"I was the one percenter": Manny Diaz and the beginnings of a Black-Puerto Rican coalition

Journal of American Ethnic History

Volumn 26, Issue 3, 2007, Pages 52-80

  Lee, Sonia S ^a   Diaz, Ande ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 57749157477     PISSN: 02785927     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Review

References (83)

1. The authors express their appreciation to Lillian Jiménez, José Morales, José Morales, Jr.; and Blanca Vazquez for their commitment to chronicle the life of Manuel Diaz, Jr., and for their generosity in sharing their materials with us; Professors Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Lizabeth Cohen, and James Jennings for their scholarly support in the development of our academic interests and Peter Park and Steven Schapiro for inspiring early sharing of this work and for their thoughtful critiques; as well as the readers from the Journal of American Ethnic History for their encouragement and thorough review of the manuscript.
2. Gilberto Gerena-Valentín will be referred as "Gerena" in this paper since this is the name that most of his Puerto Rican compatriots used to refer to him. In Spanish surnames, the first surname (i.e., Gerena) is received from the father and the second (i.e., Valentín) is from the mother.
3. Leonard Buder, "Boycott Cripples City Schools; Absences 360,000 Above Normal; Negroes and Puerto Ricans Unite," New York Times, February 4, 1964.
4. Patricia Cayo Sexton, Spanish Harlem (New York, 1965), 50;
5. Buder, "Boycott Cripples City Schools."
6. Fred Powledge, "1,800 Join March for Better Schools for Puerto Ricans," New York Times, March 2, 1964;
7. "Civil Rights Leader Denies Link to Reds," New York Times, February 20, 1964.
8. Correspondence with Gilberto Gerena-Valentín by Sonia Lee, September 12, 2005; conversation with Manny Diaz, José Morales, and José Morales, Jr., by Sonia Lee, January 21, 2005.
9. Mark Q. Sawyer, Yisilernis Peña, Jim Sidanius, "Cuban Exceptionalism: Group-Based Hierarchy and the Dynamics of Patriotism in Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, and Cuba" Du Bois Review 1, #1 (2004): 98.
10. Renzo Sereno as quoted in Samuel Betances, "The Prejudice of Having No Prejudice in Puerto Rico," The Rican (Spring 1973): 25.
11. According to psychiatrist Renzo Sereno, who conducted interviews with 160 white and non-white Puerto Rican veterans of World War II, white Puerto Ricans who claimed that Puerto Rico had no racial discrimination were motivated by a desire to protect themselves from American racism: "It was the uncertainty of their social position that caused the white Puerto Ricans to voice opposition to race prejudice in the United States. It was that same uncertainty, according to Sereno, that caused white Puerto Ricans to exclude blacks and non-whites from their fraternities in order to reassure themselves that they were white." See Renzo Sereno, "Cryptomelanism: A Study of Color Relations and Personal Insecurity in Puerto Rico," Psychiatry 10 (1947): 266.
12. A century earlier, Irish immigrants had faced a similar dilemma as that of Puerto Ricans since they too had been rural, poor immigrants who worked in the bottom of the economic system as domestic servants and farm laborers alongside blacks. The Irish eventually became "white," but this process was carefully orchestrated by the Democratic Party as well as the Irish themselves. See David Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class (New York, 1991);
13. Noel Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White (New York, 1995);
14. Matthew Jacobson, Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race (Cambridge, MA, 1998).
15. Interview with Manny Diaz by Blanca Vazquez, October 3, 2002.
16. To this date, there has been little significant historical attention paid to the Puerto Rican participation in the U.S. army during World War II. There are a few works that mention it briefly. In Jorge Rodríguez Beruff, Política militar y dominación: Puerto Rico en el contexto Latinoamericano (Río Piedras, Puerto Rico, 1988), Beruff notes that more than 75,000 Puerto Ricans enlisted to serve in the U.S. army in World War II.
