld [01:15:00] projects over there. They started moving people around. And then there was a lot of Blacks that lived in the row houses. And I believe there’s still some row houses left on Chicago and what’s that -- Chicago and -- JJ: Orleans. 51 �CR: Orleans and stuff. There’s still some projects there. But the big ones that were on Larrabee and Division and yeah, Division and Halsted, Division and Larrabee and Chicago and Division and Sedgwick. They’re all torn down. The school, Immaculate -- is it Immaculate Conception? That church is still there. I remember there’s a -- what is the health clinic that’s there? Winfield Moody? Winfield Moody is still there. So that’s some of the new buildings that came up. But there’s no more projects at all. [01:16:00] JJ: So you came out of Lincoln Park. What are you doing today in terms of community? CR: When I left Lincoln Park, my parents were still living there. I ended up moving out and had a rough life. Ended up getting pregnant at 19 and I lived with a -- my baby’s father for I don’t know how long. He was abusive. He was a drug addict. He died of AIDS -- ended up dying of AIDS from shooting up. And I ended up coming back home and I moved back on Armitage in my parent’s building and then I ended up moving to Orchard and North Avenue. And then from there, I just kind of moved out of the neighborhood. And now, I work for the state. I work -- I’ve been working 25 years at the Illinois Department of Human Services. I work with [01:17:00] pregnant teens, I do outreach, whatever. And that’s my job. JJ: But you also do volunteer work and -- CR: I’m currently at San Lucas United Church of Christ which is a Puerto Rican community. Or it is a Puerto Rican -- it’s changing. The same thing I -- I always tell people the same thing that happened -- JJ: Across the street from Humboldt Park. 52 �CR: Across the street from Humboldt Park but I remember at -- the same thing that happened in Lincoln Park, it’s happening here. Because we’re right in the heart of Humboldt Park and you’re seeing gentrification. We were gentrified out of Lincoln Park. Now I can probably say that my parents had brought a building, and I can probably say before that I would say my parents never got on welfare. My mother was a hardworking woman, and my father worked all his life. So, you know, they brought the house because of Carlos’s accident. It was a tragic that the accident happened, but we managed to get this beautiful building. And they ended up buying another building in Wicker Park. So when we moved out [01:18:00] of Armitage, and it wasn’t because I think my father and mother were getting older and we were living in a third floor. And it was harder for them. They were getting -- they couldn’t be going up and down the stairs. They got a good price for that building. They got very good money for that building. And they were not -- they were a typical Puerto Rican family that the families lived there all their life. And all my father wanted was enough to pay the mortgage. So these families lived there 15, 20 years with my par-- you know, in the building there. And then when my parents sold, they ended up moving to Winchester and Division. That was a Puerto Rican neighborhood there. But they moved to a first floor and then they’ve been there ever since. So it wasn’t -- and it was a good life. It was a good life. And they worked very hard to get, you know, to get what they have now. They worked very hard. They struggle but they -- and they raised six kids and a whole bunch of [01:19:00] foster kids were raised in that neighborhood. We had a lot of foster kids just coming out -- in and out, in and 53 �out. Some stayed with us three, four years. The rest of them stayed 15 years with us. They ended up getting married and leaving the house. JJ: Your mother was working for foster -- CR: She just took in emergency foster. We were emergency foster care site. So any foster kid that was pulled out of their home, they would be sent to our house. So that’s why we always had the whole third floor. Because there was always kids in the house. But she made her living taking care of foster kids. So, you know, we were not -- we -- they did a pretty good life. So I’m at San Lucas, I sometimes see some of the people I went to school with. JJ: What’s your role here? What do you mean -- CR: Here I’m the Council President and a member of San Lucas and this is a Puerto Rican church. The founder of this church is the Reverand Jorge Morales. There was a lot of riots going on around here, a lot of fighting going on in the community. [01:20:00] A lot of struggle. And I just happened to walk into all that. And gentrification has taken place in Humboldt Park. It’s sad, but this used to be a Puerto Rican neighborhood also. And I’m not going to say it is anymore. There is still Latinos, but it’s not like it used to be. JJ: Is the church involved in any activities here? What are some of those? CR: We were at one time regarding housing and jobs and there was a lot of -- the first Black mayor did a lot of campaigning here. JJ: You’re talking about Harold Washington. 54 �CR: Harold Washington. The pastor here was very involved in a lot of social justice issues and housing taking place and all that. So I guess it just comes with the territory. JJ: Weren’t you connected also with the -- what was your connection with the West Town Concerned Citizens’ Coalition? CR: You know, that one I really wasn’t. I heard about it [01:21:00] because I had moved in. There was other people that was involved. When I came in here, the pastor that was here and the assistant pastor that was here, they were involved in that. I kind of walked into a lot of stuff. So, I remember. JJ: But some of the programs that you recently were doing or you’re not doing them now, but didn’t you have like a food pantry or something? CR: Oh no here we had Centro Unida Latina which was an afterschool program that was started out of this church which they did. It was after school programming. What they’re doing now, we used to do that years ago. Had the kids here. We had 60 to 80 kids here. Teach them dancing, teach them how to do rumba, plena, arts, crafts. We used to just do a lot of things with the kids. It was a safe haven. This church had a place which was a safe haven for the community kids. JJ: And now I see BUILD, Incorporated. Did they use the facility? CR: This is -- BUILD works here. I mean, they’re housed here so we can have an afterschool program. JJ: A gang prevention program? CR: It’s a gang prevention [01:22:00] but we have an afterschool program. There was some monies that was at one time with all the violence going around, they 55 �opened up funding for teen reach afterschool programming. So there’s a program here that’s from after school until six, seven o’ clock at night to keep the kids off the street. So the program has been here over eight years or longer. So these kids come here. They do homework, life skills, safe haven in the church. JJ: And I believe Carlos or other people are involved in something. CR: Yeah, we have a writing class here. My brother is part of -- JJ: How does that work? CR: That one is people that want to write about their life or their past or their life. There’s a writing class that takes place here on Wednesdays. So they come together, and they share their stories, and they print some of their stories. And we had a food pantry here. We have an emergency food; we have a thrift store. We serve a hot meal. And the community, it’s changing. You’re seeing Blacks, Hispanic, [01:23:00] and immigrant being serviced in this community. So that’s now Humboldt Park. JJ: Any final thoughts? CR: Final thoughts about the Puerto Ricans in Chicago. I never -- I mean I’m just saying that we -- I had some good memories of Armitage. I had good memories - no, I’m not gonna say they were good memories, but they were memorable memories. Because you had -- you know we used to know so many people. Now you look back and it’s -- when we were growing up, it was a community. Now it is not the same. It is not the same. It’s sad, but those were good times when we were more together. We, you know, our battles were fought together. Now everybody’s so dispersed. But at one time the community was great, and 56 �we took care of each other. You know like the saying was it takes a village to raise a child. That used to happen. [01:24:00] Families would take care of each other. Now, no it’s not the same. And it’s sad because a lot of our kids do not know what it is to be in a family like we did. I don’t know. I’m just saying a lot of these kids don’t have the same -- the same opportunities that we had. We had nothing but we were more together. We didn’t have a lot. I’m not gonna say we didn’t have nothing. We didn’t have a lot but there was more family involvement and there was more strength. JJ: Why do you think that that was going on? CR: I don’t know it’s the changing -- I think it’s changing when you see a lot of these young mothers, teen pregnancy has skyrocket. And even if it was teen pregnancy at our time, the girls were not as crazy and wild as they are now. And family structure has just fallen apart. So we don’t have that family structure that we had when we were growing up. We just don’t have it. It’s not there. You know, if you try to reprimand [01:25:00] a family member, right away they’ll call DCFS. At that time, you know, if they saw you doing anything in the street, they’d say, you know what? We would get reprimanded. My mother wouldn’t fight it and say, “You don’t touch my daughter. You don’t do this.” But we would listen, or they’ll go and tell you father or anything. You know it was more family-oriented and the families were more together, and they would protect each other. Now, not now. It’s very sad. It’s not the same. So I have good memories of growing up. We had nothing, but it was good ones. What we didn’t have, you know, was just made up with the surroundings that we were with. 57 �JJ: Okay. CR: Thank you. JJ: You said you lived on La Salle; do you remember what address or on La Salle? CR: Oh my god it was right on the corner building of La Salle and Superior. La Salle and Superior. [01:26:00] The corner there was a -- we were on the third floor. JJ: That wasn’t the Water Hotel wasn’t it or? CR: No it was a three flat. JJ: It was a three flat. CR: It was a three flat building, and we lived in the third floor. And then from there we moved to Armitage and Armitage was 1114 West Armitage. JJ: What do you remember of that building? That three flat? That neighborhood? Do you remember anything? You were like five years old. CR: I was five. JJ: So what do you remember of that? CR: Oh my god. La Salle was a busy street. I don’t know if you remember my brother Carlos Flores, but Carlos came to live with us when Carlos was like 13 and I remember, I will never forget that me and Carlos were crossing the street on Chicago Avenue. No, we were on La Salle and Superior and we crossed this busy intersection and Carlos got hit by a car. And I was there. And I saw the whole incident when that car just smashed into him [01:27:00] and blew him up in the air and brought him back down. And Carlos was in the hospital for about a year. But we did not speak any English, so we suffered a lot. We came in the 58 �middle of winter, and I think Carlos ended up coming in the middle of summer like a couple of years later. JJ: Do you know what year that was about or? CR: Oh god. I’m going to say maybe ’59, ’60? I want to say. Because I was five when I came here so we were living -- JJ: When you were born in ’51 you said. CR: In ’51. JJ: So ’56? CR: ’56, ’57 like that. And then Carlos came maybe like a couple of years later and that’s, you know, and that’s the only thing that I remember. I mean and it was just a bad scene because we didn’t speak English, and it was just horrible. There was no bilingual education in school. We came in the middle of winter. JJ: What school was that? CR: We went to Ogden. First no -- first it was Sexton. Sexton was an all-Black school. [01:28:00] My -- we would get beat up by the Black kids. JJ: Sexton in Lincoln Park? CR: No, Sexton around what Cabrini what used to be Cabrini was Sexton school was on Franklin I think and we were going to school there. And then my mother moved us out of that school and put us in a school called Ogden. And Ogden now is a, you know, big, big school. And that was on Clark, Clark and I can’t remember. It was Clark and Orleans or something? And then from there, then that’s when we ended up moving on Larrabee and I went to a school called La 59 �Salle. And then from that area then we ended up moving to Armitage where I ended up going to Waller which is now Lincoln Park. JJ: Now La Salle was around Willow or something? And Sedgwick? CR: No, no, no. Newberry. We went to Newberry. La Salle was on Sedgwick and -- JJ: And Willow right? CR: And Willow (inaudible). So I know when we got to Lincoln Park, we were -- I was going to Newberry. [01:29:00] JJ: And before you get to Lincoln Park, you’re going to Ogden School, you’re living on Superior and Chicago -- and La Salle. CR: No, Superior and La Salle. JJ: And La Salle, okay. And there was -- do you remember that community there? Were there -- CR: There was a lot of Latinos, a lot of Puerto Ricans. They were starting to come. There was a Puerto Rican beautician downstairs. Her name was Clara. Clara Byron. JJ: Clara Byron? CR: Byron. She lived -- she had a -- a beauty shop on the first floor on the corner. JJ: Where you lived? CR: Where we lived at. JJ: Right on Superior. CR: Superior and La Salle. JJ: And then across the street was the Catholic Charities or? 60 �CR: No, it was -- there was a florist and then it was -- but that time it wasn’t Catholic Charities. It was something else. JJ: I think that florist is still there. CR: That florist is still there? JJ: I think so. I’m not sure. CR: And it used to be -- what used -- across the street was a big building. It’s Cath-it was Catholic Charities, but it wasn’t Catholic Charities at that time. JJ: Then, at that time. CR: I can’t remember what it was. It was a big building. [01:30:00] It was -- JJ: Then you had the Water Hotel where we lived. We lived in the Water Hotel. CR: Where was your Water Hotel? JJ: Right there across from Superior and La Salle. Right there on the other side. We were on the other side. CR: Oh, okay. See I don’t remember. I was only five, six years old then you know. JJ: So you were going to Ogden School and then you went to another school near Cabrini-Green? CR: Right because then my parents ended up moving to 1714 North Larrabee which was Larrabee and Cleveland. And we went to Saint Michael’s church and that was a Puerto Rican neighborhood then, you know, on Larrabee. And we lived in the third floor of a three flat with the storefront in the front. And we went to -- do you remember the boys club that was there? The boys club that was on Willow? Willow and Mohawk? Orchard. Orchard and Willow. And then across the street [01:31:00] was Newberry. 61 �JJ: Newberry School. Kitty-corner to that. Kitty-corner. So what do you remember of the boys club? I know what the guys remember but what did the girls do? CR: Oh the girls just hung out I guess in the boys club. They used to have a swimming pool. We used to do activities there. And I think -- JJ: What kind of activities? CR: Like there was dances and there was arts and crafts. But I know that -- my Carlos was more involved. They used to have a club there. The Continentals. JJ: The Continentals were there. CR: Yeah the Continentals and there but Carlos was part of that. We didn’t. We just hung out. We were just young kids. JJ: So the girls -- the guys had the Continentals and the girls they just went to the -- CR: Like we would go to the dances maybe, hang out. JJ: And who would throw the dances? CR: There was -- there was a group of Latinos. I can’t remember who threw the dances. JJ: But you remember it as a Latino community? CR: Puerto Rican. JJ: A Puerto Rican community [01:32:00] at that time. CR: Yes. JJ: Okay so then you’re there in -- and you also, you said you went to by Franklin? What was on Franklin? CR: No, we went to Sexton School. It was the Black school. And you remember Black kids would beat us up. 62 �JJ: Sexton is on Sheffield. CR: Then it’s got to be -- JJ: So there was Ogden -- CR: Manierre? JJ: Manierre? CR: It could have been Manierre. JJ: It might have been Manierre yeah. CR: Which was near Cabrini. I think Manierre was -- JJ: Where was Franklin School now? Did you go to Franklin school? CR: No, I didn’t go to Franklin school. It was Newberry. No it was Ogden, and I believe it was Manierre. JJ: Okay, I heard of that. CR: Because where did you go? You went to -- JJ: I went to Saint Joseph’s Holy Name Cathedral. CR: See we were -- well, we would go to Holy Name Cathedral for -- remember they used to have Las Hijas de Maria. I did my confirmation or communion there. JJ: At Holy Name Cathedral? CR: At Holy Name because we used to go to church at Holy Name Cathedral. JJ: So there was a -- Las Hijas de Maria at Holy Name Cathedral. CR: And we used to go to [01:33:00] catechism there. JJ: Okay and what year was that, what year was that? CR: That had to be late ’50s, early ’60s, maybe ’61? 63 �JJ: Okay, around ’61. And so then you moved to -- from there, where did you move to? CR: To 1113 -- 1114 North Larrabee. Which was Larrabee and Cleveland. Which, Saint Michael’s was down the street. JJ: And were you at Saint Michael’s Elementary or? CR: No, Carlos got to go to Saint Michael’s. I ended up going to Newberry. JJ: Oh you went to Newberry. CR: Yeah, we went to Newberry. JJ: But you had already made your first communion. CR: And everything. It was the Catholic Church. You know, the Catholic Church was the ones that really brought my parents over here and everything. They -- JJ: What do you mean? CR: You know that they came through like Catholic Charities. It was a charitable thing, and they brought us over here. And then that’s when my father started working here. JJ: What kind of work was your father doing? CR: Factory work. JJ: Factory work. CR: But my father didn’t [01:34:00] come to Chicago. My father came to Connecticut to pick tomatoes and cucumbers. And then from there he migrated to Chicago. JJ: How did he get to go to Connecticut? CR: Because that was the day that they had the bootstrap Muñoz Marín, and they were looking for people to work the fields like they do now where they have the 64 �migrant workers. So they call for people from Puerto Rico. And my father couldn’t support all of us. It was like three of us that he was supporting and so he had to come to the United States and make a living. And then he sent for my parents -- you know, he sent for my -- not my parents. He sent for my mother and his kids. And that’s where we ended up on La Salle and Superior. JJ: Right from Connecticut to La Salle. Okay. Now did you have other family here? Did he have other family? CR: No. Because -- well my father didn’t live there. My father must have lived with some other [01:35:00] Puerto Rican family on Oak Street. Do you remember Oak Street? It was Oak and La Salle. I think he lived with some people there. And then when my mother came with me and my sister and my baby brother which is, now they call him Cougar, the little one. Carlos had not come. Then that’s when we -- he ended up moving to the building there on La Salle and Superior. Which was a third floor. JJ: So he first came to the Oak and La Salle and then to that building. CR: To that building. Because he lived in a -- like it was like a man’s room. Like a -what do you call those? He was like a boarder. So, like a room -- they would rent him a room for the night. But then when my mother came with us, the two daughters and the son, and my brother was just a newborn. JJ: A rooming house or something like that? CR: A rooming house. It was a whole bunch -- I think there was a lot of Puerto Rican guys there. Or a lot of Latinos that lived there. 65 �JJ: So there were like a lot of men [01:36:00] that were working that came here just to work. CR: Just to work. JJ: (Spanish) [01:36:04] CR: So from there, we lived on La Salle and Superior and then we ended up moving on Larrabee. I don’t know why we moved. And then we stayed on Larrabee until HUD came. And at that time they were building Cabrini-Green. Cabrini-Green was starting to get built. JJ: So you came before Cabrini-Green was built. CR: Right. So we saw Cabrini-Green being built. And Cabrini, there was a lot of Latinos inside Cabrini-Green. They were scattered all over. So Larrabee, so we were what 17 -- we were 1714 North Larrabee. Cabrini started 1009 North Larrabee. Then 11-something North Larrabee. So the first projects was in the 1000 block of North Larrabee. That was the projects [01:37:00] that was there on Larrabee and Alston or Clybourn. JJ: Clybourn there. CR: Yeah, that was one of the first projects. And then you had Cooley High. There was a high school there called Cooley High. So we ended up going to Waller and then some -- the Cabrini-Green kids some went to Cooley and some went to Waller. JJ: But before you get to Waller, you went to Newberry also. CR: And graduated from Newberry. JJ: So tell me about Newberry. 66 �CR: Well okay we were going to Newberry. JJ: What was that like? And what the population was. CR: Puerto Rican. Puerto Rican because it was Puerto Ricans living on Halsted, on Willow, on Orchard, on Burling. That was a Puerto Rican neighborhood. So we were going to Newberry and for some reason we ended up moving. They moved us or transferred us to La Salle. So I graduated eighth grade from La Salle. JJ: Oh from Newberry and La Salle is a few blocks east of that. [01:38:00] So why didn’t you transfer to there? CR: I can’t remember what it was. I don’t know if the school was overcrowded or what. But from Newberry we ended up going to La Salle. And then I ended up -we ended up -- me and my sister ended up graduating from La Salle. JJ: Oh so -- okay so you went to Newberry and La Salle were the main schools you went to. But you also went to Manierre and Ogden. CR: Yeah but those were when we were younger. And then La Salle and Newberry were the two schools that we were like seventh, eighth grade. JJ: And what was La Salle like? I mean what was that -- CR: La Salle was on Wisconsin and -- JJ: Yeah, exactly, Wisconsin. Or Willow or something. CR: Willow. JJ: Between Willow and Wisconsin. CR: No, let me see. Newberry was on Willow and Orchard. La Salle was on Menomonee, was a street called Menomonee. JJ: Right, it changed to Menomonee. 67 �CR: And Sedgwick. That’s where La Salle was at. [01:39:00] JJ: I think Willow changed to Menomonee or something. But I don’t know. But it was Menomonee, you’re correct. And so -- CR: So that was ’60, ’65. JJ: ’65 and so they were not changing the school, but you don’t know why. CR: I believe it was overcrowded or maybe they redistrict, and they move some of the people around because we were on Larrabee and La Salle. Even though it could have been the distance, so. JJ: Okay, so what do you remember of school? I mean what was school like kind of? CR: Well school was horrible because we did not speak English. We did not speak English. So I remember being put in a corner for I don’t know how many years. And the teachers -- my name is in Puerto Rico they call me Camila. When I come here, I came here to Chicago, they changed my name to Carmen. My sister’s name was Mina, they changed it to Myrna. [01:40:00] So that’s how we grew up. And then we finally learned English, and we survived the streets. And the life and then from there Waller. And then I was there from -- JJ: And what about Saint Michael’s? You mentioned Saint Michael’s. CR: Saint Michael’s, my brother Carlos got to go to Saint Michael’s. I didn’t go. But Saint Michael’s was like kitty-corner of La Salle. But my mother could not afford to put all of us in a Catholic school, so Carlos I think went for a year, but we never went to a Catholic school. We would go to church at Saint Michael’s. JJ: And when you went to church at Saint Michael’s, how was the church? I mean where -- 68 �CR: It was a Puerto Rican church. They had a Puerto Rican mass. JJ: They had a Puerto Rican mass? CR: It was -- yeah. Father -- I cannot remember. JJ: Kathrine? CR: Father Kathrine was one of them and there was another father there. You know, White guys that spoke fluent Spanish. And they were part of the Catholic charity, you know, of helping the Latino families. La Virgen Maria. [01:41:00] JJ: So when you say you had Spanish mass, did you have it at the -- CR: At the big church. JJ: You had it at the big church. Okay so -- CR: And then when the neighborhood started changing, they moved us down to the rectory, down to the basement. Because then the neighborhood started changing so there wasn’t as many Latino families. JJ: So they moved you to the rectory. But you never celebrated mass in the hall? They had a hall next door to it. CR: No, we celebrated yeah in both. It was moved from the hall across the street which was Saint Michael’s. It was the hall; it was next door to the church. And then they moved us to the rectory which was down more in the basement where the priest lived. JJ: Oh so you started in the hall and then you went to the rectory. CR: We started at the church. Then the -- the hall across the street. And then from that hall it went down to the rectory. And so they totally moved out all the Puerto Ricans that were there. [01:42:00] 69 �JJ: Why do you think that? CR: The neighborhood was changing. The families were not there so they even stopped the Sunday service. It used to be on record that there was a Sunday service and then after that it was just -- JJ: You mean a Sunday service in Spanish. CR: In Spanish. JJ: But they stopped that later in the -- CR: In the years. JJ: Okay because I tried to look at some records and had some histories and they said they don’t find that period of time like it didn’t exist. But maybe just those people didn’t know. CR: They probably don’t know but they -- JJ: They didn’t know. Okay now were your parents involved with like the Caballeros de San Juan or -- Council Number Three was at Saint Michael’s. CR: My father -- my father used to go to the (inaudible) because that was the time that the Puerto Ricans would get together. So you had El Congreso, do you remember Carlos Caribe? The Congress used to be on North Avenue and Larrabee. JJ: And what did -- did you used to go there or? [01:43:00] CR: Yeah, when we were little we would go to parties. They would have parties there. JJ: They would have parties there. CR: Yeah, family gatherings. And then they would have baseball. The baseball league. 70 �JJ: From the Congreso? CR: Yeah. And my father was very active in the baseball league. JJ: What did -- did he play ball? CR: Yeah, he was a manager. JJ: Oh he was a manager. CR: They played baseball in Saint -- at Lincoln Park. JJ: Okay. So he was the manager of that team? CR: Yeah. At El Puerto Boricua. JJ: What was your father’s name again? CR: Charlie -- they used to call him Charlie Flores but Gonzalo Flores. JJ: Gonzalo Flores. And you said Puerto Boricua. CR: It was El Puerto Boricua Post Number I can’t remember. But that post was -- JJ: But did you used to go there to that? What did they do there? CR: They had dances, gatherings. You know, Puerto Ricans would gather there. You know we would be homesick I guess so all the Puerto Ricans would meet there. JJ: At the Puerto Boricua. But you don’t recall where that was located or? CR: It was on North Avenue and Larrabee. [01:44:00] JJ: Right next to the Congreso or? CR: The Congreso was right on the corner of North Avenue and Larrabee. If you look at it now, you would not believe that there was a Congreso there. But it was Larrabee. So it was the -- one side of Larrabee was like Puerto Ricans and then the other side of Larrabee was Cabrini. The other side of North Avenue -- so you had North Avenue dividing the Puerto Rican and the Black. 71 �JJ: Community. It was the dividing line at that time? And it was also like the road? Puerto Ricans kept moving west on North Avenue I guess. CR: There was a lot of Puerto Ricans, yeah. Willow. JJ: Would you see a lot of Puerto Ricans if you went there. CR: Families. Sheffield. JJ: What were some of the families? CR: I don’t remember a lot of the names but you have the Bergel? -- not the Bergels - the Vélez. I remember the Vélez. Do you remember that one of them shot himself? [01:45:00] He used to be part of the Young Lords. JJ: Oh yeah, Chino, Chino they used to call him Chino. CR: Yeah. You had Los Peñas, the Peña family. They lived on North Avenue and Sedgwick. You had the -- JJ: Someone else mentioned the Peñas. CR: The Lugos lived in Cabrini-Green. The Lugos lived in Cabrini-Green. Who else? I’m trying to remember the big families. The (inaudible) JJ: The Pantojas. CR: The Pantojas. JJ: So now you’re at Saint Michael’s and -- CR: Church not the school. JJ: The church, not the school. But there are activities going on there with the Caballeros de San Juan or? CR: Yeah there was a lot of activities, you know, for Puerto Rican families. They would do parties and dances, dinners, banquets. 