Former PACHS Principal Marvin Garcia on Dr.  Pedro Albizu Campos Download

Dr. Pedro Albizu Campos History
1912: Awarded a scholarship to study engineering at the University of Vermont.

1913: Transfers from the University of Vermont to Harvard

1917: World War I. Served in an African-American unit. Volunteer to General Frank McIntyre, was trained by French Military mission, organized NCO school and Home Guard in Puerto Rico. Discharged as First Lieutenant, US Infantry.

1919: Returns to Harvard where he got his law degree as well as degrees in Literature, Philosophy, Chemical Engineering and Military Sciences. Fluent in English, Spanish French, German, Portuguese, Italian, Latin and Greek. The Puerto Rican Mulatto was elected president of Harvard’s Cosmopolitan Club. He dealt with foreign students and lecturers, like Sudas Ghandra Gose (Indian Nationalist leader with Ghandi) and the Hindu poet Rabindranath Tagore. Became interested in the cause of Indian independence, helped to found several centers in Boston for Irish Independence. He would meet Eamon de Valera and later be consulted in the drafting of the constitution of the Irish Free State.
Upon graduating from Harvard, he received job offers as Hispanic repres entative for a protestant church, as a legal aide to the U.S. Supreme Court, and in the U.S. State Department’s diplomatic corps in Mexico. He opted to return to Puerto Rico.

1972 – Dr. Pedro Albizu Campos Puerto Rican High School is founded to answer the call of high school drop outs in Chicago’s Puerto Rican community

2010 – Dr. Pedro Albizu Campos Puerto Rican High School is invited to speak at the annual Harvard Alumni of Color Conference, to speak on a panel about Social Justice schools. The Schools introduced themselves, and then were asked to speak about how Social Justice looks in their school.

The video is what Principal Matthew Rodríguez had to say about Social Justice at Dr. Pedro Albizu Campos Puerto Rican High School (The full hour and thirty minutes video will be available through our school’s technology department).