17. Acosta-Belén et al. argue in Edna Acosta-Belén ... [et al]., "Adiós, Borinquen querida:" The Puerto Rican Diaspora, Its History, and Contributors (Albany, NY, 2000), 52 that Puerto Rican soldiers who fought for the U.S. suffered a similar kind of racial subjugation as black American soldiers since they were allowed to exercise leadership only as non-commissioned officers during World War II and did not participate in active combat until the Korean War in 1950.
18. Interview with Manny Diaz by Sonia Lee, August 18, 2005.
19. Post exchange is a service mark used for a store on a military base that sells goods to military personnel and their families or to authorized civilians. From the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition (Boston, 2000).
20. Virginia E. Sánchez Korrol, From Colonia to Community: The History of Puerto Ricans in New York City (Berkeley, CA, 1983), 195;
21. César Andrew Iglesias, ed., Memoirs of Bernardo Vega: A Contribution to the History of the Puerto Rican Community in New York (New York, 1984)
22. [first edited as Memorias de Bernardo Vega by César Andrew Iglesias and published by Ediciónes Hurácan in 1977, translated by Juan Flores in 1984].
23. "Puerto Ricans Get Campaign Warning," New York Times, October 17, 1949.
24. Operation Bootstrap, an industrialization program designed by New Deal administrators in the 1930s and implemented through the U.S. Labor Department and the Partido Popular Democrático (Democratic Popular Party) in 1948, replaced U.S. investment in the sugar industry with a new plan for modernization and industrialization. Although new industrial jobs were created, they did not compensate for the jobs lost in the sugar industry, which created a high unemployment rate on the island. Simultaneously, the establishment of air links between Puerto Rico and New York City after the war facilitated the migration of Puerto Ricans to the mainland. Consequently, Puerto Rican migration to New York City skyrocketed in the 1940s; between 1940 and 1950, the Puerto Rican population in New York City jumped from 61,463 to 187,420. See Sherrie L. Baver, The Political Economy of Colonialism: The State and Industrialization in Puerto Rico (Westport, CT, 1993).
25. As historian Michael Lapp has argued, the Migration Division of the Office of the Commonwealth benefited Puerto Rican workers by offering counsel and referrals to employment agencies, but it ultimately failed to build an ethnic constituency because, unlike organizations that served black and Jewish minorities, such as the Urban League, the NAACP, or the American Jewish Congress, the Migration Division had no members. Individual Puerto Rican migrants thus had no voice in formulating the agency's policies. By remaining as a government agency that took orders from San Juan rather than responding to grievances from Puerto Ricans in New York, the Migration Division failed to provide a vehicle for political expression for Puerto Rican migrants in the city. Read more in Michael Lapp, "Managing Migration: The Migration Division of Puerto Rico and Puerto Ricans in New York City, 1948-1968" (Ph.D. diss., Johns Hopkins University, 1991), 145-46, 334-35.
26. Interview with Manny Diaz by Blanca Vazquez, October 3, 2002. More than ten years later, their paths continued to cross. While Diaz was organizing black parents from Baden Street Settlement in Rochester, New York, in the early 1960s, he was able to invite Malcolm X to speak to a crowd of more than one thousand persons.
27. Interview with Manny Diaz by Gene Sklar, May 19, 1994, in Box 3, Folder 7, Union Settlement Association Records (hereafter USAR), Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Columbia University.
28. Interview with Manny Diaz by Lillian Jiménez, Latino Educational Media Center, February 16, 2006.
29. Eric C. Schneider, Vampires, Dragons, and Egyptian Kings: Youth Gangs in Post-war New York (Princeton, NJ, 1999), 25.
