- I grew up in Brooklyn, New York, in a housing project it was called "Four Green."
- I went to the Richmond high school in New York city.
- I grew up in Salinas, California, a small agricultural community.
- I am a Puerto Rican from New York.
- And you know, at the time I'm living in the Bronx, a family of 14.
- I didn't have a room because it was just my brother, my mother and I. And my brother had the room and my mother had the room so I basically slept in the living room.
- My mother being a single mom, raising nine kids and the public housing projects of Salinas.
- Here I am in Pilsen and most I would say 90% of my friends either got drafted to Vietnam or married.
- And I knew nothing about colleges.
- And I had a counselor who said to me, "You know, you should be doing something different with your life."
- I did my own research because actually my school counselor, when I mentioned to her that I was applying to Brandeis, she was trying to, she was discouraging me from applying.
- When I told them that I was applying to Brandeis, they were polite, but they said, "You know, you really should apply to a community college."
- Fortunately, my parents were... The question wasn't whether or not I was going to go to college. The question was which college I was gonna go to.
- I applied everywhere. I applied to all the Ivy league, Harvard, Wesley, Vassar.
- NYU, Princeton, MIT.
- Well, I got rejected at Yale, waiting listed at Harvard, and I got admitted to Brandeis. And my dad said, "Well, that's where you're going son."
- I was expected on an academic scholarship.
- I got a great financial aid package. I even got money for books.
- A full scholarship, the Martin Luther King scholarship.
- At the last moment, I said, "You know what? I like the idea of Brandeis, the Heller school, it's social justice mission."
- And that's when I realized this might be something I should do and of course there's no accidents in the universe. All of us met. We all were supposed to know each other and have this life experience and so we did.
- So, September comes and I get on an Eastern airlines flight and I leave my mom and dad, my social support system, my girlfriend, my car, and I fly up to Brandeis.
- In the first of my family and the first of my community to even think about going to college back east. I had no idea what I was getting myself into.
- And I walk in and I sit down at my desk and I get tears in my eyes and I'm really homesick already.
- I knew deep inside that I was going to work hard and study and my goal was to learn as much as I could. And then to be the best, you know, to get a job and be the best I could be at the job.
- I decided in my mind that I was going to get my degree from Brandeis University and I was going to get a degree in biology and I was going to go to medical school.
- And in retrospect, 40 plus years later, it was the absolute best decision I made.
- From my experience, they weren't recruiting Puerto Ricans to Ivy League schools or any Latinos for that matter.
- And I quickly found out that I was the only Puerto Rican, the only LatinX to admit it that year.
- I remember 23 Latino students, others remember 28, but it was certainly less than 30 in my freshmen class.
- There were a few of us, but you know, we need it. We wanted to have an organization that would empower us to obtain more students.
- So out of those discussions, a group of young Brandeis Latino students, Latinas in particular, came together to form an organization. And as I recall the dialogue, there was a great deal of discussion, even debate about what to call ourselves.
- At that point, you know, there were some students that had arrived, which were mainly Puerto
Rican and Chicano.
- In Puerto Rico, there was an uprising.
- Yes, Grito de Dolores.
- Revolting against Spain to get Puerto Rico's independence.
- It represented Grito de Dolores, the call to action for the Mexican independence.
- So then we said, oh wow, that's great. So there's a Grito related to the Chicano students and there's a Grito related to the Puerto Rican students.
- Out of that came the term "Grito". Our approach, the group's view about.
- Uprising, up with a revolt with claiming rights.
- Calling attention to all the issues affecting the emerging Latino population.
- So once we started Grito, we continued the efforts in terms of getting more light next to this on campus.
- The population, the amount of Latinos that came, came from various parts of the country.
- And not necessarily the minority student that came from the affluent part of society, but the minority student that came from the underserved, underprivileged part of society.
- So then junior year, they decided to start changing the way they gave grants and they were beginning to do a lot of loans and very little grants.
- [Arturo Centeno] Tuition increased, and the administration made no allowances for the minority students to have an increase in financial aid.
- [Martha Hernandez] And so that cut out a lot of people who could not afford or chose not to stay at Brandeis.
