Dates

• Existence: 1929-

Biography

Adella Martinez was born in Madelia, Minnesota, in 1929 to Esperanza Lopez and Cruz Martinez. Esperanza Lopez was born in 1904 in Queseo de Hidalgo (known today as Abasolo) in the state of Guanajuato, Mexico. She left home at the age of thirteen as a result of the Mexican Revolution and came to the United States eventually settling in Topeka, Kansas, where she met Cruz Martinez, a railroad worker and migrant farm laborer; Cruz Martinez was also from Mexico. Esperanza Lopez and Cruz Martinez married in 1920 and settled in Manly, Iowa, working as agricultural laborers primarily in Minnesota and northern Iowa. The couple had eight children. Their oldest daughter, Florence Martinez, died of tuberculosis in 1936; Cruz Martinez died in 1937. Following the death of her daughter and husband, Esperanza Martinez and her remaining children moved to a farm in Lake Mills, Iowa, and then to the Mexican settlement of Cook's Point in Davenport, Iowa. Adella Martinez attended St. Alphonsus School in Davenport. She left school at the age of thirteen to help her mother care for the younger children in the family. In 1947 she moved to Chicago where she held various factory jobs. Adella Martinez married Alfonso Constantino, whom she later divorced. She was the mother of nine children. Adella Martinez worked for the Wonder Bread Company in Davenport, Iowa, for twenty years where she was a member of the Bakery, Confectionary and Tobacco Workers International Union Local 36. She retired in 1991.

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