30. Schneider, Vampires, Dragons, and Egyptian Kings, 71.
31. Richie Pérez, "From Assimilation to Annihilation: Puerto Rican Images in U.S. Politics" in Centro Journal 2, #8 (Spring 1990): 16. Pérez has an extensive list of films that stereotyped Puerto Rican boys as juvenile delinquents and young criminals in the post-war era. They include, among many others, City Across the River (1949), Knock on Any Door (1949), Blackboard Jungle (1955), Rock, Rock, Rock (1956), Cry Tough (1959), The Young Savages (1961), and West Side Story (1961).
32. Jewell Bellush and Murray Hausknecht, "Relocation and Managed Mobility," in Urban Renewal: People, Politics, and Planning, ed. Jewell Bellush and Murray Hausknecht (Garden City, NY, 1967), 371.
33. Richard A. Cloward and Lloyd E. Ohlin, Delinquency and Opportunity: A Theory of Delinquent Gangs (Glencoe, IL, 1960).
34. Dan Wakefield, Island in the City: the World of Spanish Harlem (Boston, 1959), 16.
35. Sexton, Spanish Harlem, 9.
36. "New York City's Puerto Ricans: Asset or Liability?" A Statement Relating to the Program and Needs of the Union Settlement, 1952, 237 E. 104th St. in Box 10, Folder 10, USAR.
37. Manny Diaz, "Gangs - An East Side Story," in Box 3, Folder 6, USAR; Interview with Manny Diaz by Gene Sklar, May 19, 1994.
38. "Metro North Moves Mountains," The Reporter, 1966, Box 13, Folder 20, James Weldon Johnson Community Center Records, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture; Wakefield, Island in the City, 16. In the 1960s, a racial gradient paralleled the geography of East Harlem: going from east to west, Italians resided between the East River and Third Avenue, then Puerto Ricans lived between Third Avenue and Fifth Avenue, and finally blacks lived west of Fifth Avenue and into Central Harlem.
39. The initial members of HYAA included, among many, others José Morales, Louis Núñez, Antonia Pantoja, Josephine Nieves, Maria Canino, and Yolanda Sanchez. Conversation with Manny Diaz, José Morales, and José Morales, Jr., by Sonia Lee, January 11, 2005.
40. ASPIRA took its name from the Spanish verb "aspirar," to aspire.
41. Interview with Manny Diaz by Gene Sklar, May 19, 1994.
42. Cloward and Ohlin, Delinquency and Opportunity 108, 211.
43. In addition, Cloward co-authored, with Frances Fox Piven, the influential book Regulating the Poor: The Function of Public Welfare (New York, 1971).
44. Herbert Krosney, Beyond Welfare: Poverty in the Supercity (New York, 1966), 3-8.
45. Krosney, Beyond Welfare, 19.
46. Leonardo Covello with Guido D'Agostino, The Teacher in the Urban Community: A Half-Century in City Schools (1958; Totowa, NJ, 1970), 260.
47. Harold H. Weissman, "Overview of Employment Opportunities," in Employment and Educational Services in the Mobilization for Youth Experience, ed. Harold H. Weissman (New York, 1969), 27-28;
48. Beverly Luther, "Negro Youth and Social Action" in Individual and Group Services in the Mobilization for Youth Experience, ed. Harold H. Weissman (New York, 1969), 151-53.
49. Phone conversation between Manny Diaz and Ande Diaz, September 30, 2005.
50. Interview with Manny Diaz by Blanca Vazquez, January 29, 2003.
51. Daniel Kronenfeld, "A Case History of a Block Association," in Community Development in the Mobilization for Youth Experience, ed. Harold H. Weissman (New York, 1969), 35.
52. Conversation with Manny Diaz, José Morales, and José Morales, Jr., by Sonia Lee, January 29, 2005.
53. By 1960, blacks comprised 14 percent of the city's population, but Puerto Ricans made up a little over half of that amount at 7.9 percent. Lighter-skinned Puerto Ricans may have had an easier time getting jobs than black Americans, but Puerto Ricans as a community lacked blacks' national political influence.
