“Harlem Porto Ricans United”: Activism in East Harlem’s Barrio and US-Born Black Responses in the 1920s and 1930s

With the granting of U.S. citizenship under the Jones Act in 1917, Puerto Ricans began journeying to the mainland in increasing numbers, and many made the East Harlem neighborhood of Manhattan their destination. These boricua migrants simultaneously negotiated newfound identities as contested residents of the city as well as (sometimes unwilling) citizens. The experiences of Puerto Ricans, as well as the insights of U.S.-born black neighbors to the north and west, will provide new insights into the process of incorporation or disidentification with the national community.

Puerto Ricans took strong stances on racial justice, organized around narratives of “citizenship rights.” Black Harlemites’ reactions were impacted in part by various ideological debates existing within their communities, such as divergent visions of Pan-Africanism. Recent scholarship has touched on this time and place in Barrio history, but generally without emphasis on interactions with U.S.-born black communities in Harlem, and the ways in which strategies for empowerment were, to some degree, shared or inspired by the work of other groups in the city. This additional level of analysis offers an opportunity for a rich consideration of intra- and inter-racial community-building (complicated by Puerto Ricans’ racial identification in their new sociocultural context), as well as activism for rights, in a context of diaspora and imperialism.

The analysis of the paper will focus particularly on local outbreaks of racially-charged violence (often conflicts between Puerto Ricans and ethnic whites), as well as particularly powerful grassroots activism involving Puerto Rican community leaders. This will be accomplished primarily through examination of the editorial narratives of ethnic newspapers such as the New York Amsterdam News (a leading black newspaper in Harlem), and La Prensa (a Spanish language paper published in East Harlem), as well as the personal papers of community leaders and existing oral histories.