R-1010 -- Martí, Norma.
At a young age, Norma Martí migrated with her family from Puerto Rico to a diverse, working-class neighborhood in northwestern Indiana, part of metropolitan Chicago. She shares her formative experiences there, what enabled her to attain a college education, and her encounters with discrimination in her first role as an educator. She subsequently worked for the Census Bureau in Illinois and the Research Triangle Institute (RTI) in North Carolina, enhancing both organizations’ reach of Latino communities. In the late 1990s, Norma decided to focus on advocacy and outreach as Development Director for El Pueblo, a nonprofit organization based in Raleigh. By the mid-2000s, in a new role as Minority Outreach Specialist for the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services (NC DHHS), Norma leveraged the connections she had built with various Latino organizations to expand Medicaid and children’s health insurance in Latino communities across the state. In 2020, Norma was called back from retirement to NC DHHS to help coordinate the agency’s COVID-19 response in the Latinx population. She has continued that work through her current role as Latinx Community Co-Lead for COVID Response for North Carolina’s Community Engagement Alliance (NC CEAL). She concludes by calling for unity and perseverance in Latino communities, and sharing words of wisdom for future leaders, which will include her grandchildren.
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library. Southern Historical Collection.
<a href="http://dc.lib.unc.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/sohp/id/29346">University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library. Southern Historical Collection.</a>
2023-05-31
No restrictions. Open to research
R1010_Audio.mp3
R-0986 -- Gordon, Peter.
This oral history interview is the second in a three-part series with Peter Gordon in Chapel Hill, North Carolina on December 7, 2018. Peter Gordon narrates the WWII migration story of his father, Samuel Chrabolowski Gordon (“Sam Gordon”), who was born to a Jewish family in Poland. Sam Gordon escaped Nazi persecution by migrating to Mexico, where he served as the doctor of a refugee camp in León, Guanajuato for three years before eventually settling in the United States. In the first interview, Peter Gordon begins his father’s story in the 1930s when Sam Gordon served in the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War and attended medical school in Montpellier, France. In 1942, as Nazi occupation threatened the lives of Jews living in France, Sam Gordon, his wife Beata Babad, and son Andre Chrabolowski escaped from Marseille by boat after securing an entrance visa to Mexico. This second interview covers Sam Gordon’s experiences in Mexico from 1943 through the summer of 1946, where he became the head doctor at a camp (Colonia Santa Rosa) for Polish refugees in León, Guanajuato, and where Beata Babad started a writing career in the Communist party. In the third interview, Peter Gordon narrates his father’s emigration and permanent settlement in the United States in Washington, D.C. Peter Gordon is Professor in the Cognitive Psychology Program within the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience at UNC Chapel Hill. The interview was conducted in Davie Hall on the UNC campus by Hannah Gill, Associate Director of the Institute for the Study of the Americas and Principal Investigator of the New Roots/Nuevas Raíces Oral Histories.
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library. Southern Historical Collection.
<a href="http://dc.lib.unc.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/sohp/id/28612">University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library. Southern Historical Collection.</a>
2018-12-07
No restrictions. Open to research.
R0986_Audio.mp3
R-0987 -- Gordon, Peter.
This oral history interview is the third in a three-part series with Peter Gordon in Chapel Hill, North Carolina on 25 January 2019. Peter Gordon narrates the WWII migration story of his father, Samuel Chrabolowski Gordon (“Sam Gordon”), who was born to a Jewish family in Poland. Sam Gordon escaped Nazi persecution by migrating to Mexico, where he served as the doctor of a refugee camp in León, Guanajuato for three years before eventually settling in the United States. In the first interview, Peter Gordon begins his father’s story in the 1930s when Sam Gordon served in the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War and attended medical school in Montpellier, France. In 1942, as Nazi occupation threatened the lives of Jews living in France, Sam Gordon, his wife Beata Babad, and son Andre Chrabolowski escaped from Marseille by boat after securing an entrance visa to Mexico. The second interview covers Sam Gordon’s experiences in Mexico from 1943 through the summer of 1946, where he became the head doctor at a camp (Colonia Santa Rosa) for Polish refugees in León, Guanajuato, and where Beata Babad started a writing career in the Communist party. In this third interview, Peter Gordon narrates his father’s emigration and permanent settlement in the United States in Washington, D.C. Peter Gordon is Professor in the Cognitive Psychology Program within the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience at UNC Chapel Hill. The interview was conducted in Davie Hall on the UNC campus by Hannah Gill, Associate Director of the Institute for the Study of the Americas and Principal Investigator of the New Roots/Nuevas Raíces Oral Histories.
