Edna Negron Rosario | |
---|---|
Born | Edna Negron 1944 |
Nationality | American |
Occupation | Educator |
Children | 3 |
Edna Negron Rosario (born 1944) is an American educator who founded the first family resource center and school-based health clinic in the United States. She was inducted into the Connecticut Women's Hall of Fame in 1994.
Edna Negron was born in Ciales, Puerto Rico in 1944 and moved to the United States in 1955. Her family settled in Hartford, Connecticut, where Edna attended Weaver High School. Her father was a chaplain who ministered to migrant workers, and Edna and her siblings often accompanied him on his visits to the tobacco camps in Windsor. [1] She graduated from the Hartford College for Women, then continued her studies at the University of Hartford, where she earned a B.S. degree ( summa cum laude ) in 1973 and an M.S. degree in 1974. [2]
In 1971, Negron and María Colón Sánchez led the fight for bilingual education in Hartford. [3] Negron began teaching at the Ann Street Bilingual Community School in Hartford in 1974. She served as the coordinator of the Bilingual/Bicultural Education Program for the Hartford public schools for many years. As principal of the Kinsella Elementary School, she renamed the school in honor of Puerto Rican physician and abolitionist Ramón Emeterio Betances, [4] and founded the nation's first family resource center and school-based health clinic. The Family Resource Center at Betances Elementary became a model for social services based in public schools. [2]
Negron served on the board of directors for La Casa de Puerto Rico and was elected its president in 1989. In 1990, following the death of Maria Sanchez, she became the representative for the state's 6th House District and served out the remainder of her term. She has lectured on bilingual education and Puerto Rican history and culture at universities and on radio and television. [2] In 1995, she was featured in the Connecticut Public Television documentary, Puerto Rican Passages. [5]
She has served as vice president for community affairs and corporate giving at Hartford Financial Services Group, and on the state board of trustees overseeing the Hartford public schools. She also founded the mentoring group, El Futuro en Nuestras Manos. [6]
María de Lourdes Santiago Negrón is a Puerto Rican lawyer and politician from Adjuntas. She is the current vice-president of the Puerto Rican Independence Party (PIP) and in 2004 became the first woman from that party to be elected into the Senate in the history of Puerto Rico. She currently serves as Senator at-large at the Puerto Rico Senate after being elected in 2020 with the most votes of any candidate.
Antonia Coello Novello is a Puerto Rican physician and public health administrator. She was a vice admiral in the Public Health Service Commissioned Corps and served as 14th Surgeon General of the United States from 1990 to 1993. Novello was the first woman and first Hispanic to serve as Surgeon General. Novello also served as Commissioner of Health for the State of New York from 1999 to 2006. Novello has received numerous awards including more than fifty honorary degrees, was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2000, and has been inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame. Her memoir, Duty Calls: Lessons Learned from an Unexpected Life of Service, was published in 2024.
Julia Constanza Burgos García, also known as Julia de Burgos, was a Puerto Rican poet, journalist, and teacher. As an advocate of Puerto Rican independence, she served as Secretary General of the Daughters of Freedom, the women's branch of the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party. She was also a civil rights activist for women and African and Afro-Caribbean writers.
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.
Rosario Ferré Ramírez de Arellano was a Puerto Rican writer, poet, and essayist. Her father, Luis A. Ferré, was the third elected Governor of Puerto Rico and the founding father of the New Progressive Party of Puerto Rico. When her mother, Lorenza Ramírez de Arellano, died in 1970 during her father's term as governor, Rosario fulfilled the duties of First Lady until 1972.
Puerto Rican literature is the body of literature produced by writers of Puerto Rican descent. It evolved from the art of oral storytelling. Written works by the indigenous inhabitants of Puerto Rico were originally prohibited and repressed by the Spanish colonial government.
Pura Teresa Belpré y Nogueras was an Afro-Puerto Rican educator who served as the first Puerto Rican librarian in New York City. She was also a writer, collector of folktales, and puppeteer.
Two of the least-known roles played by Puerto Rican women and women of Puerto Rican descent have been that of soldier and that of revolutionary. This is a brief account of some the Puerto Rican women who have participated in military actions as members of either a political revolutionary movement or of the Armed Forces of the United States.
Nicholasa Mohr is one of the best known Nuyorican writers, born in the United States to Puerto Rican parents. In 1973, she became the first Nuyorican woman in the 20th century to have her literary works published by the major commercial publishing houses, and has had the longest creative writing career of any Nuyorican female writer for these publishing houses. She centers her works on the female experience as a child and adult in Puerto Rican communities in New York City, with much of writing containing semi-autobiographical content. In addition to her prominent novels and short stories, she has written screenplays, plays, and television scripts.
Frances Negrón-Muntaner is a Puerto Rican filmmaker, writer, and scholar. Her work is focused on a comparative exploration of coloniality, primarily in Puerto Rico and the United States, with special attention given to the intersections between race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality and politics. She is an associate professor of English and Comparative Literature and Director of the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race at Columbia University in New York City. She has also contributed to the Huffington Post, El Diario/La Prensa, and 80 Grados, and since 2008 has served as a Global Expert for the United Nations Rapid Response Media Mechanism. She is one of the best-known Puerto Rican lesbian artists currently living in the United States.
Juan A. Figueroa is an American consultant and political activist. He is a principal with Helene Figueroa at Soltaino Consultants, a strategic planning, applied research, advocacy and health philanthropy nonprofit consulting firm recognized for authoring an in-depth study on the health status of immigrants and refugees in the U.S. state of Missouri (2019–present).
Pedro E. Segarra is a Puerto Rican-American politician and lawyer who served as the 66th mayor of Hartford, Connecticut. Prior to becoming mayor, Segarra was president of Hartford's City Council. He succeeded former Mayor Eddie Perez who resigned after he was convicted by a state Superior Court jury of bribery and extortion in a political corruption case, though Perez' convictions eventually were reversed by the Connecticut Appellate Court. Segarra was sworn in as mayor on June 25, 2010, and won re-election on November 8, 2011. In 2015, Luke Bronin defeated Segarra for the Democratic mayoral nomination. He is Hartford's second mayor of Puerto Rican ancestry and the first openly gay mayor of the city. He is also the second openly gay mayor of an American state capital city.
Joseph Orlando Prewitt Díaz is a retired psychologist who specialized in psychosocial theory. He received the APA International Humanitarian Award from American Psychological Association
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.
The recorded history of Puerto Rican women can trace its roots back to the era of the Taíno, the indigenous people of the Caribbean, who inhabited the island that they called Boriken before the arrival of Spaniards. During the Spanish colonization the cultures and customs of the Taíno, Spanish, African and women from non-Hispanic European countries blended into what became the culture and customs of Puerto Rico.
Carmen Delgado Votaw was a civil rights pioneer, a public servant, an author, and community leader. She earned an associate degree at the University of Puerto Rico and graduated from American University in Washington, D.C., with a bachelor of arts in international studies. She was subsequently awarded an honorary doctorate in humanities by Hood College in Frederick, Maryland.
Clotilde Betances Jaeger was a feminist writer and journalist of New York's Puerto Rican intellectual community during the mid-twentieth century. She advocated for Hispanic women's rights. Once a teacher and a lifetime educational advocate, she pushed for minority children's education in New York and supported educational reforms in Puerto Rico. She is best-known for her written work in newspapers and journals in Puerto Rico and New York. though she was also featured in other Latin American and European publications. Betances Jaeger was also a grand-niece of Ramón Emeterio Betances, a Puerto Rican independence leader.