Bicycle Fetish Day 2006, Williamsburg, Brooklyn; Image courtesy of bluecinema on Flickr

On this day in 1917, President Woodrow Wilson signed the Jones Act thereby making Puerto Rico a United States territory and extending citizenship to all Puerto Ricans.  This allowed people to migrate from Puerto Rico to the mainland United States at a time when quotas were restricting immigration (Immigration Act of 1924).  This also meant that the WWI draft extended to residents of Puerto Rico, sending 20,000 Puerto Rican people to the U.S. Army.  Because of the Jones Act, Puerto Rican residents are able to vote upon migrating to mainland U.S., however, Puerto Rican residents remaining in Puerto Rico are still not allowed to vote in Federal elections.

From 1973-1975, the Brooklyn Historical Society interviewed over 70 people who migrated to Brooklyn from Puerto Rico between 1917-1940. These narrators, born between 1890-1940, tell wonderful stories about their steamship journey, family life, work life, and establishing Puerto Rican civic and cultural organizations in Brooklyn.

You can listen to stories from the Puerto Rican Oral History collection, 1973-1975 in BHS’s Othmer Library.  The collection is also made available at Centro de Estudios Puertorriqueños at Hunter College, CUNY.  And on Friday, April 16th, 12-2PM, BHS will be hosting a Brown Bag Lecture as part of the Mayor’s Immigrant Heritage Week:  Join BHS’s oral historian Sady Sullivan, archivist Chela Scott Weber, Centro’s Senior Archivist Pedro Juan Hernandez, and Columbia student and BHS Intern Amna Ahmad for a lively introduction to this important historical collection.