“Fellow Citizens Too”: Puerto Ricans and Migration Politics in the New York Amsterdam News, 1954
By Daniel Acosta Elkan
On March 1, 1954, four Puerto Rican nationalists opened fire on the members of the House of Representatives from the gallery of the body’s chamber in Washington DC. This was but the most dramatic event in an important year for the Puerto Rican diaspora, and its effects were felt in profoundly local ways. In East Harlem, the most prominent stateside Boricua[1] community, the FBI conducted a number of raids on bars, restaurants, and other community spaces. The New York Amsterdam News, the city’s leading Black newspaper, reported that “Negroes and Puerto Ricans are reportedly being rounded up, searched, and subjected to other indignities.” Everyday members of the community and Puerto Rican elected officials alike, partly in fear of indiscriminate backlash, came out vocally against the Nationalist shooters, with one young person quoted as saying “they should be shot like mad dogs.”[2]
These events point to a number of issues faced by Puerto Ricans throughout the diaspora: the question of the island’s political status, the political empowerment or marginalization of Boricuas in New York, and heightened scrutiny by law enforcement and everyday New Yorkers. At base, all of these issues speak to the social incorporation of Puerto Ricans into the United States broadly, and in New York specifically. Reporting in the Amsterdam News, a publication focused on the city’s Black middle class, reflects significant tensions among Black and Puerto Rican politicians, growing in part out of ethnic nationalist electoral strategies. On the editorial side, however, columnist and city councilman Earl Brown repeatedly worked to offer an analysis of shared struggles among Black and Puerto Rican migrants in Harlem. Despite his clear desire for unity, though, his perspective exhibits its own set of tensions, largely relating to the mutability of Puerto Ricans’ racial status.[3] In offering this analysis, Brown (to a degree not seen among other Amsterdam News writers) sought to overcome strife between the groups and offer a path for turning these shared struggles into a basis for coalition.
The Boricua community in New York was in a pivotal period of growth in 1954. Following World War II, Governor Luis Muñoz Marín initiated “Operación Manos a la Obra,” commonly known in English as “Operation Bootstrap.” Mainly known as an industrialization program, Operation Bootstrap also called for the emigration of one million Puerto Ricans from the island. Additionally, the re-orientation of the island’s economy away from agriculture and towards greater urban industrial production was tremendously disruptive to the island’s socioeconomic fabric. As a result, the Puerto Rican population in the United States grew significantly, especially in New York. Census figures for 1950 placed the numbers of Boricuas in the continental United States at 301,375, with 245,880 of those residing in New York City. By 1960, those figures had reached 887,661 and 612,574 respectively.[4] With this rapid growth came an increased emphasis on Puerto Rican issues (such as racial justice, housing opportunity and quality, etc.) in the New York press, and a concern among many whites about New York’s growing diversity.
Along with the surge in the Puerto Rican population, 1954 brought an important midterm and statewide election. In Harlem, powerhouse Black Congressman Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. was nine years into a nearly three-decade career in the US House of Representatives. The neighborhood’s State Assemblyman, West Indian-born Hulan Jack, had just ascended to the office of Manhattan Borough President, leaving his 14th District seat vacant. Many Puerto Ricans saw this as a moment to push for greater representation in local politics. This struggle is reflected in a January 1954 letter to the editors by Gilberto Gerena Valentín, noted Boricua political leader within the then-collapsing leftist American Labor Party and (later) the Democratic Party, writing here on behalf of the Committee for Spanish Unity.[5] Hailing the recent successes of Jack and Felipe Torres, a Puerto Rican who had recently been elected to the Assembly from the Bronx, Gerena Valentín nonetheless laments the lack of a Puerto Rican elected official in Manhattan. “Just as the Negro people have found out that they win representation by a united fight, so do the Puerto Rican people,” Gerena Valentín continues. He further suggests the possibility of, and the strength which would result from, a Black-Puerto Rican coalition: “Negroes and Puerto Ricans, the greatest victims of discrimination… can certainly find a way to support one another to make the governing body of the city and state of New York more representative of our people.”[6] Gerena Valentín’s analysis prefigures the tense and complex negotiations around the 14th Assembly District special election which was to follow in February.
Gregorio Domenech, a Puerto Rican Republican candidate who ran against Kenneth D. Phipps for the 14th Assembly District in 1954.
