In 1941, Pantoja received a scholarship to the University of Puerto Rico and began to train as a teacher.
Gallery of Antonia Pantoja
695 Park Ave, New York, NY 10065, United States
By 1950 Antonia had enrolled at Hunter College to complete her Bachelor's degree.
Gallery of Antonia Pantoja
New York, NY 10027, United States
Antonia got a master's degree in social work from Columbia University.
Gallery of Antonia Pantoja
440 E McMillan St, Cincinnati, OH 45206, United States
Pantoja received a Doctor of Philosophy from Union Graduate School (present-day Union Institute & University) in Cincinnati, Ohio.
Career
Gallery of Antonia Pantoja
1996
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20500, United States
Dr. Antonia Pantoja after receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom, 1996.
Gallery of Antonia Pantoja
Photo of Antonia Pantoja
Gallery of Antonia Pantoja
Photo of Antonia Pantoja
Gallery of Antonia Pantoja
Photo of Antonia Pantoja
Gallery of Antonia Pantoja
Photo of Antonia Pantoja
Gallery of Antonia Pantoja
Photo of Antonia Pantoja
Gallery of Antonia Pantoja
Antonia Pantoja and Wilhelmina Perry
Achievements
East Harlem, NY, United States
A mural in East Harlem by Manny Vega depicting Dr. Antonia Pantoja. The mural was unveiled on November 20, 2015, as part of a larger celebration of Pantoja’s life and ties to El Barrio and the Puerto Rican community.
Membership
Awards
Presidential Medal of Freedom
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20500, United States
In 1996 Antinai received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Bill Clinton.
Hispanic Heritage Award
Antonia Pantoja with the Hispanic Heritage Awards recipients
A mural in East Harlem by Manny Vega depicting Dr. Antonia Pantoja. The mural was unveiled on November 20, 2015, as part of a larger celebration of Pantoja’s life and ties to El Barrio and the Puerto Rican community.
(The autobiography of a founder of ASPIRA, the national no...)
The autobiography of a founder of ASPIRA, the national non-profit organization devoted to Puerto Rican leadership development. She discusses her birth and youth in Puerto Rico, her move to New York City in the 1940s, her founding of ASPIRA, her years as an academic, and her involvement in American politics.
Antonia Pantoja was a Puerto Rican educator, activist, and early proponent of bilingual education. She inspired multiple generations of young people and fought for many of the rights that people take for granted today. She founded ASPIRA to empower Puerto Rican youth, and created other enduring leadership and advocacy organizations in New York and California, across the United States, and in Puerto Rico.
Background
Antonia Pantoja was born to Alejandrina Pantoja on September 13, 1921, in Puerta de Tierra, Puerto Rico, a poor section of San Juan. She never knew her father who was not married to her mother. Toni, as she was affectionately called, witnessed the struggles of her family and friends organizing for better wages and living conditions. Antonia Pantoja Acosta was raised by her maternal grandparents Conrado Pantoja Santos and Luisa Acosta Rivera in the working-class neighborhood of Barrio Obrero.
Her grandfather, a cigar factory worker at the American Tobacco Company, was also an active union leader whose organizing efforts led to one of the first successful labor strikes in Puerto Rican history, notwithstanding the fierce and violent confrontations with the police and strikebreakers that ensued. After the workers won the strike, the company packed up and left Puerto Rico. She reported that being an eyewitness to this struggle impacted her life: "My life's work has always been influenced by the memory of this inequity."
Education
In 1941, Pantoja received a scholarship to the University of Puerto Rico and began to train as a teacher. She left the university before the required two years for a normal school diploma to replace a teacher in a rural one-room school in Cuchillas. Pantoja would spend all week in the small town, where she would arrive and leave by a horse that "would move very slowly because the children would hold on to its tail." In her autobiography, she describes the experience as "most unforgettable... that helped me to become who I am."
By 1950 she had enrolled at Hunter College to complete her Bachelor's degree and then a master's degree in social work from Columbia University. Pantoja later received a Doctor of Philosophy from Union Graduate School (present-day Union Institute & University) in Cincinnati, Ohio. Her academic work centered around experimental higher education in the United States.
In 1944, Antonia Pantoja sailed on the S.S. Florida to New Orleans and then took the train to New York City. During her train voyage, she experienced the racist Jim Crow system of the south, whereas a woman of color she was refused sendee at "whites only" establishments. At the beginning of her time in New York, she worked 15 hours a day in a factory as a welder, building radios for submarines. However, at her next job, an assembly-line position at a lamp factory, she painted designs on lamps. The art courses she took at the university prepared her for a rapid move to a better job as a designer in a lampshade factory, which exposed her to a new circle of artistic friends; it also was the job where Pantoja began what would be her lifelong work activism. She saw oppression and inequity being wielded against the factory workers, and with the memory of her grandfather's union struggles still fresh in her mind, she engaged in education and very successful union organizing.
