Browse Items (42 total)

Born in 1908, Esther Davalos was born as a third generation American; her family came from Spain and settled in the part of Mexico that later became Texas. After the Mexican Revolution, which her father fought and died in, the family moved to…

Gilda Cemi Cetrullo (b. 1903) was 20 when she left Abruzzi, Italy, to join her parents in Philadelphia, arriving in 1923. In her 1982 interview, Cetrullo talked about her life in Italy and the United States, including her long separation from her…

Hayfaa Ibrahem Abdulqadar shares her experiences as a refugee who fled from Baghdad, Iraq in 2005, first to Jordan, then to Philadelphia in 2009. She came to Jordan with her husband, Bajhat Abdulwahed, and her adult daughter, who is now a news…

Irena Melekhina recounts her experiences growing up in the USSR, earning a degree in dentistry, and then seeking refugee status along with her husband prior to immigrating to the United States in 1991. She recalls a sense of being brainwashed by the…

In this interview, Isatu Kallon, born in 1991, speaks about her experiences growing up in Kenema, Sierra Leone, her family, and what it was like growing up during the Rebel War. She begins by introducing her relationship to her grandmother, the woman…

When he graduated from Temple University with a journalism degree in 1925, John Calpin (1904-1991) became a police reporter for The Philadelphia Bulletin. There, he witnessed first hand the impact of Prohibition on the city of Philadelphia and the…

Born in the tough Irish-American neighborhood of Grays Ferry, John Flynn learned how to fight at a young age, started to work full time at the age of 14, and soon was part of a gang that hung out in Philadelphia's infamous Tenderloin District on the…

John "Herb" Rudolph (b. 1901), worked at the Stetson factory in North Philadelphia for forty-nine years. In his 1982 oral history interview, Rudolph provided a first-hand account of the changing nature of factory work and of the American hat industry…

After immigrating from Scotland to Philadelphia in 1922, Johnny Mulligan boxed professionally, danced with the Irish Merrymakers, and played striker for the Electric Storage Battery Company's industrial league soccer team.

In this interview, Gomez discusses her move from Colombia to the United States and enrolling at West Chester University. She talks about the cultural differences between the two countries and her transition into the U.S. educational system. Gomez…