72 �JJ: At Saint Michael’s? CR: At Saint Michael’s. JJ: And also the Congreso dinner too. So it was like several organizations right where Saint Michael’s was at, [01:46:00] at this point. Okay and did you ever go to any of those retreats that they had? CR: I was young. But I think my mother and father did. JJ: Okay. Okay. So you were young. Did they keep you in the house or as a young Puerto Rican woman -- CR: No, we were like what, 12, 13 on Larrabee. So we played outside. We went to the boys club. We went to Saint Michael’s. JJ: You had a site at the YMCA. Did you go to the YMCA? CR: Okay, where was the YMCA at? JJ: The YMCA was the other side of North Avenue. Action YMCA. They had dances too and they had a swimming pool. But the boys club was on Orchard and Willow. CR: We went more to Orchard and Willow. JJ: More Orchard and Willow. Okay you didn’t go to the Action YMCA at all? CR: I heard of it, but I can’t remember. JJ: Okay. CR: And probably was there just don’t remember it. [01:47:00] JJ: Okay but you went to boys club. And you did -- the girls did -- basically arts and crafts? CR: Arts and crafts. We’d do -- 73 �JJ: Any teams? Any soccer teams? Anything like that or? CR: Could have been, I can’t remember. JJ: Okay, all right. But you graduated from Newberry and then where did you go? CR: No, no. Not Newberry. La Salle. JJ: La Salle. CR: Waller. JJ: You went to Waller. What year was that? CR: ’65. JJ: 1965. CR: June of 1965. JJ: What do you remember -- now you were in high school you should really have a good memory. CR: No, high school was ’65 to ’69. Yeah because I graduated from Waller in ’69. JJ: Okay so now can you describe Waller at that time? Okay and then we’ll stop it there. CR: Okay, Waller was all Puerto Rican. JJ: All Puerto Rican. What does that mean? CR: Puerto Ricans and Blacks. But it was mostly Puerto Ricans. JJ: At that time? [01:48:00] CR: At that time. So you had Puerto Ricans living on Burling and you had Puerto Ricans living on Larrabee. You had Puerto Ricans living on Orchard, Halsted, Dickens. What else? The whole Lincoln Park. That was a Puerto Rican neighborhood. I remember the hot dog stand on Dickens -- Halsted and Dickens. 74 �JJ: Halsted and Dickens, yeah. CR: Used to make the best Polishes. JJ: Yes. Everybody had credit there. I had credit there. Other guys did. Okay. CR: You don’t want to finish this with my father? JJ: Testing, one, two, three. Go ahead testing, one, two, three. CR: Testing one, two, three. JJ: Okay that’s a good sound. All right. So if you could just start with your name and your date of birth and if you were born here or what town where you were born in Puerto Rico or your family’s from. CR: Okay. My name is Carmen Flores Rance. I was Carmen Flores when I was in Lincoln Park. But I was born [01:49:00] in Puerto Rico. July 18, 1951. My parents moved here from Puerto Rico from a town called Guayama in Puerto Rico. And my parents -- my father came first as every Puerto Rican family had to -- when the bootstrap thing was happening in Puerto Rico, my father came here to get a better life. And so then he left my mother and her -- and the kids. But then when he could send for us, I was five. My sister was six. And we came to Chicago to live. So I originally am from La Salle and Chicago Avenue. That was the first Puerto Rican family that I knew, and I was here when I was five. Then from there we were on Larrabee. Larrabee and Cleveland. And then HUD took over and moved us out and my parents ended up buying a home. A three flat building [01:50:00] in Lincoln Park. END OF VIDEO FILE 75 � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/434a24532b50f425b5f9ef8456af7aae.mp4 fa04b9a477f6aadb612efc4394848edb 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 Rance 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 Renovación urbana--Illinois--Chicago 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_Rance_Carmen Title A name given to the resource Carmen Rance video interview and transcript Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Rance, Carmen Description An account of the resource When Carmen F. Rance’s family first came to Chicago from Puerto Rico, she lived at the Water Hotel then moved to Lincoln Park where she grew up. She joined the Young Lords through the Breakfast for Children Program. Her family owned a large apartment building on the corner of Clifton and Armitage Avenue where many other Puerto Rican families lived. Her family was active with Council Number 9 of the Caballeros de San Juan and Damas de María, at St. Teresa’s Church. Today Ms. Rance works as a case manager and has been a lay leader in the San Lucas United Church of Christ for many years. 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 Urban renewal--Illinois--Chicago 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 2012-03-30 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/8689aa8d6a00ecd4e822c93a096508da.pdf 0f90896d9ccd518c4700c7f85e9ba0bd PDF Text Text Young Lords In Lincoln Park Interviewee: Carmen Tirado Reyes Interviewers: José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez Location: Grand Valley State University Special Collections Date: 5/12/2012 Biography and Description English Carmen Tirado Reyes is married to Marcelo Jiménez, a proud Hacha Vieja, and uncle of José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez. She is a well -respected and dedicated housewife who grew up in San Salvador, the barrio of Caguas where the Jiménez family is from and still lives strong. The original Hacha Viejas were her husband’s cousins. In the 1940s they moved to Barrio Mula in Aguas Buenas, Puerto Rico, where “Tio Gabriel,” as he was called, had purchased a large farm, hired workers, and raised his many children. When work was slow, those children and workers came to Chicago, settling in La Clark in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Ms. Reyes and Mr. Jiménez came to Chicago over this time as well, later moving to Lakeview by Wrigley Field, Wicker Park, Humboldt Park, and finally to Winchester and North Avenue where they purchase a home and remained for many years. One of Ms. Reyes’s sons became a leader of the Latin Kings. Many of the sons and some daughters of these new immigrants became leaders of local social clubs or gangs, such as the Latin Disciples, the Young Latin Organization (YLO), and Latin Eagles. Ms. Reyes now lives in Puerto Rico where she and Mr. Marcelo Jiménez returned to build their home across from la quebra, or mountain stream, that leads from La Plaza straight up toward the mountain section of Maracal. �Spanish Carmen Tirado Reyes estas casada con Marcelo Jiménez, orgullosa de ser una Hacha Vieja, igual que la tía de José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez. Ella es una esposa dedicado y respetada quien creció en San Salvador, el barrio de Caguas en donde la familia Jiménez sigue viviendo fuerte. Los originales Hacha Viejas eran primos de su esposo. En los 1940s so mudaron al Barrio Mula en Aguas Buenas, Puerto Rico, donde “Tío Gabriel” compro una granja en donde contrato unos trabajadores y creo sus hijos. En los 1940s y 1950s, cuando el trabajo se fue los trabajadores y niños se fueron a Chicago, ah La Clark. Señora Reyes y Señor Jiménez se mudaron a Chicago durante este tiempo y luego fueron a Lakeview alado de Wrigly Field, Wicker Park, Humboldt Par y finalmente a Winchester y North Avenue, donde compraron so propia casa. Uno de los hijos de Reyes se hico un líder de los Latin Kings. La mayoría de sus hijos e hijas de nuevos inmigrantes se hicieron líderes de grupos sociales igual que bandas como los Latin Disciples, los Young Latin Organization (YLO), y las Latin Eagles. Señora Reyes ahora está en Puerto Rico donde vive in frente de la quebra con su esposo Marcelo. � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/d88da7fa27e1e641015f27f4f0b947ee.mp4 6fd81452893dbfe9a0ca4682b5f98b2a 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 Tirado Reyes vídeo entrevista y biografía Descripción Spanish language Description entry Carmen Tirado Reyes estas casada con Marcelo Jiménez, orgullosa de ser una Hacha Vieja, igual que la tía de José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez. Ella es una esposa dedicado y respetada quien creció en San Salvador, el barrio de Caguas en donde la familia Jiménez sigue viviendo fuerte. Los originales Hacha Viejas eran primos de su esposo. En los 1940s so mudaron al Barrio Mula en Aguas Buenas, Puerto Rico, donde “Tío Gabriel” compro una granja en donde contrato unos trabajadores y creo sus hijos. En los 1940s y 1950s, cuando el trabajo se fue los trabajadores y niños se fueron a Chicago, ah La Clark. Señora Reyes y Señor Jiménez se mudaron a Chicago durante este tiempo y luego fueron a Lakeview alado de Wrigly Field, Wicker Park, Humboldt Par y finalmente a Winchester y North Avenue, donde compraron so propia casa. Uno de los hijos de Reyes se hico un líder de los Latin Kings. La mayoría de sus hijos e hijas de nuevos inmigrantes se hicieron líderes de grupos sociales igual que bandas como los Latin Disciples, los Young Latin Organization (YLO), y las Latin Eagles. Señora Reyes ahora está en Puerto Rico donde vive in frente de la quebra con su esposo Marcelo. Sujetos Spanish language Subject terms Young Lords (Organización) Puertorriqueños--Estados Unidos Derechos civiles--Estados Unidos--Historia Lincoln Park (Chicago, Ill.) Narrativas personales Puertorriqueños--Vida social y costumbres Puerto Rico--Autonomía y movimientos independentistas Idioma español--Relatos personales 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_Reyes_Carmen Title A name given to the resource Carmen Tirado Reyes inerview and biography Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Reyes, Carmen Description An account of the resource Carmen Tirado Reyes is married to Marcelo Jiménez, a proud Hacha Vieja, and uncle of José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez. In the 1940s they moved to Barrio Mula in Aguas Buenas, Puerto Rico, where “Tio Gabriel,” as he was called, had purchased a large farm, hired workers, and raised his many children. When work was slow, those children and workers came to Chicago, settling in La Clark in the late 1940s and early 1950s. One of Ms. Reyes’s sons became a leader of the Latin Kings. Ms. Reyes now lives in 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 Puerto Ricans--Social life and customs Puerto Rico--Autonomy and independence movements Spanish language--Personal narratives 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/7442af7b350efdfc631df8aa43e3f9da.pdf 2eba57fd0d42b0ebdfc29555c359fafa PDF Text Text Young Lords In Lincoln Park Interviewee: Carmen Trinidad Interviewers: José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez Location: Grand Valley State University Special Collections Date: 5/17/2012 Biography and Description Carmen Trinidad’s family arrived in Lincoln Park in the 1950s. She was one of only a few Puerto Rican families to attend St. Michael’s Church in those days, although the neighborhood had already become heavily Puerto Rican. She recalls her father’s, Cesario Rivera’s, work as a leader of Council Number Three of the Caballeros de San Juan at St. Michael’s. She also remembers the way that organizations like the Caballeros de San Juan and Damas de María started and sustained softball leagues, picnics, social dances and dinners, retreats, plays, parades, festivals, and the establishment of a credit that still exists to this day. �Transcript CARMEN TRINIDAD: I was born in Bronx, New York, and I lived in New Jersey, North New Jersey, ’til about the age of 13. However, we would come back to Puerto Rico for a year or two ’cause I lived with my grandmother and my other cousins because, of course, the parents worked, and, being that everybody was Puerto Rican, you didn’t go to a American or an Anglo-speaking home to be babysat. So, we would stay with my grandparents, and then -JOSE JIMENEZ: CT: And what town was this? In Isabela. Okay? And then, when I was 13, I came to Puerto Rico. I was in seventh grade, and my dad felt that it was time for me to come and live with him because he could offer me something better in Chicago. He had lived in New York until he got married, and -- because he went to pick tomatoes. That’s how he [00:01:00] got to New York. And then, from there, he moved to Indiana, where the steel mills were. There was some family there, and the Puerto Rican community, as such, came from Indiana to South Chicago to the North Side. That’s how they migrated, and everybody worked in the steel mill. So, my dad got married, and then he moved to Chicago. JJ: Okay. Let’s backtrack a little bit before that. CT: Okay. JJ: So, you were born in the Bronx. So, what do you remember of the Bronx at that time? 1 �CT: I don’t remember anything because I didn’t live there. I was just born there, and then I came to live in Puerto Rico -- JJ: Okay, in Isa-- CT: -- in Isabela. JJ: What do you remember of Isabela? CT: Oh, I remember -- oh, my God. That was just so awesome. I remember that we lived in a house across the street from the school, and there was, like, a irrigation canal, el canal, and water would [00:02:00] flow through there, and that was our swimming pool. We would all go, and get in there, and take a -- not a bath ’cause we had water, but it was like a pool, and we would go in there, and we’d go to school across the street. JJ: Okay. (inaudible). (break in audio) CT: Name is Carmen Trinidad. My maiden name was Carmen Rivera Perez ’cause, here in Puerto Rico, you have to use those names, not your married name. But, like I was saying, Isabela was wonderful. The school across the street had trees, almond trees, so that was our favorite thing, to go in there and collect the almonds from the trees, and then we would break them. We’d crack ’em with a rock because, of course, we weren’t gonna carry a hammer. But the school only had two classrooms. [00:03:00] The teachers’ name -- I’m telling you, I can remember like it was today -- Ms. Avarello and Ms. Ortiz. Ms. Avarello was a very rich, rich woman. Her husband owned all the sugarcane fields that were in the valley. 2 �JJ: So, there were a bunch of sugarcane fields in Isabela. CT: Yes, at that time. JJ: And Isabela is what part of Puerto Rico? What --? CT: It’s on the -- JJ: The east side, or --? CT: The west ’cause San Juan is the east. JJ: Okay, San Juan, but it’s up north, around San Juan? CT: Up north. It’s right next to Aguadilla, Quebradillas, Camuy. They’re all very close. JJ: All around there. Okay. CT: Okay? Anyway, if you went to -- the classes were divided where you went -- first and second grade went in the morning, third and fourth in the afternoon. Okay? The following year, they would go three and four and five -- you know, [00:04:00] and then the last class would go into the town to school. Okay? Because they couldn’t fit all the grades. But, sometimes, when there weren’t enough students, everybody was all put together in the same classroom. Okay? So, you might have had three, four, and fifth graders in the same classroom, but it was nice. And then, during recess, we could go home ’cause it was like a 15-minute recess, and I lived right across the street, so, of course, we went home, and our grandma used to give us coffee. Can you imagine that? We were so little, and that was the main thing. You drank coffee. And the culture at that time -because, I mean, there was no new technology. The way the culture was, you’d still drink out of a bottle, and they’d put coffee in there, and we’d come home, lay 3 �on the bed, and drink out of a Coke bottle with the little nipple on it. We used to drink coffee. JJ: In the Coke bottle? CT: [00:05:00] Yeah, can you --? JJ: (inaudible). CT: No, no, no. And it wasn’t Coke. It was coffee. My grandma used to save the bottles, and that’s how we -- that was our snack at recess. I lived in a home with my grandmother and my grandfather, and my grandfather still had tobacco plants. JJ: What was your grandmother’s name, and grandfather? CT: My grandmother’s name was Aurelia Concepción Concepción. No, Concepción Feliciano. My grandfather’s name was José Perez Concepción, and they were cousins, and my grandfather -- JJ: First cousins or third cousins? CT: First cousins. JJ: First cousins. CT: Let me tell you the history. My grandfather’s family came from Spain, his parents. Okay. He was born in Puerto Rico, and the family was connected. I mean, there were cousins. I don’t know how, where -- ’cause I really don’t know that history too much, but my [00:06:00] grandfather married his first cousin, and she died in childbirth. Okay? So, then, he married her cousin. Okay? And they had two children. When she was having her third child, she died. She was my grandmother’s sister. So, then, he married the sister. All in the family because 4 �everybody lived in a little town, and that’s why, today in Puerto Rico, you hear it said, “(Spanish) [00:06:31] las Vega.” Okay? Vega was the name of everybody who lived there. (Spanish) [00:06:37]. Everybody who lived in that little -JJ: Named after the family. CT: Right, and they all married each other, and, you know, was no big thing for cousins to marry. JJ: But this was what time? What period? CT: This was my grandparents’ time. My grandfather was born in the 1800s. JJ: 1800s. CT: When I was born, my grandfather [00:07:00] was 80 years old. Okay? My grandfather died at 110. Okay? So, he lived a long, healthy life, you know? And he always walked around with a machete, and they used to call him el varon, meaning he was manly, and everyone respected him. He didn’t know how to write. He couldn’t write his name. He just made a cross. Somehow, he was very smart mathematically. He used to do our homework for us. “Oh, how much is twelve times four?” He’d give you an answer. He had a store, and, during the Depression, he sold bread. He had this old mule, and he’d put my uncle on one side of the basket and my aunt on the other, and they’d walk up and down el barrio, selling a piece of bread for a penny, but a piece of bread at that time was a big piece of bread for a penny. [00:08:00] And he had his own cows, and we always had fresh milk, but things change, you know. JJ: So, this was a small town where you had the country right around. 5 �CT: We were in the country. That was considered country. No el pueblo. El pueblo is the city, but yeah. So, when I was 13, I came to Chicago. JJ: Okay. Now, how many siblings? How many siblings? CT: I have one sister from my mother from Isabela. On my dad’s side, which is the side that was in Chicago, I had 10, and one died, so we would have been cheaper by the dozen, you know? Minus one. But yeah. So, when I came to live -- JJ: You didn’t say your father’s name, but I think I (inaudible) -- CT: No, I haven’t said my -- JJ: Okay. What-- CT: -- dad’s name, but my dad’s name was Cesario Rivera García. Okay? And he was from [00:09:00] Caguas, and he lived in this land that we have today. Okay? When I went to live in Chicago, we were living on North Sedgwick, down the block from Lasalle Elementary School. JJ: And before we get there, though, we were talking about -- your father was a tomatero. CT: Okay. Well, I’m going to get to that. I’m gonna give you the history. Okay? I’m just letting you know, we lived in Lincoln Park. Okay? And, for the Puerto Rican community there, Lincoln Park was St. Michael’s Church, El Concilio Numero Tres. A little bit about my dad. My dad lived here in Puerto Rico, in this same land that my husband and I, Ricci and I, are living in ’cause we bought it from him. But my dad, at the -- [00:10:00] he made his first quarter, like he used to say, selling bootleg rum, caña, here in Puerto Rico. My dad never could have 6 �gone into the service because, as a small kid here, he cut his finger on one of those old-fashioned lawnmowers, so my dad was minus a part of his finger. So, he went to New York to pick tomatoes, and his story was that they were living in this -- you want to call it a barrack, like an army barrack-type thing, but they had all these beds, and all these Puerto Ricans were living there, and nobody knew how to cook. Okay? My dad did. So, my dad started making arroz con gandules, a little sopa, and all kinds of Puerto Rican good. Eventually, he [00:11:00] got tired of picking tomatoes, and he hooked up with a family member, and, from up north, wherever it was that they were picking tomatoes, he came to live in the Bronx, in New York, and his job, his first real job here in the mainland, was as a dishwasher in a restaurant. JJ: In the Bronx. CT: In the Bronx. And that’s when he met my mom. Okay? JJ: And your mom’s name? CT: My mother’s name was Ramona Perez Concepción. Then, my dad’s -- he had some family members that live in Indiana. My dad left that job there in New York and moved to Indiana, started working at the steel mills, and that was the first community of Puerto Ricans in Indiana. JJ: In what town? CT: [00:12:00] You know what? I really -- JJ: East -- was it Hammond, Indiana? CT: Somewhere -- where the steel mills are. JJ: Where the steel mills are. 7 �CT: Okay? I have no idea. JJ: East Chicago. East Chicago, Hammond. CT: East -- probably Chicago, but it’s in Indiana. Not East Chicago, Illinois. JJ: Chicago, yeah. CT: No, it’s in Indiana. It’s across the border. You cross the border, the street, and one side was Indiana, and the other side was -- JJ: So, you went straight from the Bronx there. CT: Straight there. JJ: Why did he go there? Did he know other people there? CT: Yes. He had some family members that told him, “You can work in the steel mills and make a lot more money than what you’re making --” JJ: (Spanish) [00:12:33]. CT: No, in the restaurant -- JJ: In the restaurant. CT: -- because he had already left the tomato picking. So, when he got to Indiana that he was working at the steel mills, all these men lived in boarding houses, you know, rooms, a little furnished room with a bed and whatever. JJ: Oh, they had boarding houses. CT: No kitchen privileges. So, they would look [00:13:00] for other family members or people in the community who would cook, and one of them was my stepmother’s family. So, he went to this house, and he would pay 10 dollars or whatever it was that they paid at that time. I think it was like three dollars a week to eat, and my stepmother was the cook, and that’s how they met, and he was living in her 8 �aunt’s house, and her aunt was a schoolteacher because she was bilingual at the time and spoke English. Okay? All the members of that community, their children used to go to that school, and her aunt used to be, like, the interpreter and the teacher. JJ: Okay. Can you say what happened to your real mother? That’s your stepmother. CT: My real mother stayed in New York, and she continued on with her life, and I have a sister [00:14:00] from her. Okay? My mother passed away right before we moved to Puerto Rico. But that’s how I have family in Isabela and in New Jersey that I go back to. That’s my real mother’s family. However, I spend more time with my stepmother’s family than my real family, and, as a result, they’re like my aunts. They’re -- JJ: And does she still live in Indiana, or is she --? CT: Okay. So, they moved to Chicago. All right? And my dad got a job at Wrigley’s gum factory. JJ: (inaudible). CT: Wrigley’s gum. It was on 35th and -- I want to say Ashland. I think it was Ashland. JJ: They were on the South Side. CT: Yeah, Ashland, on the South Side. But they lived up north. So -- JJ: Okay, so they lived -- CT: -- I didn’t live with them at the time. Okay? JJ: They lived up north, and then they went to work there. 9 �CT: Right. [00:15:00] He went to work on Ashland, on the South Side. JJ: Did you live on Sedgwick, or --? CT: No, they lived up north. I think it was something like Wheeler or -- JJ: Weyland? CT: Weyland or -- I don’t know. Something with a W. All right. So, then, they saved enough money -- well, first of all, my dad used to take the bus because, of course, they didn’t have enough money, but, when he went to work at Wrigley’s, he was able to buy himself a little car. That was the very first big thing they had. By that time, she had the three kids, my sister, who follows me, and two brothers. So, they saved enough money that they were able to buy a house on Sedgwick, so they were one of the first -- JJ: Sedgwick and North Avenue. CT: Mm-hmm. But, at that same time, there was another community, which was your family that lived [00:16:00] on LaSalle Street. JJ: LaSalle Street. Right, right. (inaudible). CT: Okay? Right. So, I can’t talk about that ’cause I never -- JJ: Lived there, yeah. CT: -- lived there, so I’m gonna talk about Sedgwick. So, my dad bought this house on Sedgwick, and then my mom’s family started moving to Chicago. Okay? Her sisters. And then, they got apartments. JJ: What year was this, about? More or less. More or less. CT: More or less. JJ: Rough estimate. 10 �CT: About 1956. JJ: ’56. CT: ’57. Okay? Eventually, everybody came. They all lived at my mom and dad’s house ’cause that’s the way it was. Families would come, and they all lived there ’til they were able to afford an apartment and move on. My stepmother’s name is Luz María Chévere, so it was the Chévere family [00:17:00] that moved. So, they bought a house, a building, the Chévere family, on North Mohawk. JJ: Your mom is a Chévere. CT: My mom’s a Chévere, my stepmom, which I consider like my mom ’cause I grew up with her, and -- JJ: ’Cause they were big in the El Concilio Numero Tres. CT: Okay. So, there were different concilios, okay? It started out with one, two, and three. Okay? That area became Concilio Numero Tres. Okay? So, my dad was a very, very religious person, and, of course, he joined the Concilio Numero Tres, and he was an active person. He didn’t have much school, but he was very smart. Okay? And his broken English and everything. He became the president of Concilio Numero Tres. There was a big commotion in that area ’cause all these families moved in, and they didn’t [00:18:00] know English, and priests there -- they didn’t want to give them a Mass in Spanish, and they met Father Kathrein, who was the priest that was a German priest at St. Michael’s. Somehow, he gave them the sodality hall. The church was here. There was a sodality hall. It was like a big room. It had a stage. It had chairs. And so, suddenly, the community -- 11 �JJ: About how many people would fit there, about? CT: I would say about -- pushing it? JJ: Yeah. CT: About 300. JJ: About 300, and they had, what? Folding chairs, or --? CT: With folding chairs. JJ: Folding chairs, okay. CT: Folding chairs. And so, that’s when the Mass started. Every Sunday, there was a Spanish Mass, and it was crowded, and that’s how all the people in that area joined the Caballeros de San Juan. JJ: [00:19:00] But they didn’t want to let them in the regular -- CT: At the beginning, no. They didn’t want to give ’em -- not to let them in. They did not have a Spanish Mass, just like in a whole bunch of the other churches in Chicago. Mass was Mass. You went, and it was in Latin, so what did it matter? Okay. But the instructions and the preaching, you know -- JJ: Wasn’t Spanish? CT: They wanted a Spanish Mass. JJ: So, that was one of the goals. CT: That was the first -- JJ: Goal was to get a Mass in Spanish. CT: That was the first thing that they did. Okay? It took a lot. It took people from the community joining together and demanding this from their church, from their parish, because, as you know -- 12 �JJ: Why demanding? That’s kind of a strong word. CT: It was demanding. They demanded it. It wasn’t just, “Can we have one?” They grouped themselves together and went to the church. “We want --” JJ: To the pastor? CT: “We want a Spanish Mass,” and they had to work at it, and [00:20:00] continue, and continue. Once they had that Spanish Mass and they saw how the community banded together and did things, they became suddenly a part of the parish. Okay? The Caballeros de San Juan were acknowledged. This was also the time that Don Jesus had Los Hermanos de la Familia del Dios. JJ: Who is Don Jesus? CT: Don Jesus was -- JJ: Jesus Rodríguez? CT: Jesus Rodríguez was my husband’s father’s cousin, I believe. Either they knew each other or they were related. I really don’t know, but he was also -- how do you say? Involved in getting this Mass together and whatnot. The Cardinals’ Committee had two priests, and I believe it was Father Mahon and Father Donahue. They worked at the [00:21:00] Cardinals’ Committee, and they suddenly became involved with the Caballeros de San Juan city-wide, not just at St. Michael’s. So, this is when my dad started working in the community and for the community that he lived in. Lincoln Park was a huge, big community, and it had different sections. Okay? You have to look at it in terms of -- Lincoln Park was a parish neighborhood. Okay? You had Immaculate Conception. You had St. Mike’s. I can’t even rememb-- 13 �JJ: St. Teresa. CT: Every parish had their community, and they had their community in terms of ethnicity because we don’t want to say race. Okay? Ethnicity. St. Michael’s was a German parish. Okay? But then, suddenly, it became German and Puerto Rican, [00:22:00] and any extra Latino that was around joined because we had a Cuban family that was very close and involved in that community. You had people from South America. It wasn’t just Puerto Ricans, but the majority were Puerto Ricans. So, from St. Mike’s, we had the Caballeros de San Juan, Hermanos de la Familia del Dios. Suddenly, throughout the city, baseball teams were formed from the Cardinals’ Committee. And so, there was a baseball team for the concilios. JJ: The baseball teams came later. CT: Yeah. JJ: And so, St. Michael’s was a big center for the Caballeros, or no? CT: No. Okay. Look at it in terms of -- again, I’m going to go back to the churches because you have to realize that the community [00:23:00] revolved around the church. Okay? The headquarters was the Cardinals’ Committee. Okay? The Cardinals’ Committee was formed to help the Hispanic community from Father Mahon, Father Donahue, and I can’t even -- Father Kathrein. I can’t remember all the names. Father Vanecko. I mean, all these priests worked at the Cardinals’ Committee, and all the churches led back there, all the Hispanic. Okay? So, they decided they were going to have a baseball team, so Concilio Numero One made their team. El Concilio Numero Two had their team. Three 14 �had their team. Okay? And they used to have mascots, and what they used to have were godmothers, la madrina. My husband’s sister was la madrina del Concilio Numero Tres. [00:24:00] Her dad played ball on it. I never -JJ: What does that mean, la madrina del -- CT: It’s a godmother. She was like -- JJ: (inaudible) picture taken, or --? CT: No. She was just there to look pretty, and, you know, everybody had a madrina. That was the way of giving a girl a -- JJ: A recognition. CT: A recognition, and you had mascots. [break in audio] The little kids were the mascots, (Spanish) [00:24:25] for the team, right. JJ: For they team, and they had -- CT: And they had their own little uniform. Okay? They got sponsors for the shirts from -- JJ: Businesses. CT: -- the Hispanic businesses. Okay? All right. So, you had the baseball team. Then, the next big thing that came out of this whole community, all these communities, was when -- I forget which pope decided that you were going to have los Cursillos. JJ: Cursillo, okay. CT: Okay. And that was like a big retreat. [00:25:00] I don’t know the word for it in English. I only know the word for it in Spanish, but they had it for the men. It started out for the men first. What they spoke about in there -- 15 �JJ: Any reason for that, or --? CT: ’Cause the men were the ones -- the women always stayed home, taking care of the kids and everything. The men were the ones that -- the shakers and the movers. Okay? That’s the way it was. So, it started out for the men first. The women eventually got theirs, but it started out with the men, and they went to the Cardinals’ Committee, and they had a retreat. I remember my dad being the cook for these retreats. I remember that my husband made it. His dad and other people we knew. What was spoken there stayed there. It was like a secret society, you could say, and they all had a pin. They were (Spanish) [00:25:58]. Okay? JJ: [00:26:00] And their purpose was what? I mean -- CT: To tell you the truth, it was a religious purpose. You went there, and it was, like, soul cleansing is the only word that I can -- JJ: So, it was a religious purpose. CT: It was a religious experience. I never made one. I would like to some day. Before I die, I would like to do it, but, unless you went there, you don’t know what happened there. JJ: So, they wanted just to cleanse themselves, or to try to get more people into the church? CT: It had nothing to do with getting more people in the church. JJ: Just a -- CT: That was a personal experience. JJ: Personal experience. 