She refers to this time as her "years of Bohemian life" when she lived in Greenwich Village with struggling artists and writers and described her apartment as a "school of art, politics, literature, and philosophy." By the late 1940s, Pantoja began her direct work with the community, working at the 110th Street Community Center in New York City's Spanish Harlem. At the center, she participated in organizing a union and later a successful union strike. These experiences motivated her to continue her education and prepare for a better job. It was at Hunter College that Pantoja began to network with other Puerto Ricans and Latinos, who were disturbed by the poverty and isolation of the Hispanic community and were interested in improving conditions for this sector of the population. The meetings of this group eventually spawned the Hispanic Young Adult Association (HYAA), which would later be changed to the Puerto Rican Association for Community Affairs.
In 1952 she received a fellowship at Columbia University's School of Social Work, and as part of her student practice, she organized a group of students to research the causes of poverty and to volunteer to improve Puerto Rican neighborhoods. This experience informed Pantoja on the living conditions of Latinos and helped her make a case with the city's Housing Authority and the mayor for policy changes in housing that would help her community. With her social work degree in hand, she continued to work in the area of community affairs and in 1958 she helped establish the National Puerto Rican Forum (NPRF) to help promote career development and business ventures in the community. The NPRF also served as a source of information about the scope of issues surrounding the Puerto Rican and Latino community and as a means of interpreting that information to generate constructive solutions.
Pantoja was alarmed by the dropout rate among Puerto Rican students and by the poor images that so many students had about themselves and their community. In 1961, as a response to what she observed to be a lack of education and leadership among Puerto Rican youth in New York City, she established a non-profit organization and named it ASPIRA, from the Spanish verb "to aspire." ASPIRA is perhaps the organization for which Pantoja is best known. It is a non-profit educational organization whose purpose is to increase the number of minority students who graduate from high school and go on to higher education. There are now eight chapters of ASPIRA around the country.
Pantoja left ASPIRA in 1966 and returned to her alma mater, Columbia University, as a faculty member in its School of Social Work. Despite the demands of her position 1967 saw the beginning of her years of contributions to the education and leadership development of Puerto Ricans in the United States and on the island. That same year she was chosen as a delegate-at-large to the New York State Constitutional Convention and helped to write a new constitution for the state. After the work was completed, she was named by New York Mayor Lindsay to be a member of the Bundy Blue Ribbon Panel that designed a legal process for decentralizing the New York City Board of Education. In 1970 she was awarded a grant to establish the Universidad Boricua and the Puerto Rican Research and Resource Center in Washington, D.C. In 1973 Pantoja became the chancellor and that university's first president. In the mid-1970 she also established the Graduate School for Community Development in San Diego, California.
In 1984 Pantoja returned to her native Puerto Rico to retire in the village of Cubby. However, she remained active in the community, and in 1985 Pantoja helped establish PRODUC1R (literally, "to produce"), a non-profit economic development corporation that promotes economic independence and leadership development in a low-income rural community. Homesick for New York City, Pantoja left PRODUC1R and Puerto Rico and returned to New York in 1998.
Pantoja published her autobiography, "Memoir of a Visionary: Antonia Pantoja" in 2002.
(The autobiography of a founder of ASPIRA, the national no...)
2002
Views
Among the early disturbing experiences that influenced her life, Pantoja described social and economic malaise, prejudice against blacks, and sexism against women. During the Great Depression, she became cognizant of the marked class differences and the contrast in housing, dress, and status that existed between whites and people of color. These experiences influenced and developed in her a leadership style that encouraged people to work collectively to reach consensus, an approach that today is considered to be very effective in eliminating prejudice.
Her life's work also revolved around educational access for the disadvantaged and community self-determination. Pantoja's lifelong mission was to empower community members to speak for themselves.
Pantoja once remarked that she considered that all her work "has always been about community development and providing resources for people to develop their personal and social strengths within the context of their cultural origins and the physical or national communities in which they live."
Quotations:
"Very early in my life, I came to understand that one has a responsibility to make the time and length of your life count for something worthwhile. I always felt that this was a noble cause - to live a life of meaning."
"Sometimes people think that you shouldn't express yourself directly and say what you're thinking, but you have to. You have to be open and direct and say what you mean. Call things by their name."
"You cannot live a life that is lukewarm. You need to live a life of commitment and passion."
Personality
Famously smart, disciplined, and the possessor of a biting sense of humor, Pantoja was also a true lover of all that New York City had to offer. She was able to navigate and connect with the pursuits and aspirations of a truly diverse group of communities and people.
Physical Characteristics:
A small woman with a powerful voice and no-nonsense attitude, Antonia wore a poker face that broke periodically into a beaming smile.
Quotes from others about the person
"She had a very infectious spirit. Everybody that worked with her would be inspired by her. She was a believer in young people and the concept of paying it forward. That's what we need to continue to do. The importance of putting these mosaics up is a way of making sure our contributions will never be erased." - New York City Council Speaker
"She really stands out as a unique figure in our history. She was the single most important figure in the development of the Puerto Rican community in New York City and nationally." - Angelo Falcon
Connections
In her autobiography, Antonia revealed that she was lesbian. Her longtime partner was Wilhelmina Perry. They lived and worked together over 30 years between the United States and Puerto Rico.