CA A AMÉRI NUESTRANUESTR AMERICA NUESTRANUESTRA AMÉRICAAMÉRICA 30 INSPIRING LAS TINA /LATINOS WHO HAVE SHAPED THE UNITED STATES by Sabrina Vourvoulias Illustrated by Gloria Felix Introduction by Eduardo Diaz, Director, Smithsonian Latino Center Reading Guide by Emily Key, Director of Education, Smithsonian Latino Center Table of Contents Copyright © 2020 by Smithsonian Institution Smithsonian® This trademark is owned by the Smithsonian Institution Introduction ...... vi and is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Interior and cover illustrations copyright © 2020 by Gloria Felix Sylvia Acevedo ...... 3 Cover copyright © 2020 by Hachette Book Group, Inc. Luis Walter Alvárez ...... 6 Hachette Book Group supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. Pura Belpré ...... 11 The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture. Martha E . Bernal ...... 14 Julia de Burgos ...... 19 The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of César Chávez ...... 22. the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact [email protected]. Sandra Cisneros ...... 27 Thank you for your support of the author’s rights. Roberto Clemente ...... 30
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Reading Guide ...... 111 ultimate successes of these individuals in the fields of entertainment, social and environmental justice, sports, education, fashion design, journalism, aviation, literature, politics, space exploration, LGBTQ advocacy, health care, entrepreneurship, music, science, and military Dear Reader, service, just to name a few. Limiting our choices to thirty individuals among a bounty of notable figures was incredibly difficult. Our hope is Latinas and Latinos—native born and immigrant—have played and that you will see these profiles as an initial exploration and will go on to continue to play foundational roles in nation-building and the shap- learn about many others in the Latino community who have made and ing our national culture as patriots, educators, entrepreneurs, laborers, continue to make meaningful contributions to strengthening the fabric artists, healers, innovators, entertainers, scientists, community activists, of this country. and leaders. Since its inception in 1997, the Smithsonian Latino Center We are immensely grateful to our colleagues at Hachette Group/ has supported ongoing research, exhibitions, collecting, public and Running Press Kids and Smithsonian Enterprises for believing in our work educational programs, digital content, and publications that interpret and extending this wonderful opportunity to the Latino Center. Special and illustrate the diverse Latino experience in the United States. thanks to Jill Corcoran at Smithsonian Enterprises and Emily Key at Nuestra América is inspired by the Smithsonian Latino Center’s effort the Smithsonian Latino Center for their vision and leadership on this to center Latino stories as part of the greater American narrative project. through the building of the Molina Family Latino Gallery at the National The great labor leader César Chávez once said, “We cannot seek Museum of American History. This gallery fulfills a promise and vision set achievement for ourselves and forget about progress and prosperity years earlier—before the creation of what would become the Latino of our community. . . . Our ambitions must be broad enough to include Center. The Molina Gallery’s exhibitions will present stories on many, if the aspirations and needs of others, for their sake and for our own.” I not most, of the remarkable Americans featured throughout this book. hope that you are inspired by the sense of community that guided History is largely made by people, and it is through their life stories that the ambitions and propelled the achievements of these distinguished we will be able to paint a more accurate portrait of our country’s past, Latina and Latino Americans. In closing, I hope you are moved to set present, and future. Latino history is American history. your personal goals high and to always be one with your communities This publication marks a groundbreaking moment in the Latino and their needs and aspirations. Keep your eyes on the prize! Center’s history. I can think of no better way to enter the world of Atentamente, youth literature than by collaborating on a publication that showcases Eduardo Díaz, Director thirty illustrious Latinas and Latinos and their impactful contributions. Smithsonian Latino Center Through these pages, you will learn about the trials, tribulations, and www.latino.si.edu
vi vii NUESTRA AMÉRICA SylviSylvia AAccevedoevedo (circa 1957–) ENGINEER
ylvia remembers being a child and looking up at the night sky. She was in the Girl Scouts, and they were camping out, eating S s’mores, and relaxing after a day of outdoor activities. The troop leader noticed Sylvia looking up at the sky, so she pointed out the plan- ets and the constellations. It was the first time Sylvia understood what those twinkling lights really were. Soon enough, Sylvia tried to earn her Girl Scout science badge by launching a rocket. Both rockets and Girl Scouts would end up being a part of Sylvia’s future. But first she’d have to learn to believe in herself. Sylvia was born in South Dakota but grew up in the desert landscape of Las Cruces, New Mexico. Her mother was a Mexican immigrant, and her father was Mexican American and from El Paso, Texas. They spoke Spanish at home and didn’t have a lot of money. Sylvia’s mother noticed that the kids from their neighborhood (which had dirt streets) seemed to get sick more than the kids from other neighborhoods, so when Sylvia’s sister got sick with meningitis, they moved. Sylvia didn’t
