Spring 2022 BCC Puerto Rico Research Tour

The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, one of The New York Public Library's world-leading research libraries.

Schomburg was a Puerto Rican-born Black historian living in New York City at the time of the Harlem Renaissance. He was a Puerto Rican of African and German descent who researched and raised awareness of the great contributions that Afro-Latin Americans and Afro-Americans have made to society.

Includes an audio clip from NPR and a video clip "Schomburg Founder Arturo Alfonso Schomburg in Our Original Reading Room"

By Parker Diakite for Travel Noire
FEB 13, 2019

By Hilda Lloréns
March 3, 2020
"This title is a variation of a statement I have heard during the last two decades as a professional anthropologist. I was reminded of it again recently, when a Puerto Rico-based colleague mentioned that it is common in the archipelago to think about the race research produced by U.S.-based Puerto Rican researchers as being tainted by U.S.-centric ideas about race. At its base, this assertion has the effect, and maybe even the goal from the outset, of discrediting the race research produced by those of us living in the Diaspora. But I believe there is more going on than just marking our research as suspect."

By Miari Taina Stephens for ReVista: Harvard Review of Latin America

Link to Netflix special, a recording of the Broadway production.
In this one-man Broadway show, John Leguizamo finds humor and heartbreak as he traces 3,000 years of Latin history in an effort to help his bullied son.

From HomeTeam History on YouTube

Did you know how much Taino culture and language is still with us today?
From Buzzfeed News

April 17, 2020
"The 2020 census is underway, which counts everyone living in the U.S. and its five territories including Puerto Rico. The form consists of questions like name, age, sex and race, but some of these answers are complicated. One example is the race question. In Puerto Rico, residents choose "Puerto Rican" to describe their Hispanic origin, but historically residents have overwhelmingly identified as white on the census, despite the island's rich African history. In this segment, journalist Natasha S. Alford takes us through her reporting of Afro-Puerto Ricans and how activists are fighting to have their communities seen on the census."

April 24, 2020
Episode from NPR's podcast Code Switch
"What is your race?"
"It's a question the federal government asks us every 10 years at census time. But in the year 2000, that was a new question for the residents of Puerto Rico. For half a century before then, the U.S. territory's government had used its own, local census questionnaire – which did not ask about race."
"And so this new question took a lot of people on the island by surprise. The way they answered it shocked many Puerto Ricans, and revealed a lot about Puerto Rico's relationship with race, colonialism and the United States."

From the NPR podcast All Things Considered

"A Latinx hosted podcast for a new generation of Puerto Ricans." One episode of interest is from June 28 2020: No Justice No Peace: The case of Sandy Guardiola and an interview with her son Andrew. Link contains full list of episodes.

Short film made for premiere in the IU Cinema on May 3, 2011.