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

Lee, Sonia Song-Ha

ISBN 10: 1469629801 / ISBN 13: 9781469629803

Published by The University of North Carolina Press, 2016

About this Item

Gently read. May have name of previous ownership, or ex-library edition. Binding tight; spine straight and smooth, with no creasing; covers clean and crisp. Minimal signs of handling or shelving. 100% GUARANTEE! Shipped with delivery confirmation, if you're not satisfied with purchase please return item! Ships USPS Media Mail.

Seller Inventory # OTV.1469629801.VG

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Building a Latino Civil Rights Movement: Puerto Ricans, African Americans, and the Pursuit of Racial Justice in New York City (Justice, Power, and Politics)
• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
• Publication Date: 2016
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1469629801
• ISBN 13: 9781469629803
• Binding: Soft cover
• Condition: very_good

About this title

Synopsis

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.

About the Author

Sonia Song-Ha Lee is assistant professor of history at Washington University in St. Louis.