3 S aylvi Acevedo Sylvia Acevedo like leaving her friends behind, but she soon found her place when she When the company finally realized she was the type of person who joined the Girl Scouts. would solve a problem instead of walking away from it, they installed Besides teaching her about the night sky, Sylvia’s troop leader a Porta Potty for her. Sylvia worked for some of the biggest names in taught her never to walk away from a cookie sale until she’d heard no tech—IBM, Dell, and Apple—and became a tech entrepreneur. But she three times. Sylvia used this technique when she was a senior in high never forgot the impact the Girl Scouts had on her life. school. “Girls like you don’t go to college,” the high school counselor She joined the Girl Scouts’ board of directors and eventually became told her. Sylvia walked into the counselor’s office anyway. The exasper- the CEO. Since she has headed the organization, the Girl Scouts have ated counselor asked her what she wanted to study. When Sylvia said, added robotics, coding, engineering, and cybersecurity to the badges “Engineering,” the counselor burst into laughter. But Sylvia went on to girls can earn—while continuing to teach them the persistence and get her industrial engineering degree from New Mexico State University resilience Sylvia has found so valuable in her own life. in 1979. She became a rocket scientist at NASA’s jet propulsion lab where Way back when she was working on her science badge trying to launch her rocket, Sylvia needed to figure out how to break gravity’s grip to successfully get her rocket off the ground. Now Sylvia is working “Ie lov numbers. to help others break the grip on whatever is holding them down. She’s written a book, Path to the Stars: My Journey from Girl Scout to Rocket Numbers are sort of Scientist, to inspire middle school girls to believe in themselves and their ambitions. my superpower.” After all, a Girl Scout is taught to always leave the campground— and the world—better than how she found it. she worked on the Voyager mission that flew by Jupiter and its moons. Then she went back to school and got her master’s degree at Stanford University. She had wanted to go there ever since her fourth- grade teacher showed her a photo of the university. There, she became one of the first Latinas to earn a graduate-level engineering degree. As a systems engineer, she decided to get into tech. There weren’t as many women as men in that industry in the 1980s, and at one of her jobs, there wasn’t even a bathroom for her to use. Sylvia thought maybe they hoped she’d quit her job because of the inconvenience. Instead, Sylvia brought a bike to work and rode it to the nearest bathroom.
4 5 Luiuis WWaltalterer AlAlvávárerez (1911–1988) PHYSICIST
riends and coworkers of Luis Alvárez would sometimes open the door to his office at the University of California, Berkeley, and catch Fhim doing a handstand on top of his desk. Not exactly what you’d expect from a Nobel prize–winning physicist, but then, Luis seemed to enjoy standing things on their heads. Born in San Francisco in 1911, Luis—known as Luie (loo-ee) to his friends—was the son of a physician. He was named after his Spanish grandfather, who was also a physician, but Luie had no interest in medicine. He liked to tinker—he built a radio when he was eleven years old—and during high school he spent two summers apprenticing in the instrument shop of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. This affec- tion for tinkering stayed with Luie, and over the course of his life, he was granted twenty-two patents—for everything from optical devices to a golf training machine developed for President Eisenhower. After high school, Luie enrolled in the University of Chicago in 1928 to study chemistry. He was a B student, and in his junior year, he switched
6 L ruis Walte Alvárez Luis Walter Alvárez to physics instead. He took twelve physics courses in eighteen months imagination. For example, he used cosmic rays to help archaeologists to make up for his late start in the subject and reportedly read every figure out if the chambers underneath one of the Egyptian pyramids nuclear physics article that had ever been published. Later, friends were empty or full without having to dig the chambers out (they were would remember that when he quoted an article he had read, he could empty, alas). Working with his geologist son, Walt, he was the first to recollect every detail about it, including whether it appeared on the say that the impact of a massive asteroid had been the cause of the left-hand or right-hand page of the journal. mass extinction of dinosaurs. Many paleontologists initially rejected his asteroid theory. It wasn’t until after Luie’s death in 1988 that an impact crater large enough to uphold such a theory was discovered, making it “Actually, physics accepted as the most likely cause of the extinction event. Throughout his life, Luie happily followed his father’s guidance: “He is the simplest of advised me to sit every few months in my reading chair for an entire all sciences.” evening, close my eyes, and try to think of new problems to solve.”
