(Screen Slide: Image featuring multi-ethnic BLM protestors.) SOUND CUE: School bell. PART 8: David Hernandez on Self-View & Black/Lat ‘SCREEN SAVER: David Hernandez Poetry Teacher “We had finally arrived!” ALAYA: Mr. Hernandez teaches poetry every Friday at my school. He’s always talkin’ about how we need to use our words to do something. He says our words can change the world. Not just the words, but how we use them. He says that in the 60s he helped transform the Young Lords from gang members to community leaders and he marched with a man named Cesar Chavez during the Grape Farmers Strike. On Friday, I'm going to ask Mr. Hernandez what it was like, growing up Latino in Chicago. ACTION: Performer transforms to HERNANDEZ. SOUND CUE: David Hernandez’ song Street Sounds, or other music selection representative of the Puerto Rican Chicago 1960's Latin Jazz music scene. SCREEN IMAGES: Throughout Hernandez’ “Elvis is Dead...” poem images of Chicago Latino youth, 1950s-1960s, in addition to photos of Elvis Presley, appear. ERNANDEZ: (Addressing audience) Well, | could tell you stories about how the white kids used to call us names and chase us through the streets, but what it was like is best described in this poem- “Elvis is dead but at least he’s not gaining any weight” Elvis arrived on the scene around 1955 with straight, greasy hair in a loose, curly pompadour that got all shook up whenever he rocked n’ rolled. At that same time we Puerto Ricans arrived in Chicago except we weren't as big of a hit as Elvis was. It wasn't long before George Perez and | felt as miserable as our teenage brothers because our hair refused to go straight. We tried fine-toothed combs, vinegar/witch hazel concoctions, lye-based straightening gels, Brylcream Hair Tonic and do-rags made out of old nylon stockings. These we wore like overnight skull caps hoping to wake up. with an Elvis pompadour yet nothing really worked. So we grew up hating our hair because it was pasu hair, raisin hair, bad kinky hair and as a result, we didn’t like ourselves too much [revo ins aed rom the sane ero Pree