Late Mexican American boxer, political organizer, educator, activist, and poet Rodolfo “Corky” Gonzales was honored Friday, October 1, on Google’s homepage with his own customized Google Doodle for Our Heritage Month.
Gonzales was first known as a professional boxer and was once ranked as one of the best featherweight fighters by Ring Magazine before he retired from the sport in 1955. After his boxing career, he became heavily involved in the Chicano Movement in Denver during the 1960s and fought for social, political, and economic justice for Chicanos.
The Google Doodle features nine slides with illustrated images of Gonzales at different points of his life and career. The first slide shows him standing at a microphone making a speech with an Aztec eagle insignia behind him. Another shows Gonzales as a child working in the fields picking radishes. There are also slides of him as a boxer, a writer, and a political organizer.
“La Raza! Mejicano! Español! Latino! Hispano! Chicano! Or whatever I call myself,” the slides read. “I look the same. I feel the same. I cry and sing the same. I am the masses of my people, and I refuse to be absorbed.”
Democrat Texas Congressman Joaquin Castro tweeted his remembrance of Gonzales and the personal connection he has to the Chicano activist.
“A leader in the Chicano Movement, Rodolfo ‘Corky’ Gonzales empowered and inspired the U.S. Latino community,” Castro wrote. “His work to advance racial and socio-economic justice moved many, including my family. He wrote the poem I was named after!”
I Am Joaquin (Yo soy Joaquin), is a well-known poem written by Gonzales that is associated with the Chicano Movement in the 1960s. An excerpt reads: “I am Joaquín, lost in a world of confusion, caught up in the whirl of a gringo society, confused by the rules, scorned by attitudes, suppressed by manipulation, and destroyed by modern society.”