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Hernandez / Organizing a Non-Profit for the Brown Berets

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Zapata: Can you tell us a little about your non-profit and your club and what you do with it? Hernandez: Well, we did it for the Brown Berets for the Brown Berets. That is how we got chartered because one of the reasons we got the charter was because we were threatened all the time. We were told “if we ever catch two of you together, three, maybe four even better. We are going to take all of you in because it is illegal for you to have meetings like this. It is against the government and if y’all have that we are going to use the charges against you.” So, we were kind of like forced to do something. We got a charter so we could have meetings. We used to have meetings and take notes. We started learning, you know, how to conduct meeting and things of that nature. It was because of the Brown Beret movement and all of that. So that is why it went hand in hand. But, mostly the things the club did was charity, things to help the community. We got out to the schools and have shows for the schools. What do you call, that have a space in school they go to and things of that nature. We use to take model cars out there so they could paint them and bring championship cars out there and have them look at the cars. I use to go out to the- there is a home over here- Coyote Children’s home- I used to go over there several times and talk to the kids there. They housed hundreds of kids there. We talked to them about the cars. Their eyes open up and they start asking you about the cars. They write to you about the cars and they want to do that when they get out of there. It is a tool. We look at it as a tool, the car. The painting and the way you build it. Zapata: And the car club’s name id there behind you? Hernandez: It is called Taste of Latin. It went through different names. It was Oldies But Goodies, La Calabera, Aztlan Car Club, ended up with Taste of Latin. Taste of Latin is the one they ended up with.

Interview Interview with Nick Hernandez
Subjects Community Organizations › Civil Rights Organizations › Local Civil Rights Organizations
Police and Law Enforcement
Chicano Power › Brown Berets
Tags Taste of Latin Car Club
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Interview date 2016-07-08
Interview source CRBB Summer 2016
Interviewees Hernandez, Nick
Locations Odessa, TX
Duration 00:02:47
Citation "Organizing a Non-Profit for the Brown Berets," from Nick Hernandez oral history interview with ,  July 08, 2016, Odessa, TX, Civil Rights in Black and Brown Interview Database, https://crbb.tcu.edu/clips/3001/organizing-a-non-profit-for-the-brown-berets, accessed April 19, 2024