16 �CT: It’s like when you go to confession. It’s a personal experience. It’s spiritual. Okay? But that was one of the big things. Okay? Now, let me go back. I went to St. Michael’s Grammar School, and the people that went to Catholic schools at that time -- the parents really had to work very hard to come [00:27:00] up with that tuition money. The one blessing was that you paid the tuition for one kid, and then you had to only pay partial tuition. You know, like, 25 dollars less for the next one. So, our family, in reality, when we went to school, because there were so many of us -- I’m the oldest, and I have 10 brothers and sisters behind me. We really went to school on one tuition. Okay? So, in those days, we were lucky. Today, you pay for every kid, and you pay for your books, and you pay for everything. That’s not the way it was then. So, at St. Mike’s Grammar School, there were not too many Hispanics. Okay? And I’m not gonna say that the nuns were bad to us because they weren’t, but they were very strict, and I had never been in a Catholic school before, and I started in [00:28:00] the middle of eighth grade. JJ: Oh, you didn’t start from first grade? CT: No. Remember, I lived -- JJ: But what about your brothers and sisters? CT: They all went through -- after kindergarten, they all went through grammar school, Catholic grammar school. Every single one. JJ: At St. Michael’s? CT: They started at St. Michael’s, but then we moved out of there, and then it was Visitation, but my oldest brothers and I graduated from St. Mike’s. 17 �JJ: Okay, ’cause you started in eighth grade. CT: I started in eighth grade. It was a very difficult year because there weren’t, like I said, very many Hispanics in that school. Okay? There were in the community, but not in the school. Anyway, I made it through the eighth grade, and then, when I started in high school, that’s when all of these other kids from different areas came to St. Michael’s high school. Okay? There were other [00:29:00] Catholic schools, but St. Michael’s was divided. It had a boy’s side and a girl’s side, and the only time the girls saw the boys were either through the gym, the library, or upstairs in the labs, the chemistry and biology lab. You had separate classes. The School Sisters of Notre Dame ran the girls, and I think the Jesuits ran the boys. No, it wasn’t the Jesuits. Co-Redemptrix priests. JJ: Oh, the Redemptrix priests. I remember. CT: So, anyway, what can I say about the community? St. Michael’s sodality hall, the church sodality hall, was finally -- not given to the Hispanics, but they used it a lot. They used it for church. They used to have dances there. I mean, and these were fantastic dances. I remember going to them. I think if I -- JJ: When you say fantastic, you mean in terms of the [00:30:00] dancing? CT: In terms of the dancing, in terms of the -- they got the groups to come there to play. JJ: The different bands. CT: Right. I can’t remember the names. I don’t want to give a name that’s not the one, but -- JJ: You had dancers like José Rodriguez (inaudible). 18 �CT: Yeah. They danced. And then, this was the time when salsa first started, so, you know, it was a big thing. They had the trios that would come and play. They could actually sell liquor there, and people used to drink. They made money for their club, for the Caballeros de San Juan. Okay? And they helped with the -how do you say? Buying the shirts for the baseball team, and they used to rent Liberty Bell. There was a retreat center there, and they used to use it. JJ: Liberty Bell (inaudible). CT: They used to have all these [00:31:00] excursions, like at Holy Hill. They’d rent a bus. JJ: In Wisconsin? CT: Right. And everybody would get on this bus. JJ: Was that (inaudible) Wisconsin? (inaudible). CT: I don’t know. JJ: Or that was another place. CT: I don’t remember. I always went on the bus. JJ: But Holy Hill -- I remember Holy Hill. CT: Holy Hill, Liberty Bell -- there was another place where they had cabins, and you spend the night for retreats. I went to one of those. There were a lot of things, okay? The next thing -- JJ: They had a plane too, right? CT: Right. I’ll get to that. Okay. The next thing that I remember was that they started a domino league. Okay? And they would go to New York to play. They won trophies, and, I mean, my father-in-law was very good at it. My dad didn’t 19 �play dominoes. My dad knew nothing about dominoes, but he got them [00:32:00] people on that plane, and he got ’em to New York, and he was like the golfer. You know, somebody who did everything. And so, they had that. Then -what’s the beer company in Milwaukee? JJ: I know (inaudible) old Milwaukee, right? They got past blue ribbon. RICCI TRINIDAD: Anheuser-Busch? JJ: Anheuser-Busch? CT: Anheuser-Busch. Okay. How they hooked up with them beats me, but, every year, Concilio Numero Tres had a trip out there, and they treated you to the beer, to this huge luncheon, because they used to sponsor the parades and things like that. Okay? JJ: The Puerto Rican Parade? CT: Right. That hadn’t happened yet, but, because of the domino league and everything, they got -- I went. JJ: [00:33:00] It led to that. It led to that. CT: Yeah, it led to the (inaudible). Oh, it was fantastic. It was really a trip that everybody died to go on. Few were selected, but -- JJ: And your father -- CT: My dad -- JJ: -- Cesario Rivera was organizing that. CT: Organizing that, along with some of the other people. JJ: And the Chéveres, and the (inaudible). 20 �CT: Exactly. So, what happens? There’s this huge, big community in Chicago, and I believe there were 13 councils if I’m not wrong. JJ: About that, yeah. CT: I think there was 13. Anyway, people didn’t know how to go get a loan. Okay? First of all, they didn’t have enough collateral, but what did they do? They formed the first credit union for Puerto Ricans, Latinos, in Chicago, and it was my dad -- JJ: And it still exists today. CT: It exists but not the same way. JJ: (inaudible). CT: They were bought out. [00:34:00] Okay? But you became a socio. Okay? It’s like a (Spanish) [00:34:04], a co-op. You became a member. You had to put so much money into their credit union, and then you could go and ask for a loan. Okay? Not a big thing. They had the money saved and everything. Everybody trusted everybody in those days, and, sure enough, everybody had a member. My dad was number three. His card and his number to this day is number three. Okay? And it grew, and it grew, and it grew, and then, you know, when you get so big -- and people were lent money to put a down payment on a house, buy a car. When I went to college, I needed to have root canal done, and I needed to have fillings done. I went ’cause I was a member, and I got me a loan. [00:35:00] Okay? I paid it back. It took me a long time to pay it back, but, as a college student, I had no money. My parents didn’t have money to get me the root canal work, and it was important that I had that done, so -- 21 �JJ: And you personally knew the bankers. CT: That was the other thing. Okay? But I couldn’t go to my dad to ask him for the loan. I had to go to the treasurer and say, “I need a loan, and I need it for this,” and I had to sign papers and everything. All right. JJ: But I didn’t mean you personally, but most of the people knew the bankers. CT: Everybody knew everybody, and everybody knew you borrowed money, and they knew how much, and they knew if you paid or not. That was the thing, that, you know, you weren’t gonna be late because you lived in that community. As it got bigger, okay? They had to go through the D-- what is it? FDIC, and banking, and whatnot, and it became a legal thing, [00:36:00] and they even had -- at the beginning, their office was at the Cardinals’ Committee, okay? Then, they bought a building on Fullerton, okay? JJ: In the west -- okay, where they’re located now, or --? CT: Yes. Okay? And it got bigger, okay? So, my family was still running that, okay? In terms of the president of the credit union was my cousin, Jeanie Chévere. Okay? And she ran on Washington’s ticket in Chicago. She ran -- JJ: Harold Washington. CT: Mm-hmm. And they lost. She lost the position. She didn’t win, but he made her executive of CTA or whatever it was. So, okay. My cousin has [00:37:00] always been in politics. Today, due to the fact that she worked politics in that community and on the North Side, she was elected to be a judge, and now she’s at federal court. She started as traffic -- JJ: So, she’s a federal judge today. 22 �CT: Yeah. I shouldn’t say federal. She went from traffic court to doing the -- JJ: But is she a judge, or does she work at federal court? CT: No, she’s a judge. JJ: (inaudible). CT: I went to her swearing. JJ: And this is your -- CT: My cousin. I have pictures of who all these people are. Okay? Anyway. So, getting back to the credit union. The credit union became very large. As you had kids and they got older, you opened up an account, and you just put five dollars, ten dollars. By the time -- my sister, my younger sister, didn’t cash her [00:38:00] credit union money in until she had triplets, and she came to Chicago, and -- how was it? She came to Chicago, and she says, “Oh, Mom, it’s the boys’ birthday.” You know, there was three of ’em. And so, she took the money out of the credit union ’cause my mom was on it, and she says, “Here, this is your life savings,” and it was enough to give ’em a birthday party and have money left over. So, you can see how it -- but that was sold, and it became like a bank. It was sold. It’s no longer run by the Caballeros de San Juan. (break in audio) CT: The credit union was sold. To who, I don’t know. The building is still there, and people still have accounts there, but it’s more like a bank now. It’s not a credit union, and [00:39:00] it’s not the Caballeros de San Juan because Caballeros de San Juan -- I don’t know if they exist any longer or what. You would have to go back -- 23 �JJ: I think they became the Hermanos, the Hermanos (inaudible). CT: No. Hermanos de la Familia del Dios is something totally, totally different. JJ: So, what happened to the Las Damas, Las Damas de María of St. Michael’s? CT: Las Damas -- JJ: Do you know anything about them, or --? CT: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I’m just going through little things that I remember. I’ll get to that part too. Okay. So, you have the credit union. You had all these trips. You have the domino league, the baseball league, and the Caballeros de San Juan. Now, they were very famous during -- they used to show movies. Where they got these movies from, I don’t know, but you would go to one of the concilios, and let’s say Concilio Numero Uno had a big dance. Concilio Numero Quatro showed a [00:40:00] movie, and you went, and you actually saw a Spanish movie. You paid your 50 cents or whatever it was at the time. JJ: A regular movie? This is not a religious movie. CT: No, a regular movie. You know, they brought in movies. JJ: So, they were using culture, regular Puerto Rican culture, with the church (inaudible). CT: Right. Right. Okay. So, then, it was the movies. JJ: So, people would pay, and they would see a movie? CT: A movie, and this -- JJ: At the hall? CT: At this hall or at a different hall from the Caballeros de San Juan. JJ: ’Cause they had halls in all the churches. 24 �CT: Right. Then -- JJ: But some of those halls were because they didn’t want ’em in (inaudible). CT: No, no, no. The halls were because they -- how do you say? It was used. It was like a hall. You go in, and you do parties, and you -- JJ: But the Mass was celebrated in (inaudible). CT: In a different place. Okay. So, getting back to the activities they did, [00:41:00] during Lent, they used to put on this big production. Okay? And it was The Passion of the Lord, and, when you talk about The Passion, it was taken right out of the Bible, and they had the spears, and they had the ketchup they would throw out, the blood. It looks really, really real, and you had the cross. People were actually dressed like them, and you had all these seamstresses making all these outfits for this play. Came Christmas time, and you had the Nativity, and it was reenacted, Mary going into labor and the baby being born. JJ: So, you had two plays -- CT: Yeah. JJ: -- a year. Two plays a year. CT: Mm-hmm. JJ: And who was part of these plays? CT: Whoever wanted to try out and be part of it. JJ: So, just any normal -- CT: Any Latino in Chicago, [00:42:00] the whole area of Chicago because everybody knew who was going to put on the play, and you’d go, and if you wanted to help or be part of it. 25 �JJ: And then, did you have professional theater people? CT: No. No. No. No. JJ: It was just anyone -- CT: This was just the community. JJ: ’Cause it looked very professional, but it was two plays a year. CT: Two plays a year. It looked professional, and I’ll tell you again, they made their costumes, or they rented them, or -- you know, it wasn’t so much what they said. It was how it was done. Okay? I remember, for the Christmas play -- I was in one of the Christmas -- I was the angel. All right? I remember the wings were out of cardboard, and they were covered, and then you sewed the material, and you put the glitter, and -- beautiful wings. I still have my picture as an angel, and it was just gorgeous, and, when you saw everything, oh, my God. It was beautiful, but it was done by the community. No outside [00:43:00] help. All right? So, they had that. Now -- JJ: So, now, who would come to see it? There was a community, but, I mean, about how many --? CT: It was -- JJ: About how many people? CT: It was, again, every president, vice president. They would go to the Cardinals’ Committee for a meeting, and everybody knew what was going on in their churches, and they’d come back and say, “Oh, there’s gonna be a dance in Concilio Numero Tres such and such a day. I have the tickets. You want them? I have the tickets for the play. How many tickets do you want?” 26 �JJ: So, they would fill up the place. CT: Oh, yeah. JJ: But I’m trying to figure out -- CT: It’d fill up -- standing room. JJ: Let’s say the Christmas play when you were there. CT: Mm-hmm. JJ: About how many people? A hundred? Two hundred? Three hundred? CT: You know, I can’t go back and tell you. I mean, I was a kid. JJ: But it wasn’t -- CT: It looked to me like thousands. JJ: Okay, (inaudible) like thousands. CT: It was always packed, and people were standing in the hall, windows, looking. I mean -- JJ: [00:44:00] Because, at that time, the Lincoln Park community had a lot of Puerto Ricans. CT: It had a lot of Puerto Ricans. Okay? And not only that, but remember, I’m going back to the church. The church was city-wide, so city-wide people would come see these plays, just like, city-wise, people would come to the dances. JJ: Now, was St. Michael’s a unique (inaudible)? CT: St. Michael’s was one of the most -- how should I say? Active councils. Okay? It was the most active council, okay? Because you had so many good people. It was Calvino (inaudible). It was my dad, my uncles, Rick’s dad, Don Jesus. There’s a lot of people. Okay? A lot. A lot of people. What else can I tell you 27 �about the community in that area? Because, again, I don’t want to speak about the [00:45:00] South Side ’cause that’s totally -JJ: Yeah, that’s a different -- CT: The Puerto Ricans moved from there -- JJ: Around what year? CT: -- to the South Side and from there up north -- JJ: Around what year? CT: I will tell you it was in ’66. JJ: ’66, they moved from there to the -- CT: South Side. JJ: South Side. To Visitation Parish, that area? CT: Right. And then -- JJ: Which is on 60 -- CT: -- from Indiana, from East Chicago -- JJ: Visitation is what? On 63rd? CT: On 55th and Peoria. JJ: 55th and Peoria, okay. CT: What happened was the people from South Chicago moved to 55th Street. They had a realtor. Okay? His name was Ernito Gómez. JJ: Ernito Gómez, okay. CT: Okay? He was the Puerto Rican realtor. He moved them there. “(Spanish) [00:45:55]. There’s a house here. It’s a perfect house for you.” JJ: [00:46:00] (inaudible). 28 �CT: Eugenio Gómez. JJ: Eugenio Gómez. CT: Okay? JJ: But he was from Indiana or from --? CT: He eventually came from the South Side of Chicago to that area. JJ: To (inaudible). CT: They were south, real far south, East Chicago. They moved to 55th. JJ: What year was that? CT: In the ’60s. JJ: In the ’60s, okay. Okay. CT: A lot of the Puerto Ricans on the North Side who knew Ernito -- like, Ernito and my dad were compadres, okay? He moved my dad. I’m telling you, he found my dad this huge, big house on the South Side, a big boarding house. He moved him there. And then, because my dad moved there, my aunt and uncle moved, and everybody moved south. JJ: So, why were people moving, though? I mean, besides the real estate guy, why did people --? CT: Cheaper. Bigger homes. Where we lived, there was only three bedrooms, [00:47:00] and then, we were 10 kids. Okay? There was no room. All right? And so, the time was good to sell. My dad should have never sold that house because, today, it would be worth a fortune. JJ: You’re talking about the house on Sedgwick? CT: On Sedgwick. Lincoln Park. 29 �JJ: So, the time was good to sell at that time. CT: Time was good to sell. JJ: So, a lot of Puerto Ricans were selling at that time? CT: They were selling and moving south or moving far north. JJ: ’66, 1966. CT: Okay. Because, remember, there was Waller School south of North Avenue, and then there was one on -- JJ: (inaudible) Franklin? CT: There was one on Armitage, another high -- JJ: The one on Armitage was Waller. Waller. CT: Waller. JJ: It was on Armitage. CT: Okay, so, which one was the one further south? Margaret went there to -- JJ: To Cooley? CT: Cooley. JJ: Cooley. CT: Okay. So, remember -- JJ: Margaret went to Cooley? CT: Yeah. JJ: Okay, Cooley -- CT: To become a beautician. JJ: Cooley High, okay. 30 �CT: Okay, so, [00:48:00] remember, you’re from Waller, and you’re Cooley, and you’re in the middle. You want to get out. The neighborhoods -- the border lines were changing. The Hispanics were afraid. Okay? You couldn’t move east ’cause that’s already blocked from you. JJ: Why? CT: ’Cause it was white. JJ: Okay, east was white. CT: Right, east -- by the lake. JJ: So, we’re talking about race and ethnicity. CT: We’re not talking about that. We’re talking about economy. JJ: Economy, okay. CT: Economy, okay? JJ: So, the east was rich. CT: East was the lake. JJ: Rich white. CT: Right. How could you move to a high rise? How could you buy a house on -what was that street called? The one before the lake. JJ: Clark Street. CT: Clark. You know? It was money. If you moved further west, okay? It wasn’t considered [00:49:00] good. JJ: Why was that? What was on the west? CT: That was ethnicity. JJ: That was ethnicity. 31 �CT: That was racial, not ethnicity. That was racial. Puerto Ricans didn’t want to move where the Blacks were. Okay? So, they had one of two choices. Either go north or go south. JJ: Okay. And that’s what they did. CT: Exactly. They either move up to the North Side, or they move to the South Side. That was it. JJ: So, they either went to Lakeview or Uptown or -- CT: Uptown. JJ: -- they went west to the Humboldt Park -- CT: Right. JJ: -- or they went south. CT: Even Humboldt Park at that time wasn’t considered to be good. Okay? JJ: Because there was not Puerto Ricans at that time. CT: No, it was Puerto Rican. It was Puerto Rican -- JJ: But it was -- CT: -- but -- economy. Remember, economy has a lot of things to do with crime. JJ: Right, so it was poor. It was poor. CT: It was poor. JJ: It was poor, okay. CT: Okay? So, you either moved north, or you either moved south. My dad moved south, not because of -- JJ: Because (inaudible). 32 �CT: -- economy or anything. It was because the house was big. A 19-room house. How could you go [00:50:00] wrong? And you have 11 kids. JJ: Nineteen rooms? That many rooms? CT: It had 19 rooms, all together. JJ: And how much was the house? CT: I don’t know. I don’t know. My parents’ financial status at that time was not shared with the kids. Anyway, so -- JJ: What did your father do before (inaudible)? CT: My dad worked at Wrigley’s gum company. JJ: Oh, yeah, Wrigley’s gum company. That’s right. That’s right. I’m sorry. CT: Okay. Okay, so, we moved south at that time, but, getting back to the Lincoln Park area, okay? Again, like I said, the church was the pillar of the community. Everything you did revolved around the church. All right? So, the Puerto Rican community at St. Michael’s suddenly became part of the church, so there was a carnival every year. Okay? And every [00:51:00] organization in the church had to have a booth, and you ran the booth, and whatever the booth made, you know, was -- how do you say? Oh, this group got so much. Okay? So, the Puerto Ricans make Puerto Rican food. They sell it there, and, sure enough, one year, they were the ones that made the most money. Okay? So, that was like a plus, but, at that carnival, everybody came, and that was one of the activities that pulled the whole community from St. Michael’s together. JJ: The whole -- all the blocks around. 33 �CT: Everybody. Whatever organization you belonged to, ’cause you had to work it, and you had a -- JJ: So, it slowly became more and more Puerto Rican at that carnival ’cause it was a yearly -- CT: No, St. Michael’s never became more Puerto Rican. Okay? It never became more German. [00:52:00] It stayed the same way it was. JJ: For years? CT: For years. Okay? Once I moved out of there, they even sold the boys’ high school and made -- the rectory. The high schools were torn down. It was sold, okay? So, the church stood, but not the school and not the sodality hall. All of that was sold. Okay? Became condos. You know, I’ve never been back there to see it, but this is what I’ve been told. Okay? At that time, one of the things was you went to -- there’s a hospital, Children’s Memorial Hospital, and, every time a child got sick, that’s the only hospital everybody knew, Children’s Memorial, ’cause the adults didn’t go to the hospital. It was the kids, [00:53:00] and that was a famous hospital to take care of the children and get them vaccinated and whatnot. They had free clinics where you could go. My dad did the grocery shopping, and he used to go to the A&P. All the Puerto Ricans went to the A&P. JJ: Right on North Avenue, or --? CT: It was right there on Sedgwick Street. Okay? Closer to North Avenue. It wasn’t that far away. JJ: Were there other businesses on North Avenue that were Puerto Rican? 34 �CT: No, I don’t remember any. To tell you the truth, I don’t remember any on North Avenue. JJ: But I know they had a theater, Puerto Rican theater. CT: Yeah, I don’t remember on North Avenue. Everybody shopped at the A&P, and you got stamps. JJ: You never went to (inaudible) on North Avenue? CT: No. Well, that’s -- when? Back in those days or now? JJ: No, no. That wasn’t in those days. CT: No. I don’t -- you know. [00:54:00] The A&P. Getting back to the A&P. JJ: Let’s get back to the A&P. CT: They gave you these little green stamps. Okay? And all the Puerto Ricans were collecting -- JJ: S&H. S&H. CT: The S&H stamps. JJ: Yeah, I remember. CT: You remember that? JJ: I remember. CT: Everybody collected the S&H stamps. Okay? And then, you went, and you cashed them in at -- Goldblatt’s, was it? JJ: Yeah, right. CT: Okay. JJ: Right. Right. 