In 1970 there was a fire in northern Chicago, on Milwaukee and Damen, during Christmas time. Thirteen Latinos died in that fire and the majority of them were Mexican. That same year, there was another fire around the holidays where twelve more people died, out of a total of 25-28. The community came together to figure out why there were so many casualties in those two fires when they realized there were no Latino firefighters in Chicago who were able to communicate in Spanish. At that point the Latino community rebelled against the Chicago Fire Department and they filed a lawsuit. The case was in the Supreme Court for seven years. In 1973, they opened the books as they say to hire minority firefighters, which were Latino and African-Americans at that time. They started two classes, where out of 125 applicants, half were supposed to be caucasian and the other half African-American and Latinos. In one class they hired twelve Latinos and thirteen Latinos in the second class. I was part of the second class that began on July 17, 1977. - Alfonso Ortiz, Retired Chicago Firefighter, Puerto Rican, Immigrant Archive Project testimony youtube/watch?v=ZHzn1d2TsjA
Posted on: Sat, 01 Feb 2014 02:14:31 +0000
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