54. Interview with Manny Diaz by Sonia Lee, July 28, 2005
55. correspondence with Gilberto Gerena-Valentín by Sonia Lee, September 12, 2005.
56. Manny Diaz and Roland Cintrón, "School Integration and Quality Education," January 13, 1964, Microform 11, Bayard Rustin Papers, 194-1987, (Frederick, MD, 1988), Government Documents and Microforms, Harvard University.
57. Diaz and Cintrón, "School Integration and Quality Education."
58. Diaz and Cintrón, "School Integration and Quality Education." Diaz's statement that Puerto Ricans were not interested in racial integration has been echoed by several other Puerto Rican community leaders and scholars, such as Sonia Nieto. As a former teacher in P.S. 25, New York City's first bilingual school, Nieto claimed that "integration was viewed as a largely black and white issue, and Puerto Ricans and others who did not fit neatly into these categories were often excluded from consideration. Language was also becoming a much more central issue to most Puerto Ricans. As a result, bilingual education became the cornerstone of educational quality for Puerto Ricans and other Latinos." See Sonia Nieto, ed., Puerto Rican Students in U.S. Schools (Mahwah, NJ, 2000), 20.
59. Other Puerto Ricans involved in the National Association for Puerto Rican Civil Rights included Mario Abreu, Herman Badillo, Rev. Rubén Darío Colón, Rev. Pablo Cotto, Antolín Flores, Monserrate Flores, Rev. Father Walter Janer, Ramón Martínez, José Monserrat, José Morales, Jr., Carlos Ríos, Irma Vidal Santaella, Paul Sánchez, George Santiago, Robert Winston, and Marty Gold. From "National Association for Puerto Rican Civil Rights Meets for First Annual Convention on April 3rd, 1964," in Box 2, Folder 3, 5206P Series, National Union of Hospital and Health Care Employees (Local 1199) Records, School of Industrial and Labor Relations, Kheel Center, Cornell University.
60. "National Association for Puerto Rican Civil Rights: Draft Resolution on the Education of the Puerto Rican Child in New York City, February 6, 1964," in Microfilm 11, Bayard Rustin Papers
61. Betances, "The Prejudice of Having No Prejudice in Puerto Rico," in The Rican (Winter 1972): 51.
62. Puerto Rican leader as quoted in David Rogers, 110 Livingston Street: Politics and Bureaucracy in the New York City Schools (New York, 1968), 125.
63. Clayton Knowles, "Screvane to Scan Poverty Budget," New York Times, July 2, 1964;
64. Antonia Pantoja, Memoir of a Visionary: Antonia Pantoja (Houston, TX, 2002), 86.
65. Diaz conducted a study in which he pointed out Puerto Ricans' wide distribution throughout the city's seventeen neighborhoods. In 1960, they composed 44.2 percent of the South Bronx, 35 percent of East Harlem, 28.8 percent of Williamsburg, 23.2 percent of Brownsville, 20.9 percent of South Brooklyn-Red Hook, 18.8 percent of Hamilton Grange-Washington Heights, and 12.1 percent of Manhattan Park West. From Peter Khiss, "Puerto Ricans Plan Self-HeIp Program," New York Times, March 16, 1964.
66. According to HARYOU-ACT designer Cyril Tyson, PRCDP founders wanted it to be a non-profit organization that would receive grants for various programs. Cloward was well aware of the then use of "holding companies" as a business tool to amass and control companies from a central structure. Diaz hoped it would be used as a tool for non-profit organizations to spin off new structures. Email correspondence with Cyril Tyson by Ande Diaz, January 17, 2007.