Despite Gerena Valentín’s call for unity, the special election pitted Black and Puerto Rican candidates against each other. The candidates were Kenneth Phipps for the Democratic Party, and Gregorio Domenech for the Republican Party. Phipps, a Black man, served as President of the New Deal Democratic Club, which was the political base of Borough President Jack. Domenech, an active member of the local Republican organization, was among those named by Gerena Valentín as part of a group “trying to develop a new generation of Puerto Rican leadership in El Barrio.” Domenech ran with the support of members of the American Labor Party (ALP), whose most noted leader was the celebrated Italian-American advocate for Puerto Rican and Black civil rights and former Republican, Congressman Vito Marcantonio.[7] For his part, Domenech was also involved in the creation of the Puerto Rican Day Parade, hosting the first organizing meeting for the event at his home in 1954.[8] Beyond the partisan division between the candidates, tensions were inflamed because of the belief on the part of Puerto Rican leaders, reported in the Amsterdam News, that Democratic Mayor Robert F. Wagner, Jr. had promised to advocate for a Boricua candidate for the seat.[9] The leftist press echoed this analysis, with the National Guardian arguing that “Republicans, ALPers, Democrats, and Liberal had joined forces… after the Democrats went back on a promise to nominate a Puerto Rican… in what was understood to be a maneuver to split the Negroes from the Puerto Ricans.” Progressives went so far as to attempt to form a “Unity Party” to support Puerto Rican representation, but local Republicans refused to allow Domenech to accept their endorsement.[10]
The tensions of this race were reflected in a letter to the editor by Martin Shepherd, Jr. of Brooklyn, who advocated for a Puerto Rican candidate to win the office. Shepherd points to the fact that, in his estimation, “about 50% of the population [of the 14th Assembly District] consists of Puerto Ricans.” Noting the potential to elect a Boricua to office in this district, he further argues that “Puerto Ricans definitely need a representative who will courageously put their case before the public and fight to help them get their rightful share of the community’s benefits.” The mixed-race composition of the diasporic community had, in Shepherd’s estimation, led to “disguised prejudice.” Thus, he urges readers “to drop party lines should there be only one Puerto Rican candidate offered and back this candidate.”[11] The correspondent, whose ethnicity is not noted, is thus urging Puerto Ricans to support whichever candidate should arise from their own community, rather than uniting around the Democratic candidate, regardless of race. Shepherd further rejects a multi-racial coalition, under the auspices of either party, in support of a non-Puerto Rican candidate. The election of a Boricua to the seat, in his analysis, was of overriding importance.
This ethnic nationalist electoral strategy would prove insufficient to overcome the power of the Democratic candidate Phipps (supported by the waning but still-potent Tammany Hall organization). Still, Domenech made a respectable showing of 879 votes (31.3% of ballots counted) to Democrat Phipps’s 1,931 (68.7%).[12] This showing is all the more impressive given the performance of earlier Boricua candidate Manuel Medina, who ran in 1952 under the ALP banner. Medina received 2,772 votes (13.9%) against Democrat Hulan Jack’s 14,505 (73%), with Republican James Ward coming in third with 2,594 votes (13%).[13]
Bearing in mind the depressed voter turnout in the 1954 special election, and the changing party dynamics in the race, the trend in these results nonetheless suggests the growing strength of the Puerto Rican vote. Perhaps in recognition of this fact, Tammany leader Carmine DeSapio endorsed a Puerto Rican, Antonio Mendez, to serve as Democratic Party leader for the eastern half of the 14th Assembly District just over one month after the special election.[14] If the intent of this move was to consolidate the Democrat’s strength in East Harlem, it would seem to have succeeded. In his re-election bid for a full term in November of 1954, Phipps achieved “the largest voting margin in Harlem,” beating his Republican challenger, Walter E. Gumbs, by nearly 7 to 1.[15]
Councilman Earl Brown. Later in his career, Brown attempted to unseat Congressman Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. in the 1958 elections, and served as Chair of the city’s Commission on Human Rights.
The growth and electoral strength of the Puerto Rican population, and the ambiguity of Boricuas’ racial identities, elicited an ongoing response from Black columnist and New York City Council member Earl Brown, who saw potential for a strategic alliance (if not an ongoing coalition) between Black and Puerto Rican New Yorkers. Under the title “New York’s Color Scheme,” Brown pushed back on Columbia University researchers’ conceptualization of a unified “non-white” population. “The white-whites,” Brown sardonically states, “lump the Puerto Ricans with Negroes and other non-whites, such as Asians, for purposes of identification. Also recognition and acceptance.” Wry statements aside, Brown agrees with the main contention of the research, that “New York’s complexion is changing rapidly.” Turning to the political implications of these demographic changes, Brown is blunt in his assessment of the tactical shifts necessary for the city’s political class: “if the white-whites are wise… they’ll forthwith cut out all forms of racial discrimination and segregation, because their days are numbered.” Reinforcing this point, he closes this analysis by asking “who’s going to be the first Negro Mayor of New York?”[16] Through this column, Brown at once questions the “non-white” classification of Puerto Ricans (many of whom arguably pass as white) and the idea of a unified “non-white” population, while also arguing that the “white-whites” of the city must recognize the growing diversity of the city and open the halls of power to members of these burgeoning communities further.