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library. Southern Historical Collection.
<a href="http://dc.lib.unc.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/sohp/id/28609">University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library. Southern Historical Collection.</a>
2019-01-25
No restrictions. Open to research.
R0987_Audio.mp3
R-0985 -- Gordon, Peter.
This oral history interview is the first in a three-part series with Peter Gordon in Chapel Hill, North Carolina on October 12, 2018. Peter Gordon narrates the WWII migration story of his father, Samuel Chrabolowski Gordon, who was born to a Jewish family in Poland. Sam Gordon escaped Nazi persecution by migrating to Mexico, where he served as the doctor of a refugee camp in León, Guanajuato for three years before eventually settling in the United States. In the first interview, Peter Gordon begins his father’s story in the 1930s when Sam Gordon served in the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War and attended medical school in Montpellier, France. In 1942, as Nazi occupation threatened the lives of Jews living in France, Sam Gordon, his wife Beata Babad, and son Andre Chrabolowski escaped from Marseille by boat after securing an entrance visa to Mexico. The second interview covers Sam Gordon’s experiences in Mexico from 1942 through the summer of 1946, where he became the head doctor at a camp (Colonia Santa Rosa) for Polish refugees in León, Guanajuato, and where Beata Babad started a writing career in the Communist party. In the third interview, Peter Gordon narrates his father’s emigration and permanent settlement in the United States in Washington, D.C. Peter Gordon is Professor in the Cognitive Psychology Program within the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience at UNC Chapel Hill. The interview was conducted in Davie Hall on the UNC campus by Hannah Gill, Associate Director of the Institute for the Study of the Americas and Principal Investigator of the New Roots/Nuevas Raíces Oral Histories.
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library. Southern Historical Collection.
<a href="http://dc.lib.unc.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/sohp/id/28606">University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library. Southern Historical Collection.</a>
2018-10-12
No restrictions. Open to research.
R0985_Audio.mp3
R-0901 -- Fernandez, Eduardo.
Eddy Fernandez is a 3rd-year student at UNC-Chapel Hill who discusses his family’s experience immigrating to Siler City, North Carolina from Texas for employment in the Townsend Chicken Processing Plant. He also discusses his experience growing up in Siler City, a rural area that was primarily Latinx/Latino/Latina. Fernandez explains the way in which the large presence of mental health issues related to migration that he witnessed among his friends growing up has impacted his career choice in the field of public health. Fernandez discusses how he conducted a research project in 2017 on youth mental health as part of the Building Integrated Communities Initiative with the Town of Siler City.
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library. Southern Historical Collection.
<a href="http://dc.lib.unc.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/sohp/id/27563">University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library. Southern Historical Collection.</a>
2018-04-05
No restrictions. Open to research.
R0901_Audio.mp3
R-0812 -- Mack, Julia Cardona.
Julia Mack is a Spanish professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Mack was born in Puerto Rico and moved to the United States to study for her Masters degree. She has taught at three colleges and universities in North Carolina, including UNC where she has taught for the past twenty years. Mack discusses her choice to become a professor and how her father was a role model for the profession. She identifies as Hispanic, but feels that she is a minority in her profession more for being a female and a mother than for her ethnicity. As a professor, she believes that her most important roles are showing Hispanic students that a career in academia is possible and serving as a resource for her colleagues in the Department of Romance Studies. Mack closes the first interview by sharing a few examples of how she has fostered relationships with Hispanic students by showing them that their Hispanic heritage is something to be proud of. In the second interview, Mack describes being an “immigrant by luxury.” She talks about studying for her Masters in California and later returning to teach at the university level. She says that her greatest challenge has been creating interactive classes and her greatest success was starting a program of language maintenance courses for Spanish-speaking students at UNC. She closes her second interview by advising future professors to foster students’ curiosity and to resist the university becoming too much like a business.
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library. Southern Historical Collection.