He loved physics, insisting that it was a simple science complicated only by the language physicists used to discuss it—the language of mathematics. Luie also loved airplanes (he had a pilot’s license and flew until he was seventy-three), which led him to invent a radar-based system that allowed aircraft to land safely in fog and at night. The mil- itary thought this and some of Luie’s other inventions could help the United States during World War I. He was one of a number of scientists who were part of the Manhattan Project, which developed the atomic bombs dropped on Japan during World War II. But his peacetime projects also gained recognition. In 1968, Luie was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for the use of liquid hydrogen in a bubble chamber with which he discovered many short-lived sub- atomic particles. Late in life, after he had officially retired from doing research, Luie had the time to use physics to solve mysteries that captured the public’s
8 9 PuPurara Belprpré (1899–1982) LIBRARIAN AND STORYTELLER
ince 1996, her face has appeared on a round, golden seal marking the books of Latino writers and illustrators who are hon- S ored for their work on an outstanding work of literature for chil- dren and youth. The Pura Belpré Award, cosponsored by three national library organizations, would have delighted Pura, who was, in 1921, the first Puerto Rican hired by the New York Public Library system. (Some say she was very likely the first Puerto Rican librarian in the mainland United States.)
“I said to myself I am going to do something with these stories.”
11 Pua r Belpré Pura Belpré
An Afro-Latina, Pura was hired to work at the 135th Street branch in library the jewel of the community. Her time there, she would later Harlem, where there was a growing population of Puerto Ricans, many say, was especially rewarding. “It acquainted me with Black culture of them black. “One of my duties in the children’s room was to ‘read’ the and I experienced the Black Renaissance of art and literature, and fairy tale shelves,” Pura wrote later in life. “Thus the folklore of the world the upsurge of poets, novelists, dramatists, and musicians. I saw the opened for me. As I shelved books, I searched for some of the folktales beginning of the now Schomburg collection come into being.” I had heard at home. There was not even one. A sudden feeling of loss In fact, Arturo Schomburg—the Black Puerto Rican historian rose within me.” whose collection of literature, art, and narratives form the basis of the So she decided to write her own retellings of traditional Puerto Rican Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture’s holdings—used to folktales. Her tale of a mouse and cockroach that fall in love, Pérez y come to the library and chat with Pura. Martina, was published in 1932 and was the first Spanish-language book At forty, Pura married Clarence Cameron White, an African for children published by a mainstream U.S. publisher. She would go on American violinist and composer (whose papers are now part of the to write other children’s books and a collection of Puerto Rican folktales. Schomburg collection), and they resided in Harlem throughout their Pura didn’t start out thinking she’d become a librarian, folklorist, marriage. and storyteller. Born in Cidra, Puerto Rico, to a middle-class family that She left the 135th Street branch after several years to work at the moved a lot because of her father’s work as a building contractor, Pura 115th Street branch, which would become an important cultural center graduated from high school in Santurce intending to go to college to for Latino residents of the city. There, she arranged for famed Mexican become a teacher. Instead, after one year at the University of Puerto muralist Diego Rivera to lecture, celebrated Latino feast days, and Rico, she went to New York City to help her sister plan her wedding—and honed her storytelling and puppetry skills. She later worked at the 110th decided to stay. Street branch before “retiring” to concentrate on writing her books. At first, like many other Puerto Rican women who migrated from the After her husband’s death in 1960, she came out of retirement to island at that time, she toiled as a garment worker. Pura was offered the work again at the New York Public Library, this time in the South Bronx. library assistant job—thanks to her education and the library’s need for She died in 1982, but her legendary status as a storyteller lives on in her Spanish-language skills—after her newlywed sister turned it down. the award named after her. To this day, Teatro SEA (a Latinx children’s Some historians have noted that Pura had more liberty than most young theater in New York) sends its actresses out to perform puppet shows Puerto Rican women of her time to pursue this opportunity because at schools dressed up as Pura. she wasn’t living under the supervision of parents, nor was she married with children. In addition to doing the typical work of an assistant librarian, Pura presented puppet shows in English and Spanish. Pura considered the
12 13 Martartha E. Bernernaall (1931–2001) CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGIST
he would go on to become the first Latina in the nation to earn a doctorate in psychology, but the first thing Martha Bernal learned S when she got to kindergarten was that, if she spoke Spanish, she’d be punished by the teacher. Later, after she became a groundbreaking psychologist, she would remember the shame this made her feel. “In 1939, when I began school in El Paso, Texas, the use of the Spanish language by Mexican children was punished in Texas schools,” Martha wrote in 1988. “Because I did not speak English, I immediately learned that the dominant society disapproved of my language and heritage.” Martha was born in San Antonio, Texas, to Alicia and Enrique de Bernal, who had recently immigrated from Mexico, and was raised in El Paso, where schools were segregated and Mexican Americans experienced significant discrimination. Her family was tight-knit and traditional, which gave her a strong connection to her identity but pre- sented some difficulties, as well.