35 �CT: I got my first set of dishes when I got married from those stamps, and my dad bought -- with S&H stamps at Goldblatts, he bought me a set of dishes. I still have ’em. Anyway, long story, but, anyway, I still have those dishes, and they were from S&H, and everybody -- if you needed one stamp to fill up your card so you could get something, you would ask somebody, “Hey, you went to the store. I just need one.” You know? So, that was like a trade-off between the [00:55:00] people in the community, a stamp. The other thing they used to sell was (Spanish) [00:55:04]. I don’t know if you remember that. JJ: Yeah, (Spanish) [00:55:09]. You put them -- how do you say--? CT: There was a card, and you would open it, and, whatever that card said, you paid, and then you might get a gift. I forgot what it was called, but that was a big thing, okay? I mean, that was a really big thing. The other big thing in the community at that time, okay? And I’m talking about before I was 16 ’cause, at 16, we moved to the South Side. Okay? The other big thing in the community -- okay, you had your S&H stamps. You had (Spanish) [00:55:48]. Oh, my God. I was gonna mention something, and it just disappeared. All right. The church [00:56:00] women ’cause that’s a big thing. Okay? Most of the women stayed at home and took care of the kids if there was a lot of kids, and they would babysit for each other and whatnot. Okay? In our house, my mother never went anywhere. She went to church, and we all had to go with them, and that’s when you put on your Sunday shoes ’cause you only had two pairs of shoes. Actually, three. You had your gym shoes around the house, you have your pair of shoes for Sunday school or when you went out, you know, church, and you had your 36 �school shoes, and you had a uniform for school, and, on Sundays, everybody went to church together. And you did not misbehave because you got pinched, and [00:57:00] you had to stay awake. So, like I said, my mom didn’t go anywhere, but my dad, on Sundays -- he always wore a suit to church. Every Sunday, he was always dressed up, and, during the summer, my mom would help him make sandwiches, and -- loaves of bread, and either ham or -- and cheese and whatever. The sandwiches were -- and they would be cut in half, and they would be wrapped, and he’d take this huge, big cooler, and he’d go to Lincoln Park and give it to the baseball players. Okay? I never could figure that out. JJ: In Lincoln Park, where they played? CT: In Lincoln Park. My dad was very, very generous. That was his team from the Concilio Numero Tres, and he’d bring ’em these big things of Kool-Aid, and we never lacked for anything in our house ’cause my dad was a hard worker,[00:58:00] but I could never understand until I was older. I would say, “Man, he’s making all these sandwiches and everything and taking --” It was a matter of being a little jealous, I guess. You know, my dad was so generous to everybody. Okay? Somebody needed 10 dollars, take the 10 dollars and give it to ’em. Well, it’s like, okay, you got 11 kids. What’s the thing? Eventually, I understood what it was. He was very, very religious, very caring, very generous, and he truly cared about everything in the community, about his Caballeros de San Juan, concilio. He was president. This was his whole life. Then, the big 37 �thing in the community came back as I was talking. Okay? Was la bolita. Okay? La [00:59:00] bolita is the Chinese numbers game. I don’t know how you call it -JJ: Los chinos, los chinos. CT: The Chinese. JJ: Yeah, that’s what you call ’em, los chinos. (inaudible) CT: Yeah, la bolita. They’re the ones that roll a number or you play a number. So, my dad would go to the bolitero. He loved to do that. Okay? And he would play a number, and he never won when he -- JJ: And this is like an underground lottery. CT: Yeah, it’s a lottery. It’s the rackets. It’s like you see on TV. They’re going to the numbers people. JJ: The numbers. The numbers, yeah. CT: Okay? Anyway, my dad used to play that. Who the bolitero was -- JJ: And it was all over the community at that time. CT: All over, and everybody played. JJ: Everybody played. Everybody played. CT: I mean, from the time that you were -- JJ: It was announced on the radio too, I heard. CT: The numbers came out on the radio. Of course. You knew. I don’t know how they did it, but, anyway. So, my dad would play this, like, religiously. Okay? [01:00:00] He never won money when he had money. Okay? Never, never won when he had money. When we were most desperate, like at Christmastime, Easter, Mother’s Day, my dad always won, and he won big. I couldn’t believe it. 38 �Then, I knew what my dad was doing. My dad was giving back what he had received, and that’s what he taught us. You help other people. You volunteer. We’ve all done volunteer work. My brother Louie, he does volunteer work every year from his church. He goes to Mexico, to the Habilitad for Humanity. JJ: Habitat for Humanity. CT: Yeah, Habitat. And -- JJ: That’s your brother. CT: My brother. And he pays for his own plane ticket, for (break in audio) everything there, and he takes a week’s vacation, and he goes, and he does that. He’s done [01:01:00] it with his wife, and, lately, he’s been doing it by himself. Okay? But he learned that. All of us have done volunteer work. So, eventually, I knew, you know, but, again, it came from the community. You help the people in the community. It was very hard for us to leave that house. Okay? It was very hard for us to leave our roots because this is where everybody had grown up. Everybody had gone to school there. So, we continued. The three oldest did graduate from St. Michael’s, but then we moved to the South Side. JJ: So, this was your roots. I mean -- CT: To me, even though I only lived there, like I said, from the time I was 13 to 16, three years -- but those were the three years of my life that I remember as being the greatest. We walked to North Avenue Beach. [01:02:00] You didn’t have to worry about anybody mugging you, or robbing you, or anything. My stepmother’s mother, my grandmother, she babysat everybody. She used to take the buggies, and the old -- I was the oldest, and my cousin Jeanie. And then, everybody 39 �would help everybody, and we’d be the guards. “Come on. Let’s go. Let’s go.” And we’d carry these sacks of sandwiches and everything, and there was this lady who didn’t know how to speak much English or anything, but she risked going to the beach. Okay? JJ: And there were more Puerto Ricans? CT: There were more Puerto Ricans there, and you met everybody you knew there ’cause everybody was babysitting. (phone rings) [Ricci called Junior?]. Anyway, so -- RT: That’s your phone. CT: I know. He’s calling here, and he’s going to keep calling, so -- RT: What does he want? CT: I don’t know. [01:03:00] Anyway, so, we’d go down to the beach. Okay. We’d go to the zoo. The zoo was free. JJ: The Lincoln Park Zoo. CT: Okay? They had the little canoes in the -- you know? You were never afraid to do any of that. Okay? So, anyway, getting back to the women, like I started, there was two organizations in the church that women belonged to: Las Damas de María y Las Hijas de María, the -- I want to call the -- the Madam, you know, the older women. Once you were married, you were considered old already, so you belonged to that group. Okay? Las Esperanzas wore this green sash with a medal. JJ: That was the ones in training, or --? 40 �CT: Those were supposed to be the young girls, unmarried girls. [01:04:00] You were representing -- you dressed in white, and you had this green metal. JJ: The virginity -- CT: Virginity. Okay? JJ: The virgin -- CT: Because that was a big thing in the community. JJ: What do you mean? CT: If you got pregnant or if you had sex at that time, it was like, “Get out of the house. We don’t want to have nothing to do with you.” JJ: (inaudible). CT: (inaudible), the -- everything. So, you had to watch whatever you did. My sister and I walked a strict line. Okay? Because everybody knew my dad. Everybody. And so, if you went anywhere, they saw you, he’d know, and the only thing in this world you didn’t want to do was embarrass your dad. JJ: Your family and your dad. CT: Okay? I mean, culturally, that was the thing. So, you wore this medal, and it was such an honor because this was the Sunday. They had it on Sundays. Every Sunday was a different group. So, all the girls would -- you’d try to outdo everybody [01:05:00] with your skirt, and your blouse, and your hairdo, and then you had to put your hair up so they could see that you had your medal, and you’d walk down. It was a procession. And then, at that time, when you went to church and Mass, you had to have something to cover your head. All right? So, 41 �it was on Sundays that it was your turn. You didn’t wear that little thing. You wore your mantilla, the nicer ones you had. JJ: Mantilla? CT: Yeah, and you wanted -- JJ: A lot of girls wore the mantillas? CT: Yeah, we had the mantillas ’cause, at the time, you had to cover your head, you know? They weren’t those big, long, elegant ones, but you had one. So, that was for the young girls. The older women, I think they had blue. I can’t recall, but they also had a medal, and they dressed, and they had their groups. Eventually, they had a cursillo for the ladies. Okay? The moms went. And so, you know, we were progressing in [01:06:00] the church too. There was no birth control to use. Very few people used birth control. Okay? The church taught you rhythm. Go to the rhythm, and that didn’t work in our house because there was a lot of us. Okay? The Hispanic families were very large. Six kids, five kids. We were ten. And, again, culturally, you didn’t use birth control. All right? That’s a lot of mouths to feed. So, the females had to -- how do you say? Adjust to cooking for all those kids on whatever there was. So, I remember, in my house, we ate rice. We ate beans. We had salad, green beans, corn, and your main meats were chicken, pork [01:07:00] chops, and bistec. Okay? And, when you ate, you had one piece of meat, a lot of rice and beans to stuff you, and your salad, and the big joke was, you know -- not in my family, but in another family was you hurried up and you ate your meat in case somebody came because the 42 �parents would give your -- they’d give you something else, but they’d give your food to the adults that came. JJ: Right. Right. To the visitor. CT: To the visitors. They always had room in their homes for anybody who came to spend the night. It didn’t matter if all the kids slept in one bed, but your company had room. Not too many women were -- how do you say? Took the risks that my stepmother and my grandmother did. I admire them very, very much. My mom learned to speak English. All right? [01:08:00] But there was one rule in our house. You didn’t speak English. You had to speak Spanish. I guess, as time went on, ’cause she had so many kids, you know, the rule -- how do you say? Was -- JJ: Changed a little. CT: -- changed, okay? JJ: Adjusted? CT: The younger ones spoke English. Okay? But she never spoke English to us in the house. Never. She always spoke Spanish so you understand. We all understand it. The younger ones -- JJ: That’s pride in our culture? CT: No. That was -- why are you gonna speak English? Her feeling was, “I got to speak Spanish so my kids can understand.” Okay? So, that was one other thing. My grandmother -- she was a funny lady. She was very bright, very loving, and she loved school, and she could talk up a storm. She’d talk to you about everything. There was [01:09:00] nothing -- you know, you could talk to 43 �her about sex. And I’m not talking about -- just about, “Grandma, what is this?” And she would tell you very calmly, explain it to you. So, she went to Tuley High School. Where was Tuley? JJ: On Ashland, around there. CT: That’s where she went. She went to learn English, and somebody would take her every night and pick her up. JJ: So, she would go from Sedgwick, or --? CT: No. She lived on Mohawk. JJ: On Mohawk at that time. Okay. CT: Yeah. That would take her to school. Maybe it wasn’t -- what was the school closest on Mohawk? Anyway, she went to a Chicago public school where they taught English classes, and she had her little book. She was going to school, and I really admired her for that. She’d come back, [01:10:00] and she’d practice everything that she learned that day with all the grandkids, and we used to laugh. “She’s trying to learn,” you know, ’cause she spoke funny, but she learned. And then, after my grandfather died, she needed a certain amount of quarters from social security in order to get social security. She got a job working in this linen company on Halsted Street on the South Side, and she would take a bus all the way from the North Side to go to the South Side to work there and then go all the way back north on this bus, and, you know, somebody who’s that old and so set culturally in being Hispanic and -- to do that, you have to admire her. How many women would do that? So, okay. So, the church. The females eventually [01:11:00] began to do things. They eventually had their own meetings at the 44 �Cardinals’ Committee. So, in 1966, they decided to have a Puerto Rican Parade. That was the very first Puerto Rican Parade there was. My dad was the president of the Puerto Rican Parade Committee, the ones that did it. JJ: So, this came out of St. Michael’s, then. CT: No. Remember, I keep telling you that. The Cardinals’ Committee -- JJ: It came out of the Cardinals’ Committee. CT: Committee, which are all the churches. Okay? So, they decided they were going to have a parade. All right? And my dad became the president. JJ: But he was from St. -- CT: He was voted from -- JJ: But he was from St. Michael’s. CT: He was from St. Michael’s. There were people from all over. All right? And so, the [01:12:00] Cardinals’ Committee, the group that sponsored the parade, had a float. Okay? And it was going to be a religious float. So, we, the Rivera family, got to be on this float, representing the family. Okay? A religious family. Okay? Indirectly, they were trying to say something else, I believe, because 10 kids, you know. No birth control at the time. This is what a good family’s supposed to be. My mom’s buggies were there with the kids. Somewhere, we have a picture of that, but that was the year that there were riots. Okay? And that was the same night that I came to Puerto Rico. JJ: The Division Street riot was (inaudible). CT: The very same night. My dad took me to the airport ’cause I was coming to Puerto Rico, [01:13:00] and my dad actually went to Daley’s house when the riots 45 �occurred, and my dad talked to him and to other people that worked with the Cardinals’ Committee’s, my uncles and dad, to try to defuse what was going on. What it was, I don’t know because, like I said, I wasn’t here. I’ve seen it on TV, and people have told me what happened, but I was never near Humboldt Park where this happened. But, getting back to my dad and the community, my dad met the governor of Puerto Rico, Luis Muñoz Marín (inaudible). He knew Daley. He knew all these people in politics, and, for a person with no education, who was a tomato picker, to be so well known, okay? Was [01:14:00] amazing. Very, very amazing. He also worked for -- when we moved to the South Side, there was a problem in that community, and the problem were the gangs. JJ: So, now, we’re talking about Visitation Church. CT: Right, but we’re not gonna talk too much about that, but I’m talking about my dad. When he moved there, they gave him a job working for the Department of Human Resources. Okay? And what his job -- JJ: Was this after the riot or --? CT: Yes because he already -- we moved to the South Side. Okay? This was when he worked with the neighborhood gangs. Okay? JJ: (inaudible). CT: So, my dad -- what I’m trying to say is, from a tomato picker, he went to holding all these positions, putting together all of these activities and things, having a job through the city. [01:15:00] Not educated, you know, and being able to -- how do you say? Mingle with people like the governor and the mayor of San Juan, and it was very amazing. Very, very amazing. Okay. So, when we moved to the 46 �South Side, okay? Caballeros de San Juan no longer existed. Okay? My dad then joined another organization, “Puertorriqueños Unidos de Chicago,” and that was an amazing one too, but let’s get back to the Lincoln Park one. JJ: But we can talk about both too (inaudible). CT: So, the Caballeros de San Juan. The last thing that they did was they had banquets, and that was to generate funds, okay? Because, if somebody had a fire, or a death, or something, [01:16:00] they gave money to these -- they helped their community. So, you bought a ticket, okay? And this was the first time Puerto Ricans were going to fancy places. So, they got to go to the hotels downtown. They got to go to different -- they got out of their neighborhood. All right? And so, that also was really amazing, that they could do that, that they could go somewhere and say, “Hey, we want to rent your hall,” and that they could sit down and estimate -- “We need to sell so many tickets, and we need to make money for the band, and we need money for the --” You know, to me, that was very amazing, and that they could do so many of these. Okay? I know that, for the first Puerto Rican parade, they had a banquet, and they sold tickets, and they were expensive, and they made money. All right. So, we -- JJ: Was anyone else connected, like [01:17:00] the Puerto Rican Congress or anybody else? CT: Puerto Rican Congress -- that was later. JJ: That was later. CT: That’s now. There’s a Puerto Rican Congress now. All right? JJ: But, at that time, it was mainly the Caballeros. 47 �CT: It was Caballeros de San Juan. JJ: The Caballeros de San Juan. CT: There was no Puerto Rican Congress. JJ: So, the first parade was Caballeros de San Juan. CT: Caballeros de San Juan all the way. The Puerto Rican Congress can claim to have been a part of that, and I really can’t say it wasn’t, but I do know who was on the committees and who did the work. I believe that the Puerto Rican Congress came -- JJ: Who was it? CT: Well, it was my dad, my uncles, Calvino. I think Felix Rodríguez. There was a Cuban guy who was -- I mean, the names -- JJ: They were all -- CT: All affiliated -- JJ: -- affiliated. CT: -- with Caballeros de San Juan. Okay? JJ: Because, actually, the date of it was [01:18:00] near San Juan Bautista, right? CT: Always. Always. Okay? It was always in June. JJ: Always in June. CT: Okay? And it’s always been in June, and it’s usually either the Sunday before Father’s Day -- sometimes, it’s fallen on Father’s Day. All right? It’s always in June. All right, so, when we left the North Side, then we moved to the South Side, again, we didn’t have a Spanish Mass. JJ: There was a group that moved at the same time? 48 �CT: Yes. It was Ernito Gómez, Rick’s dad, Don Jesus, my dad. Oh, my gosh. I’m blank right now. Okay? JJ: Okay, but it was like a group of organizers. CT: Yeah. And they moved there, and Visitation Church did not have a Mass for Spanish people. Okay? So, we went from one German church to [01:19:00] an Irish church. Everybody in that neighborhood was white, Irish. Very few Polish. Okay? No Blacks. Okay? ’Cause it was divided again. 63rd Street divided the Black community. 63rd on up and towards the East End was Irish, and Monsignor Wolfe ran the church. All right. So, he really did not want us there. Okay? He did not want us there. And so -- JJ: So you were in the hall there too, or --? CT: No, there was no hall. There was no nothing. Okay? It was a church. Actually, there was two churches. One downstairs and one upstairs. Okay? So, he used to walk on [01:20:00] Sundays. Okay? He’d get in, and he’d walk, during the Mass, talking to people, shaking their hands, but never to the Hispanics. Okay? Which was very funny. I mean, you know. And that showed his prejudice. How we came about it, I don’t know, but there was suddenly a community again, pulled together. We had different priests and whatnot, and the Monsignor eventually died, but we had a Mass downstairs. There was a chapel down there, so that was our Mass. Again, they bought a building in that area, people who connected together with my dad. They bought a building, and it was called -- oh, my gosh. What was that building called? Rick. RT: Which one? 49 �CT: The one [01:21:00] on 55th that they bought, where you played that one time. Oh, my gosh. RT: (inaudible) Puertorriqueña. CT: Oh, okay. La Unión Puertorriqueña. All right? And it had a hall upstairs, and it had a bar, and they used it for weddings. They used it for dances. Ricci played there one time. Okay? JJ: What band? What band was that? CT: He had a group. JJ: Los Riccis. CT: Los Riccis, yeah. RT: No. CT: He had a group. RT: It was The Sunsets. CT: The Sunsets. All right, so, anyway, that was one thing that they did. Eventually, as the years went by, most of the Puerto Ricans started moving further west. Okay? But there was still one group left. JJ: But this group, la Unión Puertorriqueña, what did they do? What kind of activities? CT: Dances, weddings. [01:22:00] They bought this building. It’s not that -- it was called the Puerto Rican -- RT: It’s a fundraiser. JJ: Oh, it’s a fundraiser. 50 �CT: Yeah. They called it the Puerto Rican Union because it was like a big union hall. All right? Then, the main, main thing there was -- well, there was Puerto Ricans all over the place. Eugenio Gómez, okay, was the real estate guy, and he had a store, and he used to sell furniture and whatnot from that store to all the Puerto Ricans. Okay? And he used to sell houses. So, he moved -- he was the one that gathered all these Puerto Ricans into that community. He used to work for Cahill Brothers Realtor. Cahill Brothers Realtor was on Ashland. And then, slowly, the Puerto Ricans move a little bit west of Ashland. Then, they move west of Damen. Then west of Western, and that (break in audio) in the suburbs. It was -- JJ: Is this --? CT: -- a Puerto Rican flight. JJ: [01:23:00] A Puerto Rican flight? CT: That’s exactly what it was on the South Side. JJ: So, why? Why do you call it the Puerto Rican flight? CT: ’Cause that’s how the Puerto Ricans -- I’m not talking about -- when the Puerto Ricans moved to 55th Street, and that’s what it’s called, that whole community, all the Irish picked up and left. JJ: Oh, okay. So, it was an Irish flight. CT: The first flight. After the Irish left, it was a Puerto Rican flight. JJ: Okay. Oh, they followed that. CT: Yeah. JJ: You just took over their neighborhood. 51 �CT: Exactly. So, this is what happened. The Puerto Rican Union no longer existed. They had to get rid of the building because there was not enough Puerto Ricans living in the area to continue with that. So, there was nothing for them. Okay? So, they decided, let’s do another group. We got to do something. Okay? So, they formed this group called Puertorriqueños Unidos de Chicago. [01:24:00] All right? What was their goal? Their goal was to fund scholarship for students. That was it. That was their goal. Whatever activities they did, okay? Funded. The building was owned by Eugenio Gómez, but we had to pay rent, and we had this whole, big, huge office on the South Side because, remember, St. Mike’s moved south. Some of them. JJ: You’re saying a lot of the people -- CT: Mm-hmm. JJ: -- from St. Mike’s moved south. CT: Moved to the South Side. So -- JJ: Because their neighborhood was changing at that time? CT: Yeah. So, anyway. So, here, you have this group of Puerto Ricans, and they had a president. My dad was president. My sister was always the secretary. Okay? And, eventually, [01:25:00] I don’t know how I got on it, and I was a board member, and, at the time, I was working at Curie High School. So, I had kids apply for these scholarships. Okay? And I got Wilfredo Ortiz to be on the board with me, who was -- he worked for the board. He was -- JJ: Board of education? 52 �CT: Mm-hmm. He was a principal at a couple of schools, and, eventually, he became the principal at Curie High School, and then he went on to have the job that Arne Duncan had. What is it? Director of high school development. That was his job. But, anyway. We used to have garage sales. My dad ran the garage sales. Okay? He was out there, selling everything, and everybody was cleaning house and whatnot, [01:26:00] and we did really good. The first year, we gave scholarships -- I think it was to like six kids. All right? And we were dumb because what we did was, without thinking -- “You have a scholarship. Tell us what school you’re going to, and we’ll send the money to the school.” Okay? Then, I said, “Wait a minute.” It just didn’t dawn on me because I had come in new. I didn’t know what they had done. So, the second year, I said, “You know what? That doesn’t work. We’re giving these kids scholarships, and we’re giving it to the university, and then they take away money from them ’cause, if they’re getting 1,200 dollars, they deduct the 250 that we send, and the kid’s not gonna get any more financial aid.” So, we’re helping the schools, not the students. I told them what we should do -- and then we had to vote on this -- is let the kids go to [01:27:00] school. The first semester, they bring back their grades. Okay? We don’t care if they have C’s or D’s ’cause that’s not what the scholarship was for. We just want to know that they’re in school at that they’re gonna continue the second semester, and we give ’em a check. That way, they can buy whatever they want that they need in school, for books, for clothes, if they’re hungry. What do we care? Okay? The kid’s in school. So, that’s how we did it. So, depending on how much money we got and how many kids applied, okay? 53 �First year was 250. The second year, we upped it to 500. I never worked on selecting students. Okay? Because -- even my daughter applied. Anybody could apply, but it was based on what that committee decided. No questions asked. Doors closed. They decided on [01:28:00] the kids’ resumes, on the application. They had to write an essay, “Why Should I Be Given The Scholarship?” And what have you done for the Hispanic community? That was the main thing. Don’t come and apply for a scholarship from the Puerto Ricans if you haven’t done anything, you know? So, it was based on that. Okay? And we didn’t care what school. It could have been a university. It could have been a tech school. Could have been beauty school. We didn’t care what they wanted the scholarship for, but they just had to do the first semester, and then they get the money. Wasn’t like we were giving out thousands of dollars. So, that worked for a long time. And then, eventually, like I said, the exodus took away more people, and it was just too hard to go to the suburbs, and call this one, and call that [01:29:00] one, and -- you know. JJ: The exodus -- now, the Puerto Ricans are going to the suburbs? Is that what you’re saying? CT: The Puerto Ricans have left 55th Street. There are like five families, Puerto Rican families there. The majority are Blacks. Okay? African Americans, and you have a few Mexicans, but they’re dispersed. 35th Street cuts the area up ’cause up to 35th Street is where Daley used to live, so that area is still -Canaryville is still white, Irish. JJ: It’s never changed, that area. 54 �CT: That area has never changed, and then the Chinatown area expanded, so they meet together. All right? But 35th Street cuts off the area. And, of course, Puerto [01:30:00] Ricans left. You know, the Irish took off, and then, as the African American community came -- ’cause we have to speak reality. This is the reality. Okay? They moved west because they were also scared. Okay? This had nothing to do with economics. Okay? It was really racial. JJ: It was racial. CT: So, they took off, and they kept going west, west, further south, Oaklawn. Pretty soon, everybody’s out in -- JJ: And they also -- other neighborhoods. CT: They moved to other neighborhoods. One of the neighborhoods was -- JJ: Other neighborhoods were moving the suburbs too, right? CT: When we -- JJ: Like, the other Puerto Ricans from Lincoln Park were moving to the suburbs too. CT: Exactly. It was city-wide. JJ: So they kind of (inaudible). CT: It was city-wide. The North Side people moved to the suburbs in the north. The Humboldt Park people moved west. Okay? The [01:31:00] South Side moved west and southwest. All right? JJ: So -- CT: It kept moving. Like, right now -- JJ: Oh, people kept moving away from the lake. 55 �CT: Yeah. There is -- okay. The South Side never had a lake. Okay. Now, the Puerto Ricans have moved out. Now, you have Mexicans living where the Puerto Rican lived, okay? And, now, the cut-off line in California. Okay? ’Cause we lived on 63rd and Washtenaw, and we moved, like the rest of everybody -- we also took off to the suburbs. Okay? Everybody had moved on. Okay? JJ: So, why did you move? Was it racial, or --? CT: We moved -- actually, that was one of the things, and it wasn’t just racial because of African Americans. It was also Hispanic, but what we moved for was because, now, they’re standing in the [01:32:00] corner gangs. Okay? And -- JJ: So, it was gangs. CT: Gangs. And then, we had two girls, and my daughter was going to school in Lemont, at Mount Assisi. I was paying for that bus to come pick her up, drop her off, and then I was paying extra for the bus for sports, so we said, “We’re paying all this money. Might as well just move.” JJ: Okay, so it was gangs. It was racial. It was -- CT: It was the school. JJ: The neighborhood was changing. CT: The neighborhood had changed, and the neighborhood suddenly -- it was bad. JJ: It got down. As it was changing, it got down. CT: Not that it got down. JJ: (inaudible) depressed. CT: You actually had drug dealers on the corners. You had gangbangers. JJ: But that’s what I mean, got depressed. 56 �CT: And then, the Mexican gangs would fight with the African American gangs, and it was just -- you know, we moved. We moved for a lot of reasons. JJ: It was not what it was when you first got there. CT: No. No. When we first got to that area, [01:33:00] Ricci and I, it was all Irish. It was Marquette Park. All right. My dad never moved from 55th and Peoria. The house is still there. My mom is living there now as a widow, and she lives there with three of my brothers. One never left home. Two came back after their divorce. And, basically, they’re there, but there is nothing there anymore for Puerto Ricans, just like, after we moved, there was not too much activity at St. Mike’s. JJ: Okay. And then, so, after that, you made a move back to Puerto Rico. How does it go? How does that go? CT: Myself? No, I got -- JJ: You moved back to -- CT: Okay. After we moved to 63rd -- I mean to 55th and Peoria, I went to college. [01:34:00] Okay? I went in Evanston to Kendall College for two years, and I lived there. JJ: Kendall? CT: Kendall. JJ: Okay. Was that an art --? CT: It was a junior college. JJ: Was it an art school or no? 57 �CT: No. This was just a two-year junior college, and I got a scholarship there. I didn’t have to pay anything. Then, I went to Loyola University ’cause I graduated from junior college, and I used to commute. JJ: So, you had your bachelor’s (inaudible). CT: I got my bachelor’s in science and in education. JJ: In Loyola, and then you -- CT: At Loyola. JJ: Where did you get your master’s? CT: I got two master’s. I have two master’s, one in counseling and one in supervision and administration at Chicago State. JJ: Chicago State, okay. CT: And I got my first master’s -- I started it 20 years after I had been a teacher, after I had [01:35:00] graduated, and I went to a program. Again, I went to a program for bilingual teachers. Okay? That’s how it started, but not enough applied. Okay? So, it was open to everybody, but it originally was conceived to be a program for bilingual teachers, and there was a huge, big group. Okay? And we all graduated, and we all made it as counselors, and we all worked as counselors, and some moved up to be teachers. And then, Ricci and I, we moved to Lemont. First, we lived on 27th and Keeler. From there, we moved to St. [01:36:00] Rita’s. We left St. Rita’s Parish, and I was really involved in there. I was on the school board. JJ: At St. Rita’s? CT: Mm-hmm. I used to do the cheerleading for the grammar school girls. 