Martha Martinez

The Martinez family donated many items to the Southeast Chicago Historical Museum. This picture shows Martha Martinez on her back porch in 1948. Martha was the child of Lucio and Pasquala Martinez, who emigrated to the United States from the Zacatecas region of Mexico in the period during, and just after, World War I. Martha and her other five siblings lived in South Deering near Wisconsin Steel where Lucio worked. The family originally attended Our Lady of Guadalupe Church and, later, St. Kevin’s in South Deering. The daughters, Carmen, Olga, Faye, Coni, and Martha, along with Carmen’s daughter Rita Jirasek, provided a lively oral history of growing up Mexican-American in South Deering to Dominic Pacyga and the Southeast Chicago Historical Project in 1982.