Patricia Devine-Reed was the leader of the Concerned Citizens of Lincoln Park (later called the Concerned Citizens Survival Front of Lincoln Park), the first group to protest urban renewal plans on the grounds that Puerto Ricans and African Americans…

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…

Billy Dunbar is a member of the Chicago Illinois Chapter of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense (BPP). He is from the south side of Chicago. He keeps up with all the political events related to the BPP and the Rainbow Coalition, including the…

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…

Oral history of Diego Figuearoa, Jr., interviewed by Jose 'Cha-Cha' Jimenez, on 8/25/2012 about the Young Lords in Lincoln Park.

Oral history of Diego Figuearoa, Sr., interviewed by Jose 'Cha-Cha' Jimenez, on 8/25/2012 about the Young Lords in Lincoln Park.

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…

Dimas Rodríguez Flores grew up since the 1930s in Barrio San Salvador of Caguas, Puerto Rico and continues to live there in the Lao Frío side of the barrio. He is a twin brother with Encarnación Rodríguez Flores. They have another eleven siblings,…

Oral history of Lenny Foster, interviewed by Jose 'Cha-Cha' Jimenez on 10/23/2016 about the Young Lords in Lincoln Park.

Hilda Frontany is a long-time community activist whose family first lived in the Water Hotel in Chicago’s La Clark neighborhood when they arrived in Chicago from Puerto Rico. In the late 1960s and 1970s she devoted her work to addressing the housing…

Oral history of Carmen Garcia, interviewed by Jose 'Cha-Cha' Jimenez, on 11/16/2012 about the Young Lords in Lincoln Park.

Laura Garcia was raised in an immigrant farmworker family. She was a member of MECha, the Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán, in the struggle to build the United Farmworkers Union, and joined the Teatro de las Chicanas, a theatre troupe started…

Gregorio Gómez is known as the “G Man” at one of Chicago’s longest running underground poetry venues, “Weeds,” at 1515 North Dayton Street. Opened in 1964, “Weeds” still serves the Lincoln Park neighborhood; the building has existed there since 1928.…

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…

Iberia Hampton is the mother of murdered Illinois Black Panther Party Chairman Fred Hampton, as well as Dee and Bill Hampton. Throughout her life she has been active within her church and the community. Along with Bill Hampton and the board, Mrs.…

Jack Hart was a primary assistant to Walter “Slim” Coleman during the Jiménez for Alderman Campaign of 1975. He continues to live and work in Chicago’s 46th Ward, primarily in the Uptown Community. In the 1970s, Hart was a member of the Intercommunal…

Fr. Donald Headley was first ordained as a Catholic priest in 1958 and is resident priest at the St. Mary’s of the Woods Faith Community in Chicago. He recalls meeting with Saul Alinsky and working with Rev. Jack Eagan, the founder of urban Catholic…

David Hernández was born in Cidra, Puerto Rico and arrived in Chicago in 1955. He has volunteered with the Young Lords in many activities and events. But his primary community work has been with La Gente, an organization he founded that worked with…

Rosa M. Hernández grew up on Orchard Street in Chicago. Like many of the Puerto Rican women of that era, she grew up sheltered while boys were free to stay out late and roam the streets. Ms. Hernández was the neighborhood store errand girl, it was a…

Oral history of Erica Huggins, interviewed by Jose 'Cha-Cha' Jimenez, on 3/13/2013 about the Young Lords in Lincoln Park.

A resident of Chicago’s Roger’s Park neighborhood, Mike James was the first leader of Rising Up Angry, a white, working-class group formed in the late 1960s and early 1970s that sought to organize residents of Lakeview/Uptown and offer a range of…

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,…

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…

Daisy Jiménez, or “La Prieta” as she was called by her father, is one of José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez’s sisters. She was born on the seventh floor of what was the Water Hotel at Superior and La Salle Streets in Chicago, where her family was then living.…