¡Adelante! Airs Video of 40th UW-Milwaukee Chapman Hall Takeover Anniversary and Commemoration Banquet

The late Marla O. Anderson
UWM 1970 instrumental takeover leader and a 1978 UWM Bachelor of Science Graduate

¡Adelante! First TV program to air historical event commemorating the 1970 UWM Takeover of Chapman Hall by the Hispanic community.

By H. Nelson Goodson
January 20, 2011

Milwaukee - On Tuesday, the ¡Adelante! MPTV TV 10-36 show hosted by Patricia Gomez became the first actual program to air a segment of the 40th Anniversary and Commemoration of the the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM) takeover of Chapman Hall by the Hispanic community in 1970 to gain access to higher education. Gomez and her TV crew beat any other main stream news media TV channel throughout the Milwaukee area in covering the historical event. ¡Adelante! shows the banquet at the UWM Ballroom and the vintage news footage of the actual takeover of Chapman Hall and UWM on August 27, 1970.
The Hispanic community and higher educational activists marched, fought, struggled and took over UWM for higher education access. Their endeavers succeeded to over turn the discriminatory UWM policy that kept Latinos and minorities from enrolling at the urban university. 
The ¡Adelante! show interviews actual participants and instrumental leaders of the 1970 UWM takeover, Jesus Salas and Ernesto Chacon. Both Salas and Chacon headed the steering committee for the 40th Anniversary and Commemorative Committee established by the Roberto Hernandez Center at UWM (RHC).
Members of the committee included, Carmen C. Cabrera, Gloria Gonzalez, Fela Salinas, Rose Landero-Ferrar, Graciela de la Cruz, Leticia Ledesma-Keltz, Rita Renteria Valenzuela, Dr. Enrique Figueroa, director of the Roberto Hernandez Center UWM formerly the SSOI, Lupe Martinez, Jose Ruano, Oscar Tovar, Salvador Sanchez, and H. Nelson Goodson.
The interview also shows Marla J. Possell, who spoke about her mother. Possell is the proud daughter of the late Marla O. Anderson, an instrumental leader of the UWM Takeover as well. Anderson's decision to join Salas and Chacon in 1970 led to the actiive participation of hundreds of families to back, join and march in support of the UWM takeover to gain access to higher education for Latinos and their children.
Anderson originally from Camargo, Tamaulipas, Mexico is well known for her leadership and instrumental role in the August 27, 1970 University of Wisconsin Milwaukee (UWM) takeover of Chapman Hall, where she along with four men, Jesus Salas, Dante Navarro Gregorio "Goyo" Rivera and Jose Luis Huerta-Sanchez were arrested in a peaceful protest. They were protesting UWM's discriminatory policy that prevented Latinos from enrolling.
In 1970, only 14 Hispanic students were enrolled compared to 25,000 White students and there were no Latino faculty at UWM. Anderson's role helped open the doors of education for thousands of Latinos in the state of Wisconsin UW-System. Their success in 1970 helped create the Spanish Speaking Outreach Institute (SSOI) at UWM which focus on recruitement, advicing and retention of Hispanic students. The SSOI was later renamed in 1996 the Roberto Hernandez Center and since 1970 thousands of Hispanics have graduated.
Anderson enrolled at UWM and later graduated from the School of Education with a Bachelor of Science degree in May 1978, while raising six children. Today about 1,400 Hispanic students are enrolled per semester and at least 30 Latino faculty work at UWM.

Check out ¡Adelante! video link at: http://www.mptv.org/video/watch/?id=621

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Commemorating 40 Years After The University Of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Sit-ins At the Chancellors Office

Ernesto Chacon and Jesus Salas
Photo by HNG

Special testament article focusing on events that led to the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee peaceful sit-ins at the Chancellor's Office on August 27, 1970, commemorating the 40th Anniversary in 2010.