All of the fine detail described above ultimately boils down to one question: how might Black and Puerto Rican communities, living so often side-by-side, work for political empowerment in the early civil rights era? Turning again to Earl Brown, the answer he outlines in his July 3rd column is strategic unity. As he so eloquently puts it, Black people had a “growing willingness… to look down their broad proboscises at these folk.” However, “no group has ever reached the top by keeping another one on the bottom.” Thus, he advocates for helping Puerto Ricans in their efforts towards a “fair break,” if for no other reason than because “in about 10 years or so the Puerto Ricans will be showing us Negroes their dust, because fewer of them are stuck with the handicap of color.”[17] For Brown, then, the sometimes-ambiguous racial identity of Puerto Ricans could serve as a vehicle to further the community’s empowerment. In the years to come, as one recent analysis suggests, Black and Puerto Ricans in New York “utilized their racial and ethnic identities as sites of political mobilization through mutual collaborations and contestations of power.”[18] Perhaps the most potent example of this was the formation in 1966 of the Black and Puerto Rican Caucus in the New York State Assembly, which gained the position of majority whip and two committee chairmanships in recognition of their combined power.[19] Beyond the simple calculus of strength in numbers, this development suggests a rising recognition of the shared issues faced by Black and Puerto Rican New Yorkers, and the possibility of coalitional work towards political change. Or, to put it more succinctly through the words of an Amsterdam News editorial, “The Puerto Ricans Are: Fellow Citizens Too.”[20]
Daniel Acosta Elkan (Ph.D., Bowling Green State University, 2017) is a lecturer in Latina/Latino Studies at San Francisco State University.
[1] Boricua is a folk term referring to Puerto Rican people, derived from the indigenous Taíno people’s name for the island, Borinquen. I will use the terms “Puerto Ricans” and “Boricuas” interchangeably.
[2] Clyde Reid, “Police Search East Harlem: Shame, Fear Hits Puerto Rican Area.” New York Amsterdam News, Mar. 6, 1954.
[3] Not reflected in either the reporting or editorials is the overlap between the two communities, either in terms of Afro Puerto Ricans or mixed families. This reinforced a sharp distinction between Black and Puerto Rican Harlemites.
[4] As cited in Virginia Sánchez Korrol, From Colonia to Community: The History of Puerto Ricans in New York City (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 213.
[5] According to historians Lorrin Thomas and Aldo Lauria Santiago, “by the late 1930s the American Labor Party (ALP) wielded more influence than the Democratic party in working class Puerto Rican communities in New York.” The party collapsed due largely to the death of Congressman Vito Marcantonio in August of 1954. Lorrin Thomas and Aldo A. Lauria Santiago, Rethinking the Struggle for Puerto Rican Rights (Milton: Routledge, 2019), 30-32.
[6] Gerena Valentin, “Wants Puerto Ricans’ and Negroes Support.” New York Amsterdam News, Jan. 2, 1954.
[7] Gilberto Gerena Valentin, Gilberto Gerena Valentin: My Life as a Community Activist, Labor Organizer, and Progressive Politician in New York City, ed. Carlos Rodriguez-Fraticelli (New York: Center for Puerto Rican Studies, 2013), 100-101. Marcantonio represented East Harlem as a Republican between 1935 and 1937, and under the banner of the American Labor Party between 1939 and 1951, until red baiting ended his political career. For more on Marcantonio, see Gerald Meyer, Vito Marcantonio: Radical Politician, 1902-1954 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989).
[8] Ibid., 126.
[9] “Candidates Battle for 14th AD Seat.” New York Amsterdam News, Jan. 30, 1954.
[10] “How Many Bells,” “GOP Balks.” National Guardian (N.Y. Edition), Feb. 8, 1954.
[11] Martin Shepherd, Jr., “Urges Full Support in 14th AD Contest.” New York Amsterdam News, Feb. 13, 1954.
[12] James A. Hagerty, “4 Democrats Win Assembly Races.” New York Times, Feb. 17, 1954. All percentage calculations by the author.
[13] “Hulan Jack Goes Back To Albany.” New York Amsterdam News, Nov. 8, 1952.
[14] “Mendez Wins De Sapio Nod In 14th AD.” New York Amsterdam News, Mar. 27, 1954.
[15] James Booker, “Top Dem Votes Hold In Harlem.” New York Amsterdam News, Nov. 6, 1954.
[16] Earl Brown, “New York’s Color Scheme.” New York Amsterdam News, Nov. 6, 1954.
[17] Earl Brown, “Puerto Rican Question.” New York Amsterdam News, Jul. 3, 1954
[18] Sonia Song-Ha Lee, Building a Latino Civil Rights Movement: Puerto Ricans, African Americans, and the Pursuit of Racial Justice in New York City (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2014).
[19] “History.” The New York State Black, Puerto Rican, Hispanic, and Asian Legislative Caucus. Accessed October 26, 2022. https://nyassembly.gov/comm/BlackPR/20030130a/.
[20] “Fellow Citizens Too.” New York Amsterdam News, Mar. 20, 1954.