58 �JJ: Did you do the training (inaudible)? CT: Everything. I had somebody help me, Olga. She was in high school. She had been a cheerleader, and she taught the girls the cheers and everything. I supervised them. I made sure they had drinks. I made sure they had snacks. The same thing my dad did. Then, I started doing it with my kids. Okay? I used to read in the church. My son was an altar boy. JJ: Okay, so you read in the Mass. CT: Mm-hmm. Everything my dad did, I try to do. Okay? We moved from there, and then that’s when I didn’t get involved in anything but the United Puerto Ricans when I lived in Lemont. And [01:37:00] then, when I -- JJ: So, you had the United Puerto Ricans there too, or (inaudible)? CT: No. Lemont was all white. JJ: You were traveling. CT: We used to come to the city -- JJ: To the Visitation, to the United Puerto Ricans. That area. CT: Yeah, but that was for meetings and whatnot, to Marquette Park. JJ: Right, Marquette Park. CT: All right. So, then, what I did do, though, was I got this job, an extra job, okay? From the Chicago Public Schools, okay? I became a service learning coach, and that’s when you do work, volunteer work. Students have to have 40 hours of volunteer work, so I had all these Hispanic students. Now, I’m working with the students. And so, we went back to Humboldt Park. We went to Casa Central. [01:38:00] Okay? And I had these students visit with the people there, and it was 59 �just wonderful. The kids all wanted to come back, so I kept sending kids to do volunteer work there. But, lo and behold, why do I know a whole bunch of people there that used to live in our community? JJ: In Lincoln Park. CT: They were all at Casa Central. Okay? JJ: So, they were residents of Casa Central. CT: Yes. JJ: They lived in Lincoln Park. CT: They had lived there. Okay? I mean, they no longer lived there, okay? We did that, and we did a whole bunch of work with a lot of the Hispanic community. So, like I started to say, from my dad working with the community, that went down to myself, and my daughter did a lot of work. She [01:39:00] joined a Hispanic sorority. She joined the Sigma Lambda Gammas. JJ: This is -- CT: The Gammas. Mary Lou. JJ: Okay. Is that your only daughter, or --? CT: No. I had two daughters. One passed away in a motorcycle accident three years ago. She was 25. JJ: What was her name? CT: Her name was Cristina. JJ: Cristina. CT: Cristina used to pick up strays everywhere and bring ’em to me to fix. When I mean that, I mean, you know, she was at the same school I was in, and girls who 60 �had problems, or found out they were pregnant, or whatever the problem was, I don’t know how, but she collected them all up, and I had all this work ’cause everyone would be -- they had other counselors, but they would come to me because of Cristina. So, Cristina was a lot like my dad. She would help everybody, even if she didn’t know them. “Oh, you need some help? Oh, okay. Come on.” A lot of times, she’d bring these kids who had run away from [01:40:00] home to sleep in my house. I go, “No. It doesn’t work that way. Who are their parents? Give me the phone.” So, it was really -- they learned. I think everybody in our family, from my dad, learned to be generous, to help others, to do some volunteer work, to give, so we’ve all done that, and my dad’s shoes, like the song goes, are very hard to fit. He was a great, great person. Wonderful. So much so that, when he passed away, he has been the only layperson -- and by lay, nonreligious -- that had a wake inside the church because we couldn’t accommodate the people that came to my dad’s wake. Okay? The coffin was put [01:41:00] in the middle, up by the altar. That whole church was filled. My brothers worked for CTA. There was a CTA bus with all CTA people, dressed in their uniform, conductors, bus drivers, whatever, that came to pay their respects because I have two, three, four brothers that work for CTA, and my niece and my nephew. Okay? So, how do you say? It was just -- the only layperson to have used that church. Okay? We’re very fortunate that everybody in the family, whether they went to college or not, and extended family members of my in-laws all have -- somehow, they all managed to get [01:42:00] city jobs, you know, as policemen, as CTA. 61 �JJ: These are your brothers or --? CT: My brothers, my -- JJ: So, you have some brothers that are policemen, or --? CT: No. I’m saying in my in-laws’ family. Okay? I have cousins who are policemen. Like I said, one of my cousins is a judge. Others work for the gas company. I’m not saying they have great jobs, but everyone has a profession. Okay? In my family. JJ: Now, does this have to do with your dad’s organizing? CT: With my dad. There was no such thing as “I’m not going to school.” You had to go to school. Okay? And we lived up north, in St. Michael’s. We were the only Hispanic family that had a set of encyclopedia. Everybody came to copy something for homework from our set [01:43:00] of encyclopedias. When we moved south, my mom bought another -- ’cause that one was outdated, and it wasn’t enough information. We got another set of encyclopedias, and these were the big kind, not the little, skinny kinds. You know, they go through different stages. She also got a set of books that were body -- medical. Okay? Huge, big Bible ’cause you had to have a Bible, and you had to do homework. You came from school. First thing you did when you walked through the door -- “Hi, Mom, blah, blah, blah.” Go down, and change your uniform, and put on your play clothes ’cause we were 11. We didn’t have the money to be buying -- you know, and you had to make sure you didn’t dirty that shirt because you only had one more shirt. Two shirts in a week. Okay? ’Cause you would wear it two days, put on the other one, [01:44:00] and then the other one would be washed. And you 62 �had to sit down and do your homework. You had to graduate from school. Okay? My dad never went to high school. My mother did. My stepmom graduated in Jayuya. JJ: In Jayuya? CT: There’s a big thing in our family. JJ: She graduated in Jayuya? CT: Yeah, and she still has her class ring. JJ: I didn’t know she was from Jayuya. CT: Yes, she is from Jayuya. And she has -- JJ: ’Cause I thought she was from Isabela. CT: No, that was my real mom. My stepmother’s from Jayuya. Luz María’s from Jayuya. She has her class ring, and, nowadays, there’s a thing that the ring companies do. They come to the high school, and they say, “Whoever can bring the oldest class ring gets a free ring.” All right? So, my mom’s class ring has traveled (inaudible) Arizona, to [01:45:00] Chicago, back and forth ’cause everybody wants a free ring ’cause now they’re, like, 500, 600 dollars for a ring, so -- JJ: (inaudible). CT: So, everybody’s borrowed her ring. Okay? And, you know, it’s funny because we go to her house, and, whatever we want -- ’cause my dad’s passed. She’s 82. If you want something, you have to put your name on it because, at the time, whoever comes -- like I said, there’s 11 of us. And my family has dispersed also. 63 �From Chicago, they’ve moved on to Arizona. I have two brothers in Arizona, three sisters, and their children live there. JJ: What kind of work do they do? CT: My sister-in-law works for Allstate. JJ: Allstate, okay. CT: And my brother works for the [01:46:00] energy company in Arizona. One sister works for a health company, Magellan, and my other sister works for a bank, and -- JJ: You mentioned Mary Lou. We didn’t mention her name. CT: Oh. My daughter, Mary Lou? Okay. Cristina passed away. My daughter Mary Lou is a nurse in Joliet at St. Joe’s Provena. She went to Illinois State and graduated in criminal justice, and she was working for a nonprofit organization, Cornerstone, ’cause Cristina and Mary Lou both worked for cornerstone, and, somehow, she was working with disabled people and giving them -- making sure they took their medicine and everything, and she said, “Why should I do this? I have a college degree. I could be a nurse.” And she went back and became a nurse. [01:47:00] So, she’s a registered nurse, and she’s got a very good job, and she was just here. She just left. I have a granddaughter who’s gorgeous. Just gorgeous. And my son and my granddaughter came in January, and they stayed here for 10 days, and it was just nice playing Grandma. I had a grandson, and he passed away in Chicago. He was five years old, my son’s oldest son. And, basically, that’s it. And one of the things too is -- like, when I came here, I joined an organization here for the -- we have, like, a center. Unfortunately, I got 64 �sick, and I couldn’t continue to work, but I did do a lot of work with them the first year that [01:48:00] we got in this organization, and -- very different. Things here are different from over there, but you have to continue, and -JJ: How different? What do you mean? What way? CT: All right. If you’re used to Robert’s Rules -- JJ: Rules of Order. CT: Okay? And you come here, they don’t follow them. It’s whatever anybody says. You have to have been born and raised here to understand some of the cultural things. Even though you’re Puerto Rican, they’re different here. Everything’s different here. When I first came here, I didn’t even know what a (Spanish) [01:48:44] was. I thought that was a credit card, and it was just an ATM. The words, the language, the customs. Everything is different here, but you [01:49:00] just have to get used to it and adapt to it, and you have to remember, you know, you were raised to be a Puerto Rican, and that’s one thing that everybody in our family has instilled. My dad instilled it in us. No matter where you go, you say you’re Puerto Rican, and you hold your head up. Okay? I told my kids the same thing. “When they ask you what you are, say, ’I’m Puerto Rican.’” JJ: So, he’s working with the church, but he’s also working for Puerto Ricans. CT: Okay. You have to understand, being Puerto Rican and being Catholic were one thing. Okay? It was never anything different for those of us who were Catholic. First, you were Catholic. Then you were Puerto Rican. But, when you got to Chicago and you were in the community that had all these organizations, you 65 �[01:50:00] couldn’t separate anything. You could separate it if you lived and you had nothing to do with the community, and many Puerto Ricans didn’t want to have anything to do. Many Puerto Ricans wanted to be -- how do you say? “Don’t recognize me. Therefore, I won’t have any problems.” Okay? “I’m not going to stand up and say I’m Puerto Rican because --” JJ: That’d give you problems. CT: Right. And that was the other thing too. As you left -- and, again, I’m not saying that I experienced prejudice because I was Puerto Rican, but, yes, I felt some differences. In other words, when I got my scholarship -- “Oh, you got a scholarship ’cause you’re Puerto Rican.” No. I didn’t get a scholarship because I was Puerto Rican. I got a scholarship ’cause I had brains. I had the same GPA you did, and it had nothing to do with being Puerto Rican, but you had more [01:51:00] advantages than I did, but I still got the same GPA as you did. I had to work harder for it. All right? I didn’t graduate from Loyola, and I wasn’t just given a degree. When I went and I got my job, everybody -- my first job teaching, I worked at Mozart School. It’s on Armitage, between Armitage and -- I don’t know. Armitage is the big street -- or Fullerton. No, Armitage and Fullerton. Okay? So, I got my first job there because they needed a bilingual teacher -there was a bilingual program -- and I went for my interview, and the person who interviewed me was going to be my principal, but he just happened to be working that summer, hiring. And so, the minute I mentioned I was Puerto Rican and [01:52:00] everything, he says, “You know, I taught in Puerto Rico.” I go, “What do you mean, you taught in Puerto Rico?” He says, “Yeah.” During the ’50s, he 66 �had come to Puerto Rico, and he had taught English. Okay? He spoke Spanish. So, he says, “Oh, how would you like to work for me at my school? I need a teacher for second grade.” I said, “Great.” So, I was hired, and a lot of people resented the fact that there were bilingual teachers in the system because they didn’t want the bilingual program. There was a big controversy, again, dealing with the communities. Okay? Some people used to say that, “Oh, you take all these Puerto Rican and Mexican students, and you put ’em in the classroom, and you teach ’em Spanish, and then they don’t learn English as quickly, [01:53:00] so they’re behind.” So, there were people who were against the program, and there were people who were for the program. I was neither for or against. I had a totally different philosophy, and, ’til this day, I have it. I do not feel that children should be put in a group and be separated because they are Hispanic, and I’m just gonna teach them Spanish, and they can pick up the English as you go along, and I’m not gonna put them in an all-English classroom. I believe that immersion is the best way to teach someone. You can have a teacher who’s bilingual to get them along, but you immerse them. You immerse the students who live over there into English and Spanish. You immerse the students who live here in English because [01:54:00] they’re gonna have to learn English. Okay? I don’t know if you know that a lot of our students who graduate from high school here go to the mainland for college. JJ: I didn’t know that. CT: Oh, yeah. I have two cousins who went to Purdue from here. One went to Yale from here, and one graduated from here, okay? College, and went to 67 �Georgetown University to become a dentist. She’s a -- what do you call it? One of those that puts -- an orthodontist. So, you need to learn English, but I feel that, in Chicago, when I first started and I got my job, people said, “Oh, you got your job because you’re Hispanic.” No. I didn’t get a job because of that. I got a job because I deserved it. I graduated from school because I worked. Okay? Not because they gave me something [01:55:00] because I was Hispanic, because, at that time was when -- what is it that they call -- I forget the name -where they wanted more -JJ: Yeah, I know what -- it’s quotas. CT: The quota. JJ: The quota system, yeah. CT: I didn’t get a job because of that, and I have to remind everybody, and I always said, “I’m Puerto Rican.” And then, if they ask you -- you’re white or you’re Black, you know, what does that have to do with anything? And the other thing is that we were labeled. When you went to school, are you Black, or are you white? My daughter felt a lot of -- both of them -- a lot of prejudice in Lemont. My youngest daughter was told, “Oh, you’re Black. Go back to Africa.” And she came home crying. I told her, [01:56:00] “Hold your head up high and say you’re Puerto Rican, and so what?” Well, she did, and she became a very good softball player, so she was on the private team in Lemont, and, when they traveled, she was also dark, you know. They’d go to the pool, and, two minutes later, they’re tanned, and, “Oh, you’re Black.” “No, I’m Puerto Rican.” So, yeah. There was a lot of discrimination, and the thing was, if you didn’t look for it and you looked to 68 �say, “I’m better,” you didn’t feel it. Very few times did I feel that I was being discriminated against in that area. In other areas, yes, but, in that Lincoln Park area, I never really felt discrimination, and I don’t know if it was because of our family [01:57:00] lifestyle, okay? And you have to look. I mean, to tell you the truth, we didn’t hang out. Okay? We were home every day, did our homework. We prayed the rosary. We never, ever -JJ: You prayed the rosary at nighttime. CT: Every night, we all had to pray the rosary. JJ: So, you did your homework, and then you prayed the rosary, or -- (inaudible)? CT: We did our homework. We had dinner. We took a shower, and, before bed, all 11 kids, on their knees with dad. JJ: He led the rosary? CT: Mm-hmm, and we prayed. We went to church every single day. Every single day, and, on Saturdays that you didn’t go to school ’cause you always started school with the Mass and then you went to the classroom, then, on Saturdays, go to church. You have to go to church. On Sundays, we went to church. JJ: And, in fact, they used to have a lot of (Spanish) [01:57:55] in the neighborhood, and they had (Spanish) [01:57:58] and all kind [01:58:00] of other activities. CT: During the Christmas season, they had parrandas. Everybody went. You gather at somebody’s house. It’s known as Christmas caroling in English, but it’s parranda to us in Spanish, and everybody -- the guys who had a guitar or a cuatro and the singer. And then, everybody went, and you went from house to house in the cold at two o’clock in the morning. You’d knock on their door, and 69 �you start playing, and, if you’re the homeowner -- everybody always got ready, and this was the thing. “(Spanish) [01:58:31].” You know? “They’re gonna bring me a parranda. So, you bought the cheese, the crackers. You always had a chicken in your freezer ’cause, if they came, you chopped it up, and you made the caldo, the big soup, and, oh, my God, that was fun. That was so much fun, but, yeah, you did that. People died, and you prayed in their home every single day for nine days. JJ: The novena. CT: The novenas. Okay? JJ: And you pray the rosary too, right? CT: You prayed the rosary [01:59:00] then, and you prayed it fast because, as soon as the rosary was over, you could have your beer, or you could drink, or you could have coffee, and you can gossip. Okay? That’s -- JJ: The tradition. CT: -- the tradition. Okay? Over there, you wake people in a funeral home. Here, to this day, you can wake people in your own house. Okay? And, again -- JJ: So, they bring the casket into the -- CT: The funeral home comes. Let’s assume that we were gonna wake somebody here. You take out your furniture from the living room. They make it look like a room in a -- JJ: Funeral. CT: -- funeral home, and you have the casket, and people come all day long, all night long. You have it for one day ’cause people here are buried right away. You 70 �don’t wait a week to bury somebody. Okay? They died today. You wake ’em tomorrow. You bury them the next [02:00:00] day, or you cremate them, whatever your choice is. But, yeah, and, in Chicago, you went to the people’s houses. You prayed the rosary, and, again, you see what -- we come back to what? We come back to the church. Okay? Midnight Mass. Every Puerto Rican went to midnight Mass, and then you came home, and you opened up gifts. Okay? But, before that, you had your party. You had your lechón, and you had -- I mean, as a kid, I remember my dad going to Indiana and having these lechones killed, these big pigs, and you would bring them home, and everybody - cook (phone rings) ’em, and everybody had a piece, you know? Rick, phone. So, in reality, everything, again, dealt around the church. You’re born. You’re baptized, [02:01:00] and you had to be baptized right away, and it was a big party. Anyway, so, what else? The weddings. Okay. You know how they say weddings and funerals are where you see everybody? The reality is true. In Chicago, it was a big wedding, and you didn’t have, at the beginning, weddings in halls, where you sat down and you had a banquet. It was just a big hall, and you had the rice and beans, and help yourself, and the music, whoever you knew come and play. Again, was a religious thing. Everything. JJ: And all this was going on in Lincoln Park. CT: Yeah. Well, that’s what I’m saying, that, over there, you know, at the sodality hall, you had a wedding, and people cooked. The same people in the neighborhood. JJ: Or baptisms or -- 71 �CT: A baptism too. And, again, totally different, [02:02:00] and anybody else’s wedding. We have the nine rosaries, and everybody drinks and parties. The Irish, they bury somebody, and then they have a drinking party. You know? We’re no different. Our customs are different, but, again, no different than anybody else, and Lincoln Park, as any other community in Chicago of Puerto Ricans, dealt with -- the main thing was the church. Everything from the church came out. The church is the center, and then you have your little branches, but that’s how it was. Eventually, that has changed. Okay? And I think, like any other community, you didn’t need the church as much now because, now, you learn how to do this. Now, you can do that. [02:03:00] Now, you moved away. In the suburbs, okay? There are no Puerto Rican churches, Irish churches. You know what I’m saying? Because it’s open land and there’s one subdivision here, another subdivision there. There are no churches that really hold -- there’s no Puerto Rican subdivision in the suburbs. Okay? So, everybody’s all mixed up. And so, that’s why very few -- you can go -- JJ: So, everybody’s mixed up. At that time, they were more segregated. CT: Segregated. Now, you go to North Avenue and Ashland. No longer Puerto Rican. Now, it’s Mexican. They have moved from Pilsen and 18th Street, and they have taken over -- JJ: (inaudible) -- oh, North and Ashland? CT: Yeah. JJ: All that is -- Wicker [02:04:00] Park has changed now. It’s more (inaudible). 72 �CT: There are no Puerto Ricans in Wicker Park. Okay? And the ones that are, you can’t tell they’re Puerto Rican. Okay? Because they’re either second generation, third gen -- whatever. Okay? And they’ve assimilated totally. Okay? Like I said, there was a flight of Puerto Ricans from Chicago. A big flight. It’s mostly Mexican where we used to be. They have taken over, and, at one time, (inaudible) the yuppies took over Humboldt Park. It’s changed. There’s only one Puerto Rican store that I can tell you that I know of from way back that hasn’t left. JJ: Which one is that one? CT: [02:05:00] That’s the one on Central Park and Division. JJ: Central Park and Division? CT: Mm-hmm. JJ: What’s the name? CT: I don’t know the name of it. JJ: But it’s right on the corner of Central Park and Division. CT: Division, Chicago Avenue, where they -- you know. JJ: Where they meet? CT: That store there has not changed. You can still go buy platanos. At Christmastime, they take the meat, and they grind it so that you can make your pasteles. They have everything there, but that’s the only one that I know of. And then, again, I left six years ago, so -- but, when we go back, that’s where we go and shop for Puerto Rican items. So -- JJ: Any final thoughts? 73 �CT: Yeah. There’s one. Okay. I wish that and I hope that our culture continues to grow in Chicago. I wouldn’t want [02:06:00] it to -- how do you say? There be no Puerto Rican culture here. I believe that that’s what’s gonna happen. There’ll be nothing left there. Somewhere else, you know. So, I hope that the Puerto Ricans who are still left there continue to do Puerto Rican Parade, to do things to foster our culture, and I wouldn’t want it to disappear totally. END OF AUDIO FILE 74 � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/2426f012b7793a6ae290977b29008f47.mp4 416cf80c9faff362efa3fa101080f467 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 Trinidad 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_Trinidad_Carmen Title A name given to the resource Carmen Trinidad video interview and transcript Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Trinidad, Carmen Description An account of the resource Carmen Trinidad’s family arrived in Lincoln Park in the 1950s. She was one of only a few Puerto Rican families to attend St. Michael’s Church in those days, although the neighborhood had already become heavily Puerto Rican. She recalls her father’s, Cesario Rivera’s, work as a leader of Council Number Three of the Caballeros de San Juan at St. Michael’s. She also remembers the way that organizations like the Caballeros de San Juan and Damas de María started and sustained softball leagues, picnics, social dances and dinners, retreats, plays, parades, festivals, and the establishment of a credit that still exists to this day. 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 2012-05-17 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/0527a8a8c990dcd9e0cedc0c864e02bc.pdf 4c68b025e9205ede9433992bbe1d9b07 PDF Text Text Young Lords In Lincoln Park Interviewee: Carol Blakely Interviewer: Jose Jimenez Location: Grand Valley State University Special Collections Date: 10/19/2012 Runtime: 01:53:23 Biography and Description Oral history of Carol Blakely, interviewed by Jose “Cha-Cha” Jimenez on October 19, 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 JOSE JIMENEZ: Testing one, two, three. Testing one, two, three. Go ahead and say something. CAROL CORONADO: Hello. How are you? (break in audio) JJ: Okay. Go ahead and say something. CC: Hello. How are you? JJ: Testing one, two, three. Testing one, two, three. (break in audio) Okay, now Carol, give me your name and where you were born. CC: Okay. My name is Carol [Coronado?]. I was born in Chicago, Illinois on March 11, 1942. I lived in Lake View. JJ: When you were born? CC: When I was born, we lived in Lake View which is right at Roscoe and Broadway. JJ: Okay. Right around Roscoe and Broadway, that area? CC: Right. JJ: Okay, and your parents. What were their names? CC: My mother’s name was [Evelyn?] and my father’s name was [Ross?]. I have one sister who’s older. Her name is [Patricia?]. I have a brother who’s 20 [00:01:00] months younger. His name is [Ross, Jr.?]. JJ: Okay. And did you had a sister and a brother you said so they are... Where are your parents from? 1 �CC: Okay. My father was born in McKeesport, Pennsylvania which is right near Pittsburgh. My mother was born in Chicago on the South Side. I’m not exactly sure where but it was on the South Side. JJ: What type of work did they do? CC: Pardon me? JJ: What type of work did they do? CC: Okay. My father was a produce manager for A&P and my mother was a cashier and bookkeeper for A&P, also. JJ: Okay. So they did that for most of their life or...? CC: Yes, yes. JJ: And what about your sisters and brother -- brother and sister? CC: My sister got married and had four children. My brother, he worked at a printing company in, oh, McHenry, Illinois and he just retired from there. And me, I’ve had several jobs. (laughs) [00:02:00] I worked in the bank in the accounting department. I worked for ACNielsen as a comptometer operator. I was an AT&T telephone operator for a while. For the last 30 years, I’ve been a security guard with Securitas. I was 12 years at Bell Laboratories in Naperville and 18 years at General Mills in West Chicago. Right now, I just work three days a week at a gated community in Plainfield on a public golf course. I have a gate house and I let people into play golf. Yeah. JJ: Now you said you were born at Lake View. CC: Lake View. JJ: Did you grow up there, too, or...? 2 �CC: Yes, I grew up there. I went to Nettlehorst Grammar School and Lake View High School. JJ: Oh, you went to Lake View High School. CC: Lake View High School. JJ: Nettlehorst Grammar School, where is that? CC: That’s at Broadway [00:03:00] and Aldine. And then Lake View was Irving Park and Ashland. JJ: What was that like? What was Nettlehorst like? CC: Nettlehorst? It was -- JJ: Now, did you go to eighth grade? CC: Through eighth grade and I graduated. JJ: So can you kind of describe that for us? The community and how...? CC: The community was -- all right. I lived a block off Lake Shore Drive, all right? So if you lived on this side of Broadway, you were working-class people. This side of Broadway, it was very rich people. JJ: So the west side of Broadway was working class? CC: Was working class, yeah. JJ: And the east side was rich people? CC: Was very -- yeah, very rich people. (laughs) JJ: And did people talk about that, or...? CC: Yes and no. When I went to school, mostly the kids that went there were Jewish. There were only -- like in a class of, say, 30, there were 11 [00:04:00] of us that were Protestant or Catholic. 3 �JJ: Mm-hmm. So you’re a Protestant? CC: I’m Protestant –- a Presbyterian. JJ: Oh, Presbyterian. CC: Yeah. And so -- JJ: Your parents, too? Your parents? CC: But we kind of like -- yes, my -- oh, see, that’s the thing. My father was Irish Catholic. My mother was Lutheran. We were baptized Presbyterian because my aunt, my uncle’s wife, was in charge of the cradle roll at (inaudible) Presbyterian Church and so we were baptized Presbyterian. We had kind of a strange family. (laughs) JJ: So what -- wasn’t that [Angris?]