Primo offered Rivera a job as a reporter but was unhappy with the first name "Gerald" (as he wanted something more identifiably Latino), so they agreed to go with the pronunciation used by the Puerto Rican side of Rivera's family: Geraldo. This work attracted the attention of WABC-TV news director Al Primo when Rivera was interviewed about the group's occupation of a neighborhood church in 1969. Īfter working with such organizations as the lower Manhattan-based Community Action for Legal Services and the National Lawyers Guild, Rivera became a frequent attorney for the East Harlem-based New York City chapter of the Young Lords, a Puerto Rican activist group, eventually precipitating his entry into private practice. He then held a Reginald Heber Smith Fellowship in poverty law at the University of Pennsylvania Law School in the summer of 1969 before being admitted to the New York State Bar later that year. While a law student, he held internships with the New York County District Attorney under crime-fighter Frank Hogan and Harlem Assertion of Rights (a community-based provider of legal services) before receiving his J.D.
Early career įollowing a series of jobs ranging from clothing salesman to short-order cook, Rivera enrolled at Brooklyn Law School in 1966.
Afterwards, he transferred to the University of Arizona, where he received a B.S. Underneath, I came to realize, she was deeply embarrassed over what was a clumsy attempt at an ethnic cover-up.įrom 1961 to 1963, he attended the State University of New York Maritime College in the Throggs Neck section of the Bronx, where he was a member of the rowing team.
"I just forgot how to spell it", she would say, and leave it at that. Whenever we asked about the inconsistencies, she would shrug shyly and joke her way out of it. Later, she would drop the pretense for my sister Sharon, only to pick it up again with the birth of my baby brother Craig. She did the same thing for my sister Irene. When I was born, my mother filled in my birth certificate with the name Gerald Riviera, adding an extra "i" to my father's surname. Rivera's family was sometimes subjected to prejudice and racism, and his mother took to spelling their surname as "Riviera" to avoid having bigotry directed at them.
He grew up in Brooklyn and West Babylon, New York, where he attended West Babylon High School. He was raised "mostly Jewish" and had a bar mitzvah ceremony. Rivera is a Stateside Puerto Rican his father was a Puerto Rican Catholic, and his mother was of Russian Jewish descent.
Rivera was born at Beth Israel Medical Center in New York City, New York, the son of Lillian (née Friedman Octo– June 3, 2018) and Cruz "Allen" Rivera (Octo– November 1987), a restaurant worker and cab driver respectively.