Building a Latino Civil Rights Movement: Puerto Ricans, African Americans, and the Pursuit of Racial Justice in New York City

Justice, Power, and Politics

by Sonia Song Lee

In the first book-length history of Puerto Rican civil rights in New York City, Sonia Lee traces the rise and fall of an uneasy coalition between Puerto Rican and African American activists from the 1950s through the 1970s. Previous work has tended to see blacks and Latinos as either naturally unified as "people of color" or irreconcilably at odds as two competing minorities. Lee demonstrates instead that Puerto Ricans and African Americans in New York City shaped the complex and shifting meanings of "Puerto Rican-ness" and "blackness" through political activism. African American and Puerto Rican New Yorkers came to see themselves as minorities joined in the civil rights struggle, the War on Poverty, and the Black Power movement--until white backlash and internal class divisions helped break the coalition, remaking "Hispanicity" as an ethnic identity that was mutually exclusive from "blackness."

Drawing on extensive archival research and oral history interviews, Lee vividly portrays this crucial chapter in postwar New York, revealing the permeability of boundaries between African American and Puerto Rican communities.

Genres: Race, History

352 pages, Hardcover

First published May 10, 2014

Reviews

[Craig Werner · Rating 2 out of 5]

Up until the later sections, Building a Latino Civil Rights Movement is a serviceable summary of the evolving relationships between Puerto Ricans (it's really specific, not inclusive in emphasis within the Latinx world) and African American activists. Lee draws on a number of interviews and emphasizes the complexities of Puerto Rican racial identifications. A bit too much theory for my taste, but reasonably well used.

Where the book falls apart is when she reaches the community school movement of the late Sixties. Her presentation is wildly imbalanced, taking the perspective of the more militant cultural nationalists--who definitely had some points to make--uncritically. The biggest problem, and it renders her treatment deeply untrustworthy, is that she fails to engage the reality that the upheavals were not just racial, but also involved an assault on the union movement, including black and Puerto Rican union members. She deals well with problems between black and Puerto Rican workers and the International Ladies Garment Workers, but then seems to generalize to the union movement as a whole, failing to deal with crucial elements like the teacher's union commitment to programs designed to develop a large cohort of teachers from black and Puerto Rican communities.

The treatment of the Young Lords is also fairly perfunctory. See Johanna Fernandez's The Young Lords for a much fuller treatment.

[John Ward · Rating 4 out of 5]

Need to read more on Puerto Rican politics. Wish someone would write a political narrative of Herman Badillo’s career in government.

[Asha · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book starts well, it examines differing racial ideology between Blacks and Latinos and how that influenced the willingness or unwillingness of Puerto Ricans (specifically) to participate with Blacks to fight similiar issues such as housing discrimination, labor rights, education inequity and environmental injustice to name a few in New York City.This book provides some history of struggle of Puerto Ricans in New York as well as African Americans.

Although it touches on many concepts including , New York urban policies, the background for Puerto Rico's economic issues, civil rights etc, it eventually becomes a laundry list of different activist and activist groups. It too often focuses on groups and their ties to city official or funds instead of the actual activities and how it translates the everyday life. What this book misses is capturing the daily life and struggles of Puerto Ricans, which is crucial to understanding the need for any movement. Climatic events such as school boycott, and take over of Lincoln Hospital are briefly discussed. The history of social injustice ( except schools) and environmental injustice of South bronx is almost entirely missing. While the author spends a lot of time naming social theories and social policies, without sufficient descriptions.

Good : It gives a real discussion on Latinos perspective on race in American and which perspectives may not be entirely authentic but created .

Bad: In usual "reasearch" fashion, it does not capture Puerto Rican life or struggle because too much focus on theories, policies instead of people.

The other thought is I wish the author linked some of the issues to the national trends, such as sterilization and Eugenics or NYC housing discrimination with the national trend of redlining. Most of the methods of oppression or discrimination in NYC , were nationwide phenomenon and putting it into that context helps readers particularly those not familiar with American history.