14 Martha E. Bernal Martha E. Bernal
When Martha graduated from high school and told her father she At the same time, she found herself confronting some of the anti- wanted to go to college, he objected. He wanted her to get married Latino racism she had internalized from her childhood in El Paso. This and start a family. Finally, with her mother’s and sister’s intercession, he led her to focus the research she was doing on the treatment of mental relented. “My father gave in and assisted me financially even though . . . health issues in children of color. Because she saw few Latinos working I knew it was economically difficult for him to help,” she wrote in 1988. in her field, she made it her priority to make recruitment more multicul- She completed her bachelor’s degree at the University of Texas, tural and encouraged Latino students to study psychology. got a master’s degree from Syracuse University, and then went on to Her persistence and belief in herself and her cultural traditions get a doctorate in clinical psychology from Indiana University in 1962, made her a trailblazer. becoming the first Latina to do so. Martha died in 2001, but not before inspiring a whole new genera- tion of Latinx psychologists. “I have much to learn and many things left to accomplish.”
She and her female peers experienced sexism while completing their studies. At first, professors tried to dissuade Martha from taking “difficult” courses like advanced mathematics, and later, she saw that women students were not invited to work on research projects with their professors. When Martha started applying for faculty jobs, she experienced sexism again. More than once, she heard the words “We do not hire women.” Described by her friends as resilient, passionate, and outspoken against injustice, Martha didn’t let the rejections distract her from what she wanted to accomplish. She became a researcher, focusing her work on how behavioral treatments worked on children.
16 17 JJululia de BBuurggoos (1914–1953) POET
“Ie am lif , strength, woman.”
n a letter written to her sister when she first arrived in New York, Julia de Burgos wrote: “I want to be universal.” Though she died at the I young age of thirty-nine, the Puerto Rican poet and advocate for Puerto Rico’s independence achieved her dream. There are monuments to her in Puerto Rico; a street named after her in East Harlem; schools named after her in New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, and Puerto Rico; postage stamps that commemorate her in the United States and the Dominican Republic; and countless murals and artworks that celebrate her as a poet, feminist, and Afro-Latina trailblazer.
19 Julia de Burgos Julia de Burgos
She was born Julia Constanza Burgos García in Carolina, Puerto doors for her, as a divorced woman in a fiercely Catholic country, and Rico. Julia was the eldest of her thirteen siblings, seven of whom died because of her African descent and working-class background, she in childhood. The family was working-class, and she attended college found herself only marginally accepted by the intellectual circles on the on a scholarship, graduating with a teaching certificate at the age of island. nineteen. Julia moved to New York City in 1940 as politics on the island veered She accomplished a lot very quickly: She took a job at a social ser- away from the independence movement she believed in, and she swore vice site that offered free meals to poor children, got married, took on she’d never return. Poignantly, for the woman who wanted to be uni- her first teaching job at Naranjito, Puerto Rico, joined the Daughters of versal, when she collapsed on a corner of East Harlem in 1953, she had Liberty nationalist political group, and wrote two children’s plays—all by no identification on her and was declared a Jane Doe when she died the age of twenty-two. that same day. The city buried her as a nameless indigent in a public Traditionally, when women married in Latin America, they would take burial site. on their husband’s surname and insert a “de” before it to indicate whom After weeks of searching, her family and friends finally found her they “belonged” to. When Julia divorced her husband three years after body, had it exhumed, and flew her remains to her hometown in Puerto marrying him, she inserted a “de” before her own surname to indicate Rico, where she was formally buried with a grand monument erected in she would belong to no one but herself. her memory. Julia self-published her first book of poetry, which contained one of Not counting the self-published book, Julia had seen two of her her most enduringly beloved poems, “Río Grande de Loíza,” in which the books of poetry published during her lifetime; a third would be pub- river is personified and its waters have become the tears of the enslaved lished posthumously in 1954. But even with such limited poetic output, Puerto Rican people. she has come to be considered one of the most influential Puerto Rican Located on the coastal northeast of the island, the Loíza region and Latin American poets of the twentieth century. that the Río Grande traverses has a significant Black population and is acknowledged as a place where African and Taíno Indigenous tradi- tions are alive in music, folk art, and cuisine. By setting the poem where she did, Julia found a way to decry the island’s history of slavery and its colonial occupation, first by Spain and then by the United States. Though there are no remaining copies of Julia’s self-published first book, “Río Grande de Loíza” was included in her second book of poems— published in 1939, this time by a traditional publisher—and earned her both acclaim and an avid readership. Even though poetry opened some
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