Antonia Pantoja, was a Puerto Rican educator, social worker, feminist, civil rights leader and the founder of ASPIRA, the Puerto Rican Forum, Boricua College and Producir. In 1996, she was the first Puerto Rican woman to receive the American Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Herman Badillo was an American lawyer and politician who served as borough president of The Bronx and United States Representative, and ran for Mayor of New York City. He was the first Puerto Rican elected to these posts, and the first Puerto Rican mayoral candidate in a major city in the continental United States.
The Young Lords, also known as the Young Lords Organization (YLO) or Young Lords Party (YLP), was a Chicago-based street gang that became a civil and human rights organization. The group aims to fight for neighborhood empowerment and self-determination for Puerto Rico, Latinos, and colonized people. Tactics used by the Young Lords include mass education, canvassing, community programs, occupations, and direct confrontation. The Young Lords became targets of the United States FBI's COINTELPRO program.
Pedro Pietri was a Nuyorican poet and playwright and one of the co-founders of the Nuyorican Movement. He was considered by some as the poet laureate of the Nuyorican Movement.
Angelo Falcón was a Puerto Rican political scientist best known for starting the Institute for Puerto Rican Policy (IPR) in New York City in the early 1980s, a nonprofit and nonpartisan policy center that focuses on Latino issues in the United States. It is now known as the National Institute for Latino Policy and Falcón served as its president until his death. He was also an Adjunct Assistant Professor at the Columbia University School of Public and International Affairs (S.I.P.A.).
Felipe Luciano is a poet, community activist, journalist, media personality, and politician. He is of Afro-Puerto Rican heritage. He is known for his significant involvement in both the Young Lords Party and The Last Poets, and more generally, as "an early and important participant in the awakening of the new consciousness-raising radicalism among Puerto Ricans in New York and across the country in the late 1960s and 1970s."
Stateside Puerto Ricans, also ambiguously known as Puerto Rican Americans, or Puerto Ricans in the United States, are Puerto Ricans who are in the United States proper of the 50 states and the District of Columbia who were born in or trace any family ancestry to the unincorporated US territory of Puerto Rico.
Roberto Clemente Community Academy is a public 4–year high school located in the West Town community area of Chicago, Illinois. Operated by the Chicago Public Schools, the school is named for Puerto Rican baseball player Roberto Enrique Clemente (1934–1972).
The ASPIRA Association is an American nonprofit organization whose mission is to "empower the Latino community through advocacy and the education and leadership development of its youth". ASPIRA's national office is in Washington, D.C., and it has affiliates in Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, and Puerto Rico.
LatinoJustice PRLDEF, long known by its former name the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund, is a New York-based national civil rights organization with the goal of changing discriminatory practices via advocacy and litigation. Privately funded, nonprofit and nonpartisan, it is part of the umbrella Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.
Victor Marrero is a senior United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York.
Pedro Julio Serrano is an openly gay and HIV+ human rights activist and president of Puerto Rico Para Todes, a non-profit LGBTQ+ and social justice advocacy organization founded in 2003. He is a former advisor to former New York City Council Speaker Melissa Mark Viverito and to former San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz. He also served, for more than three years, as executive director of Programa Vida and Clínica Transalud of the Municipality of San Juan. He now works as Director of Public Affairs at Waves Ahead.
José "Cha Cha" Jiménez is a political activist and the founder of the Young Lords Organization, a Chicago-based street gang that became a civil and human rights organization. Started in September 23, 1968, it was most active in the late 1960s and 1970s.
Ruth Noemí Colón was the 66th Secretary of State of New York, serving in the Cabinets of Governors David Paterson and Andrew Cuomo. She was appointed by Governor Paterson to replace outgoing Secretary Lorraine Cortés-Vázquez who officially resigned on September 1, 2010.
Gilbert F. Casellas is an American lawyer and businessman. He is a private investor and business consultant in the Washington, D.C. area, a director of Prudential Financial, trustee of the University of Pennsylvania, and advisor to Toyota Motor North America, The Procter & Gamble Company, and Comcast Corporation. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the American Law Institute, trustee of the Pan American Development Foundation and Co-Editor-in-Chief of Workplace Harassment Second Edition 2018 published by Bloomberg Law.
Maria Colón Sánchez a.k.a. "La Madrina", was an activist and politician who, in 1988, became the first Hispanic woman elected to the Connecticut General Assembly. She was also the founder of the Puerto Rican Parade Committee in 1964 and co-founded La Casa de Puerto Rico, the Society of Legal Services, the Spanish-American Merchants Association, the Puerto Rican Businessmen Association, and the Community Renewal Team.
John Carro is an American judge. He served as a judge for 25 years and was involved in many high-profile cases. A New York Supreme Court Justice serving in the Appellate Division, where he served as an associate justice for the last 15 of his 25 years as a judge. After retirement from the bench in 1994, Carro founded Carro, Velez, Carro & Mitchell, a private law firm in New York City. Carro is an ardent advocate for the Hispanic and Latino American community and human rights throughout the world, and has been a major leader in the founding and management of many bar groups, committees and legal and educational associations. He was described by The New York Times as a "legendary Justice."
Jenny Rivera is a judge on the New York Court of Appeals. A Democrat, Rivera was appointed to the court by Andrew Cuomo in 2013 for a 14-year term. Her current term expires in 2027. She is the second Hispanic woman to serve on New York's highest court, after Carmen Beauchamp Ciparick.
The following is a timeline of Latino civil rights in the United States.
Iris Morales is an American activist for Latino/a civil rights, filmmaker, author, and lawyer based in New York. She is best known for her work with the Young Lords, a Puerto Rican community activist group in the United States and her feminist movements within the organization. Morales continues to create a space for people of color to express their voices and histories through a variety of mediums as an advocate for underrepresented people, especially those who identify as LatinX members.