? What years are we --talking about (crosstalk) -- CC: That was from 1942 till I’d say ’54, I would say. JJ: So from 1932 -- CC: Forty-two. JJ: Forty-two. CC: (laughs) JJ: Sorry, oh I’m sorry. Nineteen forty-two to -- CC: Say, ’54. JJ: [00:05:00] –- to ’54. You’re talking about –- that’s the eighth grade? The first eighth grade? CC: Oh, no. Oh, the eighth grade. I started school when I was six so I went from ’48 to ’56. Nineteen forty-eight to 1956. To Nettlehorst, yeah. 4 �JJ: And then what type of neighborhood? What was the population? And what type of neighborhood? CC: And then I graduated. Okay. It was mainly white working-class. There were no Blacks in the neighborhood. We had -- like I said, it was an all-white neighborhood. JJ: You’re talking about all of Lake View or just that area? CC: That area that I was from. Yeah. JJ: Yeah. Was it all white? CC: All white. Yeah. JJ: Was it ethnic whites? I mean, were they like Irish, Italian? CC: Irish, Italian, German. Yeah. Jewish. Uh, yeah. And then in the ‘50s -- oh, I’m trying to think. In 19-- I would say ‘54 or something, we had a lot of Puerto Ricans come [00:06:00] to the neighborhood. So the neighborhood changed; We had a lot of Puerto Ricans there. JJ: Okay. So 1954, around there? CC: About ’54. Yeah. Because I was about 12, 13. Yeah. JJ: And so what happened when the Puerto Ricans came? How did you feel? CC: Oh. We had a good time, you know? And there were -- (laughs) as a young woman, there were some really good-looking guys. So we were happy (laughs) they were in the neighborhood. I don’t know if you want me to say that, but that’s -- yeah. Yeah, and we -- JJ: So you didn’t have any problem with them. CC: No. 5 �JJ: What about the guys? That’s the girls, but what about the guys? CC: The guys got along fine and they integrated with us. We all got along. I can’t remember any problems with, you know, every –- JJ: Is Aldine -- is that like around Halsted or Addison? CC: No. Aldine is -- okay. You know where Belmont is? JJ: Right. Oh, yeah. CC: All right. Aldine is two blocks north of Belmont so I lived in between [00:07:00] Addison and Belmont on Roscoe Street. JJ: Oh, that’s Roscoe. Roscoe runs the same way. Does it go by [Halsted?]? CC: Roscoe runs east and west. JJ: Does it go...? Oh. CC: And it ended at -- okay. JJ: And Aldine goes north and south. CC: I lived on Broadway. At the end of the street if you walked down to the next street, that was Halsted Street. Yeah, that was Halstead Street. And then Clark Street came also a little farther up. So -- JJ: Okay. So this area [ancestry?] is Puerto Rican and you didn’t have any problem? CC: No problems or anything. No problems. JJ: (crosstalk) the schools? CC: They went to school, yeah. And they hung -- we hung around together and stuff. JJ: Now, when you say it was turning Puerto Rican, was it a lot of Puerto Ricans? CC: Yeah, several -- a whole lot of Puerto Ricans. You probably could tell me more of the history of Puerto Rico. But that’s when the Puerto Rican community started 6 �coming into our neighborhood. Yeah. And I said we had no -- I mean, they lived across the street from me and stuff. And I get -JJ: [00:08:00] Your background is part Irish? CC: I’m Irish, German, Norwegian. I am Irish. My maiden name was [Curley?]. That’s about as Irish as you can get, so yeah. JJ: All right. Okay. So you were Irish. And so what was it like for a woman to grow up? A girl to grow up at that time? Did you stay at home or like (crosstalk) –- CC: Well, no, I hung out. We all hung out on the streets and stuff. And we played marbles (laughs) and -- JJ: Oh, you played marbles? CC: Marbles and pinners, a game called pinners. And I played baseball because I was a bit of a tomboy. So I climbed fences and my mother used to get really upset because I would rip out my blue jeans and stuff. Yeah, so -- but no, we -everybody -- you knew everybody. You knew your neighbors. Like today, it’s not like that [00:09:00] I don’t think. I don’t know the people that live here on this side of me because they’re new, okay? And I did know the people who lived in this house next to me when we first moved here. However, everybody knew everybody’s business and all the kids, you know what I’m saying? We all hung out together. But I wouldn’t call us a -- we never got into any kind of trouble trouble. We just all played until we got to be teenagers. Then we started to get into like drinking and stuff. Doing things. Doing things we shouldn’t have done. JJ: Drinking and was that all, or...? 7 �CC: No, drinking and some of us, not myself personally, (laughs) but stealing cars and stuff like that. Yeah. JJ: Oh, I see. Joy riding. Were you -- CC: Joy riding, yeah. JJ: So there was joy riding and -- CC: [00:10:00] Right. JJ: -- at the time. What year was that? CC: That was like 1956. Yeah, ’56, ’57. Yeah. And we -- JJ: Okay. Was there -- CC: And we -- JJ: Oh, I’m sorry, go ahead. CC: Oh, no. Go ahead. Also, we -- then we started forming gangs and we would fight with peop-- (laughs) We found with Lemoyne School which was over there -Addison and Southport I believe is what it -- yeah. They didn’t come into our school year -- JJ: Oh, you mean by Halstead, no? By –- CC: Yeah. Right across from Cubs Park. Yeah. JJ: Right around the corner. Yeah. CC: But they were not allowed in our neighborhood and we didn’t go in theirs. JJ: So it was a school? CC: Yeah. JJ: It was one school against the other or what gang? What was the name of it? 8 �CC: It was the gang -- we didn’t have a name. Well, we did. The Customettes. It was called the Customettes. And the guys were called -- I can’t remember. I think somewhere around [00:11:00] this house, I have a leather jacket that has –that says Customettes on the back of it. Yeah. JJ: Oh, and that’s the woman’s group. CC: That was the women’s. JJ: So it must’ve been the Customs or something. CC: No, I can’t remember what they were called. Plus we also had in our neighborhood the -- JJ: Was it mainly...? Oh. CC: -- not the Hell’s Angels. It was a motorcycle, the Chicago Outlaws. Yeah. I got involved with them a little -- when I was little like maybe 15 and stuff. That was a motorcycle gang. JJ: So what did the Customettes do mainly? CC: Just run around with the guys. Hung around with the guys (laughs) and wear jackets. But we would get in fights. I mean, fist fights and stuff. JJ: Other women or...? CC: Women and guys. You know. Some of the women, (laughs) they could fight just as good as a guy. I mean I was [00:12:00] one of those people. Yeah. But yeah, they would come in the school yard and then it would start and then the police would get us. They would surround us. They’d come from -- one from this way and another and get us and stuff. But and then take us down to Town Hall police station where my father would have to come get us. 9 �JJ: And what would your father say? CC: He was very upset. (laughs) He was very upset. But we never did anything that got us -- though some did wind up at the Audy Home. Are you familiar with the Audy Home or...? JJ: Yeah, a little bit. CC: Or a couple of people got sent to St. Charles reform school. Yeah. JJ: These are the guys or the girls? Or the guys (crosstalk) -- CC: It was the guys. The guys and (crosstalk) some of the girls went -- I can’t remember the name [00:13:00] of the -- they’re -- okay. In Geneva, there was a woman’s and I can’t remember the name of that. JJ: Yeah, but it was in Geneva. It was (inaudible). CC: Yeah, it was in Geneva. And the boys they sent to St. Charles which was -yeah, St. Charles reform school for boys. JJ: Yeah. Was this mainly in the -- was there a lot of Puerto Ricans in your group? In this gang? Or was it mainly Irish and German? CC: We had some Puerto Ricans. It was a mixture; We had a mixture of people. We had one called [Louis Anderson?] -- he was Black. See, the Louis was the only Black person that lived in the neighborhood that I remember when I was young and he ran around with us. Yes, we had Puerto Ricans and we had -- JJ: But the people in the Lemoyne were fighting with you here. CC: They were white; mostly white. JJ: At Lemoyne? CC: Yeah. At Lemoyne, they were white. 10 �JJ: Oh. Because later, I think they had like (crosstalk) Latin -- CC: Yeah. Later, it’s all -- there’s a lot of Latins over there now, but not at that -- JJ: [00:14:00] But at that time, in ’54, it was white. CC: Yeah. Yeah. There wasn’t many. JJ: Nettlehorst and then -- CC: Lake View High School. JJ: This is Lake View High School. Okay. CC: Yeah. Now, when I got to Lake View High School, I became kind of a lady because I was getting older. So I didn’t get so much into things that were -- JJ: So when you say you were fighting in these little skirmishes -- CC: In the school yard. In the school yard. JJ: This was Lake View. You were in Lake View already. CC: No, I was at Nettlehorst. JJ: At Nettlehorst. CC: Yeah, yeah. JJ: And now you went to Lake View High School? CC: And then I went to Lake View High School and we got into -- like dating and all the stuff and I started smoking. JJ: What do you mean dating? Going out with a guy? CC: You know, guys. Going out with guys and stuff. JJ: Yeah, no, no. So the girls would -- CC: Dates and -- JJ: So a lot of dates or...? 11 �CC: Yeah, yeah. [00:15:00] And but drinking. But we also did a lot of drinking. There was a lot of drinking. JJ: So did you guys hang out on a street corner? CC: On a street corner, on a street corner. JJ: What corner was that? What corner was that? CC: At one point, it was Roscoe and Broadway. JJ: You were at Roscoe and Broadway? CC: Right, Roscoe and Broadway and the police used to come. If they said we couldn’t congregate so they would split us up and we would have to go farther down the street. But they didn’t want us there. JJ: Yeah. So the police would just come by and tell you to move? CC: Yeah, tell us to move to disassemble. (laughter) Because they feared if there were more than three of us at one time, we were going to be doing something that we weren’t supposed to do. But plus the Chicago Outlaws and there were another [00:16:00] group -- gosh, oh I can’t remember the (laughs) name of that group. It was a motorcycle gang. The girls were called the [Sabers?]. I wasn’t in that gang, but that’s who hung out. The Sabers and the -- the (inaudible)... But they really were after them. There was a lot of police after them. But they had guns and stuff. (inaudible) guns and stuff. JJ: Oh, they had guns. Were they into drugs, too, or...? CC: Drugs, yeah. JJ: Oh, so that’s why they were [after them?]. 12 �CC: I drank, but I was always a little leery of drugs though I did have friends that did drugs and stuff. I -- JJ: What kind of drugs did they do? CC: Oh, they did marijuana. I had a couple friends that were into heroin. Yeah. JJ: Hmm. Was that a big problem at that time then or...? CC: Not so much the drugs. [00:17:00] When I went to high school, yeah. We had a friend who they sent him to Kentucky. There was a dry-out center. He died of -he died -- JJ: Do you remember? CC: I can’t remember. JJ: Out of Kentucky (crosstalk) -- CC: It wasn’t Louisville. It was something like that, yeah. And he died of a drug overdose while he was there. Yeah. So you tell me how that happens, you know? But yeah, at Lake View High School, there was a lot of drugs. JJ: So how was Lake View High School? I mean, what was the population there and what...? CC: It was a mixture. There were Blacks, whites, Latinos, Orientals, yeah. JJ: Was it a rough school or...? CC: Yeah, it was a rough -- pretty rough school. Yeah. JJ: What, were there gangs or...? CC: They used to call Lake View High School the home of unwed mothers. (laughs) Yeah. Seriously, yeah. And there were a lot of [00:18:00] gangs. JJ: And what year was this? 13 �CC: This was 1956, ’57. JJ: Fifty-six, fifty-seven, there were a lot of gangs? CC: Yeah. JJ: Do you remember any of the gangs or...? CC: (sighs) (shakes head) JJ: What were the teachers like? CC: The teachers were okay. I don’t know. I was very bored in high school. I did not like high school. I quit when I was 16 and I went to [Logan Continuation School?]. I worked in the truant officer’s office (laughs) one day a week and I went to work at the A&P with my mother as a cashier. Because my mother said the only way they would let me quit school when I was 16 was to go to work. Because I wasn’t going to be hanging around with my friends on the street, I had to go to work which I did. I went to work for the A&P. However, when I was 28 years old, I took the [00:19:00] GED and passed a college entrance and went to Northeastern Illinois University at the field center -- we had a field center on Montrose and Sheridan. JJ: Okay. So you went to Northeastern? CC: Northeastern. JJ: How far did you go there? CC: I was there for a couple years because then they came and they opened a mental health center, Edgewater Uptown Mental Health Center. What they did was they hired all of us, the Young Patriots and other community groups, to be, I guess, mental health workers. See, they figured they could buy us and give us 14 �this salary. And we ran the emergency service. I worked in geriatrics for United Charities. At that time, in the ‘70s, they literally dumped people out of the mental institution and put them in [00:20:00] Uptown. Okay? In halfway houses and some in independent living. All right? So they hired a bunch of the community people to work with these people and stuff. And what I did was I worked in geriatrics. I worked with a whole lot of people who had been locked up for many years in like Manteno and Dixon. They literally just turned them out on the street and gave them apartments and they had them coming to this mental health center where they worked. Or I would go to their houses and make sure they were taking their medicine and stuff. But I got in trouble because all right, they had a psychiatrist who every person I sent in there would come out with a handful of prescriptions. I had people that I was seeing that their tongue was (puffs tongue) [00:21:00] like this because they were overmedicated and stuff. And I said that I thought [Mark Schuler?] was a pill pusher. And (laughs) I got called into his office and he asked me did I think I was a doctor? I said, “No. However, you don’t need to be a doctor to know that people are overmedicated when their tongue was swollen.” Or you’re making them -- all right. They didn’t want them to be a threat to the community. Well, they’re not a threat to anybody. They’re not -- they can barely function, some of these people. You’ve got them so medicated. They’re not a threat to themselves or anybody else. That was after the clinic -- after the Young Patriots clinic. JJ: You mentioned the Patriots. Who were they? 15 �CC: The Young Patriots, they were a street gang to begin with. They were guys, mostly guys, and they [00:22:00] were like street hustlers. They hustled people for money. They fought with guns and knives. JJ: They hustled -- who did they hustle? CC: The gay guys and stuff. They would hustle them sometimes. I really don’t want to go into detail about it but that’s -- yeah, anyway. They were hustlers. JJ: This was before you were political or...? CC: Political and then JOIN and SDS -- JJ: Before you were political. CC: Yes. And then JOIN and SDS came to the community and they got -- I don’t know because I wasn’t around them with the Patriots. But they got them -somehow, they organized them into opening up a food pantry where they give out and they talk to them and politicize these young kids. They were mostly southern [00:23:00] whites that were -- JJ: And what year was this? CC: This was in 19-- okay. It had to have been -- because I first got involved -- it was in ’66, okay? And they were around for a couple years. Maybe ’64, ’65, something like that. (crosstalk) My mother-in-law was involved with them and that’s how I got to meet them, my husband and I. They were going to do a march on Summerdale Police Station because one of the kids -- JJ: So this is after they became political. CC: Yes. JJ: So they weren’t hustling anymore? 16 �CC: They weren’t hustling any-- if they were, they weren’t telling. But I -- (laughs) but no. They were talking to people in the community, they were fighting [00:24:00] the police brutality because what happened, on Sunnydale, there was a kid -- I -and they were going to arrest him. They had in handcuffs and they shot him (laughs) in the back. Shot him. He’s on his knees on the sidewalk and they shot him to death. Said he was trying to escape arrest. JJ: And he was in handcuffs. CC: He was in hand-- behind his back. Because there was a police officer, his name was [Sam Joseph?], who was very brutal, okay? Just these kids, they would beat them up and threated to kill them. So we decided we were going to march on Summerdale Police Station with my mother-in-law and the Young Patriots. They got my husband, [Doug?] and I involved and that was my first experience with that [00:25:00] is I marched on Summerdale Police Station. I was pregnant with my son (laughs) and -- JJ: What’s your son’s name? CC: His name is [Jason?]. And yeah, I was pregnant with my son. JJ: You didn’t tell me -- did you tell me your daughter’s name? CC: Huh? JJ: Did you tell me your daughter’s name? CC: I didn’t have a daughter. JJ: Oh, you didn’t. CC: No. JJ: You just had a son. Okay. 17 �CC: A son -- I just had one son. JJ: We’re talking about brothers. CC: Yeah. Oh, I had a sister and brother. Yeah. No. JJ: Okay. What was their names? CC: Patricia and Ross. That’s my sister and my brother. But yeah, no, my son Jason. I was pregnant with my son Jason and I was marching with a sign on Summerdale Police Station (laughs) and then we started to get involved because the Patriots -- JJ: (laughs) Do you remember the sign? What it said or anything or...? CC: Sam Joseph -- get rid of Sam Joseph or something like that because he was very brutal. I mean, he was a really brutal police officer. He (laughs) and -- JJ: So you went marching with a sign, right? Were you excited? CC: With a sign, yeah. JJ: Were you excited or...? CC: Oh yeah. It was fun. I never had -- [00:26:00] because I -- I knew my mother-inlaw was into all this political stuff. My husband and I, his name was [Douglas Youngblood?], he didn’t really want to get involved because he was working at DuPont and we kind of stayed back. But once we got over there and it was with the Summerdale thing and stuff. He met Bobby Joe and Junebug and the Young Patriots and he got involved. I worked. I -- JJ: Bobby Joe and Junebug are leaders in the Young Patriots? CC: Yeah, they were like 17. Now, Doug and I were like 25 but these were like young kids -- 17, 18 years old, and -- 18 �JJ: So who was Doug making (inaudible)? (crosstalk) CC: He kind of became their spokesperson because he was a little older and he really got into it. I mean he was -- he got [00:27:00] involved. JJ: What do you mean he got into it? CC: With the police. Trying to stop the police brutality and into -- like the food. We had a food coop and we gave away clothes to -- second-hand clothes. And -- JJ: Now, was this the Young Patriots then? CC: It was the Young Patriots, yeah. JJ: They -- (crosstalk) CC: They had a little storefront. I would go there -- JJ: Where was that storefront? CC: It was right on -- it was forty-- oh, I got that address -- 4408, I believe, Sheridan Road. It was just a little storefront. And they had a clinic that wa-- now, see that all came out of JOIN when -- JOIN. But I’m trying to think. Doug was really good at writing up stuff. So they had him -- JJ: [00:28:00] (crosstalk) CC: And he became their spokesperson. I mean if you needed an article written or whatever, he was really good at the writing. JJ: He’s a writer. CC: Yeah. A writer writer and a poet -- a political poet he was, too. JJ: He got any poetry? CC: Yeah, he has some really good poetry that was published and stuff. He gave -- JJ: Is he alive? Or is he still alive? 19 �CC: No, he passed away four years ago October 5th. JJ: What happened? CC: He had cancer. He had colon cancer which it spread into his liver and he died. For about two and a half years, he survived but he passed away. And I’m trying to think. Out of that -- we had a clinic one day a week in a storefront. Then it just kind [00:29:00] of built up till we had -- we rented a whole suite of offices. In the building where the storefront was here and up above, there was like offices. We rented a whole suite of offices. We had doctors that were from Presbyterian-St. Luke, Billings Hospital, and they paid the rent on those offices. We had about 75 health workers working. We had the Visiting Nurses Association, we had medical students, fourth-year medical students, whose -- JJ: Medical students? CC: Yeah, medical students. We had people that were studying like lab technician stuff. We did our own urine testing, urine sampling, and blood tests. I learned how [00:30:00] to do a [hematocrit?] where you stick somebody in the finger and stuff. We used to take people back and forth to the hospital when they had to go. Or we would just go visit people to see if they were okay. Some were our patients and stuff. JJ: To what hospital did you take them? CC: It was Weiss Memorial and Cuneo. JJ: Mm-hmm. Did you work something out with them? CC: Yeah, we did. At Weiss Memorial, we had a guy. He was the -- what do they call that guy? The Human Resources person or... [Bob Cross?] -- his name was Bob 20 �Cross and he donated a bunch of medical equipment to us. Or they had sometimes samples of medicine. But mostly, our doctors -- I mean, we had the greatest doctors in the world. JJ: Do you remember any of them? CC: Yes. [John Wilsey?], he was in charge of an emergency room at Lutheran General. We [00:31:00] had [Gordon Lang?], he was in charge of the renal department at Pres-St. Luke’s. [Sam Jampolis?], he was at Billings in the cancer research. We had another doctor; I can’t remember his name. He did heart transplants. We had another guy, he was from Children’s Memorial Hospital. We had a bunch of people. Just I’ll tell ya. We did a lot of stuff with the community and talking to the community, but the real heroes were those doctors and those medical students, Cha-Cha. They just gave -- they volunteered their time. They paid for all those hospital -- the hospital -- all the examining rooms and stuff and they paid the rent on that suite things. Those [00:32:00] were the heroes. And they treated people -- okay. Normally if you go to a doctor, they ask you questions but you’re not really treated like a human being. But the people we had there, I mean they were treated like they’d never been treated in their lives. If they had questions, those doctors would answer any question you wanted to know. It wasn’t just a, “Take off your shirt. I’m going to get a stethoscope.” They really took an interest in people. One time, we had a -- we called it, pardon my language, “Piss on Brown.” [Murray Brown?] was in charge of the Board of Health. A lot of the problem we had in Uptown was lead poisoning because there were these slum buildings and these slumlords. They didn’t fix up these 21 �buildings. Paint was peeling and kids were getting lead poisoning from the paint. So what we did, Dr. Lang, he got a grant [00:33:00] that he said we had to collect at least 3,000 urine samples. We literally went -- besides what we did at the clinic when we came in, I went with [Dr. Jampolis?] and we literally knocked on doors and collected urine samples of people with some kids. JJ: So right at their house. CC: Right at their house. (laughs) We came out of this one building and I looked at [Sam?] and there were tears rolling down his face. I says, “Sam, what’s the matter?” He said, “I didn’t realize people had to live like that.” Paint peeling off and barely any furniture or food. The tears were rolling down his face. But what we did was we collected over 4,000 samples. We only were supposed to get 3,000 but of course, the Patriots have to do it a little better. So we got over [00:34:00] 4,000 urine samples a lot of which we did at our clinic because we did have a lab and stuff. But we took them to the Board of Health who was supposed to be doing this in the beginning and they weren’t testing for lead poisoning. Then they opened a -- JJ: So did they do it then? Did they test for -- CC: They did it then. Oh, yeah. Because Gordon Lang who is a very well-respected doctor, he did kidney transplants and stuff. They would’ve maybe messed with us but they weren’t going to mess with these doctors who were well-respected. They put up -- they tried to close our clinic down but when the Board of Health came and checked us out and checked our chart, they said we were better run than the Board of Health. Because we had everything in order. [00:35:00] We 22 �took no grants because if you take grants, you have to go by their guidelines. So everything was all voluntary. We were all self-running. We took no federal money because like I said, then they could tell you how to run it and what to do and we didn’t want to do that. But they wanted -- in order to -- okay. We only ran four nights a week. Then we started on Saturdays, we had. We were a limited number of people. So my husband Doug and the Young Patriots, they got together with some of the people in the community like [Ed Farmlat?] who was in charge of a bunch of halfway houses and some other people they talked to to try to get a public health hospital there in the area to take up the slack of what we couldn’t. We could only do so much. [00:36:00] The Board of Health decided that this group was fine and everything and they would set up and that the community could run it. That was a lie told, okay? Because when they finally got everything, then they said, “No, the community was not capable of making decisions, medical decisions,” after several years of the Patriots (laughs) running a free medical clinic without their help. So they set up this public health hospital which had been an old marine -JJ: So the hospital was saying that the community can’t run it? CC: They can’t run it. JJ: But the Patriots had run it. CC: The Patriots ran their own better than the Board of Health and better than anything they ever had. I’m not bragging but that’s the truth. JJ: Doctors were saying it, you know? 23 �CC: Yeah, the doctors. [00:37:00] But the Board of Health and the politicians. “Oh no, you can’t run your -- this public health hospital.” I had to go with [Ted Stein?] who was our attorney, the legal aid, lawyer, to the state’s attorney’s office because I was the bookkeeper and the -- to tell them about our clinic. I got there and he asked me what we did. I told him. I said, “Most of our patients are ambulatory.” Now, the state’s attorney looks me in the face and says, “How many ambulances do you have?” I said, “I have...” I really had to control myself. I said, “No, sir. Ambulatory means they’re able to walk on their own and they don’t need wheelchair access. (laughs) We have no ambulances.” (laughs) I was very proud of myself; I did not laugh out loud. [00:38:00] But when we got outside, Ted Stein said, “I can’t believe he asked that.” Yeah, he did. “How many ambulances do you have?” Well anyway, they opened this public health hospital and they were giving lousy treatment to the people in the community. I myself went there a couple weeks. Then we planned -- we were going to try to get them to stay open on weekends and longer hours because their hours were lousy and people were being turned away. So a couple weeks before that, we decided to send spies in and to see just how people were treated. I went into this doctor’s office and I described to him a urinary tract infection which I did not have. The only reason I knew all the information is from working in the clinic. They never took a urine sample from me. They never examined me. [00:39:00] I walked out of that office with two prescriptions for a urinary tract infection which I didn’t have. Then in a couple weeks, we -- on a Friday evening, we took about a hundred people there to that clinic. It was just before closing and came in there and said, 24 �“Oh, people can’t come in.” We had our doctors with us and the Visiting Nurses Association said they were going to take care of people or we were going to take over the rooms and examine the people ourself with our doctors. When we first got there, there were a whole bunch of police there waiting for us because they -it was supposed to be a secret. It was something with -- but somehow, it got out. They said if we didn’t leave, they were going to arrest us and we said we were not leaving. Then they brought seven paddy wagons [00:40:00] and arrested 43 of us of which I was 1. They arrested our doctors. Murry Brown (laughs) was down there. He was in charge of the Board of Health and said to Gordon Lang, “Please Gordon, don’t make me arrest you.” Gordon said, “If you’re going to arrest my people, you’re arresting me.” So they not only arrested the community people, they arrested a gentleman who had been the chief psychiatrist for the Air Force. They arrested the head of the renal department at Presbyterian-St. Luke’s, the person who was in charge of the cancer department at Billings Hospital, (laughs) all these people. They dropped seven paddy wagons, they arrested us, and took us to 11th and State. Then we had to go up like night court and they -JJ: Then the State is the central police station. The lockup. CC: Eleventh and State, yeah, that’s the big lockup. [00:41:00] They put us in all these cells. The thing that disturbed me about it is the men... With the women, they took away our glasses, everything from us. Plus those -- the matrons, they harassed the VNA. They did body cavity searches on them which was ridiculous. The men, they gave baloney sandwiches and let them keep their cigarettes and 25 �everything. The women, they just treated us -- they just herded us in there like cattle. There were 43 of us. So then we -- they brought us out and we had to go before a judge. They released us on our own recognizance. Okay, there were 43 of us. And when we went to court, the judge said, “Everybody arrested at 4141 [Thurman?], please come up to the front of the (laughs) front of the -- you know.” JJ: In a courtroom (crosstalk) CC: [00:42:00] Forty-three people stood up and (inaudible), “What is going on?” The VNA got in trouble, the Visiting Nurses