- And so then we had this takeover of an administration building, which was very controversial.
- I think all of us, you know, showed a lot of courage.
- [Naomi Vega] We were there for several days.
- [Lynda Garden] It was like for me, something I had never done in my life,
- [Maria Rodriguez] You know, we could have been kicked out of the school.
- I ended up almost getting suspended. Well I got suspended.
- Many of us were the only ones who went to college in our families.
- That was the only time that my mother was able to come up and see me walk the stage graduate and I actually did not walk the stage. I did graduate, but I did not walk the stage.
- They were depending on us. And, you know, we were kind of like the hope of our families.
- At the time, I thought that my parents were going to be really disappointed and angry at me. They were both very, very proud of me.
- It left an impact, you know, the importance of really fighting for what you think is fair.
- [Maria Rodriguez] We did it anyway because it was the right cause. It was the right thing to do.
- And everybody that did that at that time was willing to risk their... Well, our senior year, our graduation, I mean, we would have been kicked out. So I think what I would say was that our willingness and our sticktoitiveness to remain cohesive as a collective, as a people of color. And as a collective on principle is what gave us that victory in heart. And so, I'm honored to have experienced that.
- Being at Brandeis, it was impossible to be empathetic, especially minorities.
- We were locked in Vietnam war.
- [Fernando Torres] And keep in mind, this was in the early seventies, early to mid-seventies.
- [Arturo Centeno] Richard Nixon was our president.
- [Elsie Morales] And Grito as a group also, we were very active in different social issues of the time.
- [Lynda Garden] And anything related to a demonstration in some way, we were involved.
- [Martha Hernandez] We've participated in different anti-war demonstrations.
- And we were also very involved with, you know, movements outside of the university, like the anti-war movement and the lettuce boycott.
- [Fernando Torres] Where I found Grito's so supportive was in our efforts to support the United farm workers. For us and for Grito, it meant boycotting and picketing a number of grocery stores throughout the Waltham area.
- It was a exciting time in the evolution of civil rights in the United States.
- At one point, like on a weekly basis, there was demonstrations.
- Minorities were finding their voice.
- You know, I started learning like, you know, I need to be popping this. This is part of me.
- People like us have to fight for justice constantly. And Grito really further nurtured that sense of responsibility.
- When I arrived at Brandeis, I was quite surprised that there was a Puerto Rican community in Waltham.
- Because there was a migrant program there for farmers. So they would bring Puerto Ricans to farm in Waltham, but they needed services.
- So together with another student from Latin America, we started the Puerto Rican group.
- Because we were Latinos, we wanted to help the community where we went to school at.
- And I know that students took turns going there on weekends, providing services, providing meals.
- It had a bilingual nursery school. We did things with the kids. We've been bought them up to campus or for Christmas party, we took them on outings.
- I really remember a clothing drive that we had, a really good one because people just came with what they had. You know, Grito was very instrumental in making those families feel "comfortable" while they were in Waltham.
- We were very active with Brandeis pursuing a lot of really, really good goals, but, you know, but we also have took a lot of time to really just let loose, have fun, you know, dancing.
- I would dance for like two or three hours straight.
- Grito, we also organized activities for the LatinX students. You know, I remember we put on a play, we had a fashion show.
- [Elsie Morales] You know, for Halloween, there were Halloween parties, you know, fashion shows.
- Food, oh my God, we have lots of food.
- We used to have these vouchers to go to the cafeteria for this junky, horrible food.
- Turkey fries, which I still hate to this day.
- And so everybody would collect all of them like the beef. And then we would season
it all day with Chiclets, and different sauces and then have a marathon cooking, you know, and you could smell it like through the dorms and white people would come and say, "What is that food?"
- God, we had great music and great parties.
- [Lynda Garden] We would have parties in the Latino lounge. I'm not sure if Maria was involved in that, she was with Jimmy all the time.
- And of course we all love Soul and we all love Motown.
- [Arturo Centeno] You know, I remember earth, wind and fire. I remember Santana.
- And just dancing on a Saturday night was sorta like my relief or something. You know, I love that. And I remember that, you know, just dancing.
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