<a href="http://dc.lib.unc.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/sohp/id/26896">University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library. Southern Historical Collection.</a>
25 February 2015
No restrictions. Open to research.
R0812_Audio.mp3
R-0801 -- Cabrera, Irene.
Irene Cabrera is a visiting professor of Latin American studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for the 2014-2015 academic year. Cabrera was born in Bogotá, Colombia and has lived in the United States for the past three years to study for her second Masters and to teach at the university level. In this interview, Cabrera describes becoming a teaching assistant as an undergraduate and how this led to a career as a professor. She talks at length about her parents’ bedtime stories and how they, along with a faculty mentor, have modeled her style of teaching and interacting with students. She believes that her primary role as a professor is to make her students think deeply about the issues in their community. Cabrera also talks about the problems she sees in the American university system and how those problems are being exported to the university system in Colombia. Finally, Cabrera states that the biggest discomfort she felt during her time in the U.S. was seeing so many Latinos, a group she identifies with, working in the service sector while there is a deficit in Latino leadership at the university. She hopes that the legacy she leaves at UNC is having her students think about these issues of inequality and how who they are and what they do factor into these community issues.
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library. Southern Historical Collection.
<a href="http://dc.lib.unc.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/sohp/id/26857">University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library. Southern Historical Collection.</a>
17 April 2015
No restrictions. Open to research.
R0801_Audio.mp3
R-0704 -- Halperín, Laura.
Laura Halperin is an assistant professor of English and comparative literature at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she researches contemporary Latina/o literatures and cultures. She is currently working on a book project, which focuses on representations of harm in late twentieth century Latina novels and memoirs. Her other research interests include Latinas/os and education, access to education, debates surrounding English-Only policies and bilingual or multilingual education, and censorship of Latina/o texts in school libraries and classrooms. Professor Halperin who was hired as a professor at UNC after receiving a diversity fellowship, discusses her areas of study, as well as her personal experience as a Latina in higher education. Halperin explains how fortunate she has been to face relatively little adversity as a result of her ethnicity as a Latina minority in higher education institutions. She attributes some of her experience to her fairer skin, as she is a lighter skin Argentinian. This interview emphasizes the ways in which education and access to job opportunities play an important role in migrants’ lives, and also explores issues of race and diversity.
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library. Southern Historical Collection.
<a href="http://dc.lib.unc.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/sohp/id/20991">University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library. Southern Historical Collection.</a>
17 April 2014
No restrictions. Open to research.
R0704_Audio.mp3
R-0682 -- Buchanan, Regan.
Regan Buchanan discusses her family background, how she got involved in immigration issues, as well as her experiences working with Students United for Immigrant Equality at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill this year. Buchanan discusses the intersection of immigration issues and race, and her own position as someone coming from a social and family background where she often does not have to confront issues of race. She discusses the challenges of addressing ignorance and apathy as a student advocate, as well as her strategies for engaging various kinds of audiences with these issues. She does not believe that the immigration reform movement needs one overarching leader; rather, she sees the need for a core group of leaders to step up and motivate the youth who are already at the forefront of this movement. She thinks that access to education is a key issue that those who work for immigration reform should be focusing on.
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library. Southern Historical Collection.
<a href="http://dc.lib.unc.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/sohp/id/19870">University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library. Southern Historical Collection.</a>
14 April 2014
No restrictions. Open to research.
R0682_Audio.mp3
R-0687 -- Granados, Cristina.
Cristina Granados describes immigrating to the United States through the Visiting International Faculty Program. She obtained a bachelors degree in Colombia where she also taught in a university level psychology department. Cristina describes the price of immigrating, but says that the support from the church community and her students has made her transition easier. Cristina began teaching Spanish as a Foreign Language and then moved to English as a Second Language. She describes how Sanford has changed over the course of her teaching career. She describes in-depth her relationship with her students and their families. She talks extensively about the issues her students face: rejection, discrimination, family re-unification, gang and drug violence. She also highlights her role as a teacher liaison with the Scholar’s Latino Initiative Program housed at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library. Southern Historical Collection.
<a href="http://dc.lib.unc.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/sohp/id/19858">University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library. Southern Historical Collection.</a>
26 February 2014
No restrictions. Open to research.
R0687_Audio.mp3