Challenging Anti-Latino Employment Discrimination + Financial Empowerment
Festival organizers offered options for Latinas to learn about employment and financial empowerment through key local organizations, featuring those founded and/or run by women.
The 18th Street Development Corporation was a vital participant in MLEA and the Festival that worked to improve employment opportunities for Latinos. After hiring construction and carpentry apprentices to rehab the newest MLEA storefront in 1977, their VICI (Ventures in Community Improvement) Demonstration project apprentices also helped construct the Festival booths and stage.
In Chicago, Latinos faced discrimination in hiring and were greatly underrepresented in government and corporate positions.
Spanish Coalition for Jobs (SCJ) was one of numerous organizations in Chicago established by Latinas. Founded in 1972 by Mary Gonzalez-Koenig, Festival participant SCJ brought together Mexican and Puerto Rican agencies to enforce new U.S. affirmative action laws in a city where “we did not see Hispanics or our brown faces working… [at] utility companies and major chain stores” (Gonzales-Koenig in Padilla, Latino Ethnic Consciousness, 86). The first major employer targeted by SCJ was Illinois Bell; in 1971, only 300 of 44,000 employees were Latino, and Coalition members determined that their Spanish-speaking referrals were rarely placed in jobs (Padilla, Latino Ethnic Consciousness, 94). After a year of negotiations and protests, Illinois Bell signed an agreement with SCJ in 1972 to hire at least 1,323 Latinos by the end of 1976, including two executives (Padilla, Latino Ethnic Consciousness, 96). Illinois Bell was also given a space at the Festival.
Festival organizers were also concerned with Latina financial empowerment. In 1979, U.S. women had only recently gained crucial financial rights; until the Equal Credit Opportunity Act of 1974 was signed into law, banks could refuse to offer a credit card to an unmarried woman, and married women could be required to have their husband cosign their credit application.
Festival organizers invited the Chicagoland Women’s Federal Credit Union (CWFCU) to attend; perhaps they did not claim a booth because of the challenges they faced as an all-volunteer financial organization. Members of feminist organizations were welcome to join the credit union and eligible to apply for loans. Striving to “use women’s money to meet women’s needs,” this new North Side institution offered workshops on money management. The National Conference for Puerto Rican Women and the National Alliance of Black Feminists had been among their member organizations (Temkin, “Chicagoland Credit Union,” 11). Despite these forward-thinking goals, the CWFCU was acquired by Pacesetter Federal Credit Union in 1989 (Bowdish, “Invidious Distinctions").
Learn more about civic leader Mary Gonzalez-Koenig, who also founded the Latino Council on the Media and served as Commissioner of the Mayor’s Office of Employment and Training from Illinois House Resolution 282.
SOURCES
Bowdish, Lawrence. “Invidious Distinctions: Credit Discrimination Against Women, 1960s-Present.” PhD diss., The Ohio State University, 2010.
Padilla, Felix. Latino Ethnic Consciousness: The Case of Mexican Americans and Puerto Ricans in Chicago. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1985.
Temkin, Tanya. “Chicagoland Credit Union.” Off Our Backs 6, no. 1 (March 1976): 11.