Rudy Lozano: The Struggle for Social Justice

Please join us to honor the life and legacy of the Chicagoan Latino labor activist, community organizer and former UIC student Rudy Lozano. The program begins promptly at 2 p.m. and features speaker remarks, a poetry reading and musical performance and a video screening.

Rodolfo “Rudy” Lozano (July 17, 1951–June 8, 1983) was a labor activist and community organizer from Pilsen/Little Village, Chicago, Illinois. He was instrumental in organizing multiracial and multiethnic unity in the election of Harold Washington, the first African American mayor of Chicago. Lozano was murdered shortly after Washington’s election. As a young high school student on the South Side and a college student at the University of Illinois Chicago (then the “Circle Campus”), Lozano fought for courses on Latin American history and for more Latino faculty. His fight as an undergraduate at UIC led to his arrest with other protestors on the Chicago Circle campus. The struggles they fought would pay off and lead to the creation of the Latin American Recruitment and Educational Services program and the Rafael Cintrón Ortiz Latino Cultural Center.

The UIC University Library holds the papers of Rudy Lozano and is currently displaying these archives in the exhibit, “A Search for Unity: Rudy Lozano and Coalition Building in Chicago,” in Special Collections and University Archives.

Light refreshments will be served at a reception following the program, and all will have an opportunity to view the Lozano exhibit in Special Collections and University Archives.

Sponsored by
The Rudy Lozano Family
The Rudy Lozano Expansion Committee
UIC University Library
UIC Rafael Cintrón Ortiz Latino Cultural Center

Open to the UIC community. RSVP to attend.

For questions or accommodations, please contact Linda Naru at 312-413-0394.