Sonia Song-Ha Lee - Building a Latino Civil Rights Movement

Building a Latino Civil Rights Movement

2014 The University of North Carolina Press
All rights reserved
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Manufactured in the United States of America

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Lee, Sonia Song-Ha.
Building a Latino civil rights movement : Puerto Ricans, African Americans, and the pursuit of racial justice in New York City / Sonia Song-Ha Lee.
pages cm. (Justice, power, and politics)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4696-1413-7 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-1-4696-1414-4 (ebook)
1. Puerto RicansCivil rightsNew York (State)New YorkHistory20th century. 2. Puerto RicansNew York (State)New YorkPolitics and government20th century. 3. Puerto RicansNew York (State)New YorkSocial conditions20th century. 4. African AmericansCivil rightsNew York (State)New YorkHistory20th century. 5. African AmericansNew York (State)New YorkPolitics and government20th century. 6. Civil rights movementsNew York (State)New YorkHistory20th century. 7. African AmericansRelations with Hispanic Americans 8. New York (N.Y.)Ethnic relations. 9. New York (N.Y.)Race relations. I. Title.
F128.9.P85L44 2014 323.1168729507471dc23 2013047867

18 17 16 15 14 5 4 3 2 1

2.1 Black and Puerto Rican members of Local 10, ILGWU, May 15, 1962

2.2 Union leaders prescribed womens domestic roles

2.3 ILGWUs Training Institute, June 8, 1960

3.1 Mothers meeting organized by the Union Settlement Association

3.2 Hispanic Young Adults Association meeting, c. 1954

3.3 Manny Diaz and Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy on the Lower East Side, c. 1963

4.1 Map of MEND ten subcommunities, 1964

4.2 Cyril Tyson

5.1 Charles Wilson, c. 1982

5.2 United Bronx Parents meeting, 1970s

5.3 Ethnic distribution of New York City public school employees, 196869

5.4 Board of Educations deliberations on the 1970 redistricting plans

6.1 Commencement ceremony at Boricua College, 1974

1.1 Percentage and distribution of the black population in New York City, 1960

1.2 Percentage and distribution of the Puerto Rican population in New York City, 1960

This book has been written through the generous and steadfast support of many colleagues and friends. My undergraduate adviser, Leon Litwack, sparked a love of history and an appreciation for those who came before me. My graduate adviser, Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, served as a model of academic rigor and compassionate collegiality. She affirmed the development of my intellectual life when my ideas were most unformed. Lizabeth Cohen provided a wonderful support structure by organizing a reading group and teaching us how to engage with each others work critically. I also received invaluable feedback from James Jennings, Susan ODonovan, Mark Sawyer, Carol Anderson, and Vincent Brown during my days in Cambridge. My colleagues and friends Sara Schwebel, Judy Kertsz, Erin Royston Battat, Suleiman Osman, Kim Sims, and Louis Hyman provided steadfast support and humor during graduate school.

Colleagues that I met through Centro de Estudios Puertorriqueos (Center for Puerto Rican Studies) and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture provided a wealth of knowledge and support. Miriam Jimnez Romn, Juan Flores, Ismael Garca-Coln, Andrs Torres, Anthony De Jess, Jorge Matos, Pedro Juan Hernndez, Flix Rivera, and Lillian Jimnez connected me to key sourcesthe archival collections, as well as the oral history interviewees. Their intellectual and personal investments in this research project were crucial to helping me write this book.

At Swarthmore College and Washington University in St. Louis, I found colleagues who gave me insightful comments and a nurturing intellectual community. Rafael Zapata, Marjorie Murphy, Pieter Judson, Sarah Willie-LeBreton, Keith Reeves, Cheryl Jones-Walker, and Lisa Smulyan cheered me on as I learned to link my teaching with research interests. Members of the History Department at Washington University provided me with a vital support system through which I could revise my manuscript. Special thanks go to Iver Bernstein, Yuko Miki, Andrea Friedman, Jean Allman, Andrea Campetella, Sowande Mustakeem, Shefali Chandra, Derek Hirst, Lori Watt, and Nancy Reynolds, who read my work and gave me valuable feedback. Margaret Garb went above and beyond the call of duty by reading multiple drafts of nearly every chapter. Her intellectual generosity will continue to inspire me throughout my career. Colleagues that I met through conferences and other intellectual circles also enriched my work in countless ways: Ande Diaz, Frank Guridy, Jesse Hoffnung-Garskof, Lorrin Thomas, Cary Fraser, Dan Berger, Lisa Ramos, Jos Cruz, Mrida Ra, Aldo Lauria Santiago, Craig Wilder, Johanna Fernandez, Scott Kurashige, Brian Purnell, Daniel Widener, and Tamar Carroll. Their kindness and enthusiasm have been contagious. Toward the final stages of revision, Iliyana Hadjistoyanova helped me gather important research material. Students from Swarthmore College and Washington University energized me and reminded me that ideas matterthat every good book can have a lifelong impact on the way that we treat each other and build our world. These students are too numerous to name, but special thanks go to Grace Kaissal, Isabel Rivera, Diego Menendez, Toby Wu, Karen Mok, Olamide Abiose, and Andreas Mitchell.

Many thanks go to my editors at the University of North Carolina Press, David Perry and Brandon Proia; the academic editors of the book series Justice, Power, and Politics, Rhonda Williams and Heather Ann Thompson; and the two anonymous readers of the manuscript. Their careful and insightful comments helped me write this book more clearly and accurately.

Archivists and librarians from multiple institutions provided me with generous assistance. I am indebted to the staff at the Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation and Archives at Cornell University, the Tamiment Library & Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives at New York University, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, the Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Columbia University, the La Guardia and Wagner Archives, the New York State Archives, the Lyndon B. Johnson Library, the John F. Kennedy Library, the Library of Congress, the Center for Puerto Rican Studies, and New York Citys Municipal Archives. I also received generous funding for this book from Harvard University, the City University of New York Caribbean Exchange Program, and Washington University in St. Louis.

The heart of this book comes from the voices of the many people who opened up their homes and allowed me to share their personal stories with the larger public. They picked me up from Greyhound bus stations, cooked and bought meals for me, and generously shared their memories and insights. Were it not for their willingness to trust me with their documents and memories, this book would not have materialized. Words cannot express my deep gratitude to them.