Filipina collects community's history.

Estrella Ravelo Alamar calls the master bedroom in her Hyde Park town home a "history sanctuary." Filled with stacks of boxes, some about to topple over, it holds thousands of old fliers, government records, news clippings and traditional Filipino clothing--all preserved to document stories of Filipinos in Chicago.

Alamar, 65, is known as the unofficial archivist for the area's Filipino community. In 1986 she and her late husband, Justo, established the Filipino American Historical Society of Chicago, and in 1999 she and local artist Willi Red Buhay opened a museum on Chicago's North Side. The museum closed in May because of a lack of funds, but Alamar hopes to find a way to reopen it.

Along with Buhay, she recently co-authored Filipinos in Chicago (Arcadia Publishing, 2001), the first photographic essay focusing on the community's local history. It draws from her own collection.

One June afternoon, she tamed to a bookshelf and pulled down one of dozens of binders full of photographs dating back to the 1920s. One of the photos shows her father working on the railroads out West before he settled in Chicago. Another pictures her mother in the West Side's Garfield Park neighborhood, after her 1935 arrival as one of the 50 Filipinos allowed to enter the United States that year under strict immigration laws.

Alamar shared some of her experiences with The Chicago Reporter.

What spurred your interest in this history?

When I was a child, I had to learn to play the piano music for several traditional [Filipino] dances. But, during my adolescent years, I was more concerned with my life as an American teen-ager than I was in my ethnic heritage. It wasn't until I finished my master's degree in urban education and settled as a Chicago Public Schools teacher that I began to be interested again in the community.

It was in the mid-'70s, after [the peak of] the black movement, Martin Luther King Jr. and the publication of Roots. I began to be more interested in what were my roots and what my relatives were like in the Philippines. Then I started organizing the photographs.

Tell me about trying to be more "American."

Growing up, most of my friends were white. A few were Filipino. We [children of immigrants] were all trying to be American. We thought there was no need to learn the [Filipino] language. There was more need for our parents to perfect their English. One of the things that our parents talked about was that it was a status [symbol] to marry whites. So a lot of Filipinos had white marriages.

At a book signing in April, you pointed out a picture of a Filipino man, a white woman and a child--and said it was a typical Filipino American family in the 1930s and 1940s.

Almost all of the pensionados were men.

The pensionados?

The Filipino immigrants supported by the U.S. to study here when the Philippines was a U.S. commonwealth. The dance halls were [mostly] on the North Side. Women liked the Filipino men because the men were very suave and handsome, and dressed well, and were good dancers. The white men did not like it that their women were attracted to Filipinos.

What changes have you seen among Filipinos in Chicago?

There used to be more Filipinos concentrated in the city. Before World War II, those that came to Chicago basically stayed. When housing started opening up for minorities in the suburbs in the late '70s, immigrants who came here in the '60s and '70s started moving out there. Chicago was where they first settled. But, in the '90s, Filipino immigrants began to bypass the city and go straight to the suburbs. One reason is because their relatives were relocated to the suburbs, so they [the immigrants] went straight there to stay with them. Moving to the suburbs symbolized success, as did being able to send money back home to poorer relatives in the Philippines.

The historical society has sponsored exhibits around the city. How has the Filipino community responded?

Some people from my parents' generation--immigrants in the 1930s and 1940s--were not particularly interested in seeing the past because, to them, those are kind of bad memories. They've moved on. They've become more successful, and they kind of wanted to get away from that. I would ask, "How come you're not interested in these exhibits?" [They'd respond,] "Well, it's something we've lived already. Why should we go look at it?"

But there were some who really liked it. It was nostalgic. We felt it was important because there were new immigrants who didn't know what the older immigrants did--their struggles--so we thought it was really important for us to still continue with these exhibits.

What are you up to now?

I assist in letter-writing campaigns in Filipino veterans' organizations. And I hand out information about this issue for a Filipino civil rights group in Chicago.

After the independence of the Philippines from the United States, [President Harry S.] Truman reduced the G.I. benefits of the [Philippine Army] veterans who fought in World War II. There's been a couple of attempts to get these veterans, now in their late 70s and 80s, the same benefits that the Americans have had. On June 6, [the Chicago] City Council had a hearing about a resolution. I gave a statement of support.