Building a Latino Civil Rights Movement

“The book painstakingly illustrates the broad scope of Black–Puerto Rican activism in New York City, showing that it encompassed many spheres of social and political mobilization, including those not associated with radical movements. A significant contribution to Puerto Rican, African American, New York, and U.S. postwar history, this book will be an important contribution to the ongoing debate on 'Black/Brown relations' in the United States.” — Frank Andre Guridy, author of Forging Diaspora: Afro-Cubans and African Americans in a World of Empire and Jim Crow

“Lee’s thorough and careful research into the history of grassroots politics in the 1960s and 1970s represents an important addition to the literature on the civil rights movement and its coda in New York City. The story she tells of the uneasy collaborations between Puerto Rican and African American activists and leaders in this period adds much-needed depth to the history of New York in general and to the history of civil rights activism in particular.” — Lorrin Thomas, Rutgers University-Camden

“Lee shows that working-class communities have the power and potential to come together and challenge the terms of their political affiliations and social circumstances.... She decisively rewrites the history of the decade and reminds us that the so-called black-white binary has been a means of social control rather than ethnographic description.” — Journal of African American History

“[A] pathbreaking history of Puerto Rican activism in New York.” — CHOICE

“Offers a long overdue look at Puerto Ricans' fight for civil rights in mid-century New York City.” — American Historical Review

“An important contribution to the emerging scholarship on the long civil rights movement, as well as to more nuanced treatments of the War on Poverty.” — Journal of American History