67. Interview with Manny Diaz by Sonia Lee, July 28, 2005.
68. Pantoja, Memoirs of a Visionary, 111-19.
69. Interview with Manny Diaz by Sonia Lee, July 28, 2005; Puerto Rican Forum, The Puerto Rican Community Development Project: Un Proyecto Puertorriquen̄o de Ayuda Mutua para el Desarrollo de la Comunidad (New York, 1975). Puerto Rican leaders who headed PRCDP included Francisco Trilla, Joseph Erazo, Erasto Torres, Maria Canino, Pablo Cotto, Monserrate Flores, Julio Hernandez, Luis Quero Chiesa, Max Sanoguet, and Josephine Nieves.
70. Conversation with Manny Diaz, José Morales, and José Morales, Jr., by Sonia Lee, January 22, 2005.
71. Interview with Robert de León by Sonia Lee, July 21, 2005.
72. Robert Blauner, Racial Oppression in America (New York, 1972);
73. Ramón Grosfoguel, Colonial Subjects: Puerto Ricans in a Global Perspective (Berkeley, CA, 2003), 146, 153;
74. Suzanne Oboler, Ethnic Labels, Latino Lives: Identity and the Politics of (RE)presentation in the United States (Minneapolis, MN, 1995), 42. Blauner was one of the first scholars to argue that black Americans were "internal colonial" subjects. He made the primary distinction between different forms of incorporation of diverse ethnic/racial groups within the United States by arguing that European "immigrants" were incorporated as wage labor, while "internal colonial" groups such as African Americans suffered coerced forms of labor. Grosfoguel expands on Blauner's observation by arguing that both African Americans and Puerto Ricans can be considered "colonial subjects" if we broaden the definition of "colonial situations" as "cultural, political, and economic oppression of subordinate racialized/ethnic groups by dominant racial/ethnic groups with or without the existence of colonial administrations." Oboler echoes a similar argument by claiming that blacks and Puerto Ricans and Mexican Americans/Chicanos all have been treated as second-class citizens.
75. Interview with Manny Diaz by Ande Diaz, March 18, 2006.
76. Manuel Diaz, "The Shaping of Social Welfare Policy," paper commissioned on State/Local Relations by Cesar A. Perales, Commissioner of the New York State Department of Social Services, and presented at the Tarrytown Conference, November 13-15, 1983. The paper was published in a report by the same name with a subtitle of "One Year Later" in 1984.
77. Ramón Vélez, director of the Hunts Point Multi-Service Center, was the most famous Puerto Rican leader in New York City who advocated Puerto Ricans' civil rights at the expense of blacks' civil rights, but black and Puerto Rican competition for anti-poverty money was prevalent in the late 1960s and early 1970s. See Fred Barbaro, "Ethnic Resentment" in Black/Brown/White Relations: Race Relations in the 1970s, ed. Charles V. Willie (New Brunswick, NJ, 1977);
78. Julio Morales, Puerto Rican Poverty and Migration: We Just Had to Try Elsewhere (New York, 1986), especially chapter 3 on "Black-Puerto Rican Competition in New York City: The Inevitable Systemic Outcome";
79. Angelo Falcon "Black/Latino Politics, Black/Latino Communities" in Puerto Rico Libre 7 (Summer 1985);
80. Angelo Falcón, "Black and Latino Politics in New York City: Race and Ethnicity in a Changing Urban Context," in Latinos and the Political System, ed. F. Chris Garcia (Notre Dame, IN, 1988);
81. José E. Cruz, "Inter-minority Relations in Urban Settings: Lessons from the Black-Puerto Rican Experience," in Black and Multiracial Politics in America, ed. Yvette M. Alex-Assensoh and Lawrence J. Hanks (New York, 2000).
82. Diaz later served as the Northeast Regional Director of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Senior Vice President of the Urban Coalition, and Associate Professor of Social Policy at Fordham University School of Social Service. Pantoja founded Boricua College and the Puerto Rican Research and Resource Center in Washington, DC, in 1973, worked as Associate Professor at the School of Social Work at San Diego State University, and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1996.
83. Nydia M. Velázquez, Congresswoman (D-NY), Press release upon learning of the death of Manuel Diaz, March 27, 2006.