By Jesus Salas And Ernesto Chacon
September 17, 2010

Milwaukee, Wisconsin - Many are aware that in 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court in Brown vs Board of Education outlawed the "separate but equal" legal doctrine in the nation's public school system. Less is known of the resistance by post-secondary institutions to admit and provide quality education for students of color.
Nearly 10 years after Brown, the University of Alabama continued to reject African-American students. On June 11, 1963, Governor George Wallace stood in front of the university's Foster Auditorium and symbolically blocked the entrance to two black students, keeping his inaugural promise that segregation in his state would remain "today, tomorrow and forever."
The courts had not been able to ensure equal protection of the laws for all. Clearly, for many in the 1960s, "direct action" was seen as the only alternative.
Although the anti-Vietnam war protests initially overshadowed minority demands for access to higher education, the civil unrest of the 1960s and the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King. Other groups joined together to demand increased basic rights in voting, housing, employment opportunity and collective bargaining.
In Milwaukee, disturbances broke out on July 30, 1967. The Wisconsin National Guard was called in to quell them. On August 28, the first of 200 consecutive days of demonstrations for open housing began. In 1966, migrant farm workers protested their working and living conditions by marching 80 miles from Wautoma to Madison.
That fall, Obreros Unidos, a farm workers union made up of Texas and Northern Mexico workers, was formed, and work stoppages continued through 1968. In the fall of 1969, Obreros Unidos organizers and supporters began the process of reshaping United Migrant Opportunity Services (UMOS) as an advocate for education, equal employment opportunities and training programs. Along with other community-based organizations, among them the Spanish Center,  Latin American Union for Civil Rights (LAUCR) and they formed the Council for Latino Education (CEP).
It was in this environment that so many of us learned and grew both individually and as organizers as part of a larger movement. The Obreros Unidos organizers adopted King's and Cesar Chavez's peaceful, nonviolent tactics.
They followed Chavez's tenets of developing sustainable communities, including Mutualista forms of organizing whole families rather than male heads of household, the traditionally organized group for unions at the time. Poverty primarily involved women and children, and in the migrant fields, they made up the majority of the workforce.
Yet organizers kept returning to education as a right that must be made available to all on equal terms, as Chief Justice Warren recognized in 1954.
For these reasons, on Saturday in the Union Ballroom at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM), we will commemorate the 40th anniversary of the peaceful sit-ins that took place at UWM's Chapman Hall on August 1970. The sit-ins led to the creation of the Spanish Speaking Outreach Institute, later in 1996 was renamed the Roberto Hernández Center.
The community celebrates the fact that 40 years ago, there were only a handful of Latino students (14) and no Latino faculty at UWM, now there are over 1,400 enrolled Latino students per semester and over 30 Latino faculty.
The peaceful sit-ins also proved to be a catalyst for the enhancement of expanded educational services for community- based organizations that continue to this day. Appropriately proceeds from the banquet will be used to provide scholarships for Latino students.

Note: Now retired, Ernesto Chacon was Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle's Milwaukee office deputy director, and Jesus Salas was an instructor at Milwaukee Area Technical College (MATC) and a University of Wisconsin regent. The article was also printed in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel JSOline.

Related article:

Milwaukee Latino Community To Celebrate 40th Anniversary, Making Higher Education Accessible http://bit.ly/bafD6L

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UW-Milwaukee To Commemorate 40th Anniversary Of The 1970 Hispanic Community Takeover Of Chapman Hall

Takeover led to higher educational opportunities for Latinos in Wisconsin

By H. Nelson Goodson
September 14, 2009

Milwaukee -The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM) officials announced on Monday, that a committee has been initially formed to begin planning for next years commemoration of the 40th anniversary of the historical takeover of UWM’s Chapman Hall by the Latino community in 1970.
The committee will officially begin to plan events around the 40th anniversary of the takeover of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s Chapman Hall, a pivotal event for Milwaukee’s Latino community, according to UWM administrators.
Enrique Figueroa, associate professor and director of the Roberto Hernández Center (RHC), has been directed by the Chancellor's office to lead and oversee the committee planning of events. Figueroa has appointed two co-chairs for the committee.

“Ernesto Chacon and Jesus Salas were centrally involved in the August 1970 takeover and have distinguished themselves as community activists and as public servants during their professional lives,” said Figueroa.
Although both men are now retired, Chacon most recently served as deputy director of Gov. Jim Doyle’s Milwaukee office. Salas was a professor at Milwaukee Area Technical College (MATC) and served as a member of the UW System Board of Regents.
The co-chairs are currently assembling a committee to fund raise for the 40th commemoration, develop a program for the event and bring together others who were advocates for the Latino community 40 years ago.
“The Chapman Hall takeover proved to be a seminal development for Milwaukee’s Latino community,” says Figueroa. “It directly led to the creation of UWM’s Spanish Speaking Outreach Institute (SSOI), which over time became the current Roberto Hernández Center. Indeed, the deceased Roberto Hernández was also a central figure during the takeover.”
Last August marked the 39th anniversary of the August 27, 1970 UWM takeover by the Hispanic community. Their contribution, commitment, and success led to changing the discriminatory UWM policy that restricted access to higher education for Hispanics during 1970, has today resulted in graduating large numbers of Latinos from public and private universities throughout Wisconsin.
Figueroa points out that 39 years ago, there were only a handful of Latino students and only one Latino faculty member at UWM. “Now there are over 1,300 students and more than thirty Latino faculty as well as a Latino chancellor. It’s important that our community celebrate the visionary activists of 40-years ago…Si se pudo!”

After 34 years of the Latino community takeover of UWM, on July 1, 2004, Carlos E. Santiago became the first Hispanic chancellor of the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. Chancellor Santiago has a Ph.D. in economics from Cornell University (1982) and M.A. degrees in economics from Cornell University (1979) and the University of Puerto Rico (1975).
Unfortunately, today's educational institutions like Milwaukee Public Schools, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and other private educational institutions, as well as community based organizations have yet to provide, support, and make available a curriculum about the historical aspect of the 1970's UWM educational struggle by the Hispanic community to the younger generations of students.


To enlarge and open attached articles; please click on the first, second and last photos for the most comprehensive story ever written and authored by H. Nelson Goodson who himself was a student, and graduated from UWM. El Conquistador Newspaper first published the two-page article on July 13, 2001 as a special edition for The National Council of La Raza (NCLR) Annual Conference, which was held in Milwaukee on July 14-18, 2001. "The article actually depicts a descriptive point by point narrative, documentary and occurrences of historical events at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee that will make you experience and feel the moment in time," Goodson said. Goodson's first publication of the article led to other studies and papers written about the historical event by UWM.

Link to UWM library website of chronicles of takeover and images included.