Author name: Buffalo Latino Village

This month I will be introducing Evelyn Pizarro, an educator who worked and retired from the Buffalo Public School system. Evelyn Pizzaro is a Puerto Rican integrationist. She integrated the white schools of the Sicilian West Side in the 1960s. Evelyn’s parents achieved social mobility and bought a house. One of the three Latino families in the West Side. Buying a house allowed Evelyn the privilege and the responsibility of being one of the first Latina children to attend BPS 03. At the time attending, all the white schools were understood to be a privilege because all white schools were better. While Evelyn’s parents were integrating the West Side, Puerto Ricans were fighting hard to access “better” for their children all over the country. For the folks who like definitions, social mobility is defined as a change in social status relative to one’s current social location within a given society. In the West Side commonly referred to as “the come up.” Mendez v. Westminster was filed in 1946 in California because Felicitas, a mother from Juncos Puerto Rico, was on the come up too. She refused to accept the fact that her 9yr old daughter Sylvia was denied access to their local white school. Felicitas was not backing down and took that case to the Supreme Court. Evelyn’s parents were not backing down either- part of the first 2000 Puerto Ricans to settle in Buffalo they both worked two jobs. Literally and physically working night and day to earn enough money to buy a house in a good neighborhood so Evelyn could go to school. Latino sacrifices to access education have not always been well understood and or well documented. For that reason, history won’t tell you the Mendez case came before Brown v. Board of Education and that Sylvia was ½ Puerto Rican or that the case led to the integration of California schools. History will not tell you about Evelyn Pizzaro who integrated a school and returned as its Principal.  So simply we must rewrite history. In honor of the women like Sylvia and Evelyn. Who as girls were isolated, and not wanted inside their own school buildings and in response grew into women who out-worked and out achieved their peers? Evelyn’s grit remains today, she says in her interview: “I was known as a toughie in the neighborhood. I wasn’t one that was intimated very quickly and that stayed with me as a student.” Help us rewrite history and read Evelyn’s interview on my blog. Learn the true story of a trailblazer that fought for Latinas before she even knew it- every time she stepped into the classroom. INTERVIEW WITH EVELYN PIZARRO 1.What was your experience like as a student? I went to Buffalo public schools I graduated from BPS # 03 at Porter and Niagara – around 15 or so years later I came back and became the principal. You finished at school 03 and then you would go to Grover Cleveland High School. Back then there were neighborhood schools, so you went to school where you lived.  At the time I went to school the West Side was a mostly Italian neighborhood and only a handful of Puerto Ricans lived there. My family lived around the block from the school. What was special about my family was that we were accepted by the Italians and we owned the house that we lived in. 2.Did you like school or learning? I was the first Latino principal in the City of Buffalo because of my parents. “First of all, in my house, you never failed”. If you failed, you were going to get your ass kicked. My parents made it known that “You better come home with passing grades.” If any of the six of us failed any classes, you would have to spend the whole afternoon at the table. And then if not, you were reading out loud so my mother could hear you. My parents understood education was important. My parents came from Puerto Rico and they met in New York City. I was born in New York City, but my family moved to Buffalo when I was a baby.  In those days, most Puerto Ricans only went to school until 08th grade because children were also working in the fields. During my parent’s time, If you got a high school diploma you were lucky.  So, when my parents came to Buffalo, NY they worked hard. First, my father was working in the fields. Then our neighbor down the street got him a job driving a garbage truck in the morning. And then he got a job at the steel plant. He had a garbage truck in the morning and a steel plant job in the evening. Then we had enough money to buy a house. My mother worked at the cannery and sewed at home at night. There were only 3 Hispanics in the whole neighborhood when we bought our house.  Little by little more people started to realize – if you can buy a house and you use your money to invest in your house you can make money. 3.What were your experiences like as a student and how did they inform your leadership? I was considered a tough cookie. I did not take any abuse from anyone. When my friends had a problem with the Italians. I would go to them and take care of that problem. I would say “Why are you calling her a spick?” Or telling her that “we should be on the farm?” Then I would say “you give her a hard time again- I am going to kick your ass!” I was known as a toughie in the neighborhood.  I was not one that was intimated very quickly and that stayed with me as a student. I studied here in Buffalo in the West Side.  I went to D’Youville college in the West Side because they had bilingual courses. I then went to SUNY Buffalo State