Associa-- because they were wearing their uniforms when they got arrested. (laughter) But they were still allowed to come to our clinic, but yeah, it was funny. JJ: This protest was for what, I mean? CC: Huh? JJ: This protest was for what? CC: Because of the lousy treatment they were giving to people at that public health hospital. Their hours were not conducive to people being able to get there, they would close early, they were not open on weekends, they had no evening hours. The fact that I went in there and got two prescriptions for an infection I didn’t even have and was never examined. So they closed that place down. They did close it. It had been an old military hospital type thing. It was not quite the VA, but similar. [00:43:00] That’s what they gave us which was nothing. (laughs) Yes, I was -- okay. (laughs) My mother and my father -- my father was very proud of what I was doing. My mother was a little leery. The next day, oh. When 26 �we went to court, we got -- all they -- we got off -- it was dismissed as trespassing on public property. We were trespassing on public property. But the day after, I went to the clinic -- it was a Saturday. I was opening up the clinic and the phone, the pay phone was ringing, and it was my mother. (laughs) I said, “Hi.” She said, “Do you think that’s funny?” I said, “What are you talking about, ma?” JJ: Her name? I’m sorry. CC: Evelyn. Her name is Evelyn. I said, “What are you talking about?” JJ: What’s your father’s name again? CC: Ross. And my father, Ross. But my -- [00:44:00] (laughs), “Do you think that’s funny?” I said, “What are you talking about, Mom?” She said, “Did you see the Sun-Times this morning?” I said, “No, I just got here to the clinic so I don’t know.” She said, “Well, go buy yourself a copy of the Sun-Times.” (laughs) I said, “All right.” So I went downstairs and I got a copy of the Sun-Times. Right on the front page is me in the paddy wagon smiling. (laughs) JJ: Hmm. Oh, your mom was angry. CC: Oh, she was upset that I’d been arrested. I mean, she liked the idea of the clinic and then oh, no. That was a little different. (laughs) So I called her back and I -but my father carried that article and that picture in his wallet till the day he died. He was really proud and showed it to anybody that would look. JJ: Your father or father-in-law? CC: My father. JJ: Your mom couldn’t handle it. 27 �CC: Well, she kind of got it but I couldn’t -- [00:45:00] she says, “Do you think that’s funny?” I, “What are you talking about, ma? I don’t know what you’re talking about.” (laughs) But a friend of mine got some -- okay, they opened the Red Squad files or something and you could get it. A friend of mine got them -- JJ: Who is -- what is the Red Squad files? CC: The Red Squad was Mayor Daley’s police that he said didn’t exist that spied (laughs) on us and took pictures of us every time we came out of the clinic, all right? We would go like this (poses) and this (poses). JJ: So you knew they were watching? CC: Oh, yes, and we would pose and stuff. But they said that squad did not exist and only maybe in the last couple years, finally they admitted that there really was a thing called the Red Squad. JJ: And there were files. CC: And there were files but you would have to really know somebody to get them. I mean, they’re open, right? Like freedom of information? But everything is [00:46:00] blacked out just... However, when the person brought me these files, (laughs) the second page down, you know what was there? The picture of me in the paddy wagon. (laughs) And also, there was a thing about the Young Patriots that the alderman or something said, “You need to keep an eye on them,” and stuff. But there was other literature in there. But I couldn’t believe -- JJ: So the alderman (inaudible) -- CC: Yeah. They were -- yeah, that we were a danger to the community. JJ: Did you all get in the Red Squad car? 28 �CC: Yes. There is a cop, excuse me, a copy of that. The person that has them is supposed to get me copies of that. But I couldn’t believe second page down, there I am in the paddy wagon. (laughs) What used to get me is I -- JJ: You were -- CC: I didn’t understand why they -- I’m not a dummy. But why are they harassing us? All we’re trying to do is treat people like decent [00:47:00] human beings and see that they get the healthcare that they deserve. Or to -- with the food pantry, get some people who don’t have food food or clothing. Or trying... It seemed that if you were trying to make somebody’s life better whose life wasn’t that good, you were a communist or you were some kind of a terrorist. I never could understand that. It just amazing, simply amazing that -- JJ: You had said that you were raising [something?] around. Some supplies for the clinic? Is that (crosstalk) -- CC: Oh, we got those from Weiss Hospital. They gave us a -- [Dr. Sophol?], it was a Dr. Sophol who gave us a bunch of stuff and Bob Cross saw that we got some stuff. Some of the doctors also brought us stuff. But yeah, we were [00:48:00] run without anything from anybody. Really, like where they could tell us how we could run that clinic. Because if you allow them to tell you, then you’re no better than what you’re fighting against. So we were always self-sufficient. JJ: [Marta Chavita?] worked in the Young Lords -- CC: Marta Chavita. She worked -- okay. JJ: She worked in the Young Lords clinic. CC: Right, okay. 29 �JJ: How did you know her? CC: How did I know her? Because we would go on speaking engagements and talk to people and try to raise money for the clinics. JJ: Who’s we? CC: Okay. There was a -- the member from the Black Panthers was Doc Satchel, the Young Lords was Marta Chavita and myself from the Young Patriots. We got paid 300 dollars which we split between the three of us. We would go and talk to people. JJ: Who paid you? CC: Hmm? JJ: Who paid you? A school? CC: [00:49:00] No, it wasn’t a school. It was whatever group we went and talked to. Sometimes, we went and talked to college students. One time, I went and talked to 100 priests and nuns. (laughs) Scared me to death. Somebody told me, though, “Look out in the audience. Pretend they’re all naked.” (laughter) But that didn’t help; I was scared to death. But yeah, we would go try to raise money for the clinics. Then there was a trip to Canada where we -- I believe we thought we were going because it had something to do with medical care and stuff. Because they wanted one person from the Young Lords and one -- or a couple people from the Young Lords and some from the Patriots to go and some from the Black Panthers [00:50:00] also. So on the train were -- was Hilda Ignatin who was I believe at the time Latin American Defense Organization. Was she LADO then? I’m not sure. I think that’s what she was. 30 �JJ: I’m not sure. (phone rings) I’ll answer. (break in audio) CC: The Young Lords. Okay. We were invited and I don’t know who gave our names. There was -- women college students in Montreal wanted people from the clinics and stuff to come there to -- I thought it was about a health thing and I believed that Marta and everybody else believed that, too. We went on a train to Montreal and we stayed with some college students. They put us up in their apartments and stuff. Then we went to the college the next day [00:51:00] and while we were there, here came a procession of six little ladies. Three from North Vietnam and three from Laos. They marched and they went into the auditorium. When we got in there, we were seated in the auditorium. They had a screen, a movie screen, and what they showed us were pictures of our soldiers being shot down by the Vietnamese. I mean literally, they were shooting them and blowing up planes and everything. Afterwards, they said, “This is what’s happening to your soldiers over there. We don’t want to kill your brothers, your fathers, your -- and stuff; We want this war to end.” JJ: So these little Vietnamese. CC: They were Viet-- the tiniest little ladies you ever saw but they were [00:52:00] soldiers. JJ: Vietnamese women were there. CC: Yeah. They were soldiers, yeah. So then they said they were going to have a question and answer but all they wanted in there were third-world people. I’m not third-world; I’m Irish (laughs) -- an Irish Yankee (laughter) from Chicago. JJ: From Chicago. 31 �CC: Yeah, and so they didn’t want any white -- it was all women. It was all women. Okay. From the Young -- it was me from the Patriots. I don’t know the ladies from the Panthers but the Young Lords, it was Martha Chavita, a young lady named [Lupe?], [Guadalupe?], [Trinny?] and [Angie?]. JJ: [Angie Linn?]? (inaudible) CC: Okay. I didn’t know her last name. I know her face. I can -- yeah. JJ: Yeah, she was at the -- it was a women’s conference. CC: Yeah, it was a women’s conference. And so they wanted me to leave. Marta [00:53:00] and Lupe and them, they said, “No. She’s with us. If she’s not allowed in here, we’re leaving. We’re going. She’s --” They said, “She’s not third-world or what,” and Marta said, “What do you mean? Her name [Carmen?].” (laughter) My name tag said Carol. They got me a new name tag and for the -- I think we were there two days -- I had a name tag that said Carmen. (laughs) I loved those ladies. We got along so well and on the train -we were on the train a long time. They just were fantastic ladies and laughed and talked. We had a lot of things in common -- kids and the clinics. But while we were there, Angie got a phone call. When she came back, [00:54:00] it -- she said oh, her husband -- they told her her husband was in the hospital or been hurt or something and she had to go back to Chicago. JJ: Her husband named [Pancho?]. CC: Pancho, yeah. So she left. We got her on an airplane and got her out of there back to Chicago. What we came to find out was he was not in the hospital; he was not. He was, in fact, dead. That he had been walking down the street and 32 �two guys jumped out of a car and beat him to death with baseball bats and killed him. That’s something that when I think about -JJ: So Angie was a Young Lord and her husband was a Young Lord. CC: She was a Young Lord and her husband was a Young Lord, yes. To me, that’s something, Cha-Cha, that I never forgot ever since then. When I think about Canada, I think about what we [00:55:00] -- the movie and all that other stuff. But that’s what stands out in my mind that some moron would just because somebody was not white. I had been down South, we had been down South organizing -- JJ: Was he killed because he was Puerto Rican? CC: Because he was Puerto Rican. Yes, yes, yes. JJ: Mexican and Puerto Rican. CC: I had been down South and we had marched with King and stuff. I never saw anything like that. Ever. And it was terrible. We were threatened down there and everything. But for that to happen in Chicago to me was just unconscionable. I had a hard time dealing with that after I -- (laughs) JJ: You got to know Angie while you were there? What do you remember? What do you remember of Angie? CC: I got to know Angie and Marta. I remember her being a very sweet young lady. [00:56:00] Mostly, we talked. All of us when we were there -- like I said, our kids and the clinic. Just a bunch of ladies yap yap yapping. At night, we would -- we had sleeping bags and stuff. We slept on the floor in this apartment with these college students and stuff. We would be gigglin’ and stuff. We were supposed to 33 �be sleeping because we had to go (laughs) -- we would just be giggling like a pajama party or... (laughs) We were just so professional. We went to some French restaurants because we were in -- and that’s the first time I ever had crepes. We just walked around the city. But they were kind of leery of people coming in at that time because not too long before that, a prime minister or something had been [00:57:00] kidnapped by some left-wing people. I don’t remember who that was. So they were a little leery about anybody that was to the left a little bit. I’m trying to think. JJ: What about Marta? You got to know Marta. CC: I knew Marta pretty well, yeah. JJ: What do you remember about Marta? CC: Just that she was really nice and very sweet and intelligent. Very intelligent lady. JJ: Okay. She worked with you. She went and got stuff for the clinic, you said? CC: No, we went and we gave talks about the clinic. Yeah. It was always us. JJ: You said she’s -- CC: But sometimes, Doug and I would go over there and just visit with her and [Alberto?]. JJ: Okay, so the -- CC: Yeah, we kind of socialized with them. JJ: Because Alberto was also a Young Lord. CC: Yeah, her husband. Him and Doug got along real well. JJ: Because [00:58:00] at that time, was there a coalition or something or...? CC: Yeah, it was the Rainbow Coalition. Yeah. 34 �JJ: Who was that? (inaudible) CC: I believe that was the -- that was Chuck Geary, the Patriots, the Lords, the Panthers, some other people. JJ: You said that was the Rainbow Coalition. CC: That was the Rainbow Coalition. JJ: So that’s when you guys, you went to speak together -- the women. CC: Right. The three -- the Black, the Latin, and the white person was me. JJ: (inaudible) time together. CC: Yeah. The three of us. JJ: You guys were just talking about -- you were representing the -- CC: I was representing the Young Patriots, Marta the Young Lords, and Doc Satchel, the Black Panthers. Yeah. JJ: Do you remember what places you spoke at? CC: No. We went different places. Like sometimes, a school. Sometimes, it was just in a -- at a room where people came. JJ: Then the money was divided? CC: The money was divided between the three people. Yeah, so -- well, the three clinics, not the three people. I didn’t get the money personally. Yeah, right. JJ: (crosstalk) It went to the clinic. (inaudible) Okay. Tell me about Doug. (inaudible) CC: Okay. What can I tell you about Doug Youngblood? I met him when I was 16 years old. He was new to the neighborhood and he started hanging out with my brother. 35 �JJ: Who is your brother? CC: My brother Ross. JJ: You told me three times already. CC: Then he would -- that’s all right. He would come to my house with my brother supposedly to look at comic books because they -- I know they were 16 but they were still into the comic books [01:00:00] and stuff. He kind of liked me but I had another boyfriend who would get really upset because (laughs) when he would come to bring me home, there would be Doug sitting there with my brother. The young man I was going with got in some trouble and got sent to Minnesota. He had gone to the Audy Home and the way that his mother got him out was to send him to his brother’s in Minnesota. So he was gone and Doug was there. (laughs) And he pursued me. JJ: He persuaded you. CC: He pursued me. JJ: He pursued you. CC: We lived in an apartment building where there was a basement where you did your laundry. Everybody had their washing machine in there and stuff. One night, he went down there to help me carry the laundry back up. When we were going out, he stood in front of the basement door, told me I wasn’t getting out of there unless I gave him a kiss which I did. First I said, “Get out of my way,” but then he was [01:01:00] -- and we -- then we were together for a long time. Then he moved to Michigan -- Jackson, Michigan because his -- with his mom and stuff. So we were separated for a while but when he came back, we got together 36 �and eventually got married and had a son, Jason, and got involved. His mother was married to this guy [Gil Terry?] who -- I remember when I first met Doug, he said to me, “My stepfather is a communist.” I said (nods) but he was. Gil Terry was a communist. JJ: Is it Doug’s...? CC: Doug’s stepfather, yeah. They were involved in politics and stuff and you know, sure. JJ: [01:02:00] But why is he telling you that? CC: He told me that after we’d been together for -- because I think -- Doug at first told me that -- JJ: Did he look at that bad or good or...? CC: Bad. JJ: That he was a communist? CC: Yeah, because he was a communist and we (inaudible). But all Gil was was, Gil Terry, was a man. He cared about people and like us and he politicized Peggy, Doug’s mother Peggy, and (crosstalk) got her involved in stuff. Peggy Terry is -yeah, it’s Peggy Terry. Yeah. JJ: Peggy Terry, isn’t she the one that ran for...? CC: She ran for vice president of the United States on the Peace and Freedom Party ticket with Eldridge Cleaver. And I have a bumper sticker some place that says that. JJ: That’s your mother-in-law. 37 �CC: My mother-in-law, yes. Who was a great lady who really taught me most of what I know about anything. She politicized me. (laughs) I always cared about people. You know what I’m saying. [01:03:00] But I -- JJ: How did she get to the Peace and Freedom? What was she doing to get up there? CC: When JOIN came in, they got her involved in all that. It was them. JJ: It was them. So she was a member of JOIN? CC: Yeah. But she also -- they had this thing that was called WRDA, Welfare Recipients Demand Action. We had a block club and a tenants union. Also, we used to go to South Water Market and we had a food coop where we bought food for real cheap and stuff. We had one lady (laughs) that was in charge of the money and her and her husband [Dominic?], they decided to take off with the money (inaudible). So you had to be careful. But then I took charge of it so [01:04:00] and I did run away with the money. (laughs) But see, my background at that time was in bookkeeping and stuff. So I was real good about keeping books and keeping -- JJ: How did you get into that? CC: Bookkeeping? From high school. I learned in high school. Then I went to comptometer school. Comptometer, it was an adding machine. It was 10 keys across and 10 keys up and down. That’s what you added stuff. I could do that without looking like a typewriter could type stuff. I worked for ACNielsen as a comptometer operator. (break in audio) 38 �JJ: Testing one, two, three. Go ahead. Go ahead and say something. Go ahead and say something, Carol, please. CC: Hello. JJ: Okay. CC: Can you hear me? JJ: Testing one, two, three. This is interview number two. (break in audio) Okay, we [01:05:00] were talking about Doug, you said? CC: Yeah. I mean, here’s this young man who grew up in Ozark, Alabama, Paducah, Kentucky and stuff. Had never gone to high school, never graduated. I think he graduated from grammar school, never went to high school, not much of an education, who could write the most beautiful poetry, like political poetry, and just write up -- write on everything imaginable and who sounded like he had a college degree. (laughs) Honest to God. He was amazing -- an amazing man. But he -- JJ: How far did he go to school? CC: He only went to eighth grade. He never went to -- but he’s -- he got a GED in later years when we were in our 20s and then went to Northeastern also. [01:06:00] But he gave a poetry class at Stanford University (laughs) once. But he wrote political poetry and stuff and read. That man -- JJ: What kind of stuff did he write and [read?]? CC: It was against I don’t know, the police and the government. [Hythern?] has some of his poetry I gave him. Plus we put out a poetry book, the Young Patriots, called Time of the Phoenix and some of his poetry is in there. But he just -yeah. He was just amazing and he was reading all the time. I just cleared out 39 �the basement of books. He had books on everything imaginable. Nothing disinterested him. I mean, he’d read just everything. Not just political stuff; everything. And he was into -- he started painting. Oh, his paintings are upstairs. But [01:07:00] painting. Just beautiful. I didn’t know he could do that. He just was into everything. He was an amazing man and he passed away four years ago. JJ: You said cancer. CC: Cancer but we were together. We weren’t married that long, but we were together 50 years. JJ: Fifty years? CC: Fifty years. Yeah. Because we met in ’58 and he died in ’08. We were together 50 years so it was a long time. And I miss him; I really miss him. There were times I wonder (laughs) that I even miss that. That’s power for when you’re married to somebody. We just weren’t the -- what the -- [01:08:00] like on the TV families where everybody’s so happy. We weren’t like that. But we did pretty good. JJ: But you did pretty good, right? I mean you were happy sometimes. (inaudible) CC: Oh, we were happy most of the time. It’s just every once in a while. That was always all his fault, of course. (laughter) I would like to believe that but I know it’s not the truth. Yeah. JJ: But how were the Young Patriots? Did you know each other pretty well or did you visit each other or...? CC: What, with the Young Patriots? 40 �JJ: Yeah. CC: Oh, we were married when we got into the Young Patriots because we’d been together since we were 16. Like I said, he moved away because Peggy moved to Paducah -- not Paducah -- Jackson, Michigan. He was gone a couple years and then he came back and we were together after that. JJ: Okay, you want to talk about Peggy, too. What about...? CC: Peggy. When I met Peggy, I was 16 and she was like 36 [01:09:00] years old. The most amazing woman you ever want to meet in your entire life. She just -you’re talking about a woman I don’t think even finished public school, grammar school or anything. Had no real education at all who became -- it’s because of her. She was like a historian, too. She kept all this stuff from all those years ago and just got into and started becoming very vocal. Talking about welfare, the police. She worked with doc-- very closely with Dr. King and she marched in Mississippi. She wound up with 12 broken vertebrae in her back because when the police beat them with fire hoses. That’s not fair. She was an [01:10:00] amazing woman. Just an amazing lady. For coming from -- she’s just a little -she’s a little hillbilly girl. Dumb hillbilly girl, didn’t know nothing and then she just (snapped). She was the first person, the first white person, that was on Jet magazine. I -- yeah. I don’t know if you’ve heard of Jet magazine. JJ: Yeah, I have. CC: Yeah. She was the first white person that was on there. They have an article on her. JJ: I’ll look at it. 41 �CC: Yeah, yeah. She worked -- mainly, she started out with the civil rights stuff. But that was because of Gil. Like I say, he was a -- into politics and he got her involved. I don’t think he realized what he created when he started politicizing her (laughs) because she just went -- she was just amazing. JJ: [01:11:00] So she did a lot of stuff in Uptown? CC: Oh, a whole lot. A lot of stuff in Uptown. JJ: (crosstalk) Were you living in Uptown then or...? CC: Yeah, we lived in Uptown. And she -- yeah. JJ: How long did you live there? CC: We lived there up until the ‘70s. JJ: From what year? CC: Okay. We lived there from about 1965 to 1973. JJ: Oh was it? CC: Yeah. JJ: What was it like then? CC: Uptown. Uptown? It was like the ghetto. It was a lot of slum buildings and stuff. A lot of crime. (laughs) JJ: How did it feel like? CC: I was used to that. (laughter) JJ: You [01:12:00] called it the ghetto but you were living there. (laughs) CC: I didn’t know the word ghetto till I -- they politicized it with ghetto. What are you talking about ghetto? (inaudible) JJ: (laughs) This is my hangout. 42 �CC: Yeah, right, this is my neighborhood. (laughs) JJ: So how was it? Was it a neighborhood or did people know each other or...? CC: Well, not really. People, I think, were suspicious of each other. It was a very diverse community. There were Blacks, whites, Hispanics, some Orientals, and stuff. They -- until JOIN came and they got to -- I don’t think the people were that close together. You know what I’m saying? And then JOIN kind of organized them and people got -- you got to know your neighbors were... Like I said, the neighborhood I grew up in, you knew everybody in the building and all the kids in your neighboring buildings and stuff. But that was the [01:13:00] ‘40s, ‘50s. Now, this is a little different and nobody, I don’t think, knew each other or trusted each other (laughs) all that much. Then they came together with the block club and that we had a tenants union and a (coughs) -- and a food coop. Plus, we -we had our hands in a little bit of everything. There was a lady, [Kit Komatsu?], who came. Peggy brought her back from -- when they were marching in Mississippi, she brought her to town, Kit Komatsu. Had a group that was called CAMP, Chicago Area Military Project. What they did was they printed up a newspaper and took it to military camps and soldiers because it was against the war but not against the soldiers. Do you know what I’m saying? Because there were some soldiers that were involved in that. One I remember particularly, his name was [Jeff Sharlet?]. He had been a [01:14:00] special forces. He would sit there and tell us about how they used to go in these towns in Vietnam and literally kill the mayor and stuff. What he wound up and a lot of soldiers was that Agent Orange. He wound up -- see, that’s the thing. They were spraying all this 43 �stuff but they weren’t getting the Vietnamese; They were getting our soldiers, too. A lot of our soldiers came back with that Agent Orange and cancer and all this. Then she -- Peggy brought her in and we started this newspaper called Firing Line where she would keep me up, Kit, till three o’clock in the morning (laughs) cutting with an X-Acto knife to make these little cows and all this. (laughter) I hated that newspaper. I didn’t hate it but I hated to have to [01:15:00] because she would not let me out. The Young Patriots Bobby Joe -- okay, Peggy was very political and Bobby Joe McGinnis, Junebug and I’m trying to -- and somebody else and I. There was a program on TV called The Fugitive and it was the last night when they were going to catch the one-arm man. We got up out of a meeting, a tenants’ meeting. Me, Bobby, and Junebug (laughs) went to my house to watch the last episode of The Fugitive. Peggy was so mad at us. We said, “We don’t care about the tenants’ union. We got to see -- catch the onearm man.” (laughs) Well, what can I say? (laughs) And over the years, she used to bring that up (laughs) about how we were more interested in The Fugitive than the -- well, anyway. They survived without [01:16:00] us. JJ: What about -- you mentioned Chuck Geary before. CC: Chuck Geary. JJ: Did you know him pretty good or...? CC: Yeah, I knew him and I -- well -- JJ: Because he was an activist there, right? CC: Yeah, he was -- Hythern would be more because he was involved with him. I knew Chuck Geary and I -- his daughter [Marcella?] ran around with us. I was 44 �close to Marcella. In fact, I can’t find her. We talked to her in 2007. She used to call here and I know she’s in Texas someplace. But we can’t... I tried calling the phone number I had and it’s disconnected. So but that -- Marcella. Yeah, Chuck Geary, he was a good guy and stuff. But he was more for working within the system rather than trying to change -- to work along with people. His idea of helping people and somebody said it was a good id-- [01:17:00] he bought a bunch of (laughs) chicken farms and threw these people out there and they were raising chickens. (laughter) I’m sorry. (snorts) JJ: They were raising chickens? CC: Yes. They were -- JJ: So you didn’t think that was a good thing? CC: No. (laughter) I guess the -- JJ: What should they have been doing instead of raising chickens? CC: They had nothing so he’s -- he set them up and whatever. They had all these chicken farms and I think that was in Kentucky. (laughs) I’m not sure. I -Hythern could probably tell you more (laughs) about the chicken farms. JJ: So chicken were going back and forth to Kentucky? Is that what you’re saying? CC: I think they all moved down there is what -- but he had all these chickens. (laughs) JJ: Oh, he moved them there -- CC: He moved them there. (laughs) JJ: -- to a chicken farm. (laughter) 45 �CC: [01:18:00] He always reminded me of one of those southern preachers, Chuck Gea-- because he was always preaching. He was the Reverend Chuck Geary. I don’t know which church (laughs) he was at, but he was a Reverend Chuck Geary. JJ: He had some (inaudible) CC: (laughter) Yeah, right. But -- JJ: But he preached pretty good or...? CC: Oh yeah, oh yeah. And he had a lot of people that believed in him. And he was not a bad person, Chuck. I like Chuck Geary. JJ: You didn’t like chickens. CC: I -- no. (laughter) I was not about to go to the chicken farm. (laughs) My chicken, it’s got to be plucked and on my plate. That’s the only thing I want with chicken, but -- JJ: I did hear he was a good leader. CC: He was a good leader. I mean, he could -- he had a -- he could talk. You know what I’m saying? And make you believe everything he was saying. [01:19:00] Not that he wasn’t honest. You know what I’m saying. But oh yeah, he was very -- JJ: He worked kind of within the system and you wanted to -- CC: Right, and we were revolutionaries. That’s what we considered ourself revolutionary. JJ: What does that mean? 46 �CC: We would fight for what we believe rather than try to work or take concessions or make concessions. That’s my understanding of revolutionary. We were rabblerousers. JJ: How did -- there’s another -- a better word. Rabble-rousers. CC: Yeah, rabble-rousers, yeah. JJ: But you would fight for what you believe instead of compromising. CC: Right, what we believe in. Yeah, or compro-- or taking -- that’s why we never took federal funding or anything for the clinic. Because I said once you let those people in, they’ll tell you how to run it. Before you know it, you’re not running it at all, they’re running [01:20:00] it. The reason we started the clinic to begin with was so we could do better than what they had. JJ: Okay. So in Uptown, you had -- so okay. So they can do better than what they had? CC: We could do better. The community and the community was well able to tell us what they wanted or to do for themselves. See, that was the problem with -when JOIN came, when the students came. In the beginning, it was really good because they brought all these ideas and everything. However, they didn’t want to let go and they sometimes treated the people like they were little children or something and that they had to be told what to do. These women that they were organizing and stuff were becoming more powerful and more -- and thinking more and wanting more. And able to vocalize that and go and do some. But the students didn’t want to let go. [01:21:00] It’s like little children -- you cannot... 47 �They told them, “We don’t need you. We’re not little children, we’re not idiots and we know what we want. We’re not your little project.” (laughs) JJ: Like they’re parenting -- they were parenting. CC: Yeah, right. JJ: Patronizing probably. Something like that. CC: Oh yeah, patronizing. Yeah. So a lot of the students were good people -- JJ: So the majority of the students -- they just later on, they got into -- they got into patronizing. CC: Yeah. In the beginning, too. “Oh, we’re going to save the community,” and all this and that’s okay. But if you’re going to teach people, you got to let go. It’s like with children. You got to let your kid walk on his own. You kind of watch maybe to make sure they’re not going to fall down a hole or something. But you got to let go. See? They didn’t [01:22:00] want to let go. JJ: So the Patriots believe in letting go so that then people could go by themselves -- CC: Right. (crosstalk) and various people became more knowledgeable about what they were entitled to and what they could do. JJ: So they were not just giving handouts. (crosstalk) CC: That’s right, that’s right. People were doing things and people were starting to feel good about themselves. Yeah, I can make a difference, you know? But the students were like, “You can’t do this without us.” So that’s that. Like they moved into the neighborhood -- okay. (laughs) I shouldn’t tell this story. There was a young lady and she moved into one of the apartments, one of the [Claremont?] building apartments. Once a week, her parents, chauffer and the 48 �maid would come and clean her apartment and take her laundry and do her laundry. However, she was living in poverty. She saw that as living in poverty and I’m not going to mention her name because she is pretty well-known. [01:23:00] I said to her, “What’s the matter with you? Do you really think these women can relate to you?” Here you are, your chauffer and your -- and they would pull up in a limo or whatever and (laughs) they’d come clean her apartment. They never worked. All right? That’s another thing is they -- a lot of these people, if you [wanted?] them over, a lot of women were out working trying to support their families. These students were not working. I don’t know where their money was coming from. It had to have been from their mothers and fathers or whatever. You can’t say, “We’re just like you.” You’re not. But they were well-meaning. I don’t mean to cut them that because there were a lot of -they meant well. They just didn’t know when to let go. And there -- [01:24:00] what can I say? (laughs) JJ: I understand that they -- that it was important to let go to create sort of -- CC: Right. They created something. They gave people tools to work with and I think they didn’t expect that they were going to get the -- that they were going to succeed. JJ: (laughs) CC: You know what I’m saying? (laughs) What’s the thing? (inaudible) “I’m going to do this,” and all of a sudden just... These people really have voices and they can really express themselves and they can do things and make decisions for 49 �themselves. It was like, “Hmm, be careful what you wish for,” (laughs) kind of thing. JJ: So what was the -- what kind of issues did you program with JOIN and all that? CC: I wasn’t involved that much in JOIN -- not myself. I just know this from my mother-in-law who was Peggy Terry. JJ: [01:25:00] For example, what was the housing like in Uptown? CC: The housing was terrible. JJ: It wasn’t -- CC: You had buildings where the back porches were literally falling. The kids were falling through the porches and some getting killed or maimed or there was painting peeling off the ceilings and stuff. The lead paint. They didn’t -- the halls were filled with trash and stuff. I mean, it’s just terrible. The buildings were -- JJ: Were these two- or three-storey buildings or...? CC: Yeah, yeah. These had been nice buildings at one point. But the landlords, all they did was take the rent and they never fix up the property. And if you didn’t like it, you could move. That’s the way it was. A lot of it was like there weren’t leases, see? It was like monthly. [01:26:00] Or some places, there were some furnished places that were weekly and stuff like that. And then urban renewal decided they were going to come in and -- JJ: So what happened there? CC: Urban renewal? They wanted to build that Truman College over there on Wilson Avenue and they were going to tear down a bunch of the buildings. We fought them about that because what are you going to do about the people that are 50 �living here? Are you going to move them into...? They did give people like a first month’s rent. They had to find an apartment and then they would pay the first month’s rent to move there or wherever. But they had to find their own. They were going to just tear down these buildings and where are these people going to go? And they didn’t care. JJ: This was the city. CC: The city, yeah. Urban renewal because they wanted to build the -- which they did, the Truman College. (laughs) Terrible. JJ: Now, this was [01:27:00] you. This was the -- CC: The JOIN. That was JOIN. JJ: (crosstalk) CC: Yeah, and all Young Patriots, we went there to the meetings with urban renewal and we fought with the Uptown National Bank (laughs) is who was -- JJ: The Uptown National Bank was part of it? It was -- CC: Yeah. It was part of the urban renewal and this [Yurania Dumofley?] was her name. They didn’t care about the people. I can get rid of the -- see, you get rid of the neighborhood, you get rid of the people. It was in Uptown there, there was one street, I can’t think of the name where [Ed Farr?] lived, it’s all mansions. In the middle of the ghetto, there’s this street where there’s all mansions and all these rich people live. We said to them, “Would you like some of our tenants to come move in your neighborhood? [01:28:00] (laughs) Maybe you can put us up in some of the buildings you have there.” No, no, they didn’t want any part of that. So where are you gonna move these people? But -- 51 �JJ: When did you move from Uptown? CC: I moved from Uptown in 1973. I moved actually into Edgewater and then into Rogers Park. I lived in Rogers Park, yeah. JJ: (crosstalk) You skipped one there. Now, were you being pushed out or you just went on your own? CC: No, I just went on my own. And I worked for ATA which was Aid to Alcoholics and that came out of the mental health center. We opened up the men medical detox center and I worked there. Okay. And that, I moved to Rogers Park and -- JJ: How did you get into that over there? CC: Because [01:29:00] of the mental health center, I worked with United Charities with geriatrics. But I was more interested in working with drug addicts and alcoholics and stuff. So -- JJ: Why were you into that? CC: Because most of the people (laughs) I ran around with were like that. Also at the time, I had kind of an alcohol problem myself. We had a storefront and then we opened up -- JJ: I mean, you became like a counselor. CC: A counselor, yeah. A counselor. But the terrible thing was I was also at that time drinking. (laughs) JJ: Drinking and counseling at the same time. CC: But most of the counselors and stuff were recovering alcoholics that worked in there. I was still a practicing alcoholic. (laughter) I didn’t know I was practicing but I was practicing. But then we -- 52 �JJ: Don’t they call it denial or something? CC: Yeah, denial. Absolutely. [01:30:00] And then the man who ran it was Reverend Jack Norgaard. That was [Lutheran Welfare Services?] ran that. He knew that I had a problem because people would see me out on the street and stuff. He came to my house and said to me -- never threatened my job, nothing. “You’ve got one week to get Jason,” my son, because Doug and I were split up at that time. Have Peggy, my mother-in-law, take care of Jason. He was taking me out to Mercy center in Aurora here for the alcohol treatment program. Because he said, “There’s people that are really concerned about you and they don’t want to see -- they want to see you live a little longer.” I’m thinking, “Oh, Jack. I’m not an alcoholic.” Anyway. So I let him take me out there to Mercy center and I haven’t had a drink since 1975 -- October of 1975. JJ: [01:31:00] That’s -- CC: Thirty-three years. Well, no, it wasn’t. Thirty-seven years. JJ: Congratulations. That’s pretty good. CC: But I -- JJ: Did you go to any program or did you just...? CC: Yeah, I went to -- it was an alcohol treatment program they have at Mercy center and -- JJ: And how long were you there? CC: I was there for 30 days. Okay? When I came back out, I went back to work at the drop-in center, the storefront we had. Then in a couple months, I helped open the non-medical detox center. We had a building that used to be a nursing 53 �home. There were like three floors and I worked in triage where the police would bring us people off the street and stuff. JJ: You detoxed. CC: Yeah, we detoxed. JJ: I worked in a detox. CC: Did you? JJ: Yeah. CC: But it was non-medical so they -- we had a lot of people shaking and -- JJ: Shakes and all that. CC: Yeah. Yeah. JJ: Mine was medical. They had a (inaudible). CC: [01:32:00] Was it medical? Where did you work, Cha-Cha? JJ: I was in Michigan. CC: Oh, in Michigan? JJ: (inaudible). I started in Chicago -- I was a counselor in Chicago, too. CC: Oh. JJ: (inaudible) CC: Yeah, and I got an ENT card -- JJ: Before the counseling, I started on my own. (laughs) CC: Oh, you were like me. Yeah. JJ: (laughs) (crosstalk) CC: That’s it. I never looked back and I’ve never regretted. Never regretted giving that up. I used to tell Jack, Reverend Norgaard, I’d say, “You saved my life.” 54 �“No, I didn’t.” I’d say, “Yes, you did. You saved my life. You really saved my life.” And the thing about it was a lot of the people that they brought into the detox (laughs) that were people I drank with. They listened to me because they knew I had been there and done that. The only problem is -JJ: It really helps you if you’re helping somebody else. CC: Oh, yeah. And I had to go to AA and one of the counselors at the storefront we had, him and his wife, every night, they took me to AA and I’d (inaudible)... [01:33:00] They took me to this one place that used to be a funeral home. I would be sitting in a chair and right across the street, there was a tavern and this Budweiser sign would flash on and I would think this is hell. (laughs) This is hell. I’m being punished. (laughter) JJ: (inaudible) CC: But I ran AA meetings. We had a -- like a dining room type thing. I got paid to play Pinochle with these... (laughs) When I worked triage, then I worked with the people that were really when they first came in and stuff. But then when I worked on the second floor, I used to get to go in the day room and play Pinochle. Now, they used to call me the warden. I worked on third shift and I would come in and people would be running to their rooms. “Here comes the warden,” right? I knew they were bringing [01:34:00] booze in somehow -- somehow. I sat one night and I waited and I heard noise and I went down by the day room. Here, they had a rope outside the window and somebody was standing in the gangway and they were pulling booze through the window and I busted them. Then I went from room to room and the ceiling tiles. Went up in there and I got every bottle I could 55 �find -- I mean stuff. I had a setup at the nurses’ station. Just say goodbye -wave bye-bye. (laughs) That’s how they started to call me the warden because I made a raid and (crosstalk) I said, “This is a -- you’re busted. It’s not going to happen anymore.” (crosstalk) But it -- I loved those guys. I would be standing on the corner in Chicago waiting for the bus and here would come one of the drunk, “Carol.” They’d be hugging me and people would be looking at me. (laughs) I was like, “Oh my God.” [01:35:00] I knew every drunk in Uptown. (laughter) Yeah. That was exciting. That’s what I did. JJ: So you get clean you said 37 years or...? CC: I’ve been sober 37 years. Yeah. Yeah. JJ: Thirty-seven years. CC: Yeah, thirty-seven years this month. JJ: (inaudible) CC: I never regretted it; Never ever. (laughs) I don’t know why I drank, in fact. You know what I’m saying? I don’t... But that’s something that was started when I was a teenager. I mean, that was the thing you did. You drank and -- JJ: You were a teenager when everybody was out on the same corner and that’s all they did. CC: Yeah, right. That’s all we did was drink. Some people did drugs. Like I said, I was terrified of drugs and I never... Now, when I got a little older, I did try. [01:36:00] I smoked pot. I didn’t inhale; Yes, I did. (laughs) But I never got into anything like needles. I hate needles and stuff like that. But you have your peers 56 �are there and they’re doing this and you -- so you decide you’re going to try it, but -JJ: In terms of the Young Patriots, what do you think was their contribution in the (inaudible)? CC: What was their contribution? JJ: Yeah. I mean their -- CC: Mostly, the clinic. They taught people that they didn’t have to treated like garbage, that they were worthwhile human beings. They had a right to have good healthcare, they a right to eat, (laughs) they had a right to live in conditions that weren’t falling [01:37:00] apart. They organized a lot of people -- a lot of community people. It was surprising that people got really involved. You start to feel like you’re worth something. Here, you got people telling you you’re a worthless hillbilly or something and you start to believe that. Then they saw that they weren’t. That they could do something. They could fight City Hall. Maybe we didn’t win all the time but you could do that. You were allowed to do that. You were allowed to stand up for yourself and say, “I am somebody and I deserve to be treated like somebody.” I believe that’s what the Patriots taught and I think the Patriots themselves. Here you got young guys that were just street hustlers who became different -- their lives are changed. They’re not in prison [01:38:00] which is probably where they would’ve wound up had they not gotten (inaudible) with stuff. They would probably be in prison or dead. I believe that. I really believe that. JJ: What are some final thoughts on that? 57 �CC: Hmm? JJ: Some final thoughts. CC: Final thoughts? I’m glad I was there, I’m glad I was involved. I’ve never been ashamed of what I was involved with. I would do it again. I don’t know about at this age because I can’t run as fast, for one thing. (laughter) Yeah. I’m glad I was there. I’m glad that maybe I made a difference; That I did change people’s lives or maybe educate people how they could change their lives. I’m glad I was here and I’ve never been ashamed. I’m not ashamed today. JJ: [01:39:00] Any other thoughts? Anything we forget to talk about? CC: No. I told you -- JJ: What about the relationship with the -- how did people feel between the Panthers and the Patriots or the Young Lords? CC: The Panthers. We didn’t have so much contact with the Panthers. The Panthers were -- let’s see -- on their own page. (laughs) How can I say? We were closer, I believe, to the Young Lords than the -- because the Young Lords, they ran their clinic and they were interested in the people. The Panthers? I don’t know. Sometimes I had some problems with them. JJ: What kind of problems? CC: They would call me on a -- when I was running the clinic one time and they said there’s a meeting. They were having a meeting and I had to come to this meeting. Because like I said, I was a certain -- that was my thing. [01:40:00] I said, “We’re running the clinic.” “Well, we’re the Black Panthers.” I said, “Look, I don’t care. When the clinic is over, then I will be there.” All right? All right. They 58 �had this -- these new cars and stuff and vehicles they were transporting. We had this little stinking station wagon (laughs) that was always breaking down. But -JJ: So you just didn’t have a lot of contact with them. That’s (inaudible). CC: Right. I had no animosity towards them but I really questioned their politics. The Chicago Panthers, anyway. JJ: What do you mean their politics? (crosstalk) CC: They were more -- I don’t know how to say this. (laughs) JJ: No, no, I think it’s fine. CC: It’s like -- JJ: You’re talking personally because (inaudible) -- of course there were, some of the other people were more [01:41:00] in communication with them -- with the Panthers. But you were in the clinic so you didn’t -- CC: Yeah, right. I was in the clinic and stuff and I just -- JJ: All you wanted to do was just do the clinic. CC: I just wanted to do what I was -- JJ: The clinic, right? CC: -- the clinic -- JJ: That’s what the Panthers -- CC: -- and to be helping people and -- JJ: And that’s what the Panthers wanted you to do anyway, right? CC: -- they just wanted to do, “Okay, it’s fine to beat your chest and all this other sun talk,” and sit here in a meeting and BS and talk about nothing as far as I’m concerned. I was about doing stuff. Like I said, I used to get in trouble 59 �sometimes because my mouth would go. But I’ve always been an upfront person, Cha-Cha. I’m not going to stand there and say, “Oh, okay. Yeah, well...” That’s not the way I am. (laughs) JJ: So you were a doer and you had to do -- you didn’t want to go to meetings. CC: Yeah, that’s -- I want to do and I don’t want to sit in meetings and just BS and not get anything accomplished. Just sit there and listen to yourself [01:42:00] talk is not my way of doing things. It doesn’t get anything done. That’s the problem I had with the JOIN students, too, is they were, “Me, me, me,” sitting there talking about nothing. What they wanted to do, what they were -- I don’t want to hear that. Get out there and do it. Who cares what you want to do? Get out there and do it. Or talk about philosophies or there’s a word I can’t. (gestures vomiting) Boring. So (inaudible). (laughter) I’m sorry, I have -- JJ: No, but you did get to speak with Doc Satchel and -- CC: Yeah, I liked Doc Satchel because -- oh, and that was another thing. If Doc Satchel couldn’t make it, somebody wouldn’t come from the Black Panthers. Then they expected us to share but we had to give them their 100 dollars. No, I’m sorry. That’s [01:43:00] not right because it was only me and somebody from the Young Lords that was there speaking. The Panthers were suppose-- but they didn’t because Doc was busy or something. To me, that’s not -- JJ: (laughs) It ain’t right. CC: “Give us our speaking fee.” No, you didn’t speak. JJ: So you didn’t want to give them that. CC: No, we didn’t. We didn’t. 60 �JJ: Now, what did you think about Fred Hampton? CC: I only met him one time and I didn’t know him. Mark Clark, I met many times. JJ: Was there -- they killed them. Was there something like that happening with the Patriots, too? Were the police after the Patriots? CC: Oh, the police were after the Patriots. But they just killed people on the street. They didn’t go into their apartments and roll them away which is what that jerk did. JJ: But they did (inaudible) him. CC: Oh yeah. JJ: So they didn’t plant it or anything, they just killed him on the street. CC: No. they went -- they planted it. They went in -- those people were sleeping, Cha-Cha. [01:44:00] They went in there and they killed them in their beds. I didn’t know for a long time that Doc Satchel was one of the people that got shot. Somehow, he got away but he was there the night that they killed Fred Hampton and Mark Clark. They went into there. I want to say was it Burke or Ed -- what was his name? JJ: [Hanrahan?], Hanrahan. CC: Hanrahan, him. Oh, that guy, I got to tell you a funny story. Hanrahan. They planted it. They just went in there and went into that apartment and blew people away in their sleep! I was at a bingo -- okay, 25 years ago or so at this church. In the hall comes Hanrahan running around shaking people’s hand. [01:45:00] He got to me and I just sat there. I said, “I don’t want to shake your hand, jerk.” (laughs) 61 �JJ: How come you didn’t want to shake his hand? CC: Because he had killed Fred Hampton. (laughs) I mean, he was responsible and I knew about it and he was a jerk. He was a real jerk. Oh, Hanrahan, going around, shaking all the bingo ladies’ hands. I don’t know what he was running for -- from them. He should’ve been running for his life is what he should’ve been doing. JJ: (laughter) Yeah. He was running (crosstalk). CC: Hiding in a hole. Yeah. I forget what it was. JJ: (inaudible) So (inaudible) [Youngblood?]? So I know you said that they killed some people on the street. But was the police, did they do any questioning afterwards? Why did the Young Patriots break up? CC: Oh, why did they break up? They [01:46:00] didn’t break up. People just went their own ways -- kind of moved, kind of moved. Junebug went to California and Bobby moved to Kentucky. People, the original Young Patriots. Doug and I, we moved. JJ: Mm-hmm. So you moved this way or...? CC: No. I moved to Rogers Park and I got into working with drug addicts and alcoholics. Kit Komatsu and David Komatsu, they kept up the clinic. They moved it over on [Gray Street?] and they kept it up. But people just drifted away. Nothing, nothing -- JJ: What about a preacher man or (inaudible)? CC: Now, preacher man. That’s a totally different thing. I never cared for him, (inaudible) -- never cared for him. 62 �JJ: But wasn’t he -- I thought he was from the neighborhood. CC: No, he was from -- he was a seminary student or [01:47:00] something -- JJ: (inaudible) CC: -- that my mother-in-law, Peggy Terry, when we were in Resurrection City after they killed King when we set up that city in Washington, D.C., he was there and they talked to him. Then he came to Chicago and worked with the Patriots. However, he had his own agenda and he was kind of a megalomaniac, I guess. (laughs) Megalomaniac? Is that what that -- megalomaniac? Like ego maniac? JJ: (crosstalk) CC: Yeah. A megalomaniac, because I do crossword puzzles. It has something -- no, well, that’s where I learned that word is self-important. Very self-important. (inaudible) Like I said, I never cared for him and I -- JJ: He wasn’t from Uptown. I thought he was from -- CC: No, he was from [01:48:00] North Carolina or South Carolina and he came here. JJ: So was he like a hillbilly, too, or...? (crosstalk) CC: Yeah, he was a hillbilly. JJ: Okay. Is that a good term? I don’t know. I -- CC: Oh, there’s nothing wrong with that. It used to be -- now, when I was young and stuff, if you called somebody a hillbilly, that was like using the n-word to a southerner. But then in the ‘60s and stuff, it became -- people were proud to be hillbillies. We used to say, “There’s only two kinds of people in this world: hillbillies and the people who wish they were hillbillies.” (laughs) But no, Peggy 63 �and them, they never had a problem being called hillbillies. And they used to tell me they loved me anyway even if I was a Yankee. JJ: Oh, okay. CC: Yeah, because I wasn’t a hillbilly. They told -- JJ: [01:49:00] Did they call you Yankee or no? CC: No. JJ: You called yourself Yankee. CC: Everybody did. JJ: Why is there a difference? Yeah, what is that? CC: Why do you think? Because -- okay, Yankee, because of the Civil War, the North and the South. See, I’m a Yankee. I’m a Chicago girl. JJ: Oh, that’s right. That’s right. That’s right, you’re a Chicago girl. CC: They used to kid me and say I was hillbilly by injection but that’s not... (laughter) That’s dumb. Don’t put that. (laughter) No, that’s what Dougie used to tell me. (laughter) (inaudible) “You’re a hillbilly by injection.” JJ: What does that mean? Something (inaudible). CC: Yeah, right. But it -- my mother-in-law, Peggy, she would say, “We love you even if you are a damn Yankee.” (laughs) JJ: Okay. So there was a lot of pride in (crosstalk) CC: (inaudible) it’ll go -- yeah. It came -- it became -- JJ: It’s a culture. (crosstalk) CC: -- for me derogatory to a -- yeah. JJ: So it’s [01:50:00] like a different culture, right? 64 �CC: Yeah, yeah. JJ: Something like Puerto Rican, Mexican. CC: Right. Yeah. Hillbilly. Southern white. It’s usually meant southern white, not southern Blacks but southern white. Hillbilly. But actually I think in the dictionary, it says that a hillbilly is a Michigan farmer. JJ: Really? CC: It seems to me. Maybe not but it’s probably updated. I don’t care what you call me as long as you don’t call me late for dinner. That’s what I... (laughter) But what would be funny -- okay. Because I was married to Doug and Peggy was my mother-in-law, when we would go someplace, I forget where it was. I was applying for something and they put down, “You’re a southern white, right?” I said, “No, why?” Doug is, yeah, he’s my husband but I’m not a southern white. (laughs) [01:51:00] Or when they would categorize me and put me in a southern white and I’d say, “No, I’m not a southern white.” (laughs) I’m a damn Yankee. JJ: So right now, you’re not active? You’re kind of retired? CC: Oh yeah, I’m retired. (laughs) JJ: From that, yes. CC: Yeah, from that. I still put my two cents in and if I can help, you know what I’m saying? Like at work, I’ve had guards that would -- racist and stuff and I got them removed. (laughs) I’m not ashamed to say that and I really don’t mess with people’s jobs. But if you’re going to treat people like they’re garbage just because they’re not white or whatever, you’re gone. (laughs) I’m not putting up 65 �with that. I’ve [01:52:00] had people who needed help with alcohol or something and I would put them in contact with people so... JJ: You still (inaudible) CC: Yeah. JJ: (inaudible) Okay. One more time. Any other final thoughts? CC: No. That’s it; that’s it. JJ: Okay. You said you have your son or...? CC: Yeah, I have a son, Jason. He’s 45. Yeah. JJ: He doesn’t come around or...? CC: He lives here. JJ: Oh, he lives here. CC: He lives here with his girlfriend and her two-year-old son so that just happened recently that they moved in. Actually, it was the little boy that got to me. (crosstalk) I wasn’t so keen on having her because you can’t have two women in the house or even in the kitchen and all that. But that little boy just kind of got me so -- JJ: [01:53:00] (inaudible) CC: Yeah. I guess he -- he’s my grandson. He’s not my blood but he’s my -- I love him to death. I’m a pushover when it comes to babies and animals. JJ: What’s his name? CC: His name is [Nicholas?]. JJ: Nicholas. What’s her name? CC: Her name is [Nicole?]. 66 �JJ: Nicole. (inaudible) CC: Yeah. She’s a sweetheart. She really is a sweetheart. But puppies and babies or little kids. (laughs) I know I’m a pushover. (laughs) END OF VIDEO FILE 67 � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/ad57d098cadaabde488ffbc9dc2a4c19.mp4 bfbcdc7df1177b1eb05c79b83b40adae 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. 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 Título Spanish language Title entry Carol Blakely vídeo entrevista y biografía Descripción Spanish language Description entry La historia oral de Carol Blakely, entrevistado por Jose 'Cha-Cha' Jimenez el 10/19/2012 acerca de los Young Lords en Lincoln Park. 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_Blakely_Carol Title A name given to the resource Carol (Coronado) Blakely video interview and transcript Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Blakely, Carol (Coronado) Description An account of the resource Oral history of Carol (Coronado) Blakely, interviewed by Jose 'Cha-Cha' Jimenez, on 10/19/2012 about the Young Lords in Lincoln Park. In the video, an older white woman in a blue top speaks while looking towards the interviewer who is off camera. In the interview, Carol discusses growing up on the north side of Chicago, and her involvement as a young adult in the Young Patriots Organization, which organized a health clinic for underserved Chicago residents. She also discusses collaborating with members of the Young Lords and Black Panthers on community organizing. The transcript file includes a detailed biographical note about the subject. 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 2012-10-19 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Young Lords collection (RHC-65) Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Jiménez, José "Cha-Cha" (interviewer) Audio Transcription Center (transcriber) Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1960s Civil Rights Movement Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives