Editing Geraldo Rivera (section)

==Early life==
Rivera was born at [[Mount Sinai Beth Israel|Beth Israel Medical Center]] on July 4, 1943, in New York City, the son of Lillian (née Friedman; 1924&ndash;2018) and Cruz "Allen" Rivera (1915–1987), a restaurant worker and taxicab driver respectively.<ref name="abcexcerpt">{{cite news|url=https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/WaterCooler/story?id=4339477&page=1 |title=Excerpt: 'His Panic'|work= ABC News |date=February 26, 2008 |access-date=September 29, 2010}}</ref> He is of [[Galicians|Galician]] ancestry through his father, who was from [[Puerto Rico]].<ref name="abcexcerpt" /> His mother was [[Ashkenazi]] Jewish, while his father was Roman Catholic. Rivera was raised "mostly Jewish" and had a [[Bar and bat mitzvah|bar mitzvah]] ceremony.<ref>{{cite web |last=Miller |first=Gerri |url=http://www.interfaithfamily.com/site/apps/nl/content2.asp?c=ekLSK5MLIrG&b=297403&ct=415783 |title=InterfaithFamily |website=InterfaithFamily.com |access-date=June 12, 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070927004757/http://www.interfaithfamily.com/site/apps/nl/content2.asp?c=ekLSK5MLIrG&b=297403&ct=415783 |archive-date=September 27, 2007 |url-status=dead }}</ref> He grew up in [[Brooklyn]] and [[West Babylon, New York]], where he attended [[West Babylon High School]]. 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, although Riviera, Ribeira, Rivera, and Ribera are variations of the same name as spelled by Galician, Italian and Portuguese families.<ref>{{cite book |last= Wood |first=Jamie Martinez |date=2007 |title=Latino Writers and Journalists |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=TIlaa0cLu2AC&q=%22geraldo+rivera%22+%22riviera%22&pg=PA195 |location=New York, NY |publisher=Facts on File, Inc. |page=195 |isbn=978-0-8160-6422-9}}</ref><ref name=snopes/> Rivera is a common family name in Puerto Rico, which received a significant population of colonists from Galicia, Spain, in the 16th century. The name Rivera is also very common among Sephardic Jews.

<blockquote>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. She did the same thing for my sister Irene. Later, she would drop the pretense for my sister Sharon, only to pick it up again with the birth of my baby brother Craig. Whenever we asked about the inconsistencies, she would shrug shyly and joke her way out of it. "I just forgot how to spell it", she would say, and leave it at that. Underneath, I came to realize, she was deeply embarrassed over what was a clumsy attempt at an ethnic cover-up.</blockquote>

From 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.<ref>{{cite web|website=Geraldo.com|title=Sailing Book (continues)|url=http://www.geraldo.com/v5/Biographical/Sailing-Book-continues.gr|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070327103644/http://www.geraldo.com/v5/Biographical/Sailing-Book-continues.gr|url-status=dead|archive-date=March 27, 2007|date=March 27, 2007 |access-date= December 17, 2011}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|website=Fort Schuyler Maritime Alumni Association|url=http://www.fsmaa.org/NFFS/1998/nf980924.cfm|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070818170027/http://www.fsmaa.org/NFFS/1998/nf980924.cfm|url-status=dead|archive-date=August 18, 2007|date=August 18, 2007 |title=September 24, 1998|access-date= December 17, 2011}}</ref> Afterwards, he transferred to the [[University of Arizona]], where he received a [[Bachelor of Science|B.S.]] in [[business administration]] in 1965.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://news.arizona.edu/story/tv-journalist-geraldo-rivera-funds-greek-heritage-park|title = TV Journalist Geraldo Rivera Funds Greek Heritage Park|date = September 11, 2015}}</ref>

Following a series of jobs ranging from clothing salesman to short-order cook, Rivera enrolled at [[Brooklyn Law School]] in 1966. 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 [[Juris Doctor|J.D.]] near the top of his class in 1969. 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.<ref name="google.com"/>

After 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.<ref name="google.com">{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=NLPrMMKmynwC&q=geraldo+rivera+smith+fellow&pg=PA364|title=Notable Caribbeans and Caribbean Americans|isbn=978-0-313-31443-8|access-date=September 9, 2015|last1=Méndez-Méndez|first1=Serafin|last2=Cueto|first2=Gail|last3=Deynes|first3=Neysa Rodríguez|last4=Rodríguez-Deynes|first4=Neysa|year=2003|publisher=Greenwood Publishing }}</ref><ref>{{cite book |title=Black against Empire|title-link=Black Against Empire |last1=Bloom |first1=Joshua |last2=Martin | first2=Waldo E. Jr. |publisher=[[University of California Press]] |page=295 |date=January 2013 |isbn= 978-0-520-27185-2 }}</ref> 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. Primo offered Rivera a job and he began to study introductory broadcast journalism under [[Fred W. Friendly|Fred Friendly]] in the [[Ford Foundation]]-funded Summer Program in Journalism for Members of Minority Groups at the [[Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism]] in 1970.<ref name="google.com"/><ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=HQ6FAAAAQBAJ&q=rivera&pg=PT336|title=Pulitzer's School|date=November 12, 2003|isbn=978-0-231-50017-3|access-date=September 9, 2015|last1=Boylan|first1=James|publisher